Ladyva – Boogie Woogie
An evening pause: How about some hot boogie woogie to take us into the weekend.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
April 19, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Five engines integrated into Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA-1 first stage
Testing will take place at the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands
- Russians jam two commercial satellites for six days, disrupting 39 Ukrainian television channels
The jamming was from March 13th to March 19th, and involved SES’s Astra-4 and Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13E satellites. This suggests Russia (and China) could do the same to other commercial sateliltes.
- Virgin Galactic proposes reverse stock split
Such reverse splits raises the value of each share in a superficial manner, and are usually done to prevent the stock from being delisted for having too low a value.
- Anonymous sources say NASA is considering restructuring the entire Artemis lunar program
One idea is to insert an extra mission before the lunar landing flight, during which Orion and Starship would dock in Earth orbit to test out their systems prior to going to the Moon. Since the whole Artemis program has always been haphazardly planned, this change makes sense, as it should have been considered from the beginning. In fact, it should be flown before the second Artemis flight, which presently intends to take astronauts around the Moon, on the first flight using Orion’s environmental systems.
- JPL releases short video showing all of Ingenuity’s flights, on a map
Since yesterday NASA took down the interactive maps that show where the rovers and Ingenuity have been and are going, this video is kind a slap in the face. Unless the agency restores those maps, the public will no longer be able to travel along with the rovers.
- China reorganizes its space bureaucracy, claiming that because of the change “current launch sites may get more freedom with commercial activities”
More likely this change will give the ChiComs more control over those activities.
Blue Origin completes delivery of the two BE-4 engines for ULA’s second Vulcan launch
Blue Origin this week completed delivery of the two BE-4 engines needed for the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for sometime this fall.
That launch was originally targeting an April launch, but according to official announcements has been delayed until the fall because final ground testing of its payload, Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle, is not complete. It appears that Blue Origin also contributed to that delay, as it is now obvious that its engines were not available as planned in time for that April launch.
This delay also raises questions about Blue Origin’s ability to ramp up BE-4 engine production to meet the needs of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Both have large launch contracts with Amazon to launch its Kuiper constellation, while ULA also has almost as many contracts with the U.S. military. To meet those contracts, Blue Origin will have to produce several hundred BE-4 engines yearly in the very near future. Right now it appears it can only produce about one per year.
Boeing to reduce staffing for SLS due to overall delays in Artemis
Boeing announced yesterday that it is going to reduce the staffing for its SLS rocket, caused by delays in other parts of the program that force it to stretch out operations.
When Boeing cites “external factors,” it is referring to the slipping timelines for NASA’s Artemis Program. In January officials with the space agency announced approximately one-year delays for both the Artemis II mission, a crewed lunar flyby, to September 2025; and Artemis III, a lunar landing, to September 2026. Neither of these schedules are set in stone, either. Further delays are possible for Artemis II, and likely for Artemis III if NASA sticks to the current mission plans.
Although the SLS rocket will be ready for the current schedule, barring a catastrophe, the other elements are in doubt. For Artemis II, NASA still has not cleared a heat shield issue with the Orion spacecraft. That must be resolved before the mission gets a green light to proceed next year. The challenges are even greater for Artemis III. For that mission NASA needs to have a lunar lander—which is being provided by SpaceX with its Starship vehicle—in addition to spacesuits provided by Axiom Space for the lunar surface. Both of these elements remain solidly in the development phase.
What Boeing is telling us indirectly is that, though NASA has not yet announced any further delays in those launch dates for Artemis-2 and Artemis-3, those dates are going to be delayed, quite possibly by one or more years.
None of this is a surprise. I have long been predicting that the first manned lunar landing in the Artemis program will not take place before 2030. In fact, that date was obvious the moment NASA announced its plan to make the Lunar Gateway space station an integral part of the program, back in 2018, when it was called LOP-G.
Now that SLS development is complete and NASA considers it “operational”, Boeing is merely reducing the staffing to maintain its assembly line, reducing it accordingly because of expected delays when additional rockets will be needed.
Analysis of Io’s atmosphere suggests it has been volcanically active for its entire 4+ billion year history
By analysizing the isotobes in Io’s atmosphere, scientists now believe that it has been volcanically active since its initial formation at the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
de Kleer et al. found that both elements [ sulfer- and chlorine-bearing molecules] are highly enriched in heavy isotopes compared to average Solar System values due to the loss of lighter isotopes from the upper atmosphere as material is continuously recycled between Io’s interior and atmosphere. The findings indicate that Io has lost 94% to 99% of the sulfur that undergoes this outgassing and recycling process. According to the authors, this would require Io to have had its current level of volcanic activity for its entire lifetime.
