Category: Behind The Black

November 7, 2024 Quick space links

2:07 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.

Posting today will continue to be light. I am wearing bandaging on one wrist that makes typing very slow and extremely difficult. All will go back to normal tomorrow.

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Next Starship/Superheavy test flight now targeting November 18th

12:19 pm

SpaceX today announced its plan to fly the next and sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket on November 18th, less than two weeks from today.

The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.

The success of the first catch attempt demonstrated the design feasibility while providing valuable data to continue improving hardware and software performance. Hardware upgrades for this flight add additional redundancy to booster propulsion systems, increase structural strength at key areas, and shorten the timeline to offload propellants from the booster following a successful catch. Mission designers also updated software controls and commit criteria for the booster’s launch and return.

As noted earlier, the FAA has made it clear that no new license is required since this flight plan is essentially the same as the fifth flight.

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November 6, 2024 Quick space links

3:32 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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Freedom: What Trump’s election will mean for America’s space policy

2:24 pm

The resounding landslide victory by Donald Trump and the Republicans yesterday is going have enormous consequences across the entire federal government. As a space historian and journalist who has been following, studying, and reporting on space policy for decades, this essay will be my attempt to elucidate what that landslide will mean for NASA, its Artemis program, and the entire American aerospace industry.

The cost of SLS
The absurd cost of each SLS launch

The Artemis Program

Since 2011 I have said over and over that the government-designed and owned SLS, Orion, and later proposed Lunar Gateway space station were all badly conceived. They all cost too much and don’t do the job. Fitting them together to create a long term presence in space is difficult at best and mostly impractical. Their cost and cumbersome design has meant the program to get back to the Moon, as first proposed by George Bush Jr. in 2004, is now more than a decade behind schedule and many billions over budget. Worse, under the present program as currently contrived that manned lunar landing will likely be delayed five more years, at a minimum.

For example, at present SLS is underpowered. It can’t get astronauts to and from the Moon, as the Saturn-5 rocket did in the 1960s. For the first manned lunar landing mission, Artemis-4, SLS will simply launch four astronauts in Orion to lunar orbit, where Orion will rendezvous and dock with the lunar lander version of Starship. That Starship in turn will require refueling in Earth orbit, using a proposed fuel depot that has been filled by multiple earlier Starship launches.

Once Starship is docked to Orion the crew will transfer to Starship to get up and down from the Moon, and then return to Earth in Orion.

You think that’s complicated? » Read more

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Ghana approves a government space policy

9:55 am

In a process that began in 2018, Ghana has finally approved a new government space policy that shifts bureaucratic control from a government agency not specifically focused on space to a new Ghana Space Agency.

Though Ghana officials repeatedly claim this is to encourage a commercial industry, all this policy decision has done is to create a new government agency to run things. It also appears that to make this change took years of negotiation among all the various government agencies involved, so that everyone could protect their own interests.

Don’t expect much from Ghana in the near future. All this policy does is concentrate power within its government.

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FCC issues first deep space communications license to private asteroid mining company

9:44 am

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on October 18, 2024 issued the first deep space communications license to the private asteroid mining startup company Astroforge for its planned Odin mission to an asteroid.

Asteroid prospecting company AstroForge has been awarded the first-ever commercial license for operating and communicating with a spacecraft in deep space, ahead of its Odin mission that’s set to launch and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid in early 2025.

The license, granted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Oct. 18, pertains specifically to setting up a communication network with radio ground stations on Earth, to enable commands to be sent up to Odin and data to be transmitted back to Earth. In this case, deep space is defined by the International Telecommunications Union as being farther than 2 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Earth.

Other private companies have sent missions to the Moon, but this will be the first to go beyond. Odin will orbit and map the asteroid — not yet chosen — in advance of a larger AstroForge spacecraft, dubbed Vestri, that will land on the asteroid.

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The first cubesat launched using wood for its side panelling

9:29 am

One piece of cargo carried by the cargo Dragon to ISS earlier this week is the first cubesat ever to use wood for its side panelling.

Made by researchers in Japan, the tiny satellite weighing just 900g is heading for the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission. It will then be released into orbit above the Earth. Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue.

Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood. “Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there’s no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it,” Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency. “Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” Prof Murata said. “A wooden satellite should be feasible, too.”

The satellite’s frame is still metal, but by using wood for its side panelling the engineers hope to test the feasibility of wood as a in-space construction material.

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Jeff Daniels – Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech

6:01 pm

An evening pause: On election day, I give you the most concise and poetic description of what America has always stood for, first spoken on November 19, 1863. On this day it will either signal “a new birth of freedom,” or a sad funeral speech to a nation that was dedicated to government of the people, by the people, for the people, and successfully proved it for almost 250 years.

