Moby – Extreme Ways
An evening pause: Performed live 2014.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
Category: Behind The Black
January 18, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. Note: This post is now officially an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, not just the links below.
- China’s deputy chief of its manned space program gives an update for 2024
They have 6 major tasks, including 4 launch missions and 2 recovery missions, with the six astronauts for those missions already chosen.
- China’s has reduced launches of its Tianzhou cargo freighter from 2 ships per year to 3 ships every two years
The reduction is because the construction phase of the Tiangong-3 station is now complete, and shifted into its operational phase. At the same time, China notes it can fly the Long March 7 rocket that carries Tianzhou twice within 3 months, if necessary.
- Rocket Lab will once again attempt to recover its Electron 1st stage on its next launch
They have added additional hardware to protect the engines better during return and splashdown.
- House committee backs Artemis despite latest delay
Another boring congressional hearing that will change little.
- Viasat demonstrates technology that the UK can use to replace the EU’s GPS-type system
After Brexit the UK lost access to some EU systems. This Viasat system can replace it.
- Astroscale reveals its proposed in-orbit refueling spacecraft
Essentially it will be fuel truck that will bring fuel from a depot to a satellite.
- Sergey Krikalev appointed “Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation on international cooperation in the field of space”
Krikalev, one of Russia’s most famous astronauts, had been laid off from his job in Roscosmos, apparently due to differences with the agency’s administrator. This appointment appears to be a consolation prize.
- Image from Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander as it reapproaches Earth
Re-entry is expected later today.
SpaceX successfully launches four astronauts to ISS on Axiom private mission
They’re coming for you next: SpaceX today successfully launched three European astronauts (plus the company capsule commander) to ISS on an Axiom private mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 4:49 pm (Eastern).
The capsule, Freedom, is flying humans into space for its third time. The first stage successfully completed its fourth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral.
The mission itself is private, but the customer is the European Space Agency, which has paid the company Axiom to bring its astronauts to ISS for a fourteen day mission. Axiom in turn hired SpaceX to provide the rocket and capsule. This flight is confirmation that Europe has accepted the concept of capitalism in space, whereby it no longer depends on governments to accomplish what it wants, but instead is a customer buying those products from the private sector.
The astronauts are expected to dock with ISS early tomorrow morning.
The 2024 launch race:
6 SpaceX
5 China
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan
More academics demand that space activity be controlled and regulated, by them
Modern academia, proudly marching with Lenin!
Yesterday I linked to a student newspaper article at the University of Alberta advocating more regulation over all space activity, focused on replacing private ownership with collective ownership while simultaneously imposing Marxist racial quotas to get rid “old white men”.
Today there was another story from academia demanding similar regulation. On January 12, 2024 there was a public panel discussion at Arizona State University (ASU), where four academics argued for the need for more government regulation of space. The description of the panel’s goals at the event’s website gives us a good hint of the goals of these academics:
Space exploration and utilization is a rapidly expanding sector, and there is growing consensus that the complex space governance system must evolve with it. Faced with this dynamic nature, in this fireside chat, with leading experts in space governance, policy law and space science, we present a clear framework for conceptualizing the space governance system as a tool for discussions on space law and policy, demystifying its structure and the actors, instruments and collaborations within it. We then consider key debates in the space policy field within this framework from a global and transdisciplinary perspective.
This is typically bad academic writing, designed to intentionally hide its meaning. One of the panelists however translated it most bluntly in this quote from article about the event:
» Read more
Scientists: Evidence of large deposits of buried ice along Martian equator
Click for original figure from paper.
Using data obtained from Europe’s Mars Express orbiter, scientists believe they have detected evidence of a very large and extensive deposit of buried ice in the dry Martian equatorial regions, buried within the Medusae Fossae Formation, what is thought to be the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars.
The blue-to-orange areas inside the Medusae on the map to the right, taken from figure 5 of the paper, shows where they have detected potential buried ice, at depths ranging from one to two thousand feet below the surface. The orange areas indicate the thickest ice deposits, as much as two miles thick. From the paper’s abstract:
The MARSIS radar sounder [on Mars Express] detects echoes in Medusae Fossae Formation deposits that occur between the surface and the base which are interpreted as layers within the deposit like those found in Polar Layered Deposits of the North and South Poles. The subsurface reflectors suggest transitions between mixtures of ice-rich and ice-poor dust analogous to the multi-layered, ice-rich polar deposits.
