Author: Robert Zimmerman

How Comet 67P/C-G interacts with the solar wind

9:19 am

Accumulating data from Rosetta is now giving scientists an excellent picture of how this comet interacts with the solar wind as it moves in towards its closest approach to the Sun.

They have seen that the number of water ions – molecules of water that have been stripped of one electron – accelerated away from the comet increased hugely as 67P/C-G moved between 3.6AU (about 538 million km) and 2.0AU (about 300 million km) from the Sun. Although the day-to-day acceleration is highly variable, the average 24-hour rate has increased by a factor of 10,000 during the study, which covered the period August 2014 to March 2015.

The water ions themselves originate in the coma, the atmosphere of the comet. They are placed there originally by heat from the Sun liberating the molecules from the surface ice. Once in gaseous form, the collision of extreme ultraviolet light displaces electrons from the molecules, turning them into ions. Colliding particles from the solar wind can do this as well. Once stripped of some of their electrons, the water ions can then be accelerated by the electrical properties of the solar wind.

Not all of the ions are accelerated outwards, some will happen to strike the comet’s surface. Solar wind particles will also find their way through the coma to hit home. When this happens, they cause a process called sputtering, in which they displace atoms from material on the surface – these are then ‘liberated’ into space.

There’s more at the link, including animations and simulations.

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SpaceShipTwo accident report released

12:16 pm

The National Transportation Safety Board today released the results of its investigation into last year’s SpaceShipTwo crash, concluding that the accident was caused by pilot error combined with the failure of the ship’s designers to include systems that could have prevented that error.

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday that the developer of a commercial spacecraft that broke apart over the Mojave Desert last year failed to protect against the possibility of human error, specifically the co-pilot’s premature unlocking of a braking system that triggered the in-flight breakup of the vehicle.

In its recommendation, the board took pains to make clear that Scaled Composites, an aerospace company that has partnered with Virgin Galactic to develop the spacecraft, should have had systems in place to overcome the co-pilot’s mistake. NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said he didn’t believe the company took shortcuts that compromised the spacecraft’s safety. Rather, he said, it didn’t consider that the crew would make such a mistake. “The assumption was these highly trained test pilots would not make mistakes in those areas, but truth be told, humans are humans,” Hart said after the hearing’s conclusion. “And even the best-trained human on their best day can make mistakes.”

This really isn’t news. This was the conclusion reached only weeks after the accident. It also does little to ease the problems at Virgin Galactic.

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The UK launches a 3D printed airplane drone

10:01 am

A University of Southampton team, under a project for the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, have built and launched an entirely 3D printed unmanned air vehicle (UAV) from a navy ship.

Produced under the institution’s Project Triangle, the Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft (SULSA) UAV was launched via catapult from the patrol vessel HMS Mersey, and flew over the Wyke Regis training facility near Weymouth in the south of the country to land on Chesil beach. The 5min sortie covered a range of some 500m, with the UAV carrying a small video payload to record the mission so that operators could monitor it during the flight.

SULSA measures 150cm (59in) and weighs 3kg (6.6lb), and is made via 3D printing using laser sintered nylon. The university claims that SULSA is the world’s first UAV made entirely via the technique. It consists of four separately manufactured main parts that are assembled without the need for any additional tools.

The specific achievement here is interesting, but its significance in illustrating the growing use of unmanned drones and 3D printing is more important. Very soon, a large percentage of everything we own will be built with 3D printing technology, lowering the cost while making construction easier. As for drones, they carry both positive and negative possibilities.

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Proton failure investigation finds quality control the root problem

8:32 am

In the heat of competition: The Russian investigation into the most recent Proton rocket launch failure has now found that the cause of the turbo pump failure was because of significant management failures.

The investigation into the MexSat-1 failure established that a fast spinning shaft inside a turbine of the RD-0212 engine propelling the third stage can break easily due to excessive vibrations. (The turbine is designed to pump propellant into four thrusters which steer the rocket in flight.) Yet, despite the problem lingering in the engine’s design for decades, the fact that two of these three accidents had happened in the past 15 months was itself is not an accident!

