Category: Behind The Black

Today’s blacklisted American: Students demand blacklisting of university trustee because he donated to Trump’s campaign

1:00 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled by students at Northwestern University
No first amendment permitted at Northwestern
University, if the students have their say.

Blacklists are back and the students at Northwestern U have got ’em! The student government at Northwestern University in Illinois recently passed a resolution demanding that the school’s board of trustees remove trustee J. Landis Martin from the presidential search committee because he had the gall to donate to Trump’s presidential campaign.

On June 2, student government members approved a resolution to remove J. Landis Martin, Chairman for the Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees, from the Presidential Search Committee, which is reported to be choosing the next Northwestern University President within the next year, according to the Daily Northwestern.

Outlined in the “Resolution for the Recusal of J. Landis Martin from the Presidential Search Committee” are the reasons the student government voted 17-1 to dismiss Martin on June 2nd.

The resolution lists that that “Northwestern University students are a diverse population that identify with many of the groups that Donald Trump harmed during his campaign and presidency,” and also “the conservative political ideology of Donald Trump, including those that support him, do not align with the views of the average Northwestern undergraduate.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, these students will not tolerate on their campus anyone who expresses an opinion they disagree with. There will be no free speech, no open discourse, and no debate. Agree with them, or you will be silenced, blackballed, and removed.
» Read more

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NOAA struggles with concept of letting private commercial space build its satellites

9:49 am

Capitalism in space? An article today in Space News, “NOAA to take first step toward a small satellite constellation”, describes at great length NOAA’s recent effort to rethink how it builds its weather satellites, shifting from large and expensive single satellites launched years apart to constellations of smallsats that provide more redundancy and are cheaper and easier to replace.

What the article misses, as does NOAA apparently, is that this shift should not be designed by NOAA at all. During the Trump administration there was pressure on this agency to do what NASA had, stop designing and building its satellites but instead become a customer that hires private satellite companies to do it instead.

Not much came of that pressure. NOAA hired one private company to study the idea of building a private satellite to observe the Sun. It also awarded three companies experimental contracts to provide NOAA weather data from already orbiting smallsats.

That was it. NOAA made no other attempts to encourage private companies to design and build weather satellites for it, even as it struggled to get its own satellites off the ground. The second new GOES satellite in a constellation of four for providing global weather coverage failed almost immediately after launch in 2018. Overall, that constellation is expected to cost $11 billion, $4 billion more than initially budgeted. And it is years behind schedule.

What the article above suggests is that, with the Trump administration gone, NOAA has now abandoned the effort to transition to privately-built weather satellites. Instead the article describes at great length the effort by NOAA to redesign its satellites from big, rare, and costly to small, frequent, and cheap.

This effort will fail. Government agencies like NOAA are incapable of accomplishing such a task. They do not think in terms of profit, and keeping costs down to maximize those profits. Instead, such government institutions see high costs as beneficial, as they pump more money into their operations.

Until elected officials force NOAA to change, it will not, and its weather satellites will continue to be late, expensive, and untrustworthy. Sadly, the elected officials we have today, especially in the Biden administration, are not going to do that. They are as satisfied with the present situation as NOAA is.

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SpaceX drone ship arrives in California

9:14 am

Capitalism in space: One of SpaceX’s two drone ships used by its Falcon 9 first stages for ocean landings has arrived in California in preparation for frequent Starlink launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The journey began on the East Coast two weeks ago and included passage through the Panama Canal. Once the drone ship gets offloaded, it will be based at Pier T, where it be part of recovery operations for the Starlink landings that potentially could occur in late July or early August.

These California launches will allow SpaceX to increase the global coverage of its Starlink constellation. It will also allow the company to begin frequent launches from both coasts.

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China launches communications satellite for space effort

8:15 pm

Using a Long March 3C rocket China today successfully launched a communications satellite for use by its manned space missions and its space station, similar to the TDRS satellites used by NASA for similar purposes.

