Author: Robert Zimmerman

Remembering Apollo 17, fifty years after the last manned mission to the Moon

9:37 am

LRO oblique view of Apollo 17 landing site
Click for full image.

Link here.

The article comes from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team, and includes a number of LRO photos of the landing site, including the oblique annotated image to the right, reduced to post here. As the article notes:

The Apollo 17 crew was the last of an era in human space exploration and the last to set foot on the Moon. Fifty years later, the landing sites, hardware, and footsteps remain delicately preserved on the lunar surface. Join the LRO team as we commemorate their inspiring achievements with additional images, research, maps, interactive sites, and a dedicated video. LRO continues to image the Apollo sites whenever possible, under multiple lighting conditions, and combine these images into interactive sites, like the Apollo 17 Temporal Traverse. The Lunar QuickMap 3D tool can be used to preview the Apollo landing sites and search for LROC images of the areas. For downloadable maps of the Taurus-Littrow Valley, visit the Map Sheets section on our downloads page here. Finally, the Apollo 17 fiftieth anniversary video below presents highlights of the mission with landing site views reconstructed using LROC images and topography.

I have embedded that video below. It does a marvelous job summarizing this mission, which in many ways remains the most daring human exploration mission since Columbus dared cross an ocean in a tiny ship only slightly larger than many lifeboats.
» Read more

5 comments

Update on the ten cubesats launched by SLS

9:16 am

Link here.

At this moment six of the ten cubesats either accomplished their mission successfully or are still operating, while four cubesats failed entirely.

Of those still working, two will go into lunar orbit and try to find evidence of both hydrogen and ice on the Moon. A third is testing “solid iodine” thrusters, while a fourth will observe how yeast samples react to a long exposure in deep space. A fifth cubesat is a joint NASA-JAXA mission, and is testing how to fly a smallsat in the low gravity of a Lagrangian point.

Finally, an Italian cubesat was used to successfully take images of the Moon and Orion, and has completed its mission.

One comment

China’s Long March 4C rocket launches two satellites

9:05 am

Long March 4C launch

China today launched two experimental technology satellites, using its Long March 4C rocket from an interior spaceport.

The launch pictures, as captured on the right, show what appear to be panels falling off the rocket as it lifts off. Note how some of these falling panels are red, while the Chinese flag at the top of the rocket appears to be partly broken off in the later picture. The fairing and shell of the upper stage in the second picture also appear changed.

The Chinese state-run press claims the satellites reached orbit as planned, but these pictures suggest otherwise. If part of the fairing and outside of the upper stage fell off, there is a good chance the payload was damaged during max-q, the period soon after launch when rockets undergo the greatest stress in the Earth’s thicker atmosphere.

UPDATE from stringer Jay: Video of the launch. The panels continue to drop off for a considerable time.

Assuming this launch was a success, however, the 2022 launch race continues to heat up, with China vying to beat SpaceX after trailing the American company for most of the year.

58 China
56 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 80 to 58 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 88 to 80.

7 comments

Orion successfully splashes down in the Pacific

8:42 pm

NASA’s Orion capsule today successfully returned from a three week trip around the Moon, splashing down in the Pacific where it was successfully recovered.

The next Artemis flight will be a manned one, using SLS and Orion to fly around the Moon. It will also be the first time Orion will use its full environmental system, with humans on board. Though presently scheduled for May 2024, it is almost certainly not going to fly before 2025.

The actual Artemis manned lunar landing will follow, no sooner than two years after that. As presently designed, that mission requires the establishment of the Lunar Gateway station — astronauts can be transferred from Orion to Starship and back again, and that station is likely not going to be ready in this time frame.

As I said yesterday, I predict the two already purchased private Starship missions around the Moon, paid for by Yusaku Maezawa and Jared Isaacman, will happen first. Both will certainly beat NASA’s planned landing on the Moon. I also expect both to beat that Orion manned fly-around in ’24-’25. And each will cost pennies compared to the entire SLS/Orion program, while actually making a profit that will be used to further development and more manned private flights.

2 comments

SpaceX successfully launches Ispace’s Hakuto-R private mission to Moon

12:51 am

Lunar map showing Hakuto-R's landing spot
Hakuto-R’s planned landing site is in Atlas Crater.

Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully launched Ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar lander, the first private mission attempting to softly land on the Moon.

The Falcon 9 first stage completed its fifth flight, landing successfully at Cape Canaveral.

Hakuto-R, which is actually the first of two missions, carries seven payloads, including two small rovers, Rashid, which is the United Arab Emirates first lunar mission, and a smaller rover built by Ispace. Both will operate for about a week, one lunar day. Hakuto-R will land on the Moon in April, 2023.

