Weird Al Yankovic – Smells Like Nirvana
An evening pause: Seems to me, this expresses perfectly the level of thoughtfulness seen in many hard rock music videos, only it does it more honestly.
Hat tip Gene Shipp.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
March 9, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Japanese planetary probe company Ispace to go public
The company plans to list its shares on the Toyko stock exchange, prior to the landing of Hakuto-R1 on the Moon in April.
- Asteroid discovered with potential to hit Earth in 2046
At present the risk, even if it hit the Earth, is small. The asteroid’s size is estimated roughly to be about 150 feet across, with a less than 1 in 600 chance of a collision even in 2046.
SpaceX successfully launches 40 OneWeb satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched another 40 OneWeb satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
This was SpaceX’s third launch for OneWeb, helping to replace the Russians who broke its contract with OneWeb after its invasion of the Ukraine. The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing safely on a landing pad at Cape Canaveral. As amazing as this record is, it is not a record for the most reflights, which presently stands at fifteen. The fairings completed their sixth flight.
As of posting not all of OneWeb’s satellites have been deployed.
The 2023 launch race:
16 SpaceX
7 China
3 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India
American private enterprise now leads China 17 to 7 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 17 to 12. SpaceX alone leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 16 to 13.
Ice volcano in the Martian high northern latitudes?
Click for original image.
That the Martian surface becomes increasingly icy as one approaches its poles is becoming increasingly evident from orbital images. Today’s cool image provides us another data point.
The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 4, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is once again another terrain sample image, taken not as part of any particular research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its temperature. With such pictures, it is hard to predict what will be seen, though the scientists try to find interesting things. In this case the camera team succeeded quite nicely, capturing what appears to me to be a small volcano with two calderas.
This volcano however has almost certainly not spouted lava but mud and water.
» Read more
Pushback: Texas A&M to stop favoring minorities in hiring & admission policies
Texas A&M: abandoning its discriminatory
policies?
Bring a gun to a knife fight: Less than a month after Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered all state agencies to cease considering race and gender in hiring, Texas A&M (TAMU) officials announced they were removing all mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies from the university’s hiring and admissions practices.
After receiving the Feb. 6 memo, Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp immediately ordered all A&M System institutions to review their employment and admission practices and confirm their compliance, according to the university. … Sharp directed all universities and agencies within the TAMU system to remove the DEI statements from their employment or admissions practices. The directive also standardizes faculty and staff applications, limiting them to a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching philosophies, and professional references. It further instructs universities and agencies to make all websites or printed materials dealing with employment and admission practices compliant with the directive, says TAMU.
Will this change anything? It appears that for now, no, not much. » Read more
Another orbital tug & servicing company raises investment capital
Starfish Space, a new entrant into the orbital tug & servicing industry, has successfully raised $14 million in new investment capital, in addition to the $7 million it had raised in a previous fund-raising round.
The company hopes to launch a test satellite later this year, dubbed Otter Pup, which will undock from the orbital tub of another company, Launcher Space, do maneuvers, and then redock.
Starfish’s plan calls for Otter Pup to be sent into orbit this summer as a rideshare payload on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 mission. The spacecraft will be deployed from Launcher Space’s Orbiter space tug, and then will execute a series of maneuvers with a xenon-fueled electric propulsion system to move away from the tug.
If all goes well, the Otter Pup will return to the vicinity of the Orbiter, and then use an electrostatic-based capture mechanism to latch onto a docking target on the space tug. It could take months to test out the Otter Pup’s systems and tweak them as necessary for its test hookups.
Though the company says it will offer tug services once operational, it appears it is mostly aiming for the satellite robotic servicing market. It, like Astroscale, has developed its own docking capture device, which it will try to convince satellite companies to attach to their satellites. It will then use this to dock and service those satellites. Since these capture devices are proprietary, the number that each company gets onboard satellites will determine that company’s future sales.
This orbital servicing industry appears to be growing very quickly, now that launch costs have come down by about 90% since the arrival of SpaceX. For example, the orbital tug company Momentus is getting ready to launch its third mission.
Space Force assigns launchpads to four smallsat rocket startups
The Space Force has assigned launchpad space at Cape Canaveral to four different new smallsat rocket startup companies, ABL Space Systems, Stoke Space, Phantom Space, and Vaya Space, none of which have yet launched.
There are currently four active launch complexes on the Eastern Range; Launch Complex 37 for ULA Delta rockets; Launch Complex 40 for SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets; Launch Complex 41 for ULA Atlas rockets; and Launch Complex 39A, which is owned by NASA.