In an interview with the Russian business web site BFM.ru, the head of Roskosmos Igor Komarov disclosed that due to recent easing of requirements for the quality of metal that had gone into the production of the shaft, the turbine became more vulnerable to vibrations. Additional fascinating details on the same issue had surfaced on the online forum of the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine.

As it turned out, dangerously low requirements for the turbine shaft were set in the design documentation during the development of the rocket. However the issue was identified early during testing and the production team self-imposed extra margins for the affected components to remedy the problem. However in 2013, the new management began questioning why so much manufactured parts had been disqualified during production, even when they had met lowest requirements set in the design documentation. By that time, the new generation of workers and mid-level production managers no longer saw a reason to fight for more stringent requirements, which were actually making their own work more difficult. As a result, the hardware which was barely making through the quality control was certified for the installation on the engine, thus giving the old design flaw more chances to surface. [emphasis mine]

The description above reminds me strongly of the circumstances that took place prior to the Challenger failure in 1986: Engineers trying to fix a problem that managers don’t want to see.

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India’s space agency calls for more hiring

9:18 am

The competition heats up: India’s space agency ISRO says it is facing a manpower shortage caused by its recent successes and increased demand for more space achievements.

ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) director M Annadurai – who is also considered one of the heroes of the India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon (October 2008-August 2009) and the November 2013-launched MOM – has said after a steep increase in ISRO’s workforce expansion between 1982 and 1992 there has been no significant growth in ISRO’s workforce, which has remained in the region of 16,500 over several years. “There is a crunch,” he admitted on the sidelines of the Aerospace & Defence Manufacturing Summit 2015, although adding that it was relative in nature. “The requirements have increased but the workforce has remained more or less the same.”

Annadurai said the requirements were from domestic as well as foreign origin. The ISRO on July 11 launched five British satellites in a single launch, which is considered a record as it was the Indian space agency’s heaviest commercial launch. On the domestic front, he said, there are plans to increase Indian satellite launches from the current four a year to ten in the near future – which requires manpower to meet the quality requirements.

Without doubt India’s recent successes demand a growth in its space industry. The danger here is that India will add jobs to its government space agency rather than hire private companies to do the work and let them do the hiring. If they do the latter, the companies will have flexibility and will be able to adjust quickly to changing conditions. If the former the government will instead be hiring employees who will be seen by politicians as a vested interest they must protect, whether or not it makes sense economically. The first option will allow the aerospace industry to grow naturally. The second will fossilize that industry around pork supporting inefficient political agendas.

Hopefully the new conservative Modi government in India will recognize the dangers of expanding its government agency and will go the private route. This quote from the article gives me hope:

“We need the same number of people (16,500) outside to support operations, which is why we are encouraging private partnerships,” he said. Senior ISRO scientists have also said they have been encouraging retiring space scientists to foster links with private firms to encourage them to work with ISRO in the future. This is with an aim to bring in an “outside manpower” to bolster the in-house activities by ISRO scientists.

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Dolly Parton – Jolene

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live, 2014. I especially like the dancing security guards.

Hat tip Danae.

Hey, I am still looking for tips for my evening pauses. Why let Danae have all the fun? If you see a video you think might fit, make a comment here mentioning that you have something, but don’t post the link. I will email you to get it from you.

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New Pluto data released

11:54 am

Pluto

Cool image time! During today’s New Horizons’ press conference, principal investigator Alan Stern noted that only 4%-5% of the data has been recovered. They have finished first phase of download and are moving into second phase, which will be dominated by engineering and other data, not images. So, for the next couple of months they will only be able to release images once and awhile. Beginning in September images, however, they will begin downloading images at a much faster pace.

Some results from today:
» Read more

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Cruz calls McConnell a liar in the Senate

9:47 am

Most interesting: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today called Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) a liar in a speech on the Senate floor.