Assuming this detection is real, this would be the largest reservoir of potential water in the dry equatorial regions found yet, comparable to another similar buried detection deep below the giant canyon Valles Marineris but much larger.
Accessing this water however will not be simple, as it is deep underground. You couldn’t just drill a well, as it is ice, not a liquid water table. It would have to mined like minerals on Earth. There are uncertainties about this conclusion as well. It is possible the detection is not water but volcanic ash or dust compacted in a way that mimics an ice detection.
SpaceX files for permits to build a shopping center and restaurant at Boca Chica
SpaceX has now filed for permits to build both a shopping center and restaurant at Boca Chica, with construction beginning in March and completed by the end of the year.
The location proposed is on the beach only a short distance to the west of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy facilities. It will be located looking north not at the Gulf of Mexico but at South Bay, one of the large inlets that surround the spit of land where those facilities are located. It is also located on roads that might not close during launches, which means it might be an excellent location to attract tourists during launches, about six miles from the launch site itself.
SLIM lowers orbit in preparation for January 19, 2024 lunar landing
Map showing SLIM landing zone on the Moon.
Click for interactive map.
The Japanese unmanned lunar lander SLIM, in orbit around the Moon since December 25, 2023, has now lowered its orbit in preparation for its lunar landing attempt, now scheduled for tomorrow, January 19, 2024, with operations beginning at 10:00 am (Eastern).
The image to the right indicates the targeted landing area near Shioli Crater. The mission’s prime engineering goal is to demonstrate precise robotic landing technology, able to land a spacecraft softly on another planet within a target zone less than 300 feet across. If successful it is expected to survive for about two weeks, studying the surface below it with a multi-spectral camera but also releasing two test probes, one a hopping rover and the second a rolling spherical rover. Both carry their own science instruments.
I have embedded the live stream for tomorrow’s landing below.
» Read more
Astronomical high-altitude balloon flight now exceeds two weeks
A high-altitude stratospheric balloon, dubbed GUSTO and designed to study the interstellar medium, has now been circling the south pole over Antarctica for fifteen days.
The map to the right shows its full flight path since its launch on December 31, 2023. From the press release:
GUSTO is mapping a large portion of the Milky Way galaxy and Large Magellanic Cloud to help scientists study the interstellar medium. The observatory is transmitting the data it collects back to watchful teams on the ground as it steadily circumnavigates the South Pole around 120,000+ feet.
GUSTO is flying on a 39 million cubic-foot zero-pressure scientific balloon, which is so large it could easily fit 195 blimps inside of it. The balloon is used to fly missions for long periods of time during the Austral Summer over Antarctica. GUSTO is aiming for a NASA record of 55+ days in flight to achieve its science goals.
You can follow GUSTO’s flight in real time here.
January 17, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
VisioRacer – The Napier Deltic 2-Stroke Diesel Engine
An evening pause: A bit of technological history for the geeks out there. The complexity and precision required, all designed before computers, is incredible.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
January 17, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Impulse plans high-powered orbital tug
The company, whose CEO is Tom Mueller who at SpaceX designed the Merlin engine, intends the tug to function as an add-on upper stage to rockets like the Falcon 9, capable of making it almost as powerful as a Falcon Heavy.
- This month marks the 20th anniversary of the landing on Mars of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity
Both were supposed to last only 90 days. Both lasted years instead.
- New Horizons’ principal investigator Alan Stern tweets a memorial to Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of the planet Pluto who died this day in 1997
Stern notes that a tiny sample of Tombaugh’s ashes are on New Horizons as it flies outward past Pluto and beyond.
SpaceX requests 43 acres of nearby Boca Chica State Park, offering to expand another park by 477 acres
In order to “expand its operational footprint” at Boca Chica, SpaceX is asking to buy 43 acres of nearby Boca Chica State Park, and will offer as part of the purchase 477 acres adjacent to the Laguna Atascoca National Wildlife Refuge several miles to the north.
The link above includes maps showing the relative location of the properties. According to the meeting agenda for the Texas Parks and Wildlife department (TPWD), scheduled to take up this exchange next week, the commission already favors the deal.
“This acquisition will provide increased public recreational opportunities including hiking, camping, water recreation, and wildlife viewing, and allow for greater conservation of sensitive habitats for wintering and migratory birds,” the TPWD agenda stated. The agenda concludes by stating that the Commission finds that the proposed exchange is in the best interest of TPWD.
