Category: Points of Information

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

April 13, 2023 Quick space links

9:00 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, sent these out on time but was stymied when his email bounced back hours later.

I say, better late than never.

 

 

 

 

 

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A pyramid on Mars

1:04 pm

A pyramid on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “pyramidal mound”, which is I think understating the point somewhat.

This pyramid is almost perfectly square, with two perpendicular ridgelines rising from its corners to meet perfectly at the pyramid’s peak. A similar pyramid mound in the Cydonia region, where the so-called “Face on Mars” was found, caused endless absurd speculations in the 1990s of past Martian civilizations, all of which burst into nothingness when good high resolution images were finally obtained in the 2000s.

But what caused this very symmetrical natural feature?
» Read more

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Blacklist followup: Rhode Island school district fails to respond to lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians

11:44 am

Rhode Island: haven to oppression
Oppressive Rhode Island

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Because a Rhode Island school district in Providence failed to respond to a lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians, it has now defaulted and awaits a final judgment against it.

Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the school district on March 10, 2023. The Providence Public School District did not answer the complaint by the court’s deadline. Yesterday, Liberty Counsel filed an application to enter a default against the school district which will allow Liberty Counsel to seek a final judgment against the defendants. Today, the federal court entered the default against the district and its superintendent. Having raised no defense to the lawsuit, the district will be subject to a judgment requiring it to provide equal access to the Good News Clubs. Liberty Counsel will also pursue attorney’s fees and costs against the defendants.

This is a followup on a March 2023 blacklist column. » Read more

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German students about to attempt launch of suborbital hybrid rocket

10:17 am

A student project at the University of Stuttgart in Germany is about to attempt the first suborbital launch of a hybrid rocket that has the possibility of setting a new altitude record for student-built rockets.

The hybrid rocket is 7.80 m long and weighs around 70 kg. It was built by around 60 students from the University Group HyEnD of the University of Stuttgart. “It’s one of the most powerful and advanced student-built hybrid rockets in the world,” says Max Öchsle, HyEnD project manager. With this, the students have big plans: They want to beat their own altitude record of 32 km for student-built hybrid rockets, which they set in 2016.

The students also hope to cross the boundary into space at an altitude of 100 km. In addition to the world record for hybrid rockets, this also makes the world record for student-built rockets in general possible. The previous record is 103.6 km and was set by the University of Southern California (USCRPL) team in 2019. “The world record is within our reach. We could indeed beat it,” says Öchsle. Öchsle is well aware that the record depends on other factors such as the weather.

The launch window begins on April 14th, and extends until April 25th, will take place at the new Esrange commercial spaceport in Sweden, and will be live streamed by the spaceport. Updates on the project can be found at the project’s own website.

What makes this particular student project interesting to me is its location, in Germany. That nation presently has three startup rocket companies racing to be the first to reach orbit. These students are clearly aiming for jobs with this emerging German rocket industry, and if successful at this project will bring to that industry some very sophisticated abilities.

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Museum offers $25k for recovery of meteorite that landed in Maine April 8th

9:55 am

Meteorite landing track

Because a instrument operated by NOAA picked up radar data of an asteroid fall over Maine on April 8, 2023, it has been possible for NASA scientists to publish a track, shown to the right, of where any pieces of the meteorite might have landed.

As a result, the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum has offered a $25k reward to anyone who turns in the first piece weighing more than one kilogram.

The $25,000 reward is only for the first kilogram, but Pitt said that the museum will also buy other fireball pieces that are found. “Depending upon the type of meteorite this is, specimens could easily be worth their weight in gold,” he said.

The American Meteor Society received six witness reports of Saturday’s fireball, half of which were in northeast Maine. One of the witnesses described the meteorite as having a “long glowing tail (but no smoke).” Another said that it was “bright red” while the tail was “very white.”

The museum also emphasized that any meteorite hunters must get landowner permission before entering private land.

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Hakuto-R1 now scheduled to land on Moon on April 25th

9:41 am

Lunar map showing Hakuto-R1's landing spot
Hakuto-R1’s planned landing site is in Atlas Crater.

