Category: Behind The Black

IBEX leaves safe mode and returns to full science operations

12:40 pm

Engineers have restored the orbiting astronomy probe IBEX out of safe mode, returning it to full science operations after a computer issue on February 18, 2023 that prevented the spacecraft from accepting commands.

To take the spacecraft out of a contingency mode it entered last month, the mission team performed a firecode reset (which is an external reset of the spacecraft) instead of waiting for the spacecraft to perform an autonomous reset and power cycle on March 4. The decision took advantage of a favorable communications environment around IBEX’s perigee – the point in the spacecraft’s orbit where it is closest to Earth.

After the firecode reset, command capability was restored. IBEX telemetry shows that the spacecraft is fully operational and functioning normally.

As I noted previously, IBEX was designed to study the boundary between the interstellar space and the solar system, and do it somehow from Earth orbit.

0 comments

An inactive volcanic vent on Mars

12:31 pm

An inactive volcanic vent on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on October 5, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled by the science team as “Vents and Lava Flows on Flank of Pavonis Mons,” the section to the right shows the picture’s largest vent. The downhill grade is to the south.

In the full photo you can see that this vent sits on top of a flat mound of hardened lava, all of which flowed from the vent in the distant past. The main flow of course went to the south, out the channel and down the flanks of Pavonis Mons, the middle volcano in the line of three just to the west of Mars’ giant Valles Marineris canyon. The caldera peak of Pavonis Mons is about 35 miles away, and sits at a height of 47,000 feet elevation, far higher than Mount Everest but still only the fourth highest Martian volcano.

In the full picture, the entire surface also generally flows south, except for a crack that goes from northeast to southwest, possibly caused when the mountain flank sagged to the south.
» Read more

2 comments

A confused spiral galaxy

10:34 am

An irregular spiral galaxy

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released today. From the caption:

The irregular spiral galaxy NGC 5486 hangs against a background of dim, distant galaxies in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The tenuous disc of the galaxy is threaded through with pink wisps of star formation, which stand out from the diffuse glow of the galaxy’s bright core. While this particular galaxy has indistinct, meandering spiral arms it lies close to the much larger Pinwheel Galaxy, one of the best known examples of ‘grand design’ spiral galaxies with prominent and well-defined spiral arms. In 2006 Hubble captured an image of the Pinwheel Galaxy which was — at the time — the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy ever taken with Hubble.

This galaxy is defined I think as an irregular spiral because if you look close, you can see a very faint hint of a central bar and two large arms spiraling away at its ends. It is faint however, and might simply be caused by the human mind’s natural desire to see patterns. To my eye this galaxy could just as well be a patchy elliptical galaxy, with no arms at all.

0 comments

Juno captures close-up images of Jupiter’s moon Io

10:25 am

Io as seen by Juno

On March 1, 2023 the Jupiter orbiter Juno passed within 33,000 miles of the gas giant’s moon Io, getting its first close-up images.

Several citizen scientists have processed those images. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was created by Andrew R Brown. This particular picture was one of five taken by Juno during the fly-by. Jason Perry processed all five here, with this caption:

Most of the dark spots seen across Io’s surface are the result of volcanic eruptions. These include East Girru, a dark spot that was not seen the last time Io was seen at this resolution during the New Horizons encounter with Jupiter in February 2007. East Girru was undergoing a major eruption at the time but hadn’t had time to produce a new lava flow before the end of the week-long encounter. This small flow field, measuring 3,200 square kilometers (1,390 square miles) in size, may have also been reactivated during an eruption in October 2021, as seen by Juno JIRAM.

Another apparent surface change is at Chors Patera, which has undergone a significant reddening since Galileo last observed it in October 2001. Reddish materials on Io are indicative of the presence of short-chain sulfur and are often associated with high-temperature, silicate volcanism. Additional dark spots near the terminator, the boundary between Io’s day and night sides, are the shadows of tall mountains. The dark spot at middle right in the upper right image may be due a mountain 5500 meters (18,000 feet) tall.

The smallest object resolved in this image is about 22 miles across.

3 comments

ISRO attempting controlled reentry of old satellite originally lacking in such plans

9:54 am

India’s space agency ISRO has been attempting the controlled reentry of an old India-French climate satellite that had originally been placed in a high enough orbit that de-orbit was not expected.

