Category: Behind The Black

German rocket startup Hyimpulse completes suborbital test launch

9:55 am

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse yesterday succesfully completed its first suborbital test launch, launching from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia.

The 12-metre, 2.5-tonne test rocket dubbed “SR75” lifted off shortly after 0500 GMT from a launch site in Koonibba, South Australia. It is capable of carrying small satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 pounds) to an altitude of up to 250 km (155 miles) while being fuelled by paraffin, or candle wax, and liquid oxygen.

Paraffin can be used as a cheaper and safer alternative fuel for rockets, reducing satellite transportation costs by as much as 50%, according to HyImpulse.

The company hopes to launch its SL-1 rocket on its first orbital test flight next year.

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The pro-Hamas campus mobs were almost as barbaric as Hamas itself

2:29 pm

Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob
Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob

With the mobs of pro-Hamas protesters finally cleared from many occupied college campuses, we are now finding out just how much these rioters resembled the Hamas barbarians whose effort to murder Jews these protesters supported.

To the right is a screen capture from video taken during a short walk through of the inside of the Portland State University’s Millar Library, following the removal of the pro-Hamas rioters. The place was trashed in the most childish way. You can seem more evidence here. As noted by that report:

Paint splattered on floors. Spray-painted messages and screeds covering walls. Furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras disabled. Fire extinguishers missing and entrances blocked by stacks of chairs. “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” a facilities manager at Portland State University said Thursday as he examined the destruction left behind after a three-day occupation by pro-Palestinian protesters in Millar Library.

It also was reported that rare archival materials were stolen by the student mob.

The situation was the same at numerous universities. » Read more

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SpaceX last night launched another 23 Starlink satellites

11:42 am

The bunny is so fast I missed one: Last night, only a few hours after SpaceX launched two satellites for Maxar, out of Vandenberg in California, the company followed this with another launch of 23 Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th launch, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leader board that I posted earlier today for the Chang’e-6 launch thus gave the wrong totals for SpaceX and the American launch industry. Below are the corrected numbers for the 2024 launch race:

46 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 53 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 46 to 37.

Hat tip to reader MDN to letting me know.

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Curiosity’s journey in Gediz Vallis approaching its end

11:28 am

Panorama taken on May 1, 2024
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was created using 31 pictures taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on May 1, 2024. It looks uphill into Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon that the rover has been traversing since August 2022.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The red dotted line, on both the panorama and the overview indicate the rover’s planned route, with the white dotted line marking the route it actually traveled. The yellow lines indicate approximate the area covered by the panorama.

Coming into view inside Gediz Vallis is that small outcrop in the center of the canyon that the science team has targeted for inspection for years. It will be the last spot the rover visits in Gediz Vallis before turning west to head uphill in a parallel canyon. To see that route look at the map in this September 2023 post. Curiosity will travel west past two canyons before turning uphill again in the third.

Even then, Curiosity will still be in the low foothills at the base of Mount Sharp. The peak, blocked from view by the mountain’s lower flanks, is still 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher up. The journey to get there has really only begun, even after a dozen years exploring Gale Crater.

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Scientists observe orangutan use plant to heal a wound

9:45 am

In what might be the most sophisticated medical treatement yet seen by a wild animal, scientists in 2022 observed an orangutan named Rakus treat a face wound with a poultice it made from a plant known by locals to have medicinal value.

Rakus was observed eating the stems and leaves of the creeper akar kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria), which local people use to treat diabetes, dysentery and malaria, among other conditions. Orangutans in the area rarely eat this plant.

In addition to eating the leaves, Rakus chewed them without swallowing and used his fingers to smear the juice on his facial wound over seven minutes. Some flies settled on the wound, whereupon Rakus spread a poultice of leaf-mash on the wound. He ate the plant again the next day. Eight days after his injury, his wound was fully closed.

Other animals have been seen using plants or insects for medicinal reasons, but none had done anything as complicated as Rakus. Nor have researchers of orangetans ever seen another do anything similar in more than two decades of research. It is thus unclear how Rakus knew what to do. Did he figure it out on the spot, or had he seen it done in the past by others when unobserved?