The private company Ispace yesterday announced that their Hakuto-R1 lunar lander, presently in orbit around the Moon, will attempt a landing on April 25, 2023, landing in Atlas Crater.

At approximately 15:40 on April 25, 2023, (UTC), the lander is scheduled to begin the landing sequence from the 100 km altitude orbit. During the sequence, the lander will perform a braking burn, firing its main propulsion system to decelerate from orbit. Utilizing a series of pre-set commands, the lander will adjust its attitude and reduce velocity in order to make a soft landing on the lunar surface. The process will take approximately one hour.

Should conditions change, there are three alternative landing sites and depending on the site, the landing date may change. Alternative landing dates, depending on the operational status, are April 26, May 1, and May 3, 2023.

The lander carries several commercial payloads, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Rashid rover. Ispace says the landing will be publicly live streamed, with more details to follow.

The company has from the beginning been treating this entire mission as an engineering test, with ten major goals, all related to proving out the lander’s systems. It has now completed eight of those goals, with a successful landing and successful operations on the surface the last challenges. If Hakuto-R1 succeeds, Ispace will become the first private company to complete a privately funded planetary mission to the Moon.

Furthermore, the company is already planning its second lunar landing mission, Hakuto-R2 in 2024, and a third more ambitious lunar mission for NASA, partnering with the American company Draper.

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April 12, 2023 Quick space links

5:49 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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Triple crater on Mars

1:19 pm

Triple crater on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists have labeled simply as a “triple crater,” a very apt description.

What caused this? The most obvious explanation is the arrival almost simultaneously of three pieces. As this asteroid or comet entered the thin Martian atmosphere as a single object, that atmosphere was thick enough to break it into three parts but not enough to destroy it entirely. When it hit the ground, the top piece hit first, with the center and bottom pieces following in sequence, thus partly obscuring the previous hits.

The smaller surrounding craters could either be additional pieces from the bolide, or secondary impacts from ejecta thrown out at impact.
» Read more

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Tennessee’s Republicans move to represent the left, not their constituents

12:21 pm

What Tennessee's Republicans are doing
A picture of Tennessee’s Republicans

Capitulating as always: In response to calls from Tennessee’s very small and very minor Democratic Party — including its normal mobs of screaming protesters, some of which routinely threaten violence — the Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, is now demanding new gun laws aimed at making it easier to take guns away from Tennessee citizens.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called Tuesday for state lawmakers to pass a law aimed at preventing guns from getting in the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others.

The Republican governor also said he will sign a new executive order later Tuesday aimed at strengthening background checks on firearm purchases. “I’m asking the General Assembly to bring forward an order of protection law,” Lee said in a news conference at a Nashville police station. “A new, strong order of protection law will provide the broader population cover, safety, from those who are a danger to themselves or the population. “This is our moment to lead and to give the people of Tennessee what they deserve.” [emphasis mine]

Yeah, he wants to give it to them, good and hard. And apparently he has support from the Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, and Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who is the Senate speaker.
» Read more

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FCC makes official its regulatory power grab beyond its statutory authority

10:22 am

We are here to help you! The FCC yesterday officially launched a new stand-alone Space Bureau which will be focused on institutionalizing the many new regulations the FCC has proposed for controlling how satellites are built and de-orbited.

The Space Bureau was carved out of the FCC’s International Bureau to help the regulator handle its increasing workload in the industry. The restructuring effectively splits the International Bureau into two units: the Space Bureau and the Office of International Affairs (OIA) that will handle the FCC’s work with foreign and international regulatory authorities more generally.

While the bureau’s first leader, Julie Kearney, claimed the goal of this reorganization is to streamline licensing, she also made it clear that she will also be using her new position to make the proposed new regulations on satellite construction and deorbit the law of the land, even though Congress never gave the FCC this particular regulatory power.

Based on Congress’s general weakness and willingness in the past half century to cede power to the administrative state, Kearney and the FCC will likely succeed. For example, though a bill has been introduced in Congress to address the FCC’s power grab, it basically endorses it.

In other words, the bureaucrats in DC now essentially write the laws, Congress bows meekly to approve them, and then the bureaucracy moves to enforce them.

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Does India’s new space policy shift operations from the government to the private sector?

