Category: Points of Information

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

Two Chinese launches: Long March 2D and Long March 6 put satellites into orbit

9:16 am

China successfully completed two launches in the past twelve hours, placing four satellites into orbit in total.

First, in the evening of September 26th, a Long March 2D rocket launched a “remote sensing” satellite into orbit. This was then followed in the morning of September 27th with the launch of a Long March 6 rocket, putting three “experimental” Earth observation satellites into orbit. We know nothing more about any of these satellites.

The article at the link lists a third launch, of a Kuaizhou-1A rocket, but I have already reported that.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

43 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 60 to 41 in the national rankings. Against the entire world combined, the U.S. now trails 60 to 61.

3 comments

DART hits Dimorphus

4:42 pm

Didymos and Dimorphus

Dimorphus

The surface of Dimorphus

The probe DART today successfully impacted the small 525-foot-wide asteroid Dimorphus. From the data produced engineers will calculate how much that impact changed Dimorphus’ orbit around it parent asteroid, half-mile-wide Didymos.

The three images to the right give a sense of the approach and impact.

The first, at 2 minutes and 30 seconds from impact, shows Didymos in the left bottom corner. You can actually see individual boulders on its surface. At this distance and resolution is is unclear whether it is a rubble pile or a more solid body. Dimorphus is no longer a mere dot, but no surface features can yet be discerned.

The second image, only seventeen seconds before DART crashed into Dimorphus, shows us the entire asteroid. Though it appears to be a pile of rocks, it also appears less of a rubble pile than both Ryugu and Bennu, visited by probes in 2019 and 2020. Those rubble-piles had almost no smooth surface areas. Dimorphus however at this distance and resolution does appear to have a lot of areas where the surface is relatively smooth, suggesting its structure is more solid than a rubble pile.

At only 525 feet across, some of those bigger boulders are about 50 to 60 feet in diameter.

The white dot in the center of Dimorphus marks the rocks seen in the third image, taken about five seconds before impact. At this resolution so close to the surface, it appears the smooth areas are actually made up of many tiny pebbles and dust.

The biggest rock in the center of the picture is probably between ten to twenty feet in diameter.

The primary data from this mission will not be available for a few weeks. Scientists have to observe both asteroids to see how much, if at all, Dimorphus’s orbit was shifted by the impact. Also, the images from the Italian cubesat, LICIACube Explorer, which was flying parallel to DART and taking pictures of the impact, plume, and back side of Dimorphus, won’t be available until later this week. Those images should give us a measure of the spacecraft’s effect on the asteroid. They will also reveal a lot more about the asteroid’s geology.

12 comments

September 26, 2022 Quick space links

2:56 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

Mostly shows views of the Earth.

At the link the reason given is the “problems with the delivery of foreign-made parts.” Or to put it more bluntly, the sanctions against Russia due to its unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine has blocked many sophisticated computer parts that Russia cannot make itself.

All fantasy at this point. Russia’s been promising a next generation capsule replacing Soyuz for more than a decade.

Video at the link. The test occurred on September 23, 2022. No word yet on when they plan to launch.

Leave a comment

Zig-zag ridges on Mars

2:26 pm

Zig-zag ridges on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 9, 2022v by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a series of parallel zig-zag ridges in a flat, knobby terrain.

I don’t presume to explain this at all. According to one research paper,

This interplana region consists of extensive networks of ridges—the eponymous Aeolis Dorsa—and is interpreted as having formed by topographic inversion of fluvial and alluvial deposits.

Why these ridges zig-zag however does not seem to fit into either a fluvial or alluvial explanation, both of which involve the flow of water. The quote implies these could be inverted stream channels (where the compacted streambed becomes a ridge when the surrounding terrain erodes away), but once again, the distinct zig-zag pattern seems wrong. Rivers meander, but they don’t generally turn right and left so sharply. And why should we see parallel zig-zags? This doesn’t seem to fit with a river channel origin.

The particular location, as shown on the overview map below, is close to the dry Martian equator, on the edge of Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest field of volcanic ash dust on Mars.
» Read more

One comment

Excerpt of Conscious Choice published by The Federalist

11:46 am

The Federalist today published a short excerpt from the last chapter of my new book, Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space.

