Category: Behind The Black

October 12 Falcon Heavy launch of Psyche probe faces bad weather

10:09 am

At present there is only a 20% chance that the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe will occur on October 12, 2023 at 10:16 am (Eastern) as planned out of Cape Canaveral.

The launch window only extends until October 25, 2023, after which the entire project would have to be redesigned, requiring a significant delay.

SpaceX has become very adept at threading the needle when weather restricts its Starlink launch abilities, but it has less flexibility with Psyche. To increase its chances it has scrubbed a planned Starlink launch this week from Cape Canaveral in order to give the Falcon Heavy launch more launch opportunities.

Regardless, the live stream can be accessed here.

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Aerojet Rocketdyne satellite power units are chronically failing

9:53 am

According to space insurers, problems on power units built by Aerojet Rocketdyne on four different satellites are going to cost the industry about $50 million in claims this year.

According to multiple insurance sources, Yahsat’s Al Yah 3, Avanti Communications’ Hylas 4, and Northrop Grumman’s two Mission Extension Vehicles (MEV-1 and MEV-2) are operating with reduced power to their thrusters following a problem with onboard Power Processing Units (PPUs).

The PPUs from Aerojet Rocketdyne provide the electrical power their thrusters need for station-keeping in geostationary orbit (GEO). One of the sources said Al Yah 3, Hylas 4, and MEV-2 have each lost one of two onboard PPUs since the issue emerged in 2022. The youngest of these spacecraft, MEV-2, launched in 2020.

While the article at the link focuses on the impact to space insurers for these additional claims, what I see are serious quality control problems at Aerojet Rocketdyne, now part of the company L3Harris after a summer acquisition. The new management of L3Harris better aggressively address this, or else it will find its $4.7 billion acquisition a big waste of money.

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SpaceX blasts FAA for claiming falling satellites could by 2035 kill someone every two years

9:34 am

In a letter response to an FAA report to Congress issued last week, SpaceX has strongly criticized the FAA for claiming falling satellites from the many big constellations being launched now could by 2035 kill someone every two years.

The FAA’s report actually claimed that some of the risk of death from these satellites would come from space junk impacting airplanes. From the report:

“Some debris fragments would also be a hazard to people in aircraft. Projecting 2019 global air traffic to 2035 and assuming that a fragment that would injure or kill a person on the ground also would be capable of fatally damaging an aircraft, the probability of an aircraft downing accident (defined in the Aerospace report as a collision with an aircraft downing object) in 2035 would be 0.0007 per year.”

As SpaceX’s response correctly notes, this claim of a threat is absurd. Not only do the satellites from these constellations always burn up in the atmosphere — making the risk zero — the chances of a collusion that the FAA claims are still so infinitesimal they should not have been considered worth mentioning. SpaceX also noted that the FAA’s analysis was based on obsolete Iridium satellites from the 1990s that are no longer being launched, not the kind of satellites and the preventive actions modern satellite companies take in flying them.

It appears this report is just another example of the full court press of the administrative state against not just SpaceX but all of private enterprise. By exaggerating the risk of space debris, the FAA is trying to justify more regulation and restrictions in an effort to garner more power to itself at the expense of freedom.

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Another Russian module develops leak on ISS

9:07 am

For the third time in less than a year, a Russian spacecraft at ISS has developed a coolant leak, this time in Russia’s newest module to ISS, Nauka.

The Nauka radiator actually has been in space for over a decade waiting for Nauka to arrive so whether there is any commonality to the failures is difficult to assess. Roscosmos acknowledged the leak, but said the module itself is working fine and there is no cause for concern.

The previous two leaks were on a Progress freighter, and later on a Soyuz capsule. Though Nauka was only launched to ISS in 2021, its development began in the 1990s and was originally scheduled for launch in the early 2000s. Because of the delays this radiator was launched to ISS ahead of the module, in 2012. It sits outside the module where it can release its excess heat into space.

The Russians say that the leak is in a backup coolant system, but according to a statement by Anatoli Zak quoted at the link, this statement is too vague. At the moment the location of the leak remains unknown.

