Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Alien Mars

11:19 am

Alien Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates again the alien geology of Mars, often disguised as geological features that at first glance seem familiar. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 9, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Its most distinct feature, the mile-wide double crater in the center bottom, at first appears typical of such craters found on the Moon and elsewhere, suggesting that the bolide that caused it broke in two as it cut through the Martian atmosphere.

This double crater however is not like lunar double craters, in that the shape of both craters is deformed, and the deformation is not quite the same in each. Moreover, the crater does not appear to have an upraised rim or to have thrown out any obvious ejecta. Instead, the two objects hit what looks like soft ground, such as when you drop a pebble into snow.

There’s more.
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Curiosity’s most damaged wheel appears to be surviving the rough terrain on Mount Sharp

9:46 am

Curiosity's middle left wheel, from November 2022 to July 2023
For original images go here and here.

In today’s download of images from Curiosity was a set of pictures taken by its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) of the rover’s wheels, as part of the science team’s routine inspection procedures after every 500 meters of travel.

The picture to the right shows what I think is the rover’s left middle wheel, its most heavily damaged, comparing what that wheel looks like now versus what it looked like in November 2022. At that time five of the wheel’s zig-zag grouser treads were broken, three of which are visible in both pictures. The numbers indicate identical wheel treads.

As you can see, after more than seven months of travel across some of the roughest and rockiest ground so far seen on Mars, no more grousers have broken in the new picture. The plus (“+”) signs indicate places where I think some additional metal between the grousers appears to have broken away, but even here the additional damage appears minimal.

Based on past wheel inspections, I expect more images will be taken in the next day or so. We shall see if those pictures indicate any further damage elsewhere. Based on this new picture, however, it appears that the care the science team takes in picking Curiosity’s route, as well as its software (designed to avoid the worst terrain), is continuing to preserve the wheels from further significant damage.

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Scientists: Quasar data shows time running five times slower in the early universe

8:53 am

The uncertainty of science: According to new research using data from almost 200 quasars collected over the two decades, scientists now believe they have detected the difference between the rate of time now and as we see it in the early universe.

“Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” said lead author of the study, Professor Geraint Lewis from the School of Physics and Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney. “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.”

…Professor Lewis worked with astro-statistician Dr Brewer to examine details of 190 quasars observed over two decades. Combining the observations taken at different colours (or wavelengths) – green light, red light and into the infrared – they were able to standardise the ‘ticking’ of each quasar. Through the application of Bayesian analysis, they found the expansion of the universe imprinted on each quasar’s ticking.

“With these exquisite data, we were able to chart the tick of the quasar clocks, revealing the influence of expanding space,” Professor Lewis said.

These results further confirm Einstein’s picture of an expanding universe but contrast earlier studies that had failed to identify the time dilation of distant quasars. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the word “exquisite” because it is a favorite buzzword of scientists when they are trying to oversell conclusions that carry many uncertainties. As good as this data might be, it is still incredibly sparse, and the interpretation of it requires many assumptions.

Nonetheless, these results are likely correct, in some manner, because they match well with Einstein’s predictions. It is also most likely that there are many errors and incorrect aspects to those results that the scientists do not yet understand. Above all, confirmation bias remains a concern.

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South Korea: North Korean spy satellite of “no military utility”

8:36 am

Having completed its salvage operations to recover rocket and satellite remains from North Korea’s failed launch on May 31st, the South Korean military today revealed that the satellite had “no military utility as a reconnaissance satellite.”

As expected, it also provided few details to back up that claim:

The JCS [South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff] did not detail the findings through the allies’ analysis of the wreckage nor did it disclose any photos of the retrieved part of the satellite. Last month, a Seoul official struck a cautious note, insinuating that disclosing all the information the military gleaned from the salvage operation would rather benefit the North Korean military.

It is likely true that the North Korea satellite was of limited value, but it is also true that secrecy and disinformation works to the advantage of South Korea’s military. We therefore would be wise to remain skeptical about any of its claims, one way or the other.

