July 18, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Category: Behind The Black
Leonid & Friends – Superstar
An evening pause: A lovely cover of the Carpenters song.
Hat tip Cotour.
July 18, 2024 Quick space links
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.
- Vaya and Scorpius sign deal to work together to build cryogenic oxidizer tank
Lots of blather in the press release, with little concrete information.
- Blue Origin releases video of test deployment of New Glenn’s first stage landing legs
Unlike the Falcon 9’s four legs, New Glenn will have six, and they are stored inside the stage until deployment.
- Rocket Lab touts the production line of HASTE, the suborbital version of its Electron rocket
The picture shows at least seven stages, but only two have the “HASTE” logo, so it isn’t clear how many are for suborbital or orbital flights.
- China touts test success of “key cabin segment” of Lijiuan-2 (Kinetica-2) liquid-fueled rocket
I have no idea from this tweet what exactly they did or tested.
- Today in 1966 John Young and Michael Collins launched on Gemini 10
This mission completed the first entirely successful docking, followed by a rendezvous with a second target spacecraft. Gemini 8 had docked but had to abort shortly thereafter due to out-of-control thruster, and Gemini 9 couldn’t dock because the shroud did not release properly from the target spacecraft.
Scientists: Biden has infused DEI and racial quotas throughout the entire federal science bureaucracy
Joe Biden, like the KKK in love with racist quotas
A new research paper just completed by a international group of scientists details at length how the policies of critical race theory and its “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” philosophy has been infused deeply into all levels of the entire federal science bureaucracy, influencing grant awards and hiring at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in ways that warp science and research and make good research impossible..
You can read the paper here [pdf]. From the press release:
The paper exposes how DEI has spread much further and more deeply into core scientific disciplines than most people, including many scientists, realize. This has happened, in large part, by presidential executive order (specifically, EO 13985 and EO 14091), implemented through the budget approval process.
The two executive orders listed were issued by President Biden in 2021 and 2023 respectively, with the first issued on his very first day in office. If you have the patience, it worth reading both, since they outline in great detail the goals of this administration to favor the hiring and promotion of “underserved communities,” which the first order lists as follows:
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Columbia University donors fleeing because of its apparent willingness to tolerate bigotry and pro-Hamas mobs
The motto means “In Your Light [God],
We Shall See the Light.” Too bad no one
running Columbia now believes in this.
In the past two months Columbia University has discovered that there are real consequences for tolerating and sometimes even supporting the bigotry and anti-Semitism of its Marxist and pro-Hamas students and faculty.
First, in early June a very wealthy Columbia graduate donated $260 million to Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. Though the donor remains anonymous, these details were released by the university:
Not only did the donor make a point to tell onlookers he fought in a conflict entrenched in antisemitism, but he also reiterated how he graduated from Columbia.
It appears the donor wanted to make it very clear that Columbia had once been in the running for this donation, but its wishy-washy response to the riots committed on campus by pro-Hamas students caused him to reject it.
Nor has this been all. Another major donor to Columbia, Mortimer Zuckerman, announced earlier this week that he has cut off payments on a major $200 million donation he had initiated to Columbia in 2012, totaling millions.
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Curiosity looks up Gediz Vallis as it starts its journey out
Curiosity panorama looking south on July 16, 2024. Click for high resolution. Go here, here, here, and here
for original images.
Click for interactive map.
Even as the Curiosity science team is beginning the rover’s journey out of the giant Martian slot canyon Gediz Vallis, they have on July 16, 2024 used its high resolution camera to gather a new mosaic of the surrounding terrain. I have used four of those images (available here, here, here, and here) to create a panorama, as shown above, focusing on the view looking south up into Gediz Vallis. Make sure you click on the image to see the full resolution version.
The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiousity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The white dotted line indicates Curiosity’s actual traveled route, while the red dotted line the planned route.
