Author: Robert Zimmerman

Update on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations at Boca Chica

9:22 am

Link here. Though the permitting process for launching Starship from Boca Chica is stalled or maybe even blocked, SpaceX is continuing to use this waiting time to upgrade and improve the design of both Starship and its giant booster, Superheavy, abandoning earlier prototypes for newer versions incorporating those upgrades.

[Superheavy] Booster 4 and [Star]Ship 20, having served as articles to test the ground systems and verify the major design outlines of booster and ship, have now been phased out, with Elon Musk confirming on Twitter that these wouldn’t perform the long-awaited orbital velocity test flight.

Instead, it is now expected that Booster 7 and Ship 24 will be the duo performing this duty. For that same reason, SpaceX cleared the way for Booster 7 by removing Booster 4 from the OLM on March 24.

The company has been doing tank tests and stack tests of these new prototypes at a fast pace, even as it is assembling even newer prototypes.

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ISRO once again delays first launch of its new SSLV rocket

9:12 am

India’s space agency ISRO today announced that it is once again delaying the first launch of its new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) rocket.

This rocket, designed to launch cubesats and compete with private companies like Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra, was first going to launch in the summer of 2019. That launch was delayed until 2020, only to be blocked entirely for two more years because of India’s panic over the Wuhan flu.

Last month ISRO announced the successful completion of static fire tests of the rocket’s solid rocket first stage, suggesting a spring launch in ’22 would occur. That has now been delayed again, now targeting early summer.

The delays have cost India a great deal in market share. Had SSLV launched in 2020, it would have been well positioned to garner business now captured by Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra, the latter two of which were not yet operational at that time. Now India trails all these companies, with other American companies (Firefly, Relativity, ABL) on the horizon as well.

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Spinlaunch wins suborbital launch contract from NASA

9:00 am

Spinlaunch prototype suborbital launcher

Capitalism in space: Spinlaunch has won a launch contract from NASA to use its rocket-tossing spin launcher, shown in the photo to the right, to place a test payload on a suborbital flight later this year.

Unlike a vertical rocket first stage, the launcher spins its upper stage to a high acceleration and flings it upward. While the G-forces are too brutal for any delicate equipment or biology, this technique could be a very cheap way to toss bulk payloads like water and oxygen into space.

Spinlaunch has already done one test flight in November ’21, and hopes to do its first orbital test flight by ’25.

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Breaking: Army Corp of Engineers suspends SpaceX’s Boca Chica permit process

8:50 am

We’re here to help you! According to this very short Bloomberg news report today, the Army Corp of Engineers has entirely suspended SpaceX’s Boca Chica permit process for expanding the facility.

The reason given is that SpaceX “failed to provide requested information.”

Though not yet confirmed, this permit appears to be separate from the environmental reassessment process being led by the FAA to approve Starship launches from Boca Chica. Instead, this appears to have an application to add an additional launchpad and other facilities to the site.

Assuming this distinction is true, then launches from Boca Chica of Starship might still be approved. The action however once again indicates the growing hostility to SpaceX within the federal bureaucracy, apparently aided and abetted by the Biden administration.

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China and Russia successfully launch satellites

8:34 am

Both China and Russia today successfully places satellites into orbit.

China used its Long March 4C rocket to place an Earth observation radar satellite into orbit. Russia in turn used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a military surveillance satellite. As both launched from interior spaceports, both dumped first stages and boosters on their respective countries.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

12 SpaceX
9 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 19 to 9 in the national rankings.

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Pioneer 2140CC Kickstarter campaign shuts down

5:59 pm

An announcement from Aaron Jenkin, creator and producer the video game proposal, Pioneer 2140CC, based on my science fiction novel Pioneer:
————————————————————
To everyone here on Behind the Black,

We covered a lot of topics in our Kickstarter update, but I wanted to give a special thanks to you all for following us on our journey, for your helpful feedback, and for your support on Kickstarter. This isn’t the outcome we had hoped for, but we’re hopeful it’s not the end of the road in our effort to expand on the world envisioned by Mr. Zimmerman in his fast-paced, 1983 sci-fi novel Pioneer.

