David Bowie – The Man Who Sold The World
An evening pause: Performed live 2000.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Category: Behind The Black
January 4, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- SpaceX aiming to do two launches on the same day this weekend, from opposite coasts
The launch from Vandenberg is a set of Starlink satellites, while the Kennedy launch is a set of OneWeb satellites. The author at the link breaks down the number of launches last year at each pad, and notes SpaceX’s goals this year.
- Launch of China’s Long March 7A now set for January 8-9, 2023
This launch was originally set for December but was postponed. It is unclear whether it will be China’s first launch in 2023.
- Norfolk Naval Station by Taijing-3-01 remote sensing satellite, Sept 2022
China gives us a hint at its satellite reconnaissance capability, which according to Jay, in this case has less resolution than Google Earth.
Backlash against MIT’s blacklisting of teacher forces it to adopt Free Speech Resolution
Today’s blacklist story is really a follow-up on an earlier story from November 2021. At that time MIT had cowardly bowed to the demands of the intolerant left and cancelled a lecture on planetary science by a planetary scientist, Dorian Abbott, merely because Abbott had also posted videos on line advocating the radical idea of free speech.
This action by MIT however did not go unnoticed, and in fact produced an aggressive backlash from both alumni and faculty members. The alumni withdrew their financial support to the school, while a group of 73 faculty members signed a letter demanding the school support free speech.
The faculty suggest[ed] the adoption of the Chicago Statement, which states, in part: “[T]he University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn,” and that “it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
Out of this effort the MIT Free Speech Alliance was formed, aimed at forcing these changes at MIT.
Now, less than two months later, it appears that this effort has borne fruit. » Read more
Drainage out of a Martian crater
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, not only gives us another example of a Martian geological feature that is unique to Mars and whose origins are not yet understood, it also shows what appears to have once been a lake-filled crater that over time drained out to the east through a gap.
This picture was taken on October 14, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The inexplicable geology is called brain terrain, and it fills the floor of the crater on the picture’s left side. The rim shows a gap, from which a meandering channel continues downhill to the east. The lake inside the crater might not have been liquid water, but ice. The channel might not have been formed by flowing water, but by a glacial flow downhill.
What makes this glacial evidence especially interesting is that it is located in a very different part of the Martian mid-latitudes.
» Read more
January 3, 2023 Zimmerman/Space Show podcast
You can now listen to the podcast of my appearance last night, January 2, 2023, on the Space Show at this link.
It was fun show, especially because we had some good callers.
George Winston – Thanksgiving
An evening pause: For a winter’s evening.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
January 3, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer, who trolls the web to make sure I don’t miss any important stories.
- Astronaut Walt Cunningham has passed away
Cunningham only flew in space once, on Apollo 7, the first shakedown flight of the Apollo capsule in October 1968. The flight lasted ten days, had no technical problems at all, though all three astronauts caught colds. Its success paved the way for the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon two months later.
- LeoLabs files petition with FCC requesting it rethink the limitations it placed on SpaceX’s Starlink constellation [pdf]
It appears the FCC took an arbitrary number LeoLabs had used in a presentation merely for “ease of exposition and calculation in describing the methodology” and made it the basis for limiting the number of satellites SpaceX could launch. LeoLabs wants the FCC to fix this.
- The trailer for the Russian sci-fi movie, The Challenge, that was partly filmed on ISS last year, has now been released
It is very clear that they got a lot of good footage when they were on ISS. It is a shame however that this trailer doesn’t have English subtitles, because I think it probably could make some money from American filmgoers.
Pushback: Court denies school principal immunity from lawsuit for squelching free speech
Former school principal Caroline Garrett
Pushback: A federal appeals court last week ruled that Caroline Garrett, the former principal of Wy’east Middle School in Portland, Oregon, does not have immunity from a lawsuit by a teacher, Eric Dodge, whom she threatened to punish for bringing a MAGA hat to several training sessions.
