Category: Points of Information

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

Russia delays launch of next unmanned lunar probe

9:04 am

According to a story in Russia’s state-run press, Roscosmos has decided to delay the launch of its Luna-25 lander from October 2021 to May 2022.

The story gave no reason for the delay.

Luna-25 would be the first Russian lunar probe since the 1970s, and is supposed to be that country’s first probe in a partnership with China to establish a manned lunar base by the 2030s.

Want to bet the Russian contribute to this project will be repeatedly delayed, and will also likely be disappointing? That has been the track record of Roscosmos for the past two decades (like all 21st century government projects). This first delay signals many more to come.

I am not saying Russia will fail to launch anything. What I am saying is that everyone should reserve a large store of skepticism about any promises Russia’s makes.

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Top engineers and managers fleeing Blue Origin

3:58 pm

According to this story today, Blue Origin this summer lost at least sixteen top management and engineering employees, all leaving in a very short time.

At least 16 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, CNBC has learned, with many moving on in the weeks after Bezos’ spaceflight.

…Others quietly updated their LinkedIn pages over the past few weeks. Each unannounced departure was confirmed to CNBC by people familiar with the matter. Those departures include: New Shepard senior vice president Steve Bennett, chief of mission assurance Jeff Ashby (who retired), national security sales director Scott Jacobs, New Glenn senior director Bob Ess, New Glenn senior finance manager Bill Scammell, senior manager of production testing Christopher Payne, New Shepard technical project manager Nate Chapman, senior propulsion design engineer Dave Sanderson, senior HLS human factors engineer Rachel Forman, BE-4 controller lead integration and testing engineer Jack Nelson, New Shepard lead avionics software engineer Huong Vo, BE-7 avionics hardware engineer Aaron Wang, propulsion engineer Rex Gu, and rocket engine development engineer Gerry Hudak.

Those who announced they were leaving Blue Origin did not specify why, but frustration with executive management and a slow, bureaucratic structure is often cited in employee reviews on job site Glassdoor.

There is another possibility that would be more hopeful. It could be that Jeff Bezos is shaking up the company because of its poor accomplishments during the past four years, since CEO Bob Smith was hired.

That Smith however is still there makes this guess unlikely. The article also notes that Smith’s approval among Blue Origin employees is abysmal, with only 15% approving his management, when compared to high numbers given to the management leaders at SpaceX and ULA.

Thus, this exodus is more likely a sign that that the rats are fleeing what they see as a sinking ship.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Blue Origin however. The company is swimming in dough because of Bezos’ deep pockets, and he is free to do what he thinks must be done to fix things. Under such conditions it is very unlikely Blue Origin will disappear. More likely Bezos will straighten things out, though the company now has to play big catch up, not only against SpaceX but also against the fleet of new orbital rocket companies about to come on line — all doing so ahead of Blue Origin.

There is also the possibility that this story has got its facts wrong. It makes a very big error near the beginning, claiming that former SpaceX engineer Lauren Lyons had left Blue Origin to join SpaceX, when she had actually left SpaceX to take a big promotion at Firefly. My mistake. Lyons had moved from SpaceX to Blue Origin. This job change was leaving Blue Origin to go to Firefly.

Hat tip to reader Jay.

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New cracks across old Martian lava flows

1:03 pm

New cracks across an old lava flow
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 4, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It captures one of the many deep straight fissure canyons that make up the feature dubbed Cerberus Fossae in the center of Mars’ volcano country.

The crack is called a graben, and happens when the ground is either stretched from pressure from below, or when two adjacent large blocks of material move sideways relative to each other.

What makes this particular graben interesting are two features. First, the overlapping break suggests something complex took place at this spot when the crack separated. Second, the crack cut across the foot of an older frozen lava flow, meaning it has to be younger than that flow.

The overview map below provides a clue when that lava flow might have occurred, while also suggesting this crack in Cerberus Fossae might be much younger than expected.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Unvaccinated students at Quinnipac University to be punished

11:53 am

Coming to your town in America soon!
Rounding up the unclean unvaccinated: coming soon to America.

Genocide is coming: Quinnipac University in Connecticut, having reimposed an indoor mask requirement, has now announced that it will fine and punish any students who do not provide proof that they have either been vaccinated against COVID or have a proper exemption.

