Author: Robert Zimmerman

CAPSTONE update: Situation improved but not resolved

9:13 am

Advanced Space, the company operating the CAPSTONE smallsat lunar orbiter that is on the way to the Moon, has issued a hopeful update on the efforts to regain full control of the spacecraft after it began tumbling out-of-control on September 8th.

The communications situation has dramatically improved, the power state of the spacecraft appears to be sufficient for continuous (duty cycled) heating of the propulsion system which dropped below its operational temperature, Over the past few days, CAPSTONE’s power – though limited by the orientation of the spacecraft in its spin relative to the Sun – appears to be sufficient for heating of the propulsion system. When the spacecraft propulsion system temps are at +5C for 12+ hours the system will be further evaluated for use in the recovery operation. Information on the cause of the anomaly has been obtained and is being evaluated, and recovery plans that mitigate risk of further anomalous behavior are being developed. We do not have a timeline for a recovery attempt.

It appears they have not yet done the detumble maneuver that the engineers think will bring the spacecraft back to nominal operations. However, the spacecraft appears to also be on its planned course towards the Moon, so all signs suggest a full recovery is likely.

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September 15, 2022 Quick space links

3:44 pm

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

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Rocket Lab successfully launches commercial radar satellite

1:49 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place a commercial radar Earth observation satellite into orbit.

This was the company’s 30th successful launch. As of this writing, the satellite itself has not yet deployed.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 57 to 37 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 57 to 56. The 57 successful American launches so for this year ties for third place with 1964 and 1967 for launches in a year. The record number of U.S. launches in a single year was 70, in 1966. That record should almost certainly be topped this year.

SpaceX will once again attempt to launch 54 Starlink satellites later tonight, having cancelled several times this week due to weather.

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Pushback: Fraternities break free from USC’s draconian supervision

11:59 am

What USC wants its students to become
What USC wants its students to become

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Faced with the university’s arbitrary rule that shut them down “without explanation or cause,” ten of the fourteen fraternities that serve the students at the University of Southern California (USC) have broken their affiliation with the university and formed their own oversight body.

Not surprisingly, the university immediately implied that these fraternities were acting to encourage “sexual assaults,” “drug abuse,” “mental health abuse,” and “underage drinking,” and should be blacklisted by USC students. Officials from the new independent council immediately disputed these slanderous claims:

“I want to say unequivocally that no, we are not disaffiliating to dodge these social event policies that were put into place,” Harrison Murphy, a representative from the new council, told The Los Angeles Times.

“Murphy said members that separated from USC did so because they felt the university’s policies toward Greek organizations were unfair and flawed,” The Los Angeles Times reported. “For instance, he said, USC banned all social events from November 2021 through January 2022 even for fraternities that had done no wrong.”

A look at university’s long and complex policy [pdf] for supervising these fraternities makes if very clear why so many have told the university to go jump in a lake. The number of inspections, meetings, and consultations required, combined with a lot of odious paperwork, appears absurdly unreasonable and costly. The policies also apparently allowed the school to shut a fraternity down merely on hearsay accusations, based on incredibly vague standards. Note the highlighted words below:
» Read more

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Billionaire wants to build spinning space station for testing artificial gravity

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Billionaire Jed McCaleb, who earned billions in software and cryptocurrency, has started a company dubbed Vast to develop and build a spinning space station for testing the pros and cons of artificial gravity.

McCaleb is self-financing at the moment, though he hopes to turn his station eventually into a money-making proposition. His company is also right now very small, but he clearly is going for the best in who he is hiring:

Currently, the company has about 20 employees, including Kyle Dedmon, former SpaceX vice president for construction and facilities; Tom Hayford, a systems engineer who has worked for Relativity Space and SpaceX; Molly McCormick, a former SpaceX human factors engineer and Honeybee Robotics program manager; and Colin Smith, a former SpaceX propulsion engineer. In addition, former SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann is advising the company.

This new private space station joins by my count the four other American private space stations now proposed, including Axiom’s station, a partnership led by Sierra Space building Orbital Reef, Nanorack’s Starlab station, and Northrop Grumman’s upgrade station based on its Cygnus freighter.

That’s five private space stations under development in the United States. And there could be others that I have missed.

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Overlapping galaxies

9:22 am

Overlapping galaxies, as seen by Hubble
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, and captures two galaxies that happen to overlap in their line of sight to Earth.

The two galaxies, which have the uninspiring names SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, lie more than a billion light-years from Earth. Despite appearing to collide in this image, the alignment of the two galaxies is likely just by chance — the two are not actually interacting.

