Author: Robert Zimmerman

Russia today confirmed it will return NASA astronaut as planned

9:12 am

As expected, Russia today confirmed in its state-run TASS news agency that NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will come back to Earth in its Soyuz capsule on March 30th, as planned.

The Soyuz MS-19 space capsule with Anton Shkaplerov, Pyotr Dubrov and Mark Vande Hei is expected to land on March 30. Dubrov and Vande Hei arrived on the ISS in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft together with Oleg Novitsky. This descent module brought back to Earth the two feature film crew members – actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko, who had arrived on the ISS together with Anton Shkaplerov in the Soyuz MS-19 on October 5.

There had been a number of stories in the mainstream press suggesting the Russians would leave Vande Hei behind in response to the international sanctions being imposed on Russia because of its invasion of the Ukraine. All were based on a single comment by Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin, who had simply noted visuals from a Russian news source and aired in the U.S. that showed the Russian half of ISS separating away and leaving Vande Hei behind. Rogozin was only noting that the U.S. press was worried about this possibility.

There was no chance the Russians would separate its half of ISS now. Zero. To do such a thing will require several months of preparation. For example, the Russian half has at least one module, Zvezda, that is failing. If Russia ever creates its own new space station using part of ISS, it will have to launch some new modules first.

Also, for Russia to leave Vande Hei behind would be a public relations disaster that would only make worse the disaster of its invasion of the Ukraine. Russia might end its partnership at ISS in the near future, but it won’t do it in a way that might threaten the lives of any astronauts, from any nation.

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Supernova discovered in Cartwheel galaxy

8:54 am

Cartwheel Galaxy, before and after supernova
Click for full image.

Cool image time! In reviewing a December 2021 image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken by the New Technology Telescope in Chile, astronomers noticed something that was not there in earlier images, a new supernovae.

The photo above, reduced to post here, compares a 2014 image, taken by the Very Large Telescope, with the 2021 photo. In the lower left of the new image is a bright object not in the previous photo.

This event, called SN2021afdx, is a type II supernova, which occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its evolution. Supernovae can cause a star to shine brighter than its entire host galaxy and can be visible to observers for months, or even years — a blink of an eye on astronomical timescales. Supernovae are one of the reasons astronomers say we are all made of stardust: they sprinkle the surrounding space with heavy elements forged by the progenitor star, which may end up being part of later generations of stars, the planets around them and life that may exist in those planets.

Cartwheel is about 500 million light years away, and because of its bright outer ring is one one of the more unusual nearby galaxies.

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Ingenuity completes 21st flight on Mars

3:54 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet today from JPL, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has successfully completed its 21st flight on Mars, traveling 1,214 feet in two minutes and nine seconds at an average speed of 12.6 feet per second.

The red dot on the map to the right shows Perseverance’s location as of today. The green dot indicates Ingenuity’s position before the 21st flight. Since neither the Perseverance nor the helicopter teams have posted any updates describing the 21st flight, it is difficult to indicate a precise location for its landing site. All we know is that the helicopter is supposed to fly to the northwest, cutting across the rougher region while the rover follows the tan dotted line around that rough region, with both targeting the delta to the northwest.

As a guess, I have placed a black dot about 1,200 feet to the northwest.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Multiple lawsuits against Collin College in Texas for firing any teacher who expresses an opinion

12:24 pm

Collin College: Run by clowns

The new dark age of silencing: Today’s blacklist story is interesting in that it proves the blacklist culture that is engulfing what was once a free America is not simply attacking those on the right. The level of intolerance has grown so pervasive that people are being blackballed for saying practically anything.

In this case, Collin College in Texas has now been sued by three different teachers because each had had the audacity to express a public opinion that the college administrations disagreed with. The list is quite intriguing because the teachers fired expressed opinions from the left side of the political aisle:

  • History teacher Michael Phillips was terminated because he advocated removal of a Confederate statue, as well as publicly criticized the school’s decision to quickly return to in-class learning in 2020.
  • History teacher Lora Burnett was terminated after she posted a very critical tweet about VP Mike Pence’s performance during a debate (“The moderator needs to talk over Mike Pence until he shuts his little demon mouth up.”) as well as publicly criticized the school’s Wuhan flu policy.
  • Education teacher Suzanne Jones was terminated after calling for the removal of that same Confederate statue, as well as also criticizing the school’s decision to return to in-class learning in 2020.

» Read more

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NASA: committed to forcing everyone to use gender pronouns demanded by its employees

10:28 am

The on-going dark age: NASA yesterday released a statement announcing the completion of an email test project at the Goddard Space Flight Center that allowed employees to include their preferred gender pronouns in email display fields.

NASA’s short statement, quoted in full below, illustrates where the space agency’s real priorities lie.

