Embedded below the fold in two parts, two days late because I forgot to post it on Wednesday.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon Heavy rocket to place a Hughes geosynchronous communications satellite into orbit, the heaviest ever, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The two side boosters successfully completed their third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral only a few seconds apart. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights. The center core stage was not recovered as planned.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 49.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
Presently scheduled for July 30th (New Zealand time), or 10 pm (Pacific) on July 29, 2023.
Presently scheduled for July 30th (in India), or 6 pm (Pacific) on July 29th. This will be first time India will have launched twice in a month since it panicked and shut down over the Wuhan flu.
The spacecraft is designed as a variation of Boeing’s X-37B. It will fly in orbit for two months and return to Earth for reuse.
This announcement actually reveals a delay in the program, from a 2026 planned launch. Want to bet it won’t launch in this decade at all?
The company hopes to begin launches by 2026.
China yesterday successfully placed three “remote-sensing” satellites into orbit, using its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its interior Xichang spaceport.
No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
50 SpaceX (with a Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for tonight. Live stream here.)
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 57 to 30, and the entire world combined 57 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 50 to 49.
Tabia Lee
Bring a gun to a knife fight: As I reported in March, Tabia Lee was fired as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education [OESE] at De Anza College in California when she repeatedly demanded historical accuracy and color-blind policies from both her department and the rest of the college. Here is just one example of what she was trying to do and the opposition she faced:
Lee found herself constantly harassed and slandered because she tried to bring to her work an even-handed philosophy that attempted to deal with the problems of racial conflict fairly. For example, when Jewish students and faculty members told her they had experienced anti-Semitism on campus, Lee tried to organize a campus event to discuss the problem.
Instead, she said, coworkers told her the event wasn’t important and that Jewish people are white oppressors.
…Her career at De Anza College ended when her tenure was denied because the college claimed she had an “inability to demonstrate cooperation in working with colleagues and staff” and an “unwillingness to accept constructive criticism.” This was followed by a vote by the college administration to dismiss her the end of this academic year.
Lee has now filed suit challenging her firing. You can read her complaint here.
» Read more
Click for original image.
Today’s cool image illustrates the complex explanations scientists sometimes have to come up with explain the strange geology seen on Mars. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a whitish “ridged flow-like feature” that appears to exit out of the massive hill to the west.
The white dot on the overview map above as well as in the inset marks this location, smack dab inside the 2,000-mile-long strip of glacier country in the Martian northern mid-latitudes. As you can see from the inset, that massive hill is actual the foot of a large apron of material, likely ice-infused, that has sagged down from the large 5,400-foot high mesa to the west.
The white material is likely what the scientists call an inverted river. Once it was a channel in which either water or ice flowed. With time the weight of that material compacted the riverbed so that it was denser than the surrounding terrain, much of which was likely soft anyway because of a high ice content. When that surrounding terrain eroded away, the riverbed resisted that erosion, and instead became the raised ridge we now see.
Engineers have begun trial operations for a almost two-mile diameter antenna array in China designed to observe the Sun.
The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT) consists of 313 dishes, each with a diameter of 19.7 feet (6 meters), forming a circle with a circumference of 1.95 miles (3.14 kilometers). A 328-feet-high (100 m) calibration tower stands in the center of the ring. The array has undergone half a year of debugging and testing, demonstrating the capability to consistently and reliably monitor solar activity with high precision. Trial operations officially started July 14, according to CCTV News.
This design is a variation of the VLA radio antenna in New Mexico, which has 28 antennas arranged not in a circle but in a Y-configuration that can be extended or shortened. That additional capability is probably why VLA is focused on astronomical observations, not just the Sun.
NASA has decided for budget reasons to delay the competition by scientists for a planetary mission by at least one year because of new budget constraints which the agency claims come from the budget limits imposed by Congress.
NASA has planned to release the announcement of opportunity, or AO, for the fifth New Frontiers mission in November, after releasing a draft version for public comment early this year. The release of the final AO would have kicked off a competition ending with the selection of a mission in the fall of 2026 for launch in the early 2030s.