This image was taken as part of the citizen-scientist project dubbed Galaxy Zoo, whereby volunteers review lower resolution images of strange-looking galaxies and propose the best for Hubble higher resolution imaging.

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Astronomers propose method for predicting the stars that will go supernovae

9:12 am

The uncertainty of science: Using a computer model based on the most recent data that suggests red supergiant stars like Betelgeuse are the kind of stars that produce certain kinds of supernovae, astronomers now think they have a method for predicting which of those stars are about to go supernovae.

You can read the science paper here. From the link above:

In a few examples, astronomers have looked back at old catalogs and found images of the stars before they exploded, and they all seem to be red supergiants like Betelgeuse. That’s a clear indication that those kinds of stars are supernova candidates, ready to go off at a moment’s notice.

The stars that result in these kinds of supernovas are thought to have dense shrouds of material surrounding them before they explode. These shrouds are orders of magnitude denser than what’s measured around Betelgeuse.

More importantly, the data suggests that once this shroud of material forms, the supernova will follow, in just a few years. As the scientists conclude in their paper:

The final overarching conclusion we can make from this work is that, shortly before core-collapse, [red supergiants] must undergo some prodigious mass-losing event which radically alters the appearance of the star. Therefore, the signature of an imminent explosion should be a dramatic change in the progenitor stars’ optical – near-IR photometry on timescales of less than a month. Such a signature should be detectable in the coming era of wide-field short cadence photometry. [emphasis mine]

Near-IR (infrared) photometry is exactly in the wavelengths in which the James Webb Space Telescope operates. Thus, if it is lucky and sees this kind of star in an image, and a supernova follows shortly thereafter, this theory will have been proven correct.

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Company providing satellite engines for smallsats raises $28 million

8:58 am

Capitalism in space: Morpheus, a German company focused on providing small satellites engines for maneuver and de-orbit, has successfully raised $28 million in private investment capital.

Morpheus, a company originally focused on producing miniature electric thrusters, has broadened the scope of its business to offer propulsion systems and software to help satellites maneuver in orbit and deorbit at the conclusion of their missions.

Last year, Morpheus unveiled a suite of products designed to reduce the cost and complexity of operating satellite constellations. The Sphere Ecosystem includes thrusters with nontoxic propellant, plug-and-play autopilot, space mission software and a web application.

This is not the only German company moving into the new space market. Three startup rocket companies have all successfully raised capital. Morpheus’s success, along with those rocket companies, suggests that Germany is quickly transitioning from a government-run space industry to a privately-run one.

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Update on SpaceX’s Starship and Superheavy

8:50 am

Link here. The article not only outlines the test program leading to the first launch of prototypes Starship #24 and Superheavy #7, it describes the status of later prototypes, as well as the construction of SpaceX’s Starship launch site in Florida. Key quote:

Booster 7’s gradual approach to static fire testing will allow the teams to fix issues as they test and fully mature procedures and software ahead of the long-awaited orbital flight of Starship. Should this gradual testing go without a hitch, it could culminate in one or perhaps even two 33-engine static fire tests of Booster 7 on the OLM [orbital launch mount].

Once this testing is completed and any issues found fixed, it’ll be cleared to proceed into another phase of testing: Ship 24 will then be stacked on top of Booster 7 for combined tests. This could include launch countdown simulations, an eventual full-up countdown, and a 33-engine static fire test.

SpaceX hopes to complete this by mid-next month and clear both vehicles for launch shortly after. However, as we’ve seen in the past few weeks, any issues encountered during this intense test campaign could well mean a slip to later into the year and, perhaps, into next year.

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September 14, 2022 Quick space links

3:20 pm

Links courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who does the trolling on Twitter so I don’t have to. Commentary however is mostly by yours truly.

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The new in-space repair and refueling industries that are about to revolutionize space exploration

2:57 pm

Robot repair, as imagined in 1979
Robots doing work in orbit, as imagined in 1979

When Orbital ATK announced in 2016 that its robotic Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) — designed to dock with and extend the life of defunct commercial communications satellites — had won its first contract with Intelsat, that contract award only came after several years of persistent campaigning.

In fact, Orbital ATK had had great difficulties getting any satellite communications company interested. At the time, all communication satellites were in geosynchronous orbit, were expensive to build, but lasted routinely from 10 to 15 years. The satellite companies didn’t see a need to fix them when they ran out of fuel. It seems better to launch a new replacement.

Even after winning that contract with Intelsat, it was still four years before that MEV docked with Intelsat’s satellite, bringing it back to life. In the interim Northrop Grumman (which had purchased Orbital ATK in a merger) had managed just one other contract, even as it had announced upgrades to the MEV to allow it to service many satellites, not just one.

