Kylie Minogue & Paul McCartney – Dance Tonight
An evening pause: Performed live on New Year’s Eve, 2007. They are having so much fun!
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Category: Behind The Black
February 13, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also clued me into to the updates on the Russian spacecraft leak situation on ISS.
- Blue Origin says it has made both solar cells and electricity transmission wires from simulated lunar soil
The article claims this is a major breakthrough, but I am sincerely underwhelmed. Though eventually such technology might be important for lunar colonists, right now it makes no sense to spend private capital on it. For at least the next two decades, power on the Moon is going to from solar panels shipped there. Other companies such as Astrobotics are developing cheap and easy-to-ship-and-install panels for those first missions, and they, not Blue Origin, are going to reap the profits.
- Pseudo Chinese rocket startup Space Pioneer gearing up for first launch of Tianlong-2 rocket by end of March
If successful, it would be the first liquid fueled rocket by a Chinese pseudo company to reach orbit. Others have tried and failed.
- Graphic of Chinese pseudo-company DeepBlue Aerospace’s fleet of rockets under development
Jay sums this up well: “Names of the rockets: Copy#1, Copy#2, Copy#3, Copy-Heavy#4, and of course Super Heavy Copy#5.” I will add that this is all fantasy at this moment.
- China’s FAST radio telescope discovers 740 pulsars
The claim is made by the telescope’s chief engineer, which suggests China has still not found a high quality astronomer to manage its science operations.
Cracked ash-filled Martian terrain
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 26, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this “Possible Pit,” but other than a small dark stain on the rim of a crater north of the section cropped to the right, I could find nothing that even closely resembled a pit. More likely the scientists were referring to the large circular depression in the top center of this picture. It does not at first glance look like a crater, as it has no obvious rim. In fact, almost none of the circular depressions in this image look like craters, as almost none have uplifted rims.
However, it is not clear what caused these dust-filled fractures as well as the image’s many circular depressions. The location, as indicated by the overview map below, does not really help.
» Read more
First picture of hole that occurred on Soyuz in December
Russia has now released an image taken using the robot arm on ISS of the leak that occurred on its Soyuz capsule docked to ISS in December.
The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is that image. This is not the coolant leak hole on the Progress freighter on February 11th, this past weekend. As of now no image of that hole has ever been released.
No interpretation of this hole and the stain around it has as yet been released. However, Russia has now postponed the launch of the next Soyuz capsule from February 19th until early March in order “to give investigators time to rule out similar issues in the upcoming mission.” This Soyuz was to launch unmanned to replace the Soyuz that leaked in December and provide the astronauts that launched on that leaking Soyuz a safe lifeboat that they could come home on.
Meanwhile, all communications with ISS have now been shifted to the private channels, so the public cannot hear them.
All these actions strongly suggest that both the Russians and Americans are now seriously considering the possibility of sabotage or damage to the coolant systems on all Russian spacecraft, before they leave the factory and are launched.
To clarify the situation, the image to the right shows all the spacecraft presently docked to ISS. Progress 82 is the spacecraft that experienced a leak in its coolant system on February 11th. Soyuz-MS22 experienced a leak in its coolant system in December. At the moment the only safe vehicle for returning the seven astronauts on ISS is Crew-5 Dragon, SpaceX’s Endurance spacecraft. Should a major catastrophe occur requiring an immediate evacuation of the station, the plan right now is for five astronauts to come home on Endurance, and two Russians to come home on the damaged Soyuz. (The thinking is that having only two men on board will prevent too much of a temperature rise during the return to Earth because of the lack of its coolant system.)
With the delay in the launch of the replacement Soyuz lifeboat, this emergency plan will be in place for at least three weeks longer.
A real blacklist designed to choke ad profits from conservative and legitimate news organizations
Conservative news outlets blacklisted by Microsoft’s Xandr,
based on advice from GDI
They’re coming for you next: Using American federal funds, a British “disinformation” group called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) has created a real blacklist of valid and longstanding conservative news organizations and fed that list to internet ad companies to encourage them to cut ad revenue from those news organizations.
A sampling of the blacklisted news companies that have actually been punished financially by this effort is shown to the right
Of the ad companies, a Microsoft company named Xander appears to be the most enthusiastic about using GDI’s blacklist to choke ad sales to conservatives sites.
GDI’s “dynamic exclusion list” includes at least 2,000 domains, many of which are “foreign state-sponsored news and opinion sites, forums that traffic in disinformation, and explicitly sanctioned websites,” according to a second source close to Microsoft. Each month, GDI sends Xandr a list of websites on this blacklist, said the source.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on GDI’s list and spoke to an ad-buying source who said Breitbart News is also. Separately, GDI has said that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for purported disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News Network, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
All those news outlets are legitimate, well established, and reasonable and reliable sources of information. No one should rely solely on them for their news, but to call their reporting “false,” “misleading,” “hate speech,” “reprehensible,” or “offensive” merely because they publish news from a conservative perspective is fundamentally dishonest. To then blacklist them because they have a different perspective is pure censorship by the left against its political opponents.
That the blacklist is definitely partisan is proven by the news outlets GDI has determined are acceptable.
