Author: Robert Zimmerman

Ispace secures first insurance deal for private lunar lander

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: The Japanese startup Ispace has now obtained the first insurance plan ever for a private lunar lander.

The startup has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSI), a Tokyo-based firm that started working with Ispace in 2019, to insure its first attempt to send a lander to the moon later this year. The agreement outlines intentions to finalize terms for the insurance in the months leading up to Ispace’s Mission 1 (M1), which is currently slated to fly on a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2022.

According to Ispace, the insurance would cover any damage the lander takes between separating from the rocket in a trans-lunar orbit (TLO) and touching down on the moon. As well as covering a failed landing, the insurance would guard against issues stemming from radiation exposure as the lander travels through the Van Allen belts to its destination.

The insurance does not cover the payloads Ispace’s lander will carry, including a rover from the United Arab Emirates.

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Return of Axiom mission delayed again because of weather

9:16 am

Because of marginal winds at the splashdown points, SpaceX, Axiom, and NASA agreed today to delay the return of Axiom’s first private mission to ISS one more day.

The Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crew is now targeting to undock from the International Space Station 8:55 p.m. EDT Sunday, April 23.

Weather permitting, the Ax-1 crew is targeted to close the hatch at about 6:45 p.m. Sunday, April 24, to begin the journey home in SpaceX Dragon Endeavour with splashdown off the coast of Florida approximately 1:00 p.m. Monday, April 25.

This delay will also delay the launch of NASA’s next crew to ISS on SpaceX’s new Dragon capsule, Freedom, now scheduled for launch no earlier than April 27th.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Rhode Island Democrats propose oppressing everyone who hasn’t gotten COVID shots

1:47 pm

Key language in Democrats' oppressive law
Click for higher resolution screen capture.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: Proposed legislation by the Democrats who control Rhode Island’s government will both double the state income tax as well as impose a monthly $50 fine on anyone who has not yet gotten COVID shots.

Furthermore, employers will be subject to a monthly fine of $5,000 if they are found to be harboring any employees lacking shots.
» Read more

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Colliding galaxies

1:11 pm

Merging galaxies

The string of amazing galaxy images coming from the Hubble Space Telescope continues. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today and shows an object dubbed VV-689 that is believed to be two galaxies in the process of colliding and merging.

The angelic image comes from a set of Hubble observations that took a closer look at “Zoo Gems,” interesting galaxies from the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. This crowdsourced program relies on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to classify galaxies and help astronomers wade through a deluge of data from robotic telescopes. In the process, volunteers discovered a gallery of weird and wonderful galaxy types, some not previously studied.

This image will lay the groundwork for more detailed research. Right now it appears no one has even estimated its distance.

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The gigantic lava flows off of the solar system’s biggest known volcano

12:50 pm

Olympus Mons' gigantic lava flow
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on October 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture covers a very tiny section of the southeast flank of Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system. The arrow indicates the direction of the downward slope.

Olympus Mons itself is about 400 miles wide with an actual height relative to Mars’ “sea level” of just under 70,000 feet, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. The mountain’s flanks, almost 200 miles long from caldera edge to base, drop about 54,000 feet. That average drop of about 270 feet every mile is not particular steep, but its continuous nature over such a very very long distance makes its quite daunting.

You can see evidence of that slope in the photo. The downward pointing lobes each indicate the volcano’s last separate lava flows that ceased moving when each froze in place, probably several tens of millions of years ago. These lobes were also placed on top of many earlier flows from the volcano’s past eruptions that probably continued for several billion years, beginning 3.5 billion years ago.

The overview map helps provide a sense of scale by placing this image on that mountain flank.
» Read more

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ULA begins stacking Atlas-5 rocket that will launch Starliner on demo mission

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: ULA has begin assembling the Atlas-5 rocket it will use in May to launch Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule on its second unmanned demo mission.

The article provides a detailed description of the status of both the rocket and the capsule, including this update on the valve issues that caused the August ’21 launch of this second demo mission to be scrubbed:

Engineers believe the valve components likely corroded from the interaction of nitrogen tetroxide propellant with moisture that seeped into the thrusters on the spacecraft’s service module, then permeated a Teflon seal inside the valve itself.

Technicians removed the service module from the Starliner’s crew module in January for shipment to a test facility in New Mexico, where teams are performing tests to better understand the valve problem. The OFT-2 [in May] mission will fly with a new service module, one originally assigned to the first Starliner mission with astronauts. Teams inside Boeing’s Starliner hangar mated the crew module with the new service module March 12. Filling of the service module with propellant is expected to occur this month, before the spacecraft rolls over to ULA’s rocket integration building for stacking atop the Atlas 5.

