Category: Behind The Black

NASA policy for naming missions now discourages honoring individuals

9:39 am

In a change apparently brought about by the fake and bigoted slanders against James Webb, who led NASA brilliantly for almost the entire 1960s space race and was thus honored by NASA when it named the James Webb Space Telescope after him, NASA has now changed its policy for naming missions in order to discourage any future missions to be named after individuals.

According to the new policy, a NASA historian must be involved, and “The historical analysis led by [the naming committee] will include a human capital review to ensure diversity, unity, inclusion, and inspiration are considered.” The policy also states:

Where possible, limit the practice of naming projects, missions, instruments, etc., after individuals. (a) Instead use the theme of unity, inspiration, or the accomplishments of a person as the primary criterion for a project or mission name. (b) Except in extraordinary circumstances will names of individuals be considered and, only in more rare circumstances, may individuals who are still living receive consideration. (c) The use of an individual’s name should be based on their contributions to America, NASA, and humanity, and therefore be so extraordinary that any other form of recognition by the Agency would be considered inadequate. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase is typical jargon used by the “diversity, unity, inclusion” crowd, and indicates that any past great American who did something great for America but not for the rest of the world, will be considered unqualified. Thus, do not expect any missions to be ever named after our Founding Fathers, or other great Americans. Instead, I expect any individuals who get honored in the future will be chosen in order to push “diversity, unity, inclusion”.

2 comments

NASA names four astronauts to fly on first manned Artemis mission around Moon

9:23 am

NASA today named the four astronauts who will fly on its Artemis-2 in a 10-day mission around the Moon, launched on SLS’s second launch in an Orion capsule and tentatively scheduled for late 2024.

The crew assignments are as follows: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, and Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen. They will work as a team to execute an ambitious set of demonstrations during the flight test.

The approximately 10-day Artemis II flight test will launch on the agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, prove the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.

The flight, set to build upon the successful uncrewed Artemis I mission completed in December, will set the stage for the first woman and first person of color on the Moon through the Artemis program, paving the way for future for long-term human exploration missions to the Moon, and eventually Mars. This is the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate some important facts. First, this first manned flight of Orion will also be the first that will use the capsule’s life-support systems, which were not included the first flight around the Moon in December. Thus, these four humans are essentially guinea pigs for this engineering. Seems such a plan should have been questioned by NASA’S corrupt safety panel, but then, it is corrupt, and never seems to have much problem with unsafe practices done by NASA itself. Instead, it spends a lot of time making up problems for SpaceX and missing problems at Boeing and NASA.

Second, note NASA’s emphasis on race and sex for the first landing on the Artemis-3 mission. Note too that Artemis-2 crew also includes a black and a woman. Though the press release wisely and correctly makes no mention of race when describing the four astronauts, it does tout the achievements of Christina Koch as a woman, not as a person.

Don’t get me wrong. It is good that a black and a woman are flying to the Moon. It just appears very clear that NASA now has a firm quota system, requiring one of each for every mission.

Finally, there is something not mentioned in the press release or on the Artemis-2 webpage that is very telling. Neither says anything about a launch date, which NASA had previously announced as November 2024. I have been predicting from the beginning that this date is a fantasy. It now appears NASA realizes it but is not yet ready to admit it publicly.

4 comments

Starship and Superheavy readied for orbital flight

10:22 am

With Superheavy prototype #7 already on the launchpad at Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX engineers yesterday moved Starship prototype #24 beside it in preparation for stacking the orbital spacecraft on top of Superheavy for a launch now expected no earlier than April 10, 2023.

As the article notes, when Superheavy lifts off, it will set a new record for the most powerful rocket, having twice the thrust of either of NASA’s Saturn-5 or SLS rockets. And this record will be achieved by a privately built and owned rocket whose development has been funded almost entirely by private investment capital. Note too that the development took about six years, from concept to first launch, a few years less than it took NASA to build the Saturn-5 in the 1960s, and about one third the time it NASA to do the same thing with SLS in the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s.