However, after a debt-ceiling agreement enacted in early June that would keep non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 levels for fiscal year 2024, NASA tapped the brakes on those plans. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said at a June 21 meeting of the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee that the release of the AO would likely be delayed beyond November as NASA evaluates the implications of the debt-ceiling deal.
That claim is likely bogus. I suspect the real reason the agency has been forced to delay this project is because of cost overruns in other already existing planetary missions, most specifically the Mars Sample Return mission, whose budget has apparently doubled from about $4 billion to $8-$9 billion. Congress is likely not going to increase NASA’s budget in 2024, so this cost overrun forces it to find savings elsewhere.
Northrop Grumman yesterday revealed that unexpected requirement changes to the specifications of its HALO module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station has raised its cost for this fixed price contract by $36 million.
In the company’s fiscal second quarter financial results released July 27, the company announced an unfavorable estimate-at-completion adjustment of $36 million for its work on the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, one of the first elements of the Gateway. The company blamed the charge on “evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges” that caused cost growth on the program.
…“We think that is best applied for commercial items or production programs with stable requirements and mature designs,” [the company’s CEO] said of fixed-price contracts. “As it’s turning out on the HALO program, the requirements are not as stable as we or the government anticipated, and we’re working with them to address that change management as we go forward.”
The HALO module was an upgrade of the company’s Cygnus cargo freighter, with its original fixed-price contract for $935 million.
On a fixed-price contract, NASA is not supposed to change its specifications. The company gets somewhat general requirements from NASA, and then builds the product to its own specifications. It appears that either NASA managers don’t seem to understand this and are causing the company problems, or the company itself had not anticipated some design and construction issues before bidding and are struggling to address them now. In the latter case Northrop Grumman managers might have themselves not understood the nature of fixed-price contracts, and had assumed NASA would simply pick up any increase in the project’s budget, as it does in cost-plus contracts. It apparently is not, and thus this old big space company is now suddenly forced to face reality.
Rocket Lab has revised the design of its new Neutron rocket, reducing the number of fairing shells from four to two, and shifting the location of the first stages fins.
One of the major changes shown is how the payload fairing operates. In prior concepts, the fairing was comprised of 4 quarters that opened outward to allow second stage and payload separation. The new design shows two halves of the fairing opening. Moving from four to two fairings will provide more reliability for the rocket and fewer moving parts.
Another change is a slight design to the forward strakes (fins) that help steer the rocket back to its landing site. Unlike SpaceX, which uses grid fins, the Neutron rocket will use fins that provide more lift and can return to the launch site from further downrange. The forward fins also appear to have moved further up on the rocket, and the fairing halves size made a bit smaller.
The landing legs have also been redesigned, apparently to more closely match the design used on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
These are all relatively minor changes, none of which change the fundamental design that calls for the rocket to be almost entirely reusable.
New but planned commands to Voyager 2, presently flying beyond the solar system, caused the spacecraft to point its antenna incorrectly so that communications with Earth have been lost.
A series of planned commands sent to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. As a result, Voyager 2 is currently unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth.
Voyager 2 is located almost 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth and this change has interrupted communication between Voyager 2 and the ground antennas of the Deep Space Network (DSN). Data being sent by the spacecraft is no longer reaching the DSN, and the spacecraft is not receiving commands from ground controllers.
The spacecraft is also programmed to periodically reset its orientation so that its antenna points to Earth, with the next reset scheduled for October 15th. Engineers hope that at that point contact will be recovered.
If not, this incident will mark the end of the mission, which launched in 1977 and has been functioning for 46 years as it has made close fly-bys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and then eventually entering interstellar space.
Argentina yesterday became the 28th nation to sign the Artemis Accords.
Originally conceived by the Trump as a series of bi-lateral agreements between the U.S. and another country in order to strengthen property rights in space as well as build a U.S. alliance in space, the Biden administration has been more focused on the latter, using the accords more as a tool to increase international cooperation.
