Mattias Lindström (Swebounce) – Robot chair
An evening pause: What every home must have!
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Category: Behind The Black
Ingenuity fails to take off on 4th flight
When early today Ingenuity attempted to complete its fourth and most ambitious test flight on Mars the helicopter did not lift off, for reasons that engineers are still investigating.
[JPL] engineers are assessing the data, since it’s not yet clear what caused the failure. One potential cause is a software issue that first showed up during a high-speed spin test ahead of the chopper’s first flight. That test failed because Ingenuity’s flight computer was unable to transition from “pre-flight” to “flight” mode. Within a few days, though, [JPL] engineers resolved the issue with a quick software rewrite.
But those engineers determined that their fix would only successfully transition the helicopter into flight mode 85% of the time. So Thursday’s attempt may have fallen into the 15% of instances in which it doesn’t work.
This flight was supposed to fly south for about 430 feet, take pictures, and then return to its take-off point. If they can trouble-shoot the issue they hope to do another flight quickly. They still have a week left in their 30 day test period.
The crack that splits the giant volcanoes on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! In the April download of new images from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was the photo to the right, taken on February 23, 2021 and cropped and reduced to post here, of what was labeled as “Source Region of Possible Rille on South Flank of Arsia Mons.”
Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the string of three giant volcanoes that sit between Mars’ biggest volcano to the west, Olympus Mons, and Mars’ biggest canyon to the east, Valles Marineris. This depression is on the mountain’s lower southern flank, and likely shows an ancient resurgence point where lava once flowed out from beneath the ground to form a rill meandering to the southwest. Today there is no visible resurgence. The floor of the depression appears to be filled with sand and dust, with the surrounding slopes spotted with scattered boulders.
What makes this particular image more interesting is how, when we take a very wide view, it reveals one of the most dramatic geological features on Mars, the 3,500 mile-long crack that caused these three volcanoes, and is actually not obvious unless you know what to look for.
So we need to zoom out. Let us first begin with a mosaic of three wider MRO context camera images, showing the entire rille and the immediately surrounding terrain.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Law professor under investigation for criticizing China
Doesn’t exist at the University of San Diego.
They’re coming for you next: A law professor at the University of San Diego, Tom Smith, is now under formal investigation and could possibly be fired for a blog post on his own webpage where he strongly criticized China and its role in the start of COVID-19.
When he first published the March 10 post, the USD Law School placed him under investigation, citing complaints of bias. Now, the law school has sent his case to administration for a formal review.
The review comes as a petition circulates demanding Smith resign or be fired, alleging he has a history of saying and writing things some find offensive.
Signed by the USD Law Student Bar Association presidents for this school year and the next, they claim in the petition Smith’s alleged comments have left some in the USD law community feeling vulnerable and helpless so that students cannot balance their studies or “prepare for our futures in the legal profession.” [emphasis mine]
Beside the fact that it is utterly wrong for the university to investigate this man for simply expressing his opinion on line, the highlighted words — “feeling vulnerable and helpless” — illustrate starkly the total close-mindedness of the left’s modern blacklisting effort to any opinions outside its frame of reference.
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Virgin Orbit signs deal with Brazil to launch from that country
Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit and the Brazilian Space Agency have signed an agreement to allow the company to launch satellites from one of its facilities.
Launches would occur from the Alcântara Launch Center (Centro de Lançamento de Alcântara, CLA) on Brazil’s northern coast, located just two degrees south of the equator. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne system, which uses a customized 747 aircraft as its flying launch pad and fully reusable first stage, could conduct launches from the existing airbase at the site, flying hundreds of miles before releasing the rocket directly above the equator or at other locations optimized for each individual mission. The approach enables Alcântara to become one of the only continental spaceports in the world capable of reaching any orbital inclination.
This is an excellent deal for both. Brazil gets some commercial space business, and Virgin Orbit’s 747 will no longer have to fly long distances to get to an equator launch point.
Starship prototype #15 completes 2nd static fire test, waits FAA approval for flight
Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s 15th Starship prototype completed its second static fire test in three days yesterday, and is presently poised to do its first test flight.
The scheduled road closures in Boca Chica suggest that they are aiming for either April 30th, May 1st, or May 2nd. However, it also appears they are awaiting FAA approval, which could be why they did a second static fire test. They can’t fly so rather than do nothing they reconfigured that second static fire to test the landing burn.
