Category: Points of Information

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

ESA looking to SpaceX to launch Euclid space telescope

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: Having lost its Soyuz launch vehicle for its Euclid space telescope because of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the European Space Agency (ESA) is now looking at SpaceX as a possible option.

At a meeting of NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Council, Mark Clampin, director of the agency’s astrophysics division, said his understanding is that the European Space Agency was leaning towards launching its Euclid mission on a Falcon 9 in mid to late 2023.

NASA is a partner on Euclid, a space telescope that will operate around the Earth-sun L-2 Lagrange point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth to study dark energy, dark matter and other aspects of cosmology. The 2,160-kilogram spacecraft was to launch on a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana in 2023.

Europe has for years used its own rockets for its science missions. However, right now the Falcon 9 appears the only option. The last launches of Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket are already assigned, and the new Ariane-6 rocket has not yet flown, is behind schedule, and its early launches are also already reserved.

Nor does ESA have other options outside of SpaceX. Of the rockets powerful enough to do the job, ULA’s Atlas-5 is also being retired, and the Vulcan rocket is as yet unavailable. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is years behind schedule, with no clear idea when it will finally launch.

A final decision is expected soon. ESA could either go with SpaceX, or simply delay several years until Ariane-6 is flying.

If SpaceX gets the job however it will once again demonstrate the value of moving fast in a competitive environment. While its competitors have dithered and thus do not have their rockets ready, SpaceX has been flying steadily for years, so it gets the business.

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Gemini/Apollo astronaut Jim McDivitt passes away at 93

8:49 am

R.I.P. Jim McDivitt, who was the commander of both the Gemini 4 and Apollo 9 missions in the 1960s, passed away on October 13, 2022 at the age of 93.

He first flew in space as commander of the Gemini IV mission in June 1965. McDivitt was joined by fellow Air Force pilot Ed White on the program’s most ambitious flight to date. During Gemini IV, White would become the first American to venture outside his spacecraft for what officially is known as an extravehicular activity (EVA) or as the world has come to know it, a spacewalk. … The mission’s four-day duration nearly doubled NASA astronauts’ previous time in space to that point, with the longest American spaceflight previously being Gordon Cooper’s 34-hour Mercury 9 mission.

McDivitt’s second spaceflight as the commander of Apollo 9 played a critical role in landing the first humans on the Moon. This was the first flight of the complete set of Apollo hardware and was the first flight of the Lunar Module. The mission launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on March 3, 1969, with Commander James McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Russell Schweickart. After launch, Apollo 9 entered Earth orbit and the crew performed an engineering test of the first crewed lunar module, nicknamed “Spider,” from beginning to end. They simulated the maneuvers that would be performed during actual lunar missions. During the mission, the astronauts performed a series of flight tasks with the command and service module and the lunar module. The top priority was rendezvous and docking of the lunar module with the command and service module. The crew also configured the lunar module to support a spacewalk by McDivitt and Schweickart. On Flight Day 10, March 13, 1969, the Apollo 9 capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, within three miles and in full view of the recovery ship, the USS Guadalcanal, about 341 miles north of Puerto Rico.

To me, McDivitt’s most important discovery occurred early in his Gemini mission. After launch he was tasked with an attempt to approach and rendezvous with the upper stage, shortly after deployment. He was surprised to find that his intuition about doing so was utterly wrong. Whenever he tried to close the distance by applying thrust in the direction implied by his earthbound instincts, the distance actually increased.

McDivitt’s experience showed that rendezvous and docking in orbit was not going to be simple. In fact, it took almost the entire Gemini program in 1965 and 1966 to figure it out.

McDivitt never went to the Moon, but he was like all the first generation of American astronauts, professional, careful, dedicated, and remarkably good at what he did. May he rest in peace.

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After 30 years the Geotail solar probe appears dead

8:01 pm

Launched in 1992 as a joint U.S./Japan project to study the tail of the Earth’s magnetosphere, the Geotail solar mission appears to be over, though engineers continue to work the problem.

Originally, Geotail was equipped with two data recorders to collect the mission’s scientific data. One data recorder failed in 2012 after 20 years of gathering information about the plasma environment around Earth. The remaining data recorder continued collecting data for 10 more years until it experienced an anomaly on June 28, 2022.

The team at JAXA discovered the error with the recorder and have been performing tests to investigate the cause and extent of the damage. Ongoing attempts to recover the recorder have been unsuccessful. Without a functioning recorder, the science data from the U.S. instruments can no longer be collected or downlinked. NASA, ISAS, and JAXA are deciding the best path forward for the mission given the failure.