You can read it here. They titled the excerpt most appropriately: “When Settling Space, Future Colonists Should Emulate The Pilgrims”. The key quote from this particular excerpt:

Building a new human society means the settlers must go with the intent of raising healthy and well-adjusted children. Future space colonists must remember that they are not really exploring the unknown. What they are really doing is building new societies for their children and children’s children. Such an effort carries great responsibility, and if we shirk that responsibility, our descendants will curse our memory.

While the lessons taught by the mistakes of Virginia’s colonists are long and complex (and carefully outlined in Conscious Choice), it is this lesson that is the most important to remember for future colonists in space. We will go to explore, but what we will really be doing is creating those new worlds for future generations. If we do not put our kids first and foremost, those colonies will certainly fail, as Virginia did.

And as it appears America is failing now, after several generations where children were more often considered a nuisance and something that others could take of for us.

9 comments

A galaxy slowly being eaten by its black hole

10:16 am

Spiral galaxy
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. From the caption:

NGC 5495, which lies around 300 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra, is a Seyfert galaxy, a type of galaxy with a particularly bright central region. These luminous cores — known to astronomers as active galactic nuclei — are dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas falling into a supermassive black hole. This image is drawn from a series of observations captured by astronomers studying supermassive black holes lurking in the hearts of other galaxies.

Essentially Seyfert galaxies are galaxies whose central supermassive black hole has become dominant, large enough that its gravity is slowly eating up the rest of the galaxy. As it increasingly swallows stars and gas, the black hole emits more and more energy, thus becoming an active galactic nuclei.

Two stars from our own galaxy also dominate this picture, one inside and to the right of the galaxy’s center, and the other the bright star at the bottom of the picture, both identified by the diffraction spikes.

One comment

NASA and ESA sign simple lunar exploration agreement

9:57 am

In what appears to be an attempt by both to maintain their working relationship, even though several major European nations have not yet signed the Artemis Accords, last week NASA and ESA signed a simple agreement reaffirming their desire to work together in exploring the Moon.

Neither ESA nor NASA published the agreement, which in a photograph appeared to be little more than one page. In a Sept. 23 statement, NASA described the agreement as a “non-binding joint statement” about current and prospective future cooperation in Artemis.

Of ESA’s members, only France, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, and the United Kingdom have signed the Artemis Accords. Thus, ESA and NASA face a conundrum. According to the accords and the NASA policy established by the Trump administration and supposedly continued under Biden, only signatories can participate in the Artemis program. Yet, most of the members of ESA have not signed, and ESA has no authority to make them do so. ESA however is building the service module for the Orion capsule — as well as other major components of Artemis — which NASA must have.

I suspect this short one page agreement is the Biden administration’s under-handed admission that — when it comes to Europe — the Artemis Accords will no longer be required.

6 comments

Astroscale to partner with UK companies to develop mission to remove two defunct orbiting satellites

9:44 am

Capitalism in space: The Japanese-based company Astroscale has signed an agreement with the United Kingdom’s space agency to develop a mission — in partnership with a number of UK companies — to remove two defunct orbiting satellites.

The COSMIC mission will be developed in collaboration with 10 UK-based partner companies in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland including: MDA UK, Thales Alenia Space UK, Nammo, GMV-NSL, NORSS, Goonhilly, Satellite Applications Catapult, Willis Towers Watson, and other advisory and industrial partners.

What Astroscale brings to the table is its magnetic capture system that it has already tested in orbit.

This is also the second contract Astroscale has won in Europe for its space junk removal technology. In May it signed a deal with OneWeb to de-orbit two of its satellites.

Leave a comment

Watch DART smash into asteroid today

9:27 am

At 7:14 pm (Eastern) the NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will crash into the small and harmless asteroid Dimorphus to see if such an impact could be used in the future to change the path of another asteroid aimed at Earth.

Dimorphus is 525 feet in diameter, and is a small moon of the larger half-mile-wide asteroid Didymos. Both are presently about 7 million miles away from Earth.

I have embedded the live streams below, one from a DART camera, dubbed DRACO, that will view the asteroid as the spacecraft approaches, and the other from NASA’s official live stream. From the DRACO live stream webpage:
» Read more

One comment

NASA managers decide finally to roll SLS back to assembly building

9:01 am

NASA managers this morning finally gave up on launching their SLS rocket in an early October launch window and scheduled rolling back the rocket to the assembly building tonight.

