Category: Points of Information

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

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches NASA’s Europa Clipper mission

9:50 am

Europa's approximate orbit around Jupiter
Click for original image.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket this morning successfully launched NASA’s Europa Clipper mission on its way to Jupiter, the rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In order to get the energy to reach Jupiter, none of the Falcon Heavy’s first stage boosters were recovered today. The two side boosters completed their sixth and final flights with this mission, while the core booster completed its first launch. The only parts of the rocket that will be recovered and reused were the two fairing halves.

To get to Jupiter, the spacecraft will make first a fly-by of Mars in February 2025, and then a fly-by of Earth in December 2026. It will arrive in Jupiter orbit in April 2030, where its orbit will be adjusted to fly close past Europa many times in order to study it closely, as shown by the graphic on the right. It will not going into orbit around the planet because that would place it permanently inside the high radiation environment around Jupiter. This is especially important because the spacecraft has installed transistors that were not properly hardened for that environment.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

98 SpaceX
45 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 115 to 68, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 98 to 85.

9 comments

ESA awards D-Orbit €119.6 million contract to complete Europe’s first robotic service mission

9:25 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today awarded the European orbital tug company D-Orbit a €119.6 million contract to fly Europe’s first robotic mission to extend the life of an already orbiting satellite.

Referred to as RISE, the mission will demonstrate the D-Orbit GEA satellite life extension vehicle’s ability to dock with a geostationary satellite, maneuver the satellite, and then release it. After this sequence is verified, ESA’s involvement in its operation will come to an end. The vehicle will then move into an operational phase with D-Orbit offering a life extension service to active geostationary satellite operators.

The mission is targeting a 2028 launch, though no specific target satellite as yet has been identified.

This project is very similar to the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) robotic missions of Northrop Grumman, which has been flown twice successfully. I guess ESA needed to see it work before it would consider doing its own mission. Moreover, ESA probably wanted to sign up a European company to do it, and until now no such company existed. D-Orbit has already completed fourteen orbital tug missions with seven more scheduled for 2025. This mission extension project however will be a significant leap forward in its capabilities, funded by ESA.

Leave a comment

Uzbekistan signs Outer Space Treaty

9:15 am

More than a half century after the Outer Space Treaty was written and put into force in 1967, Uzbekistan’s legislature in August approved joining the treaty, with the nation’s president signing that legislation this week.

By joining this treaty, Uzbekistan aims to strengthen cooperative relations with developed nations, accelerate the transfer of space-related technologies, and ensure that its space activities are conducted in accordance with international law and its national interests.

By signing the law the country — formerly part of the Soviet Union — is better positioned to sign joint agreements with other nations, either with China’s lunar base partnership or the American Artemis Accords (as presently being structured by the Biden administration).

One comment

Congress: NASA violated the law by awarding grants that were used by Chinese scientists

9:06 am

According to a report from the Republican members of a committee in the House, NASA has violated the law that forbids any cooperation or financial funding of China by awarding financial aid to more than a thousand research papers that were jointly published by both American and Chinese institutes.

The committee claimed more than 1,000 research papers had been jointly published by US and Chinese institutes with financial support from Nasa. Dozens of them involved people affiliated with China’s Seven Sons of National Defence, a group of universities with ties to the ministry of industry and information. Hundreds of the papers were linked to the Chinese Academy of Science, the state’s research institute.

The report also noted that “Beijing had used American taxpayer dollars to help fund research that enabled them to advance their weapons programmes. Among the Chinese arms were hypersonic missiles, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and microchips.”

The law these scientists have violated was passed after China stole significant technology when American satellite companies were using Chinese rockets in the late 1990s, and it forbids NASA to do any work in cooperation with China or any of its institutes.

None of this is a surprise however. Not only have many Chinese scientists come to the U.S. to obtain our technology, American academics (who in recent years have been more loyal to communism than their native country) have been almost all been willing to help them. in a sense, our academic community has largely become a fifth columnist working to help our enemies.

One comment

Estonia signs Artemis Accords

8:55 am

NASA yesterday announced that Estonia had become the 45th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, the bi-lateral treaty created during the Trump administration initially to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s limits on private property and ownership.