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Michael Knowles – Celebrating Columbus

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this two years ago, and think it should be seen again. As I wrote then,

On this day when all should be celebrating Christopher Columbus and his willingness “sail beyond the sunset,” to use a phrase from Tennyson, this short video give us an accurate picture of the man, his times, and his achievements. It also puts the lie to the bigoted, hateful, leftist slanders that have been used in recent years to poison his legacy.

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ArianeGroup demands more money from ESA for Ariane-6

4:35 pm

ArianeGroup is now in negotiations with the European Space Agency (ESA) to get a significant increase in the money ESA is pays for the new as-yet unlaunched Ariane-6 rocket.

A few weeks before a space summit which will take place on November 7 in Seville, [ArianeGroup] is negotiating a very clear reassessment of support for the operation of Ariane 6. [It] is asking 350 million euros per year from the States members of the ESA. That’s an incredible increase of 150%.

The problem for ArianeGroup and ESA is that Ariane-6 is expendable (a joint decision by ESA and ArianeGroup back in 2015 that was then a bad mistake), and thus is too expensive. It can’t compete in the modern launch market with SpaceX, and has thus had trouble finding customers.

As a result, ESA will likely pay out these big bucks for the next few years, but the situation creates a big opening for the new European startup rocket companies (PLD, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, and HyImpulse) that are right now developing new small rockets. Like SpaceX in 2010, they have an opportunity to undercut the established government rockets of ESA, and grab market share. To do this however they need to become operational as soon as possible.

Since there are strong signs that ESA is looking to help these new companies, we should see some interesting competitive action in European rocketry in the next few years.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Azerbaijan signs to cooperate on China’s lunar base project

3:38 pm

Azerbaijan has signed an agreement with China to cooperate and partner in China’s lunar base project.

No details were released, other than empty PR promises to work together.

So far the only ones to sign on with China are not likely to contribute much, with Russia the only possible exception. The others, South Africa and Venezuela, don’t have any major space capabilities, and like Azerbaijan hope to use the partnership to gain some. A number of individual organizations in Hawaii, Thailand, and Switzerland have also signed agreements, while there are also rumors that Pakistan has or will sign on also.

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Pushback: Court rules that schools cannot punish or suspend students who defy queer agenda

12:50 pm

The shirt that offended teachers at Nichols Middle School
Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: An federal appeals court last week ruled that schools cannot cancel the First Amendment rights of students by censoring or suspending or punishing them if they should refuse to use the preferred pronouns that advocates of the queer agenda demand.

The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a preliminary injunction Monday against an Iowa school district policy that threatens suspension and expulsion for “intentional and/or persistent refusal … to respect” a peer’s gender identity, finding it’s likely too vague to survive legal scrutiny.

“A school district cannot avoid the strictures of the First Amendment simply by defining certain speech as ‘bullying’ or ‘harassment'” as did the Linn-Mar Community School District, the three-judge panel ruled in a case that drew friend-of-the-court briefs by dozens of conservative and religious groups and 18 Republican-led states in favor of the plaintiffs.

The picture above shows Massachusetts student Liam Morrison, who was banned from school because he first wore a shirt that said “There are only two genders,” then sent home again for wearing a second shirt, as shown. His case is presently in the courts. This ruling in Iowa will strengthen his case considerable.

Nor was the Iowa case the only recent case where the courts ruled against the queer agenda in schools. The article at the link notes that this same week a state court in Wisconsin also ruled against the queer agenda, stating that “the Kettle Moraine School District’s policy of hiding gender transitions as an intrusion on parents’ rights to control ‘medical and healthcare’ decisions about their children.”

Such rulings are going to come more and more often. Of the five hundred-plus blacklist stories I have covered in the past three years, there has been one overarching pattern: » Read more

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Ingenuity completes 61st flight on Mars

10:30 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity on October 5, 2023 completed its 61st flight on Mars, doing a simple vertical hop that also set a new altitude record for the helicopter, rising to 79 feet.

This flight matched the flight plan exactly, taking just over two minutes to complete.

On the overview map above, the green dot marks the landing spot during Ingenuity’s previous flight on September 25, 2023. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s location.

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SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites

12:56 am

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

71 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 83 to 45, and the entire world combined 83 to 73. SpaceX by itself only trails the rest of the world 71 by 73, at this moment.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches 12 satellites

11:41 pm

Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency (ESA), tonight successfully used its Vega rocket to successfully launched a weather satellite, an Earth observation satellite, and ten cubesats12 satellites, lifting off from its spaceport in French Guiana.

