Category: Behind The Black

Terraced serrated layered mesas on Mars

2:34 pm

Terraced mesas 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 November 19, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a collection of terraced mesas covered with dust of a variety of colors.

The bluish colors suggest exposed bedrock, while the different shades of tan suggest areas covered by dust and volcanic ash. That the tan areas are likely dust is strengthened in that it is found between and on these rough mesas, where dunes are also seen. The dust gets blown in but gets trapped there.

The tan colors however could also indicate different types of bedrock, especially because different terraces seem to be of different shades. We will need more data to determine which, or whether this is a combination of all these geological processes.
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Curiosity takes high resolution panorama of the canyon it will soon enter

9:40 am

Curiosity looks into Gediz Valles
Click for original image.

Using its high resolution camera, the Curiosity science team has now released a November 2022 panorama looking south into Gediz Vallis, the Martian slot canyon that the rover will be entering in the near future.

The panorama above, cropped and reduced to post here, shows that canyon. The red dotted line indicates Curiosity’s approximate path since the panorama was taken, circling around behind Chenapua.

The mosaic is made up of 18 individual images that were stitched together after being sent to Earth. The color has been adjusted to match lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.

Not only should you definitely look at the original, at full resolution, but also compare it with the black and white mosaic I posted in December 2022, taken by the rover’s navigation camera looking in the same direction though from a slightly different position. The color definitely underlines the spectacular nature of the landscape.

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NASA awards launch contract to Blue Origin’s unlaunched New Glenn rocket

9:09 am

NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin the launch contract for its smallsat ESCAPADE Mars orbiter mission, set to launch in late 2024.

ESCAPADE will launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Space Launch Complex-36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Launch is targeted for late 2024. Blue Origin is one of 13 companies NASA selected for VADR contracts in 2022. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contracts. As part of VADR, the fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts have a five-year ordering period with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts.

NASA’s VADR program is designed to give contracts to higher risk contractors to help those launch companies develop their rockets. Since New Glenn is years behind schedule and as-yet unlaunched, this contract is an attempt to help change that. Note however that it is fixed price, and does not set a deadline for Blue Origin to launch.

ESCAPADE will actually be two orbiters designed to study the faint artifacts of Mars’ magnetosphere left over from its past.

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India successfully launches its SSLV rocket on 2nd attempt

9:32 pm

On its second launch attempt tonight, India’s SSLV rocket (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) successfully reached orbit and deployed all three of its smallsat payloads.

On the first launch attempt in August 2022, the engine on the fourth stage, used to put the satellites in their preferred orbits, shut down prematurely due to a failure of its guidance system. Today, all worked as planned.

The hope of India’s space agency ISRO is that this rocket can garner some of the growing smallsat business. That it is three years delayed because of ISRO’s panic over Wuhan makes fulfilling that hope more difficult, because so much of that business has now been grabbed by other companies.

The 2023 launch race:

9 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 10 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 10 to 9.

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February 9, 2023 Quick space links

5:06 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

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Pushback: Civil rights complaint filed against California school district for running segregated program

1:34 pm

Government endorsed segregation in California
Government endorsed segregation in California

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” A civil rights complaint has been filed by the organization Parents Defending Education against the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in Santa Cruz County, California, for offering a segregated teacher support program that specifically excluded some races from attending.

As the program’s leaflet to the right shows, the program for “people of color” would not only give only certain races beneficial training, it would also give those participants “a stipend” that was forbidden to some employees due to their race.

It also appears that the program is also discriminatory on who it hires, as the coaches shown on that flyer are all minorities. Apparently, whites (and especially white males) need not apply.

You can read the actual civil rights complaint here [pdf]. As it notes bluntly:
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SpaceX completes 33-engine static fire test today of Superheavy prototype #7

10:25 am

Two seconds after ignition
Today’s Superheavy static fire test

SpaceX today successfully completed a 7-second-long static fire test of 31 of 33 Raptor-2 engines at the base Superheavy #7. The test ran for its full duration, and it appears no damage occurred to the launchpad. One engine shut down prior to test, and one shut down prematurely during the test. If this had happened during launch, the booster would still have had enough energy to get Starship to its required velocity to reach orbit.