A second payload is a cubesat from JPL, called Lunar Flashlight. It will go into lunar orbit, testing new fuel technologies while also attempting to identify water in the permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

57 China
56 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 80 to 57 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 87 to 80.

9 comments

NASA extends Boeing’s contract to produce more SLS rockets

10:30 am

NASA yesterday announced that it will pay Boeing $3.2 billion for two more SLS rockets.

NASA has finalized its contract with Boeing of Huntsville, Alabama, for approximately $3.2 billion to continue manufacturing core and upper stages for future Space Launch System (SLS) rockets for Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.

Under the SLS Stages Production and Evolution Contract action, Boeing will produce SLS core stages for Artemis III and IV, procure critical and long-lead material for the core stages for Artemis V and VI, provide the exploration upper stages (EUS) for Artemis V and VI, as well as tooling and related support and engineering services.

All this really means is that NASA is going depend on SLS and Orion to fly its astronauts to and from the Moon, and because of that its pace of flight will be — at best — slow and long-drawn out. For example, this new order extends the contract out to 2028. It will thus leave plenty of time for SpaceX and other nations to get there first.

I predict that the private Starship missions paid for by Yusaku Maezawa and Jared Isaacman will both fly before these two new Artemis missions. You heard it here first.

20 comments

Chinese upper stage disintegrates in orbit

10:21 am

A Chinese Long March 6 upper stage, launched in on November 11, 2022, has disintegrated into more than 350 in orbit and now pose a threat to other orbiting spacecraft.

The Long March 6A rocket launched from Taiyuan, north China, on Nov. 11, successfully inserting the Yunhai 3 environmental monitoring satellite into its intended orbit.

The upper stage of the rocket, however, apparently suffered a breakup event shortly thereafter. On Nov. 12, the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron (18SDS) reported that it was tracking at least 50 discrete pieces of orbital debris from the rocket body. Ongoing tracking from 18SDS, which focuses on space domain awareness, now states that the debris cloud has grown to 350 objects associated with the rocket stage.

Based on the data, it appears the break-up occurred because the stage had an explosive event. It could have been programed to fire its engine to quickly de-orbit it and something went wrong. Or not. The Chinese have not demonstrated much concern about such issues.

4 comments

December 9, 2022 Quick space links

3:07 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

2 comments

Ancient lava flows down the flanks of the solar system’s largest volcano

11:52 am

Lava flows on Olympus Mons
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 2, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what appears to be very old and eroded lava on the northeast flanks of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars as well as the entire solar system. About 600 miles across, from the edge to its peak, Olympus rises about 54,000 feet, with an actual height relative to Mars’ “sea level” of just under 70,000 feet, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth.

The white arrow show the downward grade. Several different flows can be seen throughout the picture, some confined to a central channel with smooth aprons of overflows on either side. Others are more broken and less coherent, and suggest that either the flows were inherently different, or are much older and have deteriorated with time.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Pushback: Students win $90K from University of Idaho for restricting their free speech

11:00 am

Idaho University bans religious speech
This college is still hostile to free speech.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Three students who were punished last spring by the University of Idaho (UI) for daring to disagree publicly with an activist for the queer agenda have now won a $90K settlement as well as getting their records fully cleared.

As part of the settlement, university officials permanently rescinded the no-contact orders they had issued against Peter Perlot, Mark Miller, and Ryan Alexander, members of the Christian Legal Society chapter at the university, and Professor Richard Seamon, CLS’s faculty advisor, and paid $90,000.

I reported this case when it happened, noting that the university had essentially “decided that the only opinions that could be allowed were those that agreed with the queer political agenda, and acted unilaterally to punish these Christians for refusing to bow to that rule.” The university has now lost, and lost badly.
» Read more

5 comments

Astronomers confirm Webb galaxies from the early universe

9:40 am

Astronomers using Webb have now confirmed with spectroscopy the age of at least four galaxies from the very very early universe, existing only a short time after the theorized Big Bang.

Four of the galaxies studied are particularly special, as they were revealed to be at an unprecedentedly early epoch. The results provided spectroscopic confirmation that these four galaxies lie at redshifts above 10, including two at redshift 13. This corresponds to a time when the universe was approximately 330 million years old, setting a new frontier in the search for far-flung galaxies. These galaxies are extremely faint because of their great distance from us.

The scientists had aimed Webb at Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field, doing a long infrared exposure lasting 28 hours over three days in order to gather the faintest infrared radiation (that Hubble could not see) and thus the most distant galaxies. The spectrum of individuals stars was then measured, which indicating their redshift and their estimated age.

