Randy Travis – Pray For The Fish
An evening pause: Makes a nice bookend to the Alison Krauss evening pause one week ago.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Category: Behind The Black
September 19, 2022 Quick space links
Courtesy of stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.
- Four liquid nitrogen tanks on their way by barge to SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility
- First flight of Sierra Space’s Tenacity Dream Chaser cargo spacecraft now targeting the summer of ’23
- Rocket Lab’s next launch scheduled for October 5, 2022
- ULA Delta Heavy launch of National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite scheduled for September 24, 2022
- Next Tianzhou cargo spacecraft to Tiangong-3 station will also carry a ham radio cubesat for later deployment from station
- UAE’s deal with China calls for its second Rashid lunar rover to fly on China’s Chang’e-7, scheduled now for 2026
- China and Argentina sign agreement to work together on space projects
- Turkey signs deal with Axiom to fly Turkish astronaut to space
- Italian cubesat flying in formation with DART and designed to observe its asteroid impact, completes 1st of three course corrections
As this spacecraft is launching on ULA’s Vulcan rocket, this launch date is entirely dependent on when Vulcan finally gets off the ground. According to various sources, this could be either the second or third Vulcan launch. However, right now that rocket still does not have the required two BE-4 engines that Blue Origin is building for it, and so the date of that first launch remains very uncertain.
This will be the final Delta launch from Vandenberg Space Force base. ULA plans its future Vandenberg launches to use the Vulcan rocket instead.
For more information about that cubesat, go here.
The first Rashid rover is scheduled to launch in November, 2022, on a Falcon 9 rocket as part of Ispace’s private commercial lunar lander mission. Clearly, UAE officials are spreading their business around in order to guarantee the best results.
No details were provided but the image at the link is of a radio dish, suggesting this agreement firms up Argentina’s willingness to allow China to install space communications dishes there.
The deal does not say whether that Turkish astronaut will fly to ISS, or to Axiom’s own station. No date for the flight was set. This however is the fourth foreign nation that Axiom has signed, after Italy, Hungary, and the UAE. For Turkey it is the second manned contract, having also signed on with Sierra Space to launch an astronaut to its planned Orbital Reef station.
DART’s impact is scheduled for September 26th.
SpaceX fires seven engines on Superheavy prototype #7
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully did a static fire engine test of seven engines on its Superheavy prototype #7, intended to be the lower stage of the first Superheavy/Starship orbital test.
The link takes you to the full live stream. Below I have cued that live stream to just before the test occurred. Everything seems to go as planned, with no obvious anomalies.
SpaceX continues to be moving closer and closer to that first orbital flight.
» Read more
Interstellar clouds backlit by nearby massive star
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduce to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of what astronomers believe is a newly formed massive star about 9,000 light years away that has periodically spewed out material during eruptions.
The scientists hope to use Hubble to determine the speed in which this material is flying away from the star by taking pictures at intervals and then measuring the amount of change from image to image. This data will also allow the scientists to better gauge the distance to this star, as well as its actual mass, information that will help them better understand what is happening.
I highlight this picture however simply because of its beauty. The interstellar clouds on the left are all apparently backlit by the brightest star on the right, and thus their shape is easy to perceive.
InSight’s seismometer detects its first new impact on Mars
Click for full image.
Using data from InSight’s seismometer that suggested a new impact had occurred at a specific location on September 5, 2022 on Mars, scientists used the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to search and find that impact.
The photo to the right, reduced to post here, is that MRO photo.
The initial impact itself created a small marsquake that was detected by InSight’s seismometer. The instrument recorded seismological data that showed the moment the meteoroid entered Mars’ atmosphere, its explosion into pieces in the atmosphere, and finally, the impact that created a series of at least three craters in the surface.
MRO then flew over the approximate site where the impact was “felt” to look for darkened patches of ground using its Context Camera. After finding this location, HiRISE captured the scene in color. The ground is not actually blue; this enhanced-color image highlights certain hues in the scene to make details more visible to the human eye โ in this case, dust and soil disturbed by the impact.
This was thus the first new Martian impact detected based on its actual occurrence, rather than simply finding a change between two photos taken at different times. The latter only tells you a time period when the impact occurred. InSight’s detection here marks the impact’s exact moment.