The peak of Mount Sharp is directly ahead in this panorama, out of sight and about 26 miles away and 16,000 feet higher up. To get a sense of how far away that remains, note that Curiosity in its dozen years of exploration on Mars has so far traveled just under 20 miles and climbed about 2,500 feet.
The plan is to back track downhill and circle around the nose of the western wall of Gediz Vallis and head south in a parallel canyon that is believed to provide easier traveling for Curiosity’s damaged wheels.
Researchers discover an anti-aging drug that extends the lives of rats 25%
Researchers have discovered that by blocking the increase of a certain protein within the body, they can not only extend the lives of rats by about 25%, the rats overall health in old age was improved significantly.
You can read the original paper here and the press release from the researchers here. From that press release:
After establishing IL11’s role in aging, the team demonstrated that by applying this anti-IL11 therapy in the same preclinical model, metabolism was improved. The mice shifted from generating white fat to beneficial brown fat. Brown fat breaks down blood sugar and fat molecules to help maintain body temperature and burn calories. The researchers also observed improved muscle function and overall better health in their study, as well as an increased lifespan by up to 5 per cent in both sexes.
Unlike other drugs known to inhibit specific pathways involved in aging, such as metformin and rapamycin, anti-IL11 therapy blocks multiple major signaling mechanisms that become dysfunctional with age, offering protection against cardio-metabolic diseases, age-related loss of muscle mass and strength as well as frailty. In addition to these externally observable changes, anti-IL11 therapy also reduced the rate of telomere shortening and preserved mitochondria’s health and ability to generate energy.
According the paper, this drug is now in early-stage clinical trials for fibrotic lung disease, but its benefits — as seen in these rat experiments — could turn out to be far greater, across the board.
Astronomers discover an exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit so far found
Using the TESS space telescope, astronomers have discovered a gas giant exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit so far found, circling a star about 1,100 light years away.
On Jan. 12, 2020, TESS picked up a possible transit of the star TIC 241249530. Gupta and his colleagues at Penn State determined that the transit was consistent with a Jupiter-sized planet crossing in front of the star. They then acquired measurements from other observatories of the star’s radial velocity, which estimates a star’s wobble, or the degree to which it moves back and forth, in response to other nearby objects that might gravitationally tug on the star. Those measurements confirmed that a Jupiter-sized planet was orbiting the star and that its orbit was highly eccentric, bringing the planet extremely close to the star before flinging it far out.
Prior to this detection, astronomers had known of only one other planet, HD 80606 b, that was thought to be an early hot Jupiter. That planet, discovered in 2001, held the record for having the highest eccentricity, until now.
The exoplanet’s orbit is presently 167 days long, at its closest stellar approach dipping 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is from the Sun, and at its farthest point zipping just beyond Earth’s distance.
Computer simulations suggest that in a billion years this orbit will decay into a more circular orbit close to the star, turning this gas giant into a hot Jupiter roasted by its star continually.
Europe’s Gaia space telescope in trouble
Launched in 2013 and now functioning more than six years after the completion of its primary mission to measure precisely the distances to over a billion stars, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope has experienced several major technical issues this spring related to a micrometeorite hit and a failure of the electronics of one of its CCDs.
The micrometeorite hit occurred in April.
The impact created a little gap that allowed stray sunlight – around one billionth of the intensity of direct sunlight felt on Earth – to occasionally disrupt Gaia’s very sensitive sensors. Gaia’s engineers were in the middle of dealing with this issue when they were faced with another problem.
The spacecraft’s ‘billion-pixel camera’ relies on a series of 106 charge coupled devices (CCDs) – sensors that convert light into electrical signals. In May, the electronics controlling one of these CCDs failed – Gaia’s first CCD issue in more than 10 years in space. Each sensor has a different role, and the affected sensor was vital for Gaia’s ability to confirm the detection of stars. Without this sensor to validate its observations, Gaia began to register thousands of false detections.
The cause of the electronics failure remains unsolved, though it is believed related to the major solar storm that swept by at about the same time.
