Category: Behind The Black

Pluto orbiter mission could also explore Kuiper belt

1:16 pm

An analysis by scientists of the orbital mechanics surrounding Pluto and Charon, combined with the use of an ion engine similar to that used by the asteroid probe Dawn, suggests that an orbiter sent to Pluto could also break from from that planet to travel out into the Kuiper Belt and explore additional objects there.

The team first discovered how numerous key scientific objectives can be met using gravity assists from Pluto’s giant satellite, Charon, rather than propellant, allowing the orbiter to change its orbit repeatedly to investigate various aspects of Pluto, its atmosphere, its five moons, and its solar wind interactions for up to several years. The second achievement demonstrates that, upon completing its science objectives at Pluto, the orbiter can then use Charon’s gravity to escape the system without using fuel, slinging the spacecraft into the Kuiper Belt to use the same electric propulsion system it used to enter Pluto orbit to then explore other dwarf planets and smaller Kuiper Belt bodies.

“This is groundbreaking,” said Stern. “Previously, NASA and the planetary science community thought the next step in Kuiper Belt exploration would be to choose between ‘going deep’ in the study of Pluto and its moons or ‘going broad’ by examining smaller Kuiper Belt objects and another dwarf planet for comparison to Pluto. The planetary science community debated which was the right next step. Our studies show you can do both in a single mission: it’s a game changer.”

The key here is a willingness to make increased use of the ion-type engine used by Dawn in its journey from the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Such a probe could spend decades traveling from one Kuiper Belt object to the next.

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Active signaling to Opportunity to end

6:40 am

While NASA will continue to listen for activity from Opportunity for many more months, its active effort to signal the Mars rover is about to end.

After more than a month, Opportunity has not responded to those commands, and that active listening effort will soon end. “We intend to keep pinging Opportunity on a daily basis for at least another week or two,” said Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA’s planetary science division, during a presentation Oct. 22 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences here.

Glaze said that a factor in ending the active listening campaign is to prepare for the landing of the InSight spacecraft on Mars Nov. 26. “We want to wind that down before InSight gets to Mars and make sure all our orbital assets are focused on a successful landing of InSight,” she said.

That schedule is consistent with previous plans for attempting to restore contact with Opportunity. NASA said Aug. 30 that, once skies cleared sufficiently, it would attempt active listening for 45 days. “If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover,” John Callas, Opportunity project manager, said in a statement outlining those plans.

I would not be surprised if they do try to signal the rover a few more times, in January after the busy fall period when there are a lot of planetary probes needing access to the Deep Space Network. Even so, it appears the rover’s life is finally at an end, fourteen years past its originally planned lifespan of only 90 days.

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Trump moves forward on Space Force; commercial space reorganization

6:33 am

In a speech by Mike Pence yesterday the Trump administration outlined its continuing plans to moves forward with a new military branch focused on space as well as a reorganization of the bureaucracies that regulate commercial space into a single Commerce Department agency.

Pence said the National Space Council and National Security Council will review space operational authorities “to ensure that our warfighters have the freedom and flexibility they need to deter and defeat any threat to our security in the rapidly evolving battlefield of space.” A lack of centralized leadership and accountability threatened U.S. ability to “advance our national security in space,” Pence said. “The time has come to stop studying the problem and start fixing it.”

The Trump administration in August announced an ambitious plan to usher in a new “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the military by 2020. Such a change, which the Defense Department has estimated would cost $13 billion in the first five years, must first be approved by Congress. Pence said at an earlier Washington Post forum that China and Russia have established similar space forces. “This is what our competitors are already doing. And the president is determined to make sure that America leads in space, as well, from a military standpoint,” he said.

…The proposed bill would also create the Bureau of Space Commerce under the U.S. Department of Commerce to liaise with industry representatives and organizations, according to a copy provided to Reuters. It also calls for $10 million per year for five years starting in 2020 to fund the commerce arm.

I am traveling up to Phoenix as I write this to be a talking head on a Science channel television show, so I haven’t yet reviewed carefully this proposal. Based on the quote above, the cost for the Space Force is absurd. This is an office, not a military force. At $13 billion it looks more like gold-plated pork.

Meanwhile, the proposed Commerce agency makes sense only if it truly replaces other bureaucracies. I am not yet sure that will happen.

