Category: Behind The Black

Two flybys of Venus set by two spacecraft on August 9th and 10th

8:54 am

Two European planetary probes, one launched to study the inner solar enviroment and the second to study Mercury, are going to fly past Venus only 33 hours apart on August 9th and 10th.

Solar Orbiter, a partnership between ESA and NASA, will fly by Venus on 9 August with a closest approach of 7995 km at 04:42 UTC. Throughout its mission it makes repeated gravity assist flybys of Venus to get closer to the Sun, and to change its orbital inclination, boosting it out of the ecliptic plane, to get the best – and first – views of the Sun’s poles.

BepiColombo, a partnership between ESA and JAXA, will fly by Venus at 13:48 UTC on 10 August at an altitude of just 550 km. BepiColombo is on its way to the mysterious innermost planet of the solar system, Mercury. It needs flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury itself, together with the spacecraft’s solar electric propulsion system, to help steer into Mercury orbit against the immense gravitational pull of the Sun.

The two spacecraft will zip past a different side of Venus. For a variety of reasons, the imagery gathered will not of high resolution, though both spacecraft will gather data that will eventually be correlated with similar data being gathered by Japan’s Akatsuki probe, in orbit around Venus since 2015.

0 comments

SpaceX installs 29 Raptor engines on Superheavy #4

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now installed 29 Raptor engines on the fourth Superheavy prototype, intended to be the first to attempt an orbital launch, even as the company also prepares Starship prototype #20 for that flight.

In a marked increase to the already-impressive production cadence at SpaceX Starbase, it’s all hands on deck with Booster 4 and Ship 20 preparations ahead of the duo being sent to the launch site. Booster 4 was stacked on Sunday, with all 29 Raptors installed by Monday morning. While the orbital launch attempt is not imminent, the duo is expected to undergo a series of ground testing objectives, including multiple Static Fire tests for the booster. This will also provide time to complete the final elements of the Orbital Launch Site (OLS), from which the duo will conduct the milestone test flight.

Following a short ground testing campaign with Booster 3, which included cryo proofing and a three-engine Static Fire test, the focus is now on what will become the first integrated stack of a Super Heavy booster and a Starship vehicle. This is set to be achieved in double-quick time, following a call to arms from SpaceX to its workforce. This included the transportation of hundreds of workers from other sites in the country, as per a memo leaked on Facebook.

As predicted, SpaceX did not succeed in launching Superheavy/Starship on its first orbital test flight in August. However, as predicted the company is clearly pushing to attempt that flight before the end of the summer. Right now, based on the pace of operations, what has been accomplished, and what needs to be accomplished, I estimate that flight will likely occur sometime around late September to early October.

It also seems very obvious that SpaceX is trying very hard to beat SLS into orbit. If successful, it will underline most starkly the difference between free enterprise and government operations. The former got it done in about four years, for less than $6 billion. The latter has taken seventeen years, and about $60 billion, and has still not launched.

And even if SLS launches first, that contrast remains.

12 comments

Starliner launch scrubbed; no launch date yet set

8:32 am

For reasons that have not yet been revealed, ULA scrubbed today’s unmanned demo test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule just prior to launch, rescheduling the launch for tomorrow.

The launch tomorrow wiill occur at 12:57 am (Eastern).

UPDATE: It appears the scrub occurred because of a valve issue in the propulsion system of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

“During pre-launch preparations for the uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, Boeing engineers monitoring the health and status of the vehicle detected unexpected valve position indications in the propulsion system,” the company said in a statement. “The issue was initially detected during check outs following yesterday’s electrical storms in the region of Kennedy Space Center.”

…The propulsion system valves in question are inside the Starliner’s service module, which has an array of rocket thrusters designed to propel the spacecraft away from its launcher during an in-flight emergency. Other thrusters on the service module are used for in-orbit maneuvers and spacecraft pointing control.

Boeing cannot afford more failures during this second demo flight. The company has been plagued with numerous debilitating technical failures during the past four years, from Starliner to its airlines. Right now the failure to get Starliner operational is losing them business in the emerging orbital tourist market. They need to get it working, and working reliably.

UPDATE: They have decided to cancel the launch plans for tomorrow, to roll the rocket back into the assembly building so they can do more tests on the capsule’s service module where the troublesome valves are.

8 comments

Nauka shook up ISS more than first revealed

9:50 pm

According to new reporting, when the new Russian module Nauka unexpectedly began firing its engines, it rotated the International Space Station far more than first revealed, requiring a much more complicated effort to bring the station back to its correct orientation.

