Boy Meets Girl – Waiting for a Star to Fall
An evening pause: Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Category: Behind The Black
Layered glaciers in Mars’ glacier country
Click for full image.
Cool image time. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows two different impact craters in a glacial region dubbed Nilosyrtis Mensae, located in the northern mid-latitudes in the 2,000 mile long strip chaos terrain that I have labeled glacier country because practically every image finds them there.
The splash apron surrounding the larger crater is typical of craters in Martian regions where ice is thought to be near the surface.
What makes this picture interesting is that the glaciers appear layered. You can see evidence of this in the mounds inside both craters. Those mounds appear to represent earlier periods when there was more ice here. Since then the mounds have partly sublimated away.
You can also see evidence of layers in the material surrounding the nearby larger mounds.
The map below shows us where this image is, relative to all of glacier country as well as the rover Perseverance in Jezero Crater.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Doctor fired for refusing vaccine
The modern dark age: Mollie James, an ICU doctor working jobs in hospitals in both St. Louis and New York, was forced to leave her hospital practices because she refused to get vaccinated against COVID because she already had natural immunity.
The Nebraska AG’s doubts about remdesirvir.
In addition, James was also forced out because she researched the use of ivermectin, tried it on her patients, and found it beneficial. Her desire to prescribe it to her sick patients however was blocked by her hospitals, who insisted instead that she prescribe remdesivir, an anti-viral drug that the government pays a premium for hospitals to use, but has been shown to be of doubtful benefit [see screen capture to the right].
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Sierra Space teams up with Blue Origin to build its Life space station
Capitalism in space: Sierra Space and Blue Origin today announced [pdf] that they are forming a consortium of space companies to build a space station they dub Orbital Reef. From the press release:
The Orbital Reef team of experts brings proven capabilities and new visions to provide key elements and services, including unique experience from building and operating the International Space Station:
- Blue Origin – Utility systems, large-diameter core modules, and reusable heavy-lift New Glenn launch system.
- Sierra Space – Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module, node module, and runway-landing Dream Chaser spaceplane for crew and cargo transportation, capable of landing on runways worldwide.
- Boeing – Science module, station operations, maintenance engineering, and Starliner crew spacecraft.
- Redwire Space – Microgravity research, development, and manufacturing; payload operations and deployable structures.
- Genesis Engineering Solutions – Single Person Spacecraft for routine operations and tourist excursions.
- Arizona State University – Leads a global consortium of universities providing research advisory services and public outreach.
I suspect that this deal is actually telling us that Jeff Bezos is spreading some of his Blue Origin money to help finance Sierra Space’s work. The deal also appears to be an effort to generate work for Blue Origin’s not-yet-launched New Glenn rocket and Boeing’s not-yet launched Starliner capsule.
The release says nothing about target dates, but the overview [pdf] on the Orbital Reef website says they are aiming for the second half of this decade.
While the success of such a project can only increase the competition and lower the cost to orbit, thus making the settlement of space more likely, this announcement reeks of the same kind of high-minded promises that came with Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander: Big plans by the best and most established space companies, with little firm commitment by these companies to actually build anything.
Compared to the Blue Moon lunar lander project, however, this project has one very significant difference that could make it real. Orbital Reef is not being touted in order to win a government contract. It is being touted as a commercial station for private customers. Such a project will require these companies to either invest their own money, or obtain outside investment capital, to build it. To make money they can’t sit and wait for their customers to pay for it, since customers never do that (except the government). They need to first build it.
Meanwhile, the BE-4 engine is not yet flight worthy, so that Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket remains no closer to launch, even though it is now approaching two years behind schedule.
On the radio…
Tonight I will be spending two hours chatting with David Livingston on the Space Show, starting at 7 pm (Pacific).
As always, I encourage my readers to call in to ask questions.
First exoplanet detected in another galaxy?
The uncertainty of science: Using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers think they may have detected the first exoplanet ever found in another galaxy, the Whirlpool Galaxy, 28 million light years away.
