Author: Robert Zimmerman

October 7, 2022 Quick space links

3:22 pm

Thanks to BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

 

  • UK bureaucracy questions Viasat’s takeover of Inmarsat

    • I covered this in August, but now the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is setting a deadline, October 13, for the companies to explain why their merger won’t destroy Starlink. Otherwise it will initiate a full probe, blocking the merger.

    Typical government stupidity. There is no way this merged company will destroy Starlink. If anything, these companies are merging to survive the competition from Starlink.

 

 

 

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Thick flow exiting dramatic canyon on Mars

1:22 pm

Thick flow into Mamers Valles on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “viscous flow” that has apparently carved the wide curving canyon as it slowly flows into open country to the south.

I would estimate the height of that canyon wall to be around 3,000 feet, though this is a very rough guess. I also image a trail switchbacking up the nose of that canyon wall would make for a truly stupendous hiking experience.

The flow filling the canyon floor appears very glacial, which is not surprising as this canyon is at 37 degrees north latitude, in the mid-latitude band where many glacial features are found. The overview map below provides some more detailed context.
» Read more

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China’s Long March 11 launches from floating sea platform

11:26 am

China today successfully launched two “navigation satellites” from a floating sea platform in the Yellow Sea, using its Long March 11 rocket.

The platform was only about two miles off shore at launch, so the view from the beach drew a large crowd. Video at the first link.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

45 SpaceX
42 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 65 to 42 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 65 to 62. These numbers will change again later today, with a SpaceX commercial launch scheduled for 4:06 pm (Pacific).

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Today’s blacklisted American: Black playwright blackballed because he honestly told the story of racism in the Jim Crow south

11:17 am

Carlyle Brown, censored for writing truthfully
Carlyle Brown, censored for writing truthfully

The modern dark age: Close-minded students at the black student association at Texas Wesleyan University have forced the cancellation of a play celebrating the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the 1960s — written by black author Carlyle Brown — because it included realistic dialogue of the time, including the word “nigger”.

Students objected to the use of the n-word in a play that tries to capture the environment of hate and racism of the period. Texas Wesleyan’s Black Student Association declared the reference to be harmful and “triggering.” Calling for a boycott, the Association declared that allowing the play to be heard would “further hurt Black students and possibly students from other marginalized communities.”

The Rambler student newspaper reported that school and theater officials killed the production after a 90-minute campus discussion: “The main concern the students voiced was the ‘triggering’ effect of using the racially explicit word, which is repeated 11 separate times throughout the play, and how it can cause trauma to the black students in the audience.”

The play, Down in Mississippi, can be read here [pdf]. From the play’s summary:
» Read more

41 comments

Rocket Lab successfully launches NOAA satellite

10:34 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place a NOAA satellite into orbit, designed to gather data from ground-based sensors.

This was the company’s eighth successful launch in 2022, the most it has achieved in any single year. No attempt was made to recover the first stage on this launch.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

45 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 65 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 65 to 61. The 65 successful launches so far this year is now the second most successful American year in rocketry, exceeded only by the 70 launches in 1966. With almost three months left to go in the year, 2022 looks like it will top that record, by a lot.

SpaceX meanwhile has a launch scheduled for later today, after getting scrubbed yesterday at T-30 seconds because of detected minor helium leak.

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Endurance docks at ISS

9:16 am

Like clockwork SpaceX’s Endurance capsule successfully docked at ISS yesterday, delivering four astronauts to the station for a six month mission.

The most interesting aspect of this launch and crew is Russian Anna Kikina.

Kikina is the first Russian to fly aboard a U.S. spacecraft in nearly 20 years. She and Rubio were launched under a new agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that ensures at least one astronaut or cosmonaut is always aboard the space station even if a Crew Dragon or Soyuz is forced to depart early, taking its crew with it.

Without the seat-swap arrangement, a medical emergency or some other major problem could leave an all-Russian or all-NASA crew aboard without the expertise to operate the other nation’s systems.

The agreement had been stalled almost entirely by the former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. He is now gone however, sent by Putin to take over the fake occupation government in parts of the Ukraine. It appears his bellicose manner, that caused the loss of a billion dollars in launch contracts with OneWeb, was more than even Putin could handle.

