Kylie Minogue & Ricky Martin – Livin La Vida Loca
An evening pause: Performed live in 2000.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Category: Behind The Black
Sunspot update: October activity drops almost to predicted levels
NOAA today posted its updated monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I do every month, I have posted this graph below, with several additional details to provide some larger context.
In October the sunspot count dropped so much from the activity in September that the total count was for the first time since the middle of 2021 actually very close to the predicted numbers first put forth by NOAA’s solar science panel in April 2020.
October 31, 2023 Zimmerman/Space Show podcast
The podcast of my appearance last night on the Space Show with David Livingston is now available. You can download it here.
The discussion almost entirely centered on the delays getting government approvals for the next Starship/Superheavy test launch. The best part I think was the conversation between myself and Charles Lurio, publisher of the very well-respected space newsletter The Lurio Report.
Also, I think one of my regular readers and commenters here at BtB called in with some good questions, but I am not sure. If so, please confirm in the comments below.
Lucy completes fly-by of main belt asteroid Dinkinesh
Lucy’s route through the solar system
The Lucy science team has confirmed that the spacecraft has successfully completed its fly-by of the asteroid Dinkinesh (the white dot in the lower left of the main asteroid belt in the graphic to the right) and is in good health.
Based on the information received, the team has determined that the spacecraft is in good health and the team has commanded the spacecraft to start downlinking the data collected during the encounter. It will take up to a week for all the data collected during the encounter to be downlinked to Earth.
Though the images and data of Dinkinesh obtained during this fly-by have science value, the real purpose of the fly-by was to test the operations of Lucy for when it reaches the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit, as shown by the graphic. The spacecraft will now do a flyby of Earth in 2025 to slingshot it to the orbit of Jupiter, where it will do its main work exploring the Trojan asteroids there. On the way it will fly past a second main belt asteroid, dubbed Donaldjohanson.
November 1, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- ULA during Vulcan’s Christmas Eve launch will coordinate with NORAD to avoid Santa collision
Silly stuff for a slow day in space news.
- New Indian smallsat rocket startup, Spantrik, touts itself at conference
So far no webpage launched yet, and almost no information about the company or its rocket, but as Jay says, “Always good to see a new small sat rocket launcher company.”
- Video of test of prototype aerospike engine from Indian rocket engine company, Spacefields
These are preliminary tests, which appear to show that the design works.
Gadsden flag kid sues school and its officials for violating his first amendment rights
Jaiden Rodriguez reacting with bemused
disbelief by the ignorance of the school
official behind him. Click to watch the video
In August 2023 the Vanguard School in Colorado Springs demanded that 12-year-old Jaiden Rodriguez remove patches on his daypack showing the Gadsden flag as well as some funny Pac-men holding guns or he would be banned from classes. Jaiden refused, and the resulting uproar — forcing the cancellation of a scheduled parents night — caused school officials to quickly back down and give Jaiden permission to attend classes with the daypack and Gadsden flag patch.
For the school the most embarassing part of the story was how it illustrated the total ignorance of school officials about American history as well as the First Amendment. School officials, who are supposed to teach history to their students, knew less about American history than Jaiden. They falsely claimed that the Gadsen flag had “its origins in slavery and the slave trade,” when it was actually created during the American Revolution as a symbol against tyranny. In addition, they ignorantly claimed they had the right to censor Jaiden, simply because his patches “might” offend some students, when the Supreme Court has consistently ruled for more than a half century that they did not have that right.
The uproar caused the school’s board of directors to issue a retraction, though they did not waive the ban on the armed Pac-men patches. Moreover:
» Read more
A Martian splash crater in the northern lowland plains
Click for original image.
Cool image time (necessary when there is no real space news to report)! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “steep crater walls.”
And the interior slopes of this 5-mile-wide unnamed crater are steep, about 600 feet high and descending at a grade of 10 to 13 degrees, getting steeper as you go down. In fact, the floor of the crater itself continues that slope downward to the west until it reaches the base of its western interior wall. For some reason the glacial material within it is piled up higher on its eastern end.
The dark streaks on the crater interior walls are either slope streaks or recurring slope lineae, with the former appearing somewhat randomly and the latter seasonal in nature. Both remain unexplained unique phenomenons of Mars. This new picture was likely a follow-up of a January 2014 MRO picture to see if anything had changed in the past decade.
