May 15, 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
May 16, 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.
- China touts a proposed New Shepard suborbital copycat
Tourist flights to begin in 2028.
- NASA touts the future assembly of its Lunar Gateway space station
Lots of details and promises here, last updated June 2023.
- ISRO finalizes design of its Shukrayaan Venus orbiter
They are targeting the 2026 launch window.
- On this day in 2011 the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its 25th and last flight
The final shuttle flight followed two months later.
- On this day in 1987 the Soviet Union’s Energia heavy lift rocket launched for the first time
The launch was supposed to put a large module into orbit, but failed to do so when that module’s engines got the wrong software command.
Another “rightwing COVID conspiracy theory” proves to be true
Burning witches: The debate technique used by
those in charge during the Wuhan panic
Since the very beginning of the COVID panic in 2020 many perfectly reasonable people, both inside and outside the medical community, suggested that COVID was artifically created and that the evidence strongly suggested its source was from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Worse, the evidence suggested that this work was partly funded by the United States itself — approved by federal bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci — that funnelled government contracts to China to do dangerous infectious disease research which that hostile nation could then use against us.
Unfortunately, those individuals found themselves routinely mocked as pushing a “rightwing COVID conspiracy theory,” with many finding their careers destroyed by blacklisting. During those dark times it was forbidden to ask any questions that went against the leftist government narrative that pushed the myths that COVID was a deadly perfectly natural disease, that lockdowns, masks, and social distancing were the only ways to stop it, and that in the end only the COVID jab could cure it.
We now know without question that those accepted wisdoms, enforced by brutal intolerance, were all wrong, and that the blackballed individuals who advocated otherwise were 100% correct.
Or to put it more bluntly, the only difference between a “rightwing conspiracy theory” and the truth is a few months.
This week we got another proof of this apt saying.
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NASA versus Isaacman/SpaceX on upgrading Hubble
Link here. The NPR article is a long detailed look at NASA on-going review of the proposal by billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman and SpaceX to to do a maintenance mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The NPR spin is subtly hostile to the mission, because it would be funded privately and run entirely by private citizens, not the government. Like all modern leftist news outlets, it can only imagine the government capable of doing such things properly.
Reading between the lines, however, what I instead sense is that NASA and the scientific community is generally quite enthusiastic about this proposal, but wants to make sure it not only is done safely but does nothing to harm Hubble in any way, both completely reasonable concerns. While there appear to be some individuals who are opposed for purely political and egotistically reasons — a desire to keep control of this turf no matter what — I don’t see that faction having much influence long term.
Whether this project can go forward I think will be largely determined by the success or failure of Isaacman’s next manned flight, dubbed Polaris Dawn and scheduled for this summer. On it he will attempt the first spacewalk by a private citizen, using SpaceX’s Resilience capsule and EVA spacesuit. If that spacewalk is a success, and he can demonstrate the ability to accomplish some complex tasks during the EVA, it will certainly ease the concerns of many about a follow-up repair mission to Hubble.
If it does proceed, the goal appears to be to attach new gyroscope hardware to the outside of Hubble, rather than replace the failed gyroscopes already in place. Such an approach will be simpler and more in line with the capabilities of a Dragon capsule, compared to the repair work the astronauts did on the space shuttle.
AST SpaceMobile makes deal with ATT to use its cell-to-satellite constellation
AST SpaceMobile, which launched in 2022 its first satellite for direct cellphone-to-satellite communications and has been successfully testing it since, has now signed a deal with ATT, which wants to use the company’s planned constellation of five such satellites, scheduled for launch this summer.
Nor is this the only satellite company launching such satellites. SpaceX has already launched several dozen Starlink satellites adapted for direct cell-to-satellite service. In addition, it appears that all the companies making smart phones are adding features to their phones that would allow this capability in the future.
Once operational, these satellites will act as orbiting cell towers, and will thus eliminate most of the dead zones in all the populated regions on Earth.
Scientists: No evidence of obvious changes on Europa
Europa in true color, taken by Juno September 2022.
Click for full image.
Having carefully reviewed the images produced by Juno of Europa during its close fly-by in September 2022, scientists have been unable to detect any obvious changes to its surface compared to the previous high resolution images taken by the Galileo orbiter 22 years previously.
You can read the just published paper here [pdf]. From the abstract:
Surface change detection shows no changes in 22 yr, although this is a difficult task considering differences between the JunoCam and Galileo imagers and very different viewing geometries. No active eruptions were detected.
At the same time, because of the significant differences in resolution and viewing angles from the Juno and Galileo pictures, this conclusion remains uncertain. Moreover, this new analysis confirmed earlier work using these same images that suggested many surface features are very young.
The analysis of the images also found evidence of the larger tectonic structure of the planet, as indicated by a new “bright band” found in the southern hemisphere. These bands are thought to indicate the fracture pattern caused by the crust floating and wandering over the theorized underground ocean.