The Biden administration appears to be working to de-emphasize those goals, and in fact to instead strengthen the Outer Space Treaty. From this press release (and similar to statements in all recent press releases):

The accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements including the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

The full list of nations is as follows: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

It is interesting to note that Estonia as well as Lithuania, Armenia, and the Ukraine were once part of the Soviet Union (against their will). Similarly, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were once part of the Soviet bloc, also against their will. It appears they want to ally themselves with the west, with one reason their fear that Russia might invade them as it has the Ukraine. It also could be that these nations agree with the Trump administration’s original goals, and wish to promote capitalism and private property, having experienced for decades the failures of communist and authoritarian rule.

The future goals of the Artemis Accord alliance will demand entirely on who wins the presidency in the elction in November.

Leave a comment

Musk says SpaceX will sue California Coastal Commission

8:42 am

In a tweet on X on October 12, 2024, Elon Musk said that SpaceX will sue the California Coastal Commission for violating his first amendment rights as soon the court opens tomorrow.

“Filing suit against them on Monday for violating the First Amendment,” he wrote, adding: “Tuesday, since court is closed on Monday.”

At least two commissioners had made it very clear in public statements at a hearing last week that they were voting against a Space Force request that would increase the number of launches at Vandenberg because they opposed Elon Musk’s political positions, not because the request would do any harm to the coast. The commission then rejected the request 6-4, with others claiming that SpaceX should have made the request directly rather than have the Space Force do it.

The vote remains non-binding, as the Space Force has the legal power to do whatever it wants at Vandenberg, and only works with the commission as a courtesy.

2 comments

FAA approves launch license for tomorrow’s SpaceX Starship/Superheavy launch

12:24 pm

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Artist rendering of Superheavy being captured by
the tower chopsticks at landing. Click for video.

The FAA today announced that it has finally approved a launch license for the fifth test launch tomorrow of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, and that this approval applies to the next few launches as well, assuming the FAA or other government agencies or politicians don’t attempt to nitpick things again.

The full written re-evaluation [pdf] released today is somewhat hilarious, in that it spends 61 pages essentially concluding that SpaceX’s proposed actions were already approved by the 2022 Environoment Reassessment [abbreviated PEA by the FAA], spending page after page detailing why a license should be approved based on that 2022 reassessment. After wasting more than two months essentially retyping the 2022 conclusions, this report concludes ludicrously:

The 2022 PEA examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship/SuperHeavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship/Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this WR [written reevaluation] included noise and noise compatible land use and biological resources.

Based on the above review and in conformity with FAA Order 1050.1F, Paragraph 9-2.c, the FAA has concluded that the modification of an existing vehicle operator license for Starship/Super Heavy operations conforms to the prior environmental documentation, that the data contained in the 2022 PEA remains substantially valid, that there are no significant environmental changes, and all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met in the current action. Therefore, the preparation of a supplemental or new environmental document is not necessary to support the Proposed Action.

In plain English, SpaceX is doing nothing to require this bureaucratic paperwork, but we have insisted on doing it anyway in order to justify our useless jobs while acting to squelch free Americans from getting the job done as they wish. As Musk so rightly put it last month, “It takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware.”

Despite this approval, we must emphasize that this action has now set a very bad precedent for the future, When SpaceX makes changes to its flight plans on future test launches — something that is guaranteed as the company incrementally improves the design — the FAA will almost certainly shut things down again as it spends months once again determining that nothing is wrong.

Either way, stand by for tomorrow’s test launch, lifting off at 7 am (Central time). I have embedded the Space Affairs youtube live stream below, since SpaceX’s live streams on X don’t allow one to stand by, and will only go live 35 minutes before launch.
» Read more

34 comments

October 11, 2024 Quick space links

3:59 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, except for the first, which came from several readers. 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.

  • ISRO has booked all the remaining flights of its GSLV rocket
    To quote the tweet: “Within the next decade, both PSLV & GSLV are going to retire, after which India’s launch demands are to be met by SSLV, LVM3, NGLV & private launchers.” The best plan would be to replace all the government launchers with private ones, but that seems unlikely considering the political strength of India’s bureaucracy.
7 comments

California officials: SpaceX shouldn’t be allowed to launch from Vandenberg because we hate Elon Musk

10:11 am

In voting yesterday to reject a plan by the military to increase the number of launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, members of the California Coastal Commission admitted openly they did so because they do not like Elon Musk and his publicly stated political preferences.

The California Coastal Commission on Thursday rejected the Air Force’s plan to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

“Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” Commissioner Gretchen Newsom said at the meeting in San Diego.

