The May update of NOAA’s monthly graph is now available, once again showing the Sun’s sunspot activity during this ramp up to solar maximum far exceeding the predictions. That graph is below, annotated by me with additional data to provide some context.
In a letter to the FCC submitted on May 2, 2022, Viasat once again demanded the government block the deployment of SpaceX’s full 30,000 Starlink satellite constellation.
SpaceX shouldn’t be allowed to greatly expand its Starlink network while light pollution issues surrounding its deployed satellites remain unresolved, Jarrett Taubman, Viasat vice president and deputy chief of government affairs, said in a letter to the regulator.
While calls for a thorough environmental review that Viasat made for Starlink’s current generation of satellites in December 2020 were largely rejected, Taubman said SpaceX’s plan to grow the constellation by seven times “would have significant aesthetic, scientific, social and cultural, and health effects on the human environment on Earth.”
In other words, rather than try to compete with SpaceX, Viasat wants the government to squelch that competition. Though Viasat’s previous complaints have been rejected entirely, there is no guarantee that the Biden administration will continue to reject them. Recent evidence suggests instead that it will instead use this complaint as another opportunity to limit SpaceX’s operations, for political reasons.
Meanwhile, the only possible harm to Earth the full Starlink constellation might do is cause a limited interference in ground-based astronomy. Since astronomers have made so little effort to get their telescopes into orbit, above such interference, few should sympathize with them. If anything, Starlink should be the spur to get all of its telescopes off the ground and into space. Astronomers will not only avoid light interference from Starlink, they will get far better data without the atmosphere smearing their vision.
UPDATE: After emailing this post to Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona, he responded to correct an error in my image. The MRO photo was taken when Zhurong had already traveled about half the 1,300 feet listed in the Chinese article below, thus making my original circle about two times too large.
I have corrected its size. It now shows the correct maximum distance Zhurong could have driven since that MRO picture was taken on March 11th.
Original post:
——————–
According to a short report yesterday in China’s state-run press, Zhurong has traveled another 1,300 feet on Mars since it was photographed from orbit on March 11, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The report provided no information at all about the rover’s path. The map to the right shows Zhurong’s position as of March 11th, with the blue circle marking the maximum distance it could have moved since then according to this report. Based on China’s earlier vague statements, it is likely the rover has moved to the south, though even that covers a lot of possibilities.
The report did say this however:
Mars is about to enter the winter season, during which night temperatures will drop below minus 100 degrees Celsius, with a high probability of sandstorms. Martian winters last an equivalent of six Earth months.
Because Zhurong uses solar panels, it relies on the Sun for power. With coming of winter and more sandstorms, it thus faces the risk of limited solar power. As its nominal mission was only supposed to last three months, not a Martian year of 24 months that includes a winter, it will be interesting to see if it can survive that season.
The story also added that Yutu-2 has now traveled about 3,875 feet on the Moon, but added nothing else.
Capitalism in space: The Space Force yesterday announced the issuance of 125 small contracts, each worth $250,000, for developing new technologies for the removal of orbiting space junk as well as the robotic servicing of orbiting satellites.
SpaceWERX [a Space Force division] plans to award the 125 contracts over the next 30 days and each team will have about 150 days to deliver a product or study. Later this year they will have an opportunity to compete for second-phase awards of up to $1.5 million to continue development and prototyping.
The long-term goal is to select one or more teams two years from now to conduct an in-space demonstration of OSAM technologies, short for on-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing. This includes a broad range of technologies to repair and refuel existing satellites, remove and recycle orbital debris, and manufacture products in space.
Many of these development contracts likely went to already established companies like Northrop Grumman, Orbit Fab, Momentus, Launcher, and Spaceflight, which are all developing technologies for in-orbit transportation and servicing. These small contracts were also likely given to new startup companies that have not yet launched.
Eric Berger today beat me to the punch with a very cogent op-ed outlining how the press is consistently being fooled by the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, by reporting what he says without really understanding any of the larger context.