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Lockheed Martin withdraws bid to buy Terran Orbital

9:35 am

Lockheed Martin yesterday withdrew its early March offer to buy the satellite manufacuture Terran Orbital, purchasing the shares it did not already own for approximately $500 million.

No reason was given, but it appears the other shareholders at Terran Orbital objected to the purchase, and Lockheed probably decided the fight wasn’t worth it.

In that proposal, Lockheed offered to acquire the roughly two-thirds of Terran Orbital stock it did not already own. Lockheed also proposed to pay more than $70 million to buy outstanding stock warrants and either assume or repay $313 million in Terran Orbital debt, putting the total value of the proposal at more than $500 million.

Lockheed, besides being a major investor in Terran Orbital, is a major customer of the company, buying dozens of its smallsat buses for programs such as satellites for the Space Development Agency. Lockheed said in its offer letter that it accounted for 81% of Terran Orbital’s backlog.

Terran Orbital responded to the proposal March 4 with a stockholder rights plan, or “poison pill” move, to prevent a hostile takeover. It acknowledged the proposal and said an independent board committee would evaluate it as part of an ongoing strategic review.

Both companies now say they will continue to work together in the future.

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China launches Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon

9:17 am

Chang'e-6 landing zone

The new colonial movement: China today successfully launched its Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon, its Long March 5 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Unlike the Long March 5B, whose core stage reaches an unstable orbit and later crashes uncontrolled somewhere on Earth, the core stage of Long March 5 does not, and thus returns to Earth immediately, over the ocean.

The graphic from the right, released by China’s state-run press, shows the landing zone in red on the far side. The target is the southern rim area of Apollo Crater, marked by the uneven white outline. Apollo sits inside the South Aitken Basin, one of the Moon’s largest impact basins, 1,600 miles across, and roughly indicated by the black circle. The circle to the left of Apollo indicates Van Karman crater, where Chang’e-4 landed in 2019 with the Yutu-2 rover, both still operating.

The mission includes a lunar orbiter, a lander, an ascent vehicle, and an Earth sample return capsule. If all goes as planned, the samples will return to Earth in 53 days.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 52 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 37.

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May 2, 2024 Quick space links

3:23 pm

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.

 

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SpaceX launches two commercial Earth imaging satellites

3:10 pm

The bunny rolls on. SpaceX today successfully launched two commercial Earth imaging Worldview Legion satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage successfully completed its 20th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. This is the third Falcon 9 booster to fly twenty times. SpaceX now has two such boosters in its fleet, and is now working to upgrade its whole booster fleet to capable of flying forty times. The two fairings on this mission also completed their thirteenth and sixteenth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 52 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 36.

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Pro-American UNC frat boys: Don’t hold a party, use the money more effectively!

2:37 pm

UNC Frat boys protecting American flag

Earlier this week a group of college students belonging to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at North Carolina University (UNC) put their bodies between a mob of pro-Hamas protesters and the American flag, as shown in the picture on the right. That mob had been attempting to remove Old Glory and replace it with the Palestinian flag. Video of the incident can be seen here, with the Hamas mob throwing bottles and garbage at the UNC students, while other American students circle about in-between, holding up the Israeli flag in defiance.

The story quickly went viral in the conservative press. Then someone set up a Gofundme fundraiser to thank the students: “Pi Kappa Phi Men Defended their Flag. Throw ’em a Rager”. As noted by John Noonan, the origanizer:

Commie losers across the country have invaded college campuses to make dumb demands of weak University Administrators.

But amidst the chaos, the screaming, the anti-semitism, the hatred of faith and flag, stood a platoon of American heroes. Armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, fueled by Zyn and White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde — laughing at their shrieks and wails and shielding the Stars & Stripes from Soviet missiles.

These boys… no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best. Help us raise funds to throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.

To the shock of everyone, the money poured in. Within days more than 13,000 people had donated over $450K, with some donations topping five and ten thousand each.

Noonan now says he has found “a world class event planner [Susan Ralston] and she is already hard at work. She worked in the White House and knows what she’s about.” Noonan and GoFundMe is also attempting to identify every student seen holding up or defending the flag. It appears the goal is to to put together a big event that will not only be a great party but a political campaign rally.