The astronomers will next aim Webb at the more famous Hubble Deep Field, the first such long exposure that optical telescope took back in the late 1990s.

One comment

SOFIA to retire to Arizona museum

9:28 am

NASA yesterday announced that its airborne 747 SOFIA telescope will be retired to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, making its final flight there December 13, 2022.

Pima, one of the world’s largest aerospace museums, is developing plans for when and how the SOFIA aircraft will eventually be on display to the public. Along with six hangars, 80 acres of outdoor display grounds, and more than 425 aircraft from around the world, Pima also has its own restoration facility where incoming aircraft like SOFIA are prepared for museum immortalization after their arrival.

While the idea of SOFIA, putting a astronomical telescope on an airplane to get it above most of the atmosphere, has some merit, this particular NASA project was always too costly and simply produced too little science to justify its expense.

In many ways, this museum display will provide one of the best ways to see a 747 itself, now also retired.

3 comments

NASA awards Collins contract to build spacesuits for space station spacewalks

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday awarded Collins Aerospace a $97.2 million contract to build spacesuits for the agency’s future space station spacewalks.

In June NASA had picked Collins and Axiom as the vendors who would build spacesuits for the agency. In September it purchased its its first Artemis Moon spacesuits from Axiom. This new contract has NASA buying its first new space station suits from Collins.

In both cases, the companies own their designs, and can thus sell them to the other private space stations presently under construction.

This contract award follows NASA abandonment of its own failed spacesuit effort, which spent fourteen years and a billion dollars and produced nothing.

One comment

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander passes launch tests

9:14 am

Astrobotic’s first demonstration lunar lander, dubbed Peregrine, has passed its vibration and acoustic tests, demonstrating it can survive launch on ULA’s Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for the first quarter of ’23.

The lander is now undergoing electromagnetic interference testing, which will be followed by thermal vacuum tests. Once those tests are complete, the company said, it will ship the lander to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to be integrated with the Vulcan Centaur for a launch currently scheduled in the first quarter of 2023. That launch will be the inaugural flight of the Vulcan Centaur.

A great deal will be riding on that first Vulcan launch, both for Astrobotic and ULA.

One comment

Billionaire Maezawa chooses his passengers for Starship lunar flight

9:07 am

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa yesterday announced the eight passengers he will take with him on his private Starship flight around the Moon, its launch date still not set.

The full list of ten (including the two back-up passengers) is a wide mixture of individuals with a wide range of disciplines coming from a wide range of countries. For those interested in space, the one name that stood out and was very familiar was Tim Dodd, created of Everyday Astronaut. He created a video describing his selection as well as Maezawa’s entire project, which I have embedded below:
» Read more

4 comments

Last 747 rolls off assembly line

8:58 am

Boeing earlier this week completed assembly of its very last 747 airplane, the 1,574th such plane built in the past half century.

Still in its iridescent green protective coating, the giant aircraft was towed out of the widebody aircraft factory in a low-key exercise without any fanfare. Once the 747 has been cleared, it will be flown to another Boeing facility where it will be painted in the Atlas Air livery in anticipation of final delivery to the customer next year.

The 747 was born out of a failed bid by Boeing to market a large jet transporter to the US military in the 1960s. That contract for what became the C-5A Galaxy eventually went to Lockheed, but Boeing was convinced that its basic design, with its high-bypass turbofan engine, could be reworked for the civilian market, which was booming at the time.

On January 9, 1969, the first 747 prototype took to the skies over Washington state. It was a staggering 225 feet (68.5 m) long, had a wing area larger than a basketball court, and the tail was as high as a six-story building.

Without question the 747 was one of the safest and well designed airplanes ever built. It was years after that first flight before one was involved in an accident, and that was not due to a failure of the plane itself. It also flew like a dream, its large size making it look like it was lumbering slowly in the air. Its retirement is almost entirely related to fuel cost-savings, since the 747 has four engines and thus more fuel than more modern planes.

5 comments

China completes two launches successfully

8:48 am

China today successfully completed two launches:

First, China’s government used its Long March 2D rocket to launch a classified Earth observation satellite into orbit. The rocket launched from an interior spaceport, dropping its expendable first stages within China.

Next, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) successfully completed the inaugural launch of its Smart Dragon-3 solid-fueled rocket, putting 14 smallsats into orbit. The rocket launched from a platform at sea, so its expendable stages fell in the ocean. Though the rocket is aimed at launching commercial payloads, it is still a Chinese government project using military missile technology.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

57 China
55 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 79 to 57 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 87 to 79.

