Category: Behind The Black

Movie of OSIRIS-REx touch-and-go rehearsal

10:47 am

Checkpoint rehearsal: last image
Click for movie.

The OSIRIS-REx science team yesterday released a short movie, compiled from thirty images taken during the April 14, 2020 rehearsal of the spacecraft’s planned August touch-and-go sample grab from the asteroid Bennu.

The rehearsal brought the spacecraft through the first two maneuvers of the sampling event to a point approximately 213 feet (65 meters) above the surface, before backing the spacecraft away. These images were recorded over a ten-minute span between the execution of the rehearsal’s “Checkpoint” burn, approximately 394 feet (120 meters) above the surface, and the completion of the back-away burn, which occurred approximately 213 feet (65 meters) above the surface. The spacecraft’s sampling arm – called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) – is visible in the central part of the frame, and the relatively clear, dark patch of Bennu’s sample site Nightingale is visible in the later images, at the top. The large, dark boulder that the spacecraft approaches during the sequence is 43 feet (13 meters) on its longest axis.

The image to the right is the last frame of the movie, as the spacecraft has begun its retreat. The smoother area of Nightingale is at the top.

Based on the video, it appears as if the spacecraft would have missed the Nightingale target site had the rehearsal continued to touchdown. This might not be so, however. And even if it is, the reason for the rehearsal is to allow engineers to refine the process to make it more accurate. We shall see what changes in the second rehearsal in about a month or so.

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Rocket Lab steals Arianespace customer

9:04 am

Capitalism in space: It turns out that a new launch contract won by Rocket Lab this week was actually a payload that was originally going to fly on Arianespace’s Vega rocket.

What Tuesday’s announcement did not include was the fact that the Japanese company [Synspective] shuffled this launch from a Vega rocket onto Electron. The Vega rocket, which had its first failure in 15 launches last July, has yet to return to flight. The spaceport it launches from in French Guiana remains closed due to the coronavirus.

Synspective had signed a major agreement with Arianespace last year to launch what is hoped will become a 25-satellite constellation. It appears that because of the Vega rocket failure, along with its higher price, Rocket Lab is going to get that business instead. That Rocket Lab can provide Synspective a dedicated launch, to the orbit of its choice, also encouraged the switch.

The background of this deal suggests that Rocket Lab’s future is bright, assuming New Zealand and the United States are ever allowed to go back to normal as free and open countries.

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Space Force hypes unspecified Russian anti-satellite test

8:52 am

Yesterday Space Force officials released a scathing press release condemning a so-called Russian anti-satellite test, calling it “a threat” while providing zero details about what the Russians actually did.

I saw the press release and realized it was nothing more than an effort by the new Space Force to justify its existence and to possibly encourage more funding from Congress. Until they release some details about the test itself, the story simply doesn’t merit coverage.

Our compliant and brainless media today however immediately jumped on the Washington swamp bandwagon with numerous stories reinforcing and supporting the Space Force lobbying effort. Here are a few examples:

All of these articles buy into the Space Force agenda, with practically no skepticism. All provide lots of quotes from a variety of Washington “experts” backing the Space Force position, insisting that the Russians are evil and have now demonstrated a new capability that requires a big U.S. response. None provide any further detail about the test itself, meaning that no further information on it was available, and that their stories were nothing more than a xerox of that empty Space Force press release.

Only this story from C4ISRNET described the press release properly, giving no play to these so-called “experts” because any quotes they would provide were merely a transparent lobbying effort for the Space Force. Instead, the article provided this much needed background:

Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, said the test is likely of the Nudol, a ballistic-missile system capable of taking out satellites in low earth orbit. He warned not to overreact, as the system has been tested several times in recent years. According to the CSIS Aerospace Security Project’s Space Threat Assessment 2020, Russia conducted its seventh test of Nudol in December 2018.

As to why military leaders issued the statement, Weeden said it is “part of the DoD being more public about what’s going on in space, which is good. But it also seems the only thing they’re doing about it is using it to justify more U.S. spending on our own counterspace capabilities.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, this test is nothing unusual, and was being hyped by the Space Force in order to garner a bigger budget for the new agency.

Sadly, this is par for the course. Our entire society is presently shut down because medical “experts” in Washington and the mainstream leftist press did the same thing with COVID-19, hyping what was clearly nothing more than a new disease variation of the annual flu season so much that they convinced American public it was another Black Plague. The result: a new Great Depression, millions out of work, and the end of American freedom, all for the benefit of those Washington “experts” and that leftist press.