With him gone, the new head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, quickly finalized this astronaut barter deal. He has also publicly acted to try to ease tensions between the U.S. and Russian space agencies.

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Startup smallsat rocket company signs spaceport deal with Brazil

9:02 am

The new colonial movement: A Canadian startup smallsat rocket company, C6 Launch Systems, has not only signed a spaceport deal with Brazil to build its own launchpad at that country’s Alcantara Space Center, it has also won its first launch customer.

First, the launchpad is for C6’s rocket, which is unnamed and designed to launch cubesats. The company webpage says they are aiming for suborbital flights in 2021 and orbital flights in 2022, but it is unclear if it has launched anything at this point.

Nonetheless, Brazil is very clearly teaming up with C6. The Brazilian air force hired it to build a launch pad, a Brazilian company, Concert Technologies, has awarded it a launch contract.

Concert Technologies S.A. who are developing a new small satellite constellation have signed a a non-exclusive letter of intent to launch three small satellites with C6 Launch. The broad agreement allows for Concert Technologies to schedule more launches to maintain and expand their high-resolution Earth Observation (EO) constellation.

It appears Concert’s satellites will be targeting both the Earth imagery market as well as communications services in the “internet of things.”

One comment

October 6, 2022 Quick space links

3:43 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 comments

Martian crater and mesa sculpted by ancient flow

1:14 pm

Martian crater and mesa sculpted by ancient flow
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 15, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a crater whose ejecta has been sculpted to the east into a teardrop-shaped mesa by some ancient flow, coming from the west.

The crater itself is located in one of several outflow canyons draining out from the volcanic Tharsis Bulge into the northern lowland plain of Chryse Planitia, the biggest of which is Valles Marineris. This particular canyon is one of the smaller and is dubbed Ravi Vallis.

The overview map below illustrates why many scientists think the flow that shaped this mesa came from a catastrophic flood of liquid water, billions of years ago.
» Read more

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Important Roscosmos official endorses continuing cooperation with US in space

12:28 pm

In a clear sign of the distinct change in atmosphere since the removal of Dmitry Rogozin as head of Roscosmos, the executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, Sergei Krikalev, yesterday endorsed the longstanding cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in space.

Krikalev’s comments came after the launch yesterday of Endurance with one Russian astronaut as part of its four-person crew.

At a briefing after the Oct. 5 launch of the Crew-5 mission from the Kennedy Space Center, Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, emphasized long-running cooperation between the United States and Russia in civil space, cooperation that has been strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

“We just continue what we started many years ago in 1975 when the Apollo-Soyuz crew worked together, and now we continue our cooperation,” he said after mentioning a “new phase of cooperation” with the exchange of seats between NASA and Roscosmos.

To understand the importance of Krikalev’s comments, you must also understand the context. First, Krikalev is a very significant figure in the history of Russia. He was called the last Soviet citizen, having been stranded on Mir an extra few months when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Then he was the first Russian to fly on the shuttle, followed later by being on the first mission to ISS, when it was only two modules.

Since his retirement as an active astronaut, he has become the man in charge of Russia’s manned program, where he clashed with Rogozin several times over policy. His opposition to Rogozin almost certainly was a factor in Rogozin’s removal.

Krikalev’s endorsement of continuing the U.S-Russian partnership only cements that partnership, especially because Krikalev himself is a dyed-in-the-wool communist at heart. At least, he said so emphatically when I interviewed him at length in 2003 for Leaving Earth. I doubt his mind has changed in this matter, though his relentless honesty as an engineer has probably shaken his dedication to that failed ideology in subsequent years.

Nonetheless, his standing in Russia gives any statement he makes great weight. Expect more efforts by the Russians to ease tensions with the U.S., though their chances of success will be limited as long as Russia is continuing its unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine.

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Pushback: Because of Yale Law School’s enthusiasm for blacklisting, more than a dozen judges now refuse to hire its graduates

11:46 am

Yale Law School's instruction guide
Yale Law School’s instruction guide

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Following the public announcement by Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that he would no longer hire Yale graduates as law clerks because of that school’s enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship, it appears that a dozen other judges have joined his boycott as well.

“Students should be mindful that they will face diminished opportunities if they go to Yale,” said a prominent circuit court judge, whose clerks have gone on to nab Supreme Court clerkships. “I have no confidence that they’re being taught anything.”