…“I really appreciate the work of the Space Force,” said Commission Chair Caryl Hart. “But here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.”

It must be noted that this vote is not legally binding on the military. Though it has always tried to work in cooperation with this commission, it has the right to decide for itself how many launches it wants to allow out of Vandenberg. Whether it will defy the commission however is uncertain, and likely depends entirely on who wins the presidential election. If Harris wins, she will likely order the Space Force to not only obey the commission but to further limit launches by SpaceX at Vandenberg. If Trump wins, he will likely tell the Space Force to go ahead and expand operations, ignoring the immoral political machinations of these commissioners.

And it must be emphasized how immoral and improper these commissioners are. Their task is to regulate the use of the California coast in order to protect it for all future users, from beach-goers to rocket companies. It is not their right to block the coast’s use to certain individuals simply because those individuals have expressed political views they oppose. Not only does this violate Musk’s first amendment rights, it is an outright abuse of power.

If anyone in California reading this article wishes to tell these commissioners what they think of their actions yesterday, you can find their contact information here.

27 comments

Fringe activists in Texas sue SpaceX to prevent further launches of Starship/Superheavy

9:50 am

In an obvious attempt to block SpaceX’s effort to do the fifth Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch this coming weekend, a fringe activist group dubbed Save RGV has now sued the company, accusing it of using industrial wastewater in the launchpad’s deluge system that acts to minimize damage to the pad.

The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Brownsville Division, under the Clean Water Act (CWA), seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, the imposition of civil penalties and “other appropriate relief” to bring a halt to SpaceX’s “recurring, unpermitted discharges of untreated industrial wastewater from the deluge system at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site into waters of the United States,” according to the suit.

According to SpaceX, water in the deluge system is potable drinking water. Moreover, in previous launches the company obtained all the proper licenses for its use, only to have the EPA subsequently step in and claim SpaceX had “violated the Clean Water Act in deploying the deluge system. The EPA did not assess a fine, but did order SpaceX to comply with federal regulations.” That action has forced the FAA to delay issuing any further launch licenses, even as of today.

I call Save RGV a fringe group because it has almost no support from within the Rio Grande Valley surrounding Boca Chica and Brownsville. That community is overwhelming in support of SpaceX’s efforts, and wants it to grow and expand, because of all the jobs and money it is bringing to the region.

This suit is clearly an attempt to forestall any launch license approval the FAA might want to issue for SpaceX’s desire to launch this weekend, on October 13, 2024. SpaceX is ready to go that day, and is now merely waiting for the FAA to “go!”.

17 comments

On-going manned test flights of Boom’s prototype supersonic plane inching towards the supersonic

9:28 am

During the on-going manned test flights of Boom’s one-third scale prototype supersonic plane, dubbed XB-1, the maximum flight speeds have been steadily increased as they company tests the plane’s design and structure.

[On October 7th on the fifth manned flight] Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg set a record for the XB-1 shod with GE J85-15 turbojet engines, taking it up to 17,800 ft (5,425 m) and as fast as Mach 0.69 (428 knots / 492 mph / 791 km/h, true airspeed) over its 50-minute-long test flight, marking the highest and the fastest it’s flown so far.

Boom tested its flutter excitation system (FES) at Mach 0.6 … which must be unnerving for a test pilot. The FES is a system that deliberately induces vibrations into an aircraft’s airframe to help engineers find potential structural issues, particularly at higher speeds. They do this so structural issues (that could cause flutter) don’t rear their ugly head mid-flight.

The plan is to do five more test flights before attempted to break the sound barrier.

At the completion of this testing the company will then begin manufacture of its full scale supersonic passenger plane, dubbed Overture, that will carry up to 80 passengers and will sell to airlines. It already has contracts and financial support from a number of major airlines, including United and Japan Airlines.

4 comments

Arianespace sets December 3, 2024 for the next Vega-C launch

9:17 am

Arianespace today announced that the next Vega-C launch is now scheduled for December 3, 2024, the first in more than two years since a launch failure in 2022.

The failure was caused by a design flaw in the rocket’s upper stage engine nozzle. In attempting to fix the problem, the first redesign failed as well during a static fire test in 2023. The second redesign has now passed all engine tests.