The orbital mission, it successful, will have Superheavy lift off, separate from Starship and then land controlled in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will continue into orbit, and then attempt a controlled vertical splashdown in the Pacific Ocean northwest of the big Island of Hawaii.

At the moment, it appears the only obstacle to launch remains the FAA, which after many months has still not issued the launch license. This new activity at Boca Chica however suggests SpaceX expects that approval to occur momentarily.

15 comments

Japan officially delays next H2A rocket launch because of H3 launch failure

10:07 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA has now officially delayed its next H2A rocket launch, scheduled for May and carrying a Japanese lunar lander dubbed SLIM, because that rocket shares some components of Japan’s new H3 rocket, which failed during its inaugural launch in March.

No new launches are currently planned after a series of setbacks for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, including the next-generation H3 rocket’s failure and that of the smaller Epsilon-6 in October, which was ordered to self-destruct after deviating from its intended trajectory shortly after takeoff.

The earliest the H2A launch can be rescheduled for is August, due to the orbital mechanics for getting it to the Moon. There are indications however that even this date will not be met.

Leave a comment

India successfully lands its own version of the X-37B on a runway

10:00 am

LEX landing

India’s space agency ISRO today successfully landed its own version of the X-37B on a runway.

The flight was a test of the landing system. The spacecraft, dubbed LEX, was dropped from a helicopter at an elevation of 2.8 miles above sea level. It then autonomously guided itself to the runway to land smoothly. The picture to the right shows LEX as it approaches the runway. Note how similar it looks to the X-37B.

ISRO had demonstrated the re-entry of its winged vehicle RLV-TD in the HEX mission in May 2016. … In HEX, the vehicle landed on a hypothetical runway over the Bay of Bengal. Precise landing on a runway was an aspect not included in the HEX mission. The LEX mission achieved the final approach phase that coincided with the re-entry return flight path exhibiting an autonomous, high speed (350 kmph) landing.

The next step will of course be to launch an orbital version, and bring it back to Earth for reuse.

Leave a comment

SpaceX and Chinese pseudo-company complete launches

9:46 am

Two launches today. First, a new Chinese pseudo-company, dubbed Space Pioneer, completed the first launch of its liquid kerosene-fueled Tianlong-1 rocket, putting a military surveillance satellite into orbit.

Space Pioneer is the third Chinese pseudo-company to achieve orbit, but the first to do it with a liquid-fueled rocket. The previous two, Ispace and Galactic Energy, used solid-fueled rockets based on military missile technology. All of these Chinese companies follow a private model. An individual or a group of individuals creates the company, obtains private investment capital, and then wins contracts from the Chinese government. What makes them pseudo is that they do not work independently and freely, and really do not own their products. The Chinese government supervises and approves everything, and can take over at any time.

The second launch today was by SpaceX, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to put a new smallsat constellation of ten military satellites, designed to test the quick development (under two years) of such smallsats for use by the military.

The first stage successfully completed its second flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The fairings completed their fourth and sixth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

22 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 25 to 14 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 25 to 24. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including American companies, 22 to 27.

2 comments

Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane completes another test flight

9:31 pm

Stratolaunch today announced that it has successfully completed the third capture-carry test using its giant Roc airplane, carrying an engineering test version of its Talon vehicle, designed to do hypersonic flight tests for the Air Force.

The flight was the tenth for the company’s launch platform Roc and marks the beginning of routine flight operations in Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Western Range off California’s central coast. The flight, which lasted a total of five hours, performed risk reduction by practicing a variety of separation profiles and confirming telemetry between Roc and Talon-A vehicles and Vandenberg Space Force Base’s communication assets, assuring that back-up telemetry data collection will occur during future flight tests.

Pending results of post-flight data analysis, the team will progress toward a separation test in the coming weeks, enabling the company to perform its first hypersonic flight in 2023.