When the solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetosphere, it pushes it away so that on the side away from the Sun a tail forms, almost like the wake of a ship.

Without any way to download the spacecraft’s data, however, Geotail’s value as a scientific probe is extremely limited. If engineers can still control it and adjust its orbit, however, then it might still be useful for a variety of engineering and orbital flight tests.

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October 17, 2022 Quick space links

3:55 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls twitter so we don’t have to.

 

 

 

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Blacklisting in academia has been going on for decades unseen

1:04 pm

The output from modern academia
The triumphant result of academia’s long blacklisting of conservatives

Blacklists are back and academia loves ’em: Though the return of blacklisting by Democrats has only become evident and blatant in the past two years, this blacklisting culture against conservatives has been aggressively blackballing such people from academia for decades, largely silently and without any news coverage.

That no one has noticed this blackballing is because until recently this effort hasn’t tried to get conservatives fired. Instead, administrators and faculty heads in colleges nationwide have simply made it a point to not hire conservatives. They blackballed them, and did so silently so that it was difficult to accuse them of any unfair discrimination.

How do I know this? A recent series of surveys performed by the College Fix proves it unequivocally. The data from Cornell University, though extreme, was hardly unusual:
» Read more

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Jets from baby stars

12:12 pm

Jets from baby stars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated and reduced to post here, was taken across multiple wavelengths by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows two different Herbig–Haro objects (HH 1 at the top and HH 2 on the bottom). Herbig-Haro objects are the bright cloud clumps found near newly formed baby stars. These particular clouds are about 1,250 light years away. The jets flowing away from HH 1 are speeding away at about 250 miles per second.

Note that the baby stars themselves are not visible, buried in the dust that surrounds them. The bright star in the upper right is an unrelated foreground star.

In the case of HH 1/2, two groups of astronomers requested Hubble observations for two different studies. The first delved into the structure and motion of the Herbig–Haro objects visible in this image, giving astronomers a better understanding of the physical processes occurring when outflows from young stars collide with surrounding gas and dust. The second study instead investigated the outflows themselves to lay the groundwork for future observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Webb, with its ability to peer past the clouds of dust enveloping young stars, will revolutionise the study of outflows from young stars.

There is a lot of complexity here that this image only hints at. Note for example the smaller cloud objects near HH1, the shape of which suggest a shaping by some interstellar wind.

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Russia launches military satellite using Angara rocket; new global record for launches

9:00 am

Russia today successfully launched a classified military satellite using its new Angara rocket in its Angara-1.2 configuration.

Like ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6, Angara is modular, so depending on the payload’s launch needs, it can have additional strap-on boosters, from none to four. This launch had no side boosters at all.

The launch was the 135th of 2022, passing the record set last year of 134 successful launches for the entire world in one year. In 2022 the record was broken in the last week. This year the record has been broken two and a half months before the end of the year. Based on the number of planned launches for the rest of the year, 2022 is likely to easily exceed 150 launches.

And the reason this number going through the roof is because of the advent of private enterprise, private ownership of rockets, and intense competition. New rocket companies are sprouting up everywhere worldwide, each with their own rocket competing aggressively for business by lowering costs. The lower costs make it possible for more satellite companies to find financing because making money will be easier. This in turn results in more customers for the rocket companies, which encourages more competition which pushes the price down further.

The cycle feeds on itself, and will only end when the full potential of space exploration is reached. And since that potential is literally endless, this growth for the human race is also endless. The only thing that could stop it is if human civilization decides to stop it, intentionally, either from willful ignorance or fear.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

47 SpaceX
45 China
15 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 67 to 45 in the national rankings, but now trails the rest of the world combined 68 to 67.

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OSIRIS-REx does mid-course correction

8:36 am

To better refine its path back to Earth in order to properly aim its sample return capsule, engineers had OSIRIS-REx do a short successful 30 second engine burn on September 21, 2022.

Nor will this be the only course correction prior to sample return on September 24, 2023 in Utah.

To ensure a safe delivery, “Over the next year, we will gradually adjust the OSIRIS-REx trajectory to target the spacecraft closer to Earth,” said Daniel Wibben, trajectory-and-maneuver design lead with KinetX Inc. “We have to cross Earth’s orbit at the time that Earth will be at that same location.” Wibben works closely with the Lockheed Martin team in Littleton, Colorado, that flies the spacecraft.