This launch — of a European Space Agency (ESA) radar satellite — is being managed by Arianespace, the commercial arm of ESA that is presently being phased out. Beginning late next year the rocket’s manufacturer, Avio, will regain complete control of its rocket and will be able to market it internationally, no longer required to deal with this unneeded government middleman. Expect the launch price to drop at that point to make Vega-C more competitive.

Leave a comment

NATO to issue new space strategy to address growth in commercial sector

9:07 am

Capitalism in space? NATO officials at a meeting this week proposed issuing a new space strategy next year, designed to deal with the changing relationship in space between government and private enterprise.

During the Commercial Space Forum at NATO, participants discussed the threats they face, from cyber-attacks against ground systems, to jamming or spoofing of GPS and other satellite communications signals. They also addressed the importance of further investment in areas such as cybersecurity and sharing information about threats.

NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment, Ms Tarja Jaakkola, highlighted the need for a new relationship between the military and the commercial sector, “where both sides can learn from another, and where we can support and harness the entrepreneurial spirit and technological innovation essential to keep our defences strong and effective.”

More information here. It appears that NATO officials have realized that they can no longer do things as they have for the past half century, whereby they design, build, and own the space assets they launch. They must instead do what NASA and the Pentagon has been doing, become the customer that buys such products from the private enterprise.

3 comments

Mitsuibishi’s H3 rocket wins launch contract from UAE

8:55 am

Capitalism in space: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) yesterday announced that it has awarded the launch contract for its first unmanned probe to the asteroid belt to the Japanese company Mitsuibishi and its new H3 rocket.

The UAE Space Agency (UAESA) announced Oct. 10 it selected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch its Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA) on an H3 rocket in the first quarter of 2028. Terms of the contract were not disclosed.

The spacecraft, also known as MBR Explorer after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, will fly by six main belt asteroids between 2030 and 2033 before rendezvousing on a seventh, Justitia, in 2034, later deploying a lander.

This mission is the third that the UAE has selected MHI to launch. An H-2A rocket launched the Emirates Mars Mission, a Mars orbiter, in 2020, while KhalifaSat, a remote sensing satellite, launched as a secondary payload on another H-2A in 2018.

What makes this launch contract different from the previous two is that the winner is Mitsubishi. Previous awards went through Japan’s space agency JAXA, which appeared to manage the H2A entirely. Now, Mitsubishi is in control, and is working directly with its customer.

This change proves that Japan’s government effort to promote private enterprise in space is real, that though it has been slow to wrest bureaucratic control from JAXA, that wresting is happening nonetheless.

Leave a comment

October 10, 2024 Quick space links

3:36 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also deserves thanks for cluing me on the Vast, EPA, and Chinese launch stories posted earlier. 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.

7 comments

The pimpled floor of Isidis Basin on Mars

1:30 pm

The pimpled floor of Isidis Basin on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 21, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but chosen by the camera team to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.

When they do this they try to pick a target that is somewhat interesting, though it is not always possible. In this case it appears they succeeded in capturing a location filled with lots of puzzling stuff, including low 60-to-80-foot-high mesas with either flat- or hollow-tops, shallow craters that appear almost buried, and other craters that appear so deep and shadowed that it is even possible these are skylights into underground caves.

In between these features the flat landscape has a scattering of ripple dunes, all oriented in the same direction and thus implying that the prevailing winds are or were blowing from the northeast to the southwest.
» Read more

Leave a comment

EPA to NASA: We intend to regulate how you dispose ISS, and that’s only the start

12:47 pm

The FAA to SpaceX
The EPA and its supporters to the American space industry:
“Nice industry you got here. Sure would be a shame if
something happened to it.”

It appears the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a number of activist groups are now lobbying for the right to regulate whether anything in orbit can be de-orbited into the oceans, beginning with how NASA plans to dispose of the International Space Station (ISS) when the station is de-orbited into the ocean sometime before 2030.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is evaluating how the disposal of the International Space Station into the ocean will need to be regulated but has not shared the details of any specific concerns or aspects of regulation. “EPA’s Office of Water is coordinating with the Office of General Counsel on this complex issue. The agency does not have a timeline for this evaluation,” EPA spokeswoman Dominique Joseph told SpaceNews.

“Sixty-six years of space activities has resulted in tens of thousands of tons of space debris crashing into the oceans,” said Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia and a junior fellow of the Outer Space Institute, an interdisciplinary group of experts working on emerging space sustainability issues.