With one exception, the judges made clear this is a policy they are imposing on future—not current—Yale Law School students.

Ho’s public speech was even more harsh.

“Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education. Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.” The school “sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large. I certainly reserve the right to add other schools in the future. But my sincere hope is that I won’t have to. My sincere hope is that, if nothing else, my colleagues and I will at least send the message that other schools should not follow in Yale’s footsteps.”

Ho’s message to law schools was clear: “If they want the closed and intolerant environment that Yale embraces today, that’s their call. But I want nothing to do with it.”

Nor is Ho exaggerating about Yale’s intolerant track record. » Read more

9 comments

Engineers still struggling to regain full control of CAPSTONE

10:50 am

Though its batteries are now getting charged by the Sun, engineers have still not regained full control of the smallsat lunar orbiter CAPSTONE, presently on its path towards the Moon.

As per the latest update:

The CAPSTONE mission team is continuing to work towards recovery of the spacecraft full three-axis control. This work includes collecting information from the spacecraft, running simulations, and refining recovery plans. The vehicle remains stable and power positive in its current configuration.

In other words, they’ve got the spacecraft oriented so that its solar panels can gather enough sunlight to charge the batteries, but its attitude remains incorrect and they do not yet have CAPSTONE fully under their control.

The spacecraft arrives in lunar orbit on November 13, 2022. At that time however it will have to do an engine burn to enter lunar orbit, and if full control is not regained by then this burn will not be possible because engineers will not be able to point it correctly.

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Falcon Heavy to finally launch again?

8:57 am

After three years of delays due to payload issues, it now appears that the next Falcon Heavy launch will likely occur near the end of October.

The tentative date is October 28th, but this is not yet confirmed. Though a manifest of a half dozen Falcon Heavy launches has existed since 2019, and most were originally scheduled for launch in 2020-2021, none has taken place, all supposedly because of payload delays not issues with the rocket itself.

SpaceX officials are now saying that it plans to complete six Falcon Heavy launches within the next twelve months. Two are for the military, three for commercial communications companies, and the last is the Psyche mission for NASA. This last launch is delayed because of software issues discovered in June, only a few weeks before launch. Whether it can fix these issues in time for a new July 2023 launch window remains questionable.

6 comments

Satellite about to burn up because Sherpa orbital tug has done nothing

8:46 am

Capitalism in space: A Boeing cubesat satellite launched last month is about to burn up as it returns to Earth because the Spaceflight Sherpa orbital tug that was supposed to raise its orbit has as yet done nothing.

Spaceflight planned to use a chemical propulsion system on the Sherpa, provided by Benchmark Space Systems, to raise the orbit of the vehicle to an altitude of 1,000 kilometers. The Sherpa payload, initially not disclosed by Spaceflight, is a V-band communications demonstration by Boeing called Varuna.

However, tracking information from the U.S. Space Force shows that Sherpa has yet to raise its orbit. Atmospheric drag has caused that orbit to gradually decay, and the spacecraft was most recently tracked in an orbit of 283 by 296 kilometers. That raised concerns that the spacecraft could reenter in a matter of weeks if it does not start firing its thrusters.

Spaceflight officials explain the lack of action is because they are still “commissioning” the tug, whatever that means. It also appears that problems was this same propulsion system caused SpaceX to ban Spaceflight in March as a customer on future rideshare launches.

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SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites

4:19 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this afternoon successfully completed its second Falcon 9 launch of the day, placing 52 Starlink satellites into orbit from Vandenberg..

The seven hour gap between launches was a record for the shortest time between two SpaceX launches. The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific, completing its fifth flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

45 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 64 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 64 to 61. The U.S. total, 64, ties the total from 1965, the second most active year in American rocketry. The record of 70 successful launches, set in 1966, will almost certainly be broken sometime in the next month.

2 comments

Another “What the heck?” formation on Mars

2:32 pm

Another
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the scientists label “unique terrain.”

I have increased the contrast to bring out the details. It appears that we have a flat plain of criss-crossing ridges that in large areas have somehow gotten flattened across their top. Imagine someone laying plaster on a wall and using a scraper tool to smooth the surface, but only partially. In this case on Mars, our imaginary worker only smoothed the surface a little, and only in some areas. To try to come up with a geological process however to explain this seems daunting.