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Instrument designed to detect lightning releases first data

9:41 am

Lightning over Europe
Lightning over Europe. Click for original movie.

The first data from the Lightning Imager launched in December 2022 on Europe’s Meteosat weather satellite has now been released, the images compiled into movies showing lightning activity across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and parts of South America.

While the animations are a first initial result from the Lightning Imager, the Meteosat Third Generation Imager is currently undergoing its commissioning phase during which the instruments are calibrated and the data is validated. Data from the Lightning Imager will be available for operational use in early-2024 at an increased sensitivity.

You can see all the movies here. The lightning is found almost exclusively over land. In fact, you can see the lightning in one storm vanish as the storm drifts out into the Mediterranean.

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More evidence found suggesting supernovae occurred near the solar system during its formation

9:22 am

Scientists have now detected more evidence that suggests a supernovae occurred very close to our solar system during its early period of formation.

Astronomers have for decades found such evidence inside meteorites. Small spherical inclusions called chondrules are thought by some to have formed when the heat of a nearby supernova caused melting. The new study finds more evidence in isotopes also found in primitive meteorites dubbed short-lived radionuclides (SLRs).

While SLRs probably existed in the part of the filament where the Sun and Solar System formed, the meteorite samples contained too much of a particular aluminum isotope for the interstellar medium to have been the Solar System’s only SLR source. Cosmic rays, which can convert stable isotopes to radioactive ones, had a better chance of explaining the number of isotopes found in the meteorites. However, it would have taken too long for this process to produce the levels of SLRs found in the early Solar System.

It is most likely that such high SLR levels could have come from either very intense stellar winds, which would have occurred during massive star formation, or from what was left after one of the massive stars went supernova.

You can read the published paper here.

If true, this data adds weight to the possibility that our solar system is somewhat unique, which in turn suggests finding just another like it — with life — might be difficult.

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SpaceX and FAA seek dismissal of lawsuit against Starship at Boca Chica

9:01 am

Both the FAA and SpaceX have now submitted their response to the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other environmental and leftist political groups, requesting a dismissal of their lawsuit demanding no more launches at Boca Chica until the federal government completes a new environmental impact statement.

In a filing Friday, the FAA said the groups lack legal standing for their claims against the agency that granted a launch license to SpaceX’s Starship rocket program. Separately, a SpaceX filing said the first Starship launch on April 20 provided no cause for the FAA to conduct a new environmental assessment, a process that could halt further test launches for years. “For the foregoing reasons, defendants request that the court dismiss the complaint in its entirety,” Todd Kim, assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division of the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote in the filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

In a sane world, this lawsuit would have been thrown out of court almost instantly. There is no evidence the test launch of Starship/Superheavy caused any environmental damage. Furthermore, launches from Cape Canaveral for the past seven decades have proven this fact repeatedly.

We no longer live in a sane world. There is no guarantee the court will rule in favor of the FAA or SpaceX.

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Parker completes 16th orbit of the Sun

8:53 am

On June 22, 2023 the Parker Solar Probe completed its 16th close approach to the Sun, passing within 5.3 million miles of the solar surface while moving at 364,610 miles per hour.

The mission team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, noted the close approach was preceded by a small trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) on June 7 —​ the first course correction since March 2022. Mission Design and Navigation Manager​ Yanping Guo of APL said TCMs are performed periodically to ensure that the​ spacecraft remains on course, and the latest maneuver kept Parker on track to hit the “aim point” for the mission’s sixth Venus flyby on Aug. 21. ​

With each perihelion now, Parker sets new records of speed. No human spacecraft has ever flown so fast.

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A Martian volcanic ash field covering an ancient lava flow

12:38 pm

A Martian volcanic ash field covering an ancient lava flow
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows in the center an ancient tongue of lava flow that is surrounded by thick dust fields on the north and the south.

The arrow indicates the downhill grade. It also shows the direction of the prevailing winds, downhill to sculpt the volcanic ash into long streamers of parallel grooves, with obvious eddies forming around bits of older lava that still stick up through the ash. On the lava flow can also be seen one small volcano cone, on the picture’s right edge, suggesting that either during this flow or after it hardened magma bubbled up from below.

