Author: Robert Zimmerman

A river of lava on Mars as long as the Columbia

9:45 am

Lava flow in Kasei Valles
Click for full image.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Mars is strange, Mars is wonderful, but above all, Mars is alien. Today’s cool image illustrates this saying quite nicely.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was simply labeled “Sacra Sulci Lava”. Sacra Sulci is a section of the Kasei Valles canyon that runs from the north rim of Valles Marineris north about 600 miles where it turns east for about 400 miles to drain out into the northern lowlands plains of Mars. Sacra Sulci is the region where that valley narrows and then turns east.

Apparently the flat smoother areas on the east and south on this image that rise about 60 feet above the surrounding terrain and that also seem to flow around mesas and into canyons are believed to be the edge of a massive lava flow that occurred about 150 to 200 million years ago and drained through Kasei Valles, just like water.

What makes this puzzling, however, is that everything I had read previously about Kasei Valles said that it was thought to have been formed from catastrophic floods of water on early Mars, when the planet was warmer and wetter. In fact, I had posted previously about this theory, and included the map below, taken from figure 8 of this paper [pdf], showing part of the process that some scientists believe occurred.
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Long March 5B crash estimate as of today

9:02 am

May 3rd prediction of Long March 5B crash
Click for full image.

According to estimates this morning by the Aerospace Corporation, the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket will come crashing down to Earth sometime on May 10th, plus or minus 41 hours.

Their map to the right illustrates all the orbits that will take place during that time period, which in turn shows all the possible places that core stage might land. For example, though the center point in that time period puts the stage down in the Pacific west of South America, should it go down just a little more than two orbits later it will then be crossing over the entire continental United States, with even a very slim chance it could land on my own house in Arizona! If it should come down a little early instead it could land on Europe, the Middle East, India, or Australia.

This estimate is very very uncertain, and will be refined in the days ahead, though because of the chaotic nature of decaying orbits it will be impossible to refine it to less than half an orbit, even on the day of its return.

Nor can anyone do anything about it. Large sections of this big piece of hardware is going to hit the ground in an uncontrolled manner. And China, a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty which forbids exactly this sort of uncontrolled reentry, launched it anyway.

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Virgin Galactic delays quarterly earnings report

8:44 am

Waiting for Godot: Even as Blue Origin is finally about to announce the start of commercial ticket sales for its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft, Virgin Galactic has delayed release of its first quarter earnings report so that it will be released after, not before, that Blue Origin announcement.

Virgin Galactic claims the six day delay is in order to adjust numbers due to a new SEC requirement announced in mid-April. However, placing it after Blue Origin’s announcement instead of just the day before minimizes what would have been a very ugly-looking public relations disaster.

Whatever the actual reason for the delay, the prospect of delivering yet another dismal earnings report only hours before Blue Origin’s announcement could not have been an attractive one for Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier and new CFO Doug Ahrens. The quarterly earnings call is a major opportunity to influence Wall Street analysts who make recommendations on whether to buy or sell the company’s stock.

Virgin Galactic is expected to report a significant loss with minimal or no revenues as it struggles to complete the flight test program for its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, VSS Unity. Virgin Galactic’s net lost was $273 million for 2020, including a $74 million net loss for the fourth quarter.

Virgin Galactic’s stock has been taking a pounding lately. After opening at $10.75 on the first day of trading on Oct. 28, 2019, the stock soared to a high of $62.80. It is now trading at $22.15, having lost all of its gains for the year.

That both Richard Branson, the company’s founder, and Chamath Palihapitiya, the big investor when the company went public, have both sold off large portions of their stock in the past few months has also contributed to the bad press. Both took advantage of the high stock prices and apparently got out when the getting was good.

I fully expect this company to fail in the next year or two. If it doesn’t it surely will never achieve any of the many grandiose promises put forth by Branson for almost two decades.

