Category: Behind The Black

Endless dunes in the dry Martian equatorial region

1:01 pm

Endless dunes in the dry Martian equatorial region
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of a vast dune field, 50 miles square, that sits about 225 miles south of the southern foothills of Mars’ biggest volcano, Olympus Mons.

The dunes are probably less than 20 feet high, with that one small hill only slightly higher. Their similar orientation, which extends across the entire 50-mile-square dune field, indicates the direction of the prevailing winds, which I think (but will not swear to it) is from the southeast to the northwest, which also happens to also follow the grade downhill to the northwest.

It is also possible that wind direction is the reverse, and goes uphill to the southwest.
» Read more

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Scientists think they have finally discovered what makes the Sun’s corona so hot

10:31 am

Using data from Europe’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, scientists now think they have finally pinpointed the process that causes the Sun’s corona — its atmosphere — to be many times hotter than its surface.

For decades, scientists have been struggling to explain why temperatures in the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, reach mind-boggling temperatures of over 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (one million degrees Celsius). The sun’s surface has only about 10,000 degrees F (6,000 degrees C), and with the corona farther away from the source of the heat inside the star, the outer atmosphere should, in fact, be cooler.

New observations made by the Europe-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft have now provided hints to what might be behind this mysterious heating. Using images taken by the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), a camera that detects the high-energy extreme ultraviolet light emitted by the sun, scientists have discovered small-scale fast-moving magnetic waves that whirl on the sun’s surface. These fast-oscillating waves produce so much energy, according to latest calculations, that they could explain the coronal heating.

You can read the paper here [pdf]. The results have not yet been confirmed, but if so it will solve one of the space age’s oldest scientific mysteries.

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Astronomers chemically map a significant portion of the Milky Way

10:19 am

The chemistry of the Milky Way's nearby spiral arms
Red indicates areas with lots of heavier elements, blue indicates
areas dominated by hydrogen and helium. Click for original image.

Astronomers have now used today’s modern survey telescopes — on Earth and in space — to map the chemistry of a large portion of the Milky Way’s nearby spiral arms, revealing that the arms themselves are rich in heavier elements, indicating greater age and the right materials to produce new stars and solar systems like our own.

If the Milky Way’s spiral arms trigger star births as predicted, then they should be marked by young stars, aka metal-rich stars. Conversely, spaces between the arms should be marked by metal-poor stars.

To confirm this theory, as well as create his overall map of metalicity, Hawkins first looked at our solar system’s galactic backyard, which include stars about 32,000 light years from the sun. In cosmic terms, that represents our stellar neighborhood’s immediate vicinity.

Taking the resultant map, the researcher compared it to others of the same area of the Milky Way created by different techniques, finding that the positions of the spiral arms lined up. And, because he used metalicity to chart the spiral arms, hitherto unseen regions of the Milky Way’s spiral arms showed up in Hawkins’ map. “A big takeaway is that the spiral arms are indeed richer in metals,” Hawkins explained. “This illustrates the value of chemical cartography in identifying the Milky Way’s structure and formation. It has the potential to fully transform our view of the Galaxy.”

You can read the science paper here [pdf]. Based on this initial mapping effort, it appears that it will not be long before a large percentage of our own galaxy will be mapped in this manner.

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FTC will not block the purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris

10:03 am

How nice of them! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday that it will not block the planned purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris, which the company expects to now complete in mere days.

The deal, if finalized, would place L3Harris on a solid footing to achieve Kubasik’s long-stated goal of positioning the company as the sixth major defense prime.

The forthcoming acquisition has also garnered support from an unlikely source: RTX, the parent company of missiles giant Raytheon. Executives from the company, which rely on Aerojet to deliver crucial parts, have been open in recent weeks that while they don’t love strengthening a competitor, they feel Aerojet is in desperate need of new leadership. “We’ve obviously always been concerned about Aerojet. But I would say some of these things have been magnified by all these external inputs,” Wes Kremer, Raytheon president, told Breaking Defense during last month’s Paris Air Show.