ABL Space Systems, which has the RS1 rocket, has been allocated property at Space Launch Complex 15. ABL’s first orbital attempt in January failed. Stoke Space was allocated property at SLC 14. The launcher is based in Washington state and working to develop a fully reusable rocket. And Phantom Space and Vaya Space were allocated space at SLC 13. Phantom Space is developing the Daytona Launch System and executed a successful hot fire test in November.
This article provides a nice overview of the four companies, of which Vaya is the newest entrant into the smallsat rocket industry.
Space Force officials have made it clear they want to maximize use of their facility at the Cape, while helping to energize this private commercial market.
ISS maneuvers to avoid satellite
Though a collision was unlikely, Russian engineers fired the engines of a docked Progress freighter on March 6, 2023 to adjust ISS’s orbits in order to guaranteethat an Earth-observation satellite would fly past harmlessly.
At approximately 7:42 a.m. (12:42 GMT), thrusters on the Progress 83 resupply vessel currently docked with the International Space Station (ISS) fired for a little more than six minutes, raising the station’s orbit to prevent the potential collision, NASA said in a blog post (opens in new tab).
The satellite in question appears to have been an Argentinian Earth-observation satellite launched in 2020, according to Sandra Jones, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In a tweet, Dr. Jonathan McDowell, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, narrowed the possible candidates down to Nusat-17, noting the constellation’s orbital decay.
The article at the link includes a nice graph showing the number of times per year engineers have had to do this since 1999. The number of such maneuvers ranges from 0 to 5 per year, with no clear trend up or down. That lack of a trend suggests the constant howls claiming that space junk is a growing problem might be a bit overstated. This is not to say it isn’t a problem, merely that the problem might not be as severe as some claim.
March 8, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Donna Summer – I feel love
An evening pause: Performed live 1977.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
March 8, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Blue Origin faces two discrimination lawsuits
Both suits accuse the company of weeding out older employees, exclusively based on age. I wonder if many of those older workers simply had the knowledge and experience to realize working for Blue Origin was turning out to be a dead end.
- China’s government amends its space regulations to require controlled de-orbit of all rocket stages
This regulation means the core stage of future Long March 5B must be controllable, and will not crash randomly somewhere on Earth. We shall see.
- Kazakhstan takes possession of launchpad Russia hoped to use for its as yet unlaunched Soyuz-5 rocket
The Soyuz-5 was to replace the Ukraine’s Zenit rocket, but has been plagued by delays. This action by Kazakhstan, as yet unconfirmed, would likely kill the project, as the rocket now has no launchpad.
Relativity scrubs launch attempt today
After several countdown recycles Relativity’s launch team finally decided to scrub today’s first launch of its 3D-printed Terran-1 rocket.
At one point the countdown got to T-1:10, but was aborted at that point because the temperatures in the oxygen tank were not within acceptable values.
The launch window was three hours long, and it appeared they simply ran out of time. As of posting more details have not yet been released. The link above goes to the live stream.
America’s blacklist culture: Survey finds almost half of America’s major corporations are eagerly willing to blacklist others
1792 Exchange: Exposing blacklisting in
corporate America
They’re coming for you next: A survey by the non-profit 1792 Exchange has found that almost half of a list of 1,000+ major corporations, from Google to Kroger, are very willing and eager to “cancel a contract or client, or boycott, divest, or deny services based on views or beliefs.”
Of these, 160 companies were found to be “high risk” for blacklisting. For example, its report [pdf] on high-risk Coca-Cola found the following:
Coca-Cola Co. has demonstrated a willingness to terminate relationships with organizations based on ideology and require unconstitutional diversity mandates from vendors and suppliers. It lacks policies to prevent viewpoint discrimination, while it denounced local legislative efforts to reform election security and protect the unborn. Coca-Cola will not give to faith-based charities but gives to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Based on its policies and past practices, Coca-Cola Company receives a “High Risk” rating.
Note that Pepsi was also considered “high-risk”, even though it was slightly less willing to blacklist. According to the survey’s report of Pepsi [pdf]:
» Read more
Cracks in Martian lava
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was taken not as part of any specific research project, but to fill a gap in MRO’s picture-taking schedule in order to maintain the camera’s temperature. When such pictures need to be taken, the camera team tries to find something of interest in the area to be shot. Sometimes the picture is boring. Sometimes fascinating. Today’s picture I think falls into the latter category.
This is a lava flood plain, as shown in the overview map below. The meandering ridges are likely what geologists call lava dikes, places where lava was extruded out through a fissure. This suggests that the flat flood lava was an older crust, and that there was hot molten lava below it that eventually pushed its way up through cracks in that crust.
This hypothesis however is not certain, as the meandering nature of the ridges does not correspond well with what one would expect from such crustal cracks.