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November 5, 2024 Quick space links

3:04 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.

5 comments

Meandering channels on Mars

1:57 pm

Meandering channels on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists describe this as “meandering channels,” which seems appropriate. The downhill grade here is to the southeast. In wider views these channels extend from the northwest to the southeast about 31 miles total (with this location near the center), with the total elevation loss about 3,000 feet.

Note the splash apron around the 4,500-foot-wide unnamed crater as well as how the largest channel seems to terminate suddenly at the crater. Though at first glance it appears this impact occurred after the channels, that some of the channels cut into that splash apron suggests otherwise.
» Read more

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Expect fewer and less violent protests should Trump win

11:46 am

Nazi brown shirts destroying Jewish businesses on Kristallnacht
No more American Kristallnachts

Based on recent events, I am willing to predict that we shall see much less violence than expected in the days after the election should Donald Trump win. And if those protests occur, they will mostly be concentrated in Democratic Party strongholds where the protesters feel reasonably confident they can get away with it.

I base this optimistic prediction on the trends we have been seeing. As I first noted in April 2024, the strength of these leftist protests has clearly lost steam in the last four years. While in 2020 the protests and looting and violence occurred almost everywhere, destroying many inner cities, in the last year those protests have mostly been confined to college campuses, and have resulted in relatively little damage in comparison.

The reasons have been two fold. First, the authorities, while still generally treating these protesters too gently, have still responded more aggressively. Violent protesters are now arrested. Some face prison terms. Faced with real consequences, this violent leftist protest movement can no longer get the same numbers to turn out.

Second, the protests and violence has declined because of the utter failure of these protests to work. If anything, the looting and destruction has convinced vast numbers of Americans to oppose the left and to now vote with even greater energy against the politicians who support it.

Thought trends have been obvious for months, recently we have had even more evidence that the protests and violence will be less should Trump win. And that evidence is striking.
» Read more

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Astronomers call for the FCC to halt all launches of satellite constellations

9:50 am

In a letter [pdf] sent to the FCC on October 24, more than one hundred astronomers demanded a complete halt of all launches of low-Earth satellite constellations until a complete environmental review can be done.

The environmental harms of launching and burning up so many satellites aren’t clear. That’s because the federal government hasn’t conducted an environmental review to understand the impacts. What we do know is that more satellites and more launches lead to more damaging gasses and metals in our atmosphere. We shouldn’t rush forward with launching satellites at this scale without making sure the benefits justify the potential consequences of these new mega-constellations being launched, and then re-entering our atmosphere to burn up and or create debris This is a new frontier, and we should save ourselves a lot of trouble by making sure we move forward in a way that doesn’t cause major problems for our future.

Under this premise, Americans would forever be forbidden from doing anything without first having detailed environmental reviews by federal government agencies. Ponder that thought for a bit.

The astronomers’ argument of course is intellectually dishonest and disingenuous, on multiple levels. It is more than evident that these launches and satellites will cause little serious harm to the atmosphere or the environment. What the astronomers really want is to block these constellations so that their ground-based telescopes will be able to continue to see the heavens unhindered.

To hell with everyone else! We need to gaze at the stars and we are more important!

What these Chicken Littles should really do is give up on ground-based astronomy entirely, and start building space-based telescopes of all kinds, and fast. They would not only bypass the satellite constellations, they would get far better data as they would also bypass the atmosphere to get sharp images of everything they look at.

Whether the FCC listens to this absurd demand depends entirely on who wins the election. A Harris administration might easily go along, shutting down not only SpaceX’s Starlink constellation (thus getting political revenge on Elon Musk for daring to campaign against Democrats) but Amazon’s Kuiper constellation as well. Such an action would likely exceed the FCC’s statutory authority, but that won’t matter to these power-hungry thugs.

Trump in turn would almost certainly shut down much of the administrative state’s mission creep into areas of regulation it has no legal business.

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Parker to make its last fly-by of Venus

9:33 am

The Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to complete its last fly-by of Venus on November 6, 2024, passing only 233 miles above the planet’s surface.

The flyby will adjust Parker’s trajectory into its final orbital configuration, bringing the spacecraft to within an unprecedented 3.86 million miles of the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024. It will be the closest any human made object has been to the Sun.

That close solar approach will occur on December 24, 2024. Whether the spacecraft can survive is the main question, and we won’t find out until three days later, when it sends a signal to confirm its survival. If successful, it will then attempt to repeat that close fly-by at least two more times.

As for the Venus fly-by, the spacecraft will use one instrument to attempt to peer into Venus’s clouds.

