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.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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. 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.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
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.