In the meantime, please enjoy this wallpaper featuring characters from the game and book. From left to right: Saunders Maxwell, Jane Barlow, Becky Lightman, Michael Addiono, Alex Barlow, Morgan Callahan, and Harry Nickerson.

Pioneer game wallpaper
Click for full resolution.

I’d also like to thank Mr. Zimmerman for taking a chance on us and this project. He’s built up a distinguished career and it would have been easy to brush us off. But instead he welcomed us and did everything he could to help us succeed. We really appreciate that. Hopefully one day soon we can meet face-to-face for a hike or cave trip and talk about the adventure!

One problem we faced that we mentioned before was related to other people’s fear of being blacklisted. I can imagine that’s something a lot of you here would like to hear more about, and it’s something that I’d like to talk about, so we’ll have to get into that one day.

As far as moving forward is concerned… I’m a Creative Director, but I lost my main client at the end of the year due to a merger. That ended up being a good thing at the time because I was able to focus more on Pioneer. But now with the Kickstarter not panning out, I need to pick up new work. My plan is to fall back on one of my strong skills, video editing. I’m thinking that will leave me more time to devote to whatever comes next with Pioneer. If you need a video editor, please get in touch!

Thanks again for your support, and thanks for being such a great community!
Aaron
———————————————————

From my perspective, this outcome is incredibly sad, especially because of the blackballing of Aaron and the project behind the scenes because of my politics. I have no idea if the project failed because of this blacklisting, but it certainly acted as a dead weight. Some of it was vicious. Some was simply fear, holding no animus to Aaron, the book, or my politics. Such people simply did not wish to help promote the game or participate in making it because they feared the consequences to themselves if it was learned they had worked on a project by someone with conservative values.

That such fear permeates our culture now so deeply bodes ill for the future. Very ill indeed.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Georgetown University to hold segregated black-only events

5:02 pm

Blacks only event
Segregation returns to Georgetown University

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Campus Ministry of Georgetown University has scheduled several upcoming events that are advertised as segregated and for blacks only, despite a claim on its website that such events “are accessible to students of all backgrounds.”

The announcement for one such event, which included the graphic to the right (with the relevant language circled in red), however proves that last claim is an outright lie:

The Cookout is an undergraduate retreat created for Black students by Black students to promote joy, inspire hope, and explore practices of self-love and care for Black students, drawing on the values and practices of Georgetown’s Ignatian heritage and other spiritual traditions. Sponsored by Campus Ministry, The Cookout acknowledges the marginalization Black students face in predominantly white institutions and aims to center Black experience, affirm the Blackness of all Black students, and facilitate a safe space for connection and reflection through bonding activities and talks by Black chaplains, faculty and staff. A cookout is a place for relaxation, laughter, and community—and we’re going to offer just that and more. So, to the Black students of Georgetown University: Welcome to The Cookout. [emphasis mine]

Of course, when questioned a university spokesperson said that while the event is meant for black students on campus, “all students are allowed to register.” It would really be interesting to see what would happen if some white students at Georgetown did exactly that, and then showed up. Would they be greeted with the university’s commitment to…
» Read more

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Curiosity’s upcoming rough terrain

12:25 pm

Curiosity's view looking west on April 5, 2022 (Sol 3435)Click for high resolution. For original images go here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created by me from four photos taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on April 5, 2022, reveal much about the alien world of Mars that the rover is exploring. The red dotted line indicates approximately the rover’s upcoming route.

First there is the rough surface of the Greenheugh Pediment, the sloping plateau that Curiosity is presently traversing. Called “gater-back terrain” by the science team, this broken surface apparently is sandstone that was originally a dune field that in the past was periodically washed by water runoff and later hardened into this structurally weak rock.

Second, I have orientated the images so that the rim of Gale Crater, approximately 25 miles away, is horizontal. By doing so, we can see the upward slope of the Greenheugh Pediment. Curiosity is on a tilted surface, and while it will be traversing along a contour line as it heads west towards Gediz Vallis Ridge about 1,000 feet away, when it turns left and heads uphill, the climb will be steady and steep, as it has now been for the past year since the rover entered the mountains at the foot of Mount Sharp.

