Category: Points of Information

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

China successfully completes first launch of new Long March 6C rocket

9:33 am

China today successfully completed the first launch of its new Long March 6C rocket, lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the north interior of China.

The rocket uses kerosene as its fuel, rather than the toxic hypergolic fuels used in its older rockets, and is part of an effort to replace all those older rockets. Thus, when its lower stage crashes inside China, the risks of it harming anyone is reduced somewhat. China released no information on where that first stage crashed on this first launch.

The rocket placed four satellites in orbit.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

47 SpaceX
19 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 31, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 38.

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Starliner launch scrubbed due to valve issue

9:21 am

Yesterday’s Starliner launch was scrubbed before launch because ULA had detected an issue with a valve on the Atlas-5’s Centaur upper stage, causing that valve to flutter because it had not closed in the proper position.

At the press conference that followed, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno explained that during an unmanned launch, engineers would have simply cycled the valve, which almost always works to get it to seat properly. ULA launch rules however forbids it from doing so on a manned launch, because that would be the equivalent of fueling the tank with people on board the rocket. The Atlas-5 was initially not built for manned flights, and though it has been upgraded to man-rate it, those upgrades did not permit ULA this capability, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which get fueled entirely after the crew boards Dragon.

They are reviewing the data to see if the valve will need to be replaced. If not, the launch could happen quickly. If it does, the launch will be delayed slightly longer, but not significantly. Right now ULA, NASA, and Boeing are targeting a May 10th launch.

It is worth listening to Tory Bruno’s explanation of the situation because of its clarity. I have embedded his comments below, time-stamped to when he began speaking.
» Read more

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May 6, 2024 Quick space links

3:18 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.

 

 

 

  • Chang’e-6 is carrying a surprise mini-rover

    • The rover is very simple, and likely capable of only a few tasks and a short life span on the surface. Nonetheless, it shows that China continues to push the envelope, taking every opportunity to improve its space capabilities.

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Another non-story about Venus

12:33 pm

Venus as seen in ultraviolet by Mariner 10, February 5, 1974
Venus as seen in ultraviolet by Mariner 10,
February 5, 1974. The identity of the material
that causes the dark streaks still remains unknown.

The uncertainty of science: In the next few days you might see a few news articles in the mainstream press touting a new study that “Now for the first time!” explains why there is no water on Venus.

Be warned. You are reading bad reporting of relatively insignificant research that some specialists studying Venus might find of interest but for everyone else is hardly news. Prior to the internet age most science reporters would have read the press release and tossed it aside. And if they tried to sell it as a story their editors would have quickly told them to find something better to write about.

How do I know this? The press release‘s title gives it away: “Venus has almost no water. A new study may reveal why.”

First, any press release that uses qualifiers like “may” or “could” or “might” guarantees a finding of less interest. Almost invariably such “discoveries” are nothing more that a new computer simulation or model that shows interesting output, but has nothing to do with new observations of actual data. In essence, this is garbage in, garbage out. The computer models might help explain things, but no one should take the results that seriously. Good scientists (of which there appear to be fewer and fewer) never do. Good journalists should do the same.

In this case that is exactly what we have. To quote:
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

11:22 am

It just keeps going and going: SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

47 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 30. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 37.

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A supernova factory

9:44 am

A supernova factory

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2023 as part of a survey of galaxies where recent supernovae have occurred. One occurred in 2020 in this galaxy, which is about 240 million light years away and dubbed UGC 9684.

Remarkably, the 2020 supernova in this galaxy isn’t the only one that’s been seen there — four supernova-like events have been spotted in UGC 9684 since 2006, putting it up there with the most active supernova-producing galaxies. It turns out that UGC 9684 is a quite active star-forming galaxy, calculated as producing one solar mass worth of stars every few years! This level of stellar formation makes UGC 9684 a veritable supernova factory, and a galaxy to watch for astronomers hoping to examine these exceptional events.

This image provides scientists a high resolution baseline should another supernova occur. It will not only make it easier to spot a future supernova, it also increases the chances that the progenitor star that went boom could be identified.

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Another Starship/Superheavy update

9:15 am

Link here. The report details the extensive work being done by SpaceX engineers and construction crews at Boca Chica, not only upgrading and testing the 30th Starship and 11th Superheavy prototypes that will fly on the fourth orbital test flight but also improving and expanding the launch facilities there.