NASA will roll the Artemis I Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Monday, Sept. 26. First motion is targeted for 11 p.m. EDT.

Managers met Monday morning and made the decision based on the latest weather predictions associated with Hurricane Ian, after additional data gathered overnight did not show improving expected conditions for the Kennedy Space Center area. The decision allows time for employees to address the needs of their families and protect the integrated rocket and spacecraft system. The time of first motion also is based on the best predicted conditions for rollback to meet weather criteria for the move.

Based on this graph [pdf] provided by NASA earlier this year, the next launch window is from October 17 to October 31, followed by another from November 12 to November 27. It is unclear whether they can meet that first window, even if all engineers do is check and recharge the flight termination system batteries.

The question of the rocket’s two solid-fueled boosters however looms. Both are now one year past NASA’s use-by date, and it appears somewhat unknown what the risks are using them. Replacing them however will entail a significant delay, from three to six months.

As I said this weekend, NASA managers face no good choice, because of the impractical and inefficient design of this rocket.

4 comments

Ganymede as seen by Juno

10:29 am

Ganymede as seen by Juno
Click to see full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 7, 2021 when Juno made a close fly-by of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. It has been reprocessed to bring out the details by citizen scientist Brian Swift.

Note the bands and parallel light and dark ridges that criss-cross the planet. Scientist as yet do not understand what caused them. Note also the bright impact craters, suggesting the release of water ice from below.

This image anticipates Juno’s upcoming September 29, 2022 fly-by of Europa, one of Jupiter’s other Galilean moons. The orbiter will pass only 221 miles above its surface, and get the best images in decades, since the Galileo mission in the 1990s.

3 comments

China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches two satellites

9:36 am

Early today China’s smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket successfully launched two “experimental” satellites into orbit from an interior spaceport.

The satellites are part of a classified program, so little is known about them.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

43 SpaceX
39 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 60 to 39 in the national rankings and the entire world combined 60 to 59.

Tomorrow ABL Space will attempt to launch from Alaska its RS1 smallsat rocket for the first time. Later in the week Firefly will make its second attempt to launch its Alpha rocket successfully. I will embed the live streams, if available.

Leave a comment

NASA managers might forego SLS rollback and aim for Oct 2nd launch

9:20 am

Based on the present hurricane track, NASA managers are considering the possibility of leaving SLS on the launchpad so that they can go for a launch on October 2, 2022.

NASA managers will meet this evening to evaluate whether to roll back or remain at the launch pad to preserve an opportunity for a launch attempt on Oct. 2. The exact time of a potential rollback will depend on future weather predictions throughout the day and could occur Monday or very early Tuesday morning.

If they stay on the launchpad, it means the flight termination system is questionable at launch. If the rocket goes out of control during its first test launch — a not-unreasonable possibility for a new rocket — there is a chance the range officer will not be able to destroy it.

If they roll back to the assembly building, it means the rocket’s two solid strap-on boosters will either have to be replaced, delaying the launch months more, or the rocket will launch with two boosters that are questionable.

Every choice they face is a bad one, simply because this rocket is really not well designed for practical use.

8 comments

SpaceX successfully launches 52 Starlink satellites

4:42 pm

Capitalism in space: Using its Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX today successfully put another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its fourth flight. The two fairing halves each completed their fourth and fifth flights, respectively.

Note: The Biden administration yesterday gave SpaceX the okay to activate Starlink in Iran, in order to provide that country’s citizens an option for obtaining information blocked by its government.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

43 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 60 to 38 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 60 to 58.

7 comments

ULA’s Delta Heavy successfully launches spy satellite for NRO

3:38 pm

ULA today has successfully launched a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Delta Heavy rocket, its largest rocket.

With this launch, ULA retires the Delta from any further launches from Vandenberg. Future California launches will use its as yet untested Vulcan rocket.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

42 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 59 to 38 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 59 to 58. The 59 launches makes this the third most active launch year in American history, trailing only 1966 (70 launches) and 1965 (64 launches).

SpaceX has a Falcon 9 launch of 52 Starlink satellites scheduled very shortly, so these numbers will hopefully go up again before the day is out.