The satellite industry seemed in those days to be largely resistant to the concept of repairing and refueling its older satellites.

No more. We are on the cusp of a major revolution in satellite operations, driven first by innovations like the MEV, but accelerated greatly by the new satellite companies launching low orbit constellations. These new companies are willing to take risks, and thus have also shown an eager desire to link their satellites to a variety of in-space services that they themselves did not wish to provide, from satellite repair and refueling to tug services to space junk removal to quick and controlled de-orbit technologies.

The variety and innovation of this new industry is somewhat astonishing, especially considering how young an industry it is.
» Read more

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Pushback: Teacher files class-action lawsuit against Texas A&M for favoring non-Asian minorities in hiring

11:44 am

Academia: dedicated to segregation!
Texas A&M: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Because Texas A&M university has specifically created hiring programs that favor non-Asian minorities, a University of Texas at Austin professor, Richard Lowery, has now filed a federal class-action lawsuit, demanding that this policy end immediately and that the court appoint a monitor to guarantee this.

You can read the lawsuit here [pdf]. It was prompted by a July 8, 2022 letter [pdf] sent out by the Office of Diversity at Texas A&M that outlined a new program, dubbed ACES Plus, which would specifically to pay certain minorities more, merely because of their race:
» Read more

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The shattered cliffs of Mount Sharp

11:04 am

A broken cliff on Mars

Cool image time! The picture above was taken on August 11, 2022 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It shows a great example of the strange manner in which the bedrock in the layered cliffs on Mount Sharp appear to break apart.

I am not certain exactly where this feature is, or its exact scale, but based on the date and where Curiosity was located when the photo was taken, it likely is a small section from one of two hills, Deepdale and Bolivar, that Curiosity passed between in mid-August. It is likely somewhere in the panorama included in my August 11th post, but I have not yet been able to locate it.

Nonetheless, the breakage here is typical of these cliff faces. The structural strength of these layered hills is not very high, so at some point one section can break away from another as the hill sags downward to the left. What makes the cracks here more intriguing is that something caused the higher sections surrounding the main block to widen. On Earth we would assume that this widening was caused by rainwater pouring in from the top. On Mars, that explanation doesn’t hold water.

Wind? Seasonal thermal changes? Neither explains the change in the width of the cracks along their length. Maybe the wider cracks indicate an increased sagging of the hill to the left. The layers below this broken block have simply not slid to the left as much.

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Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine experiences more delays

9:27 am

Capitalism in space: Though Blue Origin appears only a few weeks from delivering its first flightworthy BE-4 rocket engine to ULA for use in that company’s new not-yet-launched Vulcan rocket, the second flightworthy engine is further delayed due to technical problems discovered when static fire testing began.

Sources told Ars that the first engine was put onto the test stand in Texas early in August, but almost as soon as work began to hot-fire the powerful engine, an issue was discovered with the engine build. This necessitated a shipment back to Blue Origin’s factory in mid-August, as the company’s test stands in Texas do not allow for more than minor work.

As a result of this technical issue, ULA now appears likely to get one flight engine this month, but it probably will not receive the other one for installation onto the Vulcan rocket before mid-October, assuming a clean battery of tests in Texas.

This issue almost certainly means that Vulcan will not attempt its first launch this year. The rocket is thus more than three years behind schedule.

The problems outlined here however are far greater than simply the technical issues with this one engine. First, Blue Origin’s pace of operations continues to be far too leisurely. Nothing the company has done since 2017 has proceeded with any sense of urgency, and thus neither ULA nor Blue Origin have been able to launch their rockets.

Second, and far more important, Blue Origin is supposed to be manufacturing the BE-4 for two rockets, both Vulcan and its own New Glenn. Neither rocket will be reusable to begin with, which means the number of needed engines required at first will be high. For example, ULA has contracts to launch Vulcan twice almost immediately, with the need to follow these with several military launches. Each launch will require two BE-4 engines, so Blue Origin at a minimum needs to manufacture four engines, probably more, just to fulfill its obligations to ULA. To supply its own New Glenn rocket, it needs seven BE-4 engines for each launch, with the company having four launches on its manifest for 2023.

All told, Blue Origin thus has to deliver, at a minimum, 32 engines in 2023 alone, to meet its contractual obligations. And since the rockets and engines will be untested, expect at least one or two launch failures that will further increase the need for more engines.

Yet, there is no sign that Blue Origin has figured out how to manufacture these engines on an assembly line basis. Even if it gets these two engines delivered soon, it is unclear it can produce a lot of flightworthy engines fast enough to meet this launch schedule. Expect therefore that both rockets will continue to experience launch delays that could stretch out years.

