Category: Points of Information

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

ISRO head unveils new timeline for major missions

10:06 am

The head of India’s space agency ISRO, S. Somanath, yesterday unveiled a new timeline for several of that nation’s major missions, both manned and unmanned.

The new timeline is as follows:

  • 2025: NISAR: a joint Indian-American radar orbiter, long delayed
  • 2026: Gaganyaan-1, India’s first manned orbital mission
  • 2028: Chandrayaan-4, an unmanned sample return mission to the Moon
  • 2028: Chandrayaan-5, a joint lander-rover to the Moon

The last project will be done in partnership with Japan, with India building the lander and Japan the rover.

2028 will be a very busy year for India in space. The Indian government had previously announced that ISRO would launch in 2028 the first module of its space station as well as a Venus orbiter.

0 comments

Unidentified astronaut from recent ISS mission released from hospital

9:54 am

Though NASA’s press release provided little informationto protect the astronaut’s privacy, including his or her name, the unidentified astronaut who was held overnight for observation after returning from a seventh-month stay on ISS mission has now been released from the hospital.

After an overnight stay at Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola in Florida, the NASA astronaut was released and returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston Saturday. The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members.

This has happened before. Readapting to a 1G environment after months in weightlessness can be difficult, even if one does all the exercises required while in orbit.

7 comments

SpaceX yesterday launched another 23 Starlink satellites

5:34 pm

SpaceX yesterday successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

While the video link above says 23, a UPI report said the launch placed 22 satellites in orbit. I have no idea which is right, as the number of Starlinks on these launches range from 20 to 23.

The first stage completed its 19th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

105 SpaceX
48 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 122 to 71, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 105 to 88.

4 comments

Space News buries the lede

9:42 am

In reporting the information revealed in an audio report of two SpaceX engineers to Elon Musk, Space News completely misses the main reason Musk posted this video.

The focus of Jeff Foust’s report is the technical problems the engineers revealed that occurred during the descent of Superheavy during the last flight. According to them, one particular parameter related to the Raptor engines was one second away from demanding an abort, whereby the rocket would not attempt to be captured by the tower chopsticks but instead crash along side it. In addition, these engineers reported the worrisome consequences when a chine on the booster ripped off shortly before landing.

All interesting, but the real reason Elon Musk posted this clip from a much longer audio report is what one engineer says about two thirds of the way through:

Given that that is the first launch [#6] in a long time — well, really, ever — that we’ve not been FAA driven, we’re trying to go do a reasonable balance of speed and risk mitigation on the booster, specifically.

Musk wished everyone to know without question the perspective of his employees when it comes to the red tape of the FAA. It hasn’t been our imagination. For the past three years the FAA has determined the test schedule, slowing it down significantly while costing SpaceX a lot of money.

Space News, which generally has been in the tank for the regulators and the FAA, puts this quote to the very end of its article, almost as an aside. I suspect the outlet would have liked to leave it out.

I have posted the video below, so my readers can listen at their leisure.
» Read more

11 comments

One unidentified astronaut hospitalized after return to Earth today

9:04 pm

Though NASA has released very little information, including the indentity of the astronaut, one of the four crew who were brought back to Earth early today has ended up in the hospital.

NASA said Friday one its astronauts is in a hospital in Florida for medical observation after a “normal” predawn splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico inside a SpaceX capsule.

The mission’s other three crew members were cleared to return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston after their own medical evaluations, NASA said.

The hospitalized astronaut “is in stable condition and under observation as a precautionary measure,” a NASA spokesperson said in a statement. The agency did not identify the astronaut or provide any more details about their condition, citing medical privacy protections.

That the other three astronauts returned to their home base at Johnson in Houston strongly suggests the hospitalized astronaut is the one Russian, Alexander Grebenkin, Normally Russians head back to Russia relatively quick after landing.

This remains speculation. We will have to wait for more information.

17 comments

October 25, 2424 Quick space links

6:12 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • NASA delays decision of cutting budgets for both Chandra and Hubble
    No surprise, The announced cuts were originally announced to apply pressure on Congress to fund both telescopes. With the election upcoming the agency wants to get Congress on their side. Cutting these popular telescopes just before the election will not servie its insterets.
8 comments

Gina Lollobrigida – Pagan dance

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I think this makes a great start to the weekend. Clips from the 1959 movie Solomon and Sheba, centered on Gina’s pagan dance as Sheba, and edited to a piece of music by Dead Can Dance, called Cantara, which the youtube website labels “genuinely pagan music.” If you want to see the original film, go here and go to about 90 minutes. In the original, God steps in to stop all this hanky-panky.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

1 comment

Taking the day off…

12:19 pm

Yesterday I came down with a head cold, which is draining me of energy. I am going to take a few hours off to take a nap. I should post some more later in the day but don’t expect much.