This satellite is the fifth such satellite launched, and is likely intended to enhance communications between the ground and China’s new space station.

No word on where the first stage crashed, or whether it landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

21 China
20 SpaceX
11 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 29 to 21 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: What the last six months has revealed

12:42 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
Reporting daily the modern witch hunt against freedom and
independent thought.

It is just about six months since I decided to do a daily column entitled “Today’s Blacklisted American.” In that time I have documented more than 120 examples where one group of Americans thought it okay and proper to destroy the livelihood and freedom of other Americans, all because the latter said something the former did not like.

The link will take you to the full list of columns since mid-January. After six months I think it is time to assess what these columns have revealed. And that revelation is quite ugly.
» Read more

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Sublimating scallops on Mars

2:05 pm

Giant scallop on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image, shown in a rotated, cropped, and reduced version to the right, gives us a close-up look at one of the giant scallops found in the high mid-latitudes of the northern lowland plains of Mars, specifically in Utopia Basin north of the landing sites of both Perseverance and Zhurong. In fact, this particular image is only a few miles north of one of my previous cool images, Giant scallops on Mars, posted in December 2019.

The image was taken on February 3, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). While such scallops are not unusual in the mid-latitudes, their formation process is not well understood. As I noted in the 2019 post, ” scientists believe [pdf] the formation process is related to the sublimation of underground ice.”

According to [one hypothesis] scallop formation should be ongoing at the present time. Sublimation of interstitial ice could induce a collapse of material, initially as a small pit, then growing [away from the equator] because of greater solar heating on [that] side. Nearby scallops would coalesce together as can be seen to have occurred.

This hypothesis is not proven, and today’s cool image raises questions about it. Though the bright material at its center suggests exposed ice, supporting the idea that sublimation of ice near the surface created the scallop, the scallop scarps seem more extended and distinct to the south, not the north as this hypothesis proposes. Sunlight should hit the northern scarps more, which suggests they should retreat more instead of the southern scarp.

The overview map below provides the context.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Baseball bans man for expressing his opinion at baseball games with banner

11:56 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled by Major League Baseball
Doesn’t exist at the professional baseball games.

This seems especially appropriate during the July 4th weekend: Major League Baseball (MLB) — joining Disney, Sea World, and Sesame Street — has officially banned Dion Cini from all baseball stadiums, simply because he routinely came to games and displayed a “Trump Won Save America” banner.

Cini’s Twitter profile describes him as “Guerilla Marketeer, Political Consultant, Founder of OperationFlagDrop & ‘Professional Provocateur.’”

He has skated with his flag on Wollman Ice Rink, where he was physically assaulted, even though the Trump organization operated Wollman Rink. Cini also unfurled what is rumored to be the world’s largest Trump flag on the front of Trump Tower in Manhattan in March of this year. Cini even dropped a “Trump Pride” flag one day after the end of Pride Month.

Cini has now been banned by MLB stadiums and Disney parks, Sea World, and Sesame Street. As per his Twitter account, he has no plans of stopping the flag drops.

» Read more

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First images from Ingenuity’s 9th flight today

10:20 am

Ingenuity landing, July 5, 2021

Ingenuity has apparently completed its 9th flight on Mars, its most challenging yet attempted. Based on the six images so far released from that flight, all taking during its landing, it appears the flight was successful. Or at least, the helicopter landed without incident or damage.

The photo to the right was the last picture taken just before touch down. From the caption:

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image using its navigation camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight.

The dark shadow of the helicopter is clearly visible. If you want to see the entire sequence of six images, go to the Ingenuity raw image website and pick the “latest images” filter in the right column. At present it shows this sequence, though I am certain as the day passes images from the entire flight will start appearing.

As noted at the first link above, the flight was to be more than twice as long as any previous flight while flying over the roughest terrain. There was the real risk that its software would become confused by that terrain.

