Category: Points of Information

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

Chang’e-4 and Yutu-2 awake after long lunar night

9:59 am

China’s lander Chang’e-4 and rover Yutu-2 have both successfully reactivated from hibernation with the arrival of dawn on the far side of the Moon.

Both the lander and the rover ended the dormant mode automatically according to the elevation angle of the sunlight. And the key instruments on the probe have started to work.

Currently, the rover is located about 18 meters northwest of the lander. Communication and data transmission between ground control and the probe via the relay satellite Queqiao (Magpie Bridge) are stable, said CNSA.

One new detail Chang’e-4 transmitted to Earth is that it found the lunar night on the far side to be colder than what was measured by the Apollo missions on the near side.

“According to the measurements of Chang’e-4, the temperature of the shallow layer of the lunar soil on the far side of the moon is lower than the data obtained by the U.S. Apollo mission on the near side of the moon,” said Zhang He, executive director of the Chang’e-4 probe project, from the China Academy of Space Technology. “That’s probably due to the difference in lunar soil composition between the two sides of the moon. We still need more careful analysis,” Zhang said.

According to this article, the low temperature measured was -190 Celsius (-310 Fahrenheit).

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Maxar cancels its DARPA satellite servicing mission

9:50 am

Capitalsm in space: Maxar today announced it is canceling its DARPA mission to develop and fly a robotic mission aimed at servicing geosynchronous satellites.

Maxar Technologies’ Space Systems Loral division terminated an agreement to build DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites spacecraft Jan. 30, leading to a potential recompete of the program. Maxar said it also canceled a contract with Space Infrastructure Services, a company it created that would have commercialized the RSGS servicer after a DARPA demonstration, starting with an in-orbit refueling mission for fleet operator SES. Both were awarded in 2017.

…The cancellations come amid an ongoing divestment of SSL’s geostationary satellite manufacturing business, which has weighed down Maxar’s financial performance due to a protracted slump in commercial orders.

More background information can be found here.

It seems that the industry’s increasing shift from a few large geosynchronous satellites to small smallsats in low Earth orbit is the real cause of this decision. Maxar has realized that there won’t be that many satellites in the future to service, since the smallsat design doesn’t require it. Smallsats aren’t designed for long life. Instead, you send them them up in large numbers, frequently. Their small size and the arrival of smallsat rockets to do this makes this model far cheaper than launching expensive big geosynchronous satellites that are expected to last ten to fifteen years and would be worth repairing.

Thus, the business model for commercial robotic servicing has apparently vanished, from Maxar’s perspective. Other servicing projects however continue. From the second link:

Northrop Grumman said it plans to launch its first Mission Extension Vehicle to dock with Intelsat-901 and take over orbital station-keeping duties, extending the satellite’s service life by several more years.

Another up and coming player, Effective Space, is developing a satellite servicing vehicle called Space Drone, to provide satellite life extension services.

And SSL [a Maxar subdivision] is under contract to NASA to build the Restore-L satellite servicing spacecraft, slated to launch in 2020. Restore-L will be owned by NASA, however, and will operate in low Earth orbit, not the geosynchronous arc as was the plan for RSGS.

The last mission is intriguing because it could lay the groundwork for a robotic servicing mission to Hubble. It is being led by the same NASA division that ran all of the shuttle servicing missions to Hubble, and is using many of the engineering designs that division proposed when it was trying to sell a Hubble robot servicing mission back in 2004.

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China fails to reduce its methane coal mine emissions

10:11 am

Surprise, surprise! Using satellite data, a new study has now shown that China has not only failed to reduce its methane coal mine emissions, it has allowed those emissions to increase.

China, already the world’s leading emitter of human-caused greenhouse gases, continues to pump increasing amounts of climate-changing methane into the atmosphere despite tough new regulations on gas releases from its coal mines, a study shows.

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, which accounts for approximately 72 percent of the country’s electricity generation. While data show that coal production has increased in China, it has been unclear until now much methane gas, or CH4, has increased. Methane that is released during coal mining is responsible for the majority of coal-related CH4 emissions and is likely the largest human-caused CH4 source in China.

“Our study indicates that, at least in terms of methane emissions, China’s government is talking the talk, but has not been able to walk the walk,” says Scot Miller, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering and of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

The truth is that while China might say it has imposed “tough new regulations,” its commitment under the Paris climate accords actually allowed it to increase its emissions significantly for years to come, even as those same accords required the U.S. to decrease its emissions. This unfair situation, which China has apparently taking full advantage of, is one of the major reasons Trump dumped the accords. It also illustrates how little the Paris Accords had to do with climate change. Its real goal was to shift the balance of power and wealth from the U.S. to other countries.

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Lockheed Martin’s space profits to decline in 2019 because of ULA

9:57 am

Capitalism in space: Lockheed Martin is projecting a decline in its space profits in 2019 because of a decline in income coming from its ULA partnership with Boeing.