Meanwhile, a plethora of new rocket companies have been appearing, all aiming eventually to compete with Blue Origin and ULA. If Blue Origin doesn’t get a move on, these new companies will soon be in a position to replace both it and ULA, entirely.

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Astrobotic acquires bankrupt Masten

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: Astrobotic announced this week that it has successfully purchased Masten, a bankrupt company that for almost two decades specialized in developing suborbital vertical rocket landing technology.

This acquisition will combine the workforce of the two companies, and give Astrobotic control over Masten’s test sites at Mojave. Since Astrobotic is one of the many companies with a NASA contract to build lunar landers, the experience of Masten’s workers — experienced experts in vertical rocket landings — will be immeasurable.

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Update on CAPSTONE, still in safe mode

8:57 am

According to a detailed update from Advanced Space, the private company operating CAPSTONE for NASA, engineers have partly recovered control of the spacecraft after an anomaly had caused it to tumble and lose power.

It appears the problem that occurred on September 8th near the end of an mid-course correction engine burn was more serious that NASA initially revealed. CAPSTONE was tumbling out-of-control, its use of power was exceeding the power the solar panels were generating (draining its batteries), and the computer was periodically rebooting.

Since then engineers at Advanced have managed to stabilize the tumbling so that the spacecraft’s batteries were gaining power rather than losing it. Communications were re-established and the computer was also stabilized so that the spacecraft was able to get into a good safe mode. It remains however in a poor orientation that limits communications, power, and prevents proper operations.

While work is ongoing to diagnose the cause of the anomaly, the team is preparing the spacecraft to attempt a detumble operation to regain attitude control of the vehicle. This detumble operation was successfully demonstrated after separation from the launch vehicle in July. A successful detumble will result in the vehicle resuming control of its orientation, orienting the solar panels to the Sun to fully charge the batteries of the power used during the detumble. The spacecraft will then orient to the ground and await further instructions.

When this operation will occur was not stated, but it certainly will take place as soon as possible.

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InSight’s power levels rise again

10:16 pm

InSight's power levels through September 10th

Based on another status update issued today by the InSight science team, the electricity generated by the Mars lander’s dust-covered solar panels increased again slightly in the past week, going from 410 watt-hours per day to 420 watt-hours per day.

The graph to the right shows the trends since May. The science team had expected the power levels to steadily drop throughout the summer so that by early September the lander would die.

Instead, the power levels remained steady throughout the summer, and have in the past two weeks actually risen slightly, thus extending InSight’s life.

If at any moment a strong gust of wind or dust devil sweeps over InSight, the panels could be blown clear and it would gain a rebirth. The longer it manages to survive, the greater the chance that this might happen.

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September 13, 2022 Quick space links

4:48 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Two students harassed and blackballed from a “sexual assault survivor’s club” because they were Jewish

12:33 pm

SUNY-New Paltz: supports blacklisting and anti-Semitism

Two female students attending the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, Cassandra Blotner and Ofek Preis, have now filed a federal civil rights complaint because of the vicious and hostile treatment that they were subjected to by “the sexual assault survivor’s club” at the college, simply because both were Jewish and supporters of Israel.

You can read their civil rights complaint here [pdf].

Denise Katz-Prober, a Brandeis Center lawyer who represents Blotner and Preis, said in an interview with The College Fix that the two women were treated horribly. “They essentially have been victimized three times,” she said. “They were victimized first when they were sexually assaulted, then by the community of students and support services they turned to, and then by the university when they reached out for help and the university failed to take steps to protect them.”

When the other members of the club, officially called New Paltz Accountability (NPA), learned that both women were ardent and public supporters of Israel, these club members began a campaign to harass and dox the women continuously.
» Read more

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SpaceX appeals FCC decision that cancelled Starlink subsidy

9:35 am

SpaceX’s Starlink division has now appealed the decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cancel a nearly $900 million subsidy award given to companies providing broadband to rural regions.

Starlink’s appeal is complex, its arguments appearing to all center on what the company thinks was unfair practices by the FCC in cancelling the award.

Starlink told the FCC it was held to “standards that no bidder could meet today.”

“Changing the rules to undo a prior policy is grossly unfair after SpaceX has invested thousands of employee-hours and millions of dollars preparing to meet its [FCC program] obligations on the reasonable assumption that the Bureau would apply the Commission’s rules in an even-handed manner,” the company said.

That one FCC commissioner has publicly questioned the legality of the cancellation gives some weight to Starlink’ complaint.