» Read more
Webb finds another galaxy in early universe that should not exist
The uncertainty of science: Scientists using the Webb Space Telescope have identified another galaxy about 12 billion light years away and only about 1.7 billion years after the theorized Big Bang that is too rich in chemicals as well as too active in star formation to have had time to form.
SPT0418-SE is believed to have already hosted multiple generations of stars, despite its young age. Both of the galaxies have a mature metallicity — or large amounts of elements like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen that are heavier than hydrogen and helium — which is similar to the sun. However, our sun is 4.5 billion years old and inherited most of its metals from previous generations of stars that were eight billion years old, the researchers said.
In other words, this galaxy somehow obtained complex elements in only 1.7 billion years that in our galaxy took twelve billion years, something that defies all theories of galactic and stellar evolution. Either the Big Bang did not happen when it did, or all theories about the growth and development of galaxies are wrong.
One could reasonably argue that this particular observation might be mistaken, except that it is not the only one from Webb that shows similar data. Webb’s infrared data is challenging the fundamentals of all cosmology, developed by theorists over the past half century.
ISRO successfully de-orbits defunct satellite
ISRO announced today that it successfully de-orbited the defunct Earth observation MT1 satellite on March 7, 2023, bringing it down over the Pacific Ocean.
The map to the right shows the timing of the last two de-orbit burns during the satellite’s last orbit.
MT1’s orbit was high enough so that it would have remained in space for about 100 more years, with a lot of fuel that might have caused an explosion and the release of many pieces of space junk. ISRO managers decided to allocate the funds to use that fuel to de-orbit it, as a test for making this a routine part of any satellite end-of-mission.
Post-Artemis-1 report: heat shield ablated more than expected; power system issued unexpected commands; damage to launchpad
In a March 7, 2023 briefing, NASA officials provided an overall report of what happened during the first SLS launch, noting that there were some minor engineering issues but none that appeared to them significant.
The biggest issue of note was the Orion heat shield.
Howard Hu, Orion program manager at NASA, said that material on the heat shield had ablated differently than what engineers expected from ground tests and computer models. “We had more liberation of the charred material during reentry than we had expected,” he said. Engineers are just beginning detailed analysis of the heat shield to determine why it behaved differently than expected.
The amount ablated was well within safety margins, but engineers still do not understand why the material behaved differently than expected.
Engineers are also trying to understand why the power system of the Orion service module issued unplanned commands, several times opening what officials called a “latching current limiter.” This action caused no problems to the capsule’s operations, but it is concerning it occurred.
The launch also did more damage to the mobile launcher tower than expected.
According to NASA officials, none of these issues will delay the planned November 2024 launch date for the Artemis-2 mission, the first intended to carry humans.
Watching the first launch attempt of Relativity’s Terran-1 rocket
I have embedded below the live stream of the first launch attempt by the rocket startup Relativity today of its 3D-printed Terran-1 smallsat rocket, with a launch window of three hours beginning at 1 pm (Eastern). The live stream begins about an hour before launch.
The first launch of a new rocket is exceedingly challenging, and almost never succeeds. The key however is the data obtained that can be used to make the next launch attempt a success.
A lot rides on this launch. Relativity already has obtained $1.2 billion in launch contracts plus more than $1 billion in private investment capital, despite having never launched anything. Moreover, the Terran-1 rocket is really a prototype for its larger Terran-R rocket, which is intended to compete directly for the larger payloads that companies like SpaceX and ULA launch.
» Read more
Forgotten Weapons – Winchester Thumb Trigger Rifle
An evening pause: A bit of engineering history. Note the simplicity.
Hat tip Gene Shipp.
March 7, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Rocket engine builder Ursa Major to provide engines to Vector Launch
It is unclear if this Vector is the same Vector rocket startup that failed the first time because its own engines were underpowered. If so, the new management has changed course, since previously it has said it would still build its own engines, but of a different design.
- Dream Chaser is no longer scheduled to fly on Vulcan flight #2
Rumors suggest the removal is due to delays at Sierra Space getting Dream Chaser ready for flight. Sadly this is becoming a pattern, as the mini-shuttle is well behind schedule.
- New Glenn’s first launch likely delayed until 2025
No surprise, as Blue Origin more and more seems to be an unserious company that cannot get anything done fast or on schedule.
- A new trailer for Russian movie that had scenes shot on ISS
All in Russian unfortunately. The release date is now April 20th.
- ESA’s chief reaffirms its support of the Ukraine, despite blaming its Vega-C rocket failure on Ukrainian nozzles
Josef Aschbacher essentially grovels in response to the Ukrainian government’s objection to that investigation’s conclusions.