“We had a Senate Republican lunch where I stood up and I asked the majority leader very directly, what was the deal that was just cut on [trade legislation], and was there a deal for the Export-Import Bank? It was a direct question. I asked the majority leader in front of all the Republican senators. The majority leader was visibly angry with me that I would ask such a question, and the majority leader looked at me and said, “There is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal.”

“Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times,” Cruz added.

[Cruz also said,] “What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie,” Cruz said Friday morning. “We know now that when the majority leader looks us in the eyes and makes an explicit commitment, that he is willing to say things that he knows are false. That has consequences for how this body operates.”

I have embedded video of this speech below the fold.

The increasing public anger expressed by Cruz here against the Republican leadership is a sign of a growing power struggle within that party. About 20% to 30% of the Republican Party feels more loyalty to the Democrats and the Washington power structure than they do to the conservative voters that have supported that party. Unfortunately, it appears that this small minority in the Republican party is presently in charge.

Should the conservative majority ever unify to dump their liberal leadership, there is the risk that many of these Republican leaders will then abandon the party and join the Democrats. The Democrats will then likely regain control of Congress, but if so, they will at least be then fighting an opponent that is unified in support of conservative principles, rather than a party run by two-faced leaders who campaign as conservatives and, having won their elections, immediately team up with the Democrats to block any conservative reform.

It is also possible that these fake conservatives, once kicked out of the leadership, will meekly join the conservative majority, knowing that to join the Democrats will likely get most of them tossed from office at the next election.

Either way, the heavens are beginning to align in favor of a major power shift within the Republican Party. Stay tuned.
» Read more

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Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) discovers why he is an idiot

3:38 pm

In a Senate hearing on Thursday, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) lambasted Secretary of State John Kerry about the Iran deal he negotiated.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker on Thursday offered a scathing indictment of the Obama administration’s shifting goals and rationales for its nuclear deal with Iran, going so far as to tell Secretary of State John Kerry that “I believe you’ve been fleeced” by Iran. Corker said the agreement reached July 14 in Vienna would “codify a perfectly aligned pathway for Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

Turning to Kerry, who took notes as he spoke, Corker said: “What you have really done here is you have turned Iran from being a pariah to Congress – Congress – being a pariah.”

Actually, it was Corker who turned Congress into a pariah. It was his bill, approved by a Republican Congress, that has made a rejection of the Iran deal almost impossible. While the Constitution requires treaties to only be approved with a two-thirds Senate majority, Corker wrote a bill and pushed it through Congress that allows this particular treaty to be approved automatically, unless two-thirds of both Houses of Congress vote to override it. In other words, instead of needing only 34 votes to kill it, Corker’s bill now requires 67 in the Senate and 292 in the House.

Why he and the Republicans in Congress did this suggests strongly to me that they are either all idiots, or far more corrupt and tied to power than anyone imagined. Unwilling to fight for our country or for the principles for which it was founded, they instead bent over and begged to be screwed by this corrupt President and Democratic Party that wishes nothing more than to destroy the free society we once had.

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Worlds without end

1:01 pm

Last week’s fly-by of Pluto by New Horizons illustrated forcefully once again the power of exploration on the human mind, and how that exploration always carries surprises that delight and invigorate us.

First of all, the images from that fly-by demonstrated clearly that the decision by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to declare Pluto a non-planet was very much premature. Even project scientist Alan Stern himself enthusiastically noted at the start of Friday press conference that Pluto-Charon was a “double planet system”.

The IAU definition itself was faulty and difficult to apply. The clause that required a planet to have “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit” made little sense in the real universe, as even the Earth has not successfully cleared its orbit after several billion years. Was the IAU suggesting the Earth was not a planet?

New Horizons’s discovery last week that even a small object like Pluto, orbiting the Sun on its own with no gas giant nearby to provide tidal heating, can still exhibit significant and on-going geological activity, shows that our understanding of what defines a planet is at this time quite limited. We simply don’t know enough about planetary evolution and formation to definitively define the term. Nor do we have enough knowledge to determine if Pluto falls into that category, though the data strongly suggests that it does.