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Astronomers claim to have discovered most powerful supernova ever

9:38 pm

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have now calculated that a supernova that was spotted in 2016 was possibly the brightest ever detected, and might have been caused by the merger of two massive stars, each about sixty times as massive as the Sun.

SN 2016aps was discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan- STARRS) Survey for Transients on February 22, 2016 with an apparent magnitude of 18. Also known as PS16aqy, the explosion occurred in a low-mass galaxy some 3.1 billion light-years from Earth.

University of Birmingham’s Dr. Matt Nicholl and colleagues believe SN 2016aps could be an example of an extremely rare ‘pulsational pair-instability’ supernova, possibly formed from two massive stars that merged before the explosion. Such an event so far only exists in theory and has never been confirmed through astronomical observations.

…The researchers observed SN 2016aps for two years, until it faded to 1% of its peak brightness. Using these measurements, they calculated the mass of the supernova was between 50 to 100 solar masses. Typically supernovae have masses of between 8 and 15 solar masses.

They theorize that the supernova became especially bright when the explosion collided with a gas shell that already surrounded both stars.

Lots of assumptions and guesswork here, based on a tiny amount of data. The biggest lack is that they don’t have any observations of the star (or stars) prior to the supernova, so any theory about what those stars were like is exactly that, a theory.

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Judge rules health dept must give names of all COVID-19 patients to police

1:56 pm

The law is only for the little people: An Illinois judge has ruled that the county health department must give the full list of patients infected with the Wuhan virus to the police, immediately making void all federal and state privacy laws designed to protect our health records.

On Friday, McHenry County Judge Michael Chmiel entered a temporary restraining order mandating that the Health Department disclose to police the names of those actively infected with COVID-19.

…The Health Department refused to reveal the names, prosecutors stated in a news release. Health departments have typically cited privacy concern in withholding such information, specifically the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

What this also means is that if you have been infected with the Wuhan flu, you are now a second class citizen in McHenry County, subject to increased police surveillance and restrictions, regardless of your rights. And your health records are now out of your control, and being freely distributed to government officials.

This story is hardly an outlier. Government officials nationwide are now using the Wuhan flu as an excuse to make them immune from all laws, free to do anything they want in order to increase their power ad infinitum.

If Americans do not resist this abuse of power now, very soon we will not have even the hint of a free nation that we presently retain.

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Baby Martian volcanoes

1:28 pm

Cratered cone near Noctis Fossae
Click for full image.

Cool image time! I came across this strange feature shown on the right in my normal rummaging through the archive of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The photo, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, focuses on what they label a “cratered cone.”

The immediate thought is that this is a volcano cone, and the craters at its peak are not impact craters but calderas. In science however such a knee-jerk conclusion is always dangerous. For example, this might instead be a pedestal crater, where the surrounding terrain was worn away over eons, leaving the crater sitting high and dry.

It is therefore important to look deeper to determine what origin of this feature might be.

First, its location, as shown in the overview map below, provides us our first clue.
» Read more

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Earth-sized exoplanet in habitable zone found in old Kepler data

10:25 am

A review of the data produced by the space telescope Kepler, now retired, has discovered an exoplanet about the same size as Earth and also located in the habitable zone that had been missed previously by software.

Scientists discovered this planet, called Kepler-1649c, when looking through old observations from Kepler, which the agency retired in 2018. While previous searches with a computer algorithm misidentified it, researchers reviewing Kepler data took a second look at the signature and recognized it as a planet. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this distant world – located 300 light-years from Earth – is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature.

This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet. Also, the amount of starlight it receives from its host star is 75% of the amount of light Earth receives from our Sun – meaning the exoplanet’s temperature may be similar to our planet’s as well. But unlike Earth, it orbits a red dwarf. Though none have been observed in this system, this type of star is known for stellar flare-ups that may make a planet’s environment challenging for any potential life.

A number of Earth-like planets have been found around red dwarf stars. Whether life could evolve in such places is entirely unknown. Red dwarfs are small, and would have likely formed in a nebula cloud with a dearth of many elements and materials needed for life. Moreover, because they are also so dim, the habitable zone is very near the star, meaning that, as the article mentions, strong flares are more dangerous.

At the same time, red dwarfs are the most common star, and the most long-lived, capable of burning for tens of billions of years. With enough time and numbers anything is still possible.

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Economy crashes in March due to Wuhan lockdowns

9:46 am

Never let a crisis go to waste: Retail sales in March dropped a record 8.7%, almost entirely due to the nationwide lock downs and business closures imposed by the government on what government officials have arbitrarily determined are “nonessential” businesses.

