Author: Robert Zimmerman

OneWeb to use India’s rockets for satellite launches

8:44 am

Capitalism in space: OneWeb today announced that it has signed a deal with India to use its rockets for satellite launches.

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company OneWeb has announced its plans to collaborate with the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), to utilise indigenously built Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the heavier Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-MkIII) as likely platforms to launch OneWeb’s satellites in India from next year.

This is not good news for either Russia or Arianespace. Up to now these entities pretty much were launching all of OneWeb’s satellites. Now some of that business is being shifted to India.

The deal was revealed at a press conference that announced the formation of an Indian commercial trade organization, the Indian Space Association (ISpA), that partnering with the government will use the government’s space assets to develop private commercial space resources.

The Indian Space Association (ISpA) will be headed by Jayant Patil, senior executive vice president – Defence, L&T-NxT as its chairman, and Bharti Airtel’s chief regulatory officer Rahul Vatts as its vice-chairman, while Lt Gen. A.K. Bhatt (Retd.) has been appointed as the director-general of the association.

Among its early members include Bharti Airtel, Larsen & Toubro, Nelco (Tata Group), OneWeb, Mapmyindia, Walchandnagar Industries and Ananth Technology Limited.

Bharti is the company that invested $500 million to bring OneWeb out of bankruptcy, partnering with the United Kingdom.

The key question is whether these private companies will invest in developing private rockets, or will simply continue to launch using ISRO’s rockets. Based on this announcement, it appears the latter, but since the whole goal here of the Modi government of India appears to be to encourage a private sector, this could soon change.

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Putin reduces budget for Roscosmos by 16%

9:06 am

The Putin government has significantly cut the budget for Roscosmos, reducing it by 16% for each of the next three years.

For 2022, the state budget for space activities will be set at 210 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), a cut of 40.3 billion rubles ($557 million) from the previous year. Similar cuts will follow in subsequent years. The most significant decreases will be in areas such as “manufacturing-technological activities” and “cosmodrome development.” Funding for “scientific research and development” was zeroed out entirely.

The publications say Russian President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with the performance of Russia’s space program. At a space industry meeting on September 29, they report, Putin criticized the industry’s failure to fulfill directives on long-term goals in the space sphere. In 2020, for example, Roscosmos failed to hit 30 of the 83 stated goals of the national space program.

Putin’s dissatisfaction is quite justified. Since his government consolidated all of Russia’s aerospace industry into a single corporation run by Roscosmos, the space agency has made many promises but achieved little. It is clear that he hopes these cuts will force it to get its act together.

The problem is that Putin has done nothing to change the root cause that has fueled this failure, the government aerospace monopoly that Putin himself created. Without competition and a willingness to allow new Russian aerospace companies to succeed — in direct competition with Roscosmos — there is little chance of reform. Roscosmos will struggle on, and it might even begin to show a bit of success, but in the end its best prospect is to become one of many competitors in the new commercial space market. And its market share will be small, because the competitive private companies in the west will easily beat it in cost and innovation.

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As expected, Pluto’s atmosphere is freezing as its orbit takes it from the Sun

10:48 am

Data from ground-based telescopes has now confirmed that Pluto’s nitrogen atmosphere has begun it annual winter freeze out as the planet’s somewhat elliptical 248-year-long orbit takes it away from the Sun.

For about 25 years, Pluto has been moving farther and farther away from the sun, so its surface temperature has been going down. And with these recent observations, the researchers found evidence showing that Pluto’s atmosphere is actually refreezing back onto its surface as the dwarf planet gets colder and colder. Pluto is so far from the sun that, as time goes on, it will get distinctly farther away (and colder) before getting closer to the sun in other regions of its immense orbit.

The astronomers were able to detect this refreezing by observing the planet as it eclipsed a star in 2018.