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Strong India monsoons cause more hurricane landfalls in North America

10:28 am

A new study has found a correlation between the strength of the monsoon season in India and the number of hurricanes that make landfall in North America.

According to Kelly, La Niña and the Indian monsoon are correlated, but the strength of the monsoon influences the steering of hurricanes independently of La Niña fluctuations, which are responsible for changes in hurricane frequency. In other words, La Niña fluctuations may result in more Atlantic hurricanes, but strong Indian monsoons steer them further westward, making it more likely they will make landfall in the Americas.

It’s important to account for the correlation when studying hurricane steering and landfall probability.

In reading the article, ignore the propaganda promoting global warming, as the research has zero to do with that subject. It instead now provides meteorologists another clue to predicting the frequency and paths of hurricanes in the Atlantic.

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Vector raises $70 million more in investment capital

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company Vector has successfully raised an additional $70 million in investment capital.

The increased funds bodes well for the company, but I am becoming increasingly concerned the company is more sizzle than steak. From the article:

With this round of funding, Vector plans to expand its sales and marketing teams. And the goal is to double its footprint in Silicon Valley. Vector is also expecting to break ground on a new state-of-the-art factory in Tucson. And Vector is advancing towards a first orbital attempt set to take place from the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska soon.

Their original plan was to complete five test launches leading up to their first orbital try. Only two of those launches have flown, and it appears they are aiming to make the third launch orbital, with no clear schedule indicated. More significantly, it appears that they are not using the additional money for rocket development but for “sales and marketing.” Shouldn’t that come after the rocket is operational?

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Final 2018 SpaceX launch schedule

8:33 am

Link here. The article describes in detail SpaceX’s schedule of launches through the end of 2018, which appears now to be firming up. Several take-aways:

  • They are going to attempt for the first time the third launch of first stage booster.
  • In one of these launches, the first stage will not be recovered, even though it is a block 5.
  • The second Falcon Heavy launch has now been definitely delayed to early 2019.

A look at the overall launch schedule shows that the two Falcon Heavy launches that have been pending and were originally set for the last quarter of 2018 are now set for “early 2019.” This full schedule also lists the first unmanned flight of the Dragon manned capsule for January.

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Hubble gyro problem appears fixed

8:18 am

Engineers have apparently pinpointed and fixed the issue that was causing the Hubble Space Telescope’s last back up gyroscope to operate incorrectly, making it likely that the telescope will return to full normal operations shortly.

In an attempt to correct the erroneously high rates produced by the backup gyro, the Hubble operations team executed a running restart of the gyro on Oct. 16. This procedure turned the gyro off for one second, and then restarted it before the wheel spun down. The intention was to clear any faults that may have occurred during startup on Oct. 6, after the gyro had been off for more than 7.5 years. However, the resulting data showed no improvement in the gyro’s performance.

On Oct. 18, the Hubble operations team commanded a series of spacecraft maneuvers, or turns, in opposite directions to attempt to clear any blockage that may have caused the float to be off-center and produce the exceedingly high rates. During each maneuver, the gyro was switched from high mode to low mode to dislodge any blockage that may have accumulated around the float.

Following the Oct. 18 maneuvers, the team noticed a significant reduction in the high rates, allowing rates to be measured in low mode for brief periods of time. On Oct. 19, the operations team commanded Hubble to perform additional maneuvers and gyro mode switches, which appear to have cleared the issue. Gyro rates now look normal in both high and low mode.

This is wonderful news, in that it means the telescope will once again be able to point accurately enough to continue to take sharp images across the entire sky. It also highlights how close we are now to the telescope’s demise, since it no longer has a back-up gyroscope. With the next failure, which will occur eventually, Hubble will descend into one gyroscope operations, holding off its second working gyro as a backup.

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Ariane 5 launches BepiColumbo to Mercury

12:48 am

An Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched the joint European/Japanese BepiColumbo mission to Mercury this weekend.

BepiColombo consists of two orbiters: Japan’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) and ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), both of which will be carried together by the Mercury Transport Module (MTM).

While MPO will go into an approximately 400 x 1500 km mapping orbit around Mercury, MMO will enter a highly elliptical orbit to study the planet’s enigmatically strong magnetic field.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

28 China
17 SpaceX
8 Russia
8 ULA
7 Europe (Arianespace)

China still leads the U.S. in the national rankings 28 to 26.