It happened again this weekend. Both Bloomberg and Axios reported that Russia is quitting the International Space Station due to sanctions imposed by the United States on Russia. Each of these stories garnered considerable attention. And each of these stories was also wrong.
…Specifically, this is what Rogozin said on state television this weekend: “The decision has been taken already, we’re not obliged to talk about it publicly. I can say this only—in accordance with our obligations, we’ll inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a year’s notice.”
This may sound ominous, but that is the wrong interpretation of Rogozin’s words. There is actually some positive news in there, with Rogozin saying Russia will give NASA and its other partners a full year’s notice before departing. This is more than enough time for NASA and its commercial partners, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, and Boeing, to work together to salvage the larger Western segment of the space station.
Rogozin’s most recent comments are even more positive than his comments in early March, when he threatened to break off the ISS partnership by the end of the month.
The ignorance of both the Bloomberg and Axios reports were amplified in that they were reporting nothing new, as Rogozin had essentially revealed this decision three weeks earlier.
The bottom line is that Russia is facing the death of its space program. It doesn’t have the cash to finance its own space station, and it has no one else to fly with. China says it will be glad to work with Russia on its Tiangong station, but it isn’t going to put out one dime to help pay for Russian efforts. Nor will the future American private stations.
Thus, most of what Rogozin says is bluster, not to be taken too seriously. Russia is going to stay with ISS for at least the next two years, and if it eventually decides to continue the partnership through ’30 it will be no surprise.
Capitalism in space: In successfully placing 34 smallsat into orbit today using its Electron rocket, Rocket Lab also successfully caught the first stage with helicopter as it descending by parachute.
The screen capture to the right from the live feed shows that first stage on parachute just before the helicopter hook captures it. That helicopter is now returning to land with that stage, which it will then gently deposit for study and refurbishment. Though it is likely this first recovered first stage will not get reused, that possibility remains, and regardless this success points to the future reuse of all Electron first stages.
UPDATE: Because of “different load characteristics” than seen during previous tests, the helicopter pilot released the stage for safety reasons, while still over the ocean. The company was then able to recover it, but though they can now study it no reuse will be possible.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
17 SpaceX
13 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 25 to 13 in the national rankings, with the U.S. leading all other nations combined 25 to 22.
ESPN: Proud censor of free speech
They’re coming for you next: Sports anchor Sage Steele last week filed a lawsuit against her employer ESPN for punishing her in 2021 when she expressed strong public reservations — on her own time — about the company’s mandates requiring employees to get COVID shots and boosters or lose their jobs.
In comments last September on a podcast hosted by former National Football League quarterback Jay Cutler, Ms. Steele touched on political and social topics, questioning Covid-19 vaccine mandates and former President Barack Obama’s decision to identify as Black instead of biracial.
After Ms. Steele’s remarks drew criticism in the press and on social media, ESPN forced her to issue an apology and temporarily benched her, according to the suit, which was served in Connecticut, where the network is based. ESPN also retaliated by taking away prime assignments and failing to stop bullying and harassment by Ms. Steele’s colleagues, the suit alleges.
The complaint says ESPN’s handling of Ms. Steele’s situation was an example of selective enforcement of a network policy that bars news personnel from taking positions on political or social issues. ESPN has “violated Connecticut law and Steele’s rights to free speech based upon a faulty understanding of her comments and a nonexistent, unenforced workplace policy that serves as nothing more than pretext,” according to the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
You can read the lawsuit here [pdf]. It cites numerous examples of other ESPN anchors making public very partisan political statements, on air and while working for ESPN, with no consequences. It also describes in detail the network’s ugly treatment of her– including taking her off prime assignments and forcing her to issue an apology she did not write — all based on this kind of non-research:
» Read more
I have embedded below the live stream of Rocket Lab’s launch today from New Zealand, scheduled for a 3:41 pm (Pacific) liftoff. The rocket carries 34 satellites for deployment.
