Georg Friedrich Händel – The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
An evening pause: Performed live 2015. From Handel’s oratorio Solomon.
Hat tip James Street.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
August 12, 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.
- Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut to air first tour of Blue Origin’s New Glenn factory with Jeff Bezos
It will be released on August 15, 2025. More and more it appears Bezos is trying to get his so-far failed company off the ground.
- NASA buys payload space to put camera on Blue Origin’s first lunar lander mission
A similar camera flew on the Intuitive Machines mission, and is scheduled to fly on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander.
- Soyuz-2 rocket carrying next Progress to ISS is now vertical on launchpad
The launch is scheduled for August 15, 2024.
- China’s policy for disposal of rocket upper stage’s in orbit (to reduce space junk) is merely recommended, not mandatory
Doesn’t matter much even if it was mandatory if the upper stages break up into hundreds of pieces, right after launch, as China’s Long March 6A has now done on two of seven launches.
- On this day in 1977 the Enterprise space shuttle test vehicle made its first free flight and runway landing, crewed by Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton
That was the flight in which Haise commented afterward, “It flies like a brick.” He meant that as a complement, because even so the shuttle made a perfect glided landing.
The strange carbon dioxide ice cap of Mars’ south pole
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.
» Read more
Trump to sue Justice Department over Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent indictments
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.”
» Read more
FAA cancels scheduled public meetings to review new Boca Chica environmental assessment
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.
A galaxy with a ring
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and appears part of a long term survey of nearby ringed galaxies. From the caption:
MCG+07-07-072 has quite an unusual shape, for a spiral galaxy, with thin arms emerging from the ends of its barred core to draw a near-circle around its disc. It is classified, using a common extension of the basic Hubble scheme, as an SBc(r) galaxy: the c denotes that its two spiral arms are loosely wound, each only performing a half-turn around the galaxy, and the (r) is for the ring-like structure they create. Rings in galaxies come in quite a few forms, from merely uncommon, to rare and astrophysically important!
Lenticular galaxies are a type that sit between elliptical and spiral galaxies. They feature a large disc, unlike an elliptical galaxy, but lack any spiral arms. Lenticular means lens-shaped, and these galaxies often feature ring-like shapes in their discs. Meanwhile, the classification of “ring galaxy” is reserved for peculiar galaxies with a round ring of gas and star formation, much like spiral arms look, but completely disconnected from the galactic nucleus – or even without any visible nucleus! They’re thought to be formed in galactic collisions.
This galaxy is about 320 million light years away, and is also known as Abell 426. Though astronomers think that these various shapes of galaxies, from barred to lenticular to ringed, are formed from a variety of galactic collusions and interactions with each galaxy’s nucleus, that remains nothing more than an educated guess. The complexity of galaxy evolution, involving billions of years and millions of stars, is barely in its infancy, and requires a lot of assumptions because our observations only involves a mere nanosecond in that grand history.
Dawn Aerospace completes new round of flight tests of its small-scale rocket-powered airplane
The crew and Mk-II prototype
The space startup Dawn Aerospace on August 7, 2024 announced the successful completion of a second set of flight tests of its small-scale rocket-powered Mk-II Aurora airplane, reaching speeds just below the speed of sound, with the goal in the next round of flights to set several major records and lay the groundwork of building a reuseable orbital spaceplane that can launch and land on a runway, and do so twice in one day.
The campaign (dubbed Campaign 2-2) saw three flights completed in late July. In flight three, we achieved a maximum speed and altitude of Mach 0.92 (967 km/h) and 50,000ft (15.1km). That is 3x and 5x of what we had achieved in the previous campaign – a massive jump in demonstrated performance.
We are now poised to fly supersonic in Campaign 2-3, scheduled for September. But that is just the beginning. In many respects, the Mk-II is slated to be the highest-performance vehicle to take off from a runway. By the end of 2025, we’re looking to climb faster than an F15, fly higher than a Mig 25, faster than an SR-71, and, ultimately, be the first vehicle to fly above the Karman line; 100km altitude (the generally accepted definition of “space”), twice in a single day.
Some of these records have stood for over 50 years.
The company has so far spent $10 million on this project, and has raised a total of $20 million. Nor is this Dawn’s only effort. It builds and sells thrusters for smallsats, and is also selling to smallsat makers its own docking and refueling port.
The press release at the link is very detailed, and worth perusing. Four of the company’s founders come from the rocket field, with the fifth from aviation. Their goal, to build from scratch a commercial orbital spaceplane using private funds entirely, is quite laudible but incredibly challenging. It remains to be seen whether they can do it. That the company has diversified successfully into the satellite industry is very encouraging however.
SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites
After a launch abort less than a minute before launch yesterday, SpaceX successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites this morning, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The past three days for SpaceX was quite busy, as my readers can easily see: Three launches in three days. It appears the company is working hard to recover its launch pace from the several week pause after an upper stage had a leak on a July 11th launch.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
80 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 95 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 80 to 64.
The launch schedule for the rest of the week will be as busy, with the Russians launching a Progress freighter to ISS, India launching its SSLV rocket, and SpaceX having two more launches on its manifest.
FAA red tape apparently stalling the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch
Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing.
Click for video.
Back in mid-June, shortly after 4th orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, it appeared based on an FAA statement that the company could proceed with the next test flight as soon as it was ready to fly.
Subsequently, Elon Musk said the company expected to be ready by early August. There were also indications that the company wished to attempt a chopstick landing of Superheavy back at the launch tower at Boca Chica. Such an attempt however would require approval from the FAA, as the flight profile would not be the same as the previous flight.
I and others speculated that SpaceX would forego that chopstick landing in order to fly the fifth test flight quickly, while simultanously requesting permission from the FAA for such a landing on a later test flight. My thinking was that this would allow test flights to proceed with as little delay as possible.
Though it remains unknown whether or not the next test flight will include that chopstick landing attempt, it does appear that FAA red tape is blocking the next flight. In an update from NASASpaceflight.com about the work at Boca Chica posted on August 9, 2023 was a link to a SpaceX tweet the day before that said the following:
» Read more
SpaceX launches two broadband satellites for the Space Force and Norway
SpaceX tonight successfully launched two broadband satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The satellites will provide improved broadband service in the Arctic regions for both the Space Force and Norway, which partnered with Northrop Grumman to build the satellites.
The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 22nd flight, tying the record of one other booster for the most reuses. It landed on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
79 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 94 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 79 to 64.
Rocket Lab launches commercial radar satellite
Rocket Lab early this morning successfully launched a radar satellite for the company Capella, its Electron rocket lifting off from its launchpad in New Zealand.
This was Rocket Lab’s fifth launch for Capella. It is also the tenth launch for Rocket Lab this year, maintaining a pace of more than one launch per month. It remains uncertain at this moment whether the company can reach its goal of 20 launches for the year.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
78 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 93 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 78 to 64.
SpaceX launches an additional 21 Starlink satellites
SpaceX early this morning successfully launched an additional 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its 21st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Note how a first stage is now used more than twenty times, and it almost goes without notice.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
78 SpaceX
33 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 92 to 49, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 78 to 63.
August 9, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Johnny Cash – Hurt
An evening pause: A truly moving music video by Cash, reflecting on his life in music and pictures.
Make your own memories this weekend.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Are these Martian terraced mesas or pits?
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have purposely enhanced the contrast to bring out the strangely shaped and terraced features.
What I cannot figure out from any data available to me is whether these terraced features are mesas rising up, or pits descending down. The resolution in the global mosiac of Mars created both from MRO’s context camera and its elevation data is simply not good enough. It suggests these are pits, but the sunlight is coming from the west, which based on the shadows suggest these could be pits or mesas.
In fact, the dark lines that appear to distinguish the terraces might not be shadows at all, but simply darker material that contrasts with the lighter material on each side.
» Read more
SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine is so advanced the CEO of ULA doesn’t understand it
Click for original image.
When Elon Musk on August 2, 2024 proudly tweeted a picture of SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine, the third iteration of the engine it uses on this Starship/Superheavy rocket, Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA, looked at the image (to the right) and complained that Musk and SpaceX were touting pictures of a “partially assembled engine.” As Bruno tweeted:
They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.
It turns out that this engine is so advanced that Bruno — the CEO of SpaceX’s best competitor — didn’t understand it. Both Musk and SpaceX’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell immediately responded with images of this same engine operating during hot fire tests. As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).”
Musk in one of his first tweets describing the engine’s specifications was also right when he described it as “Truly, a work of art.” Look at it. For what is the most powerful rocket engine ever built it looks as streamlined and a simple as the slant-6 car engine I had in my 1969 Plymouth Valient, built long before environmental regulations caused car engines to become incredibly overbuilt and complicated.
This little anecdote illustrates quite starkly how advanced SpaceX is over its competitors. It is now building rocket engines with technology beyond the immediate understanding of the CEO of the United States’ second largest rocket company.
Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same, and only one company, Rocket Lab, is doing flight tests in an attempt to eventually do so.
SpaceX has no competition because too many of its competitors are simply not trying to compete. It is both sad and shameful.
Hat tip to reader Rex Ridenoure.
Crazily eroded rock on Mars
Click for interactive map.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken today by the Perseverance Mars rover, using its SHERLOC-WATSON close-up camera at the end of its robot arm.
