China’s Chang’e 3 lunar orbiter has lowered its orbit around the Moon.
This is in preparation for the planned landing of its rover on December 14.
If a US spacewalk on ISS is necessary to repair its cooling system, the spare parts are there, but the spacesuits are not.
Prior to retiring the shuttle NASA, aware that cargo supply would be limited once the shuttle was gone, shipped up to the station as many spare parts as possible. Thus, there are three spare pump modules on ISS that could be installed during a spacewalk to replace the module that has the valve problem.
However, because of the water leak problem that occurred in one American spacesuit during a July spacewalk, NASA has halted all American spacewalks until replacement suits can be shipped up to the station.
Since then, NASA has been conducting extensive investigations into the water leak issue, with… “the crew performed a series of tests on EMU 3011 [the faulty spacesuit] as part of an ongoing effort for returning the suit back to service. The tests included water leak checks, communication checks, and suit pressure leak checks. EMU 3011 passed all tests.”
However, NASA had been planning to wait to return another EMU, serial number 3015, to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon vehicle and deliver a new EMU in its place before clearing EVAs to resume. However the next Dragon vehicle is not scheduled to arrive at the ISS until at least late February next year.
The Russians might be able to do this spacewalk, but they are going to demand payment for the work. And they won’t come cheap, considering the circumstances.
The stupid party: The Ryan budget deal includes a provision that limits the ability of the Senate minority to block tax increases.
The bill includes language from the Senate Democrats’ budget that voids senators’ ability to raise a budget “point of order” against replacing the sequester cuts with tax increases. The process is quite complicated, but in practice it grants Harry Reid the authority to send tax increases to the House with a bare majority, rather than the 60-vote threshold that would be required under a point of order.
In other words, another example of a Republican getting hosed in negotiations.
Though I have read several conservative reports about this deal that outline some of its positive benefits, on the whole it appears to be another defeat for the right.
One of ISS’s cooling system pumps failed today.
The failure has caused the crew to shut down certain systems, but at the moment no one is in any danger. They have also switched to a secondary cooling system as they consider their options, one of which might require a spacewalk to do repairs.
SpaceShipTwo flew another glide test today.
Not a powered flight however. See Doug Messier’s comments here about the slow pace of these powered tests, and how it raises questions about the company’s claim that it will be flying commercially next year.
Scientists detect evidence of the splash of clay material left by an asteroid or comet after it impacted Europa.
This detailed look at the budget deal suggests it isn’t as much of a surrender as first implied.
I have to admit this analysis leaves me more hopeful, especially with this point:
That the Democrats would accept a deal like this is a pretty striking indication of how the Republican House has changed the conversation on the spending front since 2010. Think of it this way: In their first budget after re-taking the majority—the FY 2012 Ryan budget, passed in 2011—the House Republicans wanted discretionary spending to be $1.039 trillion in 2014 and $1.047 trillion in 2015. These budgets were of course described by the Democrats and the political press (but I repeat myself) as some reversion to humanity’s barbaric past. Yet this proposed deal with the Democrats would put discretionary spending at $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion in 2015—in both cases below that first House Republican budget.
Check out the graph at the link. It does illustrate bluntly that the Republicans are beginning to force the budget curve downward, if slowly. It also suggests that should they win big majorities in both Houses of Congress next November they will be posed to finally push for some real reductions in the size of the federal government, as they will have the votes in Congress and will be doing it with the strong endorsement of the voters.
The people speak: The refusal of 70% of California doctors to participate in Obamacare appears to be spontaneous, without leadership from any professional or political organization.
The Republican leadership expresses contempt for any opposition to its budget deal that abandons the cuts imposed by sequestration.
The Republican leadership are fools. If anything, this is the moment to push harder, to not only demand that the sequestration cuts stay in place, but to demand a repeal of Obamacare.
Fail! After two months, Obamacare has only enrolled less than 400,000 people, even as it has caused millions to lose their health insurance policies.
To get even these numbers the Obama administration is defining “enroll” as someone who went through the process of picking a plan, but hasn’t yet signed on and actually enrolled in it.
Though these low numbers are partly because of the inability of the Obamacare webpage to function, the real reason is sticker shock. Obamacare has raised the cost of health insurance so much that people simply can’t afford it.
Update: It appears that only 5 to 20% of these so-called enrollees have actually purchased Obamacare insurance.
Triumph of the Vulgarians: Decency is now the new taboo.
India’s Mangalyaan Mars probe successfully completed its first midcourse correction maneuver today.
As with the images the probe took of Earth, the success of this maneuver demonstrates the ability of the probe’s engineers to control, operate, and precisely point the spacecraft’s engine. It also proves that engine works as designed.
Here’s an interesting cultural tidbit: Of the 200,000 people who have applied to Mars One (see my previous post below) to go on its proposed one-way mission to Mars, India has the second most applicants after the U.S.
Mars One applicants come from over 140 countries; the largest numbers are from the US (24 per cent), India (10 per cent), China (6 per cent), Brazil (5 per cent), UK, Canada, Russia and Mexico (4 per cent), Philippines, Spain, Colombia and Argentina (2 per cent), and Australia, France, Turkey, Chile, Ukraine, Peru, Germany, Italy and Poland (1 per cent).
A private unmanned mission to Mars by 2018?
Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, Mars One founder and CEO, told reporters the foundation has signed contracts with two major aerospace firms, Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology, to develop mission concept studies, a first step toward eventual construction and launch.