I say that’s a big mistake. » Read more

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Sunspot update: A minor uptick in sunspot activity in April

12:28 pm

It is that time of the month again. Yesterday NOAA posted its monthly update of its graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I have done now for every month since I began this website in 2010, I have posted this updated graph below, with several additional details to provide some larger context.

In April the number of sunspots on the Sun went up somewhat, the count rising to the highest level since the count hit its peak of activity last summer. The sunspot number in April, 136.5, was however still significantly less than the 2023 peak of 160. Thus it appears the Sun is likely still the middle saddle of a doubled-peaked relatively weak solar maximum, with the Sun doing what I predicted in February 2024:
» Read more

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NASA IG: Major technical problems with Orion remain unsolved

9:53 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

A just released report [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general has found the major technical problems discovered after the first unmanned Artemis mission of Orion around the Moon remain unsolved, and threaten the safety of the astronauts that NASA plans to send around the Moon on the second Artemis mission.

The problems with Orion are threefold and are quite serious, involving its heat shield, separation bolts, and power distribution.

Specifically, NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material from Orion’s heat shield wore away differently than expected during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Engineers are concurrently investigating ways to mitigate the char loss by modifying the heat shield’s design or altering Orion’s reentry trajectory.

In addition, post-flight inspections of the Crew Module/Service Module separation bolts revealed unexpected melting and erosion that created a gap leading to increased heating inside the bolt. To mitigate the issue for Artemis II, the Orion Program made minor modifications to the separation bolt design and added additional thermal protective barrier material in the bolt gaps.

NASA also recorded 24 instances of power distribution anomalies in Orion’s Electrical PowerSystem. While NASA has determined that radiation was the root cause and is making software changes and developing operational workarounds for Artemis II, without a permanent hardware fix, there is increased risk that further power distribution anomalies could lead to a loss of redundancy, inadequate power, and potential loss of vehicle propulsion and pressurization.

Moreover, like with any engineering system, without understanding the residual effects of introducing design and operational changes, it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety.

This is not all.
» Read more

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The EU’s government-owned satellite constellation is faltering in its attempt to compete with Starlink and OneWeb

9:22 am

In a pattern that should surprise no one, the government-owned internet satellite constellation proposed by the European Union to compete with private constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb is now in trouble and faces significant delays, partly because its budget has already doubled, even before anything has been built, and partly because there is friction between the various European countries tasked with building it.

A new report in a German publication, Handelsblatt, provides information on some likely causes of the delay. The report indicates that the cost estimate for the Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) constellation has doubled from an initial estimate of 6 billion euros to 12 billion. Additionally, the project is exposing long-running fault lines between Germany and France when it comes to European space policy.

…Germany, which alongside France is likely to be the main financial backer of IRIS², is not happy that most of the prime contractors are based in France or linked to the nation. … And finally, it appears the operations for the constellation will be based primarily in Italy.

In other words, this government project is not being run to make a profit, but to distribute contracts to various countries in the European Union. Under these conditions, it is guaranteed to fall behind scheduled, cost a fortune, ald lose gigantic amounts of money.

These European countries are already shifting away from this failed model, abandoning its government-run rocket company Arianespace to instead encourage competing private rocket companies. It is therefore no surprise that many member countries in the EU are now having second thoughts about building this government-run satellite constellation.

Nonetheless, EU officials want Europe to have its own internet satellite constellation. Getting it however is problematic. There presently are no continent-based companies capable of building and launching it. And a government built and owned constellation is guaranteed to fail in any attempt to compete on the open market.

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Private Nova Scotia spaceport company opens spaceport to all rocket companies

9:00 am

The company Maritime Launch, which has been building a new spaceport in Nova Scotia since 2016, has abandoned its original concept of providing both the launch facilities and rocket for satellite companies, and will instead make its launch facilities available to all rocket companies.