Quinnipiac students may be fined up to $200 per week eventually until they prove their vaccination status. Fines for students who don’t supply vaccination proof will begin at $100 per week for the first two weeks. The penalty will increase by increments of $25 every two weeks until a max fine of $200 per week.

Currently non-complying students can avoid the fines if they show the proper documentation by Sept. 14. If they fail to meet the directive by then, they will lose access to the campus internet network.

No longer is the left screaming “My body! My choice!” Then that mantra for abortion worked to garner it political support from naive followers. Now the mantra is “Your body is ours! Let us do to it what we want or we will oppress you!”

It is a very short leap from merely punishing those who refuse a vaccine to rounding them up in camps to isolate them from the rest of society. From there, it is an even shorter leap to imposing mass executions to keep society clean from such unpure individuals.
» Read more

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British court dismisses billionaire’s lawsuit against Sutherland spaceport

10:52 am

A British judge today dismissed entirely [pdf] the lawsuit filed by billionaire Anders Povlsen, who had been trying to block the construction of a spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland, a region where he owns thousands of acres and is involved in many environmental issues.

Povlsen instead has been lobbying to have a spaceport instead built in the Shetland Islands, by a company he has invested in.

The ruling on all points went against Povlsen. The judge concluded:

Since I have held that none of the grounds of challenge is well founded it is unnecessary to [do anything], and I do not propose to do so (other than to say what I have already said….)

I shall sustain [the defense’s case and]… repel the petitioner’s pleas-in-law, and refuse the petition. I shall reserve meantime all questions of expenses.

This likely clears the way for construction of the Sutherland spaceport, from which the British smallsat rocket company Obex wants to launch. Lockheed Martin has said it would launch smallsats from Sutherland, but it has also said it would launch from Shetland too.

Povlsen’s opposition based on environmental concerns was of course a smokescreen to get this competing spaceport closed so that the one he has invested in in Shetland would get all the business. For more than three-quarters of a century launches have taken place at both the Kennedy and Vandenberg spaceports in the U.S., with neither doing any harm to the surrounding wildlife. Moreover, at Kennedy that spaceport forced the creation of a wildlife preserve, which prevented development. As long as they are operated with care and properly, spaceports are good for wildlife.

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China’s astronauts complete 2nd spacewalk at Tianhe space station

9:50 am

The new colonial movement: Two Chinese astronauts yesterday successfully completed a six hour spacewalk, installing components on the outside of the Tianhe space station module necessary for future construction work.

The pair, wearing second generation Feitian (“flying to space”) extravehicular mobility suits, completed installing foot restraints and an extravehicular working platform to the large robotic arm. Chinese media outlets streamed footage of the EVA. … The EVA also included work on a panoramic camera, installing a toolkit, adding a pump set for the Tianhe thermal control system and other apparatus in preparation for the arrival of two further modules in 2022. The EVA was completed at 2:33 a.m. Friday, around an hour ahead of schedule.

The first spacewalk occurred in the first week in July.

These astronauts have been working at the station since mid-June, and are expected to return to Earth in mid-September, completing a three month mission. Shortly thereafter a new cargo freighter will launch to the station to provide supplies for the next crew, due in October.

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Perseverance’s next drill attempt

9:40 am

Perseverance short term planned route
Click for full image.

The Perseverance science team today announced its near-future plans for where it will send the rover, but also when and how it will attempt its next core sample drilling.

The map to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the rover’s future route. The red dot indicates its present location. The blue dot indicates where next they will attempt to drill. The route shows that they have decided to also make a short side trip south, an target that until now was considered optional.

As for what they plan to do in that next drill attempt:

We will first abrade the selected rock and use the science instruments to confirm (to the best of our ability) that the new target is likely to result in a core after the sampling process.

If we choose to sample the rock, Perseverance will perform a set of activities very close to what was done on the prior coring target. The main difference will be, after coring, we’ve added a “ground in the loop” session to review the images of the tube in the bit and confirm a sample was collected. Then, the tube will be transferred into the rover for processing.

If post-coring imagery shows no sample in the tube, we may elect to try again, using an alternate geometry (e.g. more horizontal) for the coring activity. Another option, if the targeted rock doesn’t allow for a change in geometry, is to look for a different rock in this region that is more easily cored horizontally.

They really want to get a sample of this particular bedrock on the floor of Jezero Crater. Their problem is that the first core sample failed because the bedrock was too structurally weak, crumbled into powder during drilling, and thus poured out of the drillbit once retracted from the ground. It could be that this will be a consistent issue with any sample attempts in this bedrock. This is why they are also considering drilling sideways, in order to hold any material they grab.