And what created the criss-crossing ridges? The overview map provides only a little help in answering these questions.
» Read more

5 comments

October 5, 2022 Quick space links

1:51 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who reads Twitter so I don’t have to.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pushback: Cornell’s library lifts its blackballing of Abraham Lincoln

12:36 pm

Banned by Cornell

Our modern dark age: Faced with a storm of criticism from donors, alumni, and the public, the removal of a bust of Abraham Lincoln from the library at Cornell University, has been cancelled, and Lincoln will once again be given an honored place at the university.

The bust’s removal, along with a plaque celebrating Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (to the right), were removed in 2021 because some unnamed individual had filed a complaint. As I noted in June:
» Read more

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Firefly wins Space Force launch contract

11:13 am

Capitalism in space: Shortly after Firefly completed the first successful orbital launch of its Alpha rocket, the U.S. Space Force awarded the company its first military launch contract.

The VICTUS NOX mission will demonstrate an end-to-end Tactically Responsive Space capability, including the launch segment, space segment, ground segment, and on-orbit operations. VICTUS NOX will perform a Space Domain Awareness (SDA) mission from Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).

The next Alpha mission, a demonstration launch of a climate smallsat for NASA, presently hopes to launch before the end of the year, though more likely early next year.

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Virgin Orbit ready to launch from Cornwall, United Kingdom

9:57 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit announced today that it has completed its preparations for its first launch from Cornwall, United Kingdom, which would also be the first launch ever from British soil.

An actual launch date has not yet been set, due to the “launch permitting regulatory process” in the UK. At the moment Cornwall is vying with two new spaceports in Scotland for the honor of that first launch.

2 comments

SpaceX successfully launches astronauts to ISS

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched two NASA astronauts, one Japanese astronaut, and one Russian astronaut into orbit for a mission to ISS, with the docking scheduled for tomorrow.

The capsule, Endurance, is making its second flight. This was SpaceX’s eighth manned launch. The first stage, making its first fight, landed successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. This was the first new first stage launched since May 2022, and only the second this year. All other launches in 2022 were completed using SpaceX’s existing fleet of boosters. The company also continues to hold to the pattern of last year for maintaining that fleet, by adding two new boosters each year.

That this achievement is now becoming as routine as SpaceX’s unmanned launches proves the company’s success. And SpaceX did it in less than a decade, something NASA with its government-built shuttle was never able to accomplish.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

44 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 63 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 63 to 61.

8 comments

Mitch & Mickey – When You’re Next to Me

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This movie scene was created for the Christopher Guest pseudo-documentary film A Mighty Wind (2003), recreating with marvelous and loving accuracy a look back at the folk song era of the 1960s, but doing it about a bunch of completely mythical folk groups. The song is by the actor Eugene Levy, who plays Mitch. Catherine O’Hara plays Mickey.

The irony is that though this is actually the best song by far in the movie, the scene was deleted. The only time you hear this song is over the end credits. However, as Levy is quoted on the youtube page:

“At the end of this movie, when we do the concert, it was all filmed basically live. We’re not pre-recording the music and lip-synching to it. We’re actually filming it live. It put a little added pressure on what you thought was a relatively good singing voice. It took a little work and I think I can speak for Catherine, too, as two of the relatively non-musician people. It was exciting and scary.”

A touching and surprisingly effective film, expressing the magic that can happen to us all, but sometimes only in a short burst that is soon lost and cannot be truly recaptured.

2 comments

ULA successfully launches two communications satellites

2:49 pm

Capitalism in space: ULA today successfully used its Atlas-5 rocket to place two SES communications satellites into orbit.

Satellite deployment will occur in about five hours, after the rocket gets them to their proper geosynchronous orbit.

43 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 62 to 41, and the entire globe combined 62 to 61. This lead will grow before the week is out. SpaceX has scheduled two launches on October 5th, first a manned mission to ISS followed a few hours later by an unmanned launch of 52 Starlink satellites. Rocket Lab follows on October 6 with another Electron launch.

One comment

October 4, 2022 Quick space links

2:41 pm

 

 

 

  • Iran completes suborbital rocket test launch

    • According to the state-run press, the rocket, dubbed Saman, tested an “orbital transmission system and … its capability to change the orbit of satellites in near-space conditions.”