Nor is this the only such discovery. It appears that InSight detected at least two other impacts (here and here), that only subsequently were linked to MRO impacts. In those cases, the new impact had already been found by MRO, and only afterward were scientists able to identify its seismic vibration in InSight data, thus pinpointing the exact date it took place.
Today’s blacklisted American: Leftist thugs at University of New Mexico threaten conservative speaker and audience with violence
Tomi Lahren: targeted for leftist violence
They’re coming for you next: When the conservative student organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) invited conservative Tomi Lahren to speak at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, a mob of leftist thugs gathered outside, attempted to force their way in, and apparently actually threatened violence against both Lahren, the audience there to hear her speak, and the handful of police officers trying to protect them.
“I start my speech and you can hear the chants and you can hear the screaming and the expletives. And again, nobody really thought anything of it. They’re just, you know, fired up. And I didn’t really think too much of it until they started pushing past the officers and banging on the doors so much that these double doors are visibly moving and shaking and they are smashing into the windows. And that’s when it became incredibly chaotic,” Lahren continued. “Everybody was worried that they were going to get inside. They were pushing officers in front of the doors and pushing them out of the way. I mean, attacking them. It started to get very ugly and very violent, very fast. Of course, we could only see through these little windows in the front the room we were in, so we couldn’t really see exactly what was going on out there.” [emphasis mine]
A very short video shows these protesters chanting and pushing against the door to the room.
» Read more
Orbital tug company signs launch agreement with German rocket startup
Capitalism in space: The orbital tug company Spaceflight today signed a launch agreement with the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA).
The agreement formalizes the plan for Spaceflight to fly its Sherpaยฎ orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) and other rideshare payloads on upcoming RFA missions from a variety of European launch sites, including from facilities in the United Kingdom, French Guiana and others. The companies are targeting mid-2024 for their first launch.
Rocket Factory is one of three German startup rocket companies pushing to complete the first German commercial launch. While Isar Aerospace had raised the most capital, it remains unclear which of these companies will win.
Valeri Polykov, holder of the record’s longest stay in space, passes away
Valeri Polykov
Russian astronaut Valeri Polykov, who holds the record for the longest spaceflight yet of any human in history, has passed away at the age of 80.
In 1994 and 1995 Polykov spent 437 days on Russia’s space station Mir, the equivalent of fourteen months and two weeks. His thoughts at launch, as he told me personally when I interviewed him while writing Leaving Earth, were not so confident:
“What if something goes wrong?” [he explained]. “I had sacrificed so much time. The government has spent so much, more than they can afford. And I’ve learned so much for them myself, for them.
“Better I die if something went wrong,” he thought. “Better if I had a gun to shoot myself.”
Nothing went wrong however. Polykov, a doctor, had pushed for this long mission to find out if it would be possible for a person to function after a year-plus of weightlessness upon arrival on Mars. Originally planned to last 18 months, circumstances eventually shortened it to 14 months-plus. When Polykov came home in March 1995, he managed to walk a few steps on his own, shortly after being removed from the capsule. To his mind, he had proved that a person could function on their own on Mars after such a long flight.
Others disagreed. As I wrote in Leaving Earth, though he was almost normal within a week of landing,
Polykov had come back to Earth very weak. For at least those first few hours, he needed help from those around him. Any spacefarer arriving on Mars after a year in space must be prepared to face that same challenge.
Regardless, Polykov, like Brian Binnie, was one of the early giants in space exploration. His contribution must not be forgotten.
SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie passes away
R.I.P. Brian Binnie, who piloted SpaceShipOne on its second flight that won the Ansari X-Prize back in 2004, passed away on September 15, 2022 at the age of 69.
Brianโs record flight was the second of two SpaceShipOne flights needed to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The prize was given for the first privately-built crewed vehicle to make a flight above 100 km (62.1 miles) twice within two weeks. Mike Melvill made the first flight for the Ansari X Prize competition five days earlier.
The success of this private spaceship proved that private enterprise could do better than government, if given the chance. It laid the groundwork for the renaissance in American rocketry we are seeing today.
His part in this history must not be forgotten.
Webb takes its first infrared image of Mars
Click for full image.
Astronomers have now released the the James Webb Space Telescope’s first infrared image of Mars, taken on September 5, 2022.