Taken together, these details indicate why Curiosity has moved very slowly in recent weeks, as shown by the white dots in the overview map to the right. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present location, with the yellow lines indicate the approximate view in the panorama above.

Traversing the pediment carries real risk to the rover. Though its somewhat dinged wheels have held up well during this last year of traveling in these rough mountains, at any point the severe roughness here could damage one or more wheels significantly, even putting one or more out of commission. The rover team is traveling carefully to avoid this, but these factors illustrate a possible end for the rover, though hopefully still years away.

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Inspector General: NASA’s lunar rover VIPER mission on schedule, with some cost increases

11:19 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon

According to a report [pdf] issued today by NASA’s inspector general, the agency’s VIPER lunar rover mission is generally on schedule for its ’23 launch, though it has experienced some cost increases and still carries some scheduling risks, mostly related to the development of Astrobotic’s commercial Griffin lunar lander, and its precursor Peregrine mission that ULA hopes to launch on its first Vulcan rocket test.

Although Astrobotic personnel explained that Griffin’s development schedule is largely independent of its Peregrine mission, the Peregrine Lander—planned to launch in 2022—has multiple systems and subsystems that will also be used on Griffin. Therefore, any technical problems with these systems may adversely affect development of the Griffin Lander because Astrobotic would only have about a year, depending on the Peregrine launch date and start of lunar operations, to resolve the issues prior to NASA delivering VIPER for integration and launch. Furthermore, any failures during the Peregrine mission may lead to Griffin delays as NASA and Astrobotic investigate the failures and develop corrective actions.

In addition, VIPER long-lead acquisitions—such as the rover solar power array and avionics unit—have been affected by aerospace industry supply chain delays caused by COVID-19 as have delivery of computer boards and motor parts. Both of these issues have impacted design verification testing needed for the mission’s Critical Design Review, while COVID-19 also delayed some component development schedules.

Peregrine’s launch has been delayed by a year because Vulcan has been delayed because of Blue Origin’s problems with the BE-4 rocket engine. Though ULA hopes the Vulcan/Peregrine launch can occur late this year, that date remains very much in doubt. Further launch delays would thus threaten the launch of Griffin and VIPER.

As for the cost increases, the IG found that NASA had been forced to increase the budget for VIPER by 18.1%, a relatively minor increase compared to many of NASA’s other big projects. The IG noted however that further cost overruns are very possible, especially if the Peregrine mission experiences problems.

The photo above shows the rover’s presently planned route in the relatively flat area about 85 miles from the Moon’s south pole and near the western edge of Nobile Crater (pronounced No-BEEL-e).

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Scientists decide propaganda and commercials are better than good research results

10:47 am

The on-going dark age: In a new study scientists have discovered that — instead of depending on hard research that is repeatedly confirmed by others — if they simply use a trusted spokesman in commercials promoting their work they can get people to accept their conclusions, at face value.

This momentous discovery occurred when some researchers decided to find out if putting Trump in a 30-second commercial asking people to get the COVID jab would encourage them to do so. This is what the test learned:

A creative effort to use former President Donald Trump to persuade people to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot appears to have paid off. An online advertisement created by a team of political scientists and economists that featured Trump recommending COVID-19 shots led to increased uptake of the vaccines in U.S. counties that had low vaccination rates, concludes a new analysis.

“We were so thrilled,” says Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who helped create the ad and co-authored the study. “How often do political scientists and economists do anything that helps the world? The answer is, like, 0% of the time.”

…The results highlight that “health communication needs to come from trusted messengers and to meet people where they are,” says behavioral scientist Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. [emphasis mine]

Hetherington’s highlighted quote was intended to imply that this research proved that political scientists and economists sometimes do do something that helps the world. I think it only proves that they never do.