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First interplanetary image from a cubesat

12:39 am

One of the two MarCO cubesats launched with the InSight Mars lander has successfully taken its first picture of Mars, the first such image ever taken by an interplanetary cubesat.

The image itself is not that interesting, with Mars not much more than a dot. What makes this significant is that it proves that a small, inexpensive cubesat can be built with the capability to accurately point and take photographs during an interplanetary mission. This means that the entire field of interplanetary probes is prime for major changes, shifting from big expensive and rarely launched spacecraft to small inexpensive cubesats launching frequently and it large numbers.

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Off to the Grand Canyon

8:01 am

I am off to the Grand Canyon again for a caving expedition. We drive up and hike in today, and hike out and drive home on Monday.

I am not bringing a laptop this time to post on the drives. Posting, except for evening pauses, will thus have to wait until I return.

There is one scheduled launch this weekend, the late lift-off tonight of BebiColumbo, a joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury, by a Ariane 5 rocket. I will catch up on this, and other news, once I return.

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Palestinian Authority arrests Palestinian-American for property sale to Jews

5:29 pm

The true Middle East bigots: The Palestinian Authority has arrested a Palestinian-American for aiding in the property sale of a house in Jerusalem to a Jewish organization that provides housing to orthodox Israelis.

“The 55-year-old man, who is a US citizen, is being interrogated by the Palestinians security agencies in Ramallah for his role in the sale of an Arab-owned house in the Old City of Jerusalem to a Jewish organization,” the sources told The Jerusalem Post. They said the man was suspected of acting as a “solicitor” between the owner of the house and the Jewish organization that bought the house.

A senior PA security official in Ramallah refused to comment on the arrest of the US citizen.

The Post has obtained a copy of the man’s US passport, but due to the sensitivity of the case has chosen not to publish his name.

US government officials said they were aware of the arrest and expressed concern that he would be treated fairly. They said the State Department was in touch with the PA regarding the arrest.

Last week, the Palestinian Islamic religious authorities in east Jerusalem reaffirmed a fatwa (religious decree) prohibiting Palestinians from selling their houses and lands to Israelis. Some Palestinians have called for imposing the death penalty on those who violate the ban. [emphasis mine]

1. If any American tried to outlaw the sale of a piece of property to anyone, solely because of their religion, we would call them a bigot.

2. This property is in Jerusalem, which is entirely under Israeli jurisdiction. That Islamic leaders are trying to impose their bigoted views on that country, despite its own laws forbidding religious discrimination, tells us all we need to know about Islam.

3. The arrested man might live in Israel, or in the West Bank, but he is also a U.S. citizen, and I suspect the Trump administration will not take kindly to this.

4. Finally, expect the Israeli authorities to step in. Already they have arrested three Palestinians for organizing a kangaroo court aimed at punishing everyone involved in the property sale.

Last week, Palestinian activists in east Jerusalem summoned Atari [the supposed Palestinian buyer] and a representative of the Joudeh family [the sellers of the property] for what some Palestinians described as a kangaroo court in an attempt to find out who sold the house to Ateret Cohanim [the Jewish organization]. A video of the “court” hearing that was later posted on Facebook has gone viral, with many Palestinians calling for the “execution” of those involved in the transaction for “high treason.”

On Thursday, the Israel Police arrested three east Jerusalem residents on suspicion of incitement for their role in organizing the “court” hearing and threatening Atari. The three are: Abdullah Alqam, Fadi Mtur and Kamal Abu Kweider. The three were arrested hours before the second “court” session was scheduled to convene on Thursday evening.

This whole story could get hot, as it reveals the bigoted and discriminatory behavior of the Palestinians, something I have written about previously. It also is occurring during a Trump administration that has decided to no longer look the other way when it comes to Palestinian corruption or injustice.

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Land of swiss cheese and spiders

12:04 pm

Swiss cheese on Martian south polar cap

Time for some cool images! In one of their periodic captioned releases of an interesting high resolution image, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) science team this week released a picture of the strange “swiss cheese” terrain found throughout the Martian southern polar cap. (I have already highlighted in an early post the spiders that form in the south pole as the carbon dioxide evaporates.) The image to the right is a cropped section of that image, which you can see in its entirety if you click on it.