A static fire test of both vehicles could happen in the next week or so, though this remains uncertain.

Though it appears that SpaceX will be ready to fly by mid- to late-May, the key factor on when that fourth test flight occurs remains this:

…there is still no news on when Flight 3’s mishap investigation will be completed.

That investigation is being conducted by SpaceX. Once submitted to the FAA that agency will have to review it and issue its own conclusions (essentially rubber-stamping it), something that is guaranteed to take time. In the past it took the FAA from two to seven months to do this rubberstamping, with the time shortening after each flight. There have been indications that it hopes to reduce that time even further with this and later flights. We should therefore expect it to take anywhere from one to four weeks this time.

Thus, a May launch remains unlikely, as I predicted from the get-go. Expect the launch to occur in June, which though delayed will still be an improvement over the FAA’s past red-tape approval processes.

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Russia to NASA: We’ll wait a bit before putting our astronauts on Starliner

8:54 am

Even though Russia and NASA have a barter deal whereby one astronaut from each country flies free on each flight of its spacecraft, Russia it appears will forego flying any Russians on Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the immediate future.

At the May 3 briefing, though, NASA officials said it was unlikely that a Russian cosmonaut would be assigned to Starliner-1 [the first operational flight after the first manned demo flight launching today]. “We expect, on the Roscosmos side, they’re more likely to want to see a long-duration flight also, so we think they’ll want to start to fly with us on Starliner-2,” said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager.

That would appear to disrupt the ongoing series of seat exchanges between NASA and Roscosmos. “We’re still working through that with our Roscosmos counterparts. It’s our desire to continue to do integrated crew,” she said, adding that NASA and Roscosmos don’t have an agreement yet in place for exchanging crews in the timeframe that will include Starliner-1.

This isn’t a surprise. Russia made the same decision with SpaceX’s Dragon manned capsule, waiting until it had flown a few times before agreeing to allow its astronauts on it. With Boeing Russia might be more hesitant, consider the problems Starliner has had in development plus the overall quality control issues known to exist at Boeing.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse completes suborbital test launch

9:55 am

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse yesterday succesfully completed its first suborbital test launch, launching from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia.

The 12-metre, 2.5-tonne test rocket dubbed “SR75” lifted off shortly after 0500 GMT from a launch site in Koonibba, South Australia. It is capable of carrying small satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 pounds) to an altitude of up to 250 km (155 miles) while being fuelled by paraffin, or candle wax, and liquid oxygen.

Paraffin can be used as a cheaper and safer alternative fuel for rockets, reducing satellite transportation costs by as much as 50%, according to HyImpulse.

The company hopes to launch its SL-1 rocket on its first orbital test flight next year.

13 comments

SpaceX last night launched another 23 Starlink satellites

11:42 am

The bunny is so fast I missed one: Last night, only a few hours after SpaceX launched two satellites for Maxar, out of Vandenberg in California, the company followed this with another launch of 23 Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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

The leader board that I posted earlier today for the Chang’e-6 launch thus gave the wrong totals for SpaceX and the American launch industry. Below are the corrected numbers for the 2024 launch race:

46 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 53 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 46 to 37.

Hat tip to reader MDN to letting me know.

2 comments

Curiosity’s journey in Gediz Vallis approaching its end

11:28 am

Panorama taken on May 1, 2024
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was created using 31 pictures taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on May 1, 2024. It looks uphill into Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon that the rover has been traversing since August 2022.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The red dotted line, on both the panorama and the overview indicate the rover’s planned route, with the white dotted line marking the route it actually traveled. The yellow lines indicate approximate the area covered by the panorama.

Coming into view inside Gediz Vallis is that small outcrop in the center of the canyon that the science team has targeted for inspection for years. It will be the last spot the rover visits in Gediz Vallis before turning west to head uphill in a parallel canyon. To see that route look at the map in this September 2023 post. Curiosity will travel west past two canyons before turning uphill again in the third.

Even then, Curiosity will still be in the low foothills at the base of Mount Sharp. The peak, blocked from view by the mountain’s lower flanks, is still 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher up. The journey to get there has really only begun, even after a dozen years exploring Gale Crater.

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