Category: Behind The Black

Activists sue Texas commission for allowing SpaceX to use its Superheavy deluge launch system

9:45 am

The same activist groups that have repeatedly used lawfare to try to block SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica have now sued the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for allowing SpaceX to use its deluge launch system during Starship/Superheavy launches, claiming that dumping potable drinking water into the ground somehow damages the environment.

The groups — the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, along with the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and Save RGV — filed the lawsuit Monday after the agency decided last month to allow SpaceX to continue its operations for 300 days or until the company obtained the appropriate permit.

These three groups represent only a very tiny handful of people in the Rio Grande Valley. The people the media interviews from Save RGV always includes the same persons, suggesting that few people in south Texas support it. The “Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas” in turn is a fake Indian tribe. It no longer exists, and when it did it existed in Mexico, not Texas. Finally, the “South Texas Environmental Justice Network” is simply an umbrella organization created on top of other two to make it appear they have more support than they do.

The real question that local journalists should be asking is where are these groups getting their money for all their lawsuits? I suspect it comes from outside the region, from leftist political organizations whose goals have nothing to do with the environment.

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Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander wins its fourth lunar NASA contract

9:32 am

Peregrine landing site

NASA yesterday awarded the rocket startup Firefly a $179.6 million contract to carry six NASA science instruments to the Moon on its Blue Ghost lunar lander, the third lander contract the company has won and the fourth Moon contract overall.

[The four contracts include] three lunar landers as well as one to provide radio frequency calibration services from orbit to support a radio science payload on the second lander mission.

The first mission, Blue Ghost 1 or “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is scheduled for launch in mid-January, with a landing in the Mare Crisium region of the near side of the moon about 45 days after launch. Blue Ghost 2 will follow in 2026, landing on the lunar farside. That mission will also deploy ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite into orbit. Both the second and third Blue Ghost missions will use Firefly’s Elytra Dark as an orbital transfer vehicle, delivering the landers to lunar orbit. Those vehicles will remain in lunar orbit to provide communications services.

This new contract will have Blue Ghost land in the Gruithuisen Domes region, as shown on the map to the right. This had been the landing target for the Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander when it launched in January 2024, but that mission failed when it developed a fuel leak shortly after launch. Astrobotic was able to operate the spacecraft through most of its trip to and from the Moon, but had to cancel the landing.

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ESA awards Avio three contracts worth $372 million for its Vega rockets

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday awarded the Italian rocket company Avio three different contracts worth $372 million to further develop its Vega family of rockets.

The first two contracts subsidize work on upgrading the Vega-C launch site at the French Guiana spaceport as well as developing the company’s planned new rocket, Vega-E.

The third contract is more significant, because it signals the coming end of Arianespace, ESA’s commercial arm. Instead of going through that government-run agency — as ESA has done for a quarter century — ESA simply bought a Vega-C launch from Avio directly, the first time it has obtained launch services directly from a European company. The contract is to place in orbit an ESA climate research satellite.

The end of Arianespace was further signaled today by the announcement that Arianespace’s chief executive since 2013, Stephane Israel, is stepping down. It was Israel who in 2015 discouraged ESA from making Ariane-6 reusable. It was Israel who for years poo-pooed competition and free enterprise, lobbying continuously that ESA should do its launches through Arianespace exclusively.

Now, more than a decade later, ESA has finally rejected Israel’s arguments, and is eliminating the middle-man Arianespace entirely, purchasing launch contracts directly from the rocket companies while having its member nations as well as itself encourage the development of many private rocket companies across Europe.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches four satellites

8:41 am

According to China’s state-run press, China early this morning successfully launched four satellites using a commercial rocket, Ceres-1, that lifted off from an off shore launch platform on the country’s northeast coast.

The rocket supposedly belongs to the pseudo-company Galactic Energy, but China’s state-run press did not think this information was important enough to mention, illustrating why I think the company is not real. The satellites were likely communications satellites intended for one of the several giant satellite constellations China is building, but that information was also left out of China’s reporting.

132 SpaceX
63 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 151 to 95, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 132 to 114.