The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
SpaceX tonight successfully put another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their second flight.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
50 SpaceX
29 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 57 to 29, and the entire world combined 57 to 48, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 50 to 48.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
Unfortunately, it ain’t gonna happen. The Falcon 9 Starlink launch is still scheduled for 10:20 pm (Eastern) (live stream here), but the Falcon Heavy launch on an adjacent launchpad of a commercial communications satellite at 11:04 pm (Eastern) has now been postponed until tomorrow.
The company was founded by Tom Mueller, one of SpaceX’s original employees who developed the Merlin engine. You can listen to an hour long interview with him here.
This test simulated the de-orbit burn. It has two more static fire burns left in this test program.
“Terrorist” Jerry Gray holding his terrible sign
Bring a gun to a knife fight: After veteran Jeff Gray was issued a citation and fined for standing in front of the city hall of Blackshear, Georgia, with a sign that said “God Bless the Homeless Vets,” he sued, hiring the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to represent him.
In Blackshear, Police Chief Chris Wright approached Gray and informed him of a city ordinance requiring citizens to obtain a government permit for a “parade, procession, or demonstration” if they wanted to hold a sign outside city hall. Although Wright said it was “kind of silly,” he explained that the ordinance — nearly identical to one struck down by the Supreme Court in 1969 — meant that Gray would need to send a letter to Blackshear’s mayor and city council explaining the purpose of his one-person demonstration and obtain the council’s approval. Gray was issued a criminal citation, which was later dismissed.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of a vast dune field, 50 miles square, that sits about 225 miles south of the southern foothills of Mars’ biggest volcano, Olympus Mons.
The dunes are probably less than 20 feet high, with that one small hill only slightly higher. Their similar orientation, which extends across the entire 50-mile-square dune field, indicates the direction of the prevailing winds, which I think (but will not swear to it) is from the southeast to the northwest, which also happens to also follow the grade downhill to the northwest.
It is also possible that wind direction is the reverse, and goes uphill to the southwest.
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Using data from Europe’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, scientists now think they have finally pinpointed the process that causes the Sun’s corona — its atmosphere — to be many times hotter than its surface.
For decades, scientists have been struggling to explain why temperatures in the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, reach mind-boggling temperatures of over 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (one million degrees Celsius). The sun’s surface has only about 10,000 degrees F (6,000 degrees C), and with the corona farther away from the source of the heat inside the star, the outer atmosphere should, in fact, be cooler.
New observations made by the Europe-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft have now provided hints to what might be behind this mysterious heating. Using images taken by the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), a camera that detects the high-energy extreme ultraviolet light emitted by the sun, scientists have discovered small-scale fast-moving magnetic waves that whirl on the sun’s surface. These fast-oscillating waves produce so much energy, according to latest calculations, that they could explain the coronal heating.
You can read the paper here [pdf]. The results have not yet been confirmed, but if so it will solve one of the space age’s oldest scientific mysteries.
Red indicates areas with lots of heavier elements, blue indicates
areas dominated by hydrogen and helium. Click for original image.
Astronomers have now used today’s modern survey telescopes — on Earth and in space — to map the chemistry of a large portion of the Milky Way’s nearby spiral arms, revealing that the arms themselves are rich in heavier elements, indicating greater age and the right materials to produce new stars and solar systems like our own.
If the Milky Way’s spiral arms trigger star births as predicted, then they should be marked by young stars, aka metal-rich stars. Conversely, spaces between the arms should be marked by metal-poor stars.
To confirm this theory, as well as create his overall map of metalicity, Hawkins first looked at our solar system’s galactic backyard, which include stars about 32,000 light years from the sun. In cosmic terms, that represents our stellar neighborhood’s immediate vicinity.