There is a lot of potential test capability for Roc and Talon, not just with hypersonic missiles and aircraft. If Stratolaunch succeeds in fulfilling this Air Force contract, it will likely garner a good amount of additional business.

Leave a comment

Lunar rover startup signs deal to send rover to the Moon using Starship

9:25 pm

The lunar rover startup Astrolab has signed a deal with SpaceX to send its FLEX rover to the Moon’s south pole region using a lunar lander version of Starship.

Jaret Matthews, founder and chief executive of Astrolab, said in an interview that the mission, which will include 1,000 kilograms of customer payloads, will be the first flight of the FLEX rover. It will be a rideshare payload on a Starship mission landing somewhere in the south polar region of the moon.

“Because our rover can traverse up to a couple thousand kilometers in a given year, we’re less sensitive to exactly where we land,” he said. “’It is definitely optimized for the south polar region because that’s fundamentally where we think that the bulk of the activity is going to be.”

The company unveiled a full scale prototype of its rover one year ago, when it made it clear it intended to compete for the rover contract in NASA’s Artemis program, competing against several big established players. Since then there has been little news. The story today sadly reeks to me of a lot of blarney. For example, the company has only 20 employees. Astrolab might have signed this deal, but I suspect it is a very tentative deal, easily canceled by either party at no cost.

Leave a comment

Update on MOXIE’s two years on Mars, producing oxygen

9:17 pm

Link here. MOXIE is a technology test instrument on the rover Perseverance that has proven it will be possible to practically produce sufficient oxygen from the Martian atmosphere to sustain a human colony.

The link provides a nice summary of everything the engineering team has accomplished since Perseverance landed in testing this technology. As I wrote in my December post about MOXIE’s achievements:

Based on these tests, MOXIE has unequivocally proven that future human explorers will not need to bring much oxygen with them, and will in fact have essentially an unlimited supply, on hand from the red planet itself. More important, MOXIE has also proven that the technology to obtain this oxygen already exists.

All we need to do is plant enough MOXIE trees on Mars.

Leave a comment

Midnight repost: The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

1:01 am

The indictment of Donald Trump this week on bogus charges by a local New York Democratic Party machine politician, done for entirely political reasons, once again illustrates the ugliness of that party. Seems therefore appropriate to repost this August 2022 essay. The only thing that has changed since then an increase in the aggressive, vicious, and violent nature of the Democrats and their allies in the various LBGQTBIBOC etc queer and bigoted identity movements. They are acting with ever greater impunity, while we certainly have not seen any clear evidence that the decent population of the United States has risen up in outrage. Instead, it increasingly appears they are bowing their heads in fear, and letting the bullies win.

It also appears that even if decent Americans finally now step up with outrage, it will be too little too late. For far too long they slept, and now they reap the whirlwind.

The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the Trump raid finally wake Americans up?

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.
» Read more

13 comments

Sponge terrain on Mars

11:44 am

Sponge terrain on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissnace Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists labeled this picture “Rocky Terrain.” Though this describes the overall sense of the full image, it fails to capture correctly the nature of this patch of ground at the center of the picture. As you can see, this patch of spongelike surface starts and ends abruptly. It appears that it is a layer on top of the surrounding terrain that has also been eroded aggressively since its placement.

The many craters on its surface seem to have come later, though as the crater size diminishes it becomes harder to separate the craters from the sponge holes. Moreover, some of the larger craters are distorted in shape, as if the impact hit material that was viscous and could flow somewhat.

The overview map below gives some context, but only some.
» Read more

3 comments

Spain’s government officially establishes a Spanish space agency

9:41 am

Spain’s Council of Ministers has voted to officially established a Spanish space agency, with operations beginning on March 7, 2023 with an initial budget of $753 million.

This announcement comes only a month before the private Spanish company, PLD, attempts its first suborbital launch from a Spanish spaceport of its Miura-1 rocket, its first stage designed to come back to Earth by parachute, recovered, and then reused. If successful the company hopes to then develop an orbital version.