7 comments

Two launches from U.S. set for this afternoon

10:29 am

Both ULA and SpaceX have planned launches this afternoon a little over an hour apart, at 2:53 pm and 4:10 pm Pacific time respectively.

The ULA launch is first, and is the last Delta rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force base. The company is slowly phasing this rocket out as it transitions to its not-yet-launched Vulcan rocket. The payload today is a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, using ULA’s biggest rocket, the Delta Heavy.

SpaceX will follow with another Falcon 9 Starlink launch, placing another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit.

I have embedded the live streams of both launches below.
» Read more

2 comments

Indian smallsat rocket startup hopes to complete 1st launch this year

10:16 am

The new colonial movement: A new Indian private commercial rocket startup, Agnikul, now hopes to complete the first launch of its Agnibaan rocket before the end of 2022.

Whether or not this launch happens this year, the important thing is the existence of this private independent rocket company in India. Up until now, India’s government space bureaucracy in ISRO, and in its new commercial arm, NSIL, has controlled all of that country’s commercial market share. Like NASA before 2008, it has worked aggressively to keep independent players out.

Agnikul’s existence suggests the Modi government’s effort to emulate the U.S. and create an independent private space industry is beginning to bear fruit. If so, expect big things over the next decade from India in space.

Leave a comment

NASA managers scrub September 27th SLS launch

9:59 am

NASA managers today decided that they had to scrub their attempt to launch SLS on September 27, 2022 due to a hurricane threatening Florida, and are instead preparing to roll the rocket back to the assembly building to protect it.

During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Engineers deferred a final decision about the roll to Sunday, Sept. 25, to allow for additional data gathering and analysis. If Artemis I managers elect to roll back, it would begin late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

This will likely delay the launch until the late October launch window, or the mid-November window, as shown in this graph [pdf]. During this time engineers will certainly test and recharge the batteries that run the rocket’s flight termination system so that there will be no question they will work should the Space Force safety range officer need to destroy the rocket during launch.

NASA however now faces another quandary it has been avoiding for the past year. The stacking of the five segments of SLS’s two solid rocket strap-on boosters began in November 2020, two years ago. During the shuttle era and until last year, NASA had a rule that said a booster must launch within a year of stacking. The fear was that the weight of the solid rocket fuel could distort it over time, and possibly cause it to burn improperly once ignited. As these boosters are the equivalent of firecrackers — once you light them you can’t turn them off — NASA had chosen, until last year, to have a use-by date of one year for the boosters.

Now however NASA has abandoned that rule. The boosters have been stacked for twice that time, and the agency has to ask if it will be safe to use them. To change them out however will take at least three months, if not longer. The present set of boosters would have to be removed, and a new set stacked and installed.

I fully expect NASA to stay with these boosters, despite their age, once again violating its own safety rules, as it did routinely during the shuttle era (resulting in the loss of two shuttles and the death of fourteen astronauts). Though no humans will be on this test flight, this sloppy engineering culture clearly threatens the lives of the astronauts who will fly on the second Artemis SLS mission, around the Moon.

8 comments

Above ground and underground Martian drainages

2:28 pm

Overview map

Cool image time! Today we are going to zoom into our cool image. The overview map to the right provides us the context. Our target is the small white rectangle inside the small box just below the north rim of 185-mile-wide Newton Crater, located 200 to 800 miles from the southwest edge of the lava plains dubbed Daedalia Planum that flowed down from Mars’s biggest volcanoes.

Newton Crater has a number of interesting features. Only two weeks ago I featured 4-mile-wide Avire Crater in Newton’s western quadrant, long known to have many gullies on its interior slopes as well as glacier features on its floor. Scientists have been monitoring those gullies now for more than a decade to see if they change seasonally, in a attempt to figure out their cause.

Today’s cool image looks at the very intriguing meandering canyons that appear to flow south from Newton’s north rim.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Range gives NASA waiver to launch SLS on September 27th, despite a questionable flight termination system

1:01 pm

In a briefing today, NASA officials confirmed that they are proceeding with their September 27, 2022 first launch of the SLS rocket, having obtained a waiver from the Space Force’s range office on testing the batteries for the flight termination system that would destroy the rocket should it begin flying out of control.