This new result is based on transits, events in which the passage of a planet in front of a star blocks some of the star’s light and produces a characteristic dip. Astronomers using both ground-based and space-based telescopes — like those on NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions — have searched for dips in optical light, electromagnetic radiation humans can see, enabling the discovery of thousands of planets.
Di Stefano and colleagues have instead searched for dips in the brightness of X-rays received from X-ray bright binaries. These luminous systems typically contain a neutron star or black hole pulling in gas from a closely orbiting companion star. The material near the neutron star or black hole becomes superheated and glows in X-rays.
Because the region producing bright X-rays is small, a planet passing in front of it could block most or all of the X-rays, making the transit easier to spot because the X-rays can completely disappear. This could allow exoplanets to be detected at much greater distances than current optical light transit studies, which must be able to detect tiny decreases in light because the planet only blocks a tiny fraction of the star.
The team used this method to detect the exoplanet candidate in a binary system called M51-ULS-1, located in M51. This binary system contains a black hole or neutron star orbiting a companion star with a mass about 20 times that of the Sun. The X-ray transit they found using Chandra data lasted about three hours, during which the X-ray emission decreased to zero. Based on this and other information, the researchers estimate the exoplanet candidate in M51-ULS-1 would be roughly the size of Saturn, and orbit the neutron star or black hole at about twice the distance of Saturn from the Sun.
While this is a tantalizing study, more data would be needed to verify the interpretation as an extragalactic exoplanet. One challenge is that the planet candidate’s large orbit means it would not cross in front of its binary partner again for about 70 years, thwarting any attempts for a confirming observation for decades. [emphasis mine]
As the press release says, this data is tantalizing, but it is really insufficient to prove that an exoplanet has been found. What is known is that for some reason the X-ray emissions from the X-ray binary system disappeared for about three hours. An exoplanet could be one explanation. So could many other things.
Space Adventures fails to find customer for Dragon orbital flight
Capitalism in space: A high orbital tourist flight on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has been cancelled because the company organizing it, Space Adventures, apparently failed to find enough customers.
Company spokesperson Stacey Tearne confirmed to SpaceNews that the company had dropped plans for the mission. “The mission was marketed to a large number of our prospective customers, but ultimately the mix of price, timing and experience wasn’t right at that particular time and our contract with SpaceX expired,” she said. “We hope to revisit the offering in the future.”
This revises the list of scheduled of orbital tourist flight that began with SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight in September.
- September 15, 2021: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule flew four private citizens on a three day orbital flight
- October 5-17, 2021: Two Russians fly to ISS for 12 days to shoot a movie
- December 2021: The Russians will fly billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant to ISS for 12 days
- January/February 2022: Axiom, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four tourists to ISS
- 2022-2024: Three more Axiom tourist flights on Dragon to ISS
- 2024: Axiom begins launching its own modules to ISS, starting construction of its own private space station
- c2024: SpaceX’s Starship takes Yusaku Maezawa and several others on a journey around the Moon.
Why Space Adventures could not get enough customers for their Dragon flight is unclear. It could be for many reasons outside of not enough demand. For example, SpaceX might have determined that the prospective customers were not physically capable for the flight. Maybe Space Adventures sold two or three tickets, but couldn’t fill the manifest before their SpaceX contract expired.
The cancellation however does suggest that the price per ticket might have to come down to garner business for orbital tourist space flights. Or those flights need to arrive at a space station where the passengers can spend more than two or three days.
Arianespace and Chinese launches this weekend
Two launches occurred this weekend.
First Arianespace used its Ariane 5 rocket to place two communications satellites in orbit, one for the French military and the second for the commercial company SES. The total payload weight set a record for the rocket.
With this success the path is now clear for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on the next Ariane 5 launch in December.
Next the Chinese used its Long March 3B rocket to launch a technology test satellite aimed at testing “space debris mitigation technologies.” No other information was released.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
37 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Arianespace (Europe)
China now leads the U.S. 37 to 36 in the national rankings.