I suspect that the short side trip south might be to an outcrop that the rover could drill sideways into. Thus, if they are successful in getting a sample at the blue dot they might still cancel that side trip.

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NASA freezes work on SpaceX’s lunar lander version of Starship

9:23 am

In response to Blue Origin’s lawsuit that is attempting to cancel the contract award to SpaceX for adapting its Starship upper stage rocket as a manned lunar lander, NASA yesterday officially paused all work by it and SpaceX on this project.

From NASA’s statement:

NASA has voluntarily paused work with SpaceX for the human landing system (HLS) Option A contract effective Aug. 19 through Nov. 1. In exchange for this temporary stay of work, all parties agreed to an expedited litigation schedule that concludes on Nov. 1. NASA officials are continuing to work with the Department of Justice to review the details of the case and look forward to a timely resolution of this matter.

The optics for Blue Origin remain ugly. Not only does the company appear more interested in fighting court battles than building spaceships and rockets, it now is acting to prevent others from doing so.

The timeline of events however is interesting. Blue Origin filed its lawsuit on August 13th. NASA issued the first $300 million payment to SpaceX for this $2.9 billion contract on August 16th. Even with this announcement today, the payment suggests that NASA is doing what it can to make the contract award an accomplished fact that the courts will not find easy to overturn.

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Japan to attempt sample return mission to Martian moon

9:06 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA today announced that it will launch in ’24 an unmanned probe to the Martian moon Phobos that will return a sample to Earth in ’29.

The plan is to bring back about 10 grams of material.

If launched as planned, Japan will beat everyone in getting the first samples back from Martian space. China says it hopes to grab samples from Mars itself by 2030, while the U.S. and Europe hope to launch a mission to return the Perseverance cached samples sometime in the 2030s.

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Two new smallsat rockets now set for launch

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: The launch dates of two different new smallsat rockets is now confirmed.

First, Astra has obtained from the FAA a launch operator license that will allow it to launch rockets from now until March 2026. This license now allows the company to proceed with its August 27th first orbital launch of its Rocket-3 rocket. If successful, Astra hopes to move to monthly launches before the end of the year.

Second, Firefly has announced that it will attempt its own first orbital launch of its Alpha rocket on September 2nd. The company had been promising a launch before the end of the year, but until now had not set a date. The successful completion of a static fire test of the rocket cleared the way.

Three other smallsat rocket companies, Relativity, ABL, and Aevum, have also said they are targeting this year for their first orbital launches, but none has set any dates yet.

If successful, these companies will join Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit in providing launch capabilities for tiny satellites like cubesats and nanosats.

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A weak avalanche season on Mars?

1:39 pm

The north pole scarp
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image from Mars is cool both for what is visible in the photo and for what is not, the latter of which might turn out to be a discovery of importance.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 24, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a section of the edge of Mars’ north polar ice cap, with north at the top.

This scarp is probably more than 2,000 feet high, though that height drops to the south as the upper layers disappear one by one from either long term erosion or sublimation. Those layers represent the visible information in the photo that is cool. They give us tantalizing clues about the geological and climatic history of Mars. Each layer probably represents a climate period when the north icecap was growing because the tilt of the planet’s rotation was even less than the 25 degrees it is now. When that tilt is small, as small as 11 degrees, the poles of Mars are very cold, and water ice migrates from the mid-latitudes to the poles, adding thickness to the icecaps. When the tilt grows, to as much as 55 degrees, the mid-latitudes are colder than the poles, and the water ice migrates back to the mid-latitudes.

What is not visible in this picture, however, might be far more significant.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Priest removed by Catholic Church for condemning Democrats who violate actual Catholic teachings

12:17 pm

Catholic Church now opposes its own basic tenets in order to politically help Democrats
The Catholic Church: Down with Catholic teachings!
Up with the leftist Democratic Party!

They’re coming for you next: A Wisconsin priest was removed from his parish by his superiors in the Catholic Church in late May because he has bluntly condemned Democratic Party politicians for their “pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and pro-transgender agendas” that violate the church’s foundational teachings.

The priest, James Altman, is most well known for a video homily he posted that stated the following:

“Here’s a memo to clueless baptized Catholics out there: You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period,” Altman said in the video. “Their party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic church teaches. So just quit pretending that you’re Catholic and vote Democrat. Repent of your support of that party and its platform, or face the fires of hell.”

