Category: Behind The Black

Ingenuity completes 47th flight, scouting ahead of Perseverance

11:55 am

Ingenuity sitting ahead of Perseverance, on the delta
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Though the science team has not, as of this posting, added the flight to Ingenuity’s flight log, according to the interactive map showing the positions of both Ingenuity and Perseverance on Mars, the helicopter completed its 47th flight yesterday as planned.

An annotated version of that map is to the right. The larger green dot marks Ingenuity’s new position. The smaller green dot marks its position when the panorama above was taken on February 27, 2023, capturing the helicopter in the distance (as indicated by the arrow). The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by that panorama. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present position.

The flight’s planned distance was to go 1,410 feet to the southwest and “image science targets along the way.” As the helicopter also flew above Perseverance’s planned route, as indicated by the red dotted line, it also provided the rover team information about the ground Perseverance will travel along the way. Since the terrain here is generally not very rough, the information is not critical for route-picking. It might however spot some geological feature that bears a closer look that would not have been noticed by the rover alone.

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Biden administration proposes more budget increases for NASA

10:25 am

In releasing its proposed federal budget for 2024 with many major spending increases, the Biden administration has also proposed a significant increase in NASA’s budget. the third year in a row it has done so.

The shortened summary version of the Biden budget proposal [pdf] covers its proposals for NASA in two pages, with the most important proposals as follows:

  • A half billion dollar increase in the budget for the Artemis program for a total of $8.1 billion.
  • A commitment to partner on Europe’s ExoMars Franklin rover mission, replacing Russia.
  • $949 million to develop the Mars sample return mission to bring back Perseverance’s core samples.
  • $180 million to begin development of “a space tug” that can de-orbit ISS as well as “be useful for other space transportation missions.”
  • $1.39 billion for developing new space technologies, an increase of $190 million.

The last two items will likely be money offered to many new commercial startups.

Though we can expect some resistance by the Republican House to most of the budget increases in the overall Biden budget proposal, expect Congress to rubber stamp the NASA increases, as it has done routinely in recent years. Congress might shift or reject some of these ideas, but generally, when all is said and done, it will only make superficial changes. NASA will likely more money.

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House subcommittee proposes five bills that would change FCC operations

10:06 am

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on March 8, 2023 approved five bills affecting the FCC and how it operates.

The first bill [pdf], Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act, is the most significant, as it appears to try to establish legal limitations and rules specifically designed to address the FCC’s recent effort to expand its power and regulatory authority beyond what its legal authority allows. While most of the bill’s language appears to allow the FCC to do what it wants (including limiting or regulating future space stations and setting lifetime limits on all orbiting spacecraft), it also insists that licenses be approved quickly and adds this caveat:

[T]he Commission may not establish performance objectives that conflict with any standard practice adopted by the Secretary of Commerce.

In other words, the FCC cannot grab the regulatory responsibilities of other agencies, especially the Commerce Department, where Congress in recent years has been trying to shift most commercial regulatory authority.

Nonetheless, this bill appears to mostly endorse the FCC ‘s power grab.

The bills still have to be approved by the full committee, then approved by the full House, then approved by the Senate, and then signed by the president.

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Russia considering bringing Soyuz launched on February 23rd home earlier

9:35 am

According to unnamed sources in the Russian press, Roscosmos officials are considering bringing the Soyuz capsule launched on February 23rd to ISS back to Earth in June rather than September, while moving up the launch of the next Soyuz manned mission.

As noted by space journalist Anatoly Zak:

The existence of such plans indicated that specialists had still been concerned about the possibility of a critical leak in the thermal control system of the fresh crew vehicle similar to those that hit two previous transport ships. Such change in schedule would also debunk the official explanation of previous two accidents by Roskosmos and NASA as caused by meteors rather than production defects.

The two previous coolant leaks occurred about three months after launch. Bringing the Soyuz home in June would get it home in about three and a half months, suggesting the Russians are no longer confident their Soyuz and Progress spacecraft can withstand six months in space.

If this plan is adopted it will also put less strain on the crew slated to come home on that Soyuz. Their mission has been planned for six months. Extending it to a full year without any prior preparation risks serious health issues.

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China’s Long March 4C rocket launches two Earth observation satellites

9:23 am

China today used its Long March 4C rocket to launch two Earth observation satellites from one of its interior spaceports.

No word on whether the expendable first stage landed near habitable areas. In related news the upper stage of a Long March 2D rocket, launched in June 2022, burned up over Texas on March 8, 2023. Such upper stage uncontrolled de-orbits are not unusual, and the effort by this news outlet to make a big deal about it is just politics. Unlike the lower stages of China’s rockets that hit the ground right after launch, it is very unlikely any pieces reached the surface, and any that did were small and posed a small risk.