The location is fascinating, and in fact puts this picture into its much more spectacular context.
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A spiral galaxy as seen by Hubble

9:40 am

A spiral galaxy as seen by Hubble
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken as part of a research project to use the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph galaxies where supernovae had recently occurred. From the caption:

UGC 11860 lies around 184 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, and its untroubled appearance can be deceiving; this galaxy recently played host to an almost unimaginably energetic stellar explosion.

A supernova explosion — the catastrophically violent end of a massive star’s life — was detected in UGC 11860 in 2014 by a robotic telescope dedicated to scouring the skies for transient astronomical phenomena; astronomical objects which are only visible for a short period of time. Two different teams of astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to search through the aftermath and unpick the lingering remnants of this vast cosmic explosion.

This Hubble image once again illustrates the vastness of the universe. Note that every single dot surrounding UGC 11860 in this picture is another far more distant galaxy. As much as UGC 11860 is in our local intergalactic neighborhood, it is still so distant that this field of view is small enough that it contains no stars.

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Another flying car gets FAA approval for flight testing

9:10 am

Aska-5 flying car
The Aska-5 flying car

The FAA has approved another flying car for flight testing, this time for a flying car designed to also be able to do vertical take-offs if necessary.

The Aska A5 … has four wheels and four seats. Like the Klein Vision [another flying car proposal], it can take off on a runway if there’s one available. Unlike the Klein Vision, it can also takeoff on a very short runway, or indeed no runway at all, thanks to an electric VTOL [vertical take-off and landing] system that folds out at the touch of a button. And unlike, say, the Xpeng AeroHT [a different flying car proposal], it’s capable of transitioning to efficient, winged cruise mode to expand its range.

The A5 will look fairly ridiculous driving down the road, all propellers and struts, a clog with a dishrack full of cutlery piled on top. But when the main rear wing and canard fold out, it all makes a lot more sense. There are six large propellers, four at the back, two at the front, and in VTOL operations these will lift the Aska off the ground and allow it to hover. For forward flight, the two inner rear propellers can tilt forward, allowing horizontal thrust in cruise mode with the rest of the props switched off and the car’s weight supported by its wings.

The proposed price tag for the Aska-5 is presently just under $800K, though it will be a while before you can buy one. The company says it is doing both driving and flight testing, but provided no images or data of it in the air. Thus, a lot of work remains before you could climb in, drive from your home to an airport and take off.

The company says it has $50 million in preorders. If so, at least 50 people think this might be the real deal.

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ISRO aborts first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine

8:51 am

According to India’s space agency ISRO, on July 1st engineers were forced to abort the first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine, planned to last 4.5 seconds but stopped after 1.9 seconds.

The test proceeded as predicted till 1.9 s validating the ignition and subsequent performance of PHTA [Power Head Test Article]. At 2.0 s, an unanticipated spike in the turbine pressure and subsequent loss of turbine-speed was observed. As a precautionary step, the test was terminated. Analysis under progress would offer further understanding before proceeding with further hot-tests for longer duration.

This was not a test of a real rocket engine, but an engineering test prototype, designed “to validate the integrated performance of the critical subsystems such as the gas generator, turbo pumps, pre-burner and control components.” That the test showed issues without exploding is actually very good news. Engineers still have the prototype to quickly figure out what went wrong and fix it.

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Ingenuity responds after 63 days of silence

12:02 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

For the past two months the science and engineering teams for the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter in Jezero Crater have been very silent as to the status of Ingenuity. On April 25, 2023 the Ingenuity team had posted their flight plan for the helicopter’s 52nd flight, with an expected flight date the next day.

Until today, however, no information about the results of that flight had been released. Except for one update in late May describing earlier issues with communications after flight 49, the science and engineering teams maintained radio silence about that 52nd flight in April.

Today’s update finally explained that silence:

The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.

