Author: Robert Zimmerman

The old media logjam has broken: Even the left is now getting its news from new media

1:18 pm

Sara Foster sees the light
Sara Foster sees the light

In my essay yesterday describing how the wildfires in the Los Angeles area appear to finally be making conservatives out of a lot of partisan knee-jerk Democrats, I used a quote that I think is important because it illustrates a major cultural change in a way that is not obvious at first. It also demonstrates a new political reality that the Democratic Party has not yet grasped.

The quote was from a tweet on X by actress Sara Foster. This is what she wrote:

We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits. @MayorOfLA @GavinNewsom RESIGN. Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.

Note the facts this clearly partisan Democrat cites.
» Read more

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SpaceX completes two launches, reusing first stage a record number of times

12:41 pm

Since early this morning SpaceX successfully completed two launches from opposite coasts.

First, in the early morning the company placed a National Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings completed their 9th and 16th flights respectively. It is believed but not confirmed that the payload was another batch of “Starshield” satellites, SpaceX’s military version of Starlink.

Next, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage I think set a new reuse record, completing its 25th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2024 launch race:

5 SpaceX
1 China

The reuse record is significant, as SpaceX’s fleet of first stages is beginning to record flight numbers comparable to NASA’s fleet of space shuttles, but it is doing so in far less time. For example, this 25th flight matches the entire number of flights by the shuttle Endeavour during its lifespan of almost two decades. This booster however accomplished the same number of reflights in only three and a half years.

In the next few years we should expect SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage fleet to eclipse the numbers set by the shuttles, and do so in a very spectacular manner.

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Hubble captures a nice example of intergalactic microlensing

9:56 am

Micro-lensing at is most distinct
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released this week. I have specifically cropped it to focus on this ringlike feature, as it one of the nicest examples of micro-lensing I have seen. From the caption:

This curious configuration is the result of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant object is warped and magnified by the gravity of a massive foreground object, like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Einstein predicted the curving of spacetime by matter in his general theory of relativity, and galaxies seemingly stretched into rings like the one in this image are called Einstein rings.

The lensed galaxy, whose image we see as the ring, lies incredibly far away from Earth: we are seeing it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The galaxy acting as the gravitational lens itself is likely much closer. A nearly perfect alignment of the two galaxies is necessary to give us this rare kind of glimpse into galactic life in the early days of the Universe.

I am generally a very big skeptic of most astronomical studies that rely on micro-lensing. I don’t deny it happens and has been detected, as in this case. The uncertainties — such as the unknown distance to intervening galaxy that is causing the lensing — always require too many assumptions that make any reliable conclusions difficult.

Nonetheless, this object illustrates the phenomenon perfectly. The light from the distant galaxy is bent around the intervening nearer galaxy so that we that distant galaxy as a ring.

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Cruz reveals another area where red tape is blocking SpaceX at Boca Chica: roads

9:13 am

In a interview with a local news outlet in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that the state’s bureaucracy is stymieing SpaceX at Boca Chica in another unexpected way, getting the road to the facility repaired and upgraded.

“SpaceX has offered to invest their own money to improve the highway, and the problem is they’re running into permitting obstacles, environmental permitting obstacles that is slowing it down,” Senator Cruz said.

Cruz is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. There are steps he says he can take to fix these roads, even if it is not something that will directly address the issue. “As chairman of the Commerce Committee, I am very focused on permitting, on reducing the barriers of permitting, on speeding up the ability to do things like improve and expand State Highway Four,” Cruz said.

In a statement, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ray Pedraza said, “TxDOT is currently providing upgrades and pavement improvements for the existing SH 4 between Brownsville and Starbase Texas (SpaceX). TxDOT is also working with SpaceX on further planning and environmental efforts to achieve additional widening on SH 4 in the future.”

I think Cruz did this interview to apply some public pressure on the Texas Transportation Department. Hopefully it will get the tortoise moving.