Are planets made up of only gas giants, rocky terrestrial planets like the Earth, and dwarf planets like Ceres and Pluto? Or are there numerous other as yet unknown categories?
» Read more

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GAO finds IRS still focused on harassing conservatives

10:26 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The GAO has found that targeting of conservatives by the IRS is still possible because the agency has not taken sufficient steps to prevent it.

The GAO now says that IRS political “targeting is indeed possible in the audit process” for nonprofits, largely due to poor agency oversight and controls. “Unfortunately, the IRS has not taken sufficient steps to prevent targeting Americans based on their personal beliefs,” the GAO says.

Specifically, The GAO found that “control deficiencies” do “increase the risk” that the IRS nonprofit unit “could select organizations for examinations in an unfair manner—for example, based on an organization’s religious, educational, political or other views.”

Then there’s this tidbit:

The GAO also found that a quarter of the IRS nonprofit audit case files it reviewed had no description of any allegation that triggered the audit to begin with. The IRS doesn’t sufficiently document why it even started nonprofit audits in the first place, the watchdog group says. All of these “weaknesses undermine the integrity of tax administration,” the GAO warns.

Instead, the GAO found that IRS audits are usually triggered because someone complained. And since IRS employees are almost all Democrats and very partisan, the only complaints they take seriously are Democratic ones. Thus, the audits are mostly against conservatives, and serve to squelch political opposition to the Democratic Party.

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Astronomers confirm Kepler discovery of near twin of Earth

10:08 am

Worlds without end! In the release today of another set of Kepler data, astronomers have announced the discovery in that dataset of a new twin of Earth.

The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone — the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet — of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030. …

Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky. While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.

While this exoplanet is certainly not identical to Earth, it is close enough that the possibility of alien life — really alien life — could very likely exist upon it.

The dataset also included 11 other Earth twin candidate exoplanets that still need to be confirmed.

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More problems at Virgin Galactic?

10:02 am

The story outlines what appear to significant problems at Virgin Galactic:

  • Some sources say the company has shelved LauncherOne in favor of a bigger launcher that would be deployed from the bottom of a 747, not WhiteKnightTwo.
  • The company however says LauncherOne is still under development.
  • The company admits that they recently had a LauncherOne test rocket engine explode during testing.

It appears that they have discovered that LauncherOne is not cost effective for meeting their contract with OneWeb to launch 39 satellites. It would only be able put up one satellite at a time. A more powerful launcher however would be too heavy for WhiteKnightTwo.

Thus, after 10 years of development, nothing they have built to date is useful for a profitable operation, and they apparently have to start over.

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Russians confirm their commitment to ISS through 2024

9:36 am

Even as a new crew arrived at ISS, the head of Roscosmos confirmed that the Russians are now committed to sticking with ISS through 2024, as requested by the U.S.

I’ll make a prediction: The station’s life will be extended beyond 2024, but not necessarily under the control of its present international partnership. If the governments involved consider backing out at that time, there will be private companies then capable of taking it over, and will demand that the U.S. transfer ownership to them. This will in turn act to pressure the governments to continue the station’s operation.

Either way, ISS will continue.

Meanwhile, quality control issues continue to pop up with the Russians. One of the solar panels on the Soyuz capsule that delivered crew to ISS yesterday had failed to open when commanded, then decided to pop open unannounced during the docking. They had enough power to get to the station with only one panel, and the panel opening at the wrong time fortunately did not cause any problems, but for the panel to open as it did is without doubt worrisome.

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Hackers demonstrate they can remotely take over moving vehicle

9:33 am

Does this make you feel safer? In a demonstration of the vulnerability of modern cars that are linked to the internet, two hackers took over the operation of an unmodified moving Jeep Cherokee.

A pair of Missouri-based hackers have put on an extraordinary demonstration by logging into a Jeep Cherokee remotely, while it was being driven by a Wired reporter Andy Greenberg, and systematically taking over the car’s functionality. First, they hit him with cold air through the air-con system, then they blasted Kanye West through the stereo at full volume, rendering the volume knob completely useless. They flashed up a picture of themselves on the car’s console and set the windscreen wipers going full blast, squirting cleaning fluid onto the windscreen and making it difficult to see.