Altman’s homily also strongly criticized his own superiors for their willingness to protect these same Democrats, no matter what those Democrats do.
» Read more

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Firefly hires noted SpaceX engineer

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly Aerospace announced earlier this week that it has hired as it chief operating officer Lauren Lyons, a former SpaceX engineer familiar to many for her regular appearances as a announcer on SpaceX’s launch telecasts.

The company said that Lyons will focus on “transitioning Firefly from an R&D environment to a production environment” for its Alpha small launch vehicle, Space Utility Vehicle tug and Blue Ghost lunar lander. “Firefly is entering a pivotal and exciting phase of its growth,” Lyons said in the statement. “I’m thrilled to take on the challenge of leading the efforts in scaling the company’s infrastructure to support rapid growth, high execution rate, and deliver exceptional value and service to our customers.”

Translation: Using Lyons expertise from SpaceX, Firefly intends to operate much like SpaceX, upgrading its rockets and spacecraft continuously even as they operate commercially.

The launch date for the company’s first orbital attempt remains unannounced, though it says it will occur before the end of the year. It appears they are ready to go, except for one component of their flight termination system.

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China launches two more military surveillance satellites

8:52 am

China today used its Long March 4B rocket to put two more military surveillance satellites into orbit.

No word on whether the spent first stage landed near habitable areas in China. China also said nothing about whether that stage carried grid fins or parachutes for bringing it back to Earth more precisely.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

27 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

Russia plans a launch later today (tomorrow in Russia) of another 34 OneWeb satellites. In the national rankings, the U.S. still leads China 31 to 27.

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Arizona’s governor moves to block any local school mask mandates or closures

3:39 pm

Doug Ducey, the less than useless Republican governor in Arizona during this past year of Wuhan panic, has apparently finally seen the light, and has begun to take action to prevent the Democratically-controlled local school boards and city governments from imposing new mask and vaccine mandates as well as shutting schools out of an unjustified fear of COVID-19.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday announced schools that impose mask mandates in the state will not have access to a $163 million grant program backed by coronavirus relief funds he controls.

The Republican governor said schools with mask mandates or that have closed due to COVID-19 concerns will not be eligible for an additional $1,800 per student. The announcement comes one day after he issued an executive order banning cities and counties from mandating vaccinations.

Ducey also announced a grant program to award parents if their schools require quarantining or isolation of students.

The governor also announced a $10 million grant that intends to award parents $7,000 for each student if their public school required isolating or quarantining due to COVID-19 exposure or if it gave preferential treatment to vaccinated children or mandated masks.

As expected, the Democrats in the state legislature railed against such measures, not because the mandates actually prevent the spread of any disease, but because Ducey’s actions rob them and their allies in local government of the unbridled power they have enjoyed for the eighteen or so months. Before they simply had power, and it corrupted them somewhat. Since the arrival of the Wuhan panic they have had absolute power, and it corrupted them absolutely. They are addicted to it, and can’t tolerate giving it up.

Meanwhile, it should not take a governor to recognize the right of the people to live their lives as they choose. That Ducey has to do this tells us that the public has ceded to much power to the government, no matter who is in charge. That too has to change, and it has to change at all levels, from the smallest local school board to the presidency of the entire nation.

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Revolt in San Diego over Democrat-imposed mask and vaccine mandates?

3:27 pm

At a board of supervisors public meeting in San Diego yesterday it appeared that a major revolt is rising against the local government’s demand that businesses impose mask and vaccine mandates on their employees and customers.

Hundreds of businesses have already signed a Business Equality Pledge and posted a Proclamation pledging not to discriminate. Citizens are also signing a petition to refuse to comply with these arbitrary and unconstitutional requirements. The rally attendees are not anti-vax, but they are simply against all medical mandates.

The community members and leaders were fired up, and to put it simply, directly called out the San Diego County Board of Supervisors for their overreaching rule, telling them to their face they have forgotten their oath to protect the constitution.

The article includes almost two dozen videos of statements by various citizens and business owners, telling the supervisors to their face, and by name, that they face a quick recall if they don’t back off and instead try to impose these mandates. These are definitely worth watching, as they indicate the rising anger and frustration many Americans are feeling over the mindless and very damaging and totalitarian government actions over the past year and a half.