An uninhabited area in the Pacific Ocean between 5°S to 14°S latitude and 119°W to 100°W longitude has been identified as the targeted re-entry zone for the [Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT1)]. Since Aug 2022, 18 orbit manoeuvres have been performed to progressively lower the orbit and on March 7 the ground impact is expected to take place between 4.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. IST.

The satellite, once no longer able to do its primary function, still had a lot of fuel left that left it a threat. ISRO managers decided to use that fuel to lower the high orbit — where MT1 was expected to remain for at least 100 years — so that the satellite could be brought down safely now.

The real story here is ISRO’s decision to commit funds to pay for this work. Until recently, most satellites are launched without any funding to remove them once launched. SpaceX changed this with its Starlink constellation, with deorbit always included as part of each satellite’s operational plan.

0 comments

Eartha Kitt – Think I’m Being Had

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live on the Dick Cavett Show, 1969. The second half of the clip is Cavett interviewing her about her autobiography Thursday’s Child.

Hat tip Gene Shipp.

3 comments

March 3, 2023 Quick space links

5:03 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

  • A graph showing the steady and slow decay of Hubble’s orbit

    • The decay was brought up because Hubble now orbits just below SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, and thus some are concerned its work will be hindered by them. I think this is a non-issue. More important is that decay. If Hubble is going to be remain in space, work on a rescue mission must begin soon.

 

 

 

  • Astra identifies the cause of its last launch failure

    • In reading their conclusions, I came away with the impression that this rocket had a lot of weak links, any one of which could cause a failure. No wonder the company abandoned it after this launch to focus on a new rocket.

4 comments

Sightseeing in the region near the Starship Mars landing zone

4:21 pm

Sightseeing in the region near Starship's landing zone
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on November 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a bulbous hill in the icy northern lowland plains of Mars. That it is icy here is indicated by the glacier features that appear to fill the small crater near the bottom of the picture.

You can get a better sense of stark alien nature of this terrain by looking at an MRO context camera image of the same area, taken on April 1, 2008. The subject hill is the first hill on the image’s west side, going from the top. This is a flat plain interspersed with crater splats, mounds of a variety of sizes, and a puzzling meandering dark line that suggests a crack from which material is oozing.

The geology to be studied here might be endless but for tourists the views will be astounding in their alienness.
» Read more

2 comments

AGs from 22 states blast Biden’s attempt to illegally insert racial quotas and climate change into federal contracting law

1:56 pm

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Joe Biden imposes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
Green New Deal on all federal contractors

In May 2021 President Biden signed an executive order [pdf] requiring federal agencies to make climate change and helping “disadvantaged communities and communities of color” a major priority in all their work.

That executive order, which in many ways was simply a rewording of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s communist and bigoted Green New Deal, required agencies to do things like reconsider where their pension funds were invested and to change those investments — not to get the best return on the dollar as required by law — but to protect them from “the threats of climate-related financial risk.”

The executive order also demanded that the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FARC) require federal contractors to:

…publicly disclose greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risk and to set science-based reduction targets; and (ii) ensure that major Federal agency procurements minimize the risk of climate change, including requiring the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions to be considered in procurement decisions and, where appropriate and feasible, give preference to bids and proposals from suppliers with a lower social cost of greenhouse gas emissions. [emphasis mine]

» Read more

13 comments

SpaceX launches another 51 Starlink satellites into orbit

11:48 am

SpaceX today successfully placed another 51 Starlink satellites into orbit, using its Falcon 9 rocket and launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The first stage completed its 12th flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairing halves completed their fifth and second flights, respectively.

The 2023 launch race:

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

American private enterprise now leads China 16 to 7, and the entire world combined 16 to 12. SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 15 to 13.

2 comments

Sunspot update: After going through the roof last month, sunspots drop into the attic this month

11:05 am

With the start of another month NOAA this week updated its graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I do every month, I have posted that updated graph below, adding some additional details to provide some context.

Last month the number of sunspots rocketed upward to the highest seen since 2014, and only the second time since November 2002 that the Sun was that active. In February those high numbers dropped, though the sunspot activity during the month remained well above the 2020 prediction by NOAA’s panel of solar scientists.

» Read more

7 comments
1 … 610 611 612 613 614 … 2,917