10:06 am

On April 6, 2023 the Modi government of India announced that it had approved a new space policy, describing it as designed to boost private commercial space over the government-run operations of its space agency ISRO.

At the time, and still to this day, the actual text of that policy has not been released. However, an article today from India provides some analysis of this policy, based on statements by several government officials, and suggests that the goal of that policy is the same as NASA’s has been for the past decade, shift from being the builder of spacecraft and rockets to simply being the customer buying those products from the private sector. The key statement illustrating this came from Dr. S. Somnath, chairman of ISRO.

Speaking to the media, Somnath said that the new policy is focused on strengthening the participation of private players in India’s space program. The ISRO chairman also said that the new policy outlines a framework under which the private sector can use ISRO facilities for a small fee. The policy also looks upon private players to create new infrastructure in the space sector.

In what can be seen as a critical move, Somnath told the media that “ISRO will not do any operational and production work for the space sector and focus its energies on developing new technologies, new systems and research and development.” This essentially means that the routine production and launches that the ISRO was so caught up with until now will be handled by the private sector completely.

In other words, ISRO’s effort to capture market share by launching its rockets (dubbed GSLV, PSLV, and SSLV) for profit will eventually end. The Modi government instead wants the private sector to do this work, with rockets it builds and owns.

Even if we assume this analysis is correct, replacing ISRO’s rocket with private rockets however cannot happen quickly. While India has a vibrant commercial space industry, it presently only has two startup rocket companies, Agnikul and Skyroot, neither of which is close to reaching orbit. For NASA, the transition from running and owning everything to being a customer took about a decade. Expect the same transition in India to take as long, assuming the Modi government stays firm against the resistance that will surely come from its government bureaucracy, and any later administrations hold to this policy as well.

Furthermore, that the policy text has not been made public strongly suggests that the Modi government recognizes that it will face strong opposition within India’s very large and powerful bureaucracy, which is far larger and stronger than even the U.S.’s administrative state in DC. Fighting that bureaucracy in India is going to be very difficult, if not impossible.

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Relativity ends Terran-1, will move to developing more powerful Terran-R

9:40 am

According to Tim Ellis, the head of the rocket company Relativity, it has decided to end any further work on its small test rocket, Terran-1 following its first failed launch and shift all work to developing its more powerful Terran-R rocket.

The company feels good about the data collected from the flight, as Terran 1 made it further into space than the debut launches from a majority of small rocket companies. It also validated the company’s test and launch program, he said, and its approach to 3D printing large parts of a rocket. “Terran 1 was always meant to develop technologies that were pushing the bounds for what was needed for Terran R,” Ellis said.

But now, it’s time to move on. Relativity Space is negotiating with NASA to move the one existing commercial launch on Terran 1—the Venture Class Launch Services Demonstration 2 mission—onto another rocket, possibly the Terran R. In other words, there will be no more Terran 1 launches.

Ellis also described some major changes in the design of Terran-R. The company will no longer attempt to make the second stage reusable, it will no longer 3D-print its entire structure, its first stage will be more powerful and will be flown and reusable like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and its first launch will be pushed back from 2024 to 2026.

This decision means that Relativity will not become an operational and competitive rocket company for another three years, at the soonest. However, should it succeed in achieving these new plans for Terran-R, it will have a rocket that can directly compete with SpaceX, while beating out anything either ULA or Blue Origin can at this time offer. For example, the rocket will be able to put from 23 to 33 tons into low Earth orbit, which is more than the Falcon 9 (20 tons) and not much less than the Falcon Heavy (50 tons), and generally better than Vulcan (27 tons). As noted at the link:

[T]he US government (as well as commercial satellite customers) would very much like a second company to step forward and challenge SpaceX on innovation, price, and reliability. Ellis correctly sees that this lane remains open with questions about Vulcan’s long-term future, Blue Origin’s slow movement on New Glenn, and Rocket Lab’s focus on a smaller medium-lift rocket, Neutron.

Whether this new strategy will work depends entirely on whether Relativity can deliver by 2026. If it does so, it will very likely beat Blue Origin into orbit, and be chosen by the military to replace it as one of the Pentagon’s launch providers. It will also make ULA’s position more vulnerable, because Vulcan will no longer be the only other option, and it will likely not be able to compete with the prices offered by SpaceX and Relativity.