Leave a comment

December 8, 2022 Quick space links

5:22 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s Twitter stringer.

 

Leave a comment

Webb’s infrared view of the Southern Ring Nebula

4:57 pm

Two views of Southern Ring Nebula by Webb
Click for original image.

The two images to the left were produced by the Webb Space Telescope, showing in false colors the Southern Ring Nebula as seen by two of Webb’s infrared cameras.

The two images shown here each combine near-infrared and mid-infrared data to isolate different components of the nebula. The image at [top] highlights the very hot gas that surrounds the central stars. The image at [bottom] traces the star’s scattered molecular outflows that have reached farther into the cosmos.

Based on the data, astronomers posit that up the system could have as many as five stars orbiting each other, with three as yet unseen, or the inner ones might no longer exist, having been absorbed by the bigger stars.

It’s possible more than one star interacted with the dimmer of the two central stars, which appears red in this image, before it created this jaw-dropping planetary nebula. The first star that “danced” with the party’s host created a light show, sending out jets of material in opposite directions. Before retiring, it gave the dim star a cloak of dust. Now much smaller, the same dancer might have merged with the dying star – or is now hidden in its glare.

A third partygoer may have gotten close to the central star multiple times. That star stirred up the jets ejected by the first companion, which helped create the wavy shapes we see today at the edges of the gas and dust. Not to be left out, a fourth star with an orbit projected to be much wider, also contributed to the celebration. It circled the scene, further stirring up the gas and dust, and generating the enormous system of rings seen outside the nebula. The fifth star is the best known – it’s the bright white-blue star visible in the images that continues to orbit predictably and calmly.

Much of this remains mere theory, based on the available data. Nonetheless, the data from many such planetary nebula continues to suggest their strange and wonderful shapes are created by multiple stars, acting as a mix-master to churn up the nebula’s dust.

Leave a comment

SpaceX successfully launches 40 OneWeb satellites

3:39 pm

SpaceX today used its Falcon 9 rocket to successfully launch 40 OneWeb satellites, joining with India to replace the launch services of Russia.

This was the first SpaceX launch for OneWeb. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing back at SpaceX’s launchpad at Cape Canaveral. The fairings completed their fifth and sixth flights.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

55 China
55 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. nowl leads China 79 to 55 in the national rankings, though it still trails the entire world combined 86 to 79.

2 comments

Pushback: Professor wins big against Auburn for punishing him for his opinions

12:08 pm

No free speech at Auburn University
Freedom of speech considered bad at Auburn University!

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After his superiors fired him as chair of the economics department at Auburn University because he had criticized the university’s policy of passing scholarship athletes for doing no work, professor Michael Stern sued, and has now won a $645K court case.

You can read his complaint here [pdf], and the jury verdict here [pdf]. The case hinged on the decision of Joseph Aistrup, the former dean at the College of the Liberal Arts, to fire him as department chair in May 2018 because Stern had publicly raised questions about the high numbers of athletics majoring in “Public Administration,” a program that seemed designed to give them a free ride. This conflict began on February 4, 2014:

Auburn University’s Faculty Athletics Representative (“FAR”), Dr. Mary Boudreaux, put on a presentation in the University Senate wherein she claimed that there was no clustering of athletes by any major at Auburn. Plaintiff [Stern] questioned her in relation to the Public Administration program and football, given the contrasting information Plaintiff was told by a colleague. (During the 2013 Iron Bowl, Dr. Randy Beard (Economics professor and Plaintiffs colleague) noticed that almost all of the star players on the football team had Public Administration as a major).

Dr. Joseph Aistrup (new College of Liberal Arts Dean at the time) ran up to Plaintiff on the way out of the Faculty Senate. He looked green and like he was going to cry. He said, “Oh my God, Mike, I can’t believe you mentioned our program. I’m going to hear about this.”

» Read more

6 comments

What a Martian impact looks like on a sheet of slushy ice

11:00 am

Overview map

What a Martian impact looks like on a sheet of ice
Click for full image.

My headline is a bit of a guess, but it is an educated guess for today’s cool image. The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The location, as indicated by the white dot in the overview map above, puts this impact in a relatively flat area of Deuteronilus Mensae, the westernmost chaos region of the 2,000 mile long mid-latitude strip I call glacier country.

In other words, there is likely a lot of near surface ice here, as this impact makes very plain. If you imagine dropping a pebble into a thick layer of soft ice cream, you might get a crater reminiscent of this. I use for comparison ice cream on Earth because the lighter Martian gravity probably makes Martian ice softer and more slushy.