The Vega rocket has only one more launch on its manifest, scheduled for next spring. Its replacement, the Vega-C, is presently grounded due to a launch failure in 2022, with the redesign of the nozzle on its upper stage taking longer than expected. With ESA’s Ariane-5 already retired, and its replacement, the Ariane-6 having not yet completed its first launch, Europe at this moment has little ability to launch anything into space.

As this was only the third launch for Europe so far this year, the leader board for the 2023 launch race remains unchanged.

70 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled in about an hour. Live stream here,)
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 82 to 45, and the entire world combined 82 to 73. SpaceX by itself only trails the rest of the world 70 by 73, at this moment.

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Software patch saves Europe’s Euclid space telescope

10:03 am

Engineeers have successfully saved Europe’s new recently launched Euclid space telescope by installing a software patch that fixed the telescope’s inability to orient itself properly for long periods.

Shortly after launching on 1 July, the European space observatory Euclid started performing tiny, unexpected pirouettes. The problem revealed itself during initial tests of the telescope’s automated pointing system. If left unfixed, it could have severely affected Euclid’s science mission and led to gaps in its map of the Universe.

Now the European Space Agency (ESA) says that it has resolved the issue by updating some of the telescope’s software. The problem occurred when the on board pointing system mistook cosmic noise for faint stars in dark patches of sky, and directed the spacecraft to reorient itself in the middle of a shot.

The new software essentially reduces the amount of light that enters the pointing system, so that the noise is no longer detected. This means that observations however will have to be longer to obtain the same data, extending the mission.

Euclid’s goal is a follow-up on Europe’s Gaia mission, to map 1.5 billion galaxies in three dimensions. Gaia did it with the stars in the Milky Way. Euclid is looking deeper, requiring far greater precision and accuracy in pointing.

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Spanish rocket startup successfully completes first suborbital test launch

10:05 pm

The Spanish rocket startup PLD today successfully completed its first suborbital test launch, a short flight of its Miura-1 prototype rocket, lifting off from its spaceport in Spain.

I have embedded video of the launch below, cued to just before launch. Though the plan had been to recover the first stage using parachutes, it is unclear if this occurred or was even attempted. The launch was at night, making recovery difficult or much slower, and because the broadcast was in Spanish there was no translation,

Regardless, the data from this launch will be used by the company to build its orbital rocket, Miura-5.

» Read more

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October 6, 2023 Quick space links

3:56 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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Real pushback: Student walkout in September forces school board to rescind queer bathroom policy

2:12 pm

A little child shall lead them, by James Johnson
“A little child shall lead them,” painting by James L. Johnson.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: It appears that the complaints of parents don’t work with leftist Democratic Party and its minions in the education community, who see those parents as extremists and potential terrorists. Instead, it took a student walkout in September in Pennsylvania to finally force the Perkiomen Valley School District board to rescind its queer bathroom policy, which allowed cross-dressing boys to use the girls’ bathroom.

This is a followup of a September blacklist story. When the school board voted 4 to 3 to reject a policy that would prevent such behavior, defying the crowds of parents attending the school board meeting to demand this change, the students then organized a walk out on September 22, 2023, for reasons they themselves made clear:
» Read more

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Gale Crater as seen by Curiosity from the heights of Mount Sharp

12:57 pm

Gale Crater as seen by Curiosity from the heights of Mount Sharp
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Though Curiosity still lies more than 13,000 feet below the peak of Mount Sharp, in its ten years on Mars it has climbed a considerable distance uphill since leaving the floor of 97-mile-wide Gale Crater, about 2,400 feet. The panorama above, taken today by one of Curiosity’s navigation cameras and rotated and cropped to post here, gives us a good sense of the elevation the rover has gained in that time.

The overview map to the right provides some perspective. Curiosity’s present location is indicated by the blue dot, with the yellow lines indicating the direction of this panorama. Though Curiosity climbed up from that valley on the lower left, none of its route is visible in this picture, as the weaved up from the left and the steepness of the ground hides the lower sections.