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SpaceX announces it will be providing a webcast for Starship’s first orbital flight

9:03 pm

Starship/Superheavy flight plan for first orbital flight
Click for original image.

SpaceX today revealed the details for its live stream of the first orbital launch of Superheavy/Starship, now targeting a launch date around April 21, 2023, depending on when the FAA issues the launch license.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin ~45 minutes before liftoff. As is the case with all developmental testing, this schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our social media channels for updates.

I will embed that live stream here on Behind the Black. Stay tuned for more information.

The flight plan is shown above. The website also provides a detailed timeline. If launch manages to pass through Max-Q and get to stage separation, Superheavy will do a flip to do a soft targeted landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will continue into orbit, and then fire its engines to return to Earth to do a soft targeted landing in the Pacific northeast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

That is the plan. Much can go wrong along the way, considering Superheavy has never flown once, no less with Starship stacked on top. Furthermore, Starship has never flown in its present iteration. Previous suborbital tests were using much earlier prototypes vastly different that this prototype, #24 in the series.

Regardless whether all goes perfectly or some things fail, the launch will be a success because it will provide SpaceX data for future test flights, which are waiting in the wings.

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April 11, 2023 Quick space links

4:45 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • Blue Origin releases another PR video touting its wonderfulness

    • This video is absolutely worth watching (if you can tolerate the smug self-righteous blather), because it reveals quite starkly the utter vapidness of the company. There is no content here, just empty feel-good propaganda. At no point does the video tell us specifically what Blue Origin is doing to achieve its goals, strongly suggesting it is failing to do anything.

    And this almost a decade after the company announced it was building its orbital New Glenn rocket, which is still at least two years from launch. Think about what SpaceX has achieved in that same time.

 

 

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What will the Republicans controlling Tennessee’s statehouse do now that Nashville’s City Council has reinstated their expelled representative?

2:04 pm

Riot in Tennessee Statehouse
L to R, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson stand at
the podium, using a bullhorn to lead protester chants.

Bring a gun to a knife fight? When the Tennessee House first moved to expel two members, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, because of their participation in a riot that shut down the legislature on March 30, 2023, I noted the following:

Note that this gigantic Republican majority [75 to 24] reflects the wishes of the voters of Tennessee. If that majority fails to expel these three misbehaving Democrats, just because it is intimidated by the loud and almost violent actions of small minority, it will then prove not only how worthless it is, but that the voters themselves might not have the courage to stand up to these leftist thugs. As I say, the elected officials reflect the wishes of the voters. Weakness now in the statehouse will indicate weakness at all levels.

Subsequently the House did expel two of the three offending representatives (the third surviving by a single vote). In response, the Nashville city council moving to quickly reinstate its expelled representative, Justin Jones. It is expected that tomorrow the local county commission that Justin Pearson represented will reinstate him as well.

We have now reached the bottom line: What will the Republicans who control the statehouse in Tennessee by very wide margins do?

The immediate answer appears to be to capitulate.
» Read more

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Weird surface cracking in the Martian northern lowland plains

11:56 am

Weird surface cracks on Mars

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture was simply labeled “Channel-like feature”, which hardly describes this strange terrain.

Apparently a mantle of surface material has covered and filled an ancient east-west channel. That surface material however has since cracked along the edges of that channel as well along its length. The cracks suggest that the material in the channel is moving downhill slowly, cracking along the cliff walls while also being pulled apart to form the north-south cracks.

My regular readers will I think be able to guess what is going on here, but if you can’t, the overview map below will help explain this.
» Read more

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Startup aims to provide Space Force a satellite that can study the satellites of other countries

10:01 am

True Anomaly, a Colorado-based startup, has proposed building satellites for the Space Force designed to maneuver close to other satellites and provide high resolution imagery and data about them.

The company has already raised $30 million, and used it to hire 57 employees and a facility for manufacturing these satellites.

The startup plans to use the funding to scale the production of its Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, which was designed to study space objects at close range. The spacecraft collects photos, videos and data about any space objects in orbit, and it’s operated by humans with the assistance of artificial intelligence pilots.