The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows some of the data obtained. Because Mars is so close, it is actually too bright for Webb’s instruments. To get any data, the exposures were very very short, and still the brightest areas — as indicated by large areas of yellow — are overexposed. The cause of the different brightness of Hellas Basin, however, is not simply because the basin — the deepest point on Mars — is cooler.
As light emitted by the planet passes through Marsโ atmosphere, some gets absorbed by carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules. The Hellas Basin โ which is the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars, spanning more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) โ appears darker than the surroundings because of this effect. โThis is actually not a thermal effect at Hellas,โ explained the principal investigator, Geronimo Villanueva of NASAโs Goddard Space Flight Center, who designed these Webb observations. โThe Hellas Basin is a lower altitude, and thus experiences higher air pressure. That higher pressure leads to a suppression of the thermal emission at this particular wavelength range [4.1-4.4 microns] due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to tease apart these competing effects in these data.โ
The NASA press release says the scientists are preparing a paper analyzing the spectral data and what it revealed about “dust, icy clouds, what kind of rocks are on the planetโs surface, and the composition of the atmosphere,” I suspect however that Webb’s capabilities for studying Mars are much more limited than implied, and that it will over time take much fewer images of the red planet, compared to Hubble.
SpaceX launches 54 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9
After four scrubs on four consecutive days, SpaceX tonight finally successfully put 54 Starlink satellites into orbit.
The first stage successfully completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings halves completed the third and fourth flights, respectively.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
42 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
5 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 58 to 37 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 58 to 56. At 58 successful launches, 2022 is now the third most active year in the entire history of the United States, with only 1965 and 1966 having more launches.
This post is late because I spend the weekend in the mountains, caving. Twas a much needed break.
SpaceX now offers more expensive high performance Starlink for residential customers
SpaceX has now made available the much more expensive Starlink high performance terminals — previously only available to business customers — for its residential customers.
The purchase price for the terminal is the same as for business customers, $2,500. The standard terminal package costs only $599. However, residential customers who buy this more expensive terminal will still pay the standard $110 month rate for the service, instead of the $500 monthly fee that business customers will pay.
SpaceX notes that the high-performance Starlink kit would be best for users who reside in harsh environments, such as those who are in hot or cold climates. Starlinkโs Support Page also indicates that the high-performance dish has better download speeds in hot weather, better snow melt capability, improved water resistance, and better visibility of satellites.
I would expect that eventually, when SpaceX is faced with competition in this market, these features will end up on all its terminals. Until then, however, new customers will have to make a choice.
NASA issues call for new manned lunar lander proposals
NASA yesterday announced a solicitation for proposals for new manned lunar lander proposals, aimed at obtaining services long term, rather than the initial contract it has awarded SpaceX which only covered the first few Artemis lunar missions.
This solicitation is essentially being offered so that Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin will have a second chance to win such a contract, having lost out to SpaceX initially. It also is NASA’s effort to get Congress to give it a bigger budget so that it can pay for two different lunar lander contracts.
Having two competing lunar landers is not a bad thing. Giving a second contract however simply because the company (Blue Origin) exerts political clout is not. Right now it is unclear whether this solicitation is the former or the later.
The announcement also included what has become boilerplate in all NASA announcements about its Artemis lunar missions:
Through Artemis missions, NASA is preparing to return humans to the Moon, including the first woman and first person of color, for long-term scientific discovery and exploration. [emphasis mine]
It is very clear that the number one criteria that NASA has established, under the Biden administration, for picking the crew on that first Artemis lunar landing mission is race and gender, not talent, skill, or ability. While it will be a great thing when the first woman and black steps on the Moon, their skin color or sex should not be the reason they got to go. If it is, it will be incredibly insulting to their talent, skill, and ability. In fact, by making race or gender the only qualification that NASA cares about, it puts an asterisk on those qualifications. Forever people will wonder if these individuals really deserved the honor.
ABL completes dress rehearsal countdown for its first RS1 rocket launch
Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company ABL successfully completed a full dress rehearsal countdown for its first RS1 rocket this past week, and is presently negotiating with the FAA the launch date for that rocket’s first test launch.
Though ABL is its own independent company, one of its biggest investors has been Lockheed Martin. In fact, in almost all ways, ABL is a Lockheed Martin division, and appears to be part of the older and bigger company’s strategy for entering the smallsat market.
