April 28, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- The flight path and drop zones for the expendable Long March 7 stages to be launched on May 10th
This launch will carry the next Tianzhou cargo spacecraft to China’s Tiangong-3 station. The drop zones will this time be over the ocean, not on people’s heads in China or elsewhere.
- China to create office to coordinate international participation on its planned moon base
This is China’s response to the Artemis Accords, but do not expect more than a handful of nations outside of Russia to sign on.
- Phantom signs deal with proposed spaceport in Australia
The spaceport, Arnhem Space Centre (ASC), is being developed by Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), and hopes to attract international rocket companies. Phantom meanwhile hopes to complete its first launch first quarter of 2024.
- Rocket Lab touts its next NASA launch on May 1st
Just some pictures of the rocket on the launchpad.
- It appears ISRO has delayed the launch of its lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 to 2024
The delay was mentioned almost as an aside in the press release. As recently as March all looked good for a June 2023 launch, so this delay appears very puzzling.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- The flight path and drop zones for the expendable Long March 7 stages to be launched on May 10th
This launch will carry the next Tianzhou cargo spacecraft to China’s Tiangong-3 station. The drop zones will this time be over the ocean, not on people’s heads in China or elsewhere.
- China to create office to coordinate international participation on its planned moon base
This is China’s response to the Artemis Accords, but do not expect more than a handful of nations outside of Russia to sign on.
- Phantom signs deal with proposed spaceport in Australia
The spaceport, Arnhem Space Centre (ASC), is being developed by Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), and hopes to attract international rocket companies. Phantom meanwhile hopes to complete its first launch first quarter of 2024.
- Rocket Lab touts its next NASA launch on May 1st
Just some pictures of the rocket on the launchpad.
- It appears ISRO has delayed the launch of its lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 to 2024
The delay was mentioned almost as an aside in the press release. As recently as March all looked good for a June 2023 launch, so this delay appears very puzzling.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Here is a nice link of lander effects upon regolith
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-planet-safely.html
The white paper
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/35/4/043331/2885299/Full-continuum-approach-for-simulating-plume
Some thoughts from the paper–though developed for thin or non-existent atmospheres:
“As mentioned earlier, although the investigated geometry is axisymmetric, some non-axisymmetric features can be observed on the dusty beds. This counterintuitive feature was observed in our preliminary studies….The NSF solution under-predicts the location of the reflected shock [consequently, the standoff shock (SS) position].”
These might be the gays to ask about what happened here:
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-giant-spacex-rocket-crater-texas.html
This may count as the *strangest* NASA story I have seen in a long time, and may deserve at least inclusion in the next Quick Space Links: Ashlee Vance’s new forthcoming book (When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach) relates an amazing anecdote about the time the FBI tried to figure out if Obama and Elon Musk, among others, were trying to destroy the US space program via NASA.
Still, things escalated quickly and dramatically from that point. A group of Ames employees handed Congress a fifty-five-page report that, according to Worden, suggested the existence of a far-reaching conspiracy to destroy the US space program. Not only were Worden and his buddies allegedly involved in the conspiracy, but so, too, were President Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Lori Garver, the deputy administrator of NASA, who had been a major advocate of SpaceX and private space exploration. Fueled by the document, the FBI kicked off an investigation that ended up taking four years and dragged Ames through the press as a bastion of spies.
Lori Garver responded directly to this revelation with a tweet a few hours ago: “I wrote in my own book about the orchestrated attempt to paint me, @elonmusk, @POTUS44 & others as trying to destroy the US space program. Attacks on us came from such a wide range of directions I’d forgotten the Ames paper! FBI should have investigated those making the charges!”
https://twitter.com/ashleevance/status/1652815580406386688