Jason Headley – It’s Not About The Nail
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who wrote, “This video is maddening to a male. I’m afraid to show it to my wife.”
Author: Robert Zimmerman
On the way home
Diane and I are about to board the airplane here in the Bahamas to return to the U.S. Twas an interesting and pleasant weekend.
Not surprisingly, the TSA were pigs as we left. It turns out that it is forbidden to carry from foreign countries a ham sandwich on the plane to eat. Either that, or they like to steal sandwiches from passengers for their own lunch.
As I said to the TSA agent, “Pigs. This is not the country I was born into.” She then tried to debate politics with me and I said, “No, please, let’s not.”
The real evil here is that the agent was upset that I was honest about having the sandwich. If I had lied and said we had no food with us, they wouldn’t have checked and all would have been fine. The whole setup was designed to make everyone dishonest and liars. If you were honest, you were punished.
Falcon Heavy static fire test delayed again
SpaceX yesterday re-scheduled the Falcon Heavy launchpad static fire engine test to Monday, with a window opening at 4 pm Eastern and lasting until 10 pm.
Comments at the link suggest that the software for the rocket’s hold down clamps required review. This theory however is unconfirmed.
Update: The test has now slipped to Tuesday.
A movie of Jupiter’s south polar region
Cool movie time! Using Juno images, a citizen scientist has created a short movie showing two complete rotations of Jupiter’s south polar regions. I have embedded the movie below the fold. It is definitely worth watching. As he notes,
Due to Jupiter’s low axial tilt we never see more than roughly one half of the area around the poles in sunlight at any given time. However, it is interesting to see what Jupiter’s polar regions would look like if things were different and a big area around the poles was illuminated. This rotation movie shows what Jupiter’s south polar region would look like near the time of southern summer solstice if Jupiter’s axial tilt was much greater than it is, i.e. comparable to Saturn’s axial tilt.
He also notes the puzzling fact that, though Jupiter and Saturn are both gas giants, unlike Saturn Jupiter does not have a vortex at its poles. In fact, he points out how none of Jupiter’s storms are centered at the pole. Why one gas giant should have such pole-centered vortexes while another does not is a big mystery that illustrates how very little we know about planetary formation and evolution.
The two rotations also do not show any changes in the storms, not because they aren’t changing but because the images used were taken over too short a time span to show this.
» Read more
China completes third launch in as many days
The competition heats up: China today completed its third launch in as many days, placing a remote sensing satellite into orbit.
It was also reported today that one of the strap-on boosters from the previous launch fell and exploded in a Chinese village, where towns-people were able to take videos of it burning on the ground.
The launch standings:
3 China
1 SpaceX
1 ULA
1 India
VSS Unity completes 7th glide test
Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic’s Unity suborbital spaceship completed 7th glide test today.
I must admit that I am only reporting this because I feel obligated to. This was their first flight in five months, and they have still not done a powered flight. I cannot get excited about Virgin Galactic and SpaceshipTwo until I actually see them reach space, something they have still not accomplished after fourteen years of development.
Rocket Lab announces January launch window
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has announced that it will attempt the second test launch of its Electron rocket during a nine day launch window beginning on January 20.
Bad weather and technical issues prevented this launch in December. Meanwhile, Japan is also planning a test launch in January of its only smallsat rocket, the SS-520. The Japanese entry is a demo mission designed and built by that country’s space agency, while Rocket Lab is entirely private. Both however provide more evidence that 2018 will be a booming year (no pun intended) for rockets.
India and ULA complete first launches in 2018
The competition heats up: In what looks like the beginning of what might be the most active launch year in almost three decades, India and ULA today each successfully completed their first launches of 2018.
ULA’s Delta 4 rocket launched a U.S. reconnaissance satellite, while India’s PSLV rocket placed in orbit 31 satellites, 30 of which were smallsats. For India, this was their first launch since an August PSLV launch failed when the rocket fairing did not release.
Update: I just discovered that China launched its second rocket yesterday, placing it in a tie with U.S. for most launches and ahead of everyone else.
2 China
1 SpaceX
1 ULA
1 India
Justin Johnson -Crankin’ Up the 3-String Shovel Guitar
An evening pause: Hat tip Jeff Poplin.
Exposed mid-latitude ice deposits found on Mars
Scientists have discovered eight locations on Mars where underground ice appears to be exposed on cliff faces
The scarps directly expose bright glimpses into vast underground ice previously detected with spectrometers on NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, with ground-penetrating radar instruments on MRO and on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, and with observations of fresh impact craters that uncover subsurface ice. NASA sent the Phoenix lander to Mars in response to the Odyssey findings; in 2008, the Phoenix mission confirmed and analyzed the buried water ice at 68 degrees north latitude, about one-third of the way to the pole from the northernmost of the eight scarp sites.
The important thing about this discovery is that, though we have known for several years that water ice exists underground in the Martian mid-latitudes, this is the first time we have identified specific places there it is exposed and accessible.
Unfortunately, the press release does not provide the specific eight locations, except for the one image, which is located in the southern hemisphere in a region called Promethei Terra, far from areas that have been studied much more extensively. I will do some digging to see if I can identify the other seven locations.
January 10, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
» Read more
On the road
Posting today has been lacking because Diane and I have been in the air, flying to the Bahamas where I will be giving a lecture tomorrow on space exploration at Lyford Cay Resort. We will be returning on Monday. I should get some posting over the weekend, but only in the evening after enjoying the day.
Posted from Nassau, the Bahamas.