At the first training session with 60 participants, “fewer than five people complained, including the first presenter who was not a District employee,” and all trainings were completed without incident, according to the court records. “Clinton, Reagan, and Trump appointees coming together to affirm the First Amendment,” lawyer Gregory Conley tweeted in response to the ruling, referring to the panel of judges.
According to the court’s official ruling [pdf], Garrett threatened to punish Dodge if he brought the hat into school again:
» Read more
China releases first update on status of Yutu-2 since September
Click for full image. The red flag marks the landing site.
China today released its first update since September on the status of its Yutu-2 rover on the far side of the Moon. The map on the right shows the rover’s travels through December 2022.
As of today the rover has traveled 4,774 feet total, and about 450 feet since September. The goal, as stated in April 2021, was to “move northwest toward the basalt distribution area located about 1.2 km away.” At the time the rover was only averaging about 100 feet travel per lunar day. According to these numbers, it picked up the pace in the past year, though it is unclear whether it has reached that goal.
The soft icy Martian northern lowland plains
Click for full image.
In a cool image post last week, I noted that the near surface “ice sheets in the northern lowland plains are never … smooth, even if well protected.” The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, provides an excellent example. It was taken on November 2, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
It is winter, and the sunlight is coming from the southwest, only 27 degrees above the horizon. The mound on the left is soft, while the depression on the upper right appears to have sand dune ripples sitting on top of a flat glacial mound. This depression may be an eroded crater (no upraised rim) or it could be a sink caused by the sublimation of the near surface ice.
Everywhere else the flat plains are stippled with small knobs.
The overview map below provides more context.
» Read more
Largest volcanic eruption in years detected on Io
Using instruments on a ground-based telescope, one scientist based at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in Arizona has detected the largest volcanic eruption in years on the Jupiter moon Io.
PSI Senior Scientist [Jeff] Morgenthaler has been using IoIO, located near Benson, Arizona to monitor volcanic activity on Io, since 2017. The observations show some sort of outburst nearly every year, but the largest yet was seen in the fall of 2022. Io is the innermost of Jupiter’s four large moons and is the most volcanic body in the Solar System thanks to the tidal stresses it feels from Jupiter and two of its other large satellites, Europa and Ganymede.
IoIO uses a coronagraphic technique which dims the light coming from Jupiter to enable imaging of faint gases near the very bright planet. A brightening of two of these gases, sodium and ionized sulfur, began between July and September 2022 and lasted until December 2022. The ionized sulfur, which forms a donut-like structure that encircles Jupiter and is called the Io plasma torus, was curiously not nearly as bright in this outburst as previously seen. “This could be telling us something about the composition of the volcanic activity that produced the outburst or it could be telling us that the torus is more efficient at ridding itself of material when more material is thrown into it,” Morgenthaler said.
The material released by this eruption could impact Juno during future close approaches of Jupiter.
SpaceX raises another $750 million in private investment capital
SpaceX has just completed another round of fund-raising, gaining another $750 million in private investment capital.
This additional money now means that SpaceX has raised about $10 billion in private money, most of which is being used for the development of Starship and Superheavy. When we add the $4 billion SpaceX will get from NASA for Starship, the company now has $14 billion to build this new rocket.
SpaceX starts 2023 with first launch of year
SpaceX today opened the 2023 launch race with first launch of year, using its Falcon 9 rocket to place 114 satellites into orbit, most of which are smallsats.
The first stage completed its 15th flight, landing safely at Cape Canaveral. As of this writing deployment of the many smallsats is ongoing.
John Williams – The Cowboys Overture
An evening pause: It is more than a decade since I last posted this magnificent piece of music from the 1972 John Wayne film, The Cowboys. Time to post it again, because I think it makes a great start to a new year. Rather than John Williams conducting, this time we have a 2018 performance by the Stanisław Moniuszko School of Music Orchestra in Bielsko Biała, Poland, Andrzej Kucybała, conductor.
On the radio plus under the weather
Two things:
1. I will be on the Space Show with David Livingston tomorrow night for about two hours, beginning at 7 pm (Pacific). You can listen to it here. Please consider calling in. Conversations and questions are always fun.