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Sun unleashes strongest solar flare since last solar maximum

9:54 am

X1 solar flare as seen by Solar Dynamics Observatory

On July 3, 2021 the Sun emitted the first X-class solar flare of the rising present solar maximum, the first such flare since September 2017 during the previous maximum.

This flare is classified as an X1.5-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc.

The image to the right was taken by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), designed to monitor the Sun continuously and catch such events.

More information here. The flare caused some disturbances to various radio instruments, though nothing that resulted in any serious consequences.

What the flare did demonstrate is that the Sun is definitely ramping up to solar maximum. In fact, the Sun has not been blank, with no sunspots on its facing hemisphere, since May 6th, the longest such stretch since the last solar maximum.

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Sunspot update: The hot streak continues

8:01 am

This past weekend NOAA released its monthly update of its graph showing the Sun’s sunspot activity, with the new update covering the period through the end of June 2021. As I have done since I began this website eleven years ago, I post that monthly graph below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context.

In June the hot streak of sunspot activity exceeding the prediction of NOAA’s solar science panel continued, with activity rising again after a tiny dip in May. Except for two months, since 2019 the number of sunspots each month has consistently exceeded the prediction. Furthermore, the ramp up of activity has been faster than expected.
» Read more

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Next Ingenuity flight to push envelope significantly

11:20 am

Ingenuity's 9th flight plan
Click for full image.

The engineers running the Mars helicopter Ingenuity revealed today that they will be attempting their most ambitious flight for the helicopter’s ninth flight, presently scheduled for no earlier than July 4th.

I have annotated the map to the right to show Ingenuity’s present position and its approximate landing area.

Without question this flight will be the riskiest taken by Ingenuity so far, more than doubling the flight distance achieved on any previous flight. More important, it will be flying over terrain far rougher than it was initially designed for.
» Read more

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More parachute problems for Europe’s Franklin Mars rover

10:11 am

During a parachute drop test in late June, following a redesign of the parachute with U.S. help, engineers for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mars rover found the chute still experienced problems that tore it during deployment.

They actually performed two drop tests, a day apart, using two different parachutes, with the first test apparently going off without a hitch. However, according to the press release:

“The performance of the second main parachute was not perfect but much improved thanks to the adjustments made to the bag and canopy. After a smooth extraction from the bag, we experienced an unexpected detachment of the pilot chute during final inflation. This likely means that the main parachute canopy suffered extra pressure in certain parts. This created a tear that was contained by a Kevlar reinforcement ring. Despite that, it fulfilled its expected deceleration and the descent module was recovered in good state.”

I have embedded below the fold the only video released by the European Space Agency. It is not clear whether this is from the first or second test. Near the end it appears that the pilot chute above the main chute might be separated, but the video ends before that can be confirmed.

Though ESA has apparently improved the chute’s performance significantly since its earlier failures that contributed to the delay of ExoMars from last year to 2022, they still haven’t gotten the chute completely right. Fortunately they still have time to get it fixed before that ’22 launch.
» Read more

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1776 – Hatching an Egg

6:01 pm

A evening pause: On this day, July 2nd, the day the Founding Fathers actually signed the Declaration of Independence, I think it appropriate to once again watch this wonderful song from the 1976 movie version of the 1972 musical, 1776. As I said in earlier posts of this song on Independence Day, “not only did the musical capture the essence of the men who made independency happen, it is also a rollicking and entertaining work of art.”

And despite the hate being spewed against America and its founding principle that all humans are created free with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that truth still shines. As John Kennedy said of himself, ourselves, and these founding fathers. “We stand for freedom.”

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Progress docks with ISS

12:36 pm

As expected a Russian Progress freighter docked with ISS yesterday, on schedule and with no mishaps.

I report this non-news story simply because of the Russian claim yesterday that a SpaceX Starlink satellite and Falcon 9 upper stage threatened a collision with that freighter as it maneuvered in orbit prior to docking.

Not surprisingly, there was no collision. The Russians knew this, or they would never have launched as they did. They made a stink about it as a ploy to stain SpaceX, a company that has taken almost all their commercial launch business by offering cheaper and more reliable rockets.