More exciting however will be the attempt to recover the first stage. On this launch the Electron rocket’s first stage will control its descent using both thrusters and parachutes so that a helicopter can make the first attempt to snatch it out of the air before it hits the ocean.
If successful, Rocket Lab will then hopefully be able to reuse the first stage on a later launch.
Click for interactive map.
Cool image time! The photo to the right is actually a screen capture of 16 consecutive photos taken on May 2, 2022 by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance.
The overview map below gives the context. The red dot marks Perseverance’s position when the photos were taken. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position. The small white dot marks the spot where the rover’s parachute landed. The yellow lines indicate I think the area covered by the sixteen navigation images.
There is a reason for showing this panorama in this somewhat crude form. The engineers who run Perseverance have programmed its navigation cameras to send back its pictures so that they immediately line up in this coherent pattern. There is no need to rearrange them upon arrival. The engineers thus can instantly see how each picture relates to the others, and thus get an immediate sense of the nearby terrain in which they must plot the rover’s next move.
Perseverance is now in its second science campaign, focused on studying the base of the delta. As the science team studies the delta’s cliff face, they are also studying the best route to continue uphill. To do both, they have begun slowly moving along that face, going from west to east.
The rough panorama above thus shows them the ground ahead as they continue that traverse. I expect the rover’s next move will be to the northeast, once again moving along the base of the nearest cliff. The panorama shows that while the ground in this area has a few ridges, none are so high as to cause Perseverance any problems.
Link here.
Overall progress has been incredibly slow, considering the NASA contract to build this was awarded in 2016. Sierra Space is only building one spacecraft, designed to be reusable. For six years to have passed and the spacecraft, dubbed Tenacity, is still a year away from flight, seems excessive, especially because the spaceplane is small. It took SpaceX only four years to go from concept to successfully landing first stages. Starship began test flights only three years after the project began.
Still, the spaceplane is moving forward. Hopefully by February ’23 it will finally fly, giving the U.S. another method besides Dragon for getting cargo to and from space. That it might do so before Boeing’s Starliner is somewhat ironic, and puts more pressure on that company to get that capsule operational.
Both China and Russia successfully completed launches in the past few hours.
First, shortly before midnight today (local time) Russia used its smaller version of its new Angara rocket to place a military satellite into orbit, launching this version of the rocket for the second time.
Next, using its solid rocket Long March 11, China on April 30th (local time) successfully launched five smallsats from an ocean platform in the East China Sea. This was the third launch from sea by the Long March 11.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
17 SpaceX
13 China
6 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 24 to 13 in the national rankings. The U.S. also still leads all other nations and companies combined, 24 to 22.
An evening pause: Another fun short video attempting to provide some perspective on the vastness of existence.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 10, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
It shows what planetary scientists have dubbed “brain terrain”, a truly unique Martian geological feature that is not found on Earth and also remains as yet unexplained. Specifically, the brain terrain is the speckled areas between the larger flow features, all of which are probably ice or glacier related.
What especially drew me to this MRO image however was the particular flow feature in the center left that looks like either a giant squid or something out of Lovecraft horror short story. Talk about a cool image!
The downward grade here is likely to the north, as this spot is inside a north-south canyon, cutting into the southern cratered highlands. The general north-south trend of the depression here reinforce this supposition.
The overview image below provides context.
» Read more
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage successfully flying and landing for the sixth time.
That first stage had flown only three weeks ago, thus completing the fastest turnaround yet.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
17 SpaceX
12 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. now leads China 24 to 12 in the national rankings.
Nate Bronstein, now dead because of a mob’s lies, and the
willingness of The Latin School of Chicago to ignore them.
They’re coming for you next: A 15-year-old boy, Nate Bronstein, hung himself in January after months of cruel and ceaseless bullying at his private school — which the school, the Latin School of Chicago, apparently refused to stop — based on the false rumor that he had never gotten any COVID shots.