The videos and the crowd responses suggest that the public in this southern California town at least has finally turned against their government leadership, which presently has a Democratic Party majority. If so, it will be a welcome and long overdue development.

At the same time, based on past experience one should not get too confident. Many past such protests were not matched by the voters. Moreover, this is California, where the election process has been badly corrupted and is very unreliable. Even if the voters vote to throw these bums out, the bums might very well have the power to revise that result to their favor.

I will not breathe easy and feel real hope until I see some actual electoral changes, at that ballot box, something that has not really occurred since World War II. Even when the voters threw the bums out of Congress in 1994 and 2010, nothing really changed.

And at the local level the public has been less than uninterested in who wins elections. This more than anything has got to change to actually change the government we live under.

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A dry bedrock Martian crater floor?

1:01 pm

A dry bedrock crater floor?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is a very eroded crater at about 26 degrees north latitude. The image shows the crater’s crater floor, with a variety of bedrock-type features, sharp ridges, abrupt scarps, and flat smooth plateaus, with a hint of lobate glacial flows in the image’s southeast quadrant.

At 26 north latitude, it is unlikely that anything here is icy, unless it is very well protected by debris. Most of these features are almost certainly bedrock, though their formation could very well have been shaped by ice in past eons when this location was more amenable to water ice.

The wider MRO context camera image of the entire crater, plus the overview map, give a larger picture, and raise some interesting questions.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired by university for having opinions

11:25 am

Today's modern witch hunt
Burn witches: What St. Joseph’s University is doing,
with great enthusiasm.

Today’s blacklist story is an update from a March 25 story. Then, St. Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania had merely suspended Professor Gregory Manco because he dared to publicly express opposition to the idea of paying reparations to blacks for something (slavery) that hasn’t existed in the U.S. for more than 150 years.

The university has now doubled down on that action by terminating Manco’s employment.

The biggest irony is that the school’s own investigation found that Manco had done nothing wrong.
» Read more

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Curiosity produces new 360 degree hi-res panorama

9:50 am

360 degree hi-res panorama from Curiosity
Click for full resolution image.

The Curiosity science team has used the rover’s high resolution camera to produce a new 360 degree panorama, with the center of the image looking directly up at Navarro Mountain.

To get a really good idea of what this panorama shows, I have embedded below a video the scientists have produced giving a tour of the image, which reveals two especially interesting details. First, their future route will go between Navarro Mountain (the highest visible peak) and the 80-foot-high dark butte to its right. This is as planned, as indicated by the red dotted line on the overview map show in this July 8, 2021 post.

Second, the air was very clear when this panorama was taken, and so the rim of Gale Crater can be distinctly seen, 20 miles away.

» Read more

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Russian space junk hit Chinese satellite in March

9:16 am

It now appears that the partial breakup of a Chinese military satellite in March 2021 was caused when it collided with a piece of rocket space junk leftover from a 1996 Russian launch.

It appears that the object that hit the satellite was one of eight pieces left over in orbit from that Russian launch that have been tracked over the years, and was somewhere between 4 and 20 inches in size. The result of the collision?

Thirty-seven debris objects spawned by the smashup have been detected to date, and there are likely others that remain untracked, he added.

Despite the damage, Yunhai 1-02 apparently survived the violent encounter, which occurred at an altitude of 485 miles (780 kilometers). Amateur radio trackers have continued to detect signals from the satellite, McDowell said, though it’s unclear if Yunhai 1-02 can still do the job it was built to perform (whatever that may be).

According to the article, this was the first major orbital collision since 2009, though similar collisions are suspected in 2013 and 2015.

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Zhurong completes its planned 90-day mission on Mars

8:54 am

China’s state-run press announced today that its Mars rover Zhurong has successfully completed its planned 90-day mission, is operating without issues, and will continue its exploration of the Red Planet.

The rover has traveled 889 meters as of Aug. 15, and its scientific payloads have collected about 10 Gb of raw data. Now the rover runs stably and operates in good condition with sufficient energy. The CNSA added that the rover will continue to move to the boundary zone between the ancient sea and the ancient land in the southern part of Utopia Planitia and will carry out additional tasks.

According to the administration, Zhurong operated with a cycle of seven days during its exploration and detection. Its navigation terrain camera obtained topographic data along the way to support the rover’s path planning and detection target selection.