The Census Bureau said though “many businesses are operating on a limited capacity or have ceased operations completely,” it had “determined estimates in this release meet publication standards.”

Last month’s decrease in retail sales reflected depressed receipts at car dealerships, with light vehicle sales crashing in March. With millions at home and crude oil prices collapsing amid worries of a deep global recession, gasoline prices have dropped, which weighed on sales at service stations in March.

In addition, the closure of non-essential retailers knocked sales at clothing, sporting goods and furniture stores.

There were also steep declines in receipts at restaurants and bars, which stopped in-person service and moved to take-out and delivery service. Though some businesses, including restaurants, have shifted to online sales, the volumes were insufficient to close the gap from social distancing measures. [emphasis mine]

I wonder if the families that run these “non-essential retailers” consider their livelihoods to be “non-essential.” Somehow I don’t think so.

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New York falsely inflates COVID-19 death toll with no evidence

9:25 am

U.S. Wuhan virus deaths, as of April 14, 2020

Yesterday the nationwide death toll from the Wuhan virus suddenly jumped after several days of decline. The graph on the right, created using the numbers at this link, illustrates this. Until yesterday it clearly looked as if the epidemic was finally subsiding, and that the peak had occurred as expected several days ago.

Why the jump? Well it turns out the reason is because government officials in New York decided to add thousands of recent deaths to their total, based on no evidence of coronavirus, at all.

The city decided to add 3,700 people to its death tolls, who they “presumed” to have died from the virus, according to a report from The New York Times. The additions increased the death toll in the U.S. by 17%, according to the Times report, and included people who were suffering from symptoms of the virus, such as intense coughing and a fever.

The Times stated: “A limited number of tests have been available, and until now, only deaths where a person had tested positive were counted among those killed by the virus in New York.”

The report stated that Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided over the weekend to change the way the city is counting deaths.

In other words, de Blasio is falsely inflating the numbers. And I can guess why. The drop during the past few days indicated that this manufactured crisis was beginning to end. That cannot be tolerated, as these government officials are still in the process of cementing their totalitarian control over their citizens. More time is needed! Let’s balloon the totals to magnify the crisis beyond reality!

The symptoms described could easily apply just as much to the flu. Moreover, just because someone has a cough or fever does not mean this is what killed them. They don’t say, but I bet some of those individuals clearly died from other causes.

This is fraud and corruption at its worst.

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Confirmed: Comet ATLAS has broken apart

8:47 am

Astronomers have now confirmed the fact that Comet ATLAS has broken into several pieces, and will not put on a spectacular sky show this coming May.

Just a month ago, it looked like the icy wanderer, officially known as C/2019 Y4 Atlas, might put on a dazzling sky show around the time of its closest approach to the sun, or perihelion, which occurs on May 31.

But relatively lackluster behavior soon dimmed such hopes. And optimism surrounding the comet is now pretty much extinguished, for it’s no longer in one piece. Comet Atlas “has shattered both its and our hearts,” astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, the founder and director of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, said in an emailed statement on Sunday (April 12). “Its nucleus disintegrated, and last night I could see three, possibly four main fragments.”

A nice picture of the break-up can be seen here.

We are due for another great comet, like Comet Hale-Bopp in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, Comet ATLAS won’t be that comet.

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OSIRIS-REx successfully completes touch-and-go rehearsal

8:44 am

OSIRIS-REx yesterday successfully completed its first dress rehearsal of the maneuver that will allow it in August to touch the surface of the asteroid Bennu and grab a sample.

Four hours after departing its 0.6-mile (1-km) safe-home orbit, the spacecraft performed the Checkpoint maneuver at an approximate altitude of 410 feet (125 meters) above Bennu’s surface. From there, the spacecraft continued to descend for another nine minutes on a trajectory toward – but not reaching – the location of the sampling event’s third maneuver, the “Matchpoint” burn. Upon reaching an altitude of approximately 246 ft (75 m) – the closest the spacecraft has ever been to Bennu – OSIRIS-REx performed a back-away burn to complete the rehearsal.

During the rehearsal, the spacecraft successfully deployed its sampling arm, the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), from its folded, parked position out to the sample collection configuration. Additionally, some of the spacecraft’s instruments collected science and navigation images and made spectrometry observations of the sample site, as will occur during the sample collection event.

They plan one more rehearsal, getting even closer to the asteroid, before the August 25 sample grab.

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