 

 

 

 

2 comments

Today’s blacklisted Americans: UC-Berkeley law school clubs ban Jewish speakers

12:03 pm

The coming genocide
Becoming Judenfrei at UC-Berkeley

Persecution is now cool! Nine different law school clubs at the University of California-Berkeley have now made it their official policy to ban all “pro-Zionist” speakers, and are doing so with the full support of the college administration.

And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.

Zionism has always been used by leftist hate-monger groups as a euphemism for Jew. Its meaning is generally unclear and vague, and in the end usually ends up covering anyone who is support of Israel’s existence. Since this opinion fits the description almost every Jew, banning Zionism essentially bans Jews.

The university’s support and backing of this anti-Semitic ban has come from Dean Chemerinsky himself, who admits he would be banned under these rules but in a rebuttal posted at the link above, expresses full support for the anti-Semitic policy of these clubs.
» Read more

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Chandra takes an X-ray look at early Webb infrared observations

9:54 am

Chandra's X-ray vision of the Cartwheel Galaxy
Chandra’s X-ray view of the Cartwheel Galaxy

Webb's view of the Cartwheel Galaxy
Webb’s infrared view of the Cartwheel Galaxy
Click for full image.

Hubble's optical view of the Cartwheel Galaxy
Hubble’s optical view of the Cartwheel Galaxy. Click for original image.

Astronomers have now taken X-ray images using the orbital Chandra X-ray Observatory of four of the first Webb Space Telescope observations. The four targets were the Cartwheel Galaxy, Stephan’s Quintet, galaxy cluster SMACS 0723.3–7327, and the Carina Nebula.

The three images to the right illustrate the importance of studying astronomy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Each shows the Cartwheel Galaxy as seen by three of the world’s most important space-based telescopes, each looking at the galaxy in a different wavelength.

The top picture is Chandra’s new X-ray observations. As the press release notes,

Chandra data generally show higher-energy phenomena (like superheated gas and the remnants of exploded stars) than Webb’s infrared view. … X-rays seen by Chandra (blue and purple) come from superheated gas, individual exploded stars, and neutron stars and black holes pulling material from companion stars.

The middle picture was produced by Webb, shortly after the start of its science operations. It looks at the galaxy in the infrared.

In this near- and mid-infrared composite image, MIRI data are colored red while NIRCam data are colored blue, orange, and yellow. Amidst the red swirls of dust, there are many individual blue dots, which represent individual stars or pockets of star formation. NIRCam also defines the difference between the older star populations and dense dust in the core and the younger star populations outside of it.

The bottom picture was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. I have rotated the image to match the others. It looks at the galaxy in optical wavelengths, the wavelengths that our eyes perceive.

Note how bright the central galactic region is in the infrared and optical, but is invisible in X-rays. Chandra is telling us that all the most active regions in the Cartwheel are located in that outer ring, not in its center.

2 comments

Spinlaunch completes 10th test launch, this time for outside customers

9:15 am

Spinlaunch prototype launcher

Capitalism in space: Spinlaunch on September 27, 2022 successfully completed the 10th test launch of its radical spin launch centrifuge, this time accelerating test components to approximately 35k feet for other potential customers, including NASA.

Flight Test 10, which had a similar flight trajectory as previous campaigns, was witnessed by more than 150 partners, government officials, and industry advocates. It was SpinLaunch’s tenth flight test in just under eleven months since the Suborbital Mass Accelerator came online in late 2021.

…Four partner payloads, as well as two instrumentation payloads, were flown on the Suborbital Accelerator Flight Test Vehicle. For partners, the flight test provided critical data on the launch environment and payload integration process.

As part of the pre-flight qualification process, SpinLaunch accelerated payloads up to 10,000G in SpinLaunch’s 12-meter Lab Accelerator at its Long Beach headquarters. Payloads were inspected post-spin and subsequently integrated into the Flight Test Vehicle in preparation for Flight Test 10.

It remains to be seen whether this technology will work for launches to orbit. Even if it does, because of the stress produced during spin up this launch technique will really only work for bulk payloads to orbit, such as water and oxygen. If it works however it could reduce launch costs for these items tremendously.

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