Category: Behind The Black

SpaceX completes third launch in less than two days

3:20 pm

SpaceX successfully launched another 54 Starlink satellites today, completing the company’s third launch in less than two days.

The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 15th flight, a record, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

60 China
59 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 83 to 60 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 92 to 83.

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Russians test thrusters on leaking Soyuz

9:28 am

In the continuing investigation into the leak of coolant from a Soyuz capsule docked to ISS, Russian engineers yesterday tested the capsule’s thrusters, finding they functioned as normal.

As part of the ongoing evaluation and investigation, Roscosmos flight controllers conducted a successful test of the Soyuz MS-22 thrusters at 3:08 a.m. EST Friday, Dec. 16. The systems that were tested were nominal, and Roscosmos assessments of additional Soyuz systems continue. Temperatures and humidity within the Soyuz spacecraft, which remains docked to the Rassvet module, are within acceptable limits.

The highlighted words have been the Russians’ way of downplaying a serious concern. According to their own data, the temperatures in the capsule have now risen to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, which though entirely safe is higher than normal for within habitable spacecraft. Should those temperatures continue to rise, it will start to become a problem.

One solution would be circulate cooler air from the rest of the station. I suspect this is possible with equipment on board, but do not know for sure.

Right now however it surely appears that it would likely not be wise to return its crew to Earth in this capsule, and that a replacement will be required.

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SpaceX launches two communications satellites

3:59 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched two communications satellites for the satellite company SES, beginning SpaceX’s contract to launch more satellites in its constellation of medium-Earth orbit satellites, replacing the Russians.

The first stage successfully flew its eighth flight, and landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

This was also the company’s second launch today, with another launch scheduled for tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

60 China
58 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 82 to 60 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 92 to 82.

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December 16, 2022 Quick space links

3:05 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s stringer.

 

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The edge of the Martian south pole ice cap

2:42 pm

The edge of the Martian south pole ice cap
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 4, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The MRO science team labeled this simply “Diverse Terrain,” an apt description but woefully incomplete.

Though the grade here goes uphill to the south, there are ups and downs along the way. The flat areas near the top as well that band near the bottom appear to be the oldest terrain, with the rough hollows appearing to be places where that flat material has sublimated or eroded away.

This terrain is in the very high southern latitudes. South is to the bottom of this picture, with the south pole of Mars about 380 miles away. Thus, that eroding top layer is likely disappearing because it has either water ice or dry ice within it, and over time it sublimates away.

The picture itself was taken in winter, when the entire surface is likely covered with a thin mantle of dry ice that fell as snow with the coming of colder temperatures. A wider view of this region in the spring, taken by MRO’s context camera, shows that this mantle, now appearing like white frost, appears largely confined to the higher terrain. Apparently, the annual sublimation of this dry ice mantle is linked somehow to the erosion of this flat terrain.

The additional location information provided by overview map below helps explain why this terrain is so diverse.
» Read more

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A barred spiral galaxy with distorted galaxy

10:58 am

A barred spiral galaxy
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced and cropped to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows a barred spiral galaxy about 214 million light years away.

Scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to image NGC 6956 to study its Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that brighten and dim at regular periods. Since the period of Cepheid variable stars is a function of their brightness, scientists can measure how bright these stars appear from Earth and compare it to their actual brightness to calculate their distance. As a result, these stars are extremely useful in determining the distance of cosmic objects, which is one of the hardest pieces of information to measure for extragalactic objects.

The press release of course focuses on this magnificent barred spiral. I however want to draw your attention to the smaller galaxy in the white box.

background distorted galaxy

Since we do not know the distance to this distorted galaxy, we do not know if its distortion is caused by the barred spiral. It could be the bigger galaxy’s gravity is pulling material away.

More likely, based on the shape of this smaller galaxy, is that it is many light years farther away — which is why it looks so much smaller — and has been distorted because it is actually a collusion of two galaxies. The two bright nuclei with the red dust between strongly suggests such a collusion.