October 22, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Jerry Douglas – The Boxer
An evening pause: “But the fighter still remains.”
Hat tip Daniel Morris. I posted this in 2013, and it was time to post it again.
Musk: Starship orbital flight could happen as soon as next month
Capitalism in space: Elon Musk today announced that SpaceX will be ready to launch the first orbital flight of Starship as soon as one month from now.
“If all goes well, Starship will be ready for its first orbital launch attempt next month, pending regulatory approval,” Musk tweeted today [emphasis mine]
Musk’s tweet came one day after the FAA completed its public hearings on its environment reassessment of SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica. Before the agency can approve that reassessment it has to digest the comments, then to hold an “industry workshop” on this reassessment.
Thus, while SpaceX is ready to go, our lumbering, oppressive government is not. As I’ve written before, I fully expect there to be pressure from the Biden administration and NASA to slow walk that government approval so that Starship does not launch before February 2022, when SLS is now scheduled for its first launch. Having SpaceX get its heavy lift rocket into orbit before NASA would be very embarrassing, considering that SpaceX has spent about a third the time and about a tenth the money getting it done.
I hope I am wrong, but this is what I expect from the corrupt federal government we now have.
NASA sets target launch date for SLS in February ’22
As expected, the first unmanned demo launch of NASA’s SLS rocket has now been scheduled for a February launch window.
The first launch window for NASA’s Artemis I mission opens on February 12 at 5:56 p.m. EDT – yes, we have dates and times for this long-awaited mission. The February window lasts two weeks, with the first half of that window allowing a six-week mission and a four-week mission on the back half.
If for some reason NASA cannot launch in that firs window, they have back up windows in March and April. These windows exist because the plan is to send the Orion capsule to orbit the Moon from four to six weeks, and then return to Earth.
The announcement came the day after NASA had finally stacked the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket, essentially completing the rocket’s assembly.
Next Ariane 5 launch postponed
Arianespace today announced that it has postponed its next Ariane 5 launch of two communications satellites, scheduled for October 22nd, because of issues with ground equipment.
Though there appear to be no issues with the rocket, this delay could effect the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December on another Ariane 5 rocket. Arianespace has said that it wants to complete this launch first, to make sure the fixes it completed on the rocket’s fairing are truly working.
It was those problems that shut down all Ariane 5 launches for almost a full year.
No new launch date has been set. Normally, ground equipment issues cause short delays, so we should be hopeful all will be fixed quickly and this launch will be quickly rescheduled and take off without problems.
Today’s blacklisted American: Teacher suspended for criticizing students for being offended over nothing
Mao’s 1966 cultural revolution comes to Coastal Carolina University
The modern dark age: Today’s blacklist story might illustrate better than any I have posted the oppressive, mindless, and emotional madness that is sweeping our country. Let me first sum the story up in a simple way.
–A teacher invites a guest speaker to a class to help the students find friends with like interests.
–The guest writes some student names on the blackboard with this intent.
–The students enter the class, and some immediately assume that because some of those names are minorities, the list has a bigoted intent.
–These students leave the class and immediately begin organizing a protest and a boycott of the teacher.
–Even after it is shown, without doubt, that these protesting students are 100% wrong, that the goal was to help all the students, including the minorities, the school apologizes to the protesters, not to the teacher or the guest speaker. The guest speaker also apologized, even though that speaker did nothing wrong.
–The teacher however does not apologize. He defends his guest, and notes that people should not let their feelings get hurt so easily.
–The student protesters, most of whom it appears did not attend the class and did not even know the teacher, immediately renew their call for a boycott of his classes.
–The administration of Coastal Carolina University agrees, suspending the teacher and accusing him of being “racially insensitive.”
Do you see the madness? The wrong-doers are in charge and it is the innocent who are punished.