Boeing said the Starliner team designed a new purging system to help prevent moisture from getting into the valves during the upcoming launch campaign while the spacecraft is in the factory and at ULA’s launch site.

Boeing’s engineering failures with Starliner have been expensive to the company. Not only has Boeing had to pay out of its own pocket an extra $410 million for this second demo flight, it has had to write off the cost of that first service module. Furthermore, not being operational has probably meant it has lost business to SpaceX and its Dragon capsules. For example, when Axiom first announced it was going to fly commercial tourist flights in 2018, it was expected the company would use both Dragon and Starliner capsules. That might still happen, but at least for the first few years of operations all of Axiom’s business has gone to SpaceX. NASA has also had to throw all its manned flights to SpaceX for the next few years, some of which was originally aimed at Boeing.

Should this second demo flight succeed, however, the company will finally be in a position to launch passengers on Starliner and thus make money from the capsule.

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Blue Origin rethinking plans for landing its first stage?

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: Though the company has said little, according to this local Florida newspaper Blue Origin is rethinking its plans to use the cargo ship Jacklyn as a platform for landing its New Glenn first stages in the ocean.

The 600-foot former cargo ship has been docked at the Port of Pensacola since 2018 and undergoing a retrofit by the Pensacola company Offshore Inland to enable the ship to serve as a landing platform for the first stage of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

When contacted by the News Journal to ask if the retrofit project had been canceled, a Blue Origin spokesperson responded that no final decision had been made yet.

The company is looking at “different options” for recovery vessels that give the best chance for mission success while also being safe and cost-effective, the spokesperson said.

This could be good news or bad news. Either it means Blue Origin is now getting close to finally launching New Glenn, which is three years behind schedule, or it has suddenly realized that using this cargo ship never made sense, and it is scrambling to find a solution at this late date.

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Lucy team schedules attempt to complete solar panel deployment

3:21 pm

Lucy solar panel graphic
Artist’s impression of solar panel

After months of discussions, the engineering team of the Lucy asteroid probe have now scheduled the week of May 9th as when they will begin their attempt to complete the deployment of the spacecraft’ partly opened solar panel.

The team is now preparing to complete the solar array deployment in two steps. The first step, tentatively scheduled for the week of May 9, is intended to pull in most of the remaining lanyard and verify that flight results are consistent with ground testing. This step will also strengthen the array by bringing it closer to a fully tensioned state. Because this step is designed to be limited in duration, the array is not likely to latch at that point.

If this step goes as planned, the second step will continue the array deployment with the intent to fully latch. Information gleaned from the first part will help fine-tune the second. The second step is currently planned for a month after the initial one, giving engineers enough time to analyze the data seen in the first attempt.

When launched in October 2021 one of Lucy’s two large solar panels did not completely open and latch, as shown above. Though the spacecraft is presently getting 90% of its expected power, the scientists want to get the panel fully open and latched to insure it will function as planned once the spacecraft gets out to the asteroid belt, where sunlight is dimmer.

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Pushback: Baseball scout sues over COVID shot mandate that got him fired

12:26 pm

1964 Civil Rights Act arbitrarily voided by the Washington Nationals
1964 Civil Rights Act: Arbitrarily voided by the Washington Nationals

Don’t comply: Bernard “Benny” Gallo, a major league baseball scout for the Washington Nationals has sued the baseball team for firing him when he refused for religious reasons to get COVID shots.

Gallo is being represented by the Thomas More Society, which has taken on a number of these cases and won. From the press release:

Serving his employers faithfully through the first 18 months of the pandemic, Gallo was terminated in late August 2021 after being denied a religious exemption by the baseball club. Gallo is seeking to have his firing reversed, his employment reinstated, backpay awarded, and restitution for the malicious deprivation of his rights. When dismissed by the Nationals, Gallo not only lost his livelihood and his life’s passion of working as a baseball scout, but also his elected position as Vice President of the Southern California Scouts Association, a distinction awarded him by his industry peers.

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Charles LiMandri, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, explained that the Nationals instituted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy on August 12, 2021. The mandate required them to have undergone vaccination by August 26. LiMandri pointed out that the Nationals’ team baseball players were not subject to this policy. MLB union members were encouraged to obtain COVID-19 vaccination, but not subject to the mandate.

“The dismissal of Mr. Gallo and the denial of his request for a religious exemption is discriminatory and unlawful,” detailed LiMandri. “The Nationals continued to employ others – including another scout – who requested and received similar accommodations for medical reasons.”