The boy’s parents, Robert and Rosellene Bronstein, are now suing both the school and the instigators of the bullying, demanding $100 million in compensatory damages. You can read their complaint in all its horror here [pdf].
This story illustrates two terrible but fundamental components of today’s blacklist culture. First, that mob is quite willing to oppress the weak and helpless based simply on lies. From the Chicago Tribune report of this story:
A student at the school, whose parents are named in the suit, spread a false rumor that the boy was unvaccinated, the suit alleges. Though he was vaccinated, the boy was harassed about his perceived vaccination status.
Even though the Bronstein’s met with this student’s parents in an attempt to end the bullying, nothing changed, and in fact it worsened, so that the boy even started receiving text messages saying he should kill himself.
Second, the mob’s emotion-driven and hateful conduct often means that those who could stand up to it and stop it are generally unwilling to challenge those lies, and will often instead team up with the mob to encourage the oppression.
» Read more
As I have been predicting now for months, the FAA today announced that it is once again delaying approval of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility one more month, to May 31, 2022.
This is the fifth time since December that the FAA has delayed the release of the environmental assessment. When the first delay was announced in December 2021, I predicted that this stone-walling by the government will likely continue for many months, and delay the first orbital launch of Starship “until the latter half of ’22, if then.”
Since then it has become very clear that the other federal bureaucracies at NOAA and Fish & Wildlife which must sign off on the approval are hostile to Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Starship, and are acting to block this approval, with this stone-walling having the unstated support of the Biden administration. When the third delay was announced at the end of February, I predicted no approval would ever occur, that the Biden administration wants to reject the reassessment and force the issuance of a new environmental impact statement, a process that could take years. To do this before the November election however will cost votes, so the administration would instead delay the approval month by month until November.
This prediction has been dead on right, unfortunately. Expect more month-by-month delays until November, when the Biden administration will then announce — conveniently just after the election — the need for a new impact statement requiring years of study.
The one hope to stop this government intransigence will be a complete wipe-out of the Democratic Party in Congress in those November elections. A strong Republican Congress with large majorities in both houses could quickly force the Biden administration to back down on many issues, including this effort to shut SpaceX down in Texas.
Capitalism in space: Axiom announced today that it has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirate (UAE) to fly a UAE astronaut to ISS in ’23 for a six month mission.
Axiom was able to put its own passenger on this flight because of a complex deal with NASA that had Axiom act as the go-between for Mark Vande Hei’s launch on a Soyuz in April ’21. Axiom brought the flight for NASA (which didn’t have the funds), and got in exchange a free seat for a passenger on a later American launch. Axiom has now sold that seat to the UAE.
The UAE in turn solidifies its space effort, with a six month manned mission to ISS.
The deal also demonstrates the priceless value of leaving ownership to American companies. Axiom made this deal to sell globally its long term space station plans, and it will use a SpaceX Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to launch it. Both companies thus make money on their products, instead of the cash going to NASA. Such profits will only encourage further sales, not only to these companies but to other competing American rocket and space station companies.
UPDATE: The Rocket Lab launch has been pushed back to May 1st because of poor weather today. The live stream below is still valid but it won’t go active until about 20 minutes before launch.
Capitalism in space: Two American rocket launches are scheduled for today, first a launch of another 53 Starlink satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral followed by the launch of 34 smallsats on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from New Zealand.
I have embedded the live stream of both below. The Rocket Lab launch will be especially exciting, because the company is going to attempt for the first time the recovery of the first stage for reuse by snatching it in the air with a helicopter as it slowly descends on parachutes.
The SpaceX launch is scheduled for 5:27 pm (Eastern), with the live stream going active about 20 minutes before launch. If successful it will be the shortest turnaround for a Falcon 9 first stage, only 21 days and shaving almost a week off the previous record.
About one hour later the Rocket Lab launch will occur, the live stream also going active about 20 minutes beforehand.