The mountain chain in the distance, about 20 to 25 miles away, is the north rim of Gale Crater. Beyond it can faintly be seen other mountains, which form the rim of another smaller crater to the north. The peak of Mount Sharp, about 23 miles to the south and in the opposite direction, forms the wide central peak of Gale Crater, unusual in that it fills much of the crater and rises higher than the crater’s rim, factors which were part of the reason this location was chosen as Curiosity’s landing site.

This picture also allows scientists to get a sense of the dust levels in the Martian atmosphere, which change seasonally depending on dust storm activity. Since it is now summer on Mars, when dust activity is low, the air is relatively clear.

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Astronomers detect baffling blue transient far outside any galaxy

11:32 am

Transient in intergalactic space
Click for original image.

Using a variety of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a baffling short-term object that brightens quickly in blue light and then fades.

What makes this discovery even more baffling is that though other such Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOT) have been discovered, all have been within galaxies, while this new discovery is in intergalactic space, as shown by the red bars in the picture to right, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. From the caption:

[An LFBOT] shines intensely in blue light and evolves rapidly, reaching peak brightness and fading again in a matter of days, unlike supernovae which take weeks or months to dim. Only a handful of previous LFBOTs have been discovered since 2018. The surprise is that this latest transient, seen in 2023, lies at a large offset from both the barred spiral galaxy at right and the dwarf galaxy to the upper left. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. And, the results are leaving astronomers even more confounded because all previous LFBOTs have been found in star-forming regions in the spiral arms of galaxies. It’s not clear what astronomical event would trigger such a blast far outside of a galaxy.

The frequent discovery of such short term transients in the past decade is because there are now many telescopes dedicated to making daily surveys of the entire sky. In the past such quick events were always missed.

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ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket launches first two Kuiper satellites

11:16 am

ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket today successfully launched the first two prototype satellites of Amazon’s proposed 3,200-satellite constellation to provide broadband globally in competition with Starlink and OneWeb.

As of posting, the satellites had not yet deployed, with the rocket’s upper stage still firing its engines to bring the rocket to its proper orbit. The live stream unfortunately ended early at this point.

Though the Atlas-5 is being retired, to be replaced by ULA’s still unlaunched Vulcan rocket, about seventeen rockets remain in the company’s launch manifest. All have payloads, so any additional ULA launch contracts must rely on Vulcan.

This was ULA’s third launch in 2023, so it does not change the leader board for the 2023 launch race. The company predicted it would complete ten launches in 2023, a prediction that with less than three months left in the year seems unlikely for it to achieve.

70 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 82 to 45, and leads the entire world combined 82 to 72. SpaceX by itself still trails the rest of the world, excluding American companies, 70 to 72.

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Italy’s biggest bank will invest in SpaceX

10:02 am

Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, announced today that is joining in SpaceX as a private investment partner.

No details of the investment deal were released, but it likely adds a significant amount to the almost $11 billion in investment capital SpaceX has already gotten from the private sector, most of which is being used to develop Starship, Superheavy, and Starlink.

Very clearly, the investment community sees value and large future profits from SpaceX and Elon Musk, and wants to support it. Contrast this with the attitude of the Biden administration and the left, which apparently prefers to squelch this progress for the sake of power.

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India’s government confirms its policy to transition to private enterprise in space

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Baku yesterday, one high official from India confirmed the Modi’s government’s new policy to shift is space industry from government-controlled to privately-run.

“A transition is happening in India. We are moving from ISRO [India’s space agency] being the sole player in the space sector to the private sector taking on a more meaningful role,” Pawan Goenka, chairman of the Indian National Space Promotion Authorization Center (IN-SPACe), said at a forum at the 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Oct. 5.

The Indian government approved the Indian Space Policy 2023 in April this year, which follows a number of developments in recent years. “What the Indian Space Policy did was take everything to do with space — satellite communication, remote sensing, space operations, transportation, navigation, everything — and put it into one comprehensive document only 12 pages long,” Goenka said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words will sound very familiar to regular readers of this webpage. It describes what NASA has been doing for the past decade, and sums up precisely the recommendations put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space.

IN-SPACe, the agency Goenka heads, has been tasked with fulfilling this task, and is thus in a direct turf war with ISRO, the space agency that has controlled all of India’s space effort for a half century. How that turf war will play out remains uncertain, though at present IN-SPACe and the Modi government appear to be winning.