The 2023 launch race:

16 SpaceX
8 China
3 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 17 to 8 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 17 to 13. SpaceX alone still leads the entire world, including American companies, 16 to 14.

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March 9, 2023 Quick space links

3:55 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

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SpaceX successfully launches 40 OneWeb satellites

1:19 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 40 OneWeb satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

This was SpaceX’s third launch for OneWeb, helping to replace the Russians who broke its contract with OneWeb after its invasion of the Ukraine. The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing safely on a landing pad at Cape Canaveral. As amazing as this record is, it is not a record for the most reflights, which presently stands at fifteen. The fairings completed their sixth flight.

As of posting not all of OneWeb’s satellites have been deployed.

The 2023 launch race:

16 SpaceX
7 China
3 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise now leads China 17 to 7 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 17 to 12. SpaceX alone leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 16 to 13.

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Ice volcano in the Martian high northern latitudes?

1:03 pm

Ice volcano on Mars
Click for original image.

That the Martian surface becomes increasingly icy as one approaches its poles is becoming increasingly evident from orbital images. Today’s cool image provides us another data point.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 4, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is once again another terrain sample image, taken not as part of any particular research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its temperature. With such pictures, it is hard to predict what will be seen, though the scientists try to find interesting things. In this case the camera team succeeded quite nicely, capturing what appears to me to be a small volcano with two calderas.

This volcano however has almost certainly not spouted lava but mud and water.
» Read more

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Pushback: Texas A&M to stop favoring minorities in hiring & admission policies

11:56 am

Texas A&M logo
Texas A&M: abandoning its discriminatory
policies?

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Less than a month after Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered all state agencies to cease considering race and gender in hiring, Texas A&M (TAMU) officials announced they were removing all mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies from the university’s hiring and admissions practices.

After receiving the Feb. 6 memo, Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp immediately ordered all A&M System institutions to review their employment and admission practices and confirm their compliance, according to the university. … Sharp directed all universities and agencies within the TAMU system to remove the DEI statements from their employment or admissions practices. The directive also standardizes faculty and staff applications, limiting them to a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching philosophies, and professional references. It further instructs universities and agencies to make all websites or printed materials dealing with employment and admission practices compliant with the directive, says TAMU.

Will this change anything? It appears that for now, no, not much. » Read more

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Another orbital tug & servicing company raises investment capital

9:29 am

Starfish Space, a new entrant into the orbital tug & servicing industry, has successfully raised $14 million in new investment capital, in addition to the $7 million it had raised in a previous fund-raising round.

The company hopes to launch a test satellite later this year, dubbed Otter Pup, which will undock from the orbital tub of another company, Launcher Space, do maneuvers, and then redock.

Starfish’s plan calls for Otter Pup to be sent into orbit this summer as a rideshare payload on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 mission. The spacecraft will be deployed from Launcher Space’s Orbiter space tug, and then will execute a series of maneuvers with a xenon-fueled electric propulsion system to move away from the tug.

If all goes well, the Otter Pup will return to the vicinity of the Orbiter, and then use an electrostatic-based capture mechanism to latch onto a docking target on the space tug. It could take months to test out the Otter Pup’s systems and tweak them as necessary for its test hookups.

Though the company says it will offer tug services once operational, it appears it is mostly aiming for the satellite robotic servicing market. It, like Astroscale, has developed its own docking capture device, which it will try to convince satellite companies to attach to their satellites. It will then use this to dock and service those satellites. Since these capture devices are proprietary, the number that each company gets onboard satellites will determine that company’s future sales.

This orbital servicing industry appears to be growing very quickly, now that launch costs have come down by about 90% since the arrival of SpaceX. For example, the orbital tug company Momentus is getting ready to launch its third mission.

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Space Force assigns launchpads to four smallsat rocket startups

9:16 am

The Space Force has assigned launchpad space at Cape Canaveral to four different new smallsat rocket startup companies, ABL Space Systems, Stoke Space, Phantom Space, and Vaya Space, none of which have yet launched.

There are currently four active launch complexes on the Eastern Range; Launch Complex 37 for ULA Delta rockets; Launch Complex 40 for SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets; Launch Complex 41 for ULA Atlas rockets; and Launch Complex 39A, which is owned by NASA.

ABL Space Systems, which has the RS1 rocket, has been allocated property at Space Launch Complex 15. ABL’s first orbital attempt in January failed. Stoke Space was allocated property at SLC 14. The launcher is based in Washington state and working to develop a fully reusable rocket. And Phantom Space and Vaya Space were allocated space at SLC 13. Phantom Space is developing the Daytona Launch System and executed a successful hot fire test in November.

This article provides a nice overview of the four companies, of which Vaya is the newest entrant into the smallsat rocket industry.

Space Force officials have made it clear they want to maximize use of their facility at the Cape, while helping to energize this private commercial market.

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