An illicit visit to two abandoned Soviet space shuttles
An evening pause: Hat tip John Harman. This video has been around for awhile, but I hadn’t ever actually watched it until now. What it shows is very cool, but sad in so many ways. As a government project the whole Soviet space shuttle program was generally a dead end waste of resources (as was our own shuttle). Yet, it was possibly one of Soviet Russia’s greatest technological achievements — which they have allowed to rot away in these abandoned hangers, rather than opening them up for their citizens to see and admire and learn from.
Take a flight through the Orion Nebula
Astronomers and programmers have created a 3D fly-through of the Orion Nebula, using imagery and data from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.
I have embedded the video below the fold. At one point it really resembles what one sees out of an airplane window when there is a thick cloud cover below.
» Read more
NASA funds a cubesat-sized ultra-violet telescope
NASA has funded a cubesat-based ultra-violet telescope to launch in 2021.
SPARCS is a CubeSat built of six cubical units, each about four inches on a side. These are joined to make a spacecraft two units wide by three long in what is termed a 6U spacecraft. Solar power panels extend like wings from one end. “In size and shape, SPARCS most resembles a family-size box of Cheerios,” Shkolnik said.
The spacecraft will contain three major systems — the telescope, the camera, and the operational and science software. Along with Shkolnik, SESE astronomers Paul Scowen, Daniel Jacobs, and Judd Bowman will oversee the development of the telescope and camera, plus the software and the systems engineering to pull it all together. The telescope uses a mirror system with coatings optimized for ultraviolet light. Together with the camera, the system can measure very small changes in the brightness of M dwarf stars to carry out the primary science of the mission.
As I have noted numerous times recently, the space industry is splitting between large manned projects and tiny unmanned ones. While certain unmanned probes will always have to be larger, the ability to build and launch the same capabilities at a smaller size is lowering cost and allowing more probes to be launched.
A lava tube entrance near the Moon’s north pole?
In reviewing Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data scientists think they have discovered several skylight entrances into a lava tube that is located near the Moon’s north pole.
The new pits were identified on the northeastern floor of Philolaus Crater, a large, 43 mile (70 km)-diameter impact crater located at 72.1oN, 32.4oW, about 340 miles (550 km) from the North Pole of the Moon, on the lunar near side. The pits appear as small rimless depressions, typically 50 to 100 feet across (15 to 30 meters), with completely shadowed interiors. The pits are located along sections of winding channels, known on the Moon as “sinuous rilles,” that crisscross the floor of Philolaus Crater. Lunar sinuous rilles are generally thought to be collapsed, or partially collapsed, lava tubes, underground tunnels that were once streams of flowing lava.
“The highest resolution images available for Philolaus Crater do not allow the pits to be identified as lava tube skylights with 100 percent certainty, but we are looking at good candidates considering simultaneously their size, shape, lighting conditions and geologic setting” says Pascal Lee, planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and the Mars Institute who made the new finding at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
…Prior to this discovery, over 200 pits had been found on the Moon by other researchers, with many identified as likely skylights leading to underground lava tubes associated with similar sinuous rilles. However, today’s announcement represents the first published report of possible lava tube skylights in the Moon’s polar regions.
The floor of the crater as a lot of rilles, and a close look at that crater floor reveals to me a lot of possible sky light entrances, more than indicated by the images at the llink. (Go here, click on projections and pick “Orthographic (North Pole).” Then zoom in on the crater indicated by the yellow X in my image on the right above.)
The key here is that caves or lava tubes provide a good place to cheaply and quickly establish a lunar colony. While it is suspected that water might survive in permanently shadowed regions near the poles, up until now no one had found any good underground locations there. If this suspected skylight entrances prove true, this crater then becomes prime real estate on the Moon.
SpaceX pushes back its manned flights
The first launch dates for SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule have apparently been rescheduled, with the new dates August 2018 for the first unmanned demo flight and December 2018 for the first manned flight.
This is a four month delay from the previous announced dates of April and August.
Hat tip to reader Kirk Hilliard.
Russia to launch a dozen cubesats for Planet
Capitalism in space: Planet has signed a deal with the Russian government entity that bundles smallsat secondary payloads to launch a dozen cubesats on a Soyuz rocket presently scheduled to launch later this year.
This agreement provides further evidence that the cubesat commercial industry is here to stay. There are a lot of these contracts right now (India is scheduled to launch 30 tomorrow). The need for more small rockets to launch such satellites appears almost overwhelming, and thus a good financial choice.
Another China space chief appointed to political post
The new colonial movement: The head of China’s space agency has now been promoted to a political post as acting governor of the Fujian province in China.
The significance here is that this is not the first time a space agency manager in China has moved into an important political role. Three previous space administrators have already become governors of different Chinese provinces (the equivalent of states here in the U.S.) As was noted in an article I linked to in May, the managers of China’s space agency now dominate its entire government. This not only bodes well for its space program (giving it great political clout), but it also bodes well for China’s political system, as they appear to be appointing their political people based not just on power, but on administrative skills and talent.
This process is also interesting historically. For almost two thousand years China’s government was managed under the bureaucratic philosophies of Confucius, whereby administrators had to pass a difficult intellectual test to become certified. They then moved up the ranks.
It seems that these cultural roots are deep and on-going. China appears now to be replacing that test (which with time became hidebound and disconnected with the changing times, especially when the European powers arrived in the 1800s) with actual management experience in major industries. If you want to get promoted into higher positions of power in China, you need to demonstrate that you can manage a company or a space program effectively.
Falcon Heavy static fire test scrubbed for today
Capitalism in space: SpaceX decided to scrub its Falcon Heavy static fire test today soon after they had loaded propellants into the rocket during countdown.
No details, but it appears to me that they are taking this test very seriously, and approaching each step with care. This was the first time they had loaded the entire Falcon Heavy, and I am not surprised they saw an issue that made them hesitate about continuing.