The lander will be based on the design of the 2007 Phoenix Mars lander that Lockheed Martin developed for NASA. The communications satellite — the first such “geostationary” comsat in orbit around the red planet — will incorporate technologies developed by Surrey and used in a variety of operational spacecraft.
Mission concept studies are of course essential before you begin construction, but they are also a far cry from actual construction. I’ve seen literally hundreds of similar concept studies about someone’s big space plans with no subsequent follow up. Thus, I will only begin to take Mars One serious when they actually start cutting metal.
The failure of a Chinese Long March rocket to put a commercial satellite into orbit earlier this week was caused by a malfunction in the rocket’s third stage.
The budget deal: “It’s hard to see how conservatives support it,” he said. “The question is, how angry will they get?”
As is usual, the Republicans negotiated away something they didn’t have to for a promise of something that they will never get. The stupid party loses again.
Juno, on its way to Jupiter, flew past the Earth on October 9 and made a movie.
The link has details. The video is below the fold.
» Read more
Why Republicans should reject the surrender budget deal rumors say Paul Ryan is negotiating with Democrats.
Expect more articles like this. There are a lot of conservatives in the Republican House caucus who are no longer willing to lick the feet of Democrats, even if the Republican leadership is. And any deal that gives up sequestration is going to face their wrath.
Also, these kinds of articles serve to pressure Ryan so that he does not agree to a surrender.
Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.
The man received a visit from a Treasury Department Inspector General who demanded personal information about the cancer patient the broker was helping. When this information was refused, the official instructed the broker
to resolve the issue with the IRS immediately, and that if he did not, “you may be visited again by other IRS representatives in your home and we do reserve the right to garnish your wages and lien your assets.”
How nice. Obey the orders of the Obama administration or they will use the IRS to destroy you.
Note also that this harassment is going on right now, six months after the scandal was revealed and Obama claimed he was outraged by it and would put a stop to it. He lied. As he revealed recently in his interview on MSNBC, he sees nothing wrong with this harassment.
I just realized that my post above left out one important detail: The cancer patient had appeared on Fox to describe how he had lost his health insurance because of Obamacare. Almost immediately thereafter both he and his broker received audit notices from the IRS.
Theories! One scientist’s modeling of the early universe suggests to him that intelligent life could have evolved as early as 15 million years after the Big Bang.
This is fun stuff, but entirely theoretical and not to be taken very seriously. We know with certainty as much about the early universe as a mouse understands Shakespeare. To predict accurately the nature or even existence of life at that time is stretching our knowledge considerably.
Data from Messenger now shows that as Mercury cooled it shrunk far more than earlier data had indicated.
A new census of these ridges, called lobate scarps, has found more of them, with steeper faces, than ever before. The discovery suggests that Mercury shrank by far more than the previous estimate of 2-3 kilometres, says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. He presented the results today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California.
The finding helps explain how Mercury’s huge metallic core cooled off over time. It may also finally reconcile theoretical scientists, who had predicted a lot of shrinkage, with observers who had not found evidence of that — until now. “We are resolving a four-decades-old conflict here,” Byrne told the meeting.
Oh those evil capitalists: An airline stages a magnificent “Christmas miracle” for hundreds of its customers.
Watch the video. You will be glad.
MSNBC: “It’s like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 — just less realistic.”
It is also a continuous two-minute hate session, lasting “hour by tedious hour.” Worse, it is a continuous hate session that far too many Americans like, while too many other Americans look the other way and make believe such hate doesn’t exist.
More news from Curiosity: Gale Crater held at least one lake in the past, and that lake existed for longer and more recently than expected.
Orbital Sciences, having delayed the launch of its first operational Cygnus cargo mission to ISS by one day, has named the spacecraft after the late astronaut Gordon Fullerton.
Today NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in November. As I do every month, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations.
As in October, the Sun was more active than it has been for this entire solar maximum. November’s numbers dropped slightly from October, but still remained high, though as has been typical for this solar maximum they remained below prediction.
» Read more
Scientists have published the first 300 days of radiation data from Curiosity on Mars.
The results suggest that while the radiation on Mars requires some shielding, most of the worst radiation a traveler would be exposed to would occur during the journey in space to and from Earth. The graph below illustrates this.
Curiosity has succeeded in dating the age of one of its rock samples, the first time this has ever been done remotely on another planet.
The second rock Curiosity drilled for a sample on Mars, which scientists nicknamed “Cumberland,” is the first ever to be dated from an analysis of its mineral ingredients while it sits on another planet. A report by Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and co-authors, estimates the age of Cumberland at 3.86 billion to 4.56 billion years old. This is in the range of earlier estimates for rocks in Gale Crater, where Curiosity is working.
This is significant engineering and scientific news. In the past the only way to date the rocks on another world was to bring them back to Earth. This was how the moon’s geology was dated. On Mars, dating has only been done by crater counting, comparing those counts with those on the Moon, and then making a vague guess. To have the ability to date rocks remotely means that geologists can begin to sort out the timeline of Mars’s geology without having to bring back samples.
Apropos my comment here, Rand Simberg superbly summarizes the serious threat SpaceX poses for the older space launch companies.
Yesterday police in Wisconsin celebrated Pearl Harbor Day by issuing tickets to people waving the American flag.
Video below the fold. Stick around to the end. As the man says, “The cops can’t scare us off, can they?”
» Read more
Does this make you feel safer? Of the 78 times police in Greensboro, North Carolina, fired their pistols in 2012, all but two were to kill someone’s pet.