In an interview with The Journal last week, Matier – who started the spaceport project in 2016 to launch satellites with Cyclone-4M rockets it intended to buy from a Ukrainian manufacturer – said geopolitical realities in Eastern Europe now makes that approach unworkable. “We can’t get the rockets out of Ukraine,” he said. “So, we’ve pivoted away from a customer-supplier relationship with [them] … There’s such huge demand for satellites going into orbit that there’s all these [other] rockets in development that don’t have a home. The bottleneck is really the spaceport, and that’s what we’re addressing.”

According to the article at the link, the spaceport is already negotiating with an unnamed European rocket company to do an orbital launch by 2025. Matier also said there will a suborbital launch at the spaceport this summer, but offered no details about the rocket or payload.

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Astroscale to go public

8:51 am

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug start-up Astroscale announced yesterday that it is becoming a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock market, beginning June 5, 2024.

The company plans to offer 20.8 million shares in the initial public offering, but has not announced a share price. According to filings with the exchange, Astroscale will set that price May 27.

Astroscale has raised more than $375 million through a series of private rounds, most recently a $76 million Series G round in February 2023. That funding has primarily come from Japanese investors, including a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Electric in that Series G round.

The company has also won two major contracts with Japan’s space agency JAXA, building its two ADRAS-J missions to first rendezvous and survey an abandoned upper stage (as shown to the right) and then fly a grapple mission to de-orbit that stage sometime in the future.

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May 1, 2024 Quick space links

8:10 pm

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.

 

 

 

 

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Another Mars location being considered for future helicopter mission

2:26 pm

Global overview of potential Mars helicopter missions

Floor of Degana Crater
Click for original picture.

In today’s May download of new photos from Mars Reconnaissnce Orbiter (MRO) I came across the picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, and taken on April 2, 2024 by MRO’s high resolution camera. The scientists labeled it “Sample Rim Traverse Hazards at Possible Mars Helicopter Landing Site.” It was clearly taken as part of preliminary research to determine some potential landing sites for a future Mars helicopter mission.

Nor is this the first such location or region on Mars targeted for such a mission. As shown in the global map above of Mars, colored by the elevation data from MRO (blue is low and orange is high), two other candidate sites are being looked at as well. About a half dozen pictures have been taken inside the eastern end of Valles Marineris, exploring a helicopter mission there. In addition, MRO took for the same purpose a recent photo of the floor of Terby Crater, on the northern interior slope of Hellas Basin.
» Read more

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Southwest Airlines is deservedly in financial trouble

12:10 pm

In love with bigotry, blacklisting, and bad maintenance
In love with bigotry, blacklisting, and bad maintenance

Late last week Southwest Airlines revealed that it is going to cease operations in four airports while simultaneously cutting 2,000 jobs as a result of a $231 million loss in the first quarter of 2024.

The company’s CEO, Bob Jordan, attempted to lay the blame for these difficulties on Boeing’s quality control problems, which has not only caused it to delay delivery of 26 planes in Southwest’s most recent order of 46, but has likely driven away customers, since Southwest uses only Boeing planes to simplify the maintenance of its fleet. For example, the article cited this incident and attributed it to Boeing’s troubles:

Earlier this month, an engine cowling on a Southwest operated Boeing 737-800 fell off during take off from Denver airport. Flight 3695 reported the engine cowling “fell off during takeoff and struck the wing flap” an FAA spokesperson previously told Newsweek.

Neither the article or Jordan are being entirely truthful or accurate. That engine cowling incident has nothing to do with Boeing, as the plane had been owned by Southwest for a considerable time, which means its maintenance is Southwest’s responsibility, not Boeing’s.

And why might Southwest have maintenance issues? Maybe these maintenance problems exist because the airline has gone all-in for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, creating racial and sex quotas that make race and sex the most important qualifications for many jobs, not skill, knowledge, talent, or experience. Its 2022 DEI-report [pdf] cited these goals:
» Read more

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Shocker! Scientists tried and failed to infect people with COVID who had natural immunity

9:08 am

Modern scientists discover the obvious: In a experiment to see the impact of COVID on people who had previously gotten sick with the virus, scientists have discovered something called “natural immunity,” a phenomenon once known to doctors and ordinary people for centuries but purposely forgotten in 2020 when an election was coming up and the leftists who controlled most universities, health departments, and science organizations wanted a panic to prevent Donald Trump from getting reelected.