A sidenote: When I mentioned I had a head cold to someone, the first question that person asked was “Covid?” I laughed and responded, “Who cares? Covid has been nothing more than a cold since around 2021.”

This obsession with Covid has got to stop. From a infectious disease perspective the only valuable thing it taught us is that every new and harsh flu strain that comes through eventually mutates downward utnil it is nothing more than the common cold. Covid did exactly that, no matter how much the Chicken Littles of the world tried to claim otherwise.

20 comments

Boeing considering selling its space division

11:55 am

According a Wall Street Journal exclusive today (behind a paywall), the company is now exploring the possibility of selling off its space division.

The NASA business that Boeing is exploring a sale of includes the troubled Starliner space vehicle and operations that support the International Space Station, but excludes the unit building NASA’s Space Launch System, the newspaper reported.

The U.S. planemaker’s shares rose 0.6% in afternoon trading.

Boeing’s space division includes its Starliner capsule and its work on NASA’s SLS rocket, as well as building many of the modules on ISS and operating it for NASA.

If this is so, it appears the new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has decided that in order to get the company back on track it needs to focus on Boeng’s first and central business, building airplanes. Space is a distraction that is not helping the company bottom line right now in any way. Furthermore, NASA in 2020 told Boeing it would not entertain any new project bids from the company because its past bids were so poorly conceived. That decision remains in effect now, four years later. Since then Boeing has only have gotten a renewal contract to build more SLS rockets, plus a contract to develop a new airplane wing, but little else.

7 comments

Using spectroscopic data, astronomers create 3D map of ancient supernova remnant

10:55 am

Supernova 1181
Click for original image.

Astronomers have now createdsdft a 3D map of the remnant formed by a supernova that occurred in 1181, using detailed spectroscopic data to determing which remnant filaments are moving towards us and which are moving away.

The picture to the right is from figure 1 of their paper, and shows how the filaments radiate out from the center in straight lines, something that is unusual for such remnants. It was taken in 2023 by a ground-based telescope at Kitt Peak in Hawaii. From simple optical data it is impossible however to determine which filaments are in the rear, expanding away from us, and which are in the front, expanding towards us.

To probe the three-dimensional structure of the supernova remnant, the astronomers turned to KCWI, an instrument that can capture multiwavelength, or spectral, information for every pixel in an image. This is like breaking apart the light captured in every pixel into a rainbow of colors. The spectral information enabled the team to measure the motions of the filaments poking out from the center of the explosion and ultimately create a 3D map of the structure. The filament material that is flying toward us shifted toward the blue higher-energy portion end of the visible spectrum (blue-shifted), while light from material moving away from us shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (red-shifted).

…The results showed that the filament material in the supernova is flying outward from the site of the explosion at approximately 1,000 kilometers per second. “We find the material in the filaments is expanding ballistically,” says Cunningham. “This means that the material has not been slowed down nor sped up since the explosion. From the measured velocities, looking back in time, you can pinpoint the explosion to almost exactly the year 1181.”

The 3D information also revealed a large cavity inside the spindly, spherical structure in addition to some evidence that the supernova explosion of 1181 occurred asymmetrically.

Using this data, they were able to create that 3D map, shown below in a coarse animation video.
» Read more

3 comments

Sutherland spaceport submits another revised plan to local council

10:41 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

We’re from the government and we are here to help you! The long-delayed proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland has now submitted another revised plan to its local Highlands council for approval.

The amended plans for Sutherland Spaceport include a smaller launch pad and launch services facility, and realigning an access road to avoid an area of deep peat. Highland Council planners said the changes would mean reducing the amount of peat that would have to be excavated by more than half. The soil is seen as important because it absorbs CO2.

Highland councillors meeting next week have been asked to approve the amendments. In a report, officials said the amount of peat to be dug up could be cut from 24,046 cubic metres to 9,895 cubic metres.

This is the second time the spaceport has had to submit revised plans to this council. It did so in December 2023, but apparently the council was not satisfied.

Meanwhile Sutherland’s main launch customer, Orbex, has still not gotten its launch licence from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, first applied for in February 2022. Orbex, which has a fifty year lease at Sutherland and has built its rocket factory nearby, had planned to do its first test launch of its Prime rocket two years ago. Didn’t happen.

Adding to these bureaucratic delays, Anders Holch Povlsen, a local billionaire — who is an investor in the Saxaford spaceport on the Shetland Islands — in July 2024 filed what appeared to be an absurd harrasment lawsuit against Sutherland, and this was the second time he had done so.

I think Orbex picked the wrong spaceport horse in this race, and is likely going to be killed by this red tape and opposition.

1 comment
1 … 228 229 230 231 232 … 2,413