Category: Behind The Black

Reassessed fuel measurements give Mars Odyssey until 2025 before it runs out

9:28 am

Using more refined methods for measuring the fuel left on Mars Odyssey, the oldest orbiter circling Mars at this time, engineers have determined that it will not run out until 2025, not this year as previously thought.

Mars Odyssey has been in orbit around Mars since 2001. The fuel is used by thrusters to help maintain the spacecraft’s orientation, which is mostly done by reaction wheels, or gyroscopes. We should therefore not be surprised if by 2025 engineers figure out a way to get the reaction wheels to do the whole job, when the fuel runs out.

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Virgin Orbit pauses operations; seeks funding

9:15 am

Virgin Orbit today paused all operations for at least a week, putting almost its entire staff on furlough as it seeks new financing.

Chief Executive Dan Hart told staff that the furlough would buy Virgin Orbit time to finalise a new investment plan, a source who attended the event told Reuters news agency. It was not clear how long the furlough would last, but Mr Hart said employees would be given more information by the middle of next week.

If Virgin Orbit dies, its death will be because a British government agency killed it. The company had planned on launching from Cornwall in the early fall of 2022, at the latest, and then do several other launches in 2022, all of which would have earned it revenue. Instead, the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) delayed issuing the launch license until January 2023, about a half a year later, preventing Virgin Orbit from launching for that time and literally cutting it off from any ability to make money. The result was that it ran out of funds.

Obviously the launch failure that followed the CAA’s approval did not help. Nor did the company’s decision to rely on only one 747 to launch its satellites. Nonetheless, the fault of this company’s death can mostly be attributed to a government bureaucracy that failed in its job so badly that it destroyed a private company.

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China’s Long March 11 rocket launches classified Earth observation satellite

9:06 am

China yesterday used its Long March 11 solid-fueled four-stage rocket to launch a classified Earth observation satellite into orbit.

The launch was from an interior spaceport, so the rocket’s lower stages crashed somewhere in China or Mongolia. No word on if they landed near habitable areas.

The 2023 launch race:

17 SpaceX
10 China
4 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 18 to 10 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 18 to 16. SpaceX alone is now tied with entire world, including the rest of the U.S., 17 to 17.

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Mary Travers & The Kingston Trio – Where Have All The Flowers Gone

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live 1982, when lefties still believed in freedom and peace and the immutable importance of each individual soul. Somehow seems appropriate on the ides of March.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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March 15, 2023 Quick space links

3:45 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

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Pushback: Legal and public pressure forces California college to cancel plans to fire employees for not getting jab

12:21 pm

The board of trustees of San Diego Community College
The board of trustees of San Diego Community College

They’re coming for you next: The board of trustees of San Diego Community College in late February 2023 had been moving to fire a number of teachers and employees because they all refused for various medical and religious reasons to get COVID shots or boosters.

The policy was senseless in all ways. As Tracy Kiser, a pregnant black professor who was refusing the jab because of the risk it posed to her unborn child, noted in a February 21st op-ed:

“Last year, after a decline in enrollment, the San Diego Community College District dropped the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students, but it has not been dropped for faculty and staff,” wrote Kiser, who also directs her school’s math center. [emphasis mine]

If the college’s trustees believe blindly that the jab prevents COVID (which it does not) and wants to protect its employees, why does it allow those employees to teach unjabbed students?

The board’s idiocy was further illustrated by Kiser’s description of this incident during one board meeting:
» Read more

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Geological evidence of past glacier found in Mars’ dry equatorial regions

11:04 am

Overview map

Scientists have uncovered geological evidence of a past glacier in westernmost end of the giant Martian canyon Valles Marineris, right at the point where it transitions into the complex chaos region dubbed Noctis Labyrinthus. The white dot on the map to the right indicates the location.

The surface feature identified as a “relict glacier” is one of many light-toned deposits (LTDs) found in the region. Typically, LTDs consist mainly of light-colored sulfate salts, but this deposit also shows many of the features of a glacier, including crevasse fields and moraine bands. The glacier is estimated to be 6 kilometers long and up to 4 kilometers wide, with a surface elevation ranging from +1.3 to +1.7 kilometers. This discovery suggests that Mars’ recent history may have been more watery than previously thought, which could have implications for understanding the planet’s habitability.

“What we’ve found is not ice, but a salt deposit with the detailed morphologic features of a glacier. What we think happened here is that salt formed on top of a glacier while preserving the shape of the ice below, down to details like crevasse fields and moraine bands,” said Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and the Mars Institute, and the lead author of the study. [emphasis mine]

You can read the paper here [pdf]. The research specifically suggests that near surface water ice in the dry equatorial regions of Mars could have been there much more recently that previously believed. It also suggests, by the rarity of this discovery, that there is likely almost no near surface ice in the equatorial regions, at present.

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Perseverance captures a movie of Ingenuity’s 47th flight on Mars

9:36 am

Ingenuity shortly after take-off on its 47th flight
Click for full movie.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

During Ingenuity’s 47th flight on Mars on March 9, 2023, one of Perseverance’s high resolution camera’s took rapid-fire images of the helicopter’s take-off and initial flight, from which the science team created a movie.

The overview map to the right provides the context for that movie at the link. The blue dot marks Perserverance’s location, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area seen in the movie. The smaller green dot and line indicates Ingenuity’s take-off point and part of its flight seen in the movie, with the larger green dot its landing spot. From the press release:

This video shows the dust initially kicked up by the helicopter’s spinning rotors, as well as Ingenuity taking off, hovering, and beginning its 1,444-foot (440-meter) journey to the southwest.

At take-off Ingenuity was 394 feet away from Perseverance.

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Firefly wins its second NASA contract to land payloads on the Moon

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly announced today that it has won a $112 million NASA contract to use its Blue Ghost lunar lander to bring three instruments to the Moon, one into orbit and two on the ground on the far side of the Moon.

Before landing on the Moon, the company’s Blue Ghost transfer vehicle will deploy the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite into lunar orbit to provide communications for future spacecraft, robots, and human explorers. After touching down on the far side of the Moon, the Blue Ghost lunar lander will deliver and operate NASA’s S-Band User Terminal, ensuring uninterrupted communications for lunar exploration, and a research-focused payload that measures radio emissions to provide insight into the origins of the universe.

The NASA press release provides more details about the three payloads.

This is Firefly’s second NASA lunar lander contract. The first is scheduled to land in 2024 and deliver ten NASA science instruments to Mare Crisium, the large mare region in the eastern side of the Moon’s visible hemisphere. This second flight is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2026.

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NASA agrees to Axiom’s third planned commercial passenger mission to ISS

8:45 am

NASA today announced that it has given Axiom the go-ahead for its third planned commercial passenger mission to ISS, now tentatively scheduled for November 2023.

Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) is expected to spend 14 days docked to the space station. A specific launch date is dependent on spacecraft traffic to the space station and in-orbit activity planning and constraints. NASA and Axiom Space mission planners will coordinate in-orbit activities for the private astronauts to conduct in coordination with space station crew members and flight controllers on the ground.

As NASA did in announcing its agreement to Axiom’s previous flight, the agency’s press release makes believe it “selected” Axiom for this flight, as if it had the power and right to do so. Hogwash. Axiom has purchased the flight from SpaceX, and wishes to rent space on ISS for two weeks for its customers. All NASA has done is agree to the deal, while also charging Axiom very large fees for that rental.

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