During a Sept. 23 teleconference, NASA announced an extension for the flight termination system battery certification, which expired after 25 days on Sept. 6. Now the Space Force’s Eastern Range has granted a waiver to allow the rocket to launch as late as Oct. 2 before needing to be returned to the Vehicle Assembly building to recertify the batteries.

The flight termination system is only used in the event the rocket veers off course during a launch anomaly.

Note that the 25 day use-by limit was actually an extension itself, as these batteries had been previously required testing every 20 days. Now the range is willing to let them go for as long about 50 days without testing, a two and half times increase.

If the rules before — based on engineering — said the batteries were not reliable after 20 days, why are those batteries now considered reliable up to 50 days? What facts or data does NASA or the Space Force have to allow this waiver? And if they have no data, it seems almost criminal to allow the go-ahead of this launch of a giant untested rocket on its first lift-off. Should something go seriously wrong — which is not that unlikely — and the flight termination system fails to work, we could see a very big rocket careening out-of-control into populated areas.

We all hope SLS launches with no problem on September 27th. We now have a really serious reason for that desire.

Regardless, the launch is now scheduled for a 70-minute launch window that opens at 11:37 am (Eastern) on September 27th, with a back-up launch window on October 2nd of 102 minutes beginning at 2:52 pm (Eastern).

Meanwhile, a developing tropical storm could put a kabosh on all these plans, forcing NASA to roll SLS back to the assembly building anyway. NASA managers plan to meet again before launch to make a decision.

19 comments

Pushback: Professor fired for making joke wins $165K settlement from university

12:05 pm

Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas
Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas

Nathaniel Hiers, fired by his boss as a math professor at the University of North Texas for daring to express a political opinion, has won a $165K settlement from the university.

This story is a follow-up on a previous column from March, when a judge had ruled that Hiers’ lawsuit could go forward. The judge also dismissed the university’s claim of qualified immunity for its officials, thus leaving them personally liable under any settlement.

The background: Hiers’ was fired when, having found flyers in math department’s lounge warning faculty against triggering “microaggessions” in their conversations, responded as shown in the picture to the right, placing one flyer on the chalk rack of the blackboard and wrote his own opinion of it above.

It appears that though the settlement was a victory for Hiers, paying him for damages and his attorneys’ fees, it does not get him his job back. Nor does it appear the officials who fired him wrongly will pay any of the settlement. Instead, the University of North Texas is picking up the tab.

Thus, this victory is not the triumph Hiers’ legal team, the Alliance Defending Freedom, claims it is. » Read more

5 comments

A hot wave in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere has been discovered, flowing away from the pole

9:59 am

Jupiter heat wave

Using data obtained by ground-based telescopes, scientists have discovered a hot wave, with temperatures in the range of 700 degrees Celsius (about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit), rolling outward from Jupiter’s hot polar atmospheric regions, believed caused by the gas giant’s intense aurora.

Jupiter’s atmosphere, famous for its characteristic multicoloured vortices, is also unexpectedly hot: in fact, it is hundreds of degrees hotter than models predict. Due to its orbital distance millions of kilometres from the Sun, the giant planet receives under 4% of the amount of sunlight compared to Earth, and its upper atmosphere should theoretically be a frigid -70 degrees Celsius. Instead, its cloud tops are measured everywhere at over 400 degrees Celsius.

…Just like the Earth, Jupiter experiences auroras around its poles as an effect of the solar wind. However, while Earth’s auroras are transient and only occur when solar activity is intense, auroras at Jupiter are permanent and have a variable intensity. The powerful auroras can heat the region around the poles to over 700 degrees Celsius, and global winds can redistribute the heat globally around Jupiter.

The graphic above, adapted from the research presentation [pdf], shows that wave propagating away from the pole. The wave’s width is about the size of the Earth, with different sections moving from about 1,000 feet per second to 8,000 feet per second.

One comment

Watching DART impact asteroid on September 26, 2022

9:35 am

A NASA planetary probe, dubbed DART, is on course for a planned impact of the asteroid Dimorphos this coming Monday, September 26, 2022, at 4:14 PM (Pacific).

DART was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA on November 23, 2021 PST (November 24 EST) headed to the asteroid Didymos and its tiny moon Dimorphos 7 million miles away. The plan is for DART to ram itself into Dimorphos while scientists on Earth measure whether its orbit around Didymos changes.