The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. The rover acts as a radio relay between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL. In anticipation of this loss of communications, the Ingenuity team had already developed re-contact plans for when the rover would drive back within range. Contact was re-established June 28 when Perseverance crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.

The flight plan for the 52nd flight in April had been to fly 1,191 feet to the west. Though the Ingenuity team has not yet released the actual flight details, I have indicated with the green line on the overview map above the estimated distance and direction planned. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position before the flight, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s present location. The red dotted line indicates the planned route for Perseverance.

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Galaxies at the dawn of time

10:40 am

Link here. The article takes a quick look at six galaxies found by Webb’s infrared view that all less than 650 million years after the Big Bang is thought to have occurred.

None disprove the Big Bang. All however raise serious questions about the cosmological theories that posit that event and the subsequent evolution of the universe. Take a look. It is worthwhile reading.

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SpaceX launches Europe’s Euclid space telescope

9:26 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched Europe’s Euclid space telescope, designed to map the spatial distribution of several billion galaxies across one third of the sky.

The first stage successfully completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their first flight.

This ESA science mission would have normally been launched on an Arianespace rocket, but Europe’s ability to launch anything now is nil, as it is about to retire its Ariane-5 rocket (with one launch left) and has so failed to get its replacement, Ariane-6, operational. As such, SpaceX got the business, since it is the cheapest and most reliable alternative.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

44 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 50 to 24, and the entire world combined 50 to 41, with SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, excluding other American companies, 44 to 41.

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A blacklisted American wins in court

3:52 pm

Gerald Groff, no longer blacklisted by the post office
Gerald Groff, no longer blacklisted by the post office

Let’s end the week on a positive note. This week the big news in connection with Americans who have been blacklisted by our leftist governments has mostly focused on the Supreme Court ruling that Colorado cannot force a Christian web designer to create websites advocating the queer agenda. That 6-3 ruling affirmed the religious rights of Americans to refuse to promote ideas they find abhorrent. It also told the fascists in the homosexual movement they are not gods who can force everyone to endorse their lifestyle.

This column is not about that victory however. Instead, I want to tout another Supreme Court victory this same week, a follow-up of a story I had posted as a blacklist column back in August 2022, describing how postal worker Gerald Groff had been forced from his job because, after years of accommodating his religious beliefs and allowing him to not work on Sunday, his new post officer supervisor suddenly decided that he no longer had the right to those religious beliefs, and instituted disciplinary actions against him that forced him to quit. As I wrote then:
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Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars

12:16 pm

Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 22, 2023, and shows a 100-foot-high many-layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars.

The shadows in this picture are deceptive. The mesa’s high point is not the narrow ridge-line, but at the green dot just beyond that ridge’s northern terminus. In fact, if you were walking south from that dot and then along the crest of that ridge you would be walking downhill the entire length.

Cydonia is in the Martian northern lowland plains, in the mid-latitudes. Thus, there are many features in this picture suggesting near surface ice, such as the mounds with craters at their peak. All could be mud volcanoes as seen in many places in the northern lowland plains.
» Read more

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Curiosity tops a ridge to see its rough path forward

10:12 am

Curiosity's view ahead on June 29, 2023
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map

After more than a month of struggle to get Curiosity to maneuver uphill through a very rocky and steep terrain, the science team today finally announced that the rover had topped the ridge and could once again see its way forward into Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon it plans to use as its route up Mount Sharp.

The panorama above, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on June 29, 2023 following Curiosity’s last move forward. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right indicate the approximate area covered by this panorama. The red dotted line on both images indicates Curiosity’s planned route, with the white dotted line its actual course.

The white ridge to either side of the central peak dubbed Kukenan is actually the higher flanks of Mount Sharp. The peak of Kukenan is about a half mile away and about 400 feet higher, with those white flanks about 2.5 miles beyond. The actual peak of Mount Sharp is about 25 miles farther south and about 17,000 feet higher.

The panorama makes clear that the path forward is not going to be any less rough for Curiosity and its damaged wheels. Expect progress to be slow for many months to come.