Aerojet has had problems for years, especially because the rocket engines it makes are very expensive. It has failed to garner any market share in the new emerging rocket industry, remaining dependent entirely on very generous government contracts and the older big space contractors. But even here, it lost out to Blue Origin when ULA was looking for engines for its new Vulcan rocket.

It is likely that after this merger, the name Aerojet Rocketdyne will vanish, a sad end to a company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the space age.

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Juno’s next fly-by of Io coming on July 30

9:54 am

Io as seen by Juno
An image of Io from the March fly-by

The Juno science team is gearing up for the spacecraft’s next fly-by of the Jupiter moon Io, scheduled for July 30, 2023.

When NASA’s Juno mission flies by Jupiter’s fiery moon Io on Sunday, July 30, the spacecraft will be making its closest approach yet, coming within 13,700 miles (22,000 kilometers) of it. Data collected by the Italian-built JIRAM (Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper) and other science instruments is expected to provide a wealth of information on the hundreds of erupting volcanoes pouring out molten lava and sulfurous gases all over the volcano-festooned moon.

The image to the right was taken from 33,000 miles during the March fly-by, almost three times farther away. The dark spots are volcanoes, and some showed significant change from earlier images.

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Boeing’s total losses due to Starliner now equal $1.5 billion

9:44 am

According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.

Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.

The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.

At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.

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OSIRIS-REx completes last major mid-course correction before sending its sample capsule back to Earth

9:38 am

OSIRIS-REx yesterday completed a 63 second engine burn, successfully aiming the spacecraft so that its September 24th drop off of its sample capsule will hit the Earth as planned.

Preliminary tracking data indicates OSIRIS-REx changed its velocity, which includes speed and direction, by 1.3 miles, or 2 kilometers, per hour. It’s a tiny but critical shift; without course adjustments like this one the spacecraft would not get close enough to Earth on Sept. 24 to drop off its sample of asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft is currently 24 million miles, or 38.6 million kilometers, from Earth, traveling at about 22,000 miles, or about 35,000 kilometers, per hour.

In the two weeks prior to that drop-off the spacecraft will do two more short burns to refine its aim so that the sample capsule will land precisely as planned on the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.

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FAA: No Starship/Superheavy launch until we say so!

9:30 am

We’re here to help you! The FAA yesterday stated in no uncertain terms that there will be no additional orbital test launches of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy until it has decided the launch will be safe.

The FAA, which is overseeing an investigation into the April 20 launch, said Wednesday it was still awaiting the report it needs to identify corrective actions SpaceX must take to get the OK to launch again from Boca Chica.

An FAA spokesperson declined to speculate when the agency’s investigation might be completed, saying that “public safety and actions yet to be taken by SpaceX will dictate the timeline.”

“The FAA will not allow a return to flight operations until it determines that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety or any other aspect of the operator’s license,” the spokesperson said. “The mishap investigation is ongoing.”

The implication that the FAA is awaiting completion of SpaceX’s own investigation sounds like an attempt to shift the blame for the delay from the government to SpaceX, even though the company has made it very evident in words and deeds that it is moving quickly and will be ready to launch in August.

This threat of a delay is hardly a surprise. I predicted in late April that the federal bureaucracy is targeting SpaceX, and by late May predicted the the FAA would block this August launch attempt.

It is also important to underline the fact that there is absolutely no one at the FAA capable of or knowledgeable enough to competently assess the safety of the next launch. The only people who can really do that are the engineers at SpaceX. All the FAA can do is reject SpaceX’s investigation — for political reasons — and demand SpaceX take additional actions, based merely on random guesses as to what needs to be done. And it can keep doing this repeatedly.

This launch is likely to be delayed many months. You heard it here first.

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Steve Ibsen – The Kitty Cat Dance

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this as an evening pause a dozen years ago. Diane found it again and said it must be posted again. I agree. It is absurdly silly but I guarantee that once you watch you will never forget it. It also appears, from the comments on the youtube page, that young children — who understand the importance of silly — like it especially.