Through an effort to create a more inclusive workplace, NASA recently completed an IT project at Goddard Space Flight Center that allowed approximately 125 employees to test the option of including their gender pronouns in NASA’s email display fields — which currently includes each employee’s name, center, and an organizational code. The learnings from this test will be used to inform the advancement of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

NASA is fully committed to supporting every employee’s right to be addressed by their correct name and pronouns. All NASA employees currently have the option and flexibility to include their gender pronouns in their customized email signature blocks. This option remains unchanged and is supported by NASA leadership so that employees can share their gender identities and show allyship to the LGBTQIA+ community.

To put this in honest language, NASA’s management is gearing up the legal process to give the power of one group of people (the “LGBTOIA+” community) to impose their beliefs on others, and to force others to promote those beliefs in writing, whether they agree with them or not.

What this has to to with NASA’s core mission, to explore space, I have no idea. But then I am rational and our government today is not.

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Russia to lose seventeen launches due to Ukraine sanctions

9:43 am

This article at Space News today provides a nice summary of the number of launches that Russia’s Roscosmos will likely lose in the next three years due to the break off of commercial operations against that country because of its invasion of the Ukraine.

According to the article, Russia will lose sixteen launches. The list however misses one South Korean satellite scheduled for launch on an Angara rocket later this year. The total breakdown of this lost business is therefore as follows:

13 launches lost in 2022
3 launches lost in 2023
1 launch lost in 2024

The entities impacted are as follows:

Government launches:
Europe: six launches in ’22 and ’23, totaling eight satellites
South Korea: two launches in ’22
Sweden: one launch in ’22

Commercial launches:
OneWeb: six launches in ’22, totaling 199 satellites
Axelspace: one launch, totaling four satellites
Synspective: one launch

If the Ukraine War were to end today, it is possible that most of the government launches would be reinstated. The commercial companies however are almost certainly going to find other launch providers, no matter what. OneWeb for example is hardly going to trust its business to Russia after that country cancelled the launches and (at least at this moment) has confiscated the already delivered satellites.

If the war continues for another two or three months, then all this business will vanish for good, as alternative rocket companies will likely be found.

This list however does reveal one interesting fact. It appears that very few private companies have been interested in buying Russian launch services, with or without the Ukraine War. Most of Russia’s international customers have been other governments. Even OneWeb falls partly into this category, as it is half owned by the United Kingdom.

This fact suggests that Russia’s product has simply not been competitive against the new commercial market. The governments meanwhile probably had political motives in addition to economics to throw their business Russia’s way. Those political motives are now gone.

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Startup Astrolab unveils its manned lunar rover design

9:20 am

Capitalism in space: A small startup company, Astrolab, yesterday unveiled its concept for a manned lunar rover, designed for NASA’s Artemis program.

The company has already built a full scale prototype, which it tested in Death Valley. It also intends to try to win NASA’s contract for building it, with bidding expected to begin in only a few months.

Astrolab will likely have major competition for the LTV contract. Lockheed Martin announced in May 2021 a partnership with General Motors to design lunar rovers but said at the time their concept was still in the early stages. Northrop Grumman announced in November it was working with several companies on a lunar rover design but also provided few technical details.

By contrast, Astrolab, based in Hawthorne, California, is a 15-person company founded two years ago after [Jaret Matthews, the founder of the company,] left SpaceX.

In a rational world, Astrolab’s small size and newness would not matter, if its design was best. In the strange world of our modern federal government, however, the political clout of big companies like General Motors and Northrop Grumman could easily be more important, even if their designs are mediocre and cost much more. Their designs might not be inferior, but their clout cannot be ignored. It will make Astrolab’s success far more difficult, requiring this startup to offer something much more superior to have a chance of winning.

At the same time, the competition might very well force the older big space companies to up their game, which will be all to the good, for everyone.

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Software company aims to launch 250 satellite weather constellation

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: Acme Atronomatic, a software company that developed the MyRadar weather app that has been downloaded 50 million times, is now planning to launch 250 satellite weather constellation, with the first test satellites scheduled for launch in April.

The satellites, scheduled to launch in April on a Rocket Lab Electron from New Zealand, are designed to test and validate hardware for Orlando, Florida-based Acme’s Hyperspectral Orbital Remote Imaging Spectrometer (HORIS) constellation.

Environmental data captured by the HORIS constellation will be paired with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create data-fusion products for the company’s government and commercial customers. Acme also intends to draw on data and imagery from the HORIS constellation to enhance its MyRadar weather app.

The first batch of Acme satellites set to launch in April are PocketQubes, satellites measuring 5 centimeters on each side. The “batch consists of our own satellite and two others that we have informally helped design and build,” Acme CEO Andy Green told SpaceNews by email. “We’re mostly focusing on the primary satellite, MyRadar1,” which is a HORIS constellation prototype.

Private weather satellites like this are the future, rather than government-built satellite, which has been the norm for sixty years. That shift is also apparently being encouraged by Congress, which the House has passed and the Senate is considering. In it NOAA’s budget to build its own weather satellites was trimmed by about 25%, from the requested $1.68 billion to $1.29 billion.

This trim is hardly painful to NOAA’s weather satellite program, which remains well funded. It does indicate however that our spendthrift Congress is interested in ways to save money in this area.

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