» Read more

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Astronomers discover new type of stellar explosion

11:31 am

Using data from the orbiting TESS observatory and the ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, astronomers have detected evidence of a new type of stellar explosion they have dubbed a “micronova.”

The micronova appears to be a smaller version of a nova, which brightens the entire star for a month or so.

A white dwarf in a two-star system can steal material, mostly hydrogen, from its companion star if they are close enough together. As this gas falls onto the very hot surface of the white dwarf star, it triggers the hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium explosively. In novae, these thermonuclear explosions occur over the entire stellar surface. “Such detonations make the entire surface of the white dwarf burn and shine brightly for several weeks,” explains co-author Nathalie Degenaar, an astronomer at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Micronovae are similar explosions that are smaller in scale and faster, lasting just several hours. They occur on some white dwarfs with strong magnetic fields, which funnel material towards the star’s magnetic poles. “For the first time, we have now seen that hydrogen fusion can also happen in a localised way. The hydrogen fuel can be contained at the base of the magnetic poles of some white dwarfs, so that fusion only happens at these magnetic poles,” says Paul Groot, an astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study.

What this discover really reveals is that as our astronomical observing technology improves, we can observe a greater variety of stellar phenomenon. Expect astronomers in future years to detect an even wider variety of stellar explosions, most of which have not be detectable up until now because we simply couldn’t see them.

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Two space companies fight in the Ukraine war

10:31 am

Two stories yesterday illustrate how Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has forced two different space companies, one American and the other Ukrainian, to adapt and change in order to help the Ukraine.

First, SpaceX once again demonstrated its ability to adapt, revise, and even redesign its products with lightning speed, based on unexpected facts on the ground.

After SpaceX sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine in February in an apparent effort to help Ukraine maintain its internet connection amid war with Russia, SpaceX founder Elon Musk claimed that Russia had jammed Starlink terminals in the country for hours at a time. After a software update, Starlink was operating normally, said Musk, who added on March 25 that the constellation had “resisted all hacking & jamming attempts” in Ukraine.

The speed in which SpaceX overcame Russia’s jamming was so fast that the American military was gob-smacked.

“From an EW technologist perspective, that is fantastic. That paradigm and how they did that is kind of eyewatering to me,” said Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare for the Pentagon’s acquisition office. “The way that Starlink was able to upgrade when a threat showed up, we need to be able to have that ability. We have to be able to change our electromagnetic posture, to be able to change very dynamically what we’re trying to do without losing capability along the way.”

In other words, the Pentagon is incapable at present of doing the same thing, and now realizes it should be. The real lesson this government entity should take from this however is to stop trying to build anything at all. Hire the private sector. Let it do the work. Competing privately owned companies can always beat the government at this game. Always.

The second story involves the Ukrainian company Lunar Research Service, which until the war had used its 3D-printing technology to build components for a number of space missions, including lunar rovers. That changed immediately with the invasion.

The start-up was just about to ship its first batch of nanosatellites to their Kickstarter backers, but priorities changed within days, the company’s chief technology officer Dmytro Khmara told Space.com in an email. Instead of going to the customers, the nanosatellites were taken apart and the components handed over to the military.

Since then the company has reprogrammed its 3D printers to build parts for the Ukrainian military, including gun parts.

Though company officials say they hope to return to building components for space, circumstances might not allow it. As long as the war grinds on, the company’s profits will be found in helping the Ukriane’s military.

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ESA successfully tests controlling a robot on Earth from orbit

10:13 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully completed a test program, proving that an astronaut in orbit on ISS can control and operate a small robot on Earth.

Astronaut Luca Parmitano aboard the ISS [in 2019] operated the gripper-equipped ESA Interact rover in a mock lunar environment inside a hangar in Valkenburg, the Netherlands to survey rocks and collect samples. The two-hour space-to-ground test was a success, overcoming a two-way signal delay averaging more than 0.8 seconds and a data packet loss rate of 1% plus.

The value of this test is obvious. It shows that astronauts will be able to use small rovers and robots in remote operations, such as sending a probe down to the surface before landing themselves, or once on the planet sending that probe into dangerous terrain as a scout, while the astronaut stays back in safety.

At the same time, the robot used and the tasks it completed were all relatively simple. Moreover, the “mock lunar environment” was hardly realistic. A lot more work is needed before such a robot is functional in a real planetary environment.

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Astrobotics unveils nearly complete Peregrine lunar lander

10:04 am

Capitalism in space: Astrobotics yesterday unveiled its nearly complete Peregrine lunar lander, scheduled for launch later this year on the first launch of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

The lander is still being assembled, said John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic. Remaining work includes installation of its solar panels, two fuel tanks and decks holding payloads. The engines are “just about done,” he said, and will soon be installed.