» Read more
Trio of colliding galaxies
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture above, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released today. From the caption:
Three galaxies stand together just right of centre. They are close enough that they appear to be merging into one. Their shapes are distorted, with strands of gas and dust running between them. Each is emitting a lot of light. Further to the left is an unconnected, dimmer spiral galaxy. The background is dark, with a few smaller, dim and faint galaxies and a couple of stars.
Astronomers estimate the colliding galaxies are about 50,000 light years from each other, which for galaxies is quite close. Eventually gravity will cause all three to merge into a single very large galaxy, its shape distorted by the merger. What that shape will be is one of the things astronomers are trying to figure out. At present their theories for galaxy evolution states that as galaxies grow by absorbing smaller nearby neighbors, they evolve from spirals to ellipticals, giant blobs lacking a distinct obvious structure.
One of Saudi Arabia’s two Axiom passengers later this year will be a woman
In announcing the two astronauts who will fly as passengers on Axiom’s commercial Ax-2 flight to ISS in the second quarter of 2023, Saudi Arabia also revealed that one will be the first female Arabian to fly in space.
Saudi nationals Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali al-Qarni will join the crew of the AX-2 space mission in an accomplishment that comes in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. The spaceflight is set to launch from the United States to the ISS.
There is an aggressive space race now in the Middle East between Arab nations. The UAE started it by making space exploration a major goal for diversifying its economy. Saudi Arabia has now followed with its own program. Turkey, Bahrain, and Oman have also joined in.
SpaceX launches 55 more Starlink satellites
Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully launched 55 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage successfully completed its 12th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. (These 1st stage landings have become so routine that no one at SpaceX even cheered tonight when the stage landed.) The fairing halves completed their 6th and 8th flights respectively. As of posting, the satellites had not yet been deployed.
The 2023 launch race:
10 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India
American private enterprise now leads China 11 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 11 to 9.
Shortly after new Progress freighter docks with ISS, older Progress loses internal pressure
Shortly after a new Progress freighter docked with ISS early today (shown as Progress 83 in the graphic to the right), the older Progress 82 lost internal pressure, possibly in its coolant system.
On February 11, Roskosmos, citing data from mission control, said that the Progress MS-21 cargo ship docked at the station lost pressure. According to the State Corporation, the hatch connecting the ship’s pressurized compartment with the rest of the station was closed and the vehicle was fully isolated from the ISS’ habitable volume.
…According to unofficial sources, the spacecraft lost all its cooling fluid from its Thermal Control System, SOTR. Several hours after the incident, NASA confirmed that the breach had been limited to the cooling system. At the same time, the US space agency said that the hatches between the cargo ship and the station had remained open, while temperatures and pressures aboard the outpost had remained normal. The subsequent publicly available exchange between the NASA mission control in Houston and a US astronaut Frank Rubio, aboard the ISS, indicated that the coolant system of the Progress MS-21 spacecraft had been completely emptied before the leak stopped.
The report is very unclear. In the first paragraph it suggests the freighter’s atmosphere had leaked out, while its hatches were closed and it was isolated from the station. The second paragraph suggests it only lost pressure and coolant from its coolant system, and the hatches had been open during the event.
Either way, this is the second Russian ferry spacecraft to experience such an event since mid-December, when the Soyuz capsule attached to ISS lost its coolant from what is believed to have been a small impact.
This particular Progress freighter is slated to be undocked from ISS on February 18th, when it will be de-orbited, burning up in the atmosphere over the Pacific. Thus, this leak appears to pose a relatively small risk to the station, as it probably has already been filled with station garbage and was likely ready for disposal anyway.
This incident however raises larger concerns. If it was caused by an impact from an external object, either micrometeorite or space junk, it suggests that the station might face a new increased risk of such events, quite possibly from debris from the Russian anti-satellite test in November 2021. As of November 2022 it was estimated that there were 444 objects still in orbit, with all but 18 expected to fall back to earth by 2025. It could be that one of those tracked objects hit ISS, or a different object that has not been tracked.
Or possibly we are seeing evidence of some quality control problem in the construction of these spacecraft, in Russia. Russia and NASA have still not revealed the results of the investigation into the hole that was drilled into the hull of a Soyuz capsule in 2018. Could there be some sabotage going on the ground in Russia that has not been identified that is designed to cause such leaks sometime after launch?
Some clarity on this issue is now becoming essential.
February 10, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – I Love Rock’n’Roll
An evening pause: Performed live 1982.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
February 10, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Blue Origin and the fast-food chain Shaq’s Big Chicken sign deal
When you read what this deal really entails, you will laugh. It is typical of the kind of engineering achievements we have come to expect from Blue Origin: Empty PR campaigns having nothing to do with actually building something that will fly in space.
- An update on the Epsilon F6 failure last October.
The release at the link is entirely in Japanese. According to Jay, “As of February 3 JAXA has now narrowed the cause of the RCS [reaction control system] failure to blockage of the diaphragm at the helium tank outlet.”
- Russian official claims his design bureau (part of Roscosmos) is beginning research on a single-stage-to-orbit rocket
The picture at the link is hilariously pure science fiction. This ain’t happening, ever.
No blacklist column today. Been too busy with personal matters.