Zhurong’s subsurface detection radar acquired the data of the layered structure below the Martian surface, which analyzes the shallow surface structure and explores the possible underground water and ice. [emphasis mine]

This announcement reveals two tantalizing details. First, they are extending the mission, and plan to continue traveling to the south, with a very long term fantasy goal of reaching the transition zone between the northern lowland plains that Zhurong landed in and the southern cratered highlands. That fantasy goal is about 250 miles away. At the pace Zhurong is traveling, about 1,000 feet per month, it will take about a 100 years to cover that ground. Even so, as they move south they are slowly going up hill, and have the chance of seeing some change in the geology along the way.

The second tantalizing detail is indicated by the highlighted last sentence, and is probably the most important data obtained by Zhurong. It suggests they obtained good data from the rover’s ground penetrating radar, and it indicated the existence of underground layers. Whether those layers contain ice however is not clear. From the story it appears the data has not yet been analyzed enough to say.

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Lacy patterns in the high north of Mars

12:27 pm

lacy patterns in the high north of Mars

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and rotated so that north is up, was taken on May 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the strange lacy patterns seen routinely in the very high northern latitudes surrounding the Martian north pole.

Located in a region of the vast northern lowland plains dubbed Scandia Tholi, such features are apparently common here. From a 2011 geology paper of the region’s geological history:

We find that Scandia Tholi display concentric ridges, rugged peaks, irregular depressions, and moats that suggest uplift and tilting of layered plains material by diapirs and extrusion, erosion, and deflation of viscous, sedimentary slurries as previously suggested. These appear to be long-lived features that both pre-date and post-date impact craters.

The small circular feature near the bottom of the picture appears to be a mesa, and might be a pedestal crater, so old that the surrounding terrain has worn away and left the hardened-by-impact crater as a butte. To its right is a larger circular mesa with its scarp well eroded into hollows. This might also be a pedestal crater, or not.

The white lacy patterns could be frost, either water ice or dry ice. That the white lace tends to favor the north-facing slopes lends support to this guess. The photo was taken in the early spring, so the thin mantle of carbon dioxide that falls to cover the polar region south to sixty degrees latitude is only beginning to sublimate away.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Big time comic book artist and screenwriter Frank Miller banned from British comic convention

11:28 am

Banned: Artist and screenwriter Frank Miller
Banned: Comic book artist and movie screenwriter Frank Miller

Genocide is coming: Frank Miller, well known comic book artist and the screenwriter of several major Hollywood movies, was banned from a British comic convention recently because fifteen years earlier — only a few years after the destruction of the World Trade Center and during the American effort to defeat the Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda — Miller had penned a comic book whose main character fought those terrorists.

And what prompted Miller’s banning by the convention, dubbed the Thought Bubble festival? Apparently, it received a single complaint from one very unknown Islamic cartoonist.

Miller was dropped after Zainab Akhtar, whom The Mix describes as an “award-winning cartoonist and small press publisher ShortBox founder,” said that she would “no longer be attending Thought Bubble festival this November” because Miller was set to be there. Akhtar explained: “As a proud Muslim woman, I cannot in good conscience attend a festival that deems it appropriate to invite and platform Frank Miller, a person who is responsible for the propagation of abhorrent anti-Muslim hate, particularly via his work.”

Akhtar in her complaint never actually cites any specific examples of Miller’s anti-Muslim hate, thus forcing everyone to guess what Miller’s specific crime might be. The only possible example is that earlier work, which very specifically attacked a terrorist group, not all of Islam.

But then, for the oppressive left, which includes radical Islamists like Akhtar, any criticism of their allies or agenda must always be labeled as “racist.”

As usual, what makes this story most appalling is the obsequiousness of the convention management, which immediately bowed to Akhtar’s slanderous complaint, begging forgiveness in the most cowardly way.
» Read more

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Saturn’s core is a slushy mix of rocks and liquid

9:31 am

Saturn's rings
Click for more information.

Using archival data from the Cassini orbiter that mapped ripples in the rings of Saturn, scientists have produced a model of Saturn’s core that suggests it is a slushy soup that as it sloshes about shifts the gas giant’s gravitational field.

By using the famous rings like a seismograph, scientists studied processes in the planet’s interior and determined that its core must be “fuzzy.” Instead of a solid sphere like Earth’s, the core of Saturn appears to consist of a ‘soup’ of rocks, ice and metallic fluids that slosh around and affect the planet’s gravity.