I highlight this background galaxy because it illustrates the importance when looking at any Hubble image to look at everything. To coin a phrase, there is gold in them thar hills, if you make the effort to look.

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NASA loses contact with one hurricane satellite in constellation of eight

10:36 am

NASA has lost contact with one of the eight CYGNSS satellites it uses to track and measure hurricanes worldwide.

The remaining seven satellites that comprise the CYGNSS constellation remain operational and have continued collecting scientific data since FM06 went incommunicado last month, according to NASA’s primary statement about the incident. The constellation’s science work can continue without FM06, but if the team can’t reconnect with the spacecraft, the loss will reduce the spatial coverage of CYGNSS, which until November provided nearly gap-free coverage of Earth.

At the moment engineers do not know why contact was lost, or if they can regain it.

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Astronomers determine that two super-Earths are not as rocky as previously believed

10:32 am

Using observations from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the now retired Spitzer infrared space telescope, astronomers now think that two super-Earth-sized explanets are not as rocky as previously believed, and are in fact liquid worlds with as much as half their make-up comprised of water. From the press release:

Water wasn’t directly detected at Kepler-138 c and d, but by comparing the sizes and masses of the planets to models, astronomers conclude that a significant fraction of their volume – up to half of it – should be made of materials that are lighter than rock but heavier than hydrogen or helium (which constitute the bulk of gas giant planets like Jupiter). The most common of these candidate materials is water.

“We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that’s why we called them super-Earths,” explained Björn Benneke, study co-author and professor of astrophysics at the University of Montreal. “However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time.”

With volumes more than three times that of Earth and masses twice as big, planets c and d have much lower densities than Earth. This is surprising because most of the planets just slightly bigger than Earth that have been studied in detail so far all seemed to be rocky worlds like ours. The closest comparison, say researchers, would be some of the icy moons in the outer solar system that are also largely composed of water surrounding a rocky core.

This data simply underlines a basic point: The information we have of all exoplanets is sparse, practically nil. Any conclusions about their make-up is an educated guess, at best. Even now the conclusion that these are water worlds should be treated with great skepticism.

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Ingenuity completes 36th flight; preps for its 37th

10:08 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity on December 10, 2022 successfully completed 36th flight, flying about 180 feet to the northwest and then returning the same distance to land at its take-off point.

This was the third flight in a row to land at this point, and was also the third flight since the Mars helicopter’s software was upgraded to allow it to fly higher and over rougher terrain.

The green dot on the map to the right shows Ingenuity’s present position. The blue dot shows where Perseverance presently sits. The rover has been moving eastward, away from the cliff face to the west where it had gathered more core samples, including the first to contain surface regolith (that is, the dirt of Mars).

Engineers are already planning Ingenuity’s 37th flight, which is scheduled for tomorrow and will reposition the helicopter to a new landing spot.

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More results from DART impact of Dimorphos

9:44 am

Didymos and Dimorphos as seen from Earth
Click for movie.

At a science conference this week scientists provided an update on the changes that occurred to the asteroid Dimorphos after it was impacted by the DART spacecraft in September, shortening its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos by 33 minutes.

The image to the right is a screen capture from a short movie made from 30 images taken by the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico, and part of a new image release of the asteroid pair.

It shows the motion of the Didymos system across the sky over the course of roughly 80 minutes, and features a long, linear tail stretching to the right from the asteroid system to the edge of the frame. The animation is roughly 32,000 kilometers across the field of view at the distance of Didymos.

According to the scientists, the impact displaced more than two million pounds of material from Dimorphos.

Observations before and after impact, reveal that Dimorphos and its larger parent asteroid, Didymos, have similar makeup and are composed of the same material – material that has been linked to ordinary chondrites, similar to the most common type of meteorite to impact the Earth. These measurements also took advantage of the ejecta from Dimorphos, which dominated the reflected light from the system in the days after impact. Even now, telescope images of the Didymos system show how solar radiation pressure has stretched the ejecta stream into a comet-like tail tens of thousands of miles in length.