Taking the resultant map, the researcher compared it to others of the same area of the Milky Way created by different techniques, finding that the positions of the spiral arms lined up. And, because he used metalicity to chart the spiral arms, hitherto unseen regions of the Milky Way’s spiral arms showed up in Hawkins’ map. “A big takeaway is that the spiral arms are indeed richer in metals,” Hawkins explained. “This illustrates the value of chemical cartography in identifying the Milky Way’s structure and formation. It has the potential to fully transform our view of the Galaxy.”
You can read the science paper here [pdf]. Based on this initial mapping effort, it appears that it will not be long before a large percentage of our own galaxy will be mapped in this manner.
How nice of them! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday that it will not block the planned purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris, which the company expects to now complete in mere days.
The deal, if finalized, would place L3Harris on a solid footing to achieve Kubasik’s long-stated goal of positioning the company as the sixth major defense prime.
The forthcoming acquisition has also garnered support from an unlikely source: RTX, the parent company of missiles giant Raytheon. Executives from the company, which rely on Aerojet to deliver crucial parts, have been open in recent weeks that while they don’t love strengthening a competitor, they feel Aerojet is in desperate need of new leadership. “We’ve obviously always been concerned about Aerojet. But I would say some of these things have been magnified by all these external inputs,” Wes Kremer, Raytheon president, told Breaking Defense during last month’s Paris Air Show.
Aerojet has had problems for years, especially because the rocket engines it makes are very expensive. It has failed to garner any market share in the new emerging rocket industry, remaining dependent entirely on very generous government contracts and the older big space contractors. But even here, it lost out to Blue Origin when ULA was looking for engines for its new Vulcan rocket.
It is likely that after this merger, the name Aerojet Rocketdyne will vanish, a sad end to a company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the space age.
An image of Io from the March fly-by
The Juno science team is gearing up for the spacecraft’s next fly-by of the Jupiter moon Io, scheduled for July 30, 2023.
When NASA’s Juno mission flies by Jupiter’s fiery moon Io on Sunday, July 30, the spacecraft will be making its closest approach yet, coming within 13,700 miles (22,000 kilometers) of it. Data collected by the Italian-built JIRAM (Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper) and other science instruments is expected to provide a wealth of information on the hundreds of erupting volcanoes pouring out molten lava and sulfurous gases all over the volcano-festooned moon.
The image to the right was taken from 33,000 miles during the March fly-by, almost three times farther away. The dark spots are volcanoes, and some showed significant change from earlier images.
According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.
Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.
The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.
At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.
OSIRIS-REx yesterday completed a 63 second engine burn, successfully aiming the spacecraft so that its September 24th drop off of its sample capsule will hit the Earth as planned.
Preliminary tracking data indicates OSIRIS-REx changed its velocity, which includes speed and direction, by 1.3 miles, or 2 kilometers, per hour. It’s a tiny but critical shift; without course adjustments like this one the spacecraft would not get close enough to Earth on Sept. 24 to drop off its sample of asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft is currently 24 million miles, or 38.6 million kilometers, from Earth, traveling at about 22,000 miles, or about 35,000 kilometers, per hour.
In the two weeks prior to that drop-off the spacecraft will do two more short burns to refine its aim so that the sample capsule will land precisely as planned on the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.
We’re here to help you! The FAA yesterday stated in no uncertain terms that there will be no additional orbital test launches of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy until it has decided the launch will be safe.
The FAA, which is overseeing an investigation into the April 20 launch, said Wednesday it was still awaiting the report it needs to identify corrective actions SpaceX must take to get the OK to launch again from Boca Chica.
An FAA spokesperson declined to speculate when the agency’s investigation might be completed, saying that “public safety and actions yet to be taken by SpaceX will dictate the timeline.”
“The FAA will not allow a return to flight operations until it determines that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety or any other aspect of the operator’s license,” the spokesperson said. “The mishap investigation is ongoing.”
The implication that the FAA is awaiting completion of SpaceX’s own investigation sounds like an attempt to shift the blame for the delay from the government to SpaceX, even though the company has made it very evident in words and deeds that it is moving quickly and will be ready to launch in August.