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WISE/NEOWISE burns up in the atmosphere

9:22 am

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, later renamed NEOWISE) has ended its fifteen years in orbit, burning up in the atmosphere on November 1, 2024.

In its initial mission it did an infrared survey of the sky, discovering millions of black holes, many of the most luminous galaxies, and numerous brown dwarfs. It was then repurposed to survey the sky for near Earth objects, asteroids that have the potential to impact the Earth, discovering more than two hundred new asteroids while tracking more precisely another 3,000. It did this by repeating its survey over and over so that moving objects could be spotted.

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Three launches last night

9:10 am

Last night three different rockets took off from three continents.

First, Russia launched two space weather satellites and 53 cubesats, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Vostochny spaceport in the far east. The main payload were the two Ionosfera-M satellites, designed to study the Earth’s ionosphere in tandem.

The rocket flew north, over Russia, where its lower stages were dropped into planned drop zones. No word if they crashed near habitable ares.

Next, SpaceX launched an unmanned cargo Dragon to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing safefly back at Cape Canaveral. The capsule is on its fifth flight, and successfully docked with ISS this morning.

Finally, Rocket Lab launched a “confidential commercial” payload under a contract designed to launch very fast after contract signing, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its launchpads in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

108 SpaceX
49 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 126 to 75, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 108 to 93. Note too that with these launches the world has exceeded 200 launches in 2024, the second time this has ever been done, with the record of 213 launches set last year. This record will almost certainly be broken sometime this month.

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Sunspot update: in October solar activity increased after September’s crash

3:35 pm

Time for this month’s sunspot update. As I have done every month since I started this website in 2010, I am posting NOAA’s most recent update of its monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, adding some additional details to provide context.

In October, following a crash in activity in September, the Sun showed a slight increase the number of sunspots. The increase did not match the drop from the month before, but it brought the activity back up to the level seen during the summer.
» Read more

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November 4, 2024 Quick space links

3:20 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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Farewell to America

12:57 pm

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Despite my headline, this essay is not intended to be entirely pessimistic. Instead it is my effort to accept a reality that I think few people, including myself, have generally been able to process: The country we shall see after tomorrow’s election will not be the America as founded in 1776 and continued to prosper for the next quarter millennium.

The country can certainly be made great again. Elon Musk’s SpaceX proves it, time after time. The talent and creativity of free Americans is truly endless, and if Donald Trump wins it is very likely that energy will be unleashed again, in ways that no one can predict.

The country can certainly become free again. There is no law that prevents the elimination of bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how immortal government agencies appear to be. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves this. Though Russia has sadly retreated back to its top-down government-ruling ways, the country did wipe out almost all its bureaucracy in 1991, resulting in an exuberant restart that even today is nowhere near as oppressive as Soviet rule.

Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent.

What however will not change, even if Donald Trump wins resoundingly tomorrow, is the modern culture and political ethics that now exist. That modern culture is fundamentally different than the America that existed during the country’ s first 200 years, and it guarantees that America can never be the country it once was.
» Read more

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A 2017 supernova as spotted by Hubble

11:20 am

Before and after of galaxy with supernova
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The pictures to the right were both compiled from photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with the bottom annotated to indicate the location of a 2017 supernova that was not visible in the earlier 2005 picture.

In this collage two images of the spiral galaxy NGC 1672 are compared: one showing supernova SN 2017GAX as a small green dot, and the other without. The difference between the images is that both have been created by processing multiple individual Hubble images, each taken to capture a specific wavelength of visible light, and combining them to make a full-colour image. In one of those filtered frames, taken in 2017, the fading supernova is still visible

NGC 1672 is considered a barred spiral galaxy. Located an estimated 52 million light years away, the 2017 supernovae was not the last detected within it. In 2022 a second supernovae occurred. That’s two supernovae within five years. Meanwhile the Milky Way has not seen a supernova in more than four centuries.

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Australia cancels $7 billion satellite contract with Lockheed Martin

9:52 am

The Australian government today announced it has canceled a $7 billion contract with Lockheed Martin, issued only eighteen months ago, to build geosynchronous communications satellites for its military.

The project — known as JP9102 — was expected to include locally controlled and operated geostationary communications satellites, as well as multiple ground stations, but on Monday the Department of Defence confirmed it no longer met “strategic priorities”.

“With the acceleration in space technologies and evolving threats in space since the project’s commencement, defence has assessed that a single orbit GEO-based satellite communications system would not meet strategic priorities,” the statement read. “As such, defence has decided to cease its current procurement activity with Lockheed Martin Australia for a single orbit GEO-based satellite communications system.”