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SpaceX now valued at $100 billion, the world’s 2nd most valuable private company

10:40 am

Capitalism in space: Because of the high price that some of its investors were able to get selling their private shares of SpaceX, the company’s valuation was reassessed upward from $74 to $100 billion and making it the second most valuable private company in the world.

The stock sale did not raise money for SpaceX as it was a secondary sale by these investors to get a profitable return on their initial investment. Regardless, the stock price they were able to get increased the company’s value.

The high price also illustrates objectively what investors think of SpaceX’s value. No matter what the critics may say, when the time comes to lay the money on the table, those willing to do it are convinced SpaceX is going to be successful in cashing in on its various space projects.

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New Horizons discovers two binary asteroids in Kuiper Belt

10:32 am

Overview map
Click for full map.

As New Horizons traveled from Pluto to the asteroid Arrokoth in 2018, scientists used it to take images of the relatively nearby asteroids that it was passing, and found that two of those asteroids appeared elongated.

[T]he team fit the shapes with a two-body model: two asteroids in a tight orbit. Even though the individual rocks weren’t resolved, the modeling showed that two bodies were better able to explain the elongation, as well as the brightness seen. The model for 2011 JY31 had two 50-km-wide objects nearly 200 km apart, while for 2014 OS393, the model had slightly smaller bodies (30 km across) that orbited each other 150 km apart.

The map, cropped and further annotated by me, shows New Horizons’ path during this time period, with the two binary asteroids indicated in blue.

This data, combined with the double lobe shape of Arrokoth (formerly named Ultima Thule), strongly suggests that it was not unusual for these primitives asteroids in the early solar system to coalesce from comparably sized partners.

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Update on Boeing’s investigation into Starliner valve issue

10:10 am

NASA yesterday issued an update on Boeing’s investigation into Starliner valve issue, noting that progress is being made.

Boeing has demonstrated success in valve functionality using localized heating and electrical charging techniques. Troubleshooting on the pad, at the launch complex, and inside the Starliner production factory at Kennedy Space Center has resulted in movement of all but one of the original stuck valves. That valve has not been moved intentionally to preserve forensics for direct root cause analysis.

Most items on the fault tree have been dispositioned by the team including causes related to avionics, flight software and wiring. Boeing has identified a most probable cause related to oxidizer and moisture interactions, and although some verification work remains underway, our confidence is high enough that we are commencing corrective and preventive actions. Additional spacecraft and component testing will be conducted in the coming weeks to further explore contributing factors and necessary system remediation before flight.

…Boeing has identified several paths forward depending on the outcome of the testing to ultimately resolve the issue and prevent it from happening on future flights. These options could range from minor refurbishment of the current service module components to using another service module already in production. [emphasis mine]

The announcement also confirmed that the next launch attempt of the unmanned demo mission is now being targeted for “the first half of 2022, pending hardware readiness, the rocket manifest, and space station availability.”

The highlighted words raise a very serious question. How is it possible for “oxidizer and moisture interactions” to cause this problem now on Starliner, when the environmental conditions at Cape Canaveral for spacecraft have been understood for better than sixty years? Though this problem might have uncovered a previously undetected fundamental engineering issue related to valves, I am very skeptical. It seems more likely that some quality control issue occurred during this capsule’s assembly. That they are considering using a different Starliner capsule for the demo flight strongly confirms this, suggesting again that the valve issue is not systemic to all valves but is specifically linked to the assembly of this capsule.

If this speculation is correct, it suggests there are some some very disturbing quality control problems in Boeing’s Starliner design and assembly processes. First they missed about sixty software issues that forced the premature landing of the capsule in the first demo flight, issues that should have been fixed during design and construction. Now it appears they have discovered assembly problems with the capsule’s valves, and only did so mere hours before launch.

Boeing has got to get these issues fixed, or it is going to have a serious public relations problem garnering private customers outside NASA once Starliner begins commercial flights.

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Off day

4:24 pm

Sorry for the light posting today. For many reasons I got no sleep last night, and then today had to see the dentist. Ugh.