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Africa’s space agency wants to build an empire

9:13 am

Link here. The article is quite typical of the mainstream press, blindly in love with government-run bureaucracies. It outlines in excellent detail all the real advantages that a thriving space industry could bring to Africa, some of which are already being realized by some of the continent’s more prosperous nations. It then assumes without any justification that a large bureaucratic space agency funded by many African nations will make that possible.

In 2019, the African Union (AU) announced its space strategy. Last January the African Space Agency (AfSA) was launched, a flagship to coordinate efforts and generate synergies. It already has a physical headquarters in Cairo, but for the moment most of its rooms stand empty.

Tidiane Ouattara, an expert in space sciences at the AU, expects its 156 permanent posts to be filled next year. Outtara highlights the importance of progressing “step by step” toward the consolidation of an agency with highly qualified personnel. A solid institution capable of “defending Africa’s interests” in the international arena and of negotiating with other countries who, when exploring space, “set the rules that were best suited to them,” he says. Ouattara understands that this was the case simply because “they were first,” although he adds: “The world must understand that now Africa is also on board” and has a lot to say on controversial issues such as space debris and space traffic.

While it is certainly true that this agency, once fully staffed, could advocate for Africa’s interests on the world stage, don’t expect that from it. Instead, it is simply a place where African leaders — many of whom are very corrupt — can return favors to friends by giving them a cushy job.

For most African nations, a space program makes no sense. At best each nation should establish laws that would give its private industries as much freedom and latitude to enter this market.

As for the African Space Agency, if it really wished to promote an African space industry, it should convince a consortium of African nations to team up to finance a variety of smallsat weather, Earth resource, and surveillance satellites that nations routinely need. It should then use that money to do what the UAE has done, hire experienced universities in the west to build those satellites, under the proviso that those universities also train African engineering students and companies at the same time. These students and companies can then go back to their countries and eventually do the work themselves.

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Dragon cargo freighter safely splashes down in Atlantic

8:49 am

After three months docked to ISS, one of SpaceX’s reusable Dragon cargo freighters safely splashed down today off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic.

This was SpaceX’s 28th cargo mission to ISS, all successful except for one launch failure not caused by the capsule itself, which post-failure analysis suggested that if it had been equipped to release parachutes it might have landed in the ocean undamaged.

This capsule brought back 3,600 pounds from the station, including some experiments that had been on the station for six years.

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Webb takes infrared (heat) image of Saturn

8:41 am

Saturn in infrared
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, scientists on June 25, 2023 took the wonderful false color infrared (heat) image of Saturn above, cropped to post here, as part of a research project [pdf] to take a number of long exposures of the ringed planet in order to test Webb’s ability to see its small moons. From the press release:

Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the Webb image.

…This new image of Saturn clearly shows details within the planet’s ring system, along with several of the planet’s moons – Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys. Additional deeper exposures (not shown here) will allow the team to probe some of the planet’s fainter rings, not visible in this image, including the thin G ring and the diffuse E ring. Saturn’s rings are made up of an array of rocky and icy fragments – the particles range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to a few as large as mountains on Earth.

The picture also shows differences between Saturn’s northern and southern hemispheres, caused by the seasonal differences between the two.

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June 29, 2023 Quick space links

2:47 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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In Pennsylvania Democratic Party politicians just proved their fascist anti-first amendment beliefs

2:20 pm

How the modern Democratic Party has evolved madly to the left
How the modern Democratic Party has evolved madly to the left

When the parental rights organization Moms for Liberty arranged to have their annual 2023 summit in the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia beginning today, six Democrats from the Pennsylvania state senate immediately proved to the world that Democrats no longer believe in free speech, and in fact make their number one principle oppression and censorship, by writing a joint letter demanding the museum cancel the event.

These Democrats also proved that their method for silencing also includes routine slanders and libels, based on zero evidence. As their letter concluded:

“The museum’s leadership has demonstrated a lack of judgment in agreeing to host a hate group. Fortunately, the mistake can be fixed with a simple and elegant solution: cancel the Moms for Liberty event scheduled for June 29. We look forward to your prompt actions,”

The letter also implied Moms for Liberty was associated with white supremacy, and used as its only evidence for these slanders the fact that the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) decided to add Moms to its hate list, a list that has been repeatedly proven to simply rank any opponent of the Democratic Party a “hater”, essentially for opposing the Democratic Party.