Zebulon Scoville, the flight director at NASA mission control in Houston, revealed that the 45 degrees that was initially reported as the amount ISS rotated was incorrect.

According to Scoville, the event has “been a little incorrectly reported.” He said that after Nauka incorrectly fired up, the station “spun one-and-a-half revolutions — about 540 degrees — before coming to a stop upside down. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation,” according to the report.

Scoville also shared that this was the first time that he has ever declared a “spacecraft emergency.”

It appears that though the station spun far more than first reported, the rate of rotation was still relatively slow, so it apparently did no harm to the station.

Scoville also revealed that, based on the data on hand during the event, it appeared Nauka was also trying to undock itself from the station. Mission controllers tried to counter this by firing engines on a Russian Progress freighter as well as on the Zvezda module.

Had Nauka’s engines had not stopped firing (for unknown reasons, though probably because they ran out of fuel), there was the real chance the accelerations could have shaken the station apart. Moreover, that other engines were brought into play suggests that the Russians not only did not know why Nauka’s engines fired, they had at the time no way to shut them down, and were thus forced to improvise other actions to try to save the increasingly dangerous situation.

19 comments

Blender FLIP Fluids Addon

6:01 pm

An evening pause: What you are looking at here appears to be a demo video of a software addon that provides users with all types of liquid visuals. And creating realistic flowing water is not easy, as the splashes and waves represent chaotic behavior which is very hard to model.

Hat tip Cotour, who adds, “At some point in the future there will be ‘reality’ and no one will be able to tell the difference.”

2 comments

The sublimating surface of Mars’ northern plains?

3:30 pm

Sublimating patches on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photograph to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on May 27, 2021. A sample image, likely taken not as part of any specific scientist’s research but by the camera team in order to maintain the camera’s temperature, shows an area of the Martian northern plains that appears filled with rough scattered depressions, possibly caused by sublimation of buried ice.

The location, at 54 degrees north latitude, is far enough north to easily have a lot of buried ice. It is also only about 40 miles to the east of Milankovič Crater, where scientists have found many scarps that appear to have exposed layers of ice in their cliff faces.

However, the location has other components that must raise questions about this sublimating ice hypothesis.
» Read more

0 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Biracial physician demoted by hospital for criticizing the left

12:54 pm

What apparently passes for medical treatment at the Hennepin Healthcare system
Beliefs apparently required of doctors at the Hennepin Healthcare system

The new dark age of silencing: Tara Gustilo, a biracial physician from the Philippines, found herself quickly demoted from her position as chairwoman of the OB-GYN department for the Hennepin Healthcare system in Minnesota when she dared to post on social media commentary against the Marxist and bigoted Black Lives Matter organization and the equally bigoted critical race theory being pushed by leftist educators in the public schools.
» Read more

1 comment

Upcoming Zimmerman public lecture available for all – Last Call!

10:40 am

Tomorrow I will be giving a lecture on the Artemis Accords to the Arizona Space Business Roundtable, a monthly event in Tucson, founded by space businessman and local all-around good guy Stephen Fleming, to bring together the business-oriented space community of this city and southern Arizona.

From Stephen Fleming’s announcement:

Bob has spoken to the Roundtable before; this time, I’ve asked him to focus on the Artemis Accords… the USA’s attempt to “to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy.” What does that mean? It’s an attempt to break the international logjam that has blocked the private sector development and exploitation of resources on the Moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. How is it working, who has joined on, and what does China think about all this? Come find out from Bob!

The event will be open to the public, no charge, and will also be available on Zoom. It is scheduled for Tuesday, August 3, 2021, from 5:00 — 6:30 pm (Arizona time, which presently corresponds to Pacific time).

If you wish to come in person, the event will be at 110 E. Pennington St, Room 215, in Tucson.

If you want to attend via Zoom, you will need to express your interest as a comment below, and I will then email you the Zoom url and password. We are not publishing this information publicly to avoid a hacking during the event.

Let me repeat: You need to express an interest in attending by Zoom by posting a comment. Otherwise you will not get the password and will not be able to watch. (I will send out the password tomorrow to all those in the comment thread.)

If you are coming in person Stephen would appreciate it if you say so in a comment below also, so that he can estimate a count. He provides, out of his own pocket, cookies and coffee for in-person attendees, and needs to gauge how much to provide.

Note that I have written these essays previously about other Arizona Space Roundtable events:

19 comments

Sunspot update: Another month of greater activity than predicted

10:11 am

NOAA this past weekend released an update of its monthly sunspot cycle graph, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity for the past month. That graph is below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context.