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July 26, 2023 Quick space links

4:10 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

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Democrats now favor oppression and censorship by almost 3 to 1

1:57 pm

Key result from Pew survey
Click for original image.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center has starkly revealed the dark oppressive mentality that now dominates supporters of the Democratic Party, and makes possible the enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship by its leadership.

The graph to the right shows the big take-away from the poll, as indicated by the arrows and the red box. Democrats now favor censorship by 70 to 28 percent, a major rise since 2018, when their attitude towards free speech was almost identical to Republicans. Since then, while Republican support for the First Amendment and freedom has remained largely stable and strong, Democrats have almost entirely abandoned these American ideals. As Pew notes:

There was virtually no difference between the parties in 2018, but the share of Democrats who support government intervention has grown from 40% in 2018 to 70% in 2023, while the share of Republicans who hold this view hasn’t changed much.

There is a similar gap between the shares of Democrats and Republicans who say technology companies should restrict false information online. A large majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) support technology companies taking such steps, while about half of Republicans (48%) say the same. The share of Democrats who support technology companies taking these steps has also increased steadily since 2018.

These partisan gaps persist when it comes to restricting extremely violent content online. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that the U.S. government (71% vs. 48%, respectively) and tech companies (83% vs. 61%) should take steps to restrict violent content online even if it limits freedom of information.

I must add that this is not a poll of the politicians of the Democratic Party. It is a poll of that party’s supporters, its rank and file, its grass roots. And though the poll showed a rise in the willingness to censor across all age groups, the cause of that rise is clearly coming from Democrats. As noted by Alex Berenson,
» Read more

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Giant glaciers in the northern Martian mid-latitudes

12:57 pm

Overview map

Giant glaciers in the northern Martian mid-latitudes
Click for original image.

It is time for two cool images! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and is one of two glaciers imaged by MRO in May that are among a whole series of glaciers flowing down the south wall of the same mesa.

The red dot in the inset and on the overview map above marks the location of the picture to the right. The white dot marks the location of the May 27, 2023 picture, which can be seen here.

The unnamed 10,000-foot-high mesa from which these glaciers flow, located in the middle of the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier glacier country, is about 41 miles long and 18 miles wide at its widest point. The glacier to the right falls about 6,000 feet in about four miles, making the grade steep, ranging from 15 to 23 degrees. That steepness explains the split in the glacier, as it flowed around a huge piece of higher bedrock in the middle of this descending hollow.

Both images provide further evidence of the dominance of glaciers in this mid-latitude region. While the glaciers are all covered with dust and debris to protect the ice, and are also thought at present to all be inactive, they also all suggest a very dynamic Martian geological and climate history, one that will likely come alive again as the planet’s rotational tilt naturally shifts back and forth from its present 25 degree tilt to 11 to 60 degrees.

The glaciers also show us again that Mars is not a dry desert, but above 30 degrees latitude it is an icy desert much like Antarctica. Colonists will have no trouble finding water.

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Optical image of accretion disk around baby star, taken by ground-based VLT

10:59 am

Stellar accretion disk
Click for original image.

Scientists today released an optical image of the accretion disk that surrounds a baby star about 5,000 light years away, taken by ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and enhanced by data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), also in Chile.

That image, reduced to post here, is to the right. The bright blue spot in the center is the main star, with the smaller dot to the lower left a companion star. From the press release:

The VLT observations probe the surface of the dusty material around the star, while ALMA can peer deeper into its structure. “With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms are undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses akin to those of planets,” says Zurlo.

Astronomers believe that giant planets form either by ‘core accretion’, when dust grains come together, or by ‘gravitational instability’, when large fragments of the material around a star contract and collapse. While researchers have previously found evidence for the first of these scenarios, support for the latter has been scant.

This data suggests that the latter is being observed, the first time gravitational instability has been identified as it is happening. You can read the scientist’s research paper here [pdf].