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Sunspot update: Sunspot activity continues to exceed predictions

1:29 am

The uncertainty of science: On May 1st NOAA updated its monthly graph to show the Sun’s sunspot activity through the end of April 2021. As I do every month, I have annotated it to show the previous solar cycle predictions and posted it below.

In my sunspot update last month I reviewed in detail the range of predictions by solar scientist for the upcoming solar maximum, noting that based on the higher than expected sunspot activity that has been occurring since the ramp up to solar maximum began in 2020, it appeared that all of their predictions might be wrong. The continuing high activity that occurred in April continued that trend.

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Resilience successfully splashes down in Gulf of Mexico

12:01 am

Resilience May 1, 2021 returning to Earth

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s Resilience capsule successfully splashed down tonight in Gulf of Mexico, returning four astronauts from a six month mission on ISS.

The infrared image to the right was taken from an airplane, just after the main parachutes deployed.

They are presently in the process of recovering the capsule and crew, which will take another hour or so. You can watch SpaceX’s live stream here.

Resilience’s next flight will be the first entirely commercial manned orbital flight, presently scheduled for September 15, 2021. Dubbed Inspiration4, it will carry four private passengers for a flight of two to four days. They will not dock with ISS, but instead orbit the Earth freely. SpaceX will also replace the docking port on Resilience with a domed cupola to provide the passengers more room and a great view during their flight.

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SpaceX to attempt first night splashdown since Apollo 8 in 1968

9:30 am

Capitalism in space: Because of weather delays, SpaceX will now attempt the splashdown of Resilience carrying four astronauts from ISS in the predawn hours tomorrow, the first nighttime splashdown in more than a half century, since Apollo 8 in 1968.

Resilience will undock from ISS tonight at 8:35 pm (Eastern), and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico at 2:57 am (Eastern).

This will also be only the third nighttime landing ever. Besides Apollo 8, which was planned, in 1976 Soyuz 23 failed to dock with the Soviet Union’s Salyut 5 station and came home after only two days in space. That unplanned landing also turned out to be the first and only manned splashdown ever in Russian history, as the capsule landed on frozen Lake Tengiz in Kazakhstan, breaking through the ice, during a blizzard. The two astronauts were safely recovered, though their return to Earth was far from pleasant.

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China’s Long March 4C rocket successfully launches Earth observation satellite

9:15 am

China yesterday successfully launched an Earth observation satellite using its Long March 4C rocket from its interior Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in inner Mongolia. Its first stage, using toxic fuels, will fall on land somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

12 SpaceX
11 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 11 in the national rankings.

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China’s 21-ton Long March 5B core stage to make uncontrolled re-entry

9:33 pm

For the second time in two launches, the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket is about to make uncontrolled re-entry, with a mass large enough that some part of it is certain to hit the ground.

Where and when the new Long March 5B stage will land is impossible to predict. The decay of its orbit will increase as atmospheric drag brings it down into more denser. The speed of this process depends on the size and density of the object and variables include atmospheric variations and fluctuations, which are themselves influenced by solar activity and other factors.

The high speed of the rocket body means it orbits the Earth roughly every 90 minutes and so a change of just a few minutes in reentry time results in reentry point thousands of kilometers away.

The Long March 5B core stage’s orbital inclination of 41.5 degrees means the rocket body passes a little farther north than New York, Madrid and Beijing and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand, and could make its reentry at any point within this area.

The previous core stage hit the Atlantic Ocean six days after launch in May 2020. Had it come down fifteen to thirty minutes earlier it would have come down on U.S. soil, possibly even on top of the New York metropolitan area.

China’s design for this rocket means that every single launch will result in similar potential disasters. They cannot restart the core stage’s engines after cut-off, so that once it has delivered its payload it is nothing more than a very big and uncontrolled brick that has to hit the ground somewhere.

This is a direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty, which China is a signatory. The treaty makes signatories liable for any damage from an uncontrolled re-entry, and requires them to take action to prevent such events from occurring.

