Category: Behind The Black

Russia: Progress freighter and SpaceX rocket/satellite to have near miss

9:00 am

According to a Russia news outlet, their just launched Progress freighter will have a near miss today prior to its docking with ISS with two SpaceX objects, a Falcon 9 upper stage and a decommissioned Starlink satellite.

The Progress spacecraft, which carries about 3,600 lbs. (1,633 kilograms) of cargo including food, fuel and other supplies to the orbital outpost, launched from Roscomos’ Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:27 p.m. EDT (2327 GMT) on Tuesday (June 29). Progress 78 will approach the two objects about three and a half hours before its docking at the International Space Station, which is scheduled for 9:02 p.m. EDT on July 1 (0102 July 2 GMT).

The close approach, which triggered a potential collision alert, was detected by the Roscosmos TsNIIMash Main Information and Analytical Center of the Automated System for Warning of Hazardous Situations in Near-Earth Space (ASPOS OKP), Roscosmos said in the statement issued on the space agency’s website Wednesday (June 30) at 7:47 a.m. EDT (1147 GMT).

Based on preliminary calculations, the Starlink 1691 satellite will be just 0.9 miles (1.5 kilometers) away from Progress 78 on Thursday (July 1) at 5:32 p.m. EDT (2132 GMT). Three minutes later, a fragment of a Falcon 9 rocket booster left in orbit in 2020 is expected to approach the spaceship within 0.3 miles (500 meters).

Based on that timetable, the near miss has already occurred. No word yet on whether there were any issues.

What is interesting is that Russia should have known this prior to launch. It is routine procedure to consider known orbital objects in scheduling liftoffs. Either they knew and decided to purposely fly this close for political reasons (it allows them to slam SpaceX while also touting the dangers of space junk) or had not done their due diligence before launch.

1 comment

Relativity signs deal to expand rocket facility

8:53 am

Capitalism in space: The rocket company Relativity Space announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement for a major expansion of its rocket manufacturing facility in California.

The firm — fresh off a $650 million Series A fundraising round announced earlier this month — said Wednesday (June 30) it has signed for a 1-million-square-foot (93,000 square meters) headquarters factory at the Goodman Commerce Center, in its current hometown of Long Beach, California.

The 93-acre plant used to host Boeing’s C-17 military transport aircraft manufacturing, with the last C-17 produced there in 2015. Now, Relativity’s factory will make it the anchor tenant for a planned 437-acre business district west of the Long Beach Airport, the company said. It also plans to hold on to its existing factory space to continue producing its Terran 1 rocket.

Relativity will occupy the new space in January 2022, which will eventually host dozens of the company’s proprietary Stargate printers that can produce Terran 1 and its newly announced reusable version of the rocket, called Terran R. Relativity said the facility will include a fusion of 3D printing, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics to create a new rocket in less than 60 days.

Relativity has not yet launched any rockets nor has it conducted any test flights. Its first test flight of Terran-1 is presently scheduled for later this year, though no date is set. The company is one of five American new rocket startups that say they will do their first launch before the end of 2021.

3 comments

Astra completes SPAC merger, goes public

8:34 am

Capitalism in space: Astra yesterday finalized its merger with the investment company Holicity and became the first launch company with stock publicly traded.

Today (June 30), the Bay Area launch startup completed its previously announced merger with Holicity, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) backed by Bill Gates and billionaire telecom pioneer Craig McCaw, among others. Astra will start trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market Thursday (July 1), becoming the first launch company ever to do so — a milestone marked by Astra CEO Chris Kemp, who will ring Nasdaq’s opening bell in the morning.

The merger brings the company $500 million in cash.

Astra has not yet successfully completed an orbital launch, though it hopes to begin monthly launches before the end of the year. It has attempted two orbital test flights, with the second only failing to reach orbit because it ran out of fuel. It says it has contracts for 50 launches, and will ramp up to weekly launches next year.

Astra is one of five rocket companies that have announced they will do their first orbital flight in 2021. So far, none have done so.

4 comments

Hubble update: Engineers narrow possible failed hardware to one of two units

5:09 pm

Engineers working to pinpoint the cause of the computer hardware issue that has placed the Hubble Space Telescope in safe mode since June 13th have now narrowed the possible failed hardware to one of two units.

The source of the computer problem lies in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, where the payload computer resides. A few hardware pieces on the SI C&DH could be the culprit(s).

