April 17, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Category: Behind The Black
Cascade – Hotel California
An evening pause: Performed live in 2022 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The instruments are called Chapman Sticks.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
April 17, 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.
- Firefly installs another payload on its Blue Ghost lunar lander
The payload is an experiment to see if electromagnetic fields can be used to protect objects from lunar dust.
- SpaceX to build $14M rec center, sushi restaurant in Brownsville
These retail outlets are for within Brownsville itself, and are separate from the shopping center and cafe it is planning for the Boca Chica area.
- Musk to meet with officials from Skyroot Aerospace, Agnikul Cosmos, Bellatrix Aerospace and Dhruva Space at New Delhi during his India visit on April 22
The first two companies are the most advanced rocket startups in India. All are central to its nascent commercial space industry.
- Long March 2F with Shenzhou-18 manned capsule rolled to launchpad
This next manned launch to China’s space station is target April 25th.
SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites; but with streaming issues
SpaceX today succeeded in launching another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. However, after stage separation and the ignition of the upper stage, with the rocket operating normally, the live stream from X suddenly went down. The problem was not with the rocket, as all feeds from both stages disappeared, with the entire live stream going blank.
The first stage was on its twelfth launch. SpaceX has now confirmed that it landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has also confirmed as successful orbital insertion.
This was SpaceX’s 40th launch so far in 2024, all successful. To get some perspective on the company’s continuing and spectacular success, the entire United States could not achieve that many launches in any year from 1969 through 2019, and in 2020 it merely matched this number (because SpaceX that year launched 25 times). And SpaceX has done it this in only three and a half months. Based on this pace, its goal of 150 launches in 2024 appears increasingly possible.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
40 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 46 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 40 to 33.
Io on Juno’s 60th close fly-by of Jupiter
Click for original image.
Click for original image.
The photos above and to the right were both taken by Juno during its 60th close fly-by of Jupiter on April 9, 2024. The image above, cropped slightly to post here, was processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, who states the following:
The stretched and enlarged crop is derived from a reprojected Io image with a margin of 100 km greater than Io’s nominal radius. Two plumes are obvious. The plume on the night siide is visible in several frames of the PJ60 Io sequence.
That Juno captures plumes like this on every close fly-by tells us the extent of activity that is on-going on the moon. Basically, eruptions are continuous and never ending.
The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was processed by Eichstädt and enhanced by citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos. It gives us a global view of Io’s many volcanoes and flood lava plains.
During that 60th fly-by Juno’s closest approach to Io was 10,778 miles. Though close, this is not as close as the approach of 930 miles during the 57th and 58th fly-bys. Nor will future fly-bys be as close again. This is essentially Juno’s last close look at the volcano world.
Confirmed: California’s coastal commission is looking for ways to block SpaceX launches at Vandenberg
According to an article yesterday in the Santa Barbara Independent, the California Coastal Commission is aggressively looking for ways it can prevent SpaceX and other commerical rocket companies from increasing the launch pace out of Vandenberg Space Force Base.
When asked how many launches at VSFB benefit the Department of Defense (DOD), Colonel Bryan Titus, vice commander for Space Launch Delta 30, said that 25 percent hold DOD satellites and payloads, but argued that all SpaceX launches support the DOD and its allies.
“I just don’t think that SpaceX should be able to skirt the requirements for a Coastal Development Permit when its clear intent is to conduct primarily for-profit business activity and not federal activity,” said Kristina Kunkel, the Environmental Policy Director of the California State Controller’s Office.
The article confirms what I had speculated last week, that the Coastal Commission wants to find ways to impose its regulatory power over commercial launches inside Vandenberg, expressly to limit or stop those launches.
Side note to my readers: Posting will be light for much of today, as I will be visiting my doctor for a follow-up on my rib injury. Nothing bad has happened, but a follow-up seems wise to make sure things are healing as they should.
Sweden signs Artemis Accords
Sweden yesterday became the 38th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, one day after Switzerland had officially signed.
The alliance now includes the following nations: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.