China it appears doesn’t care much about the treaties it signs. The first time could be rung up to a mistake. The second time is intentional and tells us that this country will not honor any of its obligations anywhere else, if it decides it can get away with it.

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NASA suspends Starship lunar lander contract award due to protests

5:16 pm

Because of the protests filed by both Blue Origin and Dynetics, NASA has temporarily suspended the contract with SpaceX for using its Starship spaceship for manned lunar landings.

NASA now has told SpaceX to stop work until GAO determines the outcome. A NASA spokesperson provided this statement to SpacePolicyOnline.com this afternoon. “Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement.” The issuance of the stop work order was first reported by Space News.

GAO has 100 days — until August 4, 2021 — to make a decision.

The odds are very likely that the GAO will reject both protests, but not certain. Meanwhile expect SpaceX to continue development of Starship regardless, as they already have about $6 billion in private investment capital in the bank for this project.

I also will predict that should GAO accept the protests and force NASA to reopen the bids, neither Blue Origin nor Dynetics will be able to make an offer that matches SpaceX anyway. And if they do win a contract, I predict that SpaceX will still launch and land on the Moon before them, based on their track records versus SpaceX’s.

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Ingenuity’s fourth flight today a success

12:37 pm

Ingenuity's 4th flight
For original images, go here, here, here, and here.

As planned, Ingenuity took off early today on Mars at 12:33:20 pm (local Mars time). Data from the full flight has now arrived on Earth, with images that show the helicopter rising, moving about, and then landing. The montage above captures the part of the flight visible from one of Perservance’s cameras.

Apparently Ingenuity was in the air for about two minutes, and landed a bit to the right of its take-off point. We will have to wait for an update from the engineering team to find out exactly what happened.

UPDATE: Mimi Aung, the Ingenuity project manager, posted a report later today:

The helicopter took off at 10:49 a.m. EDT (7:49 a.m. PDT, or 12:33 local Mars time), climbing to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) before flying south approximately 436 feet (133 meters) and then back, for an 872-foot (266-meter) round trip. In total, we were in the air for 117 seconds.

The helicopter also took a lot of images, which they are presently in the process of downloading and reviewing.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Any conservative trying to get published by Simon & Schuster

11:44 am

Cancelled Bill of Rights
No longer valid for too many employees
at Simon & Schuster.

Blacklists are back and book publishers want ’em: A petition of about 14% of the workforce at the book publisher Simon & Schuster is demanding that all former Trump administration officials be blacklisted from publication.

The petition demanding the New York publishing conglomerate to stop treating “the Trump administration as a ‘normal’ chapter in American history” collected 216 internal signatures, representing approximately 14% of the company’s workforce, and support from several thousand nonemployees, according to the Wall Street Journal. The petition singled out a planned two-part autobiography to be authored by former Vice President Mike Pence, which the publisher’s employees alleged amounted to support for “racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and violence” in the online petition.

While the publisher has rejected the call to cancel Pence’s autobiography, it still has a track record of blacklisting conservatives. » Read more

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Fourth flight of Ingenuity set for today; shifting to operational phase

9:05 am

Ingenuity close-up taken by Perseverance April 28th
Ingenuity close-up taken by Perseverance April 28th

Even as the Ingenuity engineering team will attempt a fourth flight of Ingenuity, JPL announced today that they and NASA have decided to now shift to operational flights, attempting to duplicate the kind of scouting missions that such helicopters will do on future rovers.

The second link takes you to the live stream of the press conference. The press release is here.

Essentially, they will send Ingenuity on a series of scouting missions after this fourth flight, extending its 30 day test program another 30 days. Its engineers will be working with the Perseverance science team to go where those scientists want to send it. After the fourth and fifth test flights they will fly Ingenuity only periodically, separated by weeks, and send it to scout places Perseverance can’t reach, and have it land at new sites that Perseverance scouted out as it travels.