Using advertising to sell a scientific conclusion is without doubt the most corrupt and idiotic method for selling a scientist’s work. It only proves the work itself, in this case the COVID shots, have questionable aspects that need propaganda to convince people of their value.

Other quotes from different scientists at the link also illustrate how divorced from actual research and data these scientists are. To their minds, the doubt that many people have of the COVID shots can only be attributed to an “antivaccine ecosystem” touting its own political agenda. The extensive research and data that suggests the shots carry risks while appearing possibly useless is either ignored by these scientists, or they are willfully ignorant of it.

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Europe to put instrument on Japanese rover being launched and landed on the Moon by India

9:49 am

The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed an agreement with Japan’s space agency JAXA to put a science instrument on a Japanese rover that will be launched by India to the Moon and landed there on an Indian lander.

Under the deal, ESA would provide instruments for the Japanese rover, which would be used in the exploration of the Moon’s south pole under the mission targeted for 2024. … The lunar endeavour between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and JAXA is called the Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) which aims to launch an Indian lander and a Japanese rover to the Moon.

In the next three years a lot of landers and rovers are planning to land on the Moon, most built by private American companies flying NASA and private payloads, but also joined by probes being sent by Russia, China, and now this Japanese-Indian-European mission. Even if only half succeed, the exploration of the lunar surface will still be quite busy.

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Ukrainian rocket development for Nova Scotia spaceport unhindered by war

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: The development of a Ukrainian rocket dubbed Cyclone 4M for of any satellite customers who choose to launch from a planned Nova Scotia spaceport has not been delayed by the Ukraine war.

“Everything is stable with respect to our team in Ukraine,” said Steve Matier, president of Maritime Launch Services. “The facility there is fine, the staff is fine and at work. . . . We’re continuing to finance their development of the launch vehicle.”

The Cyclone 4M rocket Maritime Launch Services plans to use is designed and built by Ukrainian state corporations Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash in Dnipro. Known as Space City, Dnipro is located in central Ukraine. The city of about a million people was shelled in mid-March by Russian forces and the airport runways and terminal were hit by missile strikes, according to Ukrainian government statements.

This story illustrates the strong possibility that the recent success the Ukraine has had on the battlefield has served to prevented any serious long term damage to its aerospace industry and its partners in the west. Those partnerships if anything look stronger, with the work in the Ukraine apparently able to continue as planned, with only slight delays.

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Commercial Orbital Reef space station passes NASA’s design review

9:30 am

Proposed Orbital Reef space station

Capitalism in space: A proposed commercial space station dubbed Orbital Reef and being built by a partnership led by Sierra Space and Blue Origin has passed its NASA’s design review, allowing for construction to now begin.

The review, conducted as part of a $130 million development contract from NASA, found no issues with the station’s design.

This commercial partnership also includes Boeing, Redwire, Mitsubishi, Genesis Engineering, and Arizona State University, and plans its launch before 2030 when ISS will be retired. This quote from the article I think is important:

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Steve Lindsey, chief strategy officer at Sierra Space, said during a panel at the Goddard Memorial Symposium March 25. “We don’t want to have a gap like we did with crew back in the last decade.”

Three other private space stations are also under construction or being planned, all hoping to be operational prior to ’30. If even two of these launch, the 2030s will be very exciting indeed.

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Astronomers discover a solar twin whose sunspot cycle changed into a grand minimum

9:19 am

Astronomers studying the sunspot cycle of several dozen stars that are twins of our Sun have identified for the first time a star whose 17-year cycle suddenly ceased, going into an extended grand minimum.

Comparing these stars to the Sun enables astronomers to better determine how typical – or not – the Sun is as a star. The Sun’s magnetic activity is defined by its 11-year sunspot cycle. Of the 59 stars that Baum’s team surveyed, 29 appeared to also have starspot cycles, and the period of those cycles could be measured for 14 of them.

“Of these 14 stars, the average length of their cycle is just under 10 years, which is similar to the Sun’s 11-year cycle,” Baum tells Physics World. However, not all the stars adhered to this time frame. One star that was surveyed has a cycle lasting less than four years, while another star, HD 166620, had a cycle 17 years long.