In July the Sun’s hot streak of sunspot activity continued. The number of sunspots on its visible hemisphere continued to exceed the prediction of NOAA’s solar science panel, with the numbers in July easily topping June’s numbers. Only at the very end of July was there a streak of five blank days, the first time the Sun has been blank of sunspots since May 6th, a stretch of activity not seen for years, since the last solar maximum was ramping down to solar minimum in ’16-’17.

The political consequences of this continuing high activity could be quite profound.
» Read more

3 comments

Zhurong continues south, inspecting dunes

10:40 am

Zhurong's travels as of July 31, 2021

The Chinese science team for their Zhurong Mars rover released new images yesterday, including a map showing the rover’s present position.

The new images and location has confirmed that the white streaks seen in orbital pictures are small dunes of sand blown by the thin Martian wind.

The map to the right, created using their map but annotated and providing a wider context, shows their present location relative to the lander and surrounding terrain. So far the rover has traveled about 1,900 feet, about 1,000 feet per month. Since it seems to be operating as planned, I expect China will extend the mission once it completes its nominal three-month tour in about two weeks.

At that travel pace there is much of interest that is within the rover’s range. I expect they are heading south partly because this brings them closer to their original landing site, which is an area they probably studied at length before landing. Whether they head to the largest crater, visible only partly on the image’s south edge, remains unclear.

0 comments

Russia offers conflicting causes for Nauka engine firing

9:34 am

Russian officials have now suggested two explanations for the accidently ignition of the engines on the new Nauka module to ISS, neither of which appears to have involved any real investigation.

Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the space station’s Russian segment, blamed the incident on a “short-term software failure.” In a statement released Friday by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Solovyov said because of the failure, a direct command to turn on the lab’s engines was mistakenly implemented.

He added the incident was “quickly countered by the propulsion system” of another Russian component at the station and “at the moment, the station is in its normal orientation” and all its systems “are operating normally.”

Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin later Friday suggested that “human factor” may have been at play. “There was such euphoria (after Nauka successfully docked with the space station), people relaxed to some extent,” Rogozin said in a radio interview. “Perhaps one of the operators didn’t take into account that the control system of the block will continue to adjust itself in space. And it determined a moment three hours after (the docking) and turned on the engines.” [emphasis mine]

So, was it human error? Or was it the software programming? Or both?

No matter what the specific cause, these conflicting stories, thrown out in almost an offhand manner, demonstrate that the real fundamental cause was the terrible, sloppy, and error-prone quality control systems at Roscosmos and all the aerospace companies it has taken over since the Putin administration consolidated Russia’s aerospace industry into a single government-run corporation.

These kinds of failures seem to happen with Russia now repeatedly. From launch aborts to launch failures to corruption in contracting to corruption in engine construction to plain simple sabotage, mistakes and errors and poor planning and dishonesty seem to hound their space effort at every level. Thank God Americans no longer have to fly on a Soyuz capsule, though one American on board ISS is still scheduled to come home on one.

Without competition and freedom, there is no pressure in Russia to improve, to improvise, to rethink, and to clean house when a management gets stale or corrupt. Instead, operations stultify and develop dry rot. They can’t see problems or even fix them efficiently. If anything, management circles the wagons to protect itself, while often deliberately ignoring the problems.

Rocket science is hard. It can quickly kill people when done poorly.

I think it will be a great relief to end this partnership. And the sooner the better.

21 comments

GAO rejects protests by Blue Origin and Dynectics over lunar lander award

12:50 am

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today rejected the protests by Blue Origin and Dynectics against the award by NASA of its manned lunar lander contract to SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.

In denying the protests, GAO first concluded that NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award. NASA’s announcement provided that the number of awards the agency would make was subject to the amount of funding available for the program. In addition, the announcement reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all. In reaching its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award. GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the program. As a result, GAO denied the protest arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX.

GAO next concluded that the evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms.

Finally, GAO agreed with the protesters that in one limited instance NASA waived a requirement of the announcement for SpaceX. Despite this finding, the decision also concludes that the protesters could not establish any reasonable possibility of competitive prejudice arising from this limited discrepancy in the evaluation.

This decision will likely allow NASA to proceed with the contract, and for SpaceX to begin work on the revisions it will need to make to Starship to make it a lunar lander.

The decision also puts companies like Blue Origin and Dynectics on notice: You need to prove you have the goods, or you won’t win customers. Commit some of your own funds to research and development, start building actual prototypes you can test, and the world will begin to beat a path to your door.

20 comments
1 … 901 902 903 904 905 … 2,915