They have decided to do this because they want to spend more time in this area on the floor of Jezero Crater, for several reasons. First, they are still testing the rover to get it to full working operations. Second, they want to obtain some samples for future pickup at this location. Third, they want to spend an extensive amount of time exploring the floor up to a mile south of their present location.

Finally, the relatively flat terrain is perfect for testing and actually using the helicopter as a scout.

Though the extension is for 30 days, and though the helicopter was not built for long term survival, there is no reason it cannot continue indefinitely until something finally breaks.

Right now they are awaiting the data from the fourth flight, which will arrive at 1:39 pm (Eastern) and will be used to determine what the fifth flight will do, probably a week from now.

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Blue Origin ticket sales on New Shepard begin next week

8:36 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin announced yesterday that it will begin selling ticket for tourist flights on its suborbital New Shepard spacecraft on May 5th, which is also the 60th anniversary of the suborbital flight of Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in space.

At that time the company will likely reveal its ticket price, and when the first commercial flights will actually take place. As of now New Shepard has not yet flown any humans on any spacecraft, including the one now undergoing tests. That capsule has flown twice, and is likely the capsule that will be used for the first manned flights.

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Nelson confirmed as NASA administrator

8:26 am

The Senate unanimously confirmed former senator Bill Nelson as NASA administrator yesterday.

Not much to say that hasn’t been said previously. Nelson, a Democrat, is 78 years old, and has shown signs of his age. His testimony during confirmation hearings suggested that he, like his boss Biden, is essentially going to rubberstamp the policies told to him by his bureaucracy, which in the case of NASA means a continuation of Artemis under a pro-capitalism framework.

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FAA approves next three Starship test flights with prototype #15

6:21 pm

Capitalism in space: In a statement today the FAA announced that it has approved next three test flights of SpaceX’s Starship prototype #15.

From the statement:

The FAA has authorized the next three launches or the SpaceX Starship prototype. The agency approved multiple launches because SpaceX is making few changes on the launch vehicle and relied on the FAA’s approved methodology to calculate the risk to the public. The FAA authorized the launches on Wednesday, April 28.

This likely means that SpaceX will try a flight tomorrow.

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Stratolaunch’s Roc, biggest plane ever, makes 2nd flight

6:07 pm

Stratolaunch today successfully completed the second test flight of its gigantic airplane Roc, biggest plane ever flown, and the first flight in two years.

Today’s takeoff from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port at 7:28 a.m. PT marked the first time the plane, nicknamed Roc after the giant bird of Arabian and Persian mythology, got off the ground since Stratolaunch’s acquisition by Cerberus Capital Management in October 2019.

Roc rose as high as 14,000 feet and traveled at a top speed of 199 mph during a flight that lasted three hours and 14 minutes — which is close to an hour longer than the first flight on April 13, 2019. During that earlier flight, the airplane reached a maximum speed of 189 mph and maximum altitude of 17,000 feet.

Since the death of Paul Allen, the original owner, Cererus has re-purposed Roc from a platform for orbital rockets to a testbed platform for launching the three hypersonic test planes that the company is building. These planes will allow for regular and frequent flight tests of this technology, something that has been lacking since the days of the X-15 in the 1950s.

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Ingenuity fails to take off on 4th flight

2:39 pm

When early today Ingenuity attempted to complete its fourth and most ambitious test flight on Mars the helicopter did not lift off, for reasons that engineers are still investigating.

[JPL] engineers are assessing the data, since it’s not yet clear what caused the failure. One potential cause is a software issue that first showed up during a high-speed spin test ahead of the chopper’s first flight. That test failed because Ingenuity’s flight computer was unable to transition from “pre-flight” to “flight” mode. Within a few days, though, [JPL] engineers resolved the issue with a quick software rewrite.