This threat of a delay is hardly a surprise. I predicted in late April that the federal bureaucracy is targeting SpaceX, and by late May predicted the the FAA would block this August launch attempt.
It is also important to underline the fact that there is absolutely no one at the FAA capable of or knowledgeable enough to competently assess the safety of the next launch. The only people who can really do that are the engineers at SpaceX. All the FAA can do is reject SpaceX’s investigation — for political reasons — and demand SpaceX take additional actions, based merely on random guesses as to what needs to be done. And it can keep doing this repeatedly.
This launch is likely to be delayed many months. You heard it here first.
An evening pause: I posted this as an evening pause a dozen years ago. Diane found it again and said it must be posted again. I agree. It is absurdly silly but I guarantee that once you watch you will never forget it. It also appears, from the comments on the youtube page, that young children — who understand the importance of silly — like it especially.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
This award was one of the eleven NASA contracts announced yesterday, and is in partnership with Zeno Power Systems
Another one of the eleven NAS contracts awarded yesterday.
Other analysis says the total write-offs Boeing has had from Starliner now exceeds $1 billion, numbers that match reports over the last few years here at BtB.
The company claims it will launch before the end of the year.
The company claims the flight allowed it to test its landing software.
More PR info here. Jay notes that he has seen many comments expressing doubt this will ever be built.
Click for original image.
Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center has starkly revealed the dark oppressive mentality that now dominates supporters of the Democratic Party, and makes possible the enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship by its leadership.
The graph to the right shows the big take-away from the poll, as indicated by the arrows and the red box. Democrats now favor censorship by 70 to 28 percent, a major rise since 2018, when their attitude towards free speech was almost identical to Republicans. Since then, while Republican support for the First Amendment and freedom has remained largely stable and strong, Democrats have almost entirely abandoned these American ideals. As Pew notes:
There was virtually no difference between the parties in 2018, but the share of Democrats who support government intervention has grown from 40% in 2018 to 70% in 2023, while the share of Republicans who hold this view hasn’t changed much.
There is a similar gap between the shares of Democrats and Republicans who say technology companies should restrict false information online. A large majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) support technology companies taking such steps, while about half of Republicans (48%) say the same. The share of Democrats who support technology companies taking these steps has also increased steadily since 2018.
These partisan gaps persist when it comes to restricting extremely violent content online. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that the U.S. government (71% vs. 48%, respectively) and tech companies (83% vs. 61%) should take steps to restrict violent content online even if it limits freedom of information.
I must add that this is not a poll of the politicians of the Democratic Party. It is a poll of that party’s supporters, its rank and file, its grass roots. And though the poll showed a rise in the willingness to censor across all age groups, the cause of that rise is clearly coming from Democrats. As noted by Alex Berenson,
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Click for original image.
It is time for two cool images! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and is one of two glaciers imaged by MRO in May that are among a whole series of glaciers flowing down the south wall of the same mesa.
The red dot in the inset and on the overview map above marks the location of the picture to the right. The white dot marks the location of the May 27, 2023 picture, which can be seen here.
The unnamed 10,000-foot-high mesa from which these glaciers flow, located in the middle of the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier glacier country, is about 41 miles long and 18 miles wide at its widest point. The glacier to the right falls about 6,000 feet in about four miles, making the grade steep, ranging from 15 to 23 degrees. That steepness explains the split in the glacier, as it flowed around a huge piece of higher bedrock in the middle of this descending hollow.
Both images provide further evidence of the dominance of glaciers in this mid-latitude region. While the glaciers are all covered with dust and debris to protect the ice, and are also thought at present to all be inactive, they also all suggest a very dynamic Martian geological and climate history, one that will likely come alive again as the planet’s rotational tilt naturally shifts back and forth from its present 25 degree tilt to 11 to 60 degrees.
The glaciers also show us again that Mars is not a dry desert, but above 30 degrees latitude it is an icy desert much like Antarctica. Colonists will have no trouble finding water.