Both China and Russia have flown a handful of satellites testing this exact technology. The U.S. has not, at least nothing comparable in recent years.

The real story here however is the manner in which the Space Force will do this. Instead of designing and building the satellites itself, which has been the policy of the military for decades, the Space Force is following the recommendations in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space, and becoming merely a customer, letting private companies do the work and own it themselves.

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Startup proposes capturing space junk with a satellite operating like a whale

9:53 am

Paladin satellite capturing space junk

Paladin, a new space junk removal startup based in Australia, has now proposed building a satellite that would literally swallow space junk and then send it over the ocean to burn up.

The image to the right shows the satellite as a piece of junk is about to be captured. The advantage it has on all other designs for capturing space junk is its simplicity. No nets, no harpoons, no grappling arms. The debris is captured inside a box inside the satellite, and then that box is released to burn up. This quote from the startup’s founder and CEO, Harrison Box, illustrates well his investment argument:

“The European Space Agency is currently paying 100 million euros to remove just one item of space junk. That’s the value they put on the job,” says Box. “Imagine the value of being able to remove hundreds.”

Paladin is one of 29 startups that have divided up $14 million in development money provided by a program of the Australian government. Thus, it is only at the very beginning of development, without a lot of cash to work with.

The idea however is smart, with great potential.

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Starship orbital test flight delayed one more week due to FAA delays

9:29 am

According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, the first orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy has been delayed again.

Starship launch trending towards near the end of third week of April

Musk had made it clear in an April 8th tweet the cause of this delay or any other delays:

Starship is ready for launch. Awaiting regulatory approval

Musk needs to be somewhat diplomatic as it will not help him to make federal bureaucrats his enemies. What he is doing here is subtly letting everyone know the sole cause of the delay, in order to press the FAA to get a move on, without saying so directly. He leaves that to others, such as myself, to say it instead.

I fear that the FAA is now demanding that it must look at the data from any wet dress rehearsal countdown, including the short engine burst that Superheavy will likely do at T-0, before it will issue the permit. If so, we could see more than a week delay. The launch should easily slip to late May if not later.

The absurdity of this is that it is utterly pointless for FAA bureaucrats to look at any of this data. What do they know? Nothing. If something was significantly wrong SpaceX engineers would know far sooner, and delay the launch themselves.

The delays seen in issuing this one launch license however give us a nice picture of what it will be like for the launch industry once the moratorium on heavy regulations by the FAA and other federal agencies expires on October 1, 2023. Expect a substantial slowdown in development and launches, with many of the new companies about to become operational instead going bankrupt in a replay of the destruction of Virgin Orbit by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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April 10, 2023 Quick space links

4:52 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also prodded me into doing that earlier post today about the coming regulatory sledgehammer against commercial human spaceflight.

 

  • A photo of the Centaur-5 explosion during testing

    • The picture really doesn’t tell us much. Though ULA’s CEO Tori Bruno said this “anomaly” during testing will not impact the first launch of Vulcan-Centaur in May, we shall have to wait and see.

 

 

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Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 4

3:53 pm

Overview map

Gullies in Asimov Crater
Click for full image.

Today is the last part in our four part exploration of the cratered southern highlands of Mars, begun last week. (For the early parts, go here-Part #1, here-Part #2, and here-Part #3.) Though there is no need, new readers should read the first three parts first, in order to get the larger perspective of this final post.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eastern main gully descending down into a pit that sits in the north center of 52-mile-wide Asimov Crater, as shown in the inset on the overview map above. (For an MRO high resolution of the western gullies into this pit, see this January 2019 cool image post.)
» Read more

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Pushback: Catholic college moves to end its need for any federal funding

3:00 pm

Belmont Abbey College

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Belmont Abbey College, a small private Catholic college in North Carolina, has begun a major fund-raising campaign to free itself and its students from any need to obtain what it calls “intrusive” federal funding.

According to their fund-raising website,

Without the ability to remain financially independent and secure, we place our faith-based practices at risk from a federal government both increasingly intrusive to private institutions and increasingly hostile to faith. The mission of Belmont Abbey College is rooted in a desire to fill society with graduates prepared to restore the culture for the greater glory of God and create a world where charity and goodness thrive.