The public has been invited to comment on the deal at the meeting. Do not be surprised if we have a riot at that meeting of leftist activists protesting this deal.
Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
China launches cargo ship to Tiangong-3 station
China today successfully launched another Tianzhou cargo ship to its Tiangong-3 station, its Long March 7 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.
It docked with the station as expected, taking a fast three-hour rendezvous route to reach it.
The 2024 launch race:
5 SpaceX
5 China
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan
The lawless left
Nazi brown shirts destroying Jewish businesses on Kristallnacht
While there remains a shrinking percentage of Democrats who strongly believe in the law and the Constitution, the leadership of that political party is largely now controlled by those who believe otherwise.
Two incidents the past week illustrated this fact most starkly.
First a pro-Hamas protest in front of the White House on January 13, 2024 became so violent that many staffers inside the building were evacuated for their safety.
“During the demonstration near the White House complex Jan. 13, a portion of the anti-scale fencing that was erected for the event sustained temporary damage,” the statement read. “The issues were promptly repaired on site by U.S. Secret Service support teams.”
The U.S. Secret Service told Fox News Digital that some fences were damaged outside the White House, and that staff members and journalists were “relocated” as a result. “As a precaution, some members of the media and staff in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue were temporarily relocated while the issue was being addressed,” the statement continued. “The Secret Service made no arrests associated with the march and there was no property damage to the White House or adjacent buildings.”[emphasis mine]
You can see video of these attempts to break into the White House here. Though the White House grounds were never penetrated, the violent self-righteous attitude of the mob is quite clear: They have the right to break in, because their cause is just. The law does not apply to them.
The highlighted words in the quote above provide a further explanation as to why this violence happened. » Read more
A rock tadpole on Mars
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 11, 2024 by the left navigation camera of the Mars rover Curiosity.
The picture was highlighted in yesterday’s update from the rover’s science team, describing the team’s upcoming geological goals for the next few days.
We have observed resistant, polygonal fractures/ridges in many recent bedrock blocks. There is much speculation among the team as to the origin of these features. Hypotheses have different implications for past environments, and the polygonal fractures are therefore of high interest. As well as the polygonal fractures, there are more continuous linear veins. The relationship between the polygonal and linear fractures can also help to inform our interpretations
You can see the polygonal fractures in the full image. The thin line of rock sticking up from the tadpole illustrates one of these continuous linear veins. The material that fills the vein is obviously more resistent to erosion, so as the wind (and maybe ancient ice or water activity) scoured the rock into its tadpole shape, the vein material remained.
» Read more
College professors insist all private activity in space must be regulated, by them
Now that private enterprise and free civilians are beginning to fly missions to space, independent of the government, “an international team of experts” have published a paper that demands that all future private activity in space be strictly regulated. From an article in the student newspaper of the University of Alberta:
Private citizens or corporations that collect data or research in space pose unique ethical concerns, Caulfield said. Previously, space travel was “largely funded by the public purse.” For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) receives its funding from the United States government. Publicly funded research has to follow certain rules and there is a degree of oversight, Caulfield explained. But, “if space flight is funded primarily or largely by private companies like Blue Origin [and] SpaceX, what rules do they need to follow?”
Caulfield is Timothy Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and a professor in the University of Alberta’s faculty of law. He is also one of the twenty co-authors of this paper, the authors of which somehow think that because they teach at colleges they have better ethics that the owners of private space companies. Not only do they want to establish strict rules over what can be done in space, they want all research and data to be open source. The private data obtained by missions paid for by others must be available to everyone, even if they didn’t do a damn thing to get it.
These control freaks also insist that commercial space must follow standards of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
“This has been for too long dominated by old white men,” [Caulfield] said. “We’ve got to change that.”
O joy! We are here to help you! These idiots have ruined the entire academic community, making colleges worldwide cesspools of bigotry and race hate. They now want to impose their Marxist ideals to commercial space, probably because deep down they resent the fact that others are doing it and they are incapable of accomplishing anything on their own.
That Alberta’s student newspaper is all-in on these foolish ideas is especially disturbing. The students appear to have been brainwashed to accept such stupidity, and since they represent the future, it tells us what that future will be like.
Next manned mission to ISS to launch tomorrow
The next manned mission to ISS, a private mission by the company Axiom carrying three European astronauts and commanded by an Axiom astronaut, is presently scheduled to launch tomorrow, January 18, 2024, at 4:49 pm (Eastern).