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Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket added to NASA’S contract bidding list

9:03 am

Rocket Lab yesterday announced that NASA has added its new Neutron rocket to its list of rockets that can bid of future NASA contracts.

The press release also says that the first launch of Neutron is still targeting 2025. If the company meets that data, the development of this rocket will have one of the fastest, if not the very fastest in history. The company first announced the project in December 2021. If it launches as planned it will have only taken three and a half years from announcement to launch. Quite impressive.

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ISRO moving ahead with Spadex docking

8:53 am

India’s space agency ISRO has announced that it now moving ahead with the autonomous docking of its two Spadex spacecraft presently in orbit, but it will wait until after the docking to post when it had occurred.

With the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) SpaDeX space docking experiment missing two publicly announced schedules on January 7 and January 9, the space agency has decided to complete docking before making a public announcement.

Isro had earlier announced that the docking would be a public event but after two consecutive postponements, a senior Isro official said that the docking “is on track” but the space agency will now “dock and inform” the public about the exercise.

I suspect they realized the uncertainty of the real docking schedule made making the schedule public too difficult. This remains a test, and so many things can occur along the way to slow things down.

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January 9, 2025 Quick space links

3:42 pm

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.

  • Astra touts testing of its Rocket-4 upper stage tank
    Very puzzling, as the company had said it was delaying construction of Rocket-4 for several years as rebuilds the company from its almost bankruptcy. Maybe now that it is in private hands again things are moving. Or not. We shall see. [Note: Link fixed. My error. Sorry.]
7 comments

The new conservatives who have been mugged by a wildfire

2:57 pm

Gavin Newsom, surveying his domain
Gavin Newsom, surveying the hellhole his
policies created. Looks proud, doesn’t he?

The news today is about how numerous Hollywood celebrities who have lost their homes in the wildfires that have been destroying huge swatches of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are one-by-one expressing loud public outrage at the mismanagement and failures of the Democrats running California’s state and city governments.

The list is long and detailed at the link. This comment is quite typical:

Actress Sara Foster also took to X to lament how Los Angeles residents pay exorbitant taxes but the state was still completely unprepared to take on such massive wildfires. “Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits,” she wrote.

The politically active actress, who is the daughter of music mogul David Foster, called on [LA mayor] Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom to resign, writing, “your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words tell us however that Foster is not yet ready to reject the corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent Democratic Party that she so loves. This has been the pattern now for decades. No matter how bad its policies, the partisan adherents to the Democratic Party have too often consistently resisted opening their minds to other choices.

It immediately occurred to me however that this present outrage is only a foretaste of the real outrage soon to come. » Read more

33 comments

The mysteries buried in the Martian south pole ice cap

1:45 pm

The mysterious layers in Mars' south pole ice cap
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and color-enhanced to post here, was taken on November 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture is labeled as a “terrain sample,” which means it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. In this case the camera team tries to choose interesting features, though sometimes they can’t due to timing.

In this case they were able to target a nice piece of geology, a layered 2,000 foot cliff on the outer edge of the south pole ice cap. The color strip illustrates the possibilities within those layers. I have significantly enhanced the colors to bring out the differences. The orange suggests dust, the aqua-blue water ice, though these colors could also indicate interesting mineralogies.
» Read more

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ESA releases three images taken by BepiColombo during its Mercury fly-by yesterday

10:57 am

BepiColombo image from January 8, 2025 fly-by of Mercury
Click for original image. For the annotated version
click here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released what it called the three best images taken by the ESA/JAXA joint mission BepiColombo to Mercury in its closest fly-by of the planet yesterday.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows the north polar regions of Mercury. The probe’s solar array is visible to the right.

Flying over the ‘terminator’ – the boundary between day and night – the spacecraft got a unique opportunity to peer directly down into the forever-shadowed craters at planet’s north pole.