To my eye it is difficult to detect any changes, but I am not looking at the highest resolution version of the picture. The lack of changes suggests the streaks are seasonal lineae, as both images were taken in the northern spring and the streaks in both appear much the same.
» Read more
China successfully launches classified satellite
China tonight (November 1, 2023 in China) successfully launched a classified satellite, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the north part of the country.
No video of the launch was released. Nor were any pictures. In addition, no information was released describing where the rocket’s first and second stages crashed. Both use kerosene and oxygen, so neither is as toxic as China’s other older rockets using hypergolic fuels, but China also does not make any apparent effort to control these crash landings.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
78 SpaceX
49 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China 90 to 49 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 90 to 78. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 78 to 78.
The Bride of Frankenstein
An evening pause: For Halloween, the 1935 classic, one of the greatest horror films ever made, directed with style and originality by James Whale.
October 31, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- At Boeing’s request the FCC withdraws its license for a low-Earth-orbit satellite constellation, approved less than two years ago
The forfeiture cost Boeing $2.2 million, but is likely necessary because of the company’s many other problems that make building this constellation impossible.
- Sierra Space shows of image of its Tenacity Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle
The spacecraft does appear almost finished, making the present ready date for launch the end of this year increasingly likely.
- Rocket Lab now targets the end of 2024 for launch of its privately funded Venus mission
Now called Venus Life Finder, this new target date firms up the mission’s schedule, as the last word from the company was that it had delayed it to 2025.
- FAA announces it has completed its safety review of SpaceX’s proposed next Starship/Superheavy test launch
A somewhat meaningless announcement, as no license was rewarded because Fish & Wildlife is still doing its own investigation.
- PLD touts its Miura-5 orbital rocket, ready to launch in 2025
The only other detail provided is that the rocket will have a thrust of 1 MN and lift at least 500kg to orbit.
Scour pits of volcanic Martian ash
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team describes this as “clusters of scour pits,” which means the pits here were formed by the prevailing winds, which according to a global analysis of dunes on Mars, is probably blowing from the west to the east at this location.
This image only covers a small section of these scour pits. The full field extends about 20 by 18 miles across, and appears to be the southeastern flank of a mile-high dome. The scour marks could therefore also be evidence of some sagging of this material downhill along that flank.
It is also possible that the flow of the prevailing winds across this southeastern downhill slope is causing the pit formation. Unlike this flank, the rest of this dome is relatively smooth.
» Read more
Israel’s Pearl Harbor
The Israeli UN ambassador and his staff wearing
yellow stars to shame the world’s diplomatic com-
munity for its willingness to appease mass murderers.
For Israel, it is now quite apparent that the mass murder by Hamas of more than a thousand Israeli civilians, including women, children, and babies, was not perceived as just another terrorist attack requiring a measured and surgical response.
No, in this case the entire nation of Israel, from the secular left to religious right, has finally recognized that Hamas had long ago declared war on the Jewish people, and the massacre on October 7th was its way of underlining that state of war.
Israel is now responding in kind, just as the United States did after Pearl Harbor. After that attack on December 7, 1941, American were resolved that they were in a war of survival that could not end until the Axis powers of Germany and Japan were utterly obliterated. There would be no ceasefire or negotiations, as had happened at the end of World War I.
For the Israelis, October 7th is their day of infamy. It is for this reason that the Israeli ambassador put on a yellow star yesterday, similar to the Star of David the Nazis forced Jews to wear, but with the words “Never Again” emblazoned thereon. He then bluntly told the appeasers at the United Nations:
» Read more
Ingenuity completes 64th flight on Mars
Click for interactive map.
Click for original image.
In a pattern that is beginning to be almost routine, on October 27, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity completed its 64th flight on Mars, flying 1,348 feet at a speed of 13 mph for 139 seconds at an altitude of 39 feet.
As with most of its recent flights, the distance and time was slightly longer than the flight plan, likely because the helicopter took extra time finding a good landing spot.
On the overview map above, the green line marks the flight path, and the green dot the helicopter’s present position. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the area covered by the color image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here. This image was taken by Ingenuity just a few seconds before landing, and looks across the floor of Neretva Vallis, where Perseverance will soon be traveling.
On the Space Show tonight
Tonight I will be doing another long appearance from 7:00-9:00 pm (Pacific) with David Livingston on The Space Show. I hope my readers tune in and, more importantly, call in with questions.