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Today’s blacklisted American: YouTube blacklists group exposing Chinese genocide in its Xinjiang region

12:12 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled on YouTube
No free speech allowed on YouTube.

Today’s blacklisting victim is not really an American, but since it is an American company doing the blacklisting I think the story is applicable. It appears Google-owned YouTube has decided to remove videos on the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel that expose the genocide and ethnic cleansing that China is doing to as many as a million people in its Xinjiang region.

Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China’s Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.

On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube’s guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its ‘cyberbullying and harassment’ policy.

The channel’s administrators had appealed the blocking of all twelve videos between April and June, with some reinstated – but YouTube did not provide an explanation as to why others were kept out of public view, the administrators told Reuters.

Following inquiries from Reuters as to why the channel was removed, YouTube restored it, explaining that it had received multiple so-called ‘strikes’ for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content. They reinstated the channel on June 18 but asked Atajurt to blur the IDs.

» Read more

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Perseverance’s most recent view of Jezero Crater

10:30 am

Panorama by Perseverance, Sol 130, July 2, 2021
Click for full resolution.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, reduced to post here, is made from two navigation camera images on the Mars rover Perseverance, found here and here.

The map to the right, taken from the “Where is Perseverance?” website and annotated further by me, shows with the yellow lines what I think (but am not sure) is the area seen in the panorama.

The navigation cameras on Perseverance are more wide angle than the navigation cameras on Curiosity, in order to cover a larger area. They thus produce a slight fisheye distortion, illustrated by the curve of the horizon.

The large mountain in the center right is likely the crater rim. You can also see the knobs to the left as indicated on the overview map. The rover is now about halfway to the southernmost planned spot it is expected to reach within the floor of Jezero Crater, which is about a half to three quarters of a mile further south.

The terrain seems quite desolate and barren, which of course is no surprise, because that is what it is like on all of the surface of Mars. No plant life, just rocks and dirt. While Curiosity is now in the mountains, Perseverance remains on the crater floor, so the points of interest (from the mere tourist’s perspective) are small or far away.

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More delays in India’s space program

9:36 am

Blaming COVID-19, the head of India’s space agency ISRO, K. Sivan, announced yesterday that they are delaying the first unmanned test flight of their manned space capsule so that it will not fly in 2021 as planned.

ISRO had planned eight launches in 2021, but has so far only flown one, and that launch took place in February. Since then no launches have occurred. Moreover, in 2020 India only completed two launches, far less than planned. In other words, their fear of COVID has essentially shut down their entire government space program for two years.

Meanwhile, China, Russia, SpaceX, and most other private companies roll on, launching frequently and without any negative consequences. The difference tells us that India is over-reacting, and allowing its fearful bureaucracy to run the show. The result is that they are losing ground not only in their effort to fly their first manned mission, but in commercial market share. I am certain that satellite companies that would have flown on their rockets have been shifting their business to SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and many of the other new rocket startups in the U.S.

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Bezos vs Branson: Virgin Galactic to do suborbital flight on July 11th carrying Richard Branson

11:06 pm

SpaceShipTwo

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic today announced that it is now planning its first passenger flight of its VSS Unity suborbital spacecraft on July 11th, and that flight will carry Richard Branson as one of its passengers.

[Aleanna Crane, vice president of communications for Virgin Galactic] said that the last flight had been so flawless that the team had decided to test the cabin experience. “Who better to test the full cabin experience than Richard Branson?” she said. “He is flying as a mission specialist, and he has a role like the rest of the crew.” The craft will carry three other Virgin Galactic employees in the cabin seats in addition to the two pilots up front.

…The company plans to broadcast the flight beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern time on July 11. The SpaceShipTwo rocket, named Unity, will be carried under an airplane named White Knight Two to an altitude of 50,000 feet before being dropped. Unity’s engine will then ignite, taking it up to higher than 50 miles. At the top of the arc, passengers will float for about four minutes before the space plane re-enters the atmosphere and glides to a runway landing.