The Museum rejected this dictatorial demand most heartily.
» Read more

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A new theory for making liquid water once possible on Mars

1:14 pm

In order to explain the many gullies on Mars, scientists at Brown University have now proposed a new model that says liquid water could exist periodically on the surface of Mars, caused by the cyclical changes in the planet’s rotational tilt, ranging from 11 to 60 degrees.

From editor’s summary of the paper:

Some steep slopes on Mars have gullies with morphologies suggesting that they were formed by a fluid. However, the planet’s current climate is not conducive to the melting of water ice at those locations, and mechanisms involving carbon dioxide ice do not explain the distribution of the gullies. [This paper] simulated how the climate of Mars differed when its axis tilted by different amounts over the past few million years. At a tilt of 35 degrees, the ice caps partially melted, raising the atmospheric pressure, and there were higher summer temperatures. Under these conditions, the atmospheric pressure at the gullies would be above the triple point of water, so it could melt to form a liquid.

The paper estimates these conditions last existed on Mars about 630,000 years ago, though the process repeated itself many times over the past several million years, each time causing some water ice to melt and flow down to form gullies. As the planet’s inclination then changed, conditions changed as well, producing colder temperatures at these latitudes so the water froze once again.

Though this is only a model with many uncertainties, it suggests a more reasonable explanation for the past existence of liquid surface water on Mars, temporary, periodic, and rare, than most other models. Combined with the possibility that ice glaciers themselves could have contributed to the formation of many of Mars’ riverlike channels, it seems that scientists are beginning to form a rough concept explaining how Mars evolved to what it is today.

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The icy floor of one of Mars’ most ancient craters

12:44 pm

Overview map

The icy floor of one of Mars' most ancient craters
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 3, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It focuses on a small crater in the center of 265-mile-wide Greeley Crater, named in 2015 after the late Ron Greeley, who had been involved in almost every planetary mission from the 1960s until his passing in 2011.

Greeley Crater is intriguing because of its age, estimated to be about four billion years old, as indicated by crater counts and the crater’s heavily eroded condition.

This ancient crater, which has already been heavily eroded and filled with sediment, is difficult to make out against the Martian landscape due to its relatively shallow depth of only 1.5 kilometres – indeed, the crater rim has disappeared altogether in places.

Greeley is also intriguing by its location in the southern mid-latitudes. On the overview map above the red dot inside Greeley marks the location of today’s picture. This is a region with lots of evidence of ice and glacial features inside craters. The picture shows a small two-mile-wide crater about 500 feet deep inside Greeley. Both inside and outside the crater the surface suggests ice, either in glacial formations on the crater floor or as a soft flat plain that allows impacts to sink in without producing a rim or much ejecta.

While research has suggested a large number of glaciers in the outlined region on the western edge of the overview map, the evidence continues to build that near-surface ice exists everywhere throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars.

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King Charles III proposes his own vision for space, focused not on private enterprise but on achieving a globalist utopia

10:47 am

We’re here to help you! King Charles III yesterday announced a major space policy concept which he dubbed Astra Carta, aimed at making the leftist utopian vision the prime guidance for any future exploration or settlement of the solar system.

The statement from the Palace says the “Astra Carta aims to convene the private sector in creating and accelerating sustainable practices across the global space industry. It also recognises the unique role that space can play in creating a more sustainable future on Earth and the need for the space industry to consider environmental and sustainability impacts beyond our planet. Its ambition encourages a focus on placing sustainability at the core of space activity.”

