Category: Behind The Black

January 14, 2025 Quick space links

3:25 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Is China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover dead?

12:58 pm

According to monthly images taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover on the far side of the Moon, it has not moved since March 2024, suggesting it is no longer functioning.

“Up to about February 2023 the rover was moving about 7 or 8 metres every drive and typically about 40 m per lunar day. Suddenly the drives dropped to about 3 or 4 m each and only about 8 or 10 m per lunar day,” Stooke said in an email.

“That lasted until about October 2023, and then drives dropped to only 1 or 2 m each. In March 2024 Yutu 2 was resting just southwest of a 10 m diameter crater, and it’s been there ever since, as revealed by LRO images,” Stooke added.

It is possible the rover is not entirely dead, but there is no way to be sure. China is not generally forthcoming when things fail. For example, it has never acknowledged the shut down of its Zhurong Mars rover, which it had hoped would survive its first Martian winter. When that winter ended however no reports from Zhurong were released by China, which suggested it was no longer functioning. China however did not report this. It simply made believe the rover no longer existed.

It could be China is now doing the same with Yutu-2.

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Launches galore!

12:44 pm

Map of lunar landing sites
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience

The next two days will be another example of the resurgent American launch industry, with a wide range of rocket launches running the gamut from the maiden flight of the New Glenn rocket, another dramatic test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, and a launch by SpaceX of two (not one!) lunar landers.

We begin however now with another successful launch by SpaceX’s of its Transporter commercial program, designed to place in orbit as many smallsats as possible at once. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off today from Vandenberg in California, carrying 131 payloads, from cubesats to microsats to orbital tugs.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing on back at Vandenberg. The fairings completed their 18th and 19th flights respectively. As of posting the payloads have not been deployed.

The 2025 launch race:

7 SpaceX
2 China

SpaceX continues its relentless goal of completing in 2025 one launch almost every other day. For example, the launch above is only the first launch planned by SpaceX today. Tonight it will launch another Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying both Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander as well as Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander. The map to the right shows the landing targets of both.

Tomorrow the launch pace will continue. First SpaceX will attempt the seventh orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, lifting off from Boca Chica, with a launch window beginning at 4 pm (Central).

Blue Origin will later that evening once again attempt the maiden launch of its New Glenn rocket. The three hour launch window opens at 1 am (Eastern).

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Mars geology at its strangest

11:22 am

Strange Martian geology
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 29, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northeast quadrant of a weirdly distorted unnamed 3-mile-wide crater in the northern lowland plains of Mars. The crater rim is the ridgeline that enters from picture’s left edge to curve down to exit at bottom right.

The geological feature of interest however is the strange mound to the left of that rim, inside the crater. It certainly appears, based on shadows, that the top of this mound popped off at some time in the past, leaving behind that sharp-edged hollow.

Note however that there is no eruption debris. When a volcano erupts, the debris covers the nearby mountainside. Here we see no evidence of anything that was flung out from this small eruption.
» Read more

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Boom about to go supersonic

9:29 am

The commercial supersonic airplane company Boom is on the verge of flying its XB-1 test vehicle faster than the speed of sound.

The company has been doing a regular test flight program, each time increasing the plane’s speed.

During the latest 44-minute flight at an altitude of 29,481 ft (8,986 m) with Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg at the controls, the prototype aircraft reached transonic speed. That is, flight so close to Mach 1 that some areas of airflow over the airframe exceed the speed of sound.

It’s also the point where the XB-1 was subjected to a maximum dynamic pressure of 383 Knots Equivalent Air Speed (KEAS), which is a pressure on the fuselage and wings greater than what it would experience when flying supersonic at Mach 1.1.

In short, XB-1 pushed what was once called the Sound Barrier.

Next step: break the sound barrier.

At the completion of this testing the company will then begin manufacture of its full scale supersonic passenger plane, dubbed Overture, that will carry up to 80 passengers and will sell to airlines. It already has contracts and financial support from a number of major airlines, including United and Japan Airlines.

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Ridges from fractures at the head of a 300+mile-long Martian drainage channel

2:28 pm

Ridges from fractures on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “Exhumed Fracture Network,” referring to the criss-crossing ridges on the eroded mesa at the picture’s center. That mesa only rises about sixty feet from the east-west channel at the top of the picture, but the location is actually on the outside northern rim of an unnamed 70-mile-wide very eroded ancient crater. The rim itself rises another 500 feet to the south before descending 10,000 feet to the crater floor.

I am assuming by the title that the geologists believe this ridges were originally cracks that got filled with more resistant material, probably lava. The fracture network then got covered over. More recent erosion removed the material around the cracks, but the material in the cracks resisted that erosion.