The rims of craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer [the four craters in a line at the terminator] cast permanent shadows on their floors. This makes these unlit craters some of the coldest places in the Solar System, despite Mercury being the closest planet to the Sun!

Excitingly, there is existing evidence that these dark craters contain frozen water. Whether there is really water on Mercury is one of the key Mercury mysteries that BepiColombo will investigate once it is in orbit around the planet.

This was BepiColombo’s last slingshot maneuver. It is now set to enter Mercury orbit in late 2026, where it will split into two separate orbiters, one build by ESA and the other by Japan’s space agency JAXA.

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Correction: SpaceX DOES NOT launch 21 more Starlink satellites

10:31 am

CORRECTION: Reader BobT in the comments below noted that this launch is actually nothing more than a duplicate posting of the launch I counted yesterday. Thus, it doesn’t exist, and I have deleted it from my annual count.

As I note below in thanking BobT for noting the error, “This does illustrate something profound. Their launches are now so routine and frequent that it is possible to not realize you are rewatching one you viewed a day earlier. They all sound the same!”

The 2024 launch race thus remains unchanged:

3 SpaceX
1 China

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SpaceX is now targeting January 13, 2025 for 7th Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:21 am

In a tweet yesterday, SpaceX announced that it now intends to fly the seventh test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy no earlier than January 13, 2025, with a launch window opening at 4 pm (Central).

The launch will test numerous new systems. Superheavy will test the reuse of one of the engines used on the fifth flight, brought back successfully when the booster was successfully caught by the tower chopsticks. It will also test improvements to the launch tower as another chopstick catch will be attempted. As for this Starship prototype, which the company calls Version 2, the upgrades and tests are extensive:

  • New avionics
  • Redesigns in the propulsion system
  • The flaps have been shrunk and shifted in position to prevent heat damage
  • The tiled heat shield system has been further upgraded
  • Deployment test of 10 dummy Starlink satellites
  • An in-orbit Raptor-2 engine relight

The last test is critical for future orbital test flights. On this test Starship will follow the same orbital flight path as the previous flights, low enough that the atmosphere will force it down without action over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX needs to prove that Starship’s Raptor-2 engines can reliably be restarted before it can go to full orbits that will require such a relight to accurately bring the spacecraft down at the right place.

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JPL shuts down due to threat from California fires

10:06 am

In a tweet posted yesterday, the head of JPL announced that all operations have been shut down because of the growing threat from the wildfires that are devastating the Los Angeles region.

JPL is closed except for emergency personnel. No fire damage so far (some wind damage) but it is very close to the lab. Hundreds of JPLers have been evacuated from their homes & many have lost homes.

If these fires should reach the center and do significant damage, a number of on-going space missions will be severely impacted, since those missions, such as the two Mars rovers, are operated from this location.

And this possibility exists, in this new dark age. The Democratic Party governments of Los Angeles and California have done everything they can in the past two decades to block fire prevention, from not managing the brush in the mountains to cutting funding to their fire departments to refusing to supply sufficient water to their fire hydrant system. This last action, which also included destroying dams, eliminating reservoirs, and refusing to replace them, is the most despicable. It appears firefighters throughout Los Angeles have been helpless because the hydrants have been dry. Thus, the fires burn out of control.

If the nearby fire reaches JPL we shall face the possibility that several major on-going space missions could suddenly end.

6 comments

DeSantis: Put NASA headquarters in Florida

9:53 am

At an event yesterday Florida governor Ron DeSantis proposed moving NASA headquarters to Florida, saving the half a billion dollars NASA now wants to spend to build a brand new gold-plated new headquarters building in Washington.

[DeSantis:] “They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like nobody goes to it. So why not just shutter it and move everybody down here? I think they’re planning on spending like a half a billion to build a new building up in D.C. that no one will ever go to either. So hopefully with the new administration coming in, they’ll see a great opportunity to just headquarter NASA here on the Space Coast of Florida. I think that’d be very, very fitting.”