This data suggests that Io, as well as Jupter’s other three large Galilean moons (Europa, Calisto, and Ganymeded) have been in their present orbits since their formation 4.5 billion years ago. It also means that, while Io’s geological history keeps getting wiped out by its volcanic activity, the other three contain detailed geological records of the solar system’s entire history. Combine that with the geological data we will eventually get from Mars, it appears that we shall someday be able to document that history far beyond anything expected.
The O’Jays – Love Train
An evening pause: Clearly from 1970s television.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
April 18, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- ULA’s CEO claims Blue Origin is ramping up production of BE-4 engines
- ULA’s CEO touts the mating of a BE-4 to a Vulcan first stage
Both tweets are devoid of any real information, so who knows? It is likely the second is real and happening, but there continue to be rumors about Blue Origin’s production rate.
FAA to now require that reentry spacecraft get landing license before launch
We’re here to help you! The FAA is now going to require that any company planning to launch a payload or spacecraft into orbit to get both its launch and landing licenses before launch, in order to avoid the situation that occurred last year when Varda launched its capsule and then had difficulties getting its landing license approved due to red-tape confusion between government agencies.
In a notice published in the Federal Register April 17, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation announced it will no longer approve the launch of spacecraft designed to reenter unless they already have a reentry license. The office said that it will, going forward, check that a spacecraft designed to return to Earth has a reentry license as part of the standard payload review process.
In the notice, the FAA said that decision was linked to safety concerns of allowing spacecraft to launch without approvals to return. “Unlike typical payloads designed to operate in outer space, a reentry vehicle has primary components that are designed to withstand reentry substantially intact and therefore have a near-guaranteed ground impact as a result of either a controlled reentry or a random reentry,” it states.
While this seems to fall directly under the FAA’s basic authority, to make sure launches and landings pose no risk to the general public, I guarantee it is also going to slow the growth of the new space manufacture industry. I fear that with time approvals will be delayed, some so much that companies will go bankrupt waiting for approval. The FAA will never be able to guarantee perfection in this matter, and as bureaucrats tend to be cautious, expect it to increasingly oppose re-entries by new companies.
SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites
Bunny march on! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
41 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 47 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 33.
Ancient flood lava in the Martian cratered highlands
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The ridges were the primary reason this photo was taken, as they cover a 50-mile-square region of relatively flat terrain that also appears to be a series of steps downward to the west. The dotted line on the picture indicates one of those steps downward, with the plain to the west of that line about 100 to 200 feet lower that the plain to the east.
My first guess was that these ridges might be inverted channels, but that really didn’t make sense considering their random nature completely divorced from the downward grade. Then I took a wider view, and came up with a better guess.
» Read more
Today’s blacklisted American: Former Trump lawyer, already disbarred in California because he took Trump’s case, now blackballed by his banks
What many banks are now doing to conservatives.
They’re coming for you next: John Eastman — a former Trump lawyer who was fired from a professorship, was banned from speaking at conferences and colleges, is being prosecuted by Fanni Willis in Georgia, and was then disbarred in California, all because he simply made a legal arguement in favor of Trump — has now been blackballed by his banks, USAA and Bank of America.
Bank of America alerted Eastman in September of 2023 that it would be closing his accounts, a letter obtained by the Daily Caller shows. Shortly thereafter, USAA notified Eastman in November that his two bank accounts with the company would be closed, a separate letter shows.
“And then two months later, we get a similar letter from USAA saying that they’ve decided that they’re going to close your account and they did like three weeks later,” Eastman told the Daily Caller. “And so that was where all of our automatic payments were coming out of, all our automatic deposits. So it was a real pain to shift everything. We had to get a new bank account opened and shift everything over.”
It is important to emphasize that Eastman has done nothing wrong. » Read more
Rocket startup Orbex raises another $16.7 million in private investment capital
The British rocket startup Orbex has raised another $16.7 million in private investment capital, bringing the total it has raised now to over $100 million.
It remains unclear when the company’s Prime rocket will complete its first launch. It now says it will have its rocket and launch facility at the Sutherland spaceport ready by the end of this year, but it had previously hoped to launch the rocket in 2023. It appears that goal failed because the spaceport could not get either the spaceport license or its own launch license approved by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Those licenses have still not been issued, even though the applications had been submitted in Feburary 2022, more than two years ago.
Those delays by the CAA probably explains why the company has had four different CEO’s in the past year. Though the fault of the delays lies with the government, others have had to take the blame. Meanwhile, company officials now state that it is now exploring using other launch sites, including its own near the equator.