He was optimistic that remaining work will be done quickly. “In just a couple months’ time, this will be heading out to environmental testing,” he said, followed by shipment to the launch site late this year.

This announcement now strongly suggests that Peregrine would not have been ready for Vulcan’s original launch date in late 2021. Since then the delays by Blue Origin in developing Vulcan’s first stage BE-4 engine has pushed the rocket’s first launch back by more than a year, time that apparently Astrobotics needed to finish Peregrine.

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NASA awards contracts to six companies for its future orbital communications

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded development contracts to six different companies to test the technology for providing the agency orbital communications for its manned missions, replacing the NASA-built TDRS satellite constellation.

In addition to SpaceX and Project Kuiper, the contractors include U.S.-based ventures representing Inmarsat, SES, Telesat and Viasat. Each venture will be required to complete technology development and in-space demonstrations by 2025 to prove that its system can deliver robust, reliable and cost-effective services — including the ability for new high-rate and high-capacity two-way links.

NASA would follow up by negotiating long-term contracts with multiple vendors to acquire services for near-Earth operations by 2030, while phasing out satellite communications systems owned and operated by the space agency.

Because NASA’s own station will likely be gone when these new in-space communications constellations become operational, their likely customers will not be NASA but the private space stations now under development. NASA is thus accepting responsibility for paying the cost for getting this communications need developed, for all the private companies. While the private space stations should eventually pay for using and building these constellations, it makes sense for NASA to get this started. No one company could likely afford or even be willing to pay the entire cost, and getting them all to work out an arrangement now would be difficult. NASA in turn can get it done now, and then later negotiate contracts with the private stations to pay for its construction and use.

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South Korea raises its space budget by 19%

9:44 am

The new colonial movement: The South Korean government has decided to further raise its space budget for ’22, increasing the planned budget from what was spent in ’21 by 19%.

About a third of this $619 million budget will be used to develop the country’s home-built rocket. Slightly more than half will finance several different satellite projects. Much of the rest is budgeted for the nation’s planned unmanned probes to the Moon and to the asteroid Apophis.

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OneWeb signs deal to launch additional satellites using India’s GSLV rocket

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: OneWeb yesterday announced that it has signed a contract with New Space India, the commercial arm of India’s space agency, to launch additional satellites using that nation’s GSLV rocket.

From the company’s press release:

The first launch with New Space India is anticipated in 2022 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. The launches will add to OneWeb’s total in-orbit constellation of 428 satellites, 66 per cent of the planned total fleet, to build a global network that will deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity.

The company refused to release any additional details. The deal however clearly indicates two things. First, OneWeb wants an alternative to using SpaceX for launching the satellites that the Russians had been previously contracted to put in space. This gives it flexibility should one or another company have issues. For example, SpaceX simply might not have the immediate capacity to launch all these satellites as quickly as OneWeb wants. This second deal distributes that capacity across two launch vendors.

Second, it is likely in the long run that India is going to get a lot of business from OneWeb. This gain for India is Russia’s total loss. The deal will also help get India out of its extended panic over the Wuhan flu. Since the arrival of COVID India’s space industry has ground to a halt, completing few launches. The OneWeb deal might force it to come back to life.

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New schedule announced for landing of AX-1 crew and launch of NASA crew

9:17 am

Because of poor weather at the splashdown points on Earth, SpaceX and NASA have worked out a new schedule for both the landing of Axiom’s first passenger flight to ISS as well as NASA’s next launch of astronauts.

The integrated NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX teams have agreed on a plan for the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crew to undock from the International Space Station at 8:35 p.m. EDT Saturday, April 23, for a splashdown off the coast of Florida about 1:46 p.m. Sunday, April 24. The decision was made based on the best weather for splashdown of the first private astronaut mission to visit the International Space Station and the return trajectory required to bring the crew and the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft back to Earth safely.

…The departure of Dragon Endeavour from the space station will clear the docking port for the arrival of Dragon Freedom and NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 astronauts. The earliest potential launch opportunity for the Crew-4 mission is 4:15 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, with additional opportunities Wednesday, April 27, and Thursday, April 28. These launch opportunities are undergoing a more detailed program review to ensure they align with integrated operational timelines. The teams want to provide a two-day gap after Ax-1 return for data reviews from splashdown and to prepare for the Crew-4 launch, including the staging of recovery assets.

If the landing occurs on April 23rd as now planned, the Axiom passengers will have spent fifteen days in space, about four more than originally planned.