But those engineers determined that their fix would only successfully transition the helicopter into flight mode 85% of the time. So Thursday’s attempt may have fallen into the 15% of instances in which it doesn’t work.

This flight was supposed to fly south for about 430 feet, take pictures, and then return to its take-off point. If they can trouble-shoot the issue they hope to do another flight quickly. They still have a week left in their 30 day test period.

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The crack that splits the giant volcanoes on Mars

2:34 pm

Source of Arsia Mons rille
Click for full image.

Cool image time! In the April download of new images from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was the photo to the right, taken on February 23, 2021 and cropped and reduced to post here, of what was labeled as “Source Region of Possible Rille on South Flank of Arsia Mons.”

Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the string of three giant volcanoes that sit between Mars’ biggest volcano to the west, Olympus Mons, and Mars’ biggest canyon to the east, Valles Marineris. This depression is on the mountain’s lower southern flank, and likely shows an ancient resurgence point where lava once flowed out from beneath the ground to form a rill meandering to the southwest. Today there is no visible resurgence. The floor of the depression appears to be filled with sand and dust, with the surrounding slopes spotted with scattered boulders.

What makes this particular image more interesting is how, when we take a very wide view, it reveals one of the most dramatic geological features on Mars, the 3,500 mile-long crack that caused these three volcanoes, and is actually not obvious unless you know what to look for.

So we need to zoom out. Let us first begin with a mosaic of three wider MRO context camera images, showing the entire rille and the immediately surrounding terrain.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Law professor under investigation for criticizing China

12:20 pm

Cancelled Bill of Rights
Doesn’t exist at the University of San Diego.

They’re coming for you next: A law professor at the University of San Diego, Tom Smith, is now under formal investigation and could possibly be fired for a blog post on his own webpage where he strongly criticized China and its role in the start of COVID-19.

When he first published the March 10 post, the USD Law School placed him under investigation, citing complaints of bias. Now, the law school has sent his case to administration for a formal review.

The review comes as a petition circulates demanding Smith resign or be fired, alleging he has a history of saying and writing things some find offensive.

Signed by the USD Law Student Bar Association presidents for this school year and the next, they claim in the petition Smith’s alleged comments have left some in the USD law community feeling vulnerable and helpless so that students cannot balance their studies or “prepare for our futures in the legal profession.” [emphasis mine]

Beside the fact that it is utterly wrong for the university to investigate this man for simply expressing his opinion on line, the highlighted words — “feeling vulnerable and helpless” — illustrate starkly the total close-mindedness of the left’s modern blacklisting effort to any opinions outside its frame of reference.
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Virgin Orbit signs deal with Brazil to launch from that country

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit and the Brazilian Space Agency have signed an agreement to allow the company to launch satellites from one of its facilities.

Launches would occur from the Alcântara Launch Center (Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara, CLA) on Brazil’s northern coast, located just two degrees south of the equator. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne system, which uses a customized 747 aircraft as its flying launch pad and fully reusable first stage, could conduct launches from the existing airbase at the site, flying hundreds of miles before releasing the rocket directly above the equator or at other locations optimized for each individual mission. The approach enables Alcântara to become one of the only continental spaceports in the world capable of reaching any orbital inclination.

This is an excellent deal for both. Brazil gets some commercial space business, and Virgin Orbit’s 747 will no longer have to fly long distances to get to an equator launch point.

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Starship prototype #15 completes 2nd static fire test, waits FAA approval for flight

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s 15th Starship prototype completed its second static fire test in three days yesterday, and is presently poised to do its first test flight.

The scheduled road closures in Boca Chica suggest that they are aiming for either April 30th, May 1st, or May 2nd. However, it also appears they are awaiting FAA approval, which could be why they did a second static fire test. They can’t fly so rather than do nothing they reconfigured that second static fire to test the landing burn.

Musk returned to Twitter to state that this was a header tank test and that all looked good. This could mean Monday’s test was a launch static fire while Tuesday’s test was more of a landing burn static fire as the header tanks are used to supply landing propellants.