The news from Europe increasing suggests that the members of the European Space Agency (ESA) are beginning to go their own way, relying less upon it. In addition to these developments in Spain, Germany now has three private companies developing rockets while Italy’s government has provided $308 million to its own Italian rocket company Avio. The United Kingdom meanwhile has had its own space agency for several years, is building several spaceports, and has been trying to develop its own space industry, with very mixed results. In addition, both Norway and Sweden are building spaceports for commercial operations.

ESA, while mouthing support for commercial space, has so far not done well in the past decade in transitioning from a government run, built, and owned operation to one owned by commercial companies. Its new Ariane-6 rocket, built and controlled by ArianeGroup but heavily managed by ESA, is still too expensive to compete with the new commercial rockets from the U.S. Nor does it appear ESA is moving very fast to fix this situation. It appears many people in Europe have recognized this state of affairs, and are looking for alternatives.

One comment

Two launches by China

9:15 am

China's spaceports
China’s spaceports

China yesterday and today successfully completed two launches using two different rockets from two different spaceports.

First, a Long March 2D rocket yesterday launched a set of four satellites establishing a new constellation of radar satellites designed to measure the Earth’s surface topography. Lift off was from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the northeast of China. No word on where the rocket’s first stage crashed.

Next, a Long March 4C rocket today placed in orbit a classified military “remote-sensing” satellite, lifting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest. Once again, no information was released on where the first and second stages of the rocket crashed to Earth.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

21 SpaceX
13 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 24 to 13 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 24 to 23. SpaceX now trails the entire world combined, including American companies, 26 to 21.

One comment

Virgin Orbit shuts down

5:12 pm

Unable to secure new funding, the managers of Virgin Orbit have shuttered the company, possibly forever.

Virgin Orbit is ceasing operations “for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline, CEO Dan Hart told employees during an all-hands meeting Thursday afternoon. The company will lay off nearly all of its workforce. “Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Hart said, according to audio of the 5 p.m. ET meeting obtained by CNBC.

The layoffs include all but 100 positions, about 85% of its workforce.

The company was killed because the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) took an extra six months approving a launch license, during which the company could launch nothing and thus make no money. Lacking revenue, it ran out of cash. If the company goes into bankruptcy, this detail is most intriguing:

Branson has first priority over Virgin Orbit’s assets, as the company raised $60 million in debt from the investment arm of Virgin Group.

In other words, Branson will be able to walk off with everything, and even resurrect the company as his own, for pennies on the dollar. If he does, I guarantee our bankrupt mainstream press will shower him with praise, calling him a hero.

8 comments

A bubbly cauldron on the surface of Mars

12:49 pm

A bubbly cauldron on the surface of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a strange terrain of craters and mounds, with all the mounds having pits within them like volcanic calderas. In between the surface has a two-toned stippled look, as if two different materials are in the process of mixing.

My immediate impression was that of the bubbly surface of a vat of tomato sauce simmering. Or maybe the vile mixture created by the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which as they mix they chant:

First witch:
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

ALL:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Of course, this is not a vat of witch’s brew or tomato sauce. It is the surface of the planet Mars, but an alien surface nonetheless.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Frank Rubio’s flight to ISS will exceed a year, setting a new American record

10:25 am

Frank Rubio
Frank Rubio

Initially, Frank Rubio’s first flight in space was intended to be a standard six month mission on ISS. Launched on September 21, 2022 on a Soyuz-2 rocket inside a Soyuz capsule, the plan was for him and his two crewmates to return in March, 2023.

Then their Soyuz capsule developed a leak in its coolant system in December 2022. Not knowing if it was safe to use this capsule with humans inside, a replacement unmanned Soyuz capsule was launched by the Russians to ISS in February 2023, with the leaking Soyuz capsule brought back unmanned earlier this week.