You can read a detailed summary of Astra Carta’s goals here [pdf]. Its aims however make clear Charles’ globalist and Marxist goals, as previously outlined by his 2021 Terra Carta proposal for Earth:
» Read more

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Blue Origin negotiating with India to use its rockets and capsule for Orbital Reef space station

10:20 am

According to the head of India’s space agency ISRO, he has been in discussions with Blue Origin about using different versions of that nation’s largest rocket (dubbed LVM-3 or GSLV-Mk3 depending on configuration) and its manned capsule (still under development) for eventually ferrying crew and cargo to Blue Origin’s proposed Orbital Reef space station.

Somanath said: “We are exploring … In fact, we’ve already discussed it with Blue Origin and they are very keen to consider this option of LVM-3 becoming a crew capsule mission to service the Orbital Reef. It is a possibility and we are engaging through IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre).”

On the challenge of integrating a docking system that is compatible, he said standard docking systems are in the public domain. “…Whoever can design a docking system that matches with the US design and standard, can be used. However, we will still need to have agreements with agencies to try it out given that there are multiple interfaces — electrical, mechanical and so on. It is not just one document, we will need to work with them to develop it. We will do that.

It appears Somanath has also had discussions with NASA about also providing the same service to ISS.

An Orbital Reef deal however suggests something very disturbing about Blue Origin. The plan had been to use Blue Origin’s New Glenn orbital rocket (also still under development but years behind schedule) to launch crew and cargo capsules to the station. That in fact is supposed to be Blue Origin’s main technical contribution to the station. Why would the company then look to India for such capability, unless it recognizes that there are more problems with New Glenn that it has not revealed?

It is also possible that Jeff Bezos is simply expressing his leftwing globalist agenda with these negotiations. Or it could mean some combination of both. This situation bears watching.

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Using pulsars scientists detect background signal of the universe’s gravitational waves

10:07 am

The uncertainty of science: Using the variations in the precise radio pulses sent out by many pulsars over a fifteen year year astronomers think they have detected the background signal produced by many gravitational waves over time throughout the universe.

Astrophysicists using large radio telescopes to observe a collection of cosmic clocks in our Galaxy have found evidence for gravitational waves that oscillate with periods of years to decades, according to a set of papers published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The gravitational-wave signal was observed in 15 years of data acquired by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center (PFC), a collaboration of more than 190 scientists from the US and Canada who use pulsars to search for gravitational waves. International collaborations using telescopes in Europe, India, Australia and China have independently reported similar results.

Imagine that each wave is a single wave on the ocean. This detection is the rough equivalent of looking at the ocean’s overall surface and measuring the general roughness of all the waves.

The press is making a big deal about this discovery. It is good science, and will over time provide valuable insights into evolution and merger of black holes, but it is not that big a deal, especially because this research carries with it many assumptions and uncertainties that good scientists recognize. They thus remain somewhat skeptical about the data. Mainstream journalists however consider gravitational waves cool, and so they hype any press release about them, sometimes to the point of absurdity.

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MOXIE instrument on Perseverance sets new record for oxygen production

9:54 am

The MOXIE instrument on Perseverance this month doubled its last record for producing oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere of carbon dioxide.

“This was the riskiest run we’ve done,” [Michael Hecht, MOXIE’s principal investigator] told Space.com in an exclusive interview. “This could have gone wrong,” he said, and could have led to minor damage to the instrument, but it didn’t. The milestone setting Mars run took place on June 6, operating during the Martian night, and lasted 58 minutes, Hecht said.

The requirements for MOXIE were to produce 6 grams of oxygen an hour, a rate that was eventually doubled. “We rolled the dice a little bit. It was ‘hold your breath and see what happens,'” Hecht said.

Informally dubbed by Hecht and his team as “the last hurrah,” MOXIE delivered the goods on its 15th run on Mars since first gulping up Martian atmosphere within Jezero Crater on April 20, 2021.

Producing twelve grams of oxygen per hours is a very big deal. A person requires about 20 grams per hour, so this demonstration instrument has shown it can produce more than half that. Build a larger version designed to work continuously, and you easily will create enough oxygen on Mars to sustain a colony.

This means the first humans to arrive on Mars will not need to bring oxygen, only enough Moxies. More important, the oxygen supply will be infinite, putting no limit to their stay.

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