By flying on July 11th, Virgin Galactic — and Branson — will beat Blue Origin — and Jeff Bezos — by nine days in accomplishing the first passenger suborbital flight. Blue Origin’s July 20th flight however will be carrying the first paying customer, while Virgin Galactic’s flight will not.

For Branson making this flight ahead of Bezos is almost essential. He has been promising this flight now for more than fourteen years, always declaring it was only months from happening. It never did, and the years dragged on and on with no achievement or Virgin Galactic suborbital tourist flights. To get beaten now would be quite embarrassing, to put it mildly. Yet, to only win this race by mere days remains embarrassing as well, since Virgin Galactic was supposed to do this more than a decade ago and did not.

Regardless, both flights are stunts intended to garner publicity and encourage ticket sales for future suborbital flights. And while there appears to be some market interest in these suborbital flights, both are mere pipsqueaks to the coming orbital tourist flights by SpaceX, Axiom, and the Russians, with Boeing to follow shortly thereafter.

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Bezos invites original female candidate for Mercury program to fly on New Shepard flight July 20th

5:47 pm

Jeff Bezos has invited Wally Funk, 82, one of the original thirteen women astronaut candidates for the 1960s Mercury program, to fly on his suborbital tourist flight scheduled for July 20th, joining Bezos, his brother Mark, and the still unnamed winner of the auction to buy that seat.

Funk is a pioneer in aviation: She was the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector and first female National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator. She has logged 19,600 hours of flight time and taught more than 3,000 people to fly, she said in Bezos’s Instagram video. “Everything that the FAA has, I’ve got the license for,” Funk says in the video. “And, I can outrun you!”

In the Instagram video, Bezos describes the plan for the New Shepard’s journey to a wide-eyed Funk, down to the moment when the rocket returns to the desert surface and its doors open. “We open the hatch, and you step outside. What’s the first thing you say?” Bezos asks Funk.

She does not hesitate. “I will say, ‘Honey, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me!’ ” Funk declares, pulling Bezos into a bear hug.

This is a gracious gesture by Bezos, even some on the left will use it to slander the 1960s NASA and America by making both look bigoted against women. That was not what happened, and Funk’s own success as a woman pilot and FAA official at that time proves it.

Why Blue Origin has not named the winner of its auction to buy that last seat however is beginning to be a bit puzzling.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Rappers have song banned by Spotify & SoundCloud for criticizing BLM, government lockdowns, and the modern perverse sexual movement

11:22 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at SoundCloud and Spotify
No free speech allowed at SoundCloud or Spotify.

Persecution is now cool! Rappers Bryson Grey and Patriot J have had a song with the opening line “They might ban me for this song” banned by Spotify & SoundCloud.

The song strongly criticized BLM, the government lockdowns, and the modern perverse sexual movement. Bryson noted in announcing the Spotify ban that though these same outlets claimed the song was banned for hateful speech, they do not ban much more violent rapper songs that glorify murder, crime, and drug use.

Patriot J responded by pointing out that other black rappers can glorify death, crime and all kinds of immoral and disgusting lifestyles, “but if you mess around and rap about traditional values and expose truths they will BAN YOU!”

“Remember y’all, you can rap about anything you want except going against the LGBT. You can rap about your vagina to children all day, you can rap about popping pills, you can rap about doing crime… but not the forbidden topic,” tweeted Bryson Gray.

This second link also included this tidbit about the intolerant employees at Spotify:
» Read more

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Al-Amal detects Martian aurora

10:11 am

Aurora on Mars

The United Arab Emirates Al-Amal Mars orbiter has detected evidence of a Martian aurora that would be visible at night for short periods.

The ultraviolet images to the right have been reduced slightly to post here.