Researchers use challenge trials to understand infections and quickly test vaccines and therapies. In March 2021, after months of ethical debate, UK researchers launched the world’s first COVID-19 challenge trial. The study identified a minuscule dose of the SARS-CoV-2 strain that circulated in the early days of the pandemic that could infect about half of the participants, who had not previously been infected with the virus (at that time, vaccines weren’t yet widely available).

In parallel, a team led by Helen McShane, an infectious-disease researcher at Oxford, launched a second SARS-CoV-2 challenge study in people … who had recovered from naturally caught SARS-CoV-2 infections, caused by a range of variants. The trial later enrolled participants who had also been vaccinated.

…When nobody developed a sustained infection, the researchers increased the dose by more and more in subsequent groups of participants, until they reached a level 10,000 times the initial dose. A few volunteers developed short-lived infections, but these quickly vanished.

…“We were quite surprised,” says Susan Jackson, a study clinician at Oxford and co-author of the latest study. “Moving forward, if you want a COVID challenge study, you’re going to have to find a dose that infects people.”

This article in the science journal Nature is written in a very clunky manner, almost as if the writer and editors wanted to obscure these findings.

The bottom line however is no surprise to anyone who kept their heads during the 2020 COVID panic. This virus was not the plague, but merely comparable to a new strain of the flu, though apparently artificially created by a Chinese lab in Wuhan that was partly funded by American federal funds from the NIH. And like all such diseases, once you caught it your own immune system naturally figured out how to protect you from it in the future.

And like the flu, if you were young and healthy it was incapable of killing you. The quicker the general population had gotten infected and immune, the quicker the epidemic would have died out, making it impossible for the virus to harm many of the sick and old. That was the standard response to epidemics until 2020.

Instead, the health establishment went nuts, forgot basic science, and did exactly the opposite, thus killing many more of the old and sick than necessary.

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Hubble out of safe mode and resumed science observations

8:43 am

According to the Hubble website, engineers have corrected the gyro issue that put the Hubble Space Telescope into safe mode on April 23, 2024.

On April 30, 2024, NASA announced it restored the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope to science operations April 29. The spacecraft is in good health and once again operating using all three of its gyros. All of Hubble’s instruments are online, and the spacecraft has resumed taking science observations.

No other information was released. The safe mode was initiated by faulty readings from one of those gyros. Was the problem in the gyro itself, or were the readings merely incorrect? This matters because when one of those gyros finally fails, the telescope will go to one-gyro mode, saving its second gyro in reserve. At that point Hubble will no longer be able to take sharp images, though it will still be able to some science.

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April 30, 2024 Quick space links

2:53 pm

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.

 

  • Yahoo visits Firefly

    • Reasonably good short report, even if the reporter clearly only has a shallow understanding of all the issues.

 

 

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Lava land on Mars

2:16 pm

Lava land on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “platy fractures.”

The ridges likely align with cracks that developed over time on this lava field, which then formed the ridges when magma oozed up from below. It is also possible that these events were closely linked, that the pressure from the magma below cracked this lava field, with the magma immediately oozing out. Because the pressure was evenly applied across the whole surface, it caused a network of cracks and plates, not a single vent or caldera. The even distribution of the pressure also caused only a small amount of lava to leak out to form the ridges.
» Read more

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Voting by conservatives HAS made a difference, just not enough so far

1:24 pm

Voting does make a difference
Voting does make a difference.

In one of my essays last week I took to task the many Republican conservatives who repeatedly say there is no point voting for Republicans because the leadership of the Republican Party does not represent conservative or American interests, and is in many ways as corrupt as the Democrats, only in a slightly different way.

[T]his refusal to support Republicans because they aren’t perfect simply guarantees that the Marxist and very corrupt Democratic Party will gain more power. The result is even worse policies, and more corruption, and congresswomen like Sheila Jackson-Lee and NASA administrators like Bill Nelson.

It is all very self-defeating. If conservatives went out and always voted for the most conservative candidate available to them, the power in Congress and in local legislatures would quickly shift rightward. It would also encourage other individuals even more conservative to run for office.