The company will now have to analyze the test to determine whether it was sufficient to proceed to a March orbital launch. Certainly they will roll the booster back to the assembly building to exchange out the two engines that misfired.

All in all, it appears an orbital test flight of Starship could occur sometime in the next two months, assuming the FAA gets out of the way and issues the launch license.

EARLIER UPDATE:
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Propellant loading is underway, and a rough time estimate for the actual static fire test is now 3 pm (Central).

Musk has now confirmed in a tweet that they are going to proceed to the test. It now appears that they have almost completed propellant loading. It appears they have filled the oxygen tanks, but not the methane tanks, and will probably not fill the methane tanks entirely for the test itself.

Original post:
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No specific schedule has been announced of SpaceX’s attempt today to complete the first full 33-engine static fire test in Boca Chica of its seventh prototype of Superheavy, but a live stream is available from NASAspaceflight.com. I have embedded that live stream below.

The test will validate numerous systems, including the ground systems, the launchpad, the engines, and the systems for igniting all 33 in the proper sequence. Starship prototype #24 is not stacked on top of Superheavy in order to prevent any damage to it in case this test goes ugly. If so, SpaceX already has Superheavy prototype #9 ready to go in the nearby assembly building.

» Read more

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Curiosity scientists find evidence of lake water higher on Mount Sharp than expected

10:14 am

Panorama as of January 17, 2023
Curiosity’s view of the marker band on January 17, 2023, the red dotted line the planned future route. Click for full image.

The science team for the Mars rover Curiosity today revealed that the marker band layer where the rover present sits shows some of the best evidence of liquid water and waves yet seen on Mount Sharp, and it has been found much higher on the mountain than expected.

Having climbed nearly a half-mile above the mountain’s base, Curiosity has found these rippled rock textures preserved in what’s nicknamed the “Marker Band” – a thin layer of dark rock that stands out from the rest of Mount Sharp. This rock layer is so hard that Curiosity hasn’t been able to drill a sample from it despite several attempts. It’s not the first time Mars has been unwilling to share a sample: Lower down the mountain, on “Vera Rubin Ridge,” Curiosity had to try three times before finding a spot soft enough to drill.

Scientists will be looking for softer rock in the week ahead.

As Curiosity climbs the mountain it transitions onto new younger layers of rock. Based on Curiosity’s earlier data lower down the mountain, scientists had assumed it had gone from layers that had been under a past lake to layers that were at the lake’s shoreline to layers where only running water once flowed. They had thought the marker layer and other higher layers would only show evidence of running water. Instead, in the marker layer they have once again found evidence of an ancient lake.

This quote by Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist, sums things up nicely: “Mars’ ancient climate had a wonderful complexity to it, much like Earth’s.”

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ISRO successfully test fires a throttleable version of an engine used in two of its rockets

10:03 am

ISRO on January 30, 2023 successfully completed a static fire test of a throttleable version of its Vikas rocket engine, used in the upper stage of both its PSLV and GSLV rockets as well as in the GSLV’S first stage, running the engine at 67 percent power for a time period of 43 seconds.

The ability to adjust the power level of the engine during launch will give ISRO the ability to attempt the recovery of the first stages, as well as expand the ability of these rockets to place more satellites per launch in different orbits.

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UAE engineers shift Al-Amal’s orbit to do fly-bys of Mars moon Deimos

9:53 am

Engineers from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) yesterday revealed that they are in the process of changing the orbit of their Al-Amal Mars orbiter so that it will be able to do several close fly-bys of the Martian moon Deimos.

Two of the three required manoeuvres have already been made, allowing it to reach a new orbit between 20,000km and 43,000km with a 25-degree incline towards the planet. “Previously, we didn’t have any reason to move the orbit,” Ms Al Matroushi said. “But now we’re exploring a new adventure and science mission.”

Engineers are using the probe’s three main science instruments to capture images and data of the moon. These include an exploration imager ― a high-resolution camera ― to photograph the moon, and the infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers to measure its temperature and observe its thermophysical properties, including its regolith, or dust.

The first Deimos fly-by took place in late January, and as the probe moves to its closest approach to the moon, it will take high-resolution images.

Eventually Al-Amal will dip as close as 60 miles of Deimos.

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