The project had been initiated by the previous government. The new Labor government however appears less interested in defense spending, and has been cutting related government space projects aggressively.

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Polaris Spaceplanes begins test flights of its second Mira prototype

9:42 am

After losing its first Mira prototype test plane during a flight in May, the German startup Polaris Spaceplanes has now begun test flights of its replacement, dubbed Mira-2.

With this prototype the company hopes to test its aerospike engine in flight for the first time, leading to the construction of its full scale spaceplane Aurora.

This five-metre-long vehicle is equipped with jet engines for take-off and landing and one of the company’s in-house developed AS-1 aerospike engines for rocket-powered flight.

POLARIS conducted the first three test flights of the MIRA II demonstrator at the Peenemünde Airport on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Over the three flights, the vehicle accumulated a total of 20 minutes of flight time and covered more than 50 kilometres.

All three flights were unmanned, as Mira-2 is relatively small. The company will now install the aerospike engine, with the next flights testing that engine. If successful, it would be the first time ever an aerospike rocket engine has ever flown.

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Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

9:32 am

Three Chinese astronauts safely landed in Mongolia today after completing a six month mission on China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

Ye Guangfu, on his second flight, and two rookies, Li Cong and Li Guansu, lifted off on April 25, 2024 at 8:59 am EDT and docked about six-and-a-half hours later. They’ve been aboard the past six months conducting scientific experiments and performing maintenance activities including a space walk.

They landed today, November 3, at 12:24 pm EST at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. China is 13 hours ahead of EST, so it was a nighttime landing there at 1:34 am November 4. China’s CGTN television network provided live coverage. Descent and touchdown were captured by infrared cameras.

A new crew has taken over occupancy of Tiangong-3, and has now started its own six month mission.

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Australia issues licenses for two spaceports

9:27 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The Australian government has now issued permits for two different spaceports, making possibly orbital launches at both in the near future.

First the planning minister for the province of South Australia has issued final approval allowing launches at the Southern Launch facility on Australia’s southern coast, though that approval included serious restrictions, such as no rocket launched could be taller than 30 meters. He also placed limitations on the number of launches per year, 36, the amount of noise a launch could make, and added other rules “regarding cultural heritage and native vegetation management.”

The spaceport hopes to complete its first orbital launch by the end of next year. Not surprisingly, the leftists in Green Party opposed the spaceport.

Second, the Australian Space Agency issued a launch license to Gilmour Space at its Bowen spaceport on the eastern coast of Australia, seven months late. This quote from the company’s founder is instructive:

But Mr Gilmour said when he and his brother, James Gilmour, set out to be the first to build a rocket of its kind in Australia almost a decade ago, he never imagined that getting a [launch] permit would be the most difficult part. “In my wildest dreams, I didn’t think it’d take this long,” he said. “I honestly thought the environmental approval [to launch a rocket over the Great Barrier Reef] would take the longest, and we got that well over a year ago.”

The company had originally hoped to launch early this year. It still hopes to do so before the end of 2024.

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Japan launches military communications satellite

9:12 am

Japan today successfully launched a military communications satellite on the fourth launch of Mitsubishi’s new H3 rocket.

Liftoff occurred at Japan’s Tanegashima spaceport on the southern end of Japan’s island chain.

This was Japan’s fifth launch in 2024, the most launches it has accomplished in a single year since it completed six in 2018. As such the leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:

107 SpaceX
49 China
12 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 124 to 74, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 107 to 91.

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Rocket startup Relativity experiencing money troubles

11:55 am

According to a report from Bloomberg today and based on anonymous sources, the rocket startup Relativity is experiencing serious cash shortages that threaten its future.

Relativity Space Inc., the privately held US maker of 3D-printed rockets that once soared to a $4.2 billion valuation, is running low on cash, raising questions about the future of its launch business, people familiar with the matter said.

The company has faced challenges raising additional capital, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential. Relativity, which last launched a rocket in March 2023 and has plans to launch its larger Terran R in 2026, hasn’t reached a decision on a path forward.

It is hard to say whether this information is correct. However, the story also had this tidbit that I myself have heard from my own sources:

The company also announced plans to incorporate more traditional manufacturing methods with Terran R, moving away from using 3D printing.

Since from its very founding Relativity touted 3D printing as the wave of the future, claiming its decision to build its rockets entirely in that manner would produce rockets fast and cheaply. That it is no longer doing this suggests that reality was not the same as these visions, and the company discovered that it is better to look for the best way to do each thing rather than try to fit everything into the same mold.

It also appears that the company spent a lot of its capital trying to make 3D printing work, and as a result it is now short of cash.

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