All of this work is very preliminary. Neither Galileo nor Juno has provided us a detailed global survey of Europa. That will come when Europa Clipper arrives in a Jupiter orbit in 2030 that is specifically designed to make 44 close fly-bys of the moon.
Earth-sized exoplanet discovered orbiting dwarf star 55 light years away
Using a number of ground-based telescopes worldwide, astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting what the scientists label an “ultra-cool” dwarf star only about 55 light years away.
You can read the paper here.
Though Earth-sized, this exoplanet is not habitable. It orbits the star every 17 hours and is believed to be tidally locked, with one side always facing the star. More important, though this red dwarf star has likely existed for many tens of billions of years and will continue for many tens of billions of years into the future, the star is too dim and lacking in the kind of resources needed for life. It also drenches the planet with bursts of radiation, which is also believed to have stripped the planet of an atmosphere.
Private satellite snaps picture of ISS in orbit
Click for original image.
One of the satellites in the commercial satellite constellation run by the Australian company HEO Robotics to monitor objects in space successfully took a picture of ISS this week as it zipped by only 43 miles away.
That picture is to the right, reduced to post here. The relative speeds between the satellite and ISS was about 3.7 miles a second. The station’s main truss, which holds up its solar panels and heat radiators, is the vertical structure going from upper left to lower right. The habitable modules cross this at right angles, with what appears to be the Russian section on the right with a Soyuz or Progress docked to the port at the end. A Dragon capsule can be seen at the opposite end, docked to the American section on the left.
The company’s satellites have previously provided imagery of other objects in orbit, including the ERS-2 satellite just before it was de-orbited as well as China’s Tiangong-3 space station during its assembly.
Potentially serious problem on BepiColombo Mercury mission
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), engineers have discovered what could be a potentially serious problem on BepiColombo mission that is presently on its way to Mercury.
The solar arrays and electric propulsion system on the Mercury Transfer Module are used to generate thrust during the spacecraft’s complex journey from Earth to Mercury.
However, on 26 April, as BepiColombo was scheduled to begin its next manoeuvre, the Transfer Module failed to deliver enough electrical power to the spacecraft’s thrusters.
A combined team from ESA and the mission’s industrial partners set to work the moment the issue was identified. By 7 May, they had restored BepiColombo’s thrust to approximately 90% of its previous level. However, the Transfer Module’s available power is still lower than it should be, and so full thrust cannot yet be restored.
The press release implies that this issue won’t prevent the spacecraft from entering orbit around Mercury as scheduled in December 2025, but one wonders how that could be if it doesn’t have sufficient power to do the proper course correction during its last major flyby of Mercury in September 2024. If it misses its precise route in ’24 it could miss Mercury entirely in ’25.
Engineers are analyzing the situation to see what can be done to get it to Mercury, while also trying to figure out what caused this power problem in the first place in order to fix it.
Congress passes new authorization bill for FAA that includes short extension of “learning period”
The new FAA authorization bill that that House approved yesterday and was passed previously by the Senate includes a short extension to the end of the year of the so-called “learning period” that is supposed to restrict the agency’s ability to regulate the new commercial space industry.
That limitation was first established in 2004 with a time period of eight years. It has been extended numerous times since then. The most recent extensions however have been very short, suggesting Congress (mostly from the Democrat side of the aile) wants to soon eliminate it. Whether that happens when it comes up for extension again at the end of 2024 will depend greatly on which party is in control after the election.
It really doesn’t matter. Everything the FAA has been doing in the past three years suggests this learning period no longer exists anyway. The agency has been demanding every new American company or rocket or spacecraft meet much higher regulatory requirements, which appears to have slowed significantly the development of those new companies, rockets, or spacecraft in the past two years.
Lithuania signs Artemis Accords
Lithuania yesterday became the 40th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance for exploring the solar system.
The alliance now includes these nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.
The press release for this announcement differed slightly from the last few, all of which emphasized how the accords were designed to “reinforce” the Outer Space Treaty, the exact opposite of its original goals, which was to build an alliance of nations focused on getting around or eliminating the restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty on private property in space. Today the press release was more vague:
NASA, along with the Department of State and seven other nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020 to lay out a set of principles grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and three related space treaties. With the commitment of now 40 nations, the accords community will facilitate a long-term and peaceful presence of deep space exploration for the benefit of humanity.
Does this mean the Biden administration is going to return to the accords’ original goal? I doubt it. I think instead they decided they needed to be less obvious about their new intentions, which increasingly appears to be to use this alliance to foster globalist international cooperation aimed at keeping all power and legal control in the hands of the governments themselves.
Swing Ninjas – I Wanna Be Like You
An evening pause: Hat tip Judd Clark.