The NASA transition team for the Trump administration is already sent out a trial balloon about cutting the size of NASA headquarters considerably. That team has also proposed eliminating NASA centers in California and Maryland and consolidating their work into the Marshall Center in Alabama.

Note the trend: All these moves shifts money from decidedly Democratic states to Republican ones. The announced goal would be to reduce NASA’s overhead, but at the same time the moves would take money and power away from Democrat strongholds.

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The biggest members of ESA cut their annual contributions to the partnership

9:43 am

In a continuation of the recent trend to go their own way in space, most of the largest partners in the European Space Agency (ESA) have decided to cut back their annual contributions this year to the agency.

The European Space Agency’s 2025 budget has dropped below its 2024 level after Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom collectively cut their contributions by €430 million.

During his annual press briefing on 9 January, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the ESA budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion, down from €7.79 billion in 2024. The reduction in the agency’s budget could have been far worse, as all of the ‘big four’ countries, apart from France, significantly reduced their contributions.

Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain all reduced their contributions. Except for Belgium, all have instead been recently diverting such funds directly either to space startups in their own country (see here and here), or forgoing contributing to large ESA projects and instead buying the services from other private sources (see here).

In general, it appears the bigger nations in Europe have realized that ESA has not been providing them a good deal. It takes their money, but doesn’t deliver competitive goods. Consider the Ariane-6 rocket. Conceived by ESA and ArianeGroup in 2015, it was five years late in launching. Worse, it was conceived as an entirely expendable rocket — even though SpaceX had just proven in ’15 that re-usability was possible — so that it is now too expensive to compete in today’s rocket market.

ESA also requires its projects to distribute contracts among all the partners, which increases costs and slows development.

In the past five years these countries have been increasingly bypassing ESA, especially when it comes to rocketry. Instead of having all European rockets built and managed by ESA’s commercial arm, Arianespace, these nations are switching to the capitalism model, whereby they each purchase launches from independent competing rocket companies.

The ESA budget cuts reflect this continuing trend. No point in giving cash to this moribund bureaucracy when the money can be better spent elsewhere.

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January 7, 2025 Space Show panel discussion from the show’s advisory council

9:14 pm

A few years ago David Livingston invited me to join a small advisory council he runs for The Space Show of people who are all independent experts on the space industry. Yesterday he decided to try a new program idea, whereby he would gather these advisors together for a Zoom session to discuss the state of the space industry at this moment.

You can listen to this discussion here. I highly recommend my listeners do so. The participants were the following, many of whom will be familiar names for those that keep abreast of the space industry:
» Read more

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Rush – Limelight

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live 2012, but this was not before an audience but was simply their sound check performance beforehand to make sure the microphones were all at the right level to mix properly.

Hat tip to Ferris Akel, who adds “by a band that always took soundchecks very seriously.”

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January 8, 2025 Quick space links

3:53 pm

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.

  • China touts its own Mars sample return mission, Tianwen-3, targeting 2028
    The mission has been kept very simple by scaling up what China’s engineers learned in doing its two lunar sample return missions. Or to put it another way, they will almost certainly fly at least two of these missions before NASA even comes close to deciding how it get Perseverance’s samples back.
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Graceful beauty found within the mid-latitude glaciers of Mars

1:31 pm

Overview map

Graceful beauty found within the glacial mid-latitudes of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 27, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The red dot on the overview map above marks the location, about 35 miles southwest of the rim of 80-mile-wide Moreau Crater. This location is also deep within the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I label glacier country, as almost every high resolution picture from MRO shows glacial features.

This picture is no different, in that it shows the typical lineated parallel grooves seen on the surface of glaciers both on Earth and Mars, and especially found on glaciers flowing within a narrow canyon, as this glacier is. The parallel grooves are caused by the waxing and waning of the glacier. Each layer represents a past period when ice was being deposited on the surface, with the grooves indicates times when that ice was sublimating away. The graceful curves of the grooves is due to the drift of the glacier itself downhill.