But these were just warmups to the main event – next, they took over the engine and shut it off completely, leaving the driver powerless and coasting on the freeway as traffic flashed past around him. Then, once he was off the highway, they showed how they could completely disable the brakes, and take over the steering of the car – only at slow speeds and in reverse, but they’re working on unlocking new abilities every day.

This suggests to me that linking any car directly to the internet is probably a very bad idea.

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Robotic servicing demo resumes on ISS

9:26 am

After a two year hiatus, engineers have resumed experiments on ISS to demonstrate robotic servicing of satellites in space.

Known by its creative team as the “little ISS experiment that could,” RRM broke uncharted ground in 2011-2013 with a set of activities that debuted robotic tools and procedures to refuel the propellant tanks of existing satellites. Its second phase of operations, which took place in April and May and will resume again later in 2015, offers something entirely different and just as disruptive, says Reed. “We’ve outfitted the RRM module with new hardware so we can shift our focus to satellite inspection, instrument life extension, and even techniques for instrument swap-out,” says Reed. Such servicing technologies could open new possibilities for owners of spacecraft in low and geosynchronous Earth orbit, he says.

Many of the designs of this demo project are based on actual research satellites that need refueling or repair. Thus, if the robot can do the work on ISS, it is likely it can also do the work at the satellite itself.

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Haze spotted over Ceres’ double bright spot

9:15 am

Dawn, in orbit around Ceres, has detected a haze above the dwarf planet’s double bright spot, suggesting that the tiny asteroid/planet is still geologically active.

Haze on Ceres would be the first ever observed directly in the asteroid belt. In 2014, researchers using the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory reported seeing water vapour spraying off Ceres, which suggested that it was geologically active1. At least one-quarter of Ceres’s mass is water, a much greater proportion than seen in most asteroids.

Bright spots pepper Ceres’s surface, but the haze has so far been seen in only one location — a crater named Occator, which has a large bright area at its centre and several smaller spots nearby. Mission scientists have been trying to work out whether the bright spots are made of ice, evaporated salts or other minerals, or something else entirely.

Some team members had been leaning towards the salt explanation, but the discovery of haze suggests the presence of sublimating ice. “At noontime, if you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze,” Russell says. “It comes back in a regular pattern.” The haze covers about half of the crater and stops at the rim.

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Mountains and craters on Pluto?

9:09 am

The edge of Tombaugh Regio

Cool image time! Even as they download new images for a press conference on Friday, the New Horizons’ science team has released a new close-up of Tombaugh Regio, showing both a new mountain range within it as well as its sharply defined western contact with the dark whale feature, which now appears to be heavily cratered and old.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.” While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old — the darker region probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).

Make sure you click through to see the full resolution image. It is quite astonishing. They have also released a new image each of two of Pluto’s moons.

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John Kerry doesn’t understand the words “Death to America!”

11:48 am

Peace in our time! In one of his first speeches following the announcement of a deal with Iran,  Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said, to chants of “Death to American” and “Death to Israel”, that the policies of Iran and the U.S. were “180 degrees” opposed.

When asked his thoughts on this speech and its hostility, Secretary of State John Kerry (former Demcratic Presidential candidate) was baffled.

“I don’t know how to interpret it at this point in time, except to take it at face value, that that’s his policy,” he said in the interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television, parts of which the network quoted on Tuesday. “But I do know that often comments are made publicly and things can evolve that are different. If it is the policy, it’s very disturbing, it’s very troubling,” he added.

Reminds me of the reaction of many appeasers to both Hitler and Stalin. No matter how plainly these tyrants expressed the desire to conquer the world and destroy their enemies, these appeasers, most of whom were on the left, would continually come up with excuses for their plain words. I however take Khamenei at his word. When he gets the bomb, he plans on using it.

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