The team is currently scrutinizing the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF), which sends and formats commands and data. They are also looking at a power regulator within the Power Control Unit, which is designed to ensure a steady voltage supply to the payload computer’s hardware. If one of these systems is determined to be the likely cause, the team must complete a more complicated operations procedure to switch to the backup units. This procedure would be more complex and riskier than those the team executed last week, which involved switching to the backup payload computer hardware and memory modules. To switch to the backup CU/SDF or power regulator, several other hardware boxes on the spacecraft must also be switched due to the way they are connected to the SI C&DH unit.

Over the next week or so, the team will review and update all of the operations procedures, commands and other related items necessary to perform the switch to backup hardware. They will then test their execution against a high-fidelity simulator.

The team performed a similar switch in 2008, which allowed Hubble to continue normal science operations after a CU/SDF module failed.

That such a switch was done successfully in the past is a very hopeful sign. However, it sounds as though they are not 100% sure they have pinpointed the actual issue, which means that this switch still might not fix the problem.

We can only wait and hope. And even if the fix works, Hubble will no longer have working backup units for these pieces of hardware. Should any of the backup that are now being activated fail, the telescope will fail, and this time it won’t be fixable with the equipment on board.

10 comments

SpaceX successfully launches 88 smallsats, marking a renaissance in rocketry in 2021

1:07 pm

null
First stage landing at Cape Canaveral today

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to place 88 smallsats into orbit, the third rocket launch today.

While Transporter-2 won’t beat the unprecedented number of satellites launched on on Transporter-1 [the first such smallsat launch by SpaceX earlier this year], SpaceX says it will still “launch 88 spacecraft to orbit” and – more importantly – carry more customer mass. In other words, Transporter-2 will carry roughly 50% fewer satellites, each of which will weigh substantially more on average.

Ordering directly through SpaceX, [the price] begins at $1 million for up to 200 kg (~440 lb). … A majority of small satellites weigh significantly less than 200 kilograms but if a customer manages to use all of their allotment, the total cost of a SpaceX rideshare launch could be as low as $5000 per kilogram – incredibly cheap relative to almost any other option. For a [comparable] launch … on a Rocket Lab Electron or Astra Rocket 3.0 rocket using every last gram of available performance, the same customer would end up paying a minimum of $25,000 to $37,500 per kilogram to orbit.

The launch also included a handful of Starlink satellites, adding to SpaceX’s constellation. I have embedded SpaceX’s live stream below the fold. As I write this the satellites have not yet been deployed from the second stage, but that should happen shortly.

The first stage landed successfully, the eighth time this booster has done so. The fairings were also reused, completing their third flight. All told, this was SpaceX’s 20th launch in 2021, 18 of which used reused boosters.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
» Read more

2 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Journalist Andy Ngo blackballed again, this time by SoundCloud

12:31 pm

Journalist Andy Ngo, blacklisted
Journalist Andy Ngo: blacklisted and banned by Soundcloud

Persecution is now cool! Journalist Andy Ngo has been blackballed again, this time by the podcast and music website SoundCloud.

[Ngo’s] podcast, ‘Things You Should Ngo’ was banned “on grounds of being dedicated to violating” Soundcloud’s rules. Unsurprisingly, as Ngo’s publication The Post Millennial reports, there’s a problem with the explanation.

The latest episode of the podcast was uploaded more than one year ago and there was no option in the notification email for Ngo to appeal or even seek further information. Over the weekend, SoundCloud’s Trust & Safety Team informed Ngo via email of the permanent ban for “violating” the site’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, which state that users must not use the platform to create content “that is abusive, libellous, defamatory, pornographic or obscene, that promotes or incites violence, terrorism, illegal acts, or hatred on the grounds of race, ethnicity, cultural identity, religious belief, disability, gender, identity or sexual orientation, or is otherwise objectionable in SoundCloud’s reasonable discretion.”

Of course, Ngo’s podcast did none of those things. His podcast simply interviewed politicians and public figures, a perfectly legitimate thing for a reporter to do in a free society. That such reporting according to SoundCloud must now be censored because some of those interviewed expressed conservative values just shows us the close-minded and oppressive attitude of that company’s management.

I say “again” in the headline because this censorship by SoundCloud follows a long string of blackballing of Ngo by many different outlets and totalitarian organizations.
» Read more

2 comments

Paypal lowering fees charged to sellers

11:21 am

Isn’t competition great? Paypal announced today that as of August 2, 2021 it is lowering the fees it deducts from the payments made by buyers to sellers.