The size of this rock is tiny, no more than a few inches across. The many holes remind me of surface limestone on Earth. When it rains, the water dissolves the limestone, and so holes will develop and grow over time. You can see this process if you spray very hot water on top of a block of ice.
The problem is that it doesn’t rain on Mars. Lava can sometimes freeze and look this way, but is it lava? The blue dot on the overview map above shows where Perseverance was two days earlier. The rover team has not updated that map so it is not known exactly where the rover was when it snapped this picture today. Nor has the science team posted an update on their activities since June 27th.
These strange features however mirror somewhat the same surface features seen back in June, when the rover was on the north side of Neretva Vallis, so it is likely this rock was produced by the same geological processes. I will however not guess what those processes were.
NASA inspector general blasts Boeing’s management relating to its work on SLS’s new more powerful upper stage
Boeing’s schedule slips in building SLS’s upper stage
In a report issued today [pdf], NASA’s inspector general harshly criticized the Boeing managment and operations at its Michoud facility, where the company is developing SLS’s new more powerful upper stage. From the report’s executive summary:
Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of rained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing. To mitigate these challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees. Considering the significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud, we found these efforts to be inadequate. For example, during our visit to Michoud in April 2023, we observed a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome—a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3—segregated and pending disposition on whether and how it can safely be used going forward due to welds that did not meet NASA specifications. According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision. The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards.
The report also notes that delivery of that upper stage has been delayed from 2021 to 2027 (as shown by the graph to the right, taken from the IG report), and its cost has risen from $962 million to almost $2.8 billion. It also notes quite bluntly that:
Boeing’s quality management system at Michoud does not effectively adhere to industry standards or NASA requirements, resulting in production delays to the SLS core and upper stages and increased risk to the integrated spacecraft. … Boeing’s process for addressing contractual noncompliance has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur.
Sound familiar? It should. These issues appear to be the same kind of quality control problems that have plagued Starliner, and are also the same kind of problems that had NASA reject Boeing’s bid to provide cargo to its Lunar Gateway station, and state while doing so that it will no longer consider future Boeing bids until the company straightens itself out.
It appears from today’s inspector general report that Boeing has fixed nothing. The report recommends some additional supervision of Boeing from NASA, and more importantly suggests the agency “institute financial penalties for Boeing’s noncompliance with quality control standards.”
French startup Exploration Company has so far obtained almost $800 million in contracts
The French startup The Exploration Company has so far obtained almost $800 million in contracts to provide cargo ferrying services to space stations using its Nyx unmanned freighter.
During a presentation at the International Space Station Research & Development Conference (ISSRDC), The Exploration Company’s chief commercial officer, Dana Baki, outlined the company’s progress since its founding. According to Baki, the company has raised $70 million in funding and grown to 130 employees across four countries. The headline figure was, however, the $770 million in contracts won, of which 10% came from space agencies and the other 90% from private space station providers Axiom Space, Vast, and Starlab.
This French company recognized early on that if all four space stations get built, they will all need regular cargo deliveries, and that SpaceX’s cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus would be hard pressed to fill the need. Thus the demand for its untested capsule. The contracts are likely contingency-based, meaning the stations are not committing any significant money until Nyx becomes operational.
One other interesting note: The only proposed station that did not offer Exploration a contract was Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef. Though one of Blue Origin’s partners is Sierra Space, which will provide cargo ferrying capacity with its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles, it seems signing up a redundant back up would be wise. Another partner, Boeing, is supposed to use Starliner to provide crew ferrying capability, with cargo an option, but that remains an unknown considering the problems with Starliner.
It is unlikely Blue Origin has signed a deal with SpaceX, and I have not seen any news that it signed a deal with Northrop. Thus, it has no known viable backup at the moment.
Rocket Lab completes first static fire test of new more powerful rocket engine
Neutron first stage deploying second stage with satellite
Rocket Lab yesterday announced it has successfully completed the first static fire test of its new Archimedies rocket engine, designed to be used on its new larger Neutron rocket scheduled for launch next year.
Archimedes performed well and ticked off several key test objectives, including reaching 102% power, anchoring the engine’s design ahead of Neutron’s first flight scheduled for mid-2025 – a schedule that would make Neutron the fastest a commercially developed medium-class launch vehicle has been brought to market. With the hot fire complete and full qualification campaign now underway, the Rocket Lab team is moving into full production of flight engines.
The design of Neuton is clever, as shown in the graphic to the right. In order to reuse as much as possible, the fairing encloses both the payload and upper stage. Before stage separation, the fairing will open, allowing the upper stage and its payload to be deployed. Afterward it remains with the first stage, which will land vertically back at the launch site.