Category: Points of Information

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

Sierra Space completes acoustic testing of Shooting Star cargo module that will fly on first Dream Chaser launch

9:45 am

Sierra Space today announced that it has successfully completed acoustic testing of the Shooting Star cargo module that will fly on first ISS mission of its Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.

During the Direct Field Acoustic Test (DFAN), the test team placed stacks of purpose-built loudspeakers – each one a highly-engineered acoustic device – in 21-ft-tall columns surrounding the spacecraft. Their goal was to test whether the structural elements of Shooting Star could withstand the acoustic environment of a launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket. Over a four-day period, test engineers blasted the spacecraft with a controlled sound field that was 10,000x higher intensity than the volume of a typical rock concert, recreating the sonic intensity of a launch. Shooting Star withstood acoustic levels greater than 140 dB for several minutes at a time, proving its flight worthiness.

The press release however made no mention as to when the launch will actually take place. Sierra first got the contract to build Dream Chaser in 2016, and was supposed to make its first flight in 2020. That launch has been repeatedly delayed, and is now four years behind schedule. Supposedly it was to take place this year on the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket in the spring of 2024, but was removed from that launch because of delays in preparing Tenacity for launch.

As of today, no new launch date has been announced, and though Sierra says Tenacity will be ready for launch by the end of this year, don’t expect it to happen before 2025.

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Private company launches small test rocket from privately run sea-based platform

9:30 am

The rocket startup Evolotion Space on August 31, 2024 successfully launched a small test rocket from privately run sea-based platform operated by the Spaceport Company, a startup in itself.

The launch itself did not appear to reach space, but was instead designed to test both the rocket and the sea platform’s operation.

The experiment occurred approximately 30 miles south of Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico. The test served to validate The Spaceport Company’s sea-based launch equipment and ground support equipment, said the company’s CEO and founder Tom Marotta. “Emerging hypersonic technologies require additional and larger test ranges to accommodate higher cadence testing campaigns,” he said. “With this new commercial facility, we will alleviate the burdens on government ranges and enable at-sea test environments that existing land-based ranges are unable to provide.”

The solid-fueled rocket meanwhile is being developed by Evolution to initially do hypersonic testing for the military.

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NASA asks space industry for proposals on using the shelved Janus probes on mission to Apophis

9:23 am

NASA has now put out a request for proposals from the space industry for refitting the two Janus planetary probes, whose asteroid mission was shelved when its launch as a secondary payload was delayed due to problems with the Psyche primary payload, as a mission to the asteroid Apophis in connection with its April 13, 2029 close approach to the Earth.

NASA has been studying this new mission goal since early 2023, but apparently had failed to come up with a plan. It is now asking the private sector for suggestions on getting it done, including finding the funding for any plans.

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Russia claims its next unmanned Moon mission, Luna-26, is on schedule

9:09 am

Phase I of China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The original phase I plan of Chinese-Russian lunar
base plan, from June 2021.

According to Russia’s state-run press, its next unmanned Moon mission, Luna-26, is on schedule for a planned launch in 2027, though that press also claims the launch may happen in 2026 instead.

The problem with this claim is that Russia had for years said that this lunar orbiter would launch by 2025. As expected, the mission has not launched on time, as have all of Russia’s 21st century lunar exploration plans. For example, the previous lunar mission, the Luna-25 lunar lander, was originally supposed to land on the Moon in 2021, was not launched until 2023, and ended up crashing on the Moon when the spacecraft did not function properly during a engine burn in lunar orbit.

In the first phase of the so-called China-Russian partnership to explore the Moon, is shown by the 2021 graph to the right, China continues to do all the heavy lifting, and do so pretty much on the schedule predicted. Russian meanwhile continues to do what I predicted back in 2021, get nothing done on time and when launched have problems.

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September 3, 2024 Quick space links

3:18 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, with the last two links today from readers Mike Nelson and Robert Pratt respectively. 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.

 

 

 

 

 

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Williams-Sonoma sued over its racist DEI hiring policies

1:27 pm

The racist hiring policies at Williams-Sonoma, beginning with its board of directors and continuing all the way down
The racist hiring policies at Williams-Sonoma, beginning with
its board of directors and continuing all the way down

On September 3, 2024 the non-profit first amendment legal firm America First Legal (AFL) filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the Williams-Sonoma corporation for its extensive DEI racial hiring policies that specifically favor some skin colors over others.

Williams-Sonoma, a kitchenware and home furnishings retailer with brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, West Elm, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow, proudly represents to the public and its shareholders and investors that race, sex, and national origin are motivating factors in its hiring, employment, and contracting practices.

As outlined in Williams-Sonoma’s 2024 Annual Report, their Equity Action Plan and Equity Action Committee led to “approximately 68.1% of our total workforce identified as female and approximately 41.1% identified as an ethnic minority group.” The company boasts higher management, comprising “56.6% of Vice Presidents and above identified as female.”

Williams-Sonoma’s Equity Action Committee also appears to reward executives for making race, color, sex, or national origin a motivating factor in hiring and other employee practices. The Equity Action Plan tracked and set goals for the diversity of the company, board members, and board nominees. It then designed the “Associate Equity Network Groups” that benefit some workers and disfavor others, specifically white, male, and religious Americans.

In other words, this company demands race and sex be considered as a qualification for a job, regardless of the person’s skills, experience, or talent, and it also demands that whites and men be put on the back of the bus, considered last in all hiring decisions, merely because they are either white or male.
» Read more

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A frozen Martian splash

11:31 am

A frozen Martian splash
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 11, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the southeast quadrant of a three-mile-wide unnamed crater that is surrounded on all sides by a dramatic but frozen splash apron of material, created when this impact occurred.