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Perseverance captures solar eclipse by Phobos

1:40 pm

Phobos eclipse the Sun
Click for full image.

Cool movie time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, shows the Sun partly blocked by the Mars’ moon Phobos, taken by the high resolution camera on Perseverance on the surface of Mars. Below I have embedded the full movie compiled from the images taken as Phobos moved across the Sun’s face. From the caption:

It’s long been known that Phobos is drifting toward the Martian surface year by year; tens of millions of years from now, it is expected to crash into the planet or fragment into chunks that will impact the planet. Studying Phobos’ orbit also allows scientists to refine predictions of when the doomed moon will crash into Mars.

Unfortunately, the website does not say when this solar eclipse occurred. The spots on the lower left of the Sun’s face are sunspots.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Assistant principal harassed and forced to resign for rejecting school’s insistence that all whites are racists

12:28 pm

A view slide from the school's bigoted training
A view slide from the school’s bigoted training, annotated to
illustrate the program’s goals.

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” When Emily Mais, assistant principal at Agnor-Hurt Elementary School in Virginia strongly objected to training materials being used by the Albemarle County school district that preached that only whites could be racists, and in fact all were, she found herself endlessly harassed, forced to make numerous public apologies, and eventually was forced to resign in the face of numerous insults and threats against her.

She has now enlisted the Alliance Defending Freedom to sue the Albemarle County School Board. From the first link above:
» Read more

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Planetary scientists propose next NASA boondoggle

11:28 am

The decadal survey's fantasy about future budget allocations
Figure 22.2 from the decadal survey, outlining its fantasy about future
budget allocations.

Let me admit right off the bat that my headline above is a bit too cynical as well as a bit unfair. In releasing yesterday their decadal survey, outlining what they hope planetary missions NASA will do in the next decade, the planetary science community was mostly interested in recommending the planetary missions in the coming decade it thought would provide the best actual science.

The problem is that in recent decades, these decadal surveys, from both the astronomers and the planetary scientists, have evolved into documents designed to encourage a few big expensive missions, rather than a suite of many smaller probes to many different places. For examples, consider this quote from the article in Science describing yesterday’s announcement:
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Spinlaunch releases video of its 7th test launch

9:41 am

Capitalism in space: Spinlaunch on April 18th released a video providing what it calls “an inside look” at the company’s procedures during its 7th test launch on March 22, 2022.

I have embedded the video below. Note that on this test launch, the projectile was lifted to only about 30,000 feet, which does not qualify it as a suborbital space flight. Still, the video also indicates that their test projectile not only survived the launch’s extremely high accelerations, reaching a speed of 1,200 miles per hour in mere seconds, but once it hit the ground it was in good enough shape to reuse.

The video also reveals one other interesting fact. Their mission control consisted of only two people, significantly less than the mission control staffs used by the commercial rocket companies, which are themselves significantly less that the mission control teams that NASA has used.
» Read more

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Delta testing Starlink use on its airplanes

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: The CEO of Delta has revealed that the airline company is testing Starlink as a method for providing its passengers internet access during flights.

Starlink officials have said they are also discussing this possibility with several airlines. It has also sought regulatory approval from the FCC, and will also need it from the FAA before officially proceeding.

The request to the FCC was made in March 2021, more than a year ago, and appears to have not yet been approved. Moreover, there have been signs that the FCC has been slow-walking other Starlink license requests. These facts, combined with the delays forced on SpaceX by the FAA, provides further circumstantial evidence that the federal bureaucracy under the Biden administration is working to block the success of Elon Musk’s space companies.

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Axiom again cancels return of manned mission due to weather

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: Because of continuing poor weather on Earth, SpaceX & Axiom once again canceled the planned return of manned mission yesterday.

At the moment there is no word on when SpaceX’s Endeavour capsule will undock and bring its passengers home. Since a NASA crew is preparing for launch on Saturday, April 23rd, we should expect that return to occur beforehand.

This article from Israel about the delay, which also focuses on the flight of Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe, had this interesting tidbit:

Businessmen Stibbe, American Larry Connor of Ohio, and Canadian Mark Pathy have paid $55 million apiece for the rocket ride. The visitors’ tickets include access to all but the Russian portion of the space station. [emphasis mine]

When the Russians launched Dennis Tito and other tourists in 2000s, I am unsure if those tourists were allowed in the American portion of the station. My guess would be yes, but that would be a guess, and very easily wrong. During the two tourist flights to ISS in October and December it is also unclear if those passengers had access to the American half. Considering the competition for tourist flights that now exists, I would suspect no.

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