Putting those pieces together, and assuming that Didymos and Dimorphos have the same densities, the team calculates that the momentum transferred when DART hit Dimorphos was roughly 3.6 times greater than if the asteroid had simply absorbed the spacecraft and produced no ejecta at all – indicating the ejecta contributed to moving the asteroid more than the spacecraft did.

This information is teaching us a great deal about these two particular asteroids, which could be used if for some reason their totally safe orbit got changed and they were going to impact Earth. However, NASA’s repeated effort to make believe this info would be useful for deflecting other asteroids is somewhat absurd. It is helpful, but each asteroid is unique. The data from DART is mostly helping astronomers get a better understanding of the geology of these specific asteroids, which will widen their understanding of asteroids in general. Planetary defense is really a very minor aspect of this work.

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Russian official: Soyuz leak possibly caused by micrometeorite hit

9:17 am

According to Sergei Krikalev, who heads Roscosmos’ manned program, the leak of coolant from the Soyuz capsule docked at ISS could have been caused by a micrometeorite hit.

Sergei Krikalev, a veteran cosmonaut who serves as the director of crewed space flight programs at Roscosmos, said a meteorite striking one of external radiators of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule could have caused the coolant to escape.

The malfunction could affect the performance of the capsule’s coolant system and the temperature in the equipment section of the capsule but doesn’t endanger the crew, Krikalev said in a statement.

Krikalev said Russian flight controllers were assessing the situation and following temperature indicators on the Soyuz. “There have been no other changes in parameters on the Soyuz spacecraft and the station, so there is no threat for the crew,” he said.

The “equipment section of the capsule” is its service module, not its habitable orbital module or descent module.

Krikalev, the first Russian to fly on the space shuttle and occupy ISS, is a generally very reliable source. He is speculating, but not wildly but based on what is so far known. The upcoming inspection of the Soyuz using an ISS robot arm will soon tell us whether he is right or not. Krikalev also said that the inspection will tell them whether this capsule can be used to return its astronauts to Earth.

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China launches test satellite

9:04 am

The launch list changes immediately! China also completed a successful launched today, using its Long March 11 rocket to put an experimental satellite into orbit, designed to do “in-orbit verification of new space technologies.”

The rocket is solid-fueled, and designed to launch quickly as needed. No word on where its lower stages crashed inside China.

The updated leaders in the 2022 launch race:

60 China
57 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 81 to 60 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 92 to 81.

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SpaceX launches oceanography satellite

8:57 am

SpaceX early this morning used its Falcon 9 rocket to successfully launch an oceanography satellite, dubbed SWOT, for both NASA and France’s space agency CNES.

The satellite it designed to measure the height of water on 90% of the Earth’s surface.

The first stage was making its sixth flight, and successfully returned to Earth, touching down on its landing pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

59 China
57 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 81 to 59 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 91 to 81.

These numbers however should change again later today, as SpaceX has another launch scheduled.

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December 15, 2022 Quick space links

5:10 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s stringer. All the links today have to do with the Soyuz capsule that is leaking on ISS.

 

 

 

  • Details about the leaking coolant are described here and here.

    • The second link provides a description of the cooling system that is leaking. It appears the leaking material could be water, or “Isooctan LZ-TK-2”.

 

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Sunken butte on Mars

1:03 pm

Collapsed butte in the Martian northern lowland plains
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 1, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “layered butte.” Like the mesas in the American southwest, those layers, or terraces, mark the geological history of this place, where over time layer upon layer was placed down, and then eroded away except for this mesa.

What makes the mesa even more intriguing and strange, however, are surrounding concentric cracks and the moat at the mesa’s base. These features suggest that at some point the ground below the mesa collapsed so that the entire mesa dropped, as a unit.

What could cause this? The overview map below provides a clue, though certainly not an answer.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservative students and pro-speech law firm slandered and threatened at University of Kansas

11:30 am

The University of Kansas Law School: Eager to blacklist

Today’s blacklisted American: When a chapter of the Federalist Society at the University of Kansas Law School scheduled an event featuring a speaker from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a pro-speech legal firm that has won many cases at the Supreme Court, the school’s “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee” falsely claimed ADF promoted “hate speech”, and two members of the school’s faculty then tried to get the chapter to cancel the event.