Last month’s maneuver was the first time the OSIRIS-REx team changed the spacecraft’s trajectory since it left Bennu on May 10, 2021. Following this course adjustment, OSIRIS-REx would pass about 1,367 miles (2,200 kilometers) from Earth. A series of maneuvers beginning in July 2023 will bring OSIRIS-REx even closer, to 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the surface, close enough to release its sample capsule for a precision landing – via parachute at the Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert.

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China launches military satellite

8:31 am

Using its Long March 2D rocket, China today successfully launched a satellite in its classified Yaogan series, suspected to be for military reconnaissance.

In fact, so little is known about the Yaogan satellites that we aren’t even sure how many were placed in orbit today. Normally a Yaogan launch puts three satellites into orbit (which is what this Space.com article assumes). The story from China’s state-run press above however does not say this at all. Instead, it implies that only one Yaogan satellite was launched.

Regardless, the leaders in the 2022 launch race:

47 SpaceX
45 China
14 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 67 to 45 in the national rankings. It is now tied with the entire world combined 67 to 67. This launch today also brings the launch total this year to 134, which ties the record for the most successful launches in a single year, set last year. With two and a half months still to go, 2022 should end up breaking that record significantly.

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SpaceX successfully launches communications satellite

10:32 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched a Eutelsat communications satellite using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage completed its third mission, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings completed their fourth flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

47 SpaceX
44 China
14 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 67 to 44 in the national rankings. It now leds with the entire world combined 67 to 66.

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Two solar eclipses coming to the U.S. next year

12:47 pm

The next eclipses to cross the U.S.
Map by Michael Zeiler (GreatAmericanEclipse.com). Click for original.

The U.S. public will get to see two different solar eclipses during a six month period, starting one year from today.

The map to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the dates and the path of both eclipses.

On 14 October 2023, anyone under clear skies within a path that sweeps from Oregon to Texas and then through parts of Central and South America will see an annular (“ring”) eclipse. Just six months later, on 8 April 2024, a total solar eclipse will sweep from Mexico to Texas to the Canadian Maritimes, plunging day into night and revealing the magnificent solar corona for anyone fortunate to be within the path of totality and under clear skies. Nearly everyone in North America will have a partial solar eclipse both days.

As always with eclipses, great care must be taken to watch it. With the 2017 eclipse Diane and I had good filters, but even so I noticed my eyes were very tired for several days afterward.

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Pushback: Central Florida U forced to end censorship and blacklisting

12:31 pm

University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech
University of Central Florida: Its hostility to free
speech had better change soon!

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In a settlement late last month [pdf] resulting from an April ruling against it by the courts, the University of Central Florida agreed to end its programs and policies designed to censor and even blacklist students who expressed opinions the university did not like.

The lawsuit [pdf] was brought by the legal organization Speech First, a student membership organization which acts to stop colleges from squelching the first amendment rights of students.

UCF officials agreed to pay $35,000 in legal fees, rewrite a harassment policy and discontinued the bias response team in a settlement with Speech First.

…The settlement “led to the elimination of UCF’s Stasi-like bias response team and ensured that the university’s policies actually consider the fundamental rights of their students,” Cherise Trump, the group’s executive director, wrote in a news release [pdf]. “Our win in the Eleventh Circuit not only set precedent in all of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, but it also guarantees that universities recognize that the law is not on their side when they want to violate their students’ rights and shut down dissenting ideas.”

The college’s bias response teams were structured to report and punish any student for…
» Read more

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Perseverance spots Phobos

10:57 am

Phobos, as seen by Perseverance on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on January 12, 2022 by one of the high resolution cameras on the Mars rover Perseverance, and shows the Martian moon Phobos.

As noted in an update today by Claire Newman, one of the members of the science team,

This provides a measurement, using visible light, of the amount of dust in the nighttime atmosphere, which can be compared to similar measurements made by looking at the sun during the daytime, and to nighttime measurements of dust abundance made in the infrared by MEDA [another Perseverance instrument].

There have been three attempts to land on Phobos, all by the Russians, all of which failed. At present a Japanese mission to Phobos, dubbed Mars Moons eXploration or MMX, is scheduled to launch in 2024. This is a planned sample return mission, and will also include a rover.

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Lucy to fly past Earth on October 16th

10:13 am

Lucy solar panel graphic
Artist’s impression of solar panel

As part of its planned route to get to the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit, the planetary probe Lucy is scheduled to fly only 220 miles above the Earth’s surface on October 16th.