The Russians however decided that this new capsule, designed for a six month mission, would stay in orbit for six months, so that it would be used to its planned capability. This decision also hinged on the lack of a new crew arriving on this new capsule. If it brought Rubio and his crew home earlier, ISS would be short three crew members for at least several months.

The planned return date, September 27, 2023, now means that Rubio’s mission will be at least 371 days long, making him the first American to fly a full year in space. Previously NASA falsely touted Scott Kelly’s 340-day mission as a year-long mission, when it never was. Later, Mark Vande Hei’s mission, also launched on a Soyuz, was extended to 355 days, still just short of a year, because the Russians wanted to send a film crew to ISS and return them on the capsule which Vande Hei was intended to come home on.

Whether Rubio truly does spend a year in space however remains uncertain. Two different Russian spacecraft — the Soyuz and a Progress freighter — have developed this coolant leak in the past three months. If this problem is a systemic manufacturing error, which Russia is now investigating, the decision might be to return the new capsule sooner than planned, out of fear it will develop its own leak. We shall likely find out sometime in the next three months.

If Rubio does end up in space for a full year, however, it will likely be a dream come true, having become an astronaut in 2017 but waiting six years for his first flight.

6 comments

New startup unveils 3D printer for making rocket tanks and fairings

10:02 am

Rosotics, a new startup focusing on providing manufacturing components for rocket companies, has now unveiled a prototype of its proposed 3D printer, dubbed Mantis, for making rocket tanks and fairings.

Mesa, Arizona-based Rosotics plans to begin delivering the Mantis in the third quarter of 2023 to customers who place $95,000 deposits and sign hardware-as-a-service contracts. After delivery, Rosotics “will install, maintain and upgrade your hardware over time without any cost to you,” LaRosa said.

While the Mantis can be configured for various tasks, the starting point is a one printhead to additively manufacture aluminum or steel structures ranging in size from 1.5 to 8 meters in diameter.

The idea is sell this manufacturing capability to rocket companies as well as other manufacturers who need large structures built. Rather than machining these large structures themselves, or have outside machining companies do it for them, the companies would buy Mantis to do it in-house instead.

Whether this model will work depends on price and operations. Is it cheaper and quicker to use this 3D printer to make large rocket parts, or traditional methods? Obviously, Rosotics thinks it is. We will find out if others think so if Rosotics survives.

One comment

H3 failure delays Japan’s entire space program

9:53 am

According to one official of Japan’s space agency JAXA, the failure of the first launch of its new H3 rocket in early March now threatens the schedule of much of Japan’s entire space program, even those missions being launched on the older H2A rocket.

The investigation into the launch failure, when the upper stage of the H3 rocket failed to ignite, remains unfinished with no word when it will be completed.

The H3 upper stage uses an engine designated LE-5B-3 developed by MHI [Mitsubishi Heavy Industries] and similar to the LE-5B engine used on the existing H-2A rocket. That is putting launches of the H-2A on hold while the investigation continues.

That may delay the upcoming launch of two science missions sharing an H-2A. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), an X-ray astronomy spacecraft, and the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), a lunar lander, were scheduled to launch together as soon as May on an H-2A.

The article notes that XRISM replaces a 2016 Japanese X-ray telescope that failed immediately after launch. That failure then was bad, but just as bad is the seven years it has taken JAXA to have a replacement ready.

The H3 failure also threatens a JAXA Mars mission scheduled for launch in 2024, during the next launch window to Mars.

Japan’s space program more and more resembles Russia’s. It is controlled entirely by the government, which it appears does not allow competition within Japan, as all major rocket work is apparently confined to Mitsubishi. There have been unending quality control problems, within many probes as well as in the development of both the H3 and the Epsilon rockets. And the pace of operations is slow, much slower than other nations or companies.

It seems a major reform is needed, and it should start with Japanese government officials reading Capitalism in Space. They need to open up competition and release their space program from the control of JAXA, especially because JAXA is not doing a very good job. Like NASA, it would be better if JAXA stopped being a designer and builder, and become merely a customer obtaining products from many different competing private companies.