Note the past tense. Sometime between 1995 and 2004, HD 166620’s starspot cycle simply stopped.

When or if the star’s sunspot activity resume is unknown. The Sun’s last grand minimum, dubbed the Maunder Minimum, lasted 70 years during the 1600s.

No one yet understands why stars do this. This discovery however now shows that the Sun is not unique in this behavior.

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Rocket Lab to attempt 1st stage recovery by helicopter on next launch

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab will attempt during its next launch later this month to become the second commercial rocket company, after SpaceX, to successfully recover a first stage for reuse.

The company will use a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter to rendezvous with the stage as it descends slowly using parachutes and capture it. The helicopter will then fly it back to land and safely deposit it on the ground.

This launch is now scheduled for April 19th, at the earliest.

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NASA postpones next SLS dress rehearsal countdown attempt to next week

11:06 pm

NASA officials today said that they have postponed their next attempt to complete the first dress rehearsal countdown of the SLS unitl next week, thus allowing the private commercial manned Axiom launch to ISS to proceed on April 8th.

The rocket will remain at the launch site as the engineering teams assess the issues that caused two scrubs and several launch count down holds.

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Ingenuity completes its 24th flight on Mars

9:14 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity today completed its 24th flight on Mars, traveling a short 33 feet for 69.5 seconds in order to place it in a good position for an upcoming record-setting 25th flight.

With Flight 24 in our log book, it is now time to look forward to our upcoming effort that charts a course out of Séítah. Flight 25 – which was uplinked yesterday – will send Ingenuity 704 meters to the northwest (almost 80 meters longer than the current record – Flight 9). The helicopter’s ground speed will be about 5.5 meters per second (another record) and we expect to be in the rarefied Martian air for about 161.5 seconds.

The red dot on the map to the right indicates Perseverance’s present position. The green dot shows where Ingenuity landed today. The tan dashed lines indicate the planned routes for both. Ingenuity’s next flight will take it out of the rough terrain of Seitah and much closer to Three Forks.

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Sonny & Cher – I Got You Babe

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This performance, from 1987, has some important historical background. As noted on the youtube page,

In November of 1987, Sonny Bono was running for mayor of Palm Springs and Cher was promoting her upcoming movie Moonstruck. The divorced couple went on Letterman together and were coaxed into playing ‘I Got You, Babe’ with Paul Shaffer and his band; they weren’t exactly the best of friends at this point, but both of them knew it would make for unforgettable television. Had YouTube existed back then, this would have gone insanely viral the next morning. It wound up being the final time they ever sang together, as Bono passed away in January 1998.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Whites aggressively blocked from attending health dept meeting

1:14 pm

Jim Crow celebrated in Seattle!
The return of Jim Crow, this time celebrated in the north, in Seattle!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Seattle health administrators purposely organized an employee Zoom training session for minorities only, then aggressively banned any white staffers from attending, and then lied repeatedly about their actions and the segregated and illegal nature of the session.

The subject of the session was in itself bigoted, as it made the claim that dieting is a white racist strategy to harm blacks.

The King County Department of Human Resources announced the remote workshop, “Anti-Blackness and Diet Culture,” in an all-staff email newsletter. It was part of the county’s Balanced You program, which focuses on staff wellness. Tacoma-based Liberating Jasper, which conducted the workshop, claims dieting is harmful to black people, and that “Western ideals of attractiveness and health are steeped in whiteness.” It even implies that obesity can be healthy.

Despite claims to the contrary, the workshop intentionally excluded white people. Indeed, the event was promoted both publicly and privately for “BIPOC employees only.”

For those not educated in the left’s alphabet lexicon of races and genders, BIPOC stands for blacks, indigenous people, and people of color. It is designed to create a group of favored minorities while excluding the sexual perverse, which in other contexts the left will gladly celebrate.

What makes the story especially offensive is not this bigoted session and the desire to ban any whites from attending, but the extent in which government officials repeatedly lied about their intentions to discriminate against whites. This story was revealed by Seattle radio host Jason Rantz. Over and over again his office would challenge officials, who would make some absurd claim, and over and over again Rantz would prove this an outright lie, using internal emails obtained by Rantz’s investigation.