Lucy will be passing the Earth at such a low altitude that the team had to include the effect of atmospheric drag when designing this flyby. Lucy’s large solar arrays increase this effect.

“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”

That solar array remains unlatched (as shown in the graphic above), but because it is almost completely deployed and is producing about 90% of its intended electricity, engineers have ceased efforts to complete deployment and latching.

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Skyrora’s first suborbital rocket launch fails shortly after liftoff

9:57 am

Capitalism in space: The first launch attempt of a suborbital rocket for Skyrora, a rocket startup from the United Kingdom, failed on October 8, 2022 shortly after liftoff.

The launch was from Iceland, with the rocket crashing in the ocean about 1,600 feet from the pad. No one was injured. The rocket, Skylark-L, was designed for a suborbital flight to test equipment that will be used in the orbital rocket, Skyrora-XL.

Skylark-L is Skyrora’s 11m suborbital rocket, capable of reaching 4x the speed of sound and an altitude of over 125 km. 70% of the technology tested in the Skylark-L launch attempt will be applied to the systems of the Skyrora-XL vehicle, providing a key incremental learning opportunity to increase technological readiness ahead of vertical orbital launch next year.

As this was an engineering flight, the failure is actually a good thing, as it will provide Skyrora’s engineers information about changes needed to make their rocket function properly. Don’t expect that first orbital launch however next year, as the company promises. These things always take longer than expected.

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Watching return of ISS crew on Freedom

9:40 am

The SpaceX manned capsule Freedom has undocked from ISS, carrying three astronauts completing a six month mission, with a scheduled splashdown planned for 4:50 pm (Eastern) off the western coast of Florida.

I have embedded NASA’s live stream below, for those that wish to watch. Note that though NASA inserts itself into this event, once the spacecraft has left ISS everything — including all workers involved in splashdown operations — is solely under the supervision of SpaceX, with NASA’s participation only that of a customer, albeit a very powerful one. This is a capsule and splashdown designed, built, run, and most important, owned by a private American company, not the government.
» Read more

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Final decision: Arecibo will not be rebuilt

3:34 pm

The National Science Foundation has made it official: It will not rebuild the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, though it will fund the facility as an education center instead.

Now, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the site, has determined that despite scientists’ pleas, Arecibo Observatory won’t be getting any new telescope to replace the loss. The new education project also doesn’t include any long-term funding for the instruments that remain operational at the observatory, including a 40-foot (12 m) radio dish and a lidar system.

…Instead, the NSF intends to build on the observatory’s legacy as a key educational institution in Puerto Rico by transforming the site into a hub for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, due to open in 2023, according to a statement. The observatory is also home to the Ángel Ramos Foundation Science and Visitor Center, which opened in 1997.

It seems unclear how this education center will function. Will it be a school that students attend? Or simply a type of museum with a visitors center? This new plan appears to call for about $2 million per year in funding, which does not appear enough to do much of anything, other than to keep the lights on and hang some pretty astronomy pictures on the walls.

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Changing slope streaks on Mars

3:08 pm

Overview map

Changing slope streaks on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists have labeled a “Splitting Slope Streak” on a mound/hill near the equator and located almost midpoint between the giant volcano Olympus Mons about 2,000 miles to the east and the almost as big volcano Elysium Mons about 2,500 miles to the west. The white cross on the overview map above marks this location, north of the Medusae Fossae volcanic ash deposit.

The slope streak in question is the biggest and darkest at about 7 o’clock. Slope streaks are a feature unique to Mars that remain as yet unexplained. They are not ordinary avalanches, despite their appearance. They seem to have no effect on the topography, and thus are more a stain on the surface. Moreover, some are bright, some dark, and all happen randomly and fade with time. Some think they may be brine-related, while others link them to dust. No theory explains them completely.

What makes this slope streak interesting is that it is relatively new. Compare it with the picture taken in 2016 below.
» Read more

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Pushback: Chants of “Vote them out!” overwhelm school board meeting

12:11 pm

Roxanne McDonald thinking she is in charge.
School board president Roxanne McDonald,
thinking she is in charge.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A school board meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, had to be shut down when a mostly Muslim crowd of parents (with some Christians as well) became outraged by what appeared to be resistance by the school board to their demand that various books advocating the queer agenda be removed from the public school libraries.

As the meeting progressed, interruptions from the crowd became louder and increasingly frequent, despite calls from board members for decorum and respecting the right of others to speak.