As a result of these issues, the telescope’s data stream will be significantly reduced. How long it will remain in operation remains unclear. At some point the cost will outweigh the amount of data obtained.
Update on Cape Canaveral work by multiple launch companies
Link here. The article provides a nice summary of the construction work by Blue Origin, Stoke Space, and SpaceX at the cape, all leading to future launches and greater capabilities.
Blue Origin is still pushing for a September 29, 2024 first launch of its New Glenn orbital rocket. SpaceX is continuing work on its new Starship/Superheavy facilities as well as installing upgrades to its Falcon launchpads. The most interesting tidbit however is was about Stoke Space and its proposed Nova rocket:
The first two flights of Nova are planned for 2025, while 10 flights are planned for both 2026 and 2027. Initial flights of Nova will be expendable, with full reusability of the first and second stages coming later.
Stoke’s primary goal has been to make this rocket entirely reusable. It apparently plans to begin launching and do recovery tests as it goes until it achieves that reusability later.
CEO of Firefly removed
The board of directors of the rocket startup Firefly announced yesterday that the company’s CEO, Bill Weber, “will no longer serve” in that position and has been replaced by an interim CEO.
This change is likely related to a news story the day prior about allegations that Weber had had an “inappropriate relationship” with a female employee.
Firefly has an interesting history when it comes to its CEOs. The company’s first CEO, Tom Markusic, was first sued by Virgin Galactic (his former employer) for stealing proprietary information, and then by his first Firefly investors when he got the company out of bankruptcy by making a deal with a Ukrainian billionaire. That billionaire was later forced to divest from the company by the State Department. The new investors that Markusic found then forced him out in 2022.
Who will take over now remains unknown.
NASA cancels its VIPER payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole
Late yesterday NASA announced it was canceling the VIPER rover that was the primary payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander, scheduled for launch in the fall of 2025.
NASA stated cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth as the reasons to stand down on the mission. The rover was originally planned to launch in late 2023, but in 2022, NASA requested a launch delay to late 2024 to provide more time for preflight testing of the Astrobotic lander. Since that time, additional schedule and supply chain delays pushed VIPER’s readiness date to September 2025, and independently its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander also has been delayed to a similar time. Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions. NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent.
Knowing a bit of history is important to understand this decision. In the first half of the 2010s VIPER was called Resource Prospector, and was intended as an entirely NASA-built lunar lander and rover mission with a budget of about billion dollars. In 2018 however the Trump administration cancelled it as part of its decision to shift from missions designed, built, and owned by NASA to making NASA simply a customer buying products from private sector. Rather than spend a billion on one lunar lander/rover mission, NASA would use that money to buy multiple lunar landers from private companies, and put its instruments on those.
NASA then decided to repurpose the rover portion of Resource Prospector, turning it into VIPER to launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. However, that project still carried with it all the problems that curse all government-designed, government-built, and government-owned projects. It had no fixed price contract but instead had the typical government unlimited checking account, and thus its costs kept rising with repeated delays in construction.
When then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed the project at the 2019 International Astronautical Congress, the estimated cost was $250 million. By the time NASA was ready to make a cost commitment to Congress, that grew to $433.5 million with landing in 2023. That landing date slipped to 2024 with a cost of $505.4 million. Now it has slipped again to 2025 and with a cost of $609.6 million, more than 30 percent above the commitment. That triggered an automatic cancellation review, Kearns said, which took place last month.
Some of the cause of the 2023 delay was because Astrobotic’s Griffin lander wasn’t ready either. Now however it appears VIPER still won’t be ready for the 2025 launch, even though the lander will be ready.
NASA has therefore decided to stop throwing good money after bad, and kill the rover. It however has not killed its funding for Astrobotic’s Griffin, and the mission will go forward, with the company offering its now open payload space to others. It also may use this space to fly a demonstration mission of its own proposed LunarGrid solar power system.