I’ll probably pick it up tomorrow as we don’t have any major plans for this weekend.

I should add that even though I am not posting much today, my readers are filling the gap with some truly thoughtful comments.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Policeman suspended for four months for praying

10:17 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled in Louisville
No freedom of speech allowed in Louisville.

They’re coming for you next: Matt Schrenger, a police officer in Louisville, Kentucky, was suspended for four months simply because, while off duty and not in uniform, he quietly prayed with his father on the street outside an abortion clinic.

The prayer event took place on February 2021.

That same day, Schrenger was locked out from his work computers, relieved of his police vehicle, and removed from the patrol schedule. Schrenger was suspended and he was stripped of his police powers, pending investigation of his off-duty prayer.

Schrenger was wrongly accused of violating Louisville Metro Police Department Standard Operating Procedures and Kentucky law. By way of a letter dated June 15, 2021, LMPD [Louisville Metro Police Department] Chief Shields admitted that none of the allegations against Officer Schrenger could be sustained. Even after that letter, Schenger’s police powers inexplicably were not restored until June 29, 2021. Even though the facts of the incident were not in dispute, it took the police department more than four months, plus a week, to make its decision after the off-duty prayer incident. [emphasis mine]

The article also notes that on that same day numerous other officers were participating in both a gay rights parade and a Black Lives Matter protest, while on duty and in uniform, and received no punishment though those actions did violate Kentucky law and the department’s procedures.
» Read more

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Data from Perseverance confirms Jezero Crater once held a lake

6:52 am

figure 5 from paper showing ancient lake in Jezero Crater

According to a newly published paper, the data obtained by the rover Perseverance has confirmed and refined what orbital data has suggested, that Jezero Crater once held a lake. From the abstract:

We analyze images taken by the rover in the three months after landing. The fan has outcrop faces that were invisible from orbit, which record the hydrological evolution of Jezero crater. We interpret the presence of inclined strata in these outcrops as evidence of deltas that advanced into a lake. In contrast, the uppermost fan strata are composed of boulder conglomerates, which imply deposition by episodic high-energy floods. This sedimentary succession indicates a transition, from a sustained hydrologic activity in a persistent lake environment, to highly energetic short-duration fluvial flows.

In other words, the crater first held a lake, which as it slowly dried out was periodically renewed by flash floods. The distinct delta of material that made Jezero Crater the prime landing site was apparently formed during the period when the lake existed. The conditions that caused the subsequent flash floods is as yet not been determined, though it likely is related to the red planet’s long term evolution.

The image above, figure 5 from the paper, shows the inferred lake in that early history. The red cross marks Perseverance’s landing site.

This data reinforces the fundamental scientific mystery of Mars. It shows evidence that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars, even though other long term data of the planet’s history says the Martian atmosphere has been too thin and too cold to allow that to happen. There is evidence that the atmosphere might have once been thicker, but no computer model or theory has been able to produce a time when it was warm enough.

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Astronauts name next new Dragon capsule to fly “Endurance”

6:33 am

The astronauts who will fly on SpaceX’s new Dragon capsule at the end of this month have named it “Endurance”, for a variety of reasons.

“First off,” said [mission commander Raja Chari], “it is a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit as we push humans and machines farther than we ever have, going both to stay and extended stays in low Earth orbit, opening it up to private companies and private astronauts and knowing we will continue our exploration to go into even further and continue.”

“Also, it is a nod to the development teams, production teams [and] training teams that got us here, who have endured through a pandemic,” he said.

…Lastly, there was a historical connection — one that spoke to the mission they are about to embark on and the skills it will take for it be successful.”I go straight to the Shackleton voyage,” said Marshburn, referring to Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to cross Antarctica. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was trapped in ice and he and his crew endured months of hardship before being rescued.

SpaceX’s fleet of manned capsules now includes Endeavour, Resilience, and Endurance. A fourth capsule is scheduled to fly in April ’22, but no name as yet has been announced.

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