The South Polar residual cap is composed of carbon dioxide ice that persists through each Martian summer. However, it is constantly changing shape.

The slopes get more direct illumination at this polar location, so they warm up and sublimate, going directly from a solid state to a gaseous state. The gas then re-condenses as frost over flat areas, building new layers as the older layers are destroyed.

The captioned link above also included a link to a gif animation showing how this terrain has changed since 2009. The holes have become bigger, their cliffs retreating with time.

The section I highlight above not only shows the retreating swiss cheese dry ice, you can also see ghosts of several buried craters slowly becoming visible as the dry ice evaporates away.

This is only one of many images taken of the south pole by MRO. In the October archive release, I found almost two dozen, and that’s only the images taken during August of this summer. MRO takes images of the south pole regularly to track its changes, though I suspect it took more this summer because the global dust storm blocked imagery in the middle latitudes. Below and to the right is just one of these images, a particularly good illustration of the swiss cheese formation.
» Read more

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First Man: Trivializing the lunar landing

10:40 am

First Man movie flightsuits, without American flag

This past weekend movie-goers finally got to see the world premiere of First Man, a movie based on the biography with the same title telling the life story of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step onto the surface of another world.

Prior to the movie’s release there was some controversy when Ryan Gosling, the actor playing Armstrong, said that they had left out the scene on the Moon when the astronauts planted the American Flag because their goal was to highlight Armstrong’s personal story as well as the global nature of the achievement.

Star Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, defended director Damien Chazelle’s decision to omit the star-spangled moment when asked about it in Venice. “I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it, ” Gosling said per the Telegraph. “I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.”

The Canadian actor added that based on his own interviews with Armstrong’s family and friends, he doesn’t believe the pioneering astronaut considered himself an American hero. “I don’t think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero,” Gosling said. From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil.” [emphasis mine]

Many on the right including myself, strongly criticized this statement. The movies director, Damien Chazelle, immediately responded, saying he was not trying to devalue the importance of the American achievement but to focus instead on telling Neil Armstrong’s personal story. “My goal with this movie was to share with audiences the unseen, unknown aspects of America’s mission to the moon — particularly Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours.”

I decided I had been unfair to criticize the film without seeing it, and decided I would make a rare trip to a movie theater as soon as it was released to see it and then review it.
» Read more

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Russia: Next Soyuz manned flight likely not delayed

8:45 am

According to Roscosmos officials, they will likely not have to delay the next manned Soyuz launch, as they have three unmanned Soyuz launches on their schedule beforehand.

“The Soyuz rocket will be launched only after the inquiry has identified the causes of the emergency and measures have been taken to prevent such situations in the future. Under the existing rules there must be at least one unmanned launch before the flight of a manned spacecraft. We have plans for at least three launches (before the next manned mission due in early December) from the Kourou space site, the launch of an unmanned spacecraft and of an unmanned spacecraft Progress. The confirmations will be more than enough to put the next crew in space,” Krikalyov said.

Makes sense.

The real question isn’t whether they will identify the specific problem that caused last week’s Soyuz launch failure (which I have every confidence they will), but whether they will identify and fix the underlying culture that is allowing these failures to occur with greater frequency. I don’t think they can, since that culture is caused by the very way they have organized their space program, as a single giant corporation controlled by the government. Without the natural process of competition, the culture of Russia’s aerospace industry has nothing to force it to do good work.

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Treasury employee arrested for revealing confidential bank info to press

2:06 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: An anti-Trump Treasury employee was arrested today for revealing confidential bank info to press.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is accused of illegally giving a reporter bank reports documenting several suspicious financial transactions, known as Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”), from October 2017 to the present. The financial transactions involved Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, campaign official Richard Gates, accused Russian agent Maria Butina and the Russian Embassy, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

An unidentified, higher-ranking Treasury colleague was cited in court papers as a co-conspirator with Edwards, but was not charged. That person, identified only as an “associate director” at FinCEN to whom Edwards reported, exchanged more than 300 messages with a reporter via an encrypted messaging application. [emphasis mine]

I wonder why this higher-ranking has not been arrested and charged as well.

The article also includes details about other anti-Trump officials now in trouble, including the former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, who pleaded guilty in connection with his leaking of national security information to the press, as well as recent revelations about the “leak strategy” of anti-FBI officials.