Now for the punchline:
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Pop-up clouds on Jupiter
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo above was cropped and enhanced by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt from a raw Juno image taken during that spacecraft’s 37th orbit. I have reduced it slightly to post here.
The photo shows what he calls “pop-up” clouds floating above a much larger cloud eddy. Unfortunately, Eichstädt provides no scale, but I suspect this image would easily cover the Earth, with those white clouds probably far larger than the biggest hurricane on Earth.
Ukraine and Nova Scotia to partner in spaceport deal
The new colonial movement: The Ukraine has agreed to be a partner in the building of a new spaceport in Nova Scotia.
It appears a Canadian company, Maritime Launch Services (MLS) has raised $10.5 million in investment capital to develop both the spaceport and a rocket it dubs Cyclone-4M. That company has also been negotiating with the Ukraine to buy engines from its two rocket engine manufacturers, Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, for that rocket. As part of the negotiations, the Ukrainian government has agreed to provide funding to these two companies.
Both sides will hold further meetings in Canada on this partnership in November, including top Ukrainian government officials, Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Uruskyi, State Space Agency of Ukraine Administrator Vladimir Taftai, and Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
China resumes communications with Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter
With the Sun no longer between the Earth and Mars, China has re-established communications with its Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter.
According to the CNSA [China National Space Administration], the orbiter will enter the remote-sensing orbit of Mars in early November to carry out global detection and obtain scientific data such as morphology and geological structure, surface material composition and soil type distribution, atmospheric ionosphere, and space environment of Mars.
The orbiter will also relay the communication between the rover and Earth for the rover’s extended mission, the CNSA added.
Based on this information, full communications with the rover Zhurong will not resume until November because the orbiter needs to re-adjust its orbit.
Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin to partner in building commercial space station
Capitalism in space: The companies Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin have announced that they have formed a partnership to build their own private commercial space station, dubbed Starlab.
Nanoracks, its majority owner Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin, will collaborate on the development of a commercial space station as others in industry warn of a potential space station gap.
Nanoracks said Oct. 21 that it was partnering with Lockheed Martin and Voyager Space on a commercial space station called Starlab. Nanoracks will be the prime contractor with Voyager handling strategy and investment and Lockheed serving as the manufacturer and technical integrator.
Starlab would consist of a docking node with an inflatable module attached to one side and a spacecraft bus, providing power and propulsion, attached to the other side. Starlab will have a volume of 340 cubic meters, about three-eighths that of the International Space Station, and generate 60 kilowatts of power. Starlab will be equipped with a robotic arm and “state-of-the-art” lab, and be able to host four astronauts at a time.
They are aiming for a 2027 launch.
Mati Ventrillon – Making sweaters from the softest wool
An evening pause: She will soon be able to ship these sweaters into space, from Shetland’s own spaceport.
Hat tip Cotour.
Nebraska AG report blasts FDA and NIH positions on COVID treatment
In a ruling [pdf] making it clear that doctors are doing nothing wrong if they prescribe ivermectin or hydroxycholoroquine as part of their treatment for patients with COVID-19, the Nebraska attorney general not only provided detailed documentation demonstrating the reasonableness of prescribing those drugs — based on extensive peer-review research by scientists — he blasted the FDA, the NIH, and WHO for their somewhat ignorant hostility to those drugs.
The document is long, but everyone should read it, mostly to get a clear idea whether they or their doctor should consider using these two drugs should they come down with COVID. The answer appears to be an unqualified yes. Both drugs have different purposes, but both appear, if used properly, to be beneficial and reduce the severity of the virus.
The report also makes it clear that the hostility to these drugs by these American health agencies is irrational and somewhat alarming. See for example the one excerpt describing the FDA’s absurd statements in connection with ivermectin, a drug that doctors have been safely prescribing since the 1970s:
The report details at length the numerous research that makes these FDA statement so anti-science as to be quite horrifying, especially as this is the federal agency that is supposed to regulate food and drugs.
Once again, download this pdf and read it for yourself. You will find yourself significantly educated, based on actual peer-reviewed science.