It would likely help India’s private industry if the Modi government would make public that 12-page policy statement. So far it has either not released the text, or if it has it has made it impossible for me to find it.

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Another lawsuit filed against SpaceX

9:35 am

They’re coming for you next: In what appears to be another example of lawfare by the left against Elon Musk, a female engineer has filed a lawsuit against SpaceX, claiming it discriminated against her in pay.

The lawsuit is absurd, based on the suit itself.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court by SpaceX engineer Ashley Foltz, who says she was hired at a salary of $92,000, even though men with similar or less experience were offered as much as $115,000. According to her LinkedIn, Ashley was hired in September 2022 as a propulsion engineer. She did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

According to the complaint, Foltz learned about the salary discrepancies when a new California law went into effect requiring employers to include pay scale in their job postings. The salary range for her job was $95,000 to $115,000, so SpaceX gave her a raise — but only to the lowest end of the band.

In other words, Foltz didn’t negotiate a good salary when she was hired, and when the California law revealed how low it was, SpaceX immediately raised her salary to the bottom end of its pay scale, indicating also its opinion of her work. I suspect a full review of the salaries the company pays will reveal that women get a wide range of payment, depending on their worth. SpaceX certainly doesn’t discriminate against women, since its CEO is a woman and over the years women engineers have led many major projects.

The lawfare from the left against Elon Musk, one of the most successful Americans in decades, is becoming quite obvious. Besides this private suit, another group of environmentalists are suing SpaceX and the FAA to block future launches from Boca Chica. The Biden administration meanwhile is using numerous agencies to gang up on Musk: the Justice Department is suing it for not illegally hiring illegal immigrants, the FAA and Fish & Wildlife are blocking its Superheavy/Starship test launches, the EEOC is suing Tesla while Justice and the SEC investigate it, and the FTC and SEC are investigating Musk’s purchase of Twitter.

If you still think this full court press of government action is an accident, or entirely innocent, then you are naive beyond belief. Musk is now considered an opponent of the left, and so the left is going after him, and abusing the power of government to do it. It doesn’t care that Musk has produced tens of thousands of new jobs, revolutionized several major industries, and brought wealth to places that were previously poverty-stricken. To the left, the only thing that matters is its hold on power. Threaten that, and it will do whatever it can to destroy you, even if it means people will be starving in the street.

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Stoke Space raises $100 million in private investment capital

9:12 am

The rocket startup Stoke Space, which is developing a radically new engine concept for its rockets, has now successfully raised $100 million in private investment capital.

This investment more than doubles the company’s total funding, which now sits at $175 million. The company also announced the official name of its first rocket: Nova.

The funding round was led by Industrious Ventures with participation from the University of Michigan, Sparta Group, Long Journey, and others. Existing investors Breakthrough Energy, YCombinator, Point72 Ventures, NFX, MaC Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and In-Q-Tel also participated. This latest funding round is evidence of strong demand for Stoke’s services, its growing success, and the confidence of investors in its future. As part of this round of fundraising Steve Angel, Chairman of the Board, Linde plc, will join Stoke’s Board of Directors. Angel is also the former CEO of Linde and a member of the Board of Directors of GE.

The company says it will use this money to develop the rocket’s first stage engines, which will follow the same ring nozzle design of its upper stage, a prototype of which it successfully test flew on a short hop last month. Under that design, the engine doesn’t have one central nozzle, but instead the thrust is funnelled out of a ring of tiny nozzles that circle the stage’s outer perimeter. The company believes this design will allow it to return its upper stage safely from orbit for re-use.

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October 5, 2023 Quick space links

3:21 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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Texas medical college mandates ineffective COVID jab

12:31 pm

Baylor College of Medicine: Where medicine is taught badly
Baylor College of Medicine: Where medicine
is intentionally taught badly

They’re coming for you next: In a demonstration that it almost certainly teaches its students bad medicine, the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has now reinstated its mandates requiring all students, faculty, and employees to get the utterly ineffective but potentially unhealthy COVID booster shots.