As I have said many times before, Mars is strange, Mars is mysterious, and above all Mars is alien.

One comment

China’s possible plans for expanding Tiangong-3

9:20 am

Though the plans have apparently not been approved, the designers of China’s Tiangong-3 space station are now considering expanding the station with additional large modules.

“Following our current design, we can continue to launch an extension module to dock with the forward section of the space station, and the extension module can carry a new hub for docking with the subsequent space vehicles,” [Wang Xiang, commander of the space station system at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST)] told CCTV following the return to Earth of the Shenzhou-14 crew Dec. 4.

With a new docking hub, the Chinese would actually have the potential of doubling the station’s size by duplicating its present configuration with one central module (with the hub) and two side modules.

The station’s design, an upgrade of the Soviet Union’s Mir station, also allows for relatively easy replacement of modules as they age. Though the station only has a planned ten-year life, do not be surprised if it remains operational for many decades beyond that.

9 comments

New gamma ray burst violates the explanations of scientists

9:04 am

The uncertainty of science: A newly discovered long gamma ray burst (GRB) that appears to have been formed by the merger of two neutron stars has contradicted the long held views of scientists as to the origin of this particular type of GRB.

Prior to the discovery of this burst, astronomers mostly thought that there were just two ways to produce a GRB. The collapse of a massive star just before it explodes in a supernova could make a long gamma-ray burst, lasting more than two seconds. Or a pair of dense stellar corpses called neutron stars could collide, merge and form a new black hole, releasing a short gamma-ray burst of two seconds or less.

But there had been some outliers. A surprisingly short GRB in 2020 seemed to come from a massive star’s implosion (SN: 8/2/21). And some long-duration GRBs dating back to 2006 lacked a supernova after the fact, raising questions about their origins. “We always knew there was an overlap,” says astrophysicist Chryssa Kouveliotou of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who wrote the 1993 paper that introduced the two GRB categories, but was not involved in the new work. “There were some outliers which we did not know how to interpret.”

There’s no such mystery about GRB 211211A: The burst lasted more than 50 seconds and was clearly accompanied by a kilonova, the characteristic glow of new elements being forged after a neutron star smashup.

Kouveliotou’s claim is not how I remember things back in 1990s. Then, the astronomers seemed certain that the two GRB classes were entirely separate, with no overlap, despite the large number of uncertainties.

2 comments

Sweden upgrading suborbital launchsite for orbital business

8:52 am

A Swedish launchsite that the European Space Agency (ESA) has used on and off for decades for suborbital test launches is now being upgraded to make it attractive to smallsat rocket companies.

Founded by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1966 to study the atmosphere and Northern Lights phenomenon, the Esrange space center has invested heavily in its facilities in recent years to be able to send satellites into space.

At a huge new hangar big enough to house two 30-meter rockets currently under assembly elsewhere, Philip Pahlsson, head of the “New Esrange” project, pulls up a heavy blue door. Under the rosy twilight of this early afternoon, construction machines nearby can be seen busily completing work on three new launch pads. “Satellite launches will start to take place from here next year,” Pahlsson says.

In Europe, Esrange is competing with a new Norway spaceport for the first orbital rocket launch. It is also competing with two spaceports in Scotland. And the one that makes launches easy for the new smallsat rocket companies is going to garner the most business.

Leave a comment

UK regulators block Virgin Orbit launch

8:42 am

We’re here to help you: Bureaucrats at the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) have refused to issue Virgin Orbit a launch permit in time for its proposed December 14, 2022 launch date, and have thus forced the company to stand down.

Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit chief executive, said the Civil Aviation Authority’s refusal to give the company an operating licence meant the launch would be delayed again. Britain’s first ever space mission was scheduled to take place on the night of December 14, Virgin Orbit announced yesterday.

But Virgin Orbit was forced to row back on its plans within hours. The company will now “retarget launch for the coming weeks”.

The refusal does not mean that the launch will never happen, only that the CAA is not going to hurry its approval for Richard Branson. This delay is thus crushing this company, as it has been unable to launch other customers while this launch is pending, and therefore has been unable to earn any additional revenue.

That the CAA has been working on this permit for more than half a year and still cannot issue, however, does not bode well for future UK rocket launches. Virgin Orbit launches from a runway, using a 747, and has done so successfully four times already. If the CAA cannot figure out how to okay it to launch after doing six months of paperwork, how is it going to okay launches for regular rockets from the two Scotland launchpads now under construction? Based on this situation, it will take forever to get launches off, and thus the CAA is likely going to force satellite customers top migrate to other spaceports outside the UK.

One comment
1 … 200 201 202 203 204 … 1,111