The story of what happened are outlined in detail by a justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, Caleb Stegall, in his resignation letter [pdf] in protest of the college’s unwillingness to defend the principle of free speech and open debate. As he wrote, first the law school administrator called a meeting with chapter’s board of students:
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Perseverance records sound of dust devil

9:23 am

For the first time scientists have used the microphone on the Mars rover Perseverance to successfully record the sound of dust devil as it flowed overhead.

I have embedded a video of the recording below. The research paper can be read here.

Dust devils on Mars, while much less dense in its very thin atmosphere, are generally much larger than found on Earth.

The dust devil recently detected by Perseverance was 25 meters wide and 118 meters tall (82 feet by 387 feet), putting it squarely in the average zone in terms of size for Martian dust storms. But they can grow much bigger, too, as dust on Mars can be whipped up in huge global dust storms.

The data also picked up the sound of dust particles hitting the microphone, which will allow the scientists to measure the density of the devil.
» Read more

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France orders Eutelsat to stop broadcasting Russian channels

9:13 am

Arcom, the French television regulation agency, yesterday ordered the communication satellite company Eutelsat to stop allowing three Russian channels from broadcasting using the satellites.

In a news release, Arcom said the television stations’ coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine “include repeated incitement to hatred and violence and numerous shortcomings to the honesty of the information.” Eutelsat said in a brief statement that “it will no longer be involved in the broadcasting of the three sanctioned channels within the prescribed time-frame.”

Arcom’s decision comes a week after France’s top administrative court, prompted by a request from the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders advocacy group, ordered Arcom to review an initial decision to permit Eutelsat to continue carrying the stations.

Arcom’s claim, that it made this order because of the content of the broadcasts, is another example of the blacklisting/censorship culture we now live in. The French regulators could have simply stated that, as an ally of the Ukraine in the Russian-Ukraine war, it does not want French-regulated satellites to provide aid to the Russian side. There is a war going on, and this alone is a rational reason to block the Russian channels.

Instead, Arcom uses censorship as its justification. It doesn’t like what the Russians are saying, and therefore has the right to censor them. Remember this argument, because in the future Arcom will likely use it again, but next time against any one of the other broadcast channels under its control that simply says something it doesn’t like.

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China launches classified remote sensing satellite

8:57 am

Using its Long March 2D rocket, China last night successfully launched a classified remote sensing satellite into orbit.

The launch was from an interior spaceport. No word on where the first stage crash-landed.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

59 China
56 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 80 to 59 in the national rankings, but now trails the entire world combined 90 to 81.

Though SpaceX led China in successful launches for most of the year, China historically tends to do a lot of launches in the November-December time period. This is why it has surged ahead in the past month. SpaceX can still catch up, however, as it still has five launches planned for 2022. Either way, we will not know who comes out ahead until probably the end of the year.

That a private American company however has even a chance of beating out the entire world in annual launches is quite remarkable, whether or not SpaceX ends up ahead.

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Soyuz manned capsule docked to ISS is apparently leaking something

9:13 pm

A spacewalk today was cancelled when it was suddenly noticed that some unknown substance was leaking from one of the Soyuz manned capsules docked to ISS.

During preparations for this evening’s planned spacewalk by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, ground teams noticed significant leaking of an unknown substance from the aft portion of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the International Space Station. The spacewalk has been canceled, and ground teams in Moscow are evaluating the nature of the fluid and potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft, which carried Prokopyev, Petelin, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio into space after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 21.

The big question is whether this leak will impact the capsule’s function as a lifeboat or a return vehicle for the three astronauts it brought into space. If so, then an empty manned capsule needs to be launched, either by the Russians or SpaceX, though if the latter someone would have to pay the cost.