These three images of atomic oxygen emission at a wavelength of 103.4 nm from the planet Mars were obtained by the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer instrument on 22 April, 23 April, and 06 May 2021 respectively. The full set of data collected during these observations include far and extreme ultraviolet auroral emissions which have never been imaged before at Mars. The beacons of light that stand out against the dark nightside disk are highly structured discrete aurora, which traces out where energetic particles excite the atmosphere after being funneled down by a patchy network of crustal magnetic fields that originate from minerals on the surface of Mars.

Though Mars does not have a magnetic field, it is believed that sections of the planet’s crust are magnetized, and under the right conditions can guide the charged particles from the Sun’s solar wind to the night side to hit the atmosphere where they break up and produce the aurora. Because there is no magnetic field however the particles are not guided by the field lines to the poles, but to different spots at all latitudes, depending on circumstances.

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Judge rules SpaceX must comply with Justice subpoena

9:22 am

A federal Judge has ruled that SpaceX must comply with Justice Department subpoena demanding its full hiring records in connection with an investigation by the agency’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section about SpaceX’s decision to not to hire a non-citizen.

However, the DOJ unit is not only investigating the complaint, but also has said it “may explore whether [SpaceX] engages in any pattern or practice of discrimination” barred by federal law. Investigators in October issued a subpoena demanding that SpaceX provide information and documents related to its hiring and employment eligibility verification processes, to which SpaceX has not fully complied.
Hiring policies in place

SpaceX’s lawyers argued in court that the DOJ’s probe is overbearing given the original complaint. “No matter how generously ‘relevance’ is construed in the context of administrative subpoenas, neither the statutory and regulatory authority IER relies on, nor the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, permits IER to rifle through SpaceX’s papers on a whim and absent reasonable justification,” SpaceX said. “And even if IER could somehow belatedly justify its current investigations, IER’s subpoena is excessively overbroad. IER’s application for an order to comply with the subpoena should be denied,” the company added.

There is another component that suggests this investigation is bogus and is intended as an attack by the government against SpaceX. The company makes rockets, and it must be extra careful about its hiring of any foreign national. So, on one hand the government forbids SpaceX from hiring foreigners, and on the other hand the government is condemning SpaceX for not doing so.

Moreover, it does appear that Justice is going on a fishing expedition in SpaceX’s files, something it is forbidden to do according the fourth amendment of the Constitution. A search such has this can only occur when there is evidence a specific crime has occurred. The search Justice wishes to do is broad and unreasonable, not based on any specific allegations but merely to “explore” SpaceX records to find a crime.

We have only just begun. The law and the Constitution means little to many in the Biden administration, in Washington, and in our government in general. What matters is power and the ability of these thugs to tell everyone else what to do. It looks like they increasingly have SpaceX in their sights.

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Scientists solve methane data conflict on Mars

9:10 am

Using the methane detector on the rover Curiosity scientists now think they have solved the mystery why Curiosity has detected methane in the atmosphere near the surface while Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter fails to detect any methane at all.

[Planetary scientist John E. Moores from York University in Toronto], as well as other Curiosity team members studying wind patterns in Gale Crater, hypothesized that the discrepancy between methane measurements comes down to the time of day they’re taken. Because it needs a lot of power, TLS [Curiosity’s methane detector] operates mostly at night when no other Curiosity instruments are working. The Martian atmosphere is calm at night, Moores noted, so the methane seeping from the ground builds up near the surface where Curiosity can detect it.

The Trace Gas Orbiter, on the other hand, requires sunlight to pinpoint methane about 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, above the surface. “Any atmosphere near a planet’s surface goes through a cycle during the day,” Moores said. Heat from the Sun churns the atmosphere as warm air rises and cool air sinks. Thus, the methane that is confined near the surface at night is mixed into the broader atmosphere during the day, which dilutes it to undetectable levels. “So I realized no instrument, especially an orbiting one, would see anything,” Moores said.