The press release once again focuses on “reinforcing” the Outer Space Treaty, rather than using the accords to get around that treaty’s limitations of private property. More and more it appears the Biden administration and the global community wants to use this alliance not to encourage the establishment of a legal framework for private ownership, but to retain that power within the governments involved.
As I said last week, “Under these circumstances, I wonder why China and Russia haven’t signed on as well.”
NASA approves Dragonfly mission to the Saturn moon Titan
NASA yesterday announced that it has given final approval for the Dragonfly helicopter mission to the Saturn moon Titan.
With the release of the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget request, Dragonfly is confirmed with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028. This reflects a cost increase of about two times the proposed cost and a delay of more than two years from when the mission was originally selected in 2019. Following that selection, NASA had to direct the project to replan multiple times due to funding constraints in fiscal years 2020 through 2022. The project incurred additional costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain increases, and the results of an in-depth design iteration. To compensate for the delayed arrival at Titan, NASA also provided additional funding for a heavy-lift launch vehicle to shorten the mission’s cruise phase.
The rotorcraft, targeted to arrive at Titan in 2034, will fly to dozens of promising locations on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a vehicle for science on another planetary body. The rotorcraft has eight rotors and flies like a large drone.
Be prepared for the project to go overbudget, as NASA’s biggests projects almost always do.
Engineers say goodbye to Ingenuity
Ingenuity with its missing blade. Click for original image.
Because Perseverance is about to move out of range of direct communications with the disabled Ingenuity helicopter, engineers have now completed their final transmission from the helicopter yesterday, confirming that a new software update has been successfully installed.
The telemetry confirmed that a software update previously beamed up to Ingenuity was operating as expected. The new software contains commands that direct the helicopter to continue collecting data well after communications with the rover have ceased.
With the software patch in place, Ingenuity will now wake up daily, activate its flight computers, and test the performance of its solar panel, batteries, and electronic equipment. In addition, the helicopter will take a picture of the surface with its color camera and collect temperature data from sensors placed throughout the rotorcraft. Ingenuity’s engineers and Mars scientists believe such long-term data collection could not only benefit future designers of aircraft and other vehicles for the Red Planet, but also provide a long-term perspective on Martian weather patterns and dust movement.
The engineers belief that the helicopter could collect data for as long as twenty years. That data will sit on Ingenuity until such time as a later exploration team arrives, either manned or unmanned. There is also the possibility that later in Perseverance’s mission it could pass nearby again, allowing engineers to grab some of the data then.
According to the press release, those same engineers are now exploring future helicopter missions to Mars. Based on imagery I have seen coming down from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the as yet unstated target locations could be inside the eastern end of Valles Marineris or on the northern perimeter of Hellas Basin.
Joe Bonamassa – The Last Matador Of Bayonne
An evening pause: Hat tip Alton Blevins.
April 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.
- Starliner now intergrated with Atlas-5 rocket
All continues to proceed to a May 6, 2024 launch.
- Chinese pseudo-company Deep Blue touts static fire test of its Nebula-1 test vehicle with 3 Thunder-R1 kerolox engines
Next will be a static fire test with nine engines, followed next year by hop tests and first orbital flight. Jay adds a side note: “All the pseudo-companies are showing off their engines with test footage. Are they feeling left out from the space symposium? Is it a deadline among all the pseudo-companies to show their progress to the party?” That last point could very well be true.
- ISRO has developed a carbon-carbon nozzle for use on its PSLV rocket
It says the nozzle is 67% lighter than the alloy nozzles presently used.
Isolated flat-topped mesa inside large Martian crater
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 18, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The camera team labels this “layers in butte”, but because we are looking straight down at this 400-foot-high butte, it is difficult to see any layers at all. Based on most Martian geology however it would be shocking if this butte is not made up of multiple horizontal layers, ending with that flat surface layer at the top. Moreover, the base of the mesa to the northeast is clearly made up of a series of terraces that appear obscured at other points due to the presence of dust and dunes.
A side view would help clarify the number of layers and their thickness, but it does appear that this butte contains evidence of the geology that once covered this whole area, but over eons has eroded everything away but this butte.
» Read more