The most intriguing feature in this picture however might actually be that nondescript channel.
» Read more

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After more than two years, Australian rocket startup thinks its launch approval is about to finally arrive

12:39 pm

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space originally expected to complete its first test launch of its three-stage Eris rocket off the east coast of Australia in April 2022.

At that time it thought the approvals for the licenses for its rocket, its Bowen spaceport, and the launch were just weeks away.

Hah! It is now two years later, and the company is still awaiting that launch license. According to the company’s head Adam Gilmour he is now hopeful the license is only weeks away.

“There is a lot of goodwill at CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority], and we recognise that they have been working very hard to get it done,” Mr Gilmour said. “We know they have been working towards it. It’s just that this is the first time for everyone involved, and it is quite complex. To give you an idea, we have had Zoom calls with literally 30 people on the call.”

Based on wait periods, if the CASA permit is approved (which comes with regulatory input from Airservices Australia), the earliest Gilmour could conduct the Eris Testflight One mission would be the middle of February. It is possible the permit will be granted as early as this week.

Gilmour however has been making the same exact statements about CASA now for two years. They are great! They are working hard! They want to approve!

Yet nothing happens.

I suspect that approval is close, but this long delay suggests other rocket startups in Australia are going to face the same governmental head winds. The government there seems uninterested in allowing freedom and competition to function. Instead, it sees itself as god, deciding who can do what when, and heaven forbid you challenge it in any way. (Which by the way explains Gilmour’s kow-towing in all his statements.)

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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January 10, 2025 Zimmerman appearance on the UAP Crossfire podcast

9:49 pm

This week I was a guest on a podcast saved from the ashes of several years ago. Back then the podcast was called Task Force Gryphon, and was run by a military guy who went only by the name of Commander Cobra for a variety of reasons. When I appeared on the show in this original version the questions were always smart, the interview thoughtful, and the topics on the money.

After a few years off the air, Cobra decided to restart the show under a new name, UAP Crossfire. During my two hour appearance last week the three hosts, Commander Cobra, Dan “Padre” Carlson, and Chris DePerno, conducted what I consider one of the best interviews I have done for a while, forcing the discussion to go to places I don’t normally go on such appearances.

I strongly advise my readers to check it out. You can listen to it here. or here.

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Live stream of first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket-Launch scrubbed!

9:12 pm

UPDATE: The company has scrubbed the launch for tonight.

Scheduled for launch at 1 am (Eastern) on January 13, 2025 (with a three hour window), I have embedded the live stream below. On the west coast the launch will occur at 10 pm (Pacific), January 12, 2025. According to Blue Origin, the live stream will go live one hour prior to launch. Based on the company’s past broadcasts, we will have to suffer through a lot of “Gosh! Gee whiz!” Isn’t this great?!” stuff that really ain’t necessary. Maybe Blue Origin will surprise me. If not, come back five minutes before launch to spare yourself this blather.

You see, there is no need for Blue Origin to blather like that. The rocket is spectacular, and it speaks for itself.

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New Glenn launched delayed one more day because of rough seas

5:10 pm

Blue Origin announced today that it is delaying its first launch of its orbital New Glenn rocket by one day to 1 am (Eastern) Monday morning.

The company’s tweet explained that “sea state conditions are still unfavorable for booster landing.”

Without question this will be a truly heart-stopping launch. Blue Origin needs to get New Glenn operational, and it trying to also achieve its first vertical landing of the first stage on the first launch.

Right now all you need to do is stay up a little late Sunday night to watch.

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January 10, 2025 Quick space links

3:19 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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The old media logjam has broken: Even the left is now getting its news from new media

1:18 pm

Sara Foster sees the light
Sara Foster sees the light

In my essay yesterday describing how the wildfires in the Los Angeles area appear to finally be making conservatives out of a lot of partisan knee-jerk Democrats, I used a quote that I think is important because it illustrates a major cultural change in a way that is not obvious at first. It also demonstrates a new political reality that the Democratic Party has not yet grasped.

The quote was from a tweet on X by actress Sara Foster. This is what she wrote:

We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits. @MayorOfLA @GavinNewsom RESIGN. Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.

Note the facts this clearly partisan Democrat cites.
» Read more

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SpaceX completes two launches, reusing first stage a record number of times

12:41 pm

Since early this morning SpaceX successfully completed two launches from opposite coasts.

First, in the early morning the company placed a National Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings completed their 9th and 16th flights respectively. It is believed but not confirmed that the payload was another batch of “Starshield” satellites, SpaceX’s military version of Starlink.

Next, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage I think set a new reuse record, completing its 25th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2024 launch race:

5 SpaceX
1 China

The reuse record is significant, as SpaceX’s fleet of first stages is beginning to record flight numbers comparable to NASA’s fleet of space shuttles, but it is doing so in far less time. For example, this 25th flight matches the entire number of flights by the shuttle Endeavour during its lifespan of almost two decades. This booster however accomplished the same number of reflights in only three and a half years.