While Wright is later quoted as saying that disposal in the ocean is “the least worst option,” the article at the link includes quotes from several other academics, all claiming that such an option must be stopped at all costs, because it threatens to “cause great damage” to the ocean. These “experts” make this claim by comparing ISS’s de-orbit with the dumping of old ammunition from World War I as well as plastic forks now.
» Read more

27 comments

China launches what it claims is “high-orbit internet services satellite”

12:17 pm

China today successfully launched what its state-run press claimed was “high-orbit internet services satellite,” its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages and strap-on boosters crashed inside China. All use toxic hypergolic fuels.

As for the payload, this tweet from a independent reporter on China’s space program questions the claim that it is a communications satellite. Since China has told us nothing, we really know nothing. However, if it was really what its state-run press says it is, China would normally release a bit more information.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

96 SpaceX
45 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 113 to 68, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 96 to 85.

2 comments

Vast unveils its first preliminary design for the interior of its Haven-1 space station

12:08 pm

Artist's rendering of Haven-1 interior
Artist’s rendering of Haven-1 interior.
Click for original.

Vast today revealed its first preliminary design for the interior of its Haven-1 space station that it hopes to launch in the second half of 2026 and immediately occupy with four astronauts for a 30-day mission.

After docking with a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, Haven-1 crew members open the Haven-1 exterior hatch and are greeted by a sleek, functional layout upon entry. A real-time display shows the station status with temperature and lighting controls, and optimized cargo compartments ensure essential supplies are stored efficiently. Notably, Haven-1’s interior surfaces are soft and padded to provide an added safety component for crew and visitors as they float throughout.

Above and below the corridor, the station’s four private crew quarters offer astronauts a space to rest and recharge. Slightly larger than the crew quarters aboard the ISS, these expanded personal rooms are uniquely designed to allow for changing, entertainment, online communication with loved ones back on Earth (enabled by SpaceX Starlink connectivity), and, most importantly, a good night’s rest. Experience has shown that sleeping in space can be a restless endeavor. Maximizing sleep efficiency and comfort remains critical to the overall experience aboard the Vast station. Historically, zero gravity sleep has been uncomfortable for astronauts due to a lack of standardized and consistent restraint systems during weightless sleep and a deficit in the distributed gravity forces humans are accustomed to on Earth. Vast’s patent-pending signature sleep system is roughly the size of a queen bed, provides a customized amount of equal pressure throughout the night, and accommodates side and back sleepers alike.

Additionally, each room features a built-in storage compartment, vanity, and a custom amenities kit

Beyond the corridor with the crew quarters is a common area which also includes a laboratory rack system on one wall, where experiments can be installed, monitored, and performed.

Overall the interior of this single module station in many ways harks back to the early Soviet Salyut stations, as the amount of interior space is somewhat comparable. One feature of Vast’s design however that is truly original is the use of “genuine safety-tested, fire-resistant maple wood veneer slats” on the interior’s walls.

Though definitely designed with that 30-day mission in mind, this first release clearly looks preliminary, with the graphics appearing far simpler than things will look in reality.

2 comments

Judge rules for 9-year-old Kansas City Chiefs fan, allowing his lawsuit against Deadspin to go forward

11:31 am

Holden Armenta on his way to the Superbowl
Holden Armenta in face-paint and headdress,
on his way to the Superbowl in February. Click for video.

In a ruling earlier this week, a Delaware judge rejected the motion of the news organization Deadspin to dismiss the lawsuit by 9-year-old Holden Armenta that accuses the news organization of falsely slandering the boy as a racist and bigot.

This story is just another example of the legacy of hate that came out of the Obama era, whereby leftists decided they had the right to slander and defame anyone they wanted, simply for political gain. In this case Deadspin writer Carron Phillips had in an article unjustly accused this child of being a racist because he attended a game wearing facepaint.

Phillips wrote the child was wearing blackface, and Deadspin helped Phillips push this lie by printing a picture that only showed the black side of Armenta’s face. A head-on shot showed his facepaint had nothing to do with blackface, but was a typical example of what many football fans do, paint their faces with the colors of their team. The right side of the boy’s face was painted black, the left side red.

What made the slander even more egregious is that Holden is an American Indian, with his grandfather, Raul Armenta, on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California. Deadspin and Phillips further worsened the situation by refusing to take down the story. Phillips even went so far as to further accuse the boy of bigotry against American Indians by the use of the red face paint!