Chants of “vote them out,” broke out when school board president Roxanne McDonald said a three-minute limit per speaker would be strictly enforced. The room was also far over its occupancy limit, and after the crowd ignored multiple orders for people to move into two overflow rooms, board members ended the meeting prior to the public comment period.

The video below shows the situation leading up to the board shutting down the meeting. Watch it and tell me if you do not think board president Roxanne McDonald is a self-righteous petty dictator who has utter contempt for the parents who are there.
» Read more

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The known near Earth asteroid catalog now tops 30,000

9:35 am

Chart of NEA's discovered over time

The catalog of known near Earth asteroids that have been identified using a number of survey telescopes in space and on the Earth now totals 30,039. As defined at the link:

An asteroid is called a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) when its trajectory brings it within 1.3 Astronomical Units (au) of the Sun. 1 au is the distance between the Sun and Earth, and so NEAs can come within at least 0.3 au, 45 million km, of our planet’s orbit.

Currently, near-Earth asteroids make up about a third of the roughly one million asteroids discovered so far in the Solar System. Most of them reside in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

NEAs are also called NEOs (Near Earth Objects). The chart above, produced by the Center for NEO Studies which tracks these objects, shows the number of NEAs discovered over time.

Of the 30,039 now known, about 1,400 have orbits with “a non-zero” chance of hitting the Earth. None however will do so in the next hundred years at least.

Though the pace of discovery is vastly improving — as indicated by the steep rise in the curve in the graph — only when that curve begins to flatten out will we know that we are getting close to having a more-or-less complete survey of these objects.

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TESS enters safe mode

9:18 am

The science team for TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) revealed yesterday that the spacecraft had entered safe mode on October 10th.

The spacecraft is in a stable configuration that suspends science observations. Preliminary investigation revealed that the TESS flight computer experienced a reset. The TESS operations team reported that science data not yet sent to the ground appears to be safely stored on the satellite. Recovery procedures and investigations are underway to resume normal operations, which could take several days.

TESS has been in orbit since 2018, where it has been repeatedly taking survey images of the entire sky. Astronomers then compare these images to see if they can spot exoplanet transits (as well as any other new phenomenon). So far 250 exoplanets have been identified.

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China launches Earth observation radar satellite

9:13 am

Using its Long March 2C rocket, China today successfully launched a new Earth observation radar satellite.

As is usual for Chinese launches from interior spaceports, the rocket dumped its lower stages somewhere within China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

46 SpaceX
44 China
14 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 66 to 44 in the national rankings. It is now tied with the entire world combined 66 each.

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Ispace targets November 9-15 launch window for first commercial lunar lander

9:07 am

The private Japanese company Ispace has now scheduled the launch of its commercial lunar lander Hakuto-R on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a November 9-15, 2022 launch window.

Though the lander’s primary goal is to see if this lander will work, it also includes several customer payloads, the most significant of which is the Rashid rover from the United Arab Emirates. Rashid, which is about the size of a Radio Flyer red wagon, will operate for one lunar day, about two weeks. While its main mission is to test the engineering and to train the engineers who built it, it will have two cameras for taking pictures. In addition, on its wheels are test adhesive patches of different materials, designed to see how each material interacts with the Moon’s abrasive dust.

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October 12, 2022 Quick space links

2:34 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls twitter so the rest of us don’t have to.

  • Amazon will launch two Kuiper test satellites on first Vulcan launch

    • That launch is tentatively scheduled for the first quarter of ’23, but don’t bet on it. Moreover, this means Amazon is gambling its first Kuiper launch on an untested rocket.

    Even if it does happen, Kuiper has taken years to get started, and is way behind SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, even though both were first announced at about the same time.

 

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An icy hollow on Mars

2:07 pm

A icy hollow on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a somewhat typical example of the many ice scarps that scientists have identified in MRO pictures.

Though this is not a hard fast rule, most of the ice scarps so far found tend to have the steep cliff on the pole-facing side, with the scarp very slowly retreating towards the equator. In today’s example, the scarp where an ice layer in the cliff wall has been identified is indicated by the white arrow, though three sides of the hollow, on the east, north, and west sides, could all also have exposed ice.

Nor is that the only likely ice at this location at 56 degrees south latitude. The stippled plain surrounding the hollow clearly looks like an eroded ice layer, likely covered with a thin protective coat of dust to protect if from quickly sublimating away. The dark streaks across this surface are likely dust devil tracks.

As documented by the global map below, Mars is like Antarctica, a desert with water ice everywhere.
» Read more

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