Immediately, the Curiosity team decided to test Moores’ prediction by collecting the first high-precision daytime measurements. TLS measured methane consecutively over the course of one Martian day, bracketing one nighttime measurement with two daytime ones. With each experiment, SAM sucked in Martian air for two hours, continuously removing the carbon dioxide, which makes up 95% of the planet’s atmosphere. This left a concentrated sample of methane that TLS could easily measure by passing an infrared laser beam through it many times, one that’s tuned to use a precise wavelength of light that is absorbed by methane.

“John predicted that methane should effectively go down to zero during the day, and our two daytime measurements confirmed that,” said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of SAM, who’s based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. TLS’ nighttime measurement fit neatly within the average the team had already established. “So that’s one way of putting to bed this big discrepancy,” Mahaffy said.

While this explains the data conflict, it does not yet explain where the methane is coming from. It is suspected it is coming from underground, but why and from what is still unclear. Nor do scientists yet understand why it doesn’t accumulate enough in the atmosphere for Trace Gas Orbiter to detect it. Something is causing the methane to break up sooner than expected.

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Russia: Progress freighter and SpaceX rocket/satellite to have near miss

9:00 am

According to a Russia news outlet, their just launched Progress freighter will have a near miss today prior to its docking with ISS with two SpaceX objects, a Falcon 9 upper stage and a decommissioned Starlink satellite.

The Progress spacecraft, which carries about 3,600 lbs. (1,633 kilograms) of cargo including food, fuel and other supplies to the orbital outpost, launched from Roscomos’ Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:27 p.m. EDT (2327 GMT) on Tuesday (June 29). Progress 78 will approach the two objects about three and a half hours before its docking at the International Space Station, which is scheduled for 9:02 p.m. EDT on July 1 (0102 July 2 GMT).

The close approach, which triggered a potential collision alert, was detected by the Roscosmos TsNIIMash Main Information and Analytical Center of the Automated System for Warning of Hazardous Situations in Near-Earth Space (ASPOS OKP), Roscosmos said in the statement issued on the space agency’s website Wednesday (June 30) at 7:47 a.m. EDT (1147 GMT).

Based on preliminary calculations, the Starlink 1691 satellite will be just 0.9 miles (1.5 kilometers) away from Progress 78 on Thursday (July 1) at 5:32 p.m. EDT (2132 GMT). Three minutes later, a fragment of a Falcon 9 rocket booster left in orbit in 2020 is expected to approach the spaceship within 0.3 miles (500 meters).

Based on that timetable, the near miss has already occurred. No word yet on whether there were any issues.

What is interesting is that Russia should have known this prior to launch. It is routine procedure to consider known orbital objects in scheduling liftoffs. Either they knew and decided to purposely fly this close for political reasons (it allows them to slam SpaceX while also touting the dangers of space junk) or had not done their due diligence before launch.

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Relativity signs deal to expand rocket facility

8:53 am

Capitalism in space: The rocket company Relativity Space announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement for a major expansion of its rocket manufacturing facility in California.

The firm — fresh off a $650 million Series A fundraising round announced earlier this month — said Wednesday (June 30) it has signed for a 1-million-square-foot (93,000 square meters) headquarters factory at the Goodman Commerce Center, in its current hometown of Long Beach, California.

The 93-acre plant used to host Boeing’s C-17 military transport aircraft manufacturing, with the last C-17 produced there in 2015. Now, Relativity’s factory will make it the anchor tenant for a planned 437-acre business district west of the Long Beach Airport, the company said. It also plans to hold on to its existing factory space to continue producing its Terran 1 rocket.

Relativity will occupy the new space in January 2022, which will eventually host dozens of the company’s proprietary Stargate printers that can produce Terran 1 and its newly announced reusable version of the rocket, called Terran R. Relativity said the facility will include a fusion of 3D printing, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics to create a new rocket in less than 60 days.

Relativity has not yet launched any rockets nor has it conducted any test flights. Its first test flight of Terran-1 is presently scheduled for later this year, though no date is set. The company is one of five American new rocket startups that say they will do their first launch before the end of 2021.

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