The rim rises between 200 to 400 feet from the surrounding plains, while the crater floor drops 700 feet to sit below those plains by 300 to 500 feet. In other words, that splash apron contains the material that was thrown up when the bolide drilled into the plain at impact, leaving behind this deep hole.

Why such a dramatic splash apron? Its existence suggests that the ground here was muddy, with a lot of water ice likely present. The location and wider context helps confirm this guess.
» Read more

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Two-lobed asteroid imaged by radar

10:04 am

Two-lobed asteroid
Click for original image.

During the August 18, 2024 first close fly-by of a potentially-dangerous asteroid only discovered back in May, astronomers used the Goldstone dish in California to produce the high resolution radar images shown in the picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here.

The images were captured when the asteroid was at a distance of 2.8 million miles (4.6 million kilometers), about 12 times the distance between the Moon and Earth.

Discovered by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona, on May 4, the near-Earth asteroid’s shape resembles that of a peanut – with two rounded lobes, one lobe larger than the other. Scientists used the radar images to determine that it is about 980 feet (300 meters) long and that its length is about double its width. Asteroid 2024 JV33 rotates once every seven hours.

Asteroids formed as contact binaries, once considered the stuff of science fiction, have now been found to be relatively common, comprising about 14% of the near Earth asteroids larger than 700 feet across that have been radar-imaged. The refined orbital data suggests this asteroid might be a dead comet, though that conclusion is unconfirmed. That orbital data also tells us that though this object has the potential of hitting the Earth, it will not do so “for the foreseeable future.”

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Scientists find oldest known reference to a solar eclipse dated approximately 6,000 years ago

9:36 am

In studying an ancient Hindu text called the Rig Veda that was compiled around 1,500 BC, scientists have found what they think is the oldest known reference to a solar eclipse, dated approximately 6,000 years ago.

You can read the peer-reviewed paper here [pdf]. From the paper’s conclusion:

We propose that the eclipse recorded in the Rig Veda refers to observations made of an eclipse around 4000 BC. By analyzing the description, we propose that the eclipse was the one that occurred in 4202 BC or else in 3811 BC. We propose that it was observed in Central Asia. To our knowledge, this is one of the oldest known references to a specific total solar eclipse mentioned in the historical literature.

The scientists came to this conclusion based on information contained and not contained in the Hindu text. The text noted the event occurred three days before the autmnal equinox, and that it occurred when that equinox occurred in the constellation Orion, when today the equinox occurs in the constellation Pisces. This reduced the number of possible eclipses to a small number during the time period around 4,000 BC. The text also lacked any mention of various Hindo myths explaining eclipses that appeared more recently, thus confirming this ancient date and telling the researchers that the nomadic people who compiled the Rig Veda were likely living in central Asia at that time.

The only two eclipses that fit the bill occurred on either October 22, 4202 BC or October 9, 3811 BC. This makes it the earliest known reference to an eclipse, far earlier than the possible eclipses that occurred in around 3340 BC and around 1300 BC.

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Largest corporate investor in rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg finalized deal to go private

9:12 am

The German company OHB, the largest corporate investor in the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg, has finalized its deal with the investment company KKR to go private and delist OHB from the German stock market.

OHB announced in August 2024 the deal where KKR would buy shares not owned by the Fuchs family for 44 euros ($48.70) per share. Under the deal, the Fuchs family will maintain its controlling 65.4% ownership of OHB while KKR owns 28.6%. That combined 94% ownership will allow OHB to delist from the exchange, effectively taking the company private.

It appears that both companies are committed to OHB’s investment in Rocket Factory, and by getting OHB delisted it gives them greater flexibility in doing so. It also appears that Marco Fuchs, the CEO of OHB, had decided in the last few years that for rocket startups being a public company was counter-productive in many ways.

“We saw all these SPACs fail. We see very different valuations out there. So, it’s not a good place to be, in the public market, especially in the core business model of doing space projects,” he said at the Space Tech Expo Europe conference. “It’s not exactly what capital markets appreciate.”

In a sense, this deal appears to be a show of support for Rocket Factory, even though its first launch is seriously delayed due to a recent failed static fire test of its first stage that destroyed the stage.

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That sonar-type sound heard on Starliner’s speakers was simply feedback

9:01 am

In a short post today NASA noted that the mysterious sonar-type sound heard on Starliner’s speakers over the weekend was nothing more than simple feedback caused by an “audio configuration between the space station and Starliner” and that the sound stopped when that configuration was adjusted.

The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback. The crew is asked to contact mission control when they hear sounds originating in the comm system. The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations

In other words, this is not a rare event, and from the beginning was not considered by the astronauts, ground engineers, or NASA management to be a matter of concern. The fix was apparently simple and straightforward, and is part of the work done whenever any new vehicle gets docked and tied into ISS’s systems.

It appears however to have caused many in the news media and in the space world to go nuts simply because it was linked to Starliner and Boeing. This is similar to the recent pattern of assigning all blame to Boeing whenever any Boeing-built plane has technical problems, even if that plane had been purchased by the airline decades earlier and its maintenance was solely the responsibility of the airline for that long.

Boeing is definitely a company in trouble, on many levels. We shouldn’t however look for problems there in the company when they clearly don’t exist.

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China launches “remote-sensing satellites” test satellites

8:51 am

China today successfully placed a classified “group” of “remote-sensing satellites” into orbit to test “new technologies of low-orbit constellations,” its Long March 4B lifting off from the Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

That is all the information that China’s state-run press released. No word was released as to where
in China the lower stages crashed. As to the number of satellites launched, according to this independent site, the launch had nine payloads, which suggests but does not confirm nine satellites.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

86 SpaceX
37 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 101 to 55, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 86 to 70.

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