Their goal is to raise $55 million.
» Read more

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Report recommends Congress allow full regulation of commercial human spaceflight

12:10 pm

The modern instruction manual for America
The modern instruction manual for America

A new report by the RAND corporation has recommended that Congress allow the moratorium on full regulation of commercial human spaceflight, established by the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 and extended several times, to expire on October 1, 2023.

That recommendation came despite a lack of progress on voluntary standards and key industry metrics. While standards development organizations like ASTM International and ISO have published 20 standards related to commercial spaceflight, the RAND report noted that “companies have yet to clearly or consistently adopt them in a manner that can be confirmed or verified publicly.” A diversity of technical approaches also hinders the development and implementation of standards.

The report also found that while the FAA had developed key industry indicators to assess readiness for adopting safety regulations, there were no goals for those indicators to determine when it was time to implement regulations. “It is, therefore, difficult to assess whether there has been progress toward meeting key industry metrics when there are not clear targets that could be met,” the report concluded.

Despite that lack of progress on standards or metrics, the RAND report nonetheless concluded that allowing the learning period to expire this year was the best approach. Doing so, it argued, would allow FAA and industry to start the process of developing safety regulations in a gradual manner and avoid a rush to regulate imposed by Congress should a high-profile accident take place while the learning period is still in effect.

It also recommended additional resources for the FAA to support that regulatory process, but did not quantify an increase in the budget for or personnel assigned to its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the crushing fundamentals of all government regulation. » Read more

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The Earth hangs above the Moon

10:42 am

The Earth hangs above the Moon

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on December 10, 2015 and released by the LRO team this week. From the caption:

LRO slewed to the east as it passed over the northwest rim (-8.536°N, 251.028°E, 82 km altitude) of the Orientale basin and snapped this spectacular Earth-Moon sequence with the NAC and WAC [cameras]. Tropical Cyclone Bohale is visible in the center of the image. MODIS (onboard the NASA Aqua satellite) imaged the same storm 3 hours after LRO.

The NAC and WAC images of the Earth were projected using a Point-Perspective projection to recreate the view one would see from the LRO spacecraft while taking the NAC image. Due to the relatively slow speed of the spacecraft slew, many NAC framelets of the Earth were acquired. All these WAC frames were oversampled and averaged, enabling a “super-resolution” color image (115 pixels across!), which was then combined with the 4000-pixel-wide NAC image.

…[For the Earth:] North is to the left, Antarctica to the right, Australia at the top, and Africa at the bottom

NAC and WAC are names of two different LRO cameras, one of which captured the Earth in high resolution color while the other captured the Moon. The two images were then combined, superimposing the Earth at the right size onto the second lunar image.

As noted in the caption, this view is as LRO sees the Earth from Lunar orbit, while taking a slewed oblique image of the Moon. It however is not how things would look if you were standing on the surface of the Moon. For one, the photo is zoomed in to get details on the lunar surface, making the Earth appear much larger.

For another, the image is taken 82 kilometers or 51 miles above the Moon. This higher altitude changes the position of the Earth relative to the Moon, making it appear farther from the horizon.

To a person standing in Orientale basin at 8 degrees south latitude (near the equator), but also near the edge of the visible near side of the Moon, the Earth would likely be very close to the horizon, but much smaller. To get a comparable view of the Earth, the person would likely need to use binoculars.

Orientale basin is mostly on the far side of the Moon, though it was known to exist before the space age because ground-based telescopes could see it on the edge of the visible face. It was only with the first lunar orbiters was the basin imaged from directly above, revealing its large size and distinct concentric rings forming its several circular rims.

At this location, the Earth would essentially always remain at approximately the same spot in the sky, though its illuminated face would wax and wane, like the Moon’s does, during the Moon’s twenty-eight day-long day.

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Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 3

2:06 pm

Overview map

Pit and surface in crater
Click for original image.