In the end, this entire FCC program is a rip-off of the taxpayer. No companies, including SpaceX, should get this money. SpaceX is proving that it can get its constellation launched and operating profitably in rural areas, without a dime of federal money. Why should the rest of us help them do it?

Furthermore, the questionable nature of the FCC cancellation suggests the money from this program is possibly being awarded for political reasons, payoffs to companies that give the most campaign contributions to the right politicians. SpaceX doesn’t give much to any politicians, so it could be the cancellation was done as punishment for that lack.

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China’s Long March 7A launches communications satellite; dumps debris on Philippines

9:19 am

China today launched its Long March 7A rocket from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, successfully placing a communications satellite into orbit.

The coastal launch site meant that the rocket’s lower stages would not fall on China’s interior. Instead, it appears the drop zones were located in the Philippines.

The [Philippines Space] agency said it was able to verify the estimated drop zones of the rocket debris from a notice by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. “Two drop zones within the Philippine territory have been identified based on the NOTAM: Drop zone 1 is approximately 71 kilometers from Burgos, Ilocos Norte, while drop zone 2 is approximately 52 kilometers away from Sta. Ana, Cagayan,” PhilSA said in an advisory.

No word on whether this debris caused any damage. Regardless, China is continuing its policy, in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, of recklessly dumping rocket stages on others.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 56 to 37 in the national rankings, but is now tied with the entire world combined 56 to 56. This tie will likely not be long-lived. Though Firefly’s launch has been delayed until next week, SpaceX and Rocket Lab have launches scheduled for today and tomorrow, respectively.

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NASA revises its SLS launch schedule, pending approval of the range’s safety office

6:13 pm

NASA today announced that it is now targeting September 27, 2022 for the first test launch of its SLS rocket and Orion capsule.

Engineers have — on the launchpad — completed the repair work on the hydrogen leak that caused the previous launch scrubs. The plan now is to do a test fueling on September 21st to see if the repair worked.

If all is then well, the agency wants to launch on September 27th. To do so however NASA needs to get the approval of the safety range office to waive the use-by date of the batteries used to terminate the flight after launch, should something go seriously wrong. The rules require those batteries to be checked every 20 days, and as of today they have been in use for 31 days. The range had already given NASA a five day waiver so it could try to launch on September 5. To launch on September 27th will require the range to allow those batteries to remain unchecked for 46 days, more than double their accepted use-by date.

For the range to allow such a waiver would be I think entirely unprecedented, especially for the very first launch of a new rocket. Such test launches are exceedingly risky. A lot can go wrong, and often does when a rocket tries to fly for the first time. To allow such a lift-off with a questionable flight termination system seems completely insane and irrational.

NASA is also proposing an October 2nd launch date. I suspect this date is based on the range safety office refusing to give this waiver. If so, NASA would then do its September 21st fueling test on the launchpad, quickly roll the rocket back to the assembly building to check the batteries, and then try to get it back to the launch pad in time for that October 2nd date.

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InSight’s power level goes up!

5:54 pm

InSight's power levels as of September 5, 2022

The most recent status update on the Mars lander InSight, released today, shows a slight rise in the amount of power generated by its dust-covered solar panels.

As shown on the graph to the right, on August 27, 2022 the power level was 400 watt-hours generated per Martian day. On September, 5, 2022, the power level was 410 watt-hours per Martian day, the first power increase since late July. At the same time, the dust in the atmosphere continued to clear, going from a tau level of .88 to 0.8. Outside of the winter dust season tau is usually between 0.6 and 0.7.

The slight power increase continues to suggest that the lander’s death might be delayed. At 400 watt-hours per day, it has been able to run its seismometer since the beginning of July. With this slight increase, the chance increases that InSight will finally get that one gust of wind or dust devil that will blow the dust off its solar panels and allow it to recover some power and operate for longer.

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Crazy badlands in the equatorial region of Mars

2:49 pm

Badlands in the equatorial regions of Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, was taken on June 17, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The section highlighted is at full resolution, in order to make clear the absolutely crazy and complex terrain seen in the full image.

This terrain is not glacial, as the location is only about 1 degree south of the Martian equator. There might have been surface or near surface ice here once in the past, but there is none now.

Could we be looking at some form of lava flow? This is possible, because a close look at the context map at the image link suggests this region has been partly covered by some material, obscuring some craters to the east and west. However, there is no visible evidence anywhere in this region of a volcanic vent or caldera. If this covering material was volcanic it is very unclear where it came from.

The overview map below does not really provide any answers, but at least gives the context.
» Read more

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September 12, 2022 Quick space links

1:17 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay.

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