It also appears that SpaceX has had its flight application sitting at the FAA for about a week, with no action. Thus, it is the federal bureaucracy that appears to be slowing things down at this moment.

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Eutelsat invests $550 million in OneWeb

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: The long established European communications satellite company Eutelsat has committed $550 million in investment capital in OneWeb and its internet satellite constellation.

Eutelsat, one of the world’s leading satellite operators, will receive a c.24% equity stake in OneWeb and similar governance rights to the U.K. Government and Bharti Global, making it a significant equity partner and joining leading investors including the U.K. Government, Bharti Global and SoftBank. The investment is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021, subject to regulatory approvals.

This investment raises OneWeb’s total funding to $1.9 billion, and puts it in a good position to complete its 648 satellite constellation on schedule, with the first commercial operations beginning when the total in orbit tops 250 in July, after the next two Soyuz-2 launches.

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Launch of Intuitive Machine’s first lunar lander delayed

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: The first mission of Intuitive Machine’s lunar lander has now been delayed from late this year to early next year.

Intuitive Machines spokesman Josh Marshall said April 26 that the slip was caused by its launch provider. “SpaceX informed Intuitive Machines that due to unique mission requirements the earliest available flight opportunity is in the first quarter of 2022,” he told SpaceNews.

Marshall referred questions about the “unique mission requirements” that caused the delay to SpaceX. That company did not respond to questions from SpaceNews on the topic.

Though it is entirely possible that SpaceX needed to delay the launch, we should be skeptical of this reason. More likely Intuitive has had issues that caused a delay, and is using SpaceX as a cover.

There is a race to become the first privately-built commercial lunar lander. Astrobotics Peregrine lander is still scheduled to launch by the end of the year. We shall see.

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Ingenuity’s fourth flight today

9:05 am

The fourth flight of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has just occurred, with data arriving momentarily.

The fourth Ingenuity flight from Wright Brothers Field, the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place, is scheduled to take off Thursday, April 29, at 10:12 a.m. EDT (7:12 a.m. PDT, 12:30 p.m. local Mars time), with the first data expected back at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 1:21 p.m. EDT (10:21 a.m. PDT).

…Flight Four sets out to demonstrate the potential value of that aerial perspective. The flight test will begin with Ingenuity climbing to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and then heading south, flying over rocks, sand ripples, and small impact craters for 276 feet (84 meters). As it flies, the rotorcraft will use its downward-looking navigation camera to collect images of the surface every 4 feet (1.2 meters) from that point until it travels a total of 436 feet (133 meters) downrange. Then, Ingenuity will go into a hover and take images with its color camera before heading back to Wright Brothers Field.

Stay tuned for new images. NASA will also hold a press conference tomorrow to outline the results and the rest of Ingenuity’s test program.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket launches six satellites

8:52 am

Arianespace yesterday successfully completed its first Vega rocket lift-off since a launch failure last year, placing six satellites in orbit.

This was Arianespace’s first launch in 2021. Though the year is still early, the timing of this launch, late April, puts them well behind the pace they have set for most of the 21st century.

The leader board for the 2021 launch race remains unchanged:

12 SpaceX
10 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 10 in the national rankings.

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SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites; China launches Tianhe station module

10:16 pm

Twas a busy evening. SpaceX successfully put 60 more Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket, with the first stage successfully completing its seventh flight, landing safely on the drone ship in the Atlantic.

China in turn successfully used its Long March 5B rocket to place in orbit the core module, dubbed Tianhe, of its planned space station. This is the first of eleven launches in the next two years to assemble the station’s initial configuration, including cargo and manned missions along the way.

The SpaceX live stream is at the link. I have embedded China’s English language live stream of the Tianhe launch below the fold. The launch is about 52 minutes in.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

12 SpaceX
10 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 10 in the national rankings.
» Read more

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