September 16, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Max Ehrman – Desiderata
An evening pause: An excellent meditation for beginning the weekend. From the Youtube webpage:
Max Ehrmann was an American attorney and poet who often wrote on spiritual themes. During his life, he contributed great thoughts to our literary lexicons, blending the magic of words and wisdom with his worthy observations.
Desiderata, which means โthings that are desired,โ was written by Max Ehrmann โbecause it counsels those virtues I felt most in need of.โ
I think the reading was a bit slow. I think it works better at either 1.25 or 1.5 speed.
Hat tip Cotour.
September 16, 2022 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.
- UAE signs deal with China to do joint Moon mission
- Ariane 6 core stage test model completes test program in French Guiana
- Elon Musk gives Jay Leno a tour of Boca Chica
- Video from UK startup Black Arrow showing its proposed smallsat launch rocket, launched from a ship at sea
- Assessment of the objects remaining from Russia’s November 2021 anti-satellite test
- Federal military-industrial complex discussing ways to compensate private satellite constellations if attacked by foreign powers
No details as yet released, but expect more by next week.
This is not a real Ariane 6, but a mock-up used to test roll-out, assembly, and launch procedures in advance of the arrival of the real thing.
The link includes a short clip. The full tour will air on Jay Leno’s Garage on CNBC on September 21st.
The concept is brilliant. Since smallsat rockets are designed to ship in containers or trucks and launch from simple concrete pads, bringing everything with them, there really is no reason they couldn’t also launch from the deck of a ship.
Generally good news. According to this analysis, of the 1,785 objects catalogued, only 585 remain in orbit, and of those 547 are expected to burn up within the next three years. This will leave only 38 pieces of debris threatening ISS and other satellites.
The level of corruption I smell from this story sickens me. There might be good reasons to do this, but I am certain in the end none of those reasons will drive this new policy. Instead, it will be designed as a way to suck more money from the taxpayers for private companies who are friends of politcians and donate to their campaign coffers.
Deep inside the youngest flood lava event on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! Today we return to the Athabasca Valles flood lava event, believed to be the youngest major lava event on Mars that I highlighted in a cool image last week.
Then, I showed two meandering lava flows near the edge of this Great Britain-sized flood lava plain, produced 600 million years ago in only a matter of weeks. Today, we take a look deep within the lava plain. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 6, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “a lava-crater interaction.”
In plain English, we are looking at a crater that has been inundated by the flood lava, filling it.
» Read more
Today’s blacklisted American: USC professor suspended because one common Chinese word he was teaching sounded like the “N-word”
Greg Patton, blacklisted by USC for being a good teacher
The modern dark age: Today’s blacklist story is in a sense a follow-up of my blacklist story from yesterday, as it clearly shows that the fraternities which broke free of supervision from the University of Southern California (USC) had good reason, and that (as I speculated) one of the main reasons they did so was because of USC’s woke and racist policies.
Today we discover that USC has forced a communications professor specializing in Asia, Greg Patton, to stop teaching because during one virtual class he was explaining the innocent reason why — to English speakers — the Chinese seem to say a racial slur repeatedly. Apparently, the Chinese phrase โ้ฃไธชโ (nรจi ge), which approximately means “that one” or more simply “um”, is used in Chinese as a filler word, similar to “um,” “ur” in English.
Patton was trying to explain this to his class during a virtual session. Below is embedded that specific moment that has now caused him so much trouble:
» Read more
Starlink being tested in Antarctica
Capitalism in space: The National Science Foundation (NSF) has begun testing a single Starlink terminal at its McMurdo station in Antarctic, with the hope that the service can improve communications at the station significantly.
Everyone at the base shares a 17 Mbps link, according to the United States Antarctic Program, which severely limits what people can do. The station actually blocks people from using high-bandwidth apps like Netflix, cloud backups, and video calls, with the exception of once-weekly Skype or FaceTime sessions at a public kiosk or mission-critical communications.
The addition of Starlink probably doesnโt mean that McMurdo residents will be able to hold a Netflix movie night or anything โ the terminals can handle around 50-200 Mbps, which still isnโt a ton to go around, even during the winter when far fewer people are at the base โ but it could help make transferring important scientific data off of the icy continent easier.
According to SpaceX’s plans, this new service in Antarctica means that by year’s end Starlink will be available on all seven continents.