For example, one white attendee was specifically removed from the Zoom meeting because of his race.
» Read more

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Looking down into a Jupiter hurricane

11:25 am

Looking down into a Jupiter hurricane
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was created by citizen scientists Kevin Gill and Navaneeth Krishnan from a raw image taken by Juno during its 40th close fly-by of Jupiter in February 2022.

I don’t have a scale, but I would guess that this storm is at least a thousand miles across. The depth is harder to measure, but we looking down into a deep whirlpool for sure.

To bring out the details Gill and Krishnan enhanced the colors significantly. The original is quite bland in comparison, with this storm being the faint dark spot just below the center near the photo’s left edge.

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UAE wants to prioritize private enterprise for its space effort

10:17 am

Capitalism in space: According to officials of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) space agency, that nation is working to encourage the growth of a private space industry, funded initially using government money, in its effort to become a major world player in space.

“We’ve spent well over Dh1.5 billion ($408 million) on building capacity within the space industry over the last eight years and we’re more than doubling that over the next decade.”

Laws and regulations, including permits, which would allow interested companies to set up base in the UAE, are already available through a space law passed in 2019.

Companies would also have access to funding from a new initiative launched by the space agency, called Space Analytics and Solutions, which has a budget of Dh20 million. The programme aims to help start-ups build space-based applications that focus on food security, climate change, infrastructure and the oil and gas industry.

The space agency hopes that as these companies progress, they would become less reliant on government funding.

While the UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter was mostly built and launched by foreign companies, it hopes its next major mission, to send an unmanned probe to seven asteroids, will be built almost entirely by companies run by UAE citizens, something they claim they have achieved with an upcoming smallsat Earth observation satellite.

The article also mentioned as an aside that the UAE has ended its 2019 agreement with Virgin Galactic to allow it to launch from the UAE. Instead, it is negotiating with Blue Origin “to set up spaceports.”

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More than 4,000 people apply to Japan’s JAXA space agency to become astronauts

10:05 am

In its first new recruitment effort in thirteen years, JASA has received more than 4,000 applications from people eager to become astronauts flying to ISS.

A record number of people applied as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for the first time dropped the requirement that candidates have a university education. The change was made in the hope of recruiting people with a wide range of experience.

However, applicants were required to have at least three years of work experience as of late March, with some academic qualifications being considered as meeting this requirement.

It is unfortunate that the Japanese people do not have more options to get into space. They must either buy a flight from foreign private companies, or depend on a government agency to approve them.

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Rogozin proposes Russia launch modules to China’s space station

9:54 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, yesterday proposed in an interview on China’s state-run press that Russia is eager to discuss the possibility of attaching its future space station modules to China’s Tiangong space station.

“As for the Chinese space station, we can discuss construction of some joint modules as well. In order to be friends in space, friendship must first be established back on Earth, and Russia and China are friends on Earth,” Rogozin said. He opined that Russia and China “can be together” in human spaceflights as well.

Whether China will agree is in some ways besides the point. The real question is whether Russia has the capability to do this. Though China and Russia already have a joint agreement to develop a permanent base on the Moon, China is carrying most of the load. Moreover, Russia’s new modules for ISS are decades behind schedule. Whether they will now even be launched to ISS is questionable. Adding these Russian modules to China’s space station will require some major engineering discussions, as neither Tiangong nor the modules were designed for such a thing.

I suspect the two countries will work out an agreement that they will announce with great fanfare. I also expect China will insist that at no time will it be dependent on Russian technology, so that if Russia is delayed or can’t get it done, China will not be hampered in any way. This is essentially their deal for building the lunar base.

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Amazon announces launch agreements with Blue Origin, Arianespace, and ULA

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: Amazon today announced major multi-launch agreements with Blue Origin, Arianespace, and ULA to launch its 3,000+ Kuiper satellite constellation.