Capitalism in space: Momentus announced today that it has received its FCC license to launch its Vigoride space tug on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in May of this year.
The launch however is still not guaranteed. Momentus still needs FAA approval. Since ’21 the FAA has refused to give its approval because of security concerns in connection with the company’s management. Since then the individuals involved have stepped down, but the FAA has still not awarded the company that launch license.
If the launch goes forward, it will allow Momentus to perform its first in-space tests of the tug. The delays caused by these license issues however has caused the company to lose contracts with several customers, as well as allow competitors to gain ground.
Capitalism in space: Because the United Kingdom rocket company Skyrora has been unable to get Iceland to approve a suborbital test launch from that country, further test orbital launches from the new spaceport in Shetland in ’23 are threatened with delays.
The suborbital test launch had been scheduled to launch in September of last year, and has been delayed since because of this red tape.
According to a joint announcement yesterday from NASA and the German space agency DLR, all operations of the airborne astronomy telescope SOFIA will end as of September ’22.
NASA has been trying to cancel this project for several years, because its capabilities have not justified its expense, about $85 million per year. Congress has repeatedly refused to go along, reinserting funding after NASA tried to delete it. That the astronomy community itself suggested in November that the project be canceled, however, probably means this Congress will likely go along with this most recent announcement.
China yesterday successfully launched two Earth observation satellites using its Long March 2C rocket.
Since these were launched from one of China’s interior spaceports, the rocket’s first stage fell somewhere in China. No word if it used parachutes or grid fins to control that landing. Also, weather yesterday forced the scrub of a launch of China’s Long March 11 solid rocket from a sea-based launch platform. That launch has been rescheduled for tomorrow.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
16 SpaceX
12 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab.
The U.S. presently leads China 23 to 12 in the national rankings. Since there are two U.S. launches scheduled for later today, as well as a Russian and Chinese launch pending, these numbers will change in the next 24 hours.
The so-called Chinese-Russian partnership to explore
the Moon.
According to a statement by Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, yesterday in the Russian state-run press, the launch of two unmanned probes to the Moon, Luna-26 and Luna-27, are likely to be postponed due to “the current circumstances.”
“As for the Luna-26 lunar orbiter and the Luna-27 heavy lander mission, possibly, it will be adjusted taking into account that in the current situation we will be spending the main financial and industrial resources on increasing the orbital group. Now it is more important,” the space chief emphasized.
The Roscosmos CEO also asked for understanding if the mission is postponed. “Science is very important but now we are talking about the viability of Russia’s orbital group, about bringing it to a new level, its work as a group of double and military designation. Yet we are not postponing the lunar missions for long,” he added.
Rogozin added that Luna-25, scheduled for launch this year, has not been postponed.
Apparently the more than $1 billion of income that Roscosmos has lost by its refusal to launch OneWeb’s satellites is forcing it to make choices. For the government, the priority has to be launching communications, weather, navigation, and military surveillance satellites. Being tight on cash, Rogozin thus has no recourse but to favor those launches over any purely science missions.
This decision also demonstrates that Russia’s so-called partnership with China to explore the Moon, as shown in the graphic to the right that was released by China and Russia in June 2021, is pure hogwash. as I noted then:
Of the three Russian missions, Luna 25 is scheduled to launch later this year, making it the first all-Russian-built planetary mission in years and the first back to the Moon since the 1970s. The other two Russian probes [Luna-26 and Luna-27] are supposedly under development, but based on Russia’s recent track record in the past two decades for promised space projects, we have no guarantee they will fly as scheduled, or even fly at all.
Rogozin also said yesterday that he plans further talks with China in May to further their partnership concerning lunar exploration and building a lunar base. Let me translate: “We need cash to launch anything, and hope the Chinese will provide some.”