4 comments

Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket launches classified military satellite

11:06 pm

Russia today successfully launched a classified military satellite, using its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.

The rocket traveled north over the Arctic Ocean, so its first stage fell harmlessly into the ocean.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

21 SpaceX
11 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 24 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 24 to 21. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world, including other American companies, 21 to 24.

Leave a comment

In U.S. sales of dumb phones are up

4:00 pm

It appears that American users of mobile phones are shifting every so slightly away from smart phones, with sales of simple flip-phones lacking a screen rising in the past year.

In the U.S., feature flip phone sales were up in 2022 for HMD Global, with tens of thousands sold each month. At the same time, HMD’s global feature phone sales were down, according to the company.

In 2022, almost 80% of feature phone sales in 2022 came from the Middle East, Africa and India, according to Counterpoint Research. But some see that number shifting, as a contingency of young people in the U.S. revert back to dumb or minimalist phones. “In North America, the market for dumb phones is pretty much flatlined,” said Moorhead. “But I could see it getting up to 5% increase in the next five years if nothing else, based on the public health concerns that are out there.”

Companies like Punkt and Light are catering to the trend, selling devices geared toward those with a desire to spend less time on their phones and social media. On YouTube, you will find a slew of influencers touting these phones.

It is not clear if this is a real trend, or merely a bit of press release salesmanship by HMD and others. If it is however I think it is a good trend. Smart phones do very little to make people smarter. Instead, they foster a shallow thinking process focused on emotion. The more people who get away from them the better.

13 comments

Psyche asteroid mission now scheduled for October 2023 launch

3:40 pm

After a year delay because certain flight software was not ready on time for its first launch window in the fall of 2022, the science team for the Psyche asteroid mission are now aiming for an October 2023 launch.

The launch period will open Oct. 5 and close Oct. 25. The asteroid, which lies in the outer portion of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may be the remains of a core of a planetesimal, a building block of a rocky planet.

Due to the new launch date, Psyche has a new mission plan, which includes a flyby of Mars for a gravity assist and arrival at the asteroid in August 2029. The mission then will enter its 26-month science phase, collecting observations and data as the spacecraft orbits the asteroid at different altitudes.

Meanwhile, the two Janus probes that were to launch with Psyche last year remain in limbo, as this new Psyche launch date is useless to that mission’s plan to fly past a different asteroid.

One comment

Boeing & NASA; 1st Starliner manned mission to now launch on July 21

3:34 pm

In a update posted by NASA today, agency and Boeing officials announced that they are now aiming to launch Boeing’s Starliner capsule on July 21, 2023 on its first manned mission to ISS.

The new target date provides NASA and Boeing the necessary time to complete subsystem verification testing and close out test flight certification products and aligns with the space station manifest and range launch opportunities.

The specifics behind this somewhat meaningless press release jargon can be found at this twitter thread. Apparently Boeing & NASA want to do more ground tests of the capsule’s parachute system as well as its flight software. There also appears to be some issue relating to the capsule’s batteries.

Boeing is also mulling a redesign of Starliner’s batteries for after this delayed crewed flight test. It also expects to redesign Starliner’s smart initiator system, which separates the crew from service module. NASA’s paying $24 million for that redesign amid added requirements

Though Boeing has a fixed price contract with NASA, if NASA demands redesigns or changes it has to pay for them. That Boeing and NASA are finding these issues at this late date, four years after Starliner was first supposed to launch, does not speak well of Boeing’s workmanship and quality control systems.

3 comments

The chaos between galaxies following their head-on collision

2:09 pm

The chaos between galaxies following their head-on collision
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken using the Gemini North ground-based 8-meter telescope in Hawaii. It shows two spiral galaxies about 180 million light years away following a head-on collision about 25 million years ago, in which the smaller spiral moved through the larger from the bottom to the top.