According to the press release, ULA won 38 launches using its new Vulcan-Centaur rocket (not yet flown), Arianespace won 18 launches using its new Ariane-6 rocket (not yet flown), and Blue Origin won 12 launches using its new New Glenn rocket (not yet flown), with an option for 15 more. The ULA deal is in addition to a previous launch contract of nine launches using the Atlas-5 rocket.

In addition, Amazon hopes to launch two prototype satellites later this year using ABL’s smallsat RS1 rocket (not yet flown).

Overall, this Amazon launch announcement might be the largest launch contract deal ever. However, the company’s reliance on unproven rockets means it will also likely face some delays and failures in its early stages. That the press release makes no mention of any schedule for launches illustrates this fact starkly. All four rockets have already seen major delays. with the three biggest (Vulcan-Centaur, New Glenn, Ariane 6) now more than two years behind schedule, and the likelihood of their first launch occurring in 2022 increasingly unlikely.

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SLS dress rehearsal countdown scrubbed an hour before T-0

9:22 am

Yesterday’s first dress rehearsal countdown for NASA’s SLS rocket managed to get within an hour of T-0 with its oxygen tanks half full when mission control scrubbed the countdown.

During chilldown of the lines in preparation for loading the liquid hydrogen, the teams encountered an issue with a panel on the mobile launcher that controls the core stage vent valve. The purpose of the vent valve is to relieve pressure from the core stage during tanking. Given the time to resolve the issue as teams were nearing the end of their shifts, the launch director made the call to stop the test for the day. A crew will investigate the issue at the pad, and the team will review range availability and the time needed to turn systems around before making a determination on the path forward.

No word as yet when they will attempt the next full dress rehearsal. The delays with SLS have so far caused several further delays for Axiom’s private mission to ISS, since NASA has given SLS priority over the range. It has now been pushed back to April 8th.

Note that none of these problems should be a surprise. This is the first time the rocket and mobile launcher have been placed under flight conditions, so minor issues should be expected. At the same time, dealing with these issues now, just before actual launch, rather than earlier in development, illustrates the backwards way NASA’s management has run this program. You can never design anything new perfectly. You need to test and fail and fix along the way. NASA avoids testing because it can’t build anything at a reasonable cost. The result is that when it comes time to launch, lots of previously unidentified minor issues pop up that need fixing.

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Astronomers directly image the orbital motion of Jupiter protoplanet 531 light years away

1:41 pm

AB Aurigae B's motion over thirteen years
Click for original image.

Astronomers, using a number of ground- and space-based telescopes, have now directly photographed the orbital motion of a Jupiter protoplanet orbiting a star 531 light years away over a thirteen year time span.

The image to the right, cropped to post here, shows images produced by two Hubble instruments. The caption:

Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instrument’s coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS shows the protoplanet has moved in a counterclockwise motion over time.

From the paper’s abstract:

Using the Subaru Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, we find evidence for a Jovian protoplanet around AB Aurigae orbiting at a wide projected separation (~93 au), probably responsible for multiple planet-induced features in the disk. Its emission is reproducible as reprocessed radiation from an embedded protoplanet.

The accretion disk around AB Aurigae happens to lie face on to our line of sight, which facilitates these observations. The data also shows two additional potential proto-planets farther from the star.

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Pushback: Musk — offended by Twitter censorship — becomes its biggest shareholder

1:19 pm

Twitter's censorship a target of Elon Musk
Twitter’s censorship a target of Elon Musk

Defeating the censors: On March 25th Elon Musk — opposed to the censorship of conservatives on the social media outlet Twitter — had conducted a poll on Twitter that asked:

Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?

The poll results were unequivocal: by 70.4% to 29.6% the respondents declared that the present management at Twitter is hostile to free speech.

In the next two days Musk then tweeted “Is a new platform needed?” followed by “Seize the memes of production!” The rumors all suggested that Musk would start his own competing social media platform.

Musk fooled everyone. Instead, as revealed today he proceeded to buy 9.2% of Twitter’s shares, making him the company’s largest individual shareholder.

What Musk will do with this new power is of course not yet known. » Read more

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