…Not only does the planet’s core seem sludgy, it also appears to extend across 60% of the planet’s diameter, making it much larger than previously estimated. The analysis showed that Saturn’s core might be about 55 times as massive as the entire planet Earth. Of the total mass of the core, 17 Earth masses are made of ice and rock, with the rest consisting of a hydrogen and helium-based fluid, the study suggests.

The image above was taken in 2017, and shows both a density wave in the rings (the parallel lines in the center) caused by a Saturn moon, and numerous “propellers”, small distortions in the rings caused by slightly larger objects.

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Ingenuity’s 12th flight successful

9:15 am

Ingenuity's shadow just before landing.

According to the Perseverance science team, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its twelfth flight on Mars early yesterday, making a short scouting round trip over an area called South Seitah to provide images that the team can use to plan the rover’s future route.

All told, Ingenuity flew just under 1,500 feet flying about 30 feet above the ground for just under three minutes. The picture to the right was taken just before landing, and shows the helicopter’s shadow on the ground. It is one of six so far downloaded. The remaining images will follow later.

The announcement was made on Twitter, and included some embarrassingly over-the-top prose:

The #MarsHelicopter’s latest flight took us to the geological wonder that is the “South Séítah” region.

South Seitah is hardly a “geological wonder”. It is a sandy area with some rocks and interesting geology.

I’m not sure why, but the Perseverance rover team seems prone to do this with their press releases and announcements. The claim they make over and over that Perseverance’s prime mission is to look for ancient life is junk Now they call a relatively undistinguished and small area on a crater floor a “wonder.”

Makes one think they somehow feel a need to justify what they are doing, something that is patently absurd. They are controlling a robotic rover and helicopter tens of millions of miles away as both explore a place on another planet no one had ever visited before. That certainly is spectacular enough, and does not need purple prose to justify.

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Blue Origin files lawsuit against Starship lunar contract award

8:40 am

What a joke: Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin on August 13th filed a lawsuit in federal court, attempting to overthrow the contract award NASA gave SpaceX’s Starship in its manned lunar lander Artemis project

In a court filing on Friday, Blue Origin said it continued to believe that two providers were needed to build the landing system, which will carry astronauts down to the Moon’s surface as early as 2024. It also accused Nasa of “unlawful and improper evaluation” of its proposals during the tender process. “We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” Blue Origin said.

The article then goes on to list the basic facts that make this lawsuit absurd. First, NASA had not been appropriated enough money by Congress to award two contracts, and had it done so, it would have violated the law. Second SpaceX’s bid was the lowest bid, far less than Blue Origin’s expensive price. Third, SpaceX was already test flying early prototypes of its Starship lander, while Blue Origin had built nothing. Fourth, many other technical issues made SpaceX’s bid superior.

Finally, the GAO, as an independent arbitrator, has already ruled against a Blue Origin protest, stating unequivocally that NASA had done nothing wrong in its contract process.

This lawsuit makes Blue Origin appear to be a very unserious company. Rather than putting its energies towards building rockets and spacecraft to demonstrate its capabilities, it focuses its effort on playing legal games in the courts. Such behavior will only make it seem less appealling when next it bids on a NASA or Space Force contract.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches five satellites

8:54 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket today successfully launched five satellites into orbit, completing the company’s third launch in 2021 and the second Vega launch this year.

With only three launches so far in 2021, Arianespace does not make the leader board, which is presently as follows:

26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains 31 to 26.

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Regional Martian dust storms help suck water from Mars

2:55 pm

Orbital data now shows that both global and regional dust storms on Mars help remove the planet’s water, allowing it to reach higher atmospheric elevations where solar radiation breaks it up and it escapes into space.

Scientists have long suspected that Mars, once warm and wet like Earth, has lost most of its water largely through this process, but they didn’t realize the significant impact of regional dust storms, which happen nearly every summer in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Globe-enveloping dust storms that strike typically every three to four Martian years were thought to be the main culprits, along with the hot summer months in the southern hemisphere when Mars is closer to the Sun.

But the Martian atmosphere also gets heated during smaller, regional dust storms, according to a new paper published August 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy. The researchers, an international team led by Chaffin, found that Mars loses double the amount of water during a regional storm as it does during a southern summer season without regional storms.

This conclusion is based on data gathers from three different orbiters during a regional dust storm in early 2019.

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