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Axiom to speed up assembly of its space station

6:59 pm

Axiom's new module assembly sequence
Axiom’s new module assembly sequence

Capitalism in space: In order to be able to fly its space station independent of ISS more quickly, Axiom has rearranged the order it will launch some modules.

Originally, the plan was to attach Habitat 1 (AxH1) first, before the power and thermal module. Now, the on-orbit assembly sequence will start with the Payload Power Thermal Module (AxPPTM), followed by AxH1, an airlock, Habitat 2 (AxH2), and finally the Research and Manufacturing Facility (AxRMF). “The result – free-flight capability after the launch and berthing of PPTM,” [Mark Greeley, Axiom Space COO and station program manager,] explained, “[will allow] us to add modules while on orbit once we have separated from station. Our goal is to ensure a smooth transition from a government to a commercial platform, maintaining a continuous human presence on orbit to serve a community of global customers and partners, to include NASA.”

The AxPPTM primary structure will be built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, and then relocated to Houston no earlier than fall 2025, where the integration of the internal structure and systems will take place at Axiom Space facilities.

The new sequence is shown in the graphic above. This change will allow Axiom to fly free two years sooner than previously planned, in 2028. It appears NASA pushed for this change possibly because it considers remaining attached to ISS until 2030 a risk that should be avoided. NASA apparently is increasingly concerned about the state of Russia’s Zvezda module, and fears it might have a catastrophic failure due to the stress fractures in its hull. The sooner Axiom can get free of ISS the better.

This modification also appears to include some major changes from previous Axiom graphics. It appears the airlock module and its solar panels have undergone a major design change.

Below is my present ranking for the launch of the four space stations being designed and built:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, and plans to launch and occupy it in 2025 for a 30 day mission. It will then build its mult-module Haven-2 station.
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, which has also launched three tourist flights to ISS. Though there are rumors it is experiencing cash flow issues, today’s announcement suggests those rumors might be unfounded.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Though Blue Origin has apparently done little, Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building the station’s modules for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman.
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December 18, 2024 Quick space links

6:36 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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SpaceX launches reconnaissance satellite

4:08 pm

SpaceX yesterday launched a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings completed their ninth and tenth times respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

132 SpaceX
62 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 151 to 94, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 132 to 113.

Hat tip to reader Geoffrey Carman. I had missed this launch and he let me know.

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Curiosity looks down and across Gale Crater

10:43 am

Curiosity looks down across Gale Crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was part of a panorama created by 24 photos taken by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity on December 16, 2024.

The view looks west at the foothills that fill the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. In the far distance, about 20 to 30 miles away, can be seen the western rim of Gale Crater, obscured by the dust in the Martian atmosphere.

Curiosity is presently contouring west along the mountain slope. As it goes it will pass a series of canyons coming down the mountainside. The goal is to eventually reach the canyon the science team has chosen to take for climbing that mountain.

Note the rocky ground. One of the surprises found as Curiosity left the crater floor and started climbing Mount Sharp about four years ago is the rockiness of the terrain. Unlike Earth, Mars’s atmosphere and environment does not have the activity to smooth out this landscape. While science data suggests flowing water was once present here, it wasn’t here long enough to smooth things out. And the atmosphere is just too thin.
» Read more

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Astronomers discover 1st binary star system orbiting Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole

9:40 am

The stars orbiting Sag A*
The stars orbiting Sag A*. Click for original image.

Using infrared spectroscopic data gathered from 2005 to 2019 by the Very Large Telescope in Chile, astronomers have identified the first known binary star system to orbit Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”), the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.

You can read their science paper here [pdf]. The white dot at the center of the map to the right marks the location of Sagittarius A*, while the red dot marks the present location of the binary star, dubbed D9. The other objects are the stars previously identified orbiting the central black hole, all of which are now believed to be single stars. The binary D9 has an estimated orbit around Sagittarius A* of 432 years and is thought to be less than three million years old. The two stars have approximate masses of 3.86 and 2.8 solar masses, with the smaller orbiting the larger every 372 days.

There is a lot of uncertainty in these numbers, but the data identifying the binary is quite firm. This discovery, as well as the many other stars now known to orbit Sagittarius A*, show that star formation so close to a supermassive black hole is not only possible, it is common, something astronomers a decade ago thought impossible.

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