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Infrared Webb image of a binary baby star system and its surrounding jets and nebula

10:47 am

Webb infrared image of HH 46/47
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The infrared picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Webb Space Telescope of the jets and nebula of the Herbig–Haro object dubbed HH 46/47, thought to contain a pair of baby stars under formation.

The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the actively forming central stars, represented in fiery orange. Much of this material was shot out from those stars as they repeatedly ingest and eject the gas and dust that immediately surround them over thousands of years.

When material from more recent ejections runs into older material, it changes the shape of these lobes. This activity is like a large fountain being turned on and off in rapid, but random succession, leading to billowing patterns in the pool below it. Some jets send out more material and others launch at faster speeds. Why? It’s likely related to how much material fell onto the stars at a particular point in time.­­­

The stars’ more recent ejections appear in a thread-like blue. They run just below the red horizontal diffraction spike at 2 o’clock. Along the right side, these ejections make clearer wavy patterns. They are disconnected at points, and end in a remarkable uneven light purple circle in the thickest orange area. Lighter blue, curly lines also emerge on the left, near the central stars, but are sometimes overshadowed by the bright red diffraction spike.

To see optical images of HH 46/47 as well as some further background, go here. It is one of the most studied HH objects, which is why it was given priority in Webb’s early observation schedule.

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A Dragon cargo capsule had a valve issue at ISS in June

10:30 am

The Dragon cargo capsule that had been docked to ISS in June apparently had a faulty valve that impacted no operations but has required SpaceX to review similar valves on all manned and cargo Dragon capsules.

The valve — known as an isolation valve — is designed to come on in case of a thruster leak, Reed said during the press conference. Since no leak was happening at the time it was stuck open, the valve “didn’t have to serve any purpose.”

The affected spacecraft, known as CRS-28, otherwise returned to Earth normally on June 30 after 25 days in space. After checking into the valve on CRS-28, SpaceX looked at its entire spacecraft line. They found “corrosion among certain units,” Reed said, which SpaceX is looking into identifying and addressing.

Knowing SpaceX, it will now not only find out the root cause, but fix it so that the corrosion never appears again, thus making its Dragon spacecraft even more reliable.

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Houston mission control loses contact with ISS for about 90 minutes

10:25 am

NASA’s mission control in Houston yesterday lost contact with ISS for about ninety minutes during work at the Johnson Space Center, an outage apparently caused or related to upgrade work being done there.

Back-up systems were activated but not used, while communications continued through Russia’s mission control in Moscow. Nor was anyone on the station ever in any danger, according to NASA officials.

The only concern with such an outage would be the many systems on the American half of ISS that are closely controlled and maintained by the ground. On the Russian half the goal has always been to build its station modules so they could run independent of ground operations.

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A third spaceport approved in Scotland

10:18 am

Despite some local opposition, a third spaceport has been approved in Scotland, allowing up to ten suborbital launches per year.

During launches, a 155m (250km) exclusion zone will be placed on the seas around St Kilda, the world-heritage site and archipelago north west of the site. It will be the third of its kind in Scotland, after spaceports were launched in Sutherland and Shetland.

The project, spearheaded by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar – Western Isles Council – has been met with opposition from locals with more than 1,000 people signing a petition rejecting the plans.

…Comhairle nan Eilean Siar had previously bought Scolpaig Farm for £1m and is developing it with private military contractor QinetiQ alongside space industry firms Rhea Group and Commercial Space Technologies.

It is unclear if the spaceport will eventually upgrade to providing orbital launch facilities. It will also have to compete with the two other spaceports in Scotland, as well as get launch approvals from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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New Space Force language would give it the power to take over all commercial space assets

10:04 am

A new draft outlining the powers of the Space Force would give it the right to shut down all commercial space activities during any government declared emergency, giving it exclusive control over all space assets, whether built or owned by the government or private companies.

The Space Force’s draft framework for how commercial satellite services could be called up in times of crisis or conflict to support military missions would allow the Defense Department to deny participating companies the right to sell their wares to any other client in times of “war, major conflict, national or international emergency.”