Musk returned to Twitter to state that this was a header tank test and that all looked good. This could mean Monday’s test was a launch static fire while Tuesday’s test was more of a landing burn static fire as the header tanks are used to supply landing propellants.
It also appears that SpaceX has had its flight application sitting at the FAA for about a week, with no action. Thus, it is the federal bureaucracy that appears to be slowing things down at this moment.
Eutelsat invests $550 million in OneWeb
Capitalism in space: The long established European communications satellite company Eutelsat has committed $550 million in investment capital in OneWeb and its internet satellite constellation.
Eutelsat, one of the world’s leading satellite operators, will receive a c.24% equity stake in OneWeb and similar governance rights to the U.K. Government and Bharti Global, making it a significant equity partner and joining leading investors including the U.K. Government, Bharti Global and SoftBank. The investment is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021, subject to regulatory approvals.
This investment raises OneWeb’s total funding to $1.9 billion, and puts it in a good position to complete its 648 satellite constellation on schedule, with the first commercial operations beginning when the total in orbit tops 250 in July, after the next two Soyuz-2 launches.
Launch of Intuitive Machine’s first lunar lander delayed
Capitalism in space: The first mission of Intuitive Machine’s lunar lander has now been delayed from late this year to early next year.
Intuitive Machines spokesman Josh Marshall said April 26 that the slip was caused by its launch provider. “SpaceX informed Intuitive Machines that due to unique mission requirements the earliest available flight opportunity is in the first quarter of 2022,” he told SpaceNews.
Marshall referred questions about the “unique mission requirements” that caused the delay to SpaceX. That company did not respond to questions from SpaceNews on the topic.
Though it is entirely possible that SpaceX needed to delay the launch, we should be skeptical of this reason. More likely Intuitive has had issues that caused a delay, and is using SpaceX as a cover.
There is a race to become the first privately-built commercial lunar lander. Astrobotics Peregrine lander is still scheduled to launch by the end of the year. We shall see.
Ingenuity’s fourth flight today
The fourth flight of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has just occurred, with data arriving momentarily.
The fourth Ingenuity flight from Wright Brothers Field, the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place, is scheduled to take off Thursday, April 29, at 10:12 a.m. EDT (7:12 a.m. PDT, 12:30 p.m. local Mars time), with the first data expected back at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 1:21 p.m. EDT (10:21 a.m. PDT).
…Flight Four sets out to demonstrate the potential value of that aerial perspective. The flight test will begin with Ingenuity climbing to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and then heading south, flying over rocks, sand ripples, and small impact craters for 276 feet (84 meters). As it flies, the rotorcraft will use its downward-looking navigation camera to collect images of the surface every 4 feet (1.2 meters) from that point until it travels a total of 436 feet (133 meters) downrange. Then, Ingenuity will go into a hover and take images with its color camera before heading back to Wright Brothers Field.
Stay tuned for new images. NASA will also hold a press conference tomorrow to outline the results and the rest of Ingenuity’s test program.
Arianespace’s Vega rocket launches six satellites
Arianespace yesterday successfully completed its first Vega rocket lift-off since a launch failure last year, placing six satellites in orbit.
This was Arianespace’s first launch in 2021. Though the year is still early, the timing of this launch, late April, puts them well behind the pace they have set for most of the 21st century.
The leader board for the 2021 launch race remains unchanged:
12 SpaceX
10 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 17 to 10 in the national rankings.
SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites; China launches Tianhe station module
Twas a busy evening. SpaceX successfully put 60 more Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket, with the first stage successfully completing its seventh flight, landing safely on the drone ship in the Atlantic.
China in turn successfully used its Long March 5B rocket to place in orbit the core module, dubbed Tianhe, of its planned space station. This is the first of eleven launches in the next two years to assemble the station’s initial configuration, including cargo and manned missions along the way.
The SpaceX live stream is at the link. I have embedded China’s English language live stream of the Tianhe launch below the fold. The launch is about 52 minutes in.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
12 SpaceX
10 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 17 to 10 in the national rankings.
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April 28, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in three parts. The third part was a late taping we did to talk about the passing of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins today.
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