In the next few years we should expect SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage fleet to eclipse the numbers set by the shuttles, and do so in a very spectacular manner.

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Hubble captures a nice example of intergalactic microlensing

9:56 am

Micro-lensing at is most distinct
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released this week. I have specifically cropped it to focus on this ringlike feature, as it one of the nicest examples of micro-lensing I have seen. From the caption:

This curious configuration is the result of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant object is warped and magnified by the gravity of a massive foreground object, like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Einstein predicted the curving of spacetime by matter in his general theory of relativity, and galaxies seemingly stretched into rings like the one in this image are called Einstein rings.

The lensed galaxy, whose image we see as the ring, lies incredibly far away from Earth: we are seeing it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The galaxy acting as the gravitational lens itself is likely much closer. A nearly perfect alignment of the two galaxies is necessary to give us this rare kind of glimpse into galactic life in the early days of the Universe.

I am generally a very big skeptic of most astronomical studies that rely on micro-lensing. I don’t deny it happens and has been detected, as in this case. The uncertainties — such as the unknown distance to intervening galaxy that is causing the lensing — always require too many assumptions that make any reliable conclusions difficult.

Nonetheless, this object illustrates the phenomenon perfectly. The light from the distant galaxy is bent around the intervening nearer galaxy so that we that distant galaxy as a ring.

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Cruz reveals another area where red tape is blocking SpaceX at Boca Chica: roads

9:13 am

In a interview with a local news outlet in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that the state’s bureaucracy is stymieing SpaceX at Boca Chica in another unexpected way, getting the road to the facility repaired and upgraded.

“SpaceX has offered to invest their own money to improve the highway, and the problem is they’re running into permitting obstacles, environmental permitting obstacles that is slowing it down,” Senator Cruz said.

Cruz is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. There are steps he says he can take to fix these roads, even if it is not something that will directly address the issue. “As chairman of the Commerce Committee, I am very focused on permitting, on reducing the barriers of permitting, on speeding up the ability to do things like improve and expand State Highway Four,” Cruz said.

In a statement, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ray Pedraza said, “TxDOT is currently providing upgrades and pavement improvements for the existing SH 4 between Brownsville and Starbase Texas (SpaceX). TxDOT is also working with SpaceX on further planning and environmental efforts to achieve additional widening on SH 4 in the future.”

I think Cruz did this interview to apply some public pressure on the Texas Transportation Department. Hopefully it will get the tortoise moving.

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Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket added to NASA’S contract bidding list

9:03 am

Rocket Lab yesterday announced that NASA has added its new Neutron rocket to its list of rockets that can bid of future NASA contracts.

The press release also says that the first launch of Neutron is still targeting 2025. If the company meets that data, the development of this rocket will have one of the fastest, if not the very fastest in history. The company first announced the project in December 2021. If it launches as planned it will have only taken three and a half years from announcement to launch. Quite impressive.

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ISRO moving ahead with Spadex docking

8:53 am

India’s space agency ISRO has announced that it now moving ahead with the autonomous docking of its two Spadex spacecraft presently in orbit, but it will wait until after the docking to post when it had occurred.

With the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) SpaDeX space docking experiment missing two publicly announced schedules on January 7 and January 9, the space agency has decided to complete docking before making a public announcement.

Isro had earlier announced that the docking would be a public event but after two consecutive postponements, a senior Isro official said that the docking “is on track” but the space agency will now “dock and inform” the public about the exercise.

I suspect they realized the uncertainty of the real docking schedule made making the schedule public too difficult. This remains a test, and so many things can occur along the way to slow things down.

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January 9, 2025 Quick space links

3:42 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • Astra touts testing of its Rocket-4 upper stage tank
    Very puzzling, as the company had said it was delaying construction of Rocket-4 for several years as rebuilds the company from its almost bankruptcy. Maybe now that it is in private hands again things are moving. Or not. We shall see. [Note: Link fixed. My error. Sorry.]
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The new conservatives who have been mugged by a wildfire

2:57 pm

Gavin Newsom, surveying his domain
Gavin Newsom, surveying the hellhole his
policies created. Looks proud, doesn’t he?

The news today is about how numerous Hollywood celebrities who have lost their homes in the wildfires that have been destroying huge swatches of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are one-by-one expressing loud public outrage at the mismanagement and failures of the Democrats running California’s state and city governments.

The list is long and detailed at the link. This comment is quite typical:

Actress Sara Foster also took to X to lament how Los Angeles residents pay exorbitant taxes but the state was still completely unprepared to take on such massive wildfires. “Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits,” she wrote.

The politically active actress, who is the daughter of music mogul David Foster, called on [LA mayor] Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom to resign, writing, “your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words tell us however that Foster is not yet ready to reject the corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent Democratic Party that she so loves. This has been the pattern now for decades. No matter how bad its policies, the partisan adherents to the Democratic Party have too often consistently resisted opening their minds to other choices.