When I scheduled this with David several months ago, I told him my expectation was that Starship/Superheavy would still be on the ground due to government blockage. He hoped not. I am sad to say I was right, when I really really wanted to be wrong.
Scientists detect salts and carbon-based molecules on Ganymede
A close-up image taken during the June 7, 2021
Juno fly-by of Ganymede Click for original image.
Using data obtained during a close fly-by of Ganymede by Juno in June 2021, scientists have detected evidence of salts and organic carbon-based molecules.
On June 7, 2021, Juno flew over Ganymede at a minimum altitude of 650 miles (1,046 kilometers). Shortly after the time of closest approach, the JIRAM instrument acquired infrared images and infrared spectra (essentially the chemical fingerprints of materials, based on how they reflect light) of the moon’s surface. Built by the Italian Space Agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, JIRAM was designed to capture the infrared light (invisible to the naked eye) that emerges from deep inside Jupiter, probing the weather layer down to 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below the gas giant’s cloud tops. But the instrument has also been used to offer insights into the terrain of moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (known collectively as the Galilean moons for their discoverer, Galileo).
The JIRAM data of Ganymede obtained during the flyby achieved an unprecedented spatial resolution for infrared spectroscopy – better than 0.62 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel. With it, Juno scientists were able to detect and analyze the unique spectral features of non-water-ice materials, including hydrated sodium chloride, ammonium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, and possibly aliphatic aldehydes.
The data indicated that the salts and organics were most concentrated in Ganymede’s equatorial regions, which are less impacted by Jupiter’s strong magnetic field. The scientists think these materials originally came from the brine of an underground ocean that somehow reached the surface, though this hypothesis remains unconfirmed.
Chinese crew completes five-month mission on Tiangong-3 after return to Earth
The new colonial movement: A three-man Chinese crew successfully landed today in north China in their Shenzhou capsule, completing a five-month mission on the Tiangong-3 space station.
The full mission length was 154 days. China claims that one of the astronauts was a civilian, but that really means nothing considering the security required to participate in these missions.
The crew that has taken over on Tiangong-3 are expected to do a mission of comparable length, probably pushing the length to six-months.
Tomaso Albinoni – Adagio in G minor for violin strings and organ
An evening pause: Performed by the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra.
Hat tip Dave McCooey.
SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage successfully completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
78 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China 90 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 90 to 77. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 78 to 77.
October 30, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- New startup, Interlune, focused on in situ technology for lunar mining and manned operations
Two of the company’s founders come from Blue Origin, while the third is Apollo astronaut Jack Schmidt, the only actual geologist to walk on the Moon.
- Visual maps showing who has put the most satellites in orbit in 2023, here and here
Not surprisingly, the maps make it obvious how much SpaceX now dominates the space industry.
- An image showing three different next generation Russian manned capsules, all under development
For an assembly production floor, the image shows remarkably little activity, with no workers and very little on the floor itself. Russia might be building these, but I bet the work is going more slowly than anything Blue Origin has done, and that is very slow indeed.
- A map of the lunar surface material displaced by the engine thrust of India’s Vikram lander at touchdown
Good information for calculating the work that must be done to reduce the consequences of take off and landing when near a future base.
Chandra X-rays a giant hand in space
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, with data from the orbiting IXPE producing the lines that indicate the orientation of the magnetic field lines.
The image was part of research studying what the scientists call Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe).
[E]arly-on when the new-born pulsar is still deep in its parent supernova remnant, or at late times after it has escaped to the relatively uniform interstellar medium, the pulsar wind is often uniform around the pulsar spin or velocity axis. In projection on the sky such structures have bilateral symmetry, that is, the two halves mirror each other. This makes them look (vaguely) like animals. This has led to many PWNe collecting animal monikers (‘The Mouse’, ‘The Dragonfly’, ‘The Rabbit’ – we are guilty of some of these…).
In between these early and late phases, the story is often more complex and the PWN interaction with the supernova shock wave leads to complicated morphologies. One of the prime examples is the PWN in the supernova remnant RCW 89 (also known as MSH 15-5(2)). Here the complex interactions form the PWN into the `Cosmic Hand’. Wanting to map the magnetic fields which structure this hand, the IXPE team took a long hard stare at MSH 15-5(2) and its central pulsar.
The scientists admit that the match between IXPE’s data and the structure of the hand is not really a surprise, but confirming the match was necessary if they are ever going to figure out the fundamental laws that govern magnetic fields, laws that presently are not well understood, at all.