TESS has resumed science operations
Engineers have successfully returned TESS to full science operations, without providing as yet any explanaton as to why on April 8, 2024 it went into safe mode or what they did to fix the issue.
The Aprill 11 press release announcing the safe mode had only mentioned that the shut down had occurred “during scheduled engineering activities.” The lack of information continues to suggest that someone did an “Oops!” during those activities, and NASA is too embarassed to reveal that fact.
April 17, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Cascade – Hotel California
An evening pause: Performed live in 2022 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The instruments are called Chapman Sticks.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
April 17, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Firefly installs another payload on its Blue Ghost lunar lander
The payload is an experiment to see if electromagnetic fields can be used to protect objects from lunar dust.
- SpaceX to build $14M rec center, sushi restaurant in Brownsville
These retail outlets are for within Brownsville itself, and are separate from the shopping center and cafe it is planning for the Boca Chica area.
- Musk to meet with officials from Skyroot Aerospace, Agnikul Cosmos, Bellatrix Aerospace and Dhruva Space at New Delhi during his India visit on April 22
The first two companies are the most advanced rocket startups in India. All are central to its nascent commercial space industry.
- Long March 2F with Shenzhou-18 manned capsule rolled to launchpad
This next manned launch to China’s space station is target April 25th.
SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites; but with streaming issues
SpaceX today succeeded in launching another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. However, after stage separation and the ignition of the upper stage, with the rocket operating normally, the live stream from X suddenly went down. The problem was not with the rocket, as all feeds from both stages disappeared, with the entire live stream going blank.
The first stage was on its twelfth launch. SpaceX has now confirmed that it landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has also confirmed as successful orbital insertion.
This was SpaceX’s 40th launch so far in 2024, all successful. To get some perspective on the company’s continuing and spectacular success, the entire United States could not achieve that many launches in any year from 1969 through 2019, and in 2020 it merely matched this number (because SpaceX that year launched 25 times). And SpaceX has done it this in only three and a half months. Based on this pace, its goal of 150 launches in 2024 appears increasingly possible.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
40 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 46 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 40 to 33.
Io on Juno’s 60th close fly-by of Jupiter
Click for original image.
Click for original image.
The photos above and to the right were both taken by Juno during its 60th close fly-by of Jupiter on April 9, 2024. The image above, cropped slightly to post here, was processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, who states the following:
The stretched and enlarged crop is derived from a reprojected Io image with a margin of 100 km greater than Io’s nominal radius. Two plumes are obvious. The plume on the night siide is visible in several frames of the PJ60 Io sequence.
That Juno captures plumes like this on every close fly-by tells us the extent of activity that is on-going on the moon. Basically, eruptions are continuous and never ending.
The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was processed by Eichstädt and enhanced by citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos. It gives us a global view of Io’s many volcanoes and flood lava plains.
During that 60th fly-by Juno’s closest approach to Io was 10,778 miles. Though close, this is not as close as the approach of 930 miles during the 57th and 58th fly-bys. Nor will future fly-bys be as close again. This is essentially Juno’s last close look at the volcano world.
Confirmed: California’s coastal commission is looking for ways to block SpaceX launches at Vandenberg
According to an article yesterday in the Santa Barbara Independent, the California Coastal Commission is aggressively looking for ways it can prevent SpaceX and other commerical rocket companies from increasing the launch pace out of Vandenberg Space Force Base.
When asked how many launches at VSFB benefit the Department of Defense (DOD), Colonel Bryan Titus, vice commander for Space Launch Delta 30, said that 25 percent hold DOD satellites and payloads, but argued that all SpaceX launches support the DOD and its allies.
“I just don’t think that SpaceX should be able to skirt the requirements for a Coastal Development Permit when its clear intent is to conduct primarily for-profit business activity and not federal activity,” said Kristina Kunkel, the Environmental Policy Director of the California State Controller’s Office.
The article confirms what I had speculated last week, that the Coastal Commission wants to find ways to impose its regulatory power over commercial launches inside Vandenberg, expressly to limit or stop those launches.
Side note to my readers: Posting will be light for much of today, as I will be visiting my doctor for a follow-up on my rib injury. Nothing bad has happened, but a follow-up seems wise to make sure things are healing as they should.
Sweden signs Artemis Accords
Sweden yesterday became the 38th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, one day after Switzerland had officially signed.
The alliance now includes the following nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.
The press release once again focuses on “reinforcing” the Outer Space Treaty, rather than using the accords to get around that treaty’s limitations of private property. More and more it appears the Biden administration and the global community wants to use this alliance not to encourage the establishment of a legal framework for private ownership, but to retain that power within the governments involved.
As I said last week, “Under these circumstances, I wonder why China and Russia haven’t signed on as well.”