2. I am a bit under the weather today, so it is likely I will not have the energy to do a blacklist column today or a cool image. This could change, as I get restless if not active. Regardless, I want to take some pressure off by making it voluntary, not a requirement for the day.
Rocketry went BOOM! in 2022, but in a good way
In my 2021 annual report on the global launch industry, I noted that while 2021 was a banner year for the global launch industry:
Not all is sweetness and light of course. Competition and freedom always includes risk. Some of these new companies will certainly fail. The demand for launch services might not be enough to sustain them all. And factors outside the control of anyone, such as war and further panics like the Wuhan panic, could shut them all down.
In 2022 the launch industry not only topped 2021, setting a new record for successful launches in a single year, the industry was reshaped and changed by the very factors I warned about one year ago. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine resulted in Russia losing its one remaining satellite customer from the west, OneWeb, while the challenges of rocketry caused one already successful launch company, Astra, to suspend its launch services in order to develop a more competitive rocket.
Nonetheless, 2022 remained the most successful year ever in rocketry, smashing the record for successful launches in a single year, set the previous year, by more than 33%. The graph below illustrates well the unprecedented success of 2022.
» Read more
Hakuto-R successfully completes second mid-course correction
Hakuto-R’s planned landing site is in Atlas Crater.
According to Ispace, the private lunar lander company based in Japan, its Hakuto-R lander has now successfully completed second mid-course correction, and is functioning as expected on its way to the Moon.
The maneuver was carried out shortly after midnight on Jan. 2, 2023 (Japan Standard Time) and operations were managed from ispace’s mission control center located in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. This orbital control maneuver is the second maneuver to occur while the lander has been traveling to the moon. The first orbital control maneuver was completed on December 15, 2022. The second maneuver was carried out at a greater distance from Earth and lasted for a longer period than the first maneuver, verifying the company’s capability to carry out orbital maneuvers under various conditions.
As of Jan. 2, 2023, the lander has traveled approximately 1.24 million kilometers from the Earth and is scheduled to be at its farthest point of approximately 1.4 million km from the Earth by Jan. 20, 2023. Once the lander reaches its farthest point from Earth, a third orbital control maneuver may be performed, depending on its navigational status.
While Hakuto-R carries a number of commercial payloads — including Rashid, the first lunar rover built by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — its primary goal is engineering. Ispace is using this mission to demonstrate its ability as a company to do this, in anticipation of later commercial planetary missions.
Sunspot update: The most sunspots since 2014
Time for my monthly sunspot update, based on NOAA’s monthly graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. The newest graph, with December’s numbers added to the timeline, is below. As always, I have added some additional details to provide context.
In December the half-year pause in the ramp up to solar maximum ceased, with the Sun seeing the most sunspots since September 2014. This high activity far exceeded the predicted sunspot count for December 2023, almost doubling it. In fact, December’s sunspot count almost equaled the predicted peak for the upcoming solar maximum, which is not supposed to happen until sometime in 2025.
Manualist John Twomey on The Tonight Show, New Year’s eve, 1986
A evening pause: This silliness is perfect as we head into the New Year’s eve weekend.
Note: He was anticipating a Michigan victory in the Rose Bowl, which wouldn’t happen until the next day. Unfortunately, Michigan lost.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Pushback: University eliminates “bias reporting” option that allowed any student to anonymously squelch dissent
An afterthought at Southern Utah University
Bring a gun to a knife fight: After receiving a threat of legal action [pdf] for violating the first amendment rights of its students, South Utah University (SUU) eliminated a “bias reporting” option on its website that allowed any student to anonymously squelch dissent, simply because he or she did not like what the other person said.
Southern Utah University (SUU) removed a tab from its campus safety website where students and officials could report alleged “bias” or “hate” incidents after the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), a non-profit legal group, challenged that it violates students’ rights to free speech, SLF confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
» Read more