This canyon is about seven miles wide at this point, formed from the confluence of two southerly tributaries to the south. The downward grade is to the north, but the low point is not where you would expect, out into the northern lowland plains. Instead, I have marked the low point in the inset with a white dot, inside the canyon itself. It appears this glacier drains into this low spot, but then this debris-covered ice appears to vanish.

It can’t really vanish, but there is a geological mystery here that involves the alien nature of Mars. For some reason the glacier dies at this point, its material sublimating away. Is there a drainage here that sends the ice to the north by underground passages? Your guess is as good as mine.

The lineated nature of this glacial flow however is no mystery in one respect. It is quite beautiful, as seen from space.

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Oman plans three more suborbital launches in ’25 from its proposed spaceport site

9:59 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport
The Middle East, showing the location of
Oman’s proposed spaceport at Duqm.

Oman is now planning three more suborbital launches from its proposed spaceport site at Duqm on the coast of the Indian Ocean, intended to further sell the location as a viable spaceport for use by others.

The first launch, of which little was revealed, took place in early December. What Oman’s state-run has revealed about the rocket is this:

Measuring 6.72m in length and weighing 123kg when fuelled, the rocket was developed with strict adherence to environmental and safety standards. … The Duqm-1 project involved 15 Omani engineers and technicians, who gained valuable experience in the space industry. While the rocket components were manufactured abroad, assembly took place locally, reflecting Oman’s efforts to transfer and localise advanced technologies.

I suspect the planned launches in 2025 will involve a similar-sized rocket. Though I know through various sources that Oman has been trying to encourage American rocket startups to consider this location, no deals have been made because of the State Department’s strict ITAR rules that are designed to prevent hostile nations from stealing American technology. The location however is a good one, and other Middle Eastern Arab nations might begin to consider it for their own rocket programs.

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Blue Origin fined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for using its launch deluge system

9:43 am

Because it conducted a static fire test using its launchpad deluge system in September 2024, before the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) had issued it a permit, the department has now fined Blue Origin $3,250.

The actual permit was subsequently approved in November 2024.

The story is very reminiscent of the red tape treatment SpaceX has been getting at Boca Chica. I am certain Blue Origin’s deluge system uses potable water (confirmed in the comments below), which will do no harm to the environment — proven by decades of government launches at both Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Yet, FDEP accuses the company of dumping “untreated industrial wastewater [in]to the environment.”

This story kind of proves that leftist politicians and activists can never stay bribed. Bezos for years has cozied up to the left with major donations to leftist organizations, including many many environmental groups. But when he finally gets ready to launch they are still ready and willing to make his life difficult.

It seems to me that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida should have a conversation with the officials at FDEP that issued this fine, explaining to them that the real problem was likely that permitting was taking longer than it should, especially when everyone knows such deluge systems cause no harm. The permit should have been approved instantly.

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India appoints a new leader for its space agency ISRO

9:30 am

After two-plus very successful years under the leadership of S. Somnath, the Indian government has now appointed a new chairman for its space agency ISRO, V. Narayanan.

Narayanan’s journey with ISRO began in 1984, and he has functioned in various capacities before becoming Director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), which Narayanan heads, is engaged in the development of liquid, semi-cryogenic and cryogenic propulsion stages for launch vehicles, chemical and electric propulsion systems for satellites, control systems for launch vehicles, and transducers development for space systems health monitoring.

The term for this job in India is never more than three years, which explains this change at what seems a somewhat inappropriate moment, with ISRO gearing up to fly its first manned mission while preparing more missions to the Moon. It means that Narayanan will be in charge during that manned mission in 2026, should it fly on time.

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Japan identifies a Chinese hacker group as the source of 210 attacks since 2019

9:23 am

The Japanese government has now identified a Chinese hacker group — dubbed “MirrorFace” and likely working with government support and direction — as the source of 210 attacks from 2019 to 2024.