An evening pause: Performed by Grayson Samuels, Bella Coppola, and Anna Rose Daugherty at Texas State University.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman, who decided to find a version of this for an evening pause after we watched the 1972 movie Cabaret one evening. The film and play portrayed bluntly the decadence of Germany before World War II, a decadence that led directly to Nazi rule. Watching it now is somewhat horrifying, as it now accurately portrays the dominate and decadent leftist culture of America today. I watched and wondered if we Americans will have the courage and sense of morality to fight back and stop the kind of evils such decadence always leads to.
This song however is simply lovely, and illustrates the larger strength of the musical itself.
Click for interactive map.
Cool image time! For the past two weeks the Curiosity science team has been gingerly and slowing backing the rover off from the very rough terrain of the Greenheugh pediment, as shown on the overview map to the right. The blue dot indicates Curiosity’s present position, with the red dotted line marking its original planned route, now abandoned.
The main question remains: Where to go next? At this point the science team is still debating their exact path forward. As Catherine Weitz of the Planetary Science Institute explained to me in an email today,
The Curiosity team is still working out the details. Maybe in another month or so the new route will be finalized so stay tuned.
No matter what route they eventually choose, the white arrows mark one of the more interesting upcoming geological features that the scientists very much intend Curiosity to reach. In a paper published at the end of March in which Weitz was the lead author, they describe this “marker horizon” as follows:
» Read more
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, blacklisted for being white, Jewish, and willing
to speak the truth.
They’re coming for you next: When a Jewish English professor at Linfield University in Oregon, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, reported the sexual misconduct of four of the university’s ten trustees, he was first ignored, then subjected to anti-Semitic attacks, and then fired without any due process when he described those attacks on Twitter.
Pollack-Pelzner claimed that the Linfield University “President and Board Chair had religiously harassed me,” and that the school failed to act on alleged instances of sexual assault and hateful messages painted on campus. He also alleged that University President and Chair of the Board of Trustees Miles Davis had made anti-Semitic comments about Jewish noses, made jokes about sending Jews to gas chambers, and accused the Jewish professor of conspiring to grab power on the board.
The firing occurred in July 2021, during the first heavy wave of blacklisting that began right after Joe Biden took power as president. It is news now because of the release on April 22nd of an independent investigation that confirms entirely the improper firing of Pollack-Pelzner:
» Read more
The new colonial movement: According to a statement by one Chinese official on April 24th, China now plans to launch a constellation of communications/GPS-type satellites that will orbit the Moon and provide support for its unmanned and manned missions to the surface.
China will take the lead in demonstrating a small, lunar relay communication and navigation system, Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), told Chinese media on April 24. The first launch for the small constellation could take place in 2023 or 2024, according to Wu, who added that countries around the world are welcome to jointly build it.
That first launch will likely be a relay satellite to support the first unmanned landers/rovers targeting the lunar south pole. It will also likely be the first of several satellites designed to provide service long term for China’s planned manned lunar base, what it has dubbed the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Though announced as a project partnered with Russia, expect a large bulk of the work to be done by China.
Click for full image.
The uncertainty of science: According to a just published paper, scientists now propose that the dune-like ridges long known to exist on Io, Jupiter’s volcano-covered moon, might actually be dunes, even though Io has no real atmosphere.
The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken by the Galileo while it orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. It illustrates what the scientists believe is the proposed process:
McDonald and his colleagues used mathematical equations to simulate the force required to move grains on Io and calculated the path those grains would take. The study simulated the movement of a single grain of basalt or frost, revealing that the interaction between flowing lava and sulfur dioxide beneath the moon’s surface creates venting that is dense and fast moving enough to form large dune-like features on the moon’s surface, according to the statement.
In what might be a monumental understatement about the reality of interplanetary geology, McDonald said this in the press release: “This work tells us that the environments in which dunes are found are considerably more varied than the classical, endless desert landscapes on parts of Earth.”
Damn right. The possibility of unexpected geology of all kinds on the millions of planets, moon, and asteroids not yet studied is endless, and guaranteed.