It immediately occurred to me however that this present outrage is only a foretaste of the real outrage soon to come. » Read more

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The mysteries buried in the Martian south pole ice cap

1:45 pm

The mysterious layers in Mars' south pole ice cap
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and color-enhanced to post here, was taken on November 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture is labeled as a “terrain sample,” which means it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. In this case the camera team tries to choose interesting features, though sometimes they can’t due to timing.

In this case they were able to target a nice piece of geology, a layered 2,000 foot cliff on the outer edge of the south pole ice cap. The color strip illustrates the possibilities within those layers. I have significantly enhanced the colors to bring out the differences. The orange suggests dust, the aqua-blue water ice, though these colors could also indicate interesting mineralogies.
» Read more

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ESA releases three images taken by BepiColombo during its Mercury fly-by yesterday

10:57 am

BepiColombo image from January 8, 2025 fly-by of Mercury
Click for original image. For the annotated version
click here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released what it called the three best images taken by the ESA/JAXA joint mission BepiColombo to Mercury in its closest fly-by of the planet yesterday.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows the north polar regions of Mercury. The probe’s solar array is visible to the right.

Flying over the ‘terminator’ – the boundary between day and night – the spacecraft got a unique opportunity to peer directly down into the forever-shadowed craters at planet’s north pole.

The rims of craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer [the four craters in a line at the terminator] cast permanent shadows on their floors. This makes these unlit craters some of the coldest places in the Solar System, despite Mercury being the closest planet to the Sun!

Excitingly, there is existing evidence that these dark craters contain frozen water. Whether there is really water on Mercury is one of the key Mercury mysteries that BepiColombo will investigate once it is in orbit around the planet.

This was BepiColombo’s last slingshot maneuver. It is now set to enter Mercury orbit in late 2026, where it will split into two separate orbiters, one build by ESA and the other by Japan’s space agency JAXA.

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Correction: SpaceX DOES NOT launch 21 more Starlink satellites

10:31 am

CORRECTION: Reader BobT in the comments below noted that this launch is actually nothing more than a duplicate posting of the launch I counted yesterday. Thus, it doesn’t exist, and I have deleted it from my annual count.

As I note below in thanking BobT for noting the error, “This does illustrate something profound. Their launches are now so routine and frequent that it is possible to not realize you are rewatching one you viewed a day earlier. They all sound the same!”

The 2024 launch race thus remains unchanged:

3 SpaceX
1 China

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SpaceX is now targeting January 13, 2025 for 7th Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:21 am

In a tweet yesterday, SpaceX announced that it now intends to fly the seventh test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy no earlier than January 13, 2025, with a launch window opening at 4 pm (Central).

The launch will test numerous new systems. Superheavy will test the reuse of one of the engines used on the fifth flight, brought back successfully when the booster was successfully caught by the tower chopsticks. It will also test improvements to the launch tower as another chopstick catch will be attempted. As for this Starship prototype, which the company calls Version 2, the upgrades and tests are extensive:

  • New avionics
  • Redesigns in the propulsion system
  • The flaps have been shrunk and shifted in position to prevent heat damage
  • The tiled heat shield system has been further upgraded
  • Deployment test of 10 dummy Starlink satellites
  • An in-orbit Raptor-2 engine relight

The last test is critical for future orbital test flights. On this test Starship will follow the same orbital flight path as the previous flights, low enough that the atmosphere will force it down without action over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX needs to prove that Starship’s Raptor-2 engines can reliably be restarted before it can go to full orbits that will require such a relight to accurately bring the spacecraft down at the right place.

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JPL shuts down due to threat from California fires

10:06 am

In a tweet posted yesterday, the head of JPL announced that all operations have been shut down because of the growing threat from the wildfires that are devastating the Los Angeles region.

JPL is closed except for emergency personnel. No fire damage so far (some wind damage) but it is very close to the lab. Hundreds of JPLers have been evacuated from their homes & many have lost homes.

If these fires should reach the center and do significant damage, a number of on-going space missions will be severely impacted, since those missions, such as the two Mars rovers, are operated from this location.

And this possibility exists, in this new dark age. The Democratic Party governments of Los Angeles and California have done everything they can in the past two decades to block fire prevention, from not managing the brush in the mountains to cutting funding to their fire departments to refusing to supply sufficient water to their fire hydrant system. This last action, which also included destroying dams, eliminating reservoirs, and refusing to replace them, is the most despicable. It appears firefighters throughout Los Angeles have been helpless because the hydrants have been dry. Thus, the fires burn out of control.

If the nearby fire reaches JPL we shall face the possibility that several major on-going space missions could suddenly end.

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