Upon exiting, the smaller spiral trailed behind it the reddish stream of material, while its outside arms on the right were bent downward. That trailing material is why astronomers have dubbed these the “Taffy Galaxies.” Imagine pulling two clumps of taffy apart. The stretched material linking the two clumps is the bridge of trailing material between these two galaxies. From the caption:

When the Taffy Galaxies’ collided, their galactic disks and gaseous components smashed right into each other. This resulted in a massive injection of energy into the gas, causing it to become highly turbulent. As the pair emerged from their collision, high-velocity gas was pulled from each galaxy, creating a massive gas bridge between them. The turbulence of the stellar material throughout the bridge is now prohibiting the collection and compression of gas that are required to form new stars.

The evolution of galaxies is incredibly slow, from the perspective of human existence. For example, this first collision 25 million years ago seems like it took a long time, but it will likely be followed by many more over the next billion years, eventually resulting in a single spherical elliptical galaxy. On the time scale of the universe, collisions every 100 million years or so means galaxies like this can mix and collide many times, and do so well within the existence of the theorized lifespan of the universe itself.

To us short-lived humans, however, this process just seems so slow it can’t possibly happen as described. But it does.

Sidebar: It appears this image was released to herald the repair of Gemini North’s primary mirror, which was damaged in two places on its edge during a recoating operation on October 20, 2022. Since then the telescope has been shut down as repair operations were undertaken. That repair is now complete, and it is expected the telescope will resume science observations in a few weeks.

2 comments

SpaceX launches another 56 Starlink satellites

1:19 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The first stage successfully completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Russia was also launching at almost the exact same time a classified military satellite, using its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia, but at the moment there is no word on whether that launch was a success.

For the moment then the leaders in the 2023 launch race are as follows:

21 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia (with a planned launch today)
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 24 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 24 to 20. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world, including other American companies, 21 to 23.

Leave a comment

Zhurong: Small polygons on light curved dunes indicate regular atmospheric water interaction

1:12 pm

Zhurong's full journey on Mars

A paper published this week in Geophysical Research Letters by the science team for China Zhurong Martian rover has revealed the discovery of small polygon cracks on the surface of the many curved light-colored small dunes found in the region where Zhurong landed, suggesting the possibility of relatively recent water activity between the atmosphere and the dune surfaces.

Those dunes, dubbed transverse aeolian ridges (TARs) by the science team, are the many light curves visible in the labeled Mars Reconnaissance mosaic to the right. The blue arrows indicate Zhurong’s path south from its landing spot at the top and ending near the bottom of the picture after traveling about 1,400 feet.

According to the paper, the TARs were formed by the prevailing winds over many eons, coming first from the north and then from the northwest. The edges of the ridges, being smaller, are pushed ahead quicker, thus creating the curved shape. The polygons were small, never larger than 4 inches in size, with five to six sides. The scientists theorize that they were formed when atmospheric water interacted with the dune crust, causing fractures “due to temperature/moisture changes or deliquescence/dehydration cycling of salts”. This process could be slow or fast, and could actually be occurring in relatively recent times, as the scientists say it requires only a little water in the atmosphere.

More likely however we are seeing evidence of water from the past, from tens of thousands to several million years ago.

Zhurong meanwhile remains in hibernation, and might never come out of that condition. Orbital images indicate that its solar panels are dust-covered, the result of the heavy winter dust storm season. The project team however is hopeful that with time and the arrival of Martian summer the dust will be blown off and they can reactivate the rover. This hope however entirely depends on the arrival of a dust devil acoss the top of Zhurong, a random event that cannot be predicted. With both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, such events happened regularly, allowing those missions to last years instead of only 90 days. With InSight it never happened, and the lander died after two-plus years on Mars.

Zhurong’s future fate thus remains unknown, but not promising at this moment.

Leave a comment
1 … 179 180 181 182 183 … 1,109