Deadspin, which shortly after its slanderous behavior was sold to a foreign company which then fired its entire staff, had attempted to get the Armenta lawsuit dismissed, claiming that Phillips’ article was simply an “opinion,” not a statement of a false fact that was libelous. Superior Court Judge Sean Lugg bluntly rejected that argument, allowing the lawsuit to now go forward.
» Read more

3 comments

Viewing Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS when it enters the evening sky

9:20 am

Link here. For those living in the northern hemisphere, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be bright and visible to the naked eye just after sunset beginning tomorrow.

“As soon as October 11th, ambitious comet spotters may pick up the comet during twilight just above the western horizon,” says Sky & Telescope Contributing Editor Bob King. “Binoculars will help you see the comet throughout its appearance.”

About 40 minutes after sunset on Friday, find a spot with a good view down to the western horizon. The first thing that will catch your eye will be the bright planet Venus, the Evening Star — that’s your starting point. Hold your fist out at arm’s length; the comet is about 2½ fists to Venus’s right. The comet will still look tiny in Friday’s twilight — like a hazy star with a small tail — and will set while twilight is still in progress.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (pronounced choo-cheen-SHAHN) will remain visible for the next ten days, with the best viewing likely from October 13th to October 16th.

5 comments

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot appears to jiggle like Jello on a 90-day cycle

9:07 am

Jupiter as seen by Hubble over time
Click for original image.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph Jupiter’s Great Red Spot repeatedly over a four month period from December 2023 to March 2024 scientists have detected a 90-day cycle in which the spot oscillated in shape, shaking like Jello.

“While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn’t expect to see the size oscillate. As far as we know, it’s not been identified before,” said Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the science paper published in The Planetary Science Journal. “This is really the first time we’ve had the proper imaging cadence of the GRS. With Hubble’s high resolution we can say that the GRS is definitively squeezing in and out at the same time as it moves faster and slower. That was very unexpected, and at present there are no hydrodynamic explanations.”

The four images to the right are some of those observations. For a full movie showing the changes over ninety days, go here.

The scientists also predict that though the spot has been shrinking for decades, they expect that shrinkage to stop once the spot size no longer extends beyond the jet stream band within which it sits. At that point the different jet streams in the upper and lower bands will hold the spot in place and its size will stabilize.

Leave a comment

Monitoring a changing spot on Mars

1:12 pm

Monitoring a changing landscape on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 18, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Based on its label, “Dark Filamentary Streak Year-Round Monitor Site in Promethei Terra,” it was apparently taken as part of a long-term project to monitor the changes that occur at this particular spot on Mars.

This monitoring began in 2008, not long after MRO began science operations. In that first image, taken in the Martian autumn, almost the entire terrain was covered with dust devil tracks, all running more-or-less parallel to each other in a northwest-to-southeast direction.

That unusual tiger-striped landscape prompted later monitoring. However, a follow-up photo in 2010, also in autumn, showed practically no dust tracks here at all. Another image, taken in 2011 during the Martian summer, showed new dust devil tracks, but instead of being aligned as in 2008, the tracks went in all directions, with only a hint of alignment to the southeast.
» Read more

One comment

Astronomers find another galaxy that shouldn’t be there in the early universe

9:44 am

REBELS-25
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Using ground-based telescopes, astronomers have identified a galaxy only 700 million years after the Big Bang that is far more organized and coherent in shape and structure than thought possibly that soon after the theorized creation of the universe.

The galaxy in question is dubbed REBELS-25. It is at a red shift of z=7.31, which means that it is from a time when the universe was only 700 million years old. The earliest galaxies ever seen are only a few hundred million years older.

REBELS by name rebel by nature. This odd galaxy has stumped astronomers because it shows evidence of an ordered structure and rotation. It may even have a central elongated bar and spiral arms, though further observation is needed to confirm these structures.

This is in contrast to the small, messy, lumpy and chaotic norm for galaxies of a similar age. “According to our understanding of galaxy formation, we expect most early galaxies to be small and messy looking,” says co-author Jacqueline Hodge, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

You can read the published paper here [pdf]. The picture to the right shows this galaxy as seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.

The consensus view of the early universe said there would not have been enough time for such a structured galaxy to form. And yet as astronomers use the improved astronomical instrumentation of our time to look deeper and deeper at that early universe, they keep finding things — like this galaxy — that defy that consensus view.