Many commenters for that essay disputed my claim, and still insisted there was no reason to vote any longer because the whole system is rigged.

This claim however is wrong. Though there is certainly ample evidence of vote tampering and corruption in the whole system, these issues can be overcome by the voters, if they have the courage and determination to vote. Proof of this fact was given in this op-ed published on April 27, 2024 and entitled “GOP Establishment’s Days Are Numbered”. The writer, Kevin Roberts, is president of the Heritage Foundation, which while solidly conservative has itself too often allied itself with that establishment, and thus is not to be trusted blindly in all political matters. However, in describing how that think tank had fought the gigantic foreign aid bill for the Ukraine that the Republican establishment and the Democrats pushed through, Roberts also noted these very important facts:
» Read more

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Webb maps the global temperature and water vapor of a hot exoplanet

10:37 am

The uncertainty of science: Using detailed infrared data from the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have mapped the temperature swings and atmospheric water vapor across the entire global of a tidally locked “hot Jupiter” exoplanet about 284 light years away that orbits its star every 19.5 hours.

The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to measure light from the WASP-43 system every 10 seconds for more than 24 hours. “By observing over an entire orbit, we were able to calculate the temperature of different sides of the planet as they rotate into view,” explained Bell. “From that, we could construct a rough map of temperature across the planet.”

The measurements show that the dayside has an average temperature of nearly 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit (1,250 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to forge iron. Meanwhile, the nightside is significantly cooler at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius). The data also helps locate the hottest spot on the planet (the “hotspot”), which is shifted slightly eastward from the point that receives the most stellar radiation, where the star is highest in the planet’s sky. This shift occurs because of supersonic winds, which move heated air eastward.

…To interpret the map, the team used complex 3D atmospheric models like those used to understand weather and climate on Earth. The analysis shows that the nightside is probably covered in a thick, high layer of clouds that prevent some of the infrared light from escaping to space. As a result, the nightside – while very hot – looks dimmer and cooler than it would if there were no clouds.

The data also found water vapor on both the day and night sides of the exoplanet, but surprisingly no evidence of methane, suggesting that atmosphere has high winds exceeding 5,000 miles per hour that mixes that atmosphere globally. Any methane that was expected to exist on the night side gets blown to the day side where the heat destroys it.

This data, while excellent, is also very coase and even more uncertain. While Webb can get good infrared spectroscopy from almost 300 light years away, we must take the interpretations of that data with great skepticism.

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NASA announces launch coverage for the first Starliner manned capsule launch on May 6, 2024

10:23 am

NASA today released the details for its public media coverage of the first manned launch at 10:34 pm (Eastern) on May 6, 2024 of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, which will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the International Space Station.

Launch of the ULA (United Launch Alliance) Atlas V rocket and Boeing Starliner spacecraft is targeted for 10:34 p.m. EDT Monday, May 6, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight test will carry Wilmore and Williams to the space station for about a week to test the Starliner spacecraft and its subsystems before NASA certifies the transportation system for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Starliner will dock to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 12:48 a.m., Wednesday, May 8.

Though that coverage includes several prelaunch and post launch press conferences, the key coverage of the launch itself will begin at 6:30 pm (Eastern) on May 6th, about four hours before the launch itself. It will also include the capsule’s docking with ISS on May 8th.

I will embed NASA’s Youtube live stream here on Behind the Black on both dates, though as always I sugggest waiting until just before launch and docking to tune in. The four hours of streaming prior to launch is mostly going to be NASA propaganda, touting the agency and often misconstruing the facts to overstate its importance. This launch will be just like SpaceX’s Dragon launches, in that almost everything will be run by the two private companies involved, Boeing and ULA, and not NASA. NASA’s real involvement will only begin at the docking to ISS.

This first manned flight of Starliner is long past due. It was supposed to occur about four years ago, but numerous technological and management problems at Boeing forced many delays. Getting that capsule operational will finally give NASA two American companies capable of putting humans in space. It will also offer some competition to SpaceX, though this competition will be weak until Boeing can demonstrate Starliner’s reliability.

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