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Scientists publish papers describing largest Mars quake from May

1:56 pm

Location of May quake

Though news of the largest quake so far detected by InSight on Mars, magnitude 4.7, was released in May, this week the science team published two papers describing the quake itself and what they have learned from it. From the press release:

The waves from the record-breaking quake lasted about 10 hours — quite a while, considering no previous Marsquakes exceeded an hour.

It was also curious because the epicenter was close to but outside the Cerberus Fossae region, which is the most seismically active region on the Red Planet. The epicenter did not appear to be obviously related to known geologic features, although a deep epicenter could be related to hidden features lower in the crust.

Marsquakes are often divided into two different types — those with high-frequency waves characterized by rapid but shorter vibrations, and those of low-frequency, when the surface moves slowly but with larger amplitude. This recent seismic event is rare in that it exhibited characteristics of both high- and low-frequency quakes. Further research might reveal that previously recorded low- and high-frequency quakes are merely two aspects of the same thing, Kawamura said.

The green-dotted white patch on the map above marks the approximate location of this quake, east of where most of the previous larger quakes have been detected and under the Medusa Fossae Formation of volcanic ash. That no surface features appear to correspond to this quake, it is thought it was the result of a shift of underground features.

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The first launch of China’s Zhuque-2 rocket ends in failure

1:31 pm

The first launch of China’s Zhuque-2 rocket, built by the pseudo-private company Landspace, ended in failure today when the upper stage had problems after separation of the first stage.

Apparent spectator footage posted on Chinese social media showed the rocket ascending into clear skies, trailed by white exhaust. While the first stage is understood to have performed well, separate apparent leaked footage suggests that issues affecting the rocket’s second stage resulted in the failure of the mission.

Data suggest an expected burn of the stage’s vernier thrusters, intended to carry the stage and payloads into orbit after a burn by the main engine, did not occur as planned.

If this launch had been successful, it would have made the Zhuque-2 rocket the first rocket to reach orbit using methane as a fuel, beating three different American companies, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Relativity.

Relativity has been preparing for the first launch of its Terran-1 rocket since October, with a goal of launching before the end of the year. At the moment however no launch date is set, though the company’s CEO seems confident it will launch soon.

In addition, SpaceX has also been targeting the first orbital launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket by the end of this year. As with Relativity, no launch date has been set.

The first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket meanwhile is nowhere in sight, as yet. It was originally supposed to launch in 2020, but even now has four launches scheduled on its manifest for 2023. None however have been scheduled, and the first launch will likely slip to late in the year, if that soon.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Book touting Judeo-Christian values blacklisted from libraries

1:03 pm

Kirk Cameron, blacklisted

They’re coming for you next: Librarians across America — the same ones running drag queen storybook hours with little kids — are routinely blacklisting television actor Kirk Cameron from doing his own library event reading his own book, As You Grow, because it tries to teach children traditional Judeo-Christian values.

It is common for community libraries to run story-hour programs for kids and parents that correspond with the release of a new book. In recent years, libraries have come under fire for promoting drag queens and other LGBTQ+ centric story hours for young children. It now appears to be the case that those same libraries, which are largely funded by taxpayers, have decided there is no space in their programming lineups for more traditional and faith-based titles.

Cameron’s book, As You Grow, ‘teaches biblical wisdom and the value of producing the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control,’ according to the author.

You can buy Cameron’s book here.
» Read more

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Curiosity looks down Gediz Vallis

12:03 pm

Curiosity's looks down Gediz Vallis
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The panorama above was taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera today, December 14, 2022, looking down into Gediz Vallis, the giant slot canyon that the rover will use as its route up Mount Sharp.

The red dotted lines above and on the overview map to the right indicate approximately the planned route for Curiosity. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama above.

At present the scientists are attempting to drill into the marker band on which Curiosity sits. This marker layer is visible at many places at about the same elevation on all sides of Mount Sharp’s flanks. The white arrows indicate other examples of it in this overview map. It generally appears smooth and flat, which suggests it is made of a harder substance more resistant to erosion. That hardness was confirmed when Curiosity’s first drill attempt into it last week failed. The scientists are now trying again.

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