The fee reduction is about 15% to 20%, depending on the fee, which means I have just gotten a pay raise from those who donate or subscribe to Behind the Black using PayPal. This does not mean I want everyone to use PayPay. Right now I actually prefer new subscribers use Patreon, simply because it makes me less dependent on PayPay should it decide my commentary is “evil” and must be blacklisted.

The reductions make these fees lower than Paypal’s new competitors, such as Patreon, or from the conservative right, such as David Rubin’s Locals.com and Dan Bongino’s AlignPay. However, I expect them all to quickly drop their fees as well to match PayPal. And as long as PayPal continues to treat its conservative customers like dirt, expect this competition to continue to heat up.

Lowering its price won’t help if PayPal doesn’t stop playing partisan politics. It really has only two options for maintaining its market dominance. Either it can stop acting like a petty authoritarian dictator and canceling conservative vendors, or it can team up with the government to get its competitors banned or shut down. Which do you think it will eventually choose?

10 comments

Astronomers detect a white dwarf that is both the smallest and most massive ever found

10:04 am

Using an array of telescopes on the ground and in space, astronomers have discovered a white dwarf star that is both the smallest ever found while also being the most massive.

White dwarfs are the collapsed remnants of stars that were once about eight times the mass of our Sun or lighter. Our Sun, for example, after it first puffs up into a red giant in about 5 billion years, will ultimately slough off its outer layers and shrink down into a compact white dwarf. About 97 percent of all stars become white dwarfs.

While our Sun is alone in space without a stellar partner, many stars orbit around each other in pairs. The stars grow old together, and if they are both less than eight solar-masses, they will both evolve into white dwarfs.

The new discovery provides an example of what can happen after this phase. The pair of white dwarfs, which spiral around each other, lose energy in the form of gravitational waves and ultimately merge. If the dead stars are massive enough, they explode in what is called a type Ia supernova. But if they are below a certain mass threshold, they combine together into a new white dwarf that is heavier than either progenitor star. This process of merging boosts the magnetic field of that star and speeds up its rotation compared to that of the progenitors.

Astronomers say that the newfound tiny white dwarf, named ZTF J1901+1458, took the latter route of evolution; its progenitors merged and produced a white dwarf 1.35 times the mass of our Sun. The white dwarf has an extreme magnetic field almost 1 billion times stronger than our Sun’s and whips around on its axis at a frenzied pace of one revolution every seven minutes (the zippiest white dwarf known, called EPIC 228939929, rotates every 5.3 minutes).

Based on their present understanding of stellar evolution, single white dwarfs do not form from stars with more than 1.3 solar masses. Stars with greater masses instead become neutron stars, or black holes. To get a white dwarf of 1.35 masses thus requires a merger of two white dwarfs, but it also means that the resulting dwarf could be unstable and could collapse into a neutron star at some point. The data also suggests that this merger process might be how a large number of neutron stars actually form.

The dwarf is also the smallest ever found, with a diameter of 2,670 miles, because the larger masses squeezes it into a tighter space.

0 comments

Dust covering solar panels threatens to end InSight mission

9:52 am

The InSight science team has revealed that the amount of dust that presently covers the solar panels on the Mars lander has now reduced their available power by about 80%, and if a dust devil doesn’t soon blow the dust off they will have to shut the spacecraft down sometime in the next ten months.

“The dust accumulation on the solar arrays has been considerable. We have about 80% obscuration of the arrays,” said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the InSight mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, according to SpaceNews.

Banerdt showed the impact of the declining power levels during a June 21 meeting of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. When InSight landed near the Martian equator in November 2018, he said, the robot was generating roughly 5,000 watt-hours of power. Today that level is less than 700 watt-hours.

None of this is a surprise. Both the Opportunity and Spirit rovers faced the same problems. Both however were able to recover because periodically a dust devil would fly over the rover and clear the dust from the solar panels.

InSight however has not so far been lucky. While it has seen many nearby dust devils with its camera, none has come close enough to sweep the solar panels clean.

As the power has declined they have shut off various systems in order to keep the lander’s prime instrument, its seismometer, operating continuously. Engineers have also been using the scoop on the lander’s robot arm to try to dislodge some of the dust, with only a very very limited success. If the panels are not cleared soon, however, engineers will eventually be forced to shut everything down.

7 comments
1 … 916 917 918 919 920 … 2,915