The statement issued by the college stated “Baylor faculty, staff, and students must get the COVID vaccine, or request a medical, religious, or personal exemption by Nov. 30.” In 2022-23 this college had more 1,600 students [pdf], so this mandate effects a lot of young people, who according to numerous recent studies (here, here, here, here, here, and here) are also at greater risk of getting myrocarditus from these boosters, resulting in serious heart damage and even death.

What makes this even worse is that the boosters are generally useless in preventing COVID, with other research suggesting strongly that if anything, the jab increases the chances you will get the virus.

Not that this matters, since anyone who has read any of the recent studies on the mutation of COVID over time will also know that all the recent strains are generally harmless, especially to the young, producing nothing more than a very mild cold. No one need do anything to avoid it. In fact, it might even be better to get one of these mild strains to strengthen your immune system.

That a medical college seems entirely unaware of this research data tells us that it must be teaching its medical students badly. » Read more

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Distorted Martian craters

11:09 am

Overview map

Distorted Martian craters
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, on the west end of the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I label glacier country because almost every image suggests the presence of ice and glaciers.

Where this crater is located the terrain is shifting from mesas and criss-crossing canyons to the northern lowland plains. Thus, the features that suggest the presence of ice shift from glacial in nature (flowing down hollows and cliffsides or within canyons) to that of a near-surface ice sheet, which acts to distort impact craters and leave large splash aprons around them.

The straight depression cutting into the crater near the center top that is also aligned with craters to the southwest suggests that these craters are either sinkholes into a void created by a fault line, or the impacts all occurred at the same time, as the asteroid broke up while cutting through the Martian atmosphere.

Either could be true. The data is insufficient to determine which.

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Satellite data shows this year’s ozone hole one of the biggest on record

9:53 am

The uncertainty of science: New data from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite has determined that the ozone hole this year over the south pole was one of the biggest on record.

The hole, which is what scientists call an ‘ozone depleting area,’ reached a size of 26 million sq km on 16 September 2023. This is roughly three times the size of Brazil.

The size of the ozone hole fluctuates on a regular basis. From August to October, the ozone hole increases in size – reaching a maximum between mid-September and mid-October. When temperatures high up in the stratosphere start to rise in the southern hemisphere, the ozone depletion slows, the polar vortex weakens and finally breaks down, and by the end of December ozone levels return to normal.

Despite the claims of scientists that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were creating the hole, requiring their ban in refrigerators, air conditioning, and aerosol sprays in 1987, the arrival of the ozone hole each year is actually a normal seasonal occurance caused by the interaction of the Earth’s tilt and the impact of solar radiation on the upper atmosphere. More interaction, and oxygen molecules break-up into ozone. Less interaction, and there is less ozone.

Thus, despite the ban of these products now for almost forty years, the size of the ozone hole continues to fluctuate significantly from year to year, for reasons that are not yet understood entirely. Some scientists attribute this year’s large size to a volcanic eruption in 2022, but this is merely a theory, not yet proved.

It also must be noted that when the ban was imposed in 1987, we only had data of the ozone hole going back a decade or so. Environmentalists posited then that the hole hadn’t existed before CFCs, but they really hadn’t known that. It will likely take a century of research to really get a good idea of the hole’s normal behavior from year to year. We might find that there was no reason to ban CFCs, that the hole is a natural seasonal occurance like snow in winter and heat in summer.

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A nearby active galaxy, viewed head on by Hubble

9:39 am

Active galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and is the third of a seven-day celebration of galaxies by the Hubble science team. Previous images in the series can be found here. From the caption for this particular image:

At the center of NGC 6951 lies a supermassive black hole surrounded by a ring of stars, gas, and dust about 3,700 light-years across. This “circumnuclear ring” is between 1 and 1.5 billion years old and has been forming stars for most of that time. Scientists hypothesize that interstellar gas flows through the dense, starry bar of the galaxy to the circumnuclear ring, which supplies new material for star formation. Up to 40 percent of the mass in the ring comes from relatively new stars that are less than 100 million years old. Spiral lanes of dust, shown in dark orange, connect the center of the galaxy to its outer regions, contributing more material for future star formation.

This galaxy, located about 78 million light years away, has also seen six different supernovae in the past quarter century. Compare that with the Milky Way, which has not seen a supernova now in more than four hundred years.

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