This is a private mission by Axiom, launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and flying the astronauts in its Freedom Dragon manned capsule. This will be Freedom’s third flight to ISS. The launch was originally scheduled for today, but SpaceX scrubbed the mission today in order to give it “additional time allows teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.” It appears during normal prelaunch checkouts engineers found the joints between the upper stage and the capsule were not tightened the proper amount. The company decided to replace the joints, which caused this one day delay.
The crew will spend up to fourteen days at ISS.
I have embedded a live stream of the launch below.
» Read more
Webb confirms the unusual shape of early galaxies as seen by Hubble
Click for original image.
The uncertainty of science: The infrared view of the Webb Space Telescope appears to have confirmed and even underlined the unusual shapes of many early galaxies as previously seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like surfboards and pool noodles – and are rarely round, like volleyballs or frisbees. “Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained lead author Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University in New York. “Galaxies that look like pool noodles or surfboards seem to be very common in the early universe, which is surprising, since they are uncommon nearby.”
The team focused on a vast field of near-infrared images delivered by Webb, known as the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, plucking out galaxies that are estimated to exist when the universe was 600 million to 6 billion years old.
While most distant galaxies look like surfboards and pool noodles, others are shaped like frisbees and volleyballs. The “volleyballs,” or sphere-shaped galaxies, appear the most compact type on the cosmic “ocean” and were also the least frequently identified. The frisbees were found to be as large as the surfboard- and pool noodle-shaped galaxies along the “horizon,” but become more common closer to “shore” in the nearby universe.
The galaxies also appear generally far less massive than galaxies in the near universe, which fits with the Big Bang theory that says they had less time to grow.
The press release notes that the sample size is still very small, and further observations will be required to confirm whether these shapes are common in the early universe.
Private satellite tracking companies track both China’s and the Pentagon’s X-37Bs
Two different commercial satellite tracking companies, LeoLabs and ExoAnalytics, are using their global network of radars and telescopes to track the movements of China’s X-37B mini-shuttle, dubbed Shenlong (“Divine Dragon” in English), as well as the Pentagon’s own X-37B, both of which launched recently.
LeoLabs activated its new radar system in Western Australia early last year. It’s now part of a 10-radar global network tracking the trajectories of satellites and debris so commercial operators can safely navigate the increasingly congested orbits. “We can see what’s happening in Low Earth Orbit because that’s where radar is dominant,” he explains. “But activity in higher orbits can be tracked with specialised optical telescopes. ExoAnalytics, a US commercial company, has 400 of these deployed worldwide, with 11 sites in Australia.”
LeoLabs’ radars are tracking Shenlong in its low Earth orbit. Since the U.S. X-37B is in a higher orbit, it is being monitored by ExoAnalytics.
Both these companies now provide satellite tracking services that were once the sole domain of the U.S. military. Not only does the military buy their information, so do private concerns in the U.S., since their networks track everything, not simply the two X-37Bs. Those unique craft however make for good press copy, and thus help both to sell their services to the world.
Note too that this is the first time I have seen a name attached to China’s X-37B. Previous reports never gave it a name.
Military awards satellite contracts worth $2.5 billion to three companies
The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency (SDA) today announced the award of contracts to Sierra Space, Lockheed Martin, and L3Harris for the construction of 54 reconnaissance satellites, with a total value of $2.5 billion.
The 54 satellites will form part of the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a massive missile detection and tracking constellation in low Earth orbit that’s being built and launched in “tranches.” The trio of contracts announced today is for 18 satellites each in the Tranche 2 Tracking Layer: L3Harris’s award is worth $919 million; Lockheed Martin, $890 million; and Sierra Space, $740 million.
Last week SDA had awarded Rocket Lab its own 18-satellite contract for this constellation, worth $515 million.
The contract awards signal several major changes in the Pentagon’s space strategy. First, it is farming the work out to multiple companies, two of which (Rocket Lab and Sierra Space) are new. In the past the military relied on a very limited number of companies, all well established, with most contracts going to only one vender. New companies had great difficulties getting in the door.
Second, it is building a constellation of smallsats rather than single large satellites. Smallsats are cheaper to build and replace, and are much harder military targets to hit.
Third, though it appears the military is designing these satellites, it appears it is still shifting much of the work from it to the private sector. In other words, the Pentagon is becoming a customer instead of a builder. The result will be a healthy space industry capable of doing more for itself and the military.