According the draft, the government would also not be required to cover any losses to the companies. In other words, in clear violation of the fifth amendment to the Constitution forbidding the taking of any private property without just compensation, this draft regulation would allow the military to do exactly that. And it won’t require a war, merely a declared emergency, similar to the unjustified emergency declared when COVID arrived.

At this time the draft language has only been issued for industry comment. I suspect the entire space industry will oppose it strenuously. I also expect the government to yield reluctantly, using its financial power to issue major contracts as a wedge to garner some industry compromises.

The result, as with the FCC and the FAA in the two stories below, will be a more powerful administrative state in DC, wielding power the Constitution expressly forbids it to wield.

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Varda blocked from bringing its capsule back to Earth by FAA

9:49 am

Varda has been forced to delay the first return of its capsule from space, loaded with a drug designed to treat HIV/AIDS that can only be manufactured in weightlessness, because the FAA has so far refused to issue “a re-entry license,” a new regulatory power grab the FAA instituted two years ago supposedly to “streamline the launch and reentry licensing process.”

This new language, which I was unaware of and know of no Congressional act approving it, has done exactly the opposite.

A key issue, he said, is that Varda is the first to seek a reentry license under new FAA regulations known as Part 450. Those regulations were enacted by the FAA more than two years ago to streamline the launch and reentry licensing process.

…For the commercial launch industry, the Part 450 regulations have become an area of concern. Only a handful of Part 450 launch licenses have been issued to date as the FAA begins a transition to the new regulations, but those licenses have taken longer to complete than expected, in some cases missing a 180-day statutory deadline. Industry officials raised the issue at a July 13 hearing of the House Science Committee and at a July 11 meeting of an FAA advisory group, the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted language says it all. It also suggests these new regulations, apparently written by the FAA and not Congress, might be contributing to the delays being experienced by SpaceX in its attempt to do test launches of its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

Varda is presently hoping to return the capsule in mid-August. It had begun this re-entry licensing process in early 2021 — more than two years ago — and still does not have that approval. Its business plan is to make money by manufacturing things in weightlessness that can’t be made on Earth — such as this HIV drug — and returning those items to Earth for sale.

Such a plan can’t work if the federal administrative state stands in the way.

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House rejects FCC bill because the bill approved FCC’s recent power grab

9:35 am

The full House yesterday failed to pass an FCC bill designed “to reform satellite spectrum licensing regulations” because of opposition to language that provided a backdoor approval of the FCC’s recent power grab that extended its regulatory power beyond its legal statutory authority.

[T]he leadership of House Science Committee opposed the bill because of provisions regarding regulation of space debris and space traffic management. They pointed to language in the bill that directed the FCC to establish “specific, measurable, and technology-neutral performance objectives for space safety and orbital debris.”

In a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated to House members ahead of the vote, the bipartisan leadership of the full committee and its space subcommittee argued that the FCC would be overstepping its authority by attempting to regulate space safety. “Congress has never explicitly granted FCC authority to regulate in these areas, and doing so now is a significant policy decision,” the letter stated, adding that the FCC also lacked expertise to do so. “Assigning FCC responsibility to both create these rules and assess an applicant’s compliance would divert resources from FCC’s primary mission of assessing the applicant’s spectrum use.”

While this sounds like Congress has actually decided to exercise its Constitution authority and restrict this maverick agency, don’t bet on it. The vote for procedural reasons required a two-thirds majority. 250 House members voted in favor, and 163 voted against, a clear majority in favor that was only 16 votes short of approval.

Moreover, even if Congress removes the language approving the FCC power grab and then passes the bill, it will have done nothing to stop that power grab. Expect FCC officials under Biden to ignore the law and continue to demand the right to regulate how satellites are de-orbited, something it hasn’t the knowledge or authority to do. Satellite companies will have to sue to stop it, an expensive task that will hinder their operations and cost money. Many will simply decide to go along.

The result will be a more powerful unelected administrative state — beholden to no law — and a weaker Congress unwilling to represent the American citizenry by wielding its Constitutional power.

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