Dimorphos is about 525 feet in diameter, while Didymos is much larger, about a half mile in width. The goal is to see if this method can be used in the future to adjust an asteroid’s orbit enough to shift it away from hitting the Earth.

The impact will be observed by a camera on DART, as well as an Italian cubesat dubbed LICIACube.

NASA TV will be live streaming the event, and I will embed that live stream here when it goes live. Once DART gets close, its camera will record the asteroid’s approach through impact.

5 comments

Voyager Space signs cooperative deal with Azerbaijan

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: Voyager Space, the subsidiary of Nanoracks that is building its Starlab private space station, has signed a cooperative agreement with Azercosmos, Azerbaijan’s space agency.

The press release is very vague about what the deal entails.

This strategic multi-year collaboration paves the way for Azercosmos and Voyager Space to proactively develop mutually beneficial space infrastructure, technology, and manufacturing initiatives, research programs, and further opportunities for innovation. With the potential to exchange experience and knowledge, the organizations will focus on commercial and educational opportunities in-country to foster a thriving local space ecosystem.

I suspect it will eventually lead to Azerbaijan sending research payloads to Starlab, once it is in orbit and operational.

The number of recent deals made by American private space companies, either to fly foreign astronauts in space, provide payload space on planetary missions, or provide space station capabilities for foreign science research, is beginning to be difficult to count. With at least four different American private space stations under construction, with at least one more proposed, the rush to sign up customers by these companies is accelerating.

Expect the business to be very brisk once these get launched. It appears that practically every government on Earth wants to claim it has a space program, and buying space and seats from these American commercial companies is going to be the quickest and cheapest way to do it.

2 comments

Astrobotic gets ESA’s first commercially purchased lunar lander payload

9:18 am

Capitalism in space: Astrobotic yesterday announced that the European Space Agency (ESA) has purchased payload space on the company’s Griffin lunar lander for a commercially produced camera.

This is the first commercial payload ESA has purchased for a lunar mission. The camera will fly as a secondary payload on Griffin’s first mission, which will deliver NASA’s VIPER rover to the Moon’s south pole in 2024. The camera is being built by a French startup called Lunar Logistics Services.

Leave a comment

Confirmed: Saudi Arabia buys two seats on next Axiom commercial flight to ISS

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Saudi Arabia’s official press yesterday confirmed an earlier Reuters story that it has purchased two seats on an Axiom commercial flight to ISS, using a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The twist is that the Saudi government says one of those astronauts will be a woman, and the mission should fly in 2023. It will include Axiom’s pilot, two Saudi passengers, and a fourth passenger, all as-yet unnamed.

The mission is part of what the Saudi government calls a new astronaut training program.

2 comments

September 22, 2022 Quick space links

4:50 pm

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

  • Want a NASA rocket engine once intended for SLS? GSA has seven for sale!

The engine is the J-2X, a supposed upgrade of the Saturn-5’s J-2 upper stage engines. GSA is selling the components for seven, the auctions to be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Its proposed rocket family will look very familiar to those familiar with SpaceX.

FAST is essentially a larger version of the now-shuttered Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It is hard to say if it is being used to its full potential at this time, as China right now doesn’t have that many qualified radio astronomers. This is why for a long while it tried to get foreigners to run it, unsuccessfully. With time, however, this will change.

It also appears they plan to fly it past both Venus and some asteroids on its way to the outer solar system.

It is is Chinese, so it would be nice if one of my readers who can read Chinese provides some explanation.

3 comments

How private enterprise is solving the vulnerability of satellites to military attack

1:10 pm

Link here. The essay provides a nice overview of the U.S. military’s present conundrum on protecting all American satellites in orbit, not just military ones, and what it is beginning to do to solve it, now that the Space Force exists.

The approach is following three paths, with only the last two having any hope of success. First, the Biden administration is trying diplomacy to convince space-faring nations to ban future anti-satellite tests. This approach has really little chance of success.

The other two avenues involve innovations from private enterprise, launching many small satellites as part of a large constellation and in-orbit servicing, repair, and refueling. The first creates redundancy, making it difficult for any enemy power to easily destroy U.S. assets. The second provides capabilities for both fixing important satellites as well as attacking our enemy’s without causing space junk. Both will become common in the coming years, and thus will become very viable tools for military use.

2 comments
1 … 174 175 176 177 178 … 913