March 3, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander has successfully completed a deep space engine burn as it works its way for a May landing
As the company notes, it “is now on a path towards the boundaries of the Earth gravitational influence, a region so far from Earth that the gravity of the Sun starts to be relevant.”
- Arianespace scrubbed its second Ariane-6 launch today, providing no explanation so far as to why
The launch itself was delayed six months because of issues with the engine on the upper stage during the first launch.
- Earlier this week protesters blocked the entrance to one of the space facilities of India’s space agency ISRO
They also tried to deface “the hindi text” on some signs. No word on what they were protesting.
- On this day in 1972 Pioneer 10 was launched, the first American mission to the outer planets
It flew past Jupiter in December 1973, surviving both its journey through the asteroid belt to get there as well the harsh environment around Jupiter. Its flight also proved that Jupiter’s gravity could be used successfully to slingshot missions to other locations, a technique that is now standard on almost all interplanetary missions.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander has successfully completed a deep space engine burn as it works its way for a May landing
As the company notes, it “is now on a path towards the boundaries of the Earth gravitational influence, a region so far from Earth that the gravity of the Sun starts to be relevant.”
- Arianespace scrubbed its second Ariane-6 launch today, providing no explanation so far as to why
The launch itself was delayed six months because of issues with the engine on the upper stage during the first launch.
- Earlier this week protesters blocked the entrance to one of the space facilities of India’s space agency ISRO
They also tried to deface “the hindi text” on some signs. No word on what they were protesting.
- On this day in 1972 Pioneer 10 was launched, the first American mission to the outer planets
It flew past Jupiter in December 1973, surviving both its journey through the asteroid belt to get there as well the harsh environment around Jupiter. Its flight also proved that Jupiter’s gravity could be used successfully to slingshot missions to other locations, a technique that is now standard on almost all interplanetary missions.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Elon Musk @elonmusk
Raptor 3 has almost twice the thrust and much higher reliability than Raptor 1, despite costing about four times less!
Quote
SpaceX @SpaceX
Raptor 3 is an unprecedented step forward in rocket engine design, which will help us increase Starship’s efficiency and the amount of mass Starship is able to deliver to space
3:24 PM · Mar 3, 2025
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1896703213434462640
Pioneer 10 survived its Jupiter flyby, but it was pretty fried in the process. Imagery and data were lost thanks to a series of radiation induced false commands. Jupiter’s electromagnetic field had proven more powerful than expected.
But….the experience of Pioneer 10 and 11 proved of great benefit to the final design of the Voyagers. Ames engineers happily passed along their data to their Voyager counterparts, who, among other things, added more radiation shielding to their vehicles.
Richard M: Ah, but the whole point of Pioneer 10 and 11 was to characterize the environment around Jupiter so as to inform the design of the Voyager spacecraft. In that, both missions were spectacular successes, strengthened by the fact that both were able to send back a number of excellent pictures of Jupiter, plus several of its larger moons.
Oh, I hope I did not come across as dismissing Pioneer 10 and 11 as failures. I do not think anyone characterizes them that way.
Ames had very little money to develop and build those probes. They were very simple affairs next to the Voyagers, even after their knock-down redesign from the TOPS architecture. (As a kid, I was fascinated with the Pioneers and Voyagers, and I remember being surprised to see how small the full-scale mockup of Pioneer 10 was when my parents took us to the NASM.) I think it remains a marvel how much they were able to accomplish, having so little to work with.
But yes, they got roughed up. It was our first direct evidence of just how formidable it was going to be to operate in Jupiter’s electromagnetic field.
A followup to the ISRO protest. The local Tamils did not like the Hindi text, because it is not their language, and defaced the sign.
Pioneer 10 – startling news – math was used to predict a slingshot effect of a satellite at Jupiter. First use of math to help solve a then-unknown physics problem! Isaac gives a thumbs-up from his grave.
For those who don’t already know, here is a quick explanation of how gravity assist works — how the spacecraft ends up going faster despite approaching and leaving the planet at the same speed:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kD8PFhj_a8s (1 minute)
The free-return trajectory for the Apollo missions worked similarly, except the opposite (how can that be?). Instead of approaching the Moon from behind, it approached from in front, so that the Apollo spacecraft would slow down instead of speed up, then Apollo could fall back to Earth, so long as it slowed the right amount and in the right direction. Otherwise it would miss the Earth. Free-return trajectory for Apollo was a very small window.