The answer to this mystery remains unknown, and is likely not yet answerable with the data we presently have. The data we do have however is beginning to suggest that scientists might have to begin looking at fundamentally different theories as to the inital formation of the universe. The Big Bang might still work, but if so it might require a major rewrite.

6 comments

October 8, 2024 Quick space links

3:12 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.

4 comments

Donations to Columbia University continue to plunge in response to the pro-Hamas anti-Semitic protests on campus

2:13 pm

Columbia University's seal
The motto means “In Your Light [God],
We Shall See the Light.” Too bad no one
running Columbia now believes in this.

During an annual fundraiser event this week at Columbia University, donations plunged nearly 29 percent from its last event in 2022.

Columbia’s “Giving Day” event in 2024 raised $21.4 million, a significant decrease from the $30 million it garnered in 2022, according to the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper. The event was not held in 2023 due to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent protests on campus.

The university also saw a nearly 28 percent decline in the number of gifts, which dropped from 19,229 in 2022 to 13,870 in 2024, the lowest level since 2015 and the first time the total monetary amount of the donations declined from the previous year since the event began in 2012. In response to the decline, the Columbia Spectator stated that the university is currently facing a “donor crisis — born out of concerns regarding campus protests.”

» Read more

11 comments

Curiosity’s upcoming travel route

12:36 pm

Curiosity's upcoming route
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped and annotated to post here, was taken on October 6, 2024 by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks south, down the slopes of Mount Sharp and across Gale Crater, the distant crater rim barely visible through the dusty air twenty to thirty miles away.

The overview map to the right provide the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s planned route, with the white dotted line the path it has recently traveled.

As you can see, the rover has moved up onto a higher terrace surrounding the Texoli butte, and will now travel downhill a bit to skirt around its northern nose. From there, the science team plans to send the rover westward, traversing along the contour lines on the side of Mount Sharp. Along the way it will lose more elevation, but eventually, after passing several parallel north-south trending canyons, it will finally turn south into one canyon to resume its climb up the mountain.

To review the rover’s journey, Curiosity during its dozen years on Mars has traveled just over 20 miles and climbed about 2,500 feet. The peak of Mount Sharp however is still about 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher. Getting there will probably take at least three more decades, which is possible since the rover uses a nuclear power source similar to that used by the two Voyager interplanetary probes, now functioning in space for almost a half century.

In fact, it would not surprise me if the first human Mars colonies are established while Curiosity is still working, and that in its later years it sends its data to that colony directly (via an orbiting relay satellite), rather than beaming it back to Earth.

3 comments

Scientists: both liquid water and ice shaped Gale Crater

9:38 am

The uncertainty of science: Using isotope data from instruments on the Mars rover Curiosity, scientists have found evidence that suggests that both liquid water as well as glacial ice helped shape the present geology in Gale Crater.

The paper proposes two formation mechanisms for carbonates found at Gale. In the first scenario, carbonates are formed through a series of wet-dry cycles within Gale crater [involving intermittent liquid water]. In the second, carbonates are formed in very salty water under cold, ice-forming (cryogenic) conditions in Gale crater [involving glacial ice].

“These formation mechanisms represent two different climate regimes that may present different habitability scenarios,” said Jennifer Stern of NASA Goddard, a co-author of the paper. “Wet-dry cycling would indicate alternation between more-habitable and less-habitable environments, while cryogenic temperatures in the mid-latitudes of Mars would indicate a less-habitable environment where most water is locked up in ice and not available for chemistry or biology, and what is there is extremely salty and unpleasant for life.”

…The heavy isotope values in the Martian carbonates are significantly higher than what’s seen on Earth for carbonate minerals and are the heaviest carbon and oxygen isotope values recorded for any Mars materials. In fact, according to the team, both the wet-dry and the cold-salty climates are required to form carbonates that are so enriched in heavy carbon and oxygen.

What I glean from this report is that the evidence that ice played the dominant role continues to build, but since it counters the liquid water theories that scientists have favored for decades they are reluctant to shift entirely to it. It also suggests the geological processes on Mars were far more complex than proposed (no surprise!), and that some mixture of both processes was likely.

This paper is of course merely a newly proposed hypothesis, and therefore its conclusions should be considered only with great skepticism.

Leave a comment
1 … 26 27 28 29 30 … 898