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Moon Express and Canada cement business relationship

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Moon Express today signed deals with seven Canadian companies, further cementing an agreement with that country’s space agency to work together to provide Canada with a lunar mission capability.

The news comes just two weeks after Moon Express had signed an MOU with the Canadian Space Agency whereby “the CSA and Moon Express will explore the possibilities of using Moon Express lunar orbiter and lander systems for potential CSA payloads and will promote possibilities for collaboration between Moon Express and the Canadian space industry and academia.”

Moon Express was co-founded by Canadian Bob Richards who has strong ties to Canada’s space sector having started his career in Canada. Richards moved to the U.S. to pursue his dream of building a company that would be an enabler for a sustained economy based on lunar resources.

Moon Express has been working for some time on developing relationships and laying the necessary groundwork, to expand into Canada. More agreements could come as result of today’s Industry Day.

The company has not said when the first mission will fly, though there are hints they are aiming for late 2019 or early 2020.

These deals however point to the future of planetary exploration. Rather than create a big lumbering space program, Canada is hiring a private company to build its lunar probe so that it gets it quickly and for little cost. I expect other nations will soon follow.

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U.S. astronaut describes Soyuz launch failure

9:22 am

Link here. There really isn’t any news here, but it is definitely interesting to read his perspective on the experience of returning to Earth during a launch abort. Up until now, the only humans to have experienced this have been Russians.

This article provides more info.

Meanwhile the Russians have made it clear that this crew will fly in the spring of 2019. Both were trained to do specific spacewalks on ISS, and the Russians think it wise to use that training.

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Rocket Lab chooses Wallops as first U.S. launch site

9:18 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has picked the spaceport at Wallops in Virginia as its first U.S. launch site.

The company is planning its first launch of Electron from U.S. soil and its Wallops facility for Quarter 3 of 2019, less than a year from today’s announcement. “We needed to get pad and support up quickly, and Wallops met the bill completely for what we needed to achieve in this time,” said Mr. Beck to NASASpaceflight.

Overall, the Wallops launch pad, known as Launch Complex 2 (LC-2), will be Rocket Lab’s second dedicated launch complex, will be capable of supporting monthly orbital launches, and is designed to serve U.S. government and commercial missions. The site will bring Rocket Lab’s global launch availability across two launch complexes to more than 130 missions per year.

It really does appear that once they successfully complete their next two launches in November and December, the company will be aiming to meet a launch cadence of at least one orbital launch per week.

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A new virus that mimics polio appears in U.S.

9:14 am

Not good: Several dozen children in twenty-two U.S. states have been struck by a new polio-like virus that causes paralysis.

Sixty-two AFM cases in 22 states have been confirmed in recent weeks, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta said at a news conference today; 65 more are under investigation.

Similar waves occurred in 2014 and 2016, and scientists have fingered a relative of the poliovirus, called enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), as a possible culprit. But the evidence isn’t conclusive yet, and it’s unclear why the virus would only paralyze a small minority of children it infects. Solving these mysteries is urgent because the paralysis can be severe and irreversible. AFM is “pretty rare, but it’s pretty devastating,” says Priya Duggal, a genetic epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, who’s studying whether some patients may have a genetic vulnerability to the virus. “And it appears that it’s cyclical. It’s not going away.”

It appears that in most cases the virus simply causes cold-like symptoms that go away like a cold. In a few cases, however, it produces paralysis.

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Atlas 5 launches Air Force military satellite

9:07 am

ULA successfully launched an Air Force military satellite early today using its Atlas 5 rocket.

You can watch the launch at the link.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

28 China
17 SpaceX
8 Russia
8 ULA
6 Europe (Arianespace)

China leads the U.S. in the national rankings 28 to 26. Note that Russia has now been tied by ULA in the number of successful launches this year, and has a chance of topping Russia before by year’s end, a possibility that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The Russian launch count has crashed in the past four years. Nor is Russia alone in this. ULA’s numbers have also slumped slightly. Prior to last year, ULA routinely had had a dozen launch per year. It only had 8 launches last year, and it does not look like it will a dozen again in 2018.

This slump is not because of an overall slump in launches. It is because SpaceX has grabbed the commercial market with its less expensive rockets.

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