Investigations by the agency’s National Cyber Department and police nationwide found that the malware used by MirrorFace was similar to that employed by the “APT10 Group,” a hacker organization said to be associated with China’s Ministry of State Security.

The targets also aligned with China’s areas of interest and the attacks coincided with Chinese working hours, ceasing during the country’s long holidays, police noted.

Though Japan’s space agency JAXA was a major target, it appears the hackers had many successes with other government agencies, including those related to national security.

This story only adds weight to the previous reports [pdf] of Chinese hacks of JPL, whereby China got the plans of our Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers and used that information to design Zhurong, its first rover to go to Mars.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites; delays 7th Starship/Superheavy launch several days

9:14 am

Early today SpaceX successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.

The first stage completed its 3rd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Elon Musk also indicated around the same time that the initially scheduled 7th Starship/Superheavy launch on January 10th has been delayed a few days into next week.

The 2024 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 China

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January 7, 2025 Quick space links

4:10 pm

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.

5 comments

BepiColombo to fly past Mercury again on January 8, 2025

12:57 pm

BepiColombo will do its sixth close fly-by of Mercury on January 8, 2025, zipping by its surface by only 183 miles.

It will use this opportunity to photograph Mercury, make unique measurements of the planet’s environment, and fine-tune science instrument operations before the main mission begins. This sixth and final flyby will reduce the spacecraft’s speed and change its direction, readying it for entering orbit around the tiny planet in late 2026.

BepiColombo is more than six years into its eight-year journey to planet Mercury. In total, it is using nine planetary flybys to help steer itself into orbit around the small rocky planet: one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury. Making the most of this sixth close approach to the small rocky planet, BepiColombo’s cameras and various scientific instruments will investigate Mercury’s surface and surroundings.

Once the spacecraft arrives at Mercury two years hence it will split into two orbiters in complementary orbits, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter built by Europe and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter built by Japan.

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NASA is considering two options for getting Perseverance’s Mars samples to Earth

12:48 pm

The previous plan for Mars Sample Return
The previous plan for Mars Sample Return

In a press briefing today, NASA officials announced it is considering two options for getting Perseverance’s Mars samples to Earth sooner and what it hopes will for less money.

In the first option, NASA would use already available and operational rockets to launch a larger rover to Mars, landing using a sky crane similar but larger than the one used successfully by both Curiosity and Perseverance. This rover would also have nuclear power system used by those rovers, as well as an arm similar to theirs, simplifying the design process. Under this option it appears NASA is abandoning the use of a helicopter for retrieval, as had previous been considered.

In the second option, NASA would rely on what administrator Bill Nelson called “the heavy-lifte capability of the commercial sector.” He specifically mentions SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn, but added that they are looking at the capabilities of the entire private sector right now.

In both operations, the retrieval rover would clean on Mars the outside of the cores to prevent them from contaminating Earth with Martian particles. Previously that cleaning process was to take place in space on the way back. They claim this change also simplifies things.

The final decision on which option to choose is now scheduled for 2026. NASA likely wishes to see more progress with getting Starship/Superheavy as well as New Glenn operational before deciding.

Note that at this press conference very little was said about the Mars ascent rocket, presently supposedly being built by Lockheed Martin. This is essentially building a full scale rocket only slightly less powerful that Earth-based rockets by a company that has never done it before. It seems the second option is likely going to include other options and other rocket companies for this task. The lack of mention suggests NASA was uncomfortable with mentioning this possibility.

In general, this project still feels incomplete and poorly thought out. Major components — such as the ascent vehicle — have not been worked out properly. The officials claimed these changes would make it possible to bring the samples back in the ’35-’39 time frame but I don’t believe it. What it does do is guarantee a large cash influx to NASA, something administrator Bill Nelson lobbied for during the conference, for the next decade-plus. And I think that was the real goal.

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