This is the third part of this week’s series taking a look at some of the strange features in the southern cratered highlands of Mars. In the first part I posted a beautiful image of what appears to be a crater filled to the brim with glacial ice, surrounded by an ice sheet plain. In part two we took a look at the interior of Rabe Crater, which though very nearby does not appear to have obvious glacial features within it at all. What it has instead are deep open air pits and a lot of sand dunes.

Today’s image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, takes us to the interior of an unnamed 45-mile-wide crater only about 70 miles north of Rabe. The black dot in the inset on overview map above indicates the photo’s location. The picture was taken on January 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Like Rabe, this crater also has many large open-air pits. In the picture one pit, near the lower center of the picture, is surrounded by soft-looking mounds and a strangely swirling textured and uneven terrain that makes up the majority of the crater’s floor.

This picture might help explain what we saw in Rabe. The textured terrain in this unnamed crater could easily be ice-impregnated and now hardened sand dunes. The pit could be where that impregnated ice has sublimated away, leaving behind the dust from those ancient dunes which then forms new sand dunes. In Rabe, the crater floor above its pits looks very similar to this swirling textured surface, suggesting the same process is going on there.

What strengthens this explanation is the many other craters nearby, all indicated by red dots in the overview map above, that also have pits or distorted crater floors. Their proximity suggests that there is an underground ice layer in this region, always at about the same elevation, and each crater impact exposed it. With time that exposed ice, no longer pure but filled with material from the impacts, sublimated partly away, producing the pits as well as ample sand to form sand dunes.

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Pushback: University president forced out because she fired professor for including Muhammad images in classwork

1:00 pm

Mohammad meeting Gabriel
One of the two works of art, “Mohammed receiving revelation
from the angel Gabriel,” that got Prater fired.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The president of Hamline University in Minnesota, Fayneese Miller, has now announced her early retirement after the school’s faculty demanded her resignation in January when she dismissed a professor for showing images of Muhammad as part of an art class.

That teacher, Erika Lopez Prater, immediately sued.

The lawsuit, which Lopez Prater’s lawyers said on Tuesday will soon be filed in court, reiterated the professor’s previous statement that she had offered warnings before showing the image – including in the syllabus and immediately before showing the image – and had volunteered to work with students uncomfortable with viewing the depictions.

The suit has alleged the university subjected Lopez Prater to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation. “Among other things, Hamline, through its administration, has referred to Dr Lopez Prater’s actions as ‘undeniably Islamophobic,’” her attorneys said in a statement.

» Read more

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Japanese businesses face major losses due to Virgin Orbit bankruptcy

9:58 am

Two Japanese companies (one partnering with a Japanese airport) now face major financial losses due to the bankruptcy of Virgin Orbit.

Two Japanese companies, ANA Holdings … and little-known Japanese satellite development start-up iQPS Inc emerged among the top six creditors when Virgin Orbit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday.

ANA, owed $1.65 million, had been a key partner for the Oita spaceport, entering a provisional deal with Virgin Orbit in 2021 for 20 flights of its LauncherOne rocket there. ANA said it was hopeful Virgin Orbit, which has said it is seeking a buyer, would be able to restructure and resume business.

Fukuoka-based iQPS had paid a $5.2 million deposit to launch its small, lightweight constellation satellites weighing under 100 kilograms (220 pounds), representing a major portion of the $17.2 million Series A funding it had raised in 2017.

ANA and the government of Oita prefecture had also hoped to garner some economic benefits from tourism by making this deal with Virgin Orbit. That won’t be happening now, though the expectation by this Japanese local government was never realistic. In fact, it illustrates how divorced government officials are from economic reality. No airport spaceport is going to attract a lot of tourism, even if Virgin Orbit was prospering and launching monthly.

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Starship now stacked on launchpad

9:45 am

Starship stacked on top of Superheavy

In preparation for a final wet dress rehearsal countdown followed by its first launch, Starship has now been stacked on top of Superheavy at SpaceX’s launchpad at Boca Chica, Texas.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from a short video Elon Musk posted on Twitter. SpaceX had also tweeted that its “Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week [April 10-11] followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval.”

At this time the FAA has still not issued the launch license. By announcing its plan to launch the week of April 17th, Musk and SpaceX puts pressure the government bureaucracy to get a move on.

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