In the previous quarterly earnings call in October, Bruce Tanner, Lockheed Martin’s chief financial officer, warned those earnings could be down as much as $150 million in 2019 compared to 2018. Tanner said then that both the number of [ULA] launches and the mix of vehicles contributed to that decline.

“We have more, for instance, Delta 4 launches in 2018 than we expect to have in 2019,” he said in the prior call. “Those are obviously the most profitable launch vehicles in all of ULA’s portfolio.”

In the latest earnings call, Tanner said the decline would not be as large as previously projected, estimating it to be closer $100 million. Part of the change has to do with improved performance at ULA, he said, but a bigger factor was a delay of a Delta 4 Heavy launch from late 2018 to earlier this month, shifting the profit realized from it to 2019. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted language illustrates why they are losing sales. The Delta family of rockets might bring ULA the most income, but that is because it is also its most expensive rocket to build and launch, and is also the one for which it charges the most.

Back in 2016 ULA announced that it planned to retire Delta, but it has not yet done so, probably because the company earns so much with each launch. Whether they eventually retire it or not doesn’t really matter, however, because its high cost will have it with time go the way of the horse regardless. Other cheaper rockets, such as the Falcon Heavy, are getting the business instead.

In fact, this competitive process probably explains entirely the drop in earnings expected in 2019.

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Problem found with Soyuz set for Arianespace commercial launch

9:41 am

Russian engineers have found a problem with Freget upper stage used on their Soyuz rocket and set for an Arianespace commercial launch in French Guiana this spring.

According to the source, “a microhole has been found in one of the upper stage’s pipes, which apparently emerged during a long transportation of the booster to the spaceport in French Guiana.”

“Now the specialists of the Lavochkin Research and Production Association [Fregat’s manufacturer] are dealing with this malfunction, by the end of the week they should specify the types of the works needed for eliminating it,” the source said.

The launch may be postponed from late February until March due to this situation.

This problem might not be related to Russia’s ongoing quality control problems. It could simply be a consequence of the difficulty of shipping a rocket across the globe. At the same time, the thought must not be dismissed. They say the microhole occurred during transport, but there is no way to confirm this.

Either way, the problem and delay does not do the Russians good. I wonder if OneWeb, the commercial customer for this flight, is beginning to have regrets about its contract for 21 Soyuz launches to get a large percentage of its satellite constellation into orbit.

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China aims for at least 30 launches in 2019

9:26 am

The new colonial movement: The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China’s main government agency supervising its space program, has revealed that they have at least 30 launches planned for 2019.

This number brings the known predicted launches for 2019 to about 125, which I think would be the most ever in a single year, since Sputnik. It definitely would be the most since the 1980s.

The article also has the following information about the problems and delays that have prevented a third Long March 5 rocket launch since its second launch failed in 2017.

A redesign has been carried out to the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen YF-77 engines, two of which power the Long March 5 first stage, to correct the turbopump issue reported to be behind the 2017 failure. The return-to-flight mission will carry the Shijian-20 communications satellite, or “Practice-20” in Chinese, based on a new, large DFH-5 satellite platform which supports satellites from 6,500 to 9,000 kilograms.

A successful launch would mean the fourth Long March 5 would then be used to launch the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return toward the moon in late 2019. The mission will aim to collect up to 2 kilograms of rocks and regolith from a site near Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum on the lunar near side and bring the samples to Earth.

A nominal return-to-flight would also clear the way for the test launch of the Long March 5B, a variant of the Long March 5 designed specifically for lofting the 20-metric ton modules of the planned Chinese Space Station (CSS) into low Earth orbit. CASC official Shang Zhi told China’s state-run Xinhua news agency that joint tests and exercises involving a test model of the rocket and the CSS core module will be carried out at Wenchang at the end of 2019 in preparation for the maiden flight of the Long March 5B. Launch of the first CSS module is currently slated for 2020.

I wonder if we will ever see the Long March 5 version ever launch again after the 5B launches successfully. I suspect not, as it appears to me that the new variant is really a cover for the significant redesign required after the 2017 launch failure.

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Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) goes full communist

11:40 am

They’re coming for you next: During a townhall broadcast provided for her by CNN in connection with her decision to run for president, Democratic senator Kamala Harris (D-California) made it clear that her policies would follow a full communist agenda, aiming to eliminate the entire fossil fuel industry and the entire private healthcare industry while working to ban private ownership of guns.

Considering that the nation this very moment is suffering from one of the coldest cold spells ever and that millions would die without the ability to warm their homes without fossil fuels, it seems to me that Kamala Harris is a very typical leftist: She believes her ideas are so wonderful that they must be imposed, even if this will cause a genocide.

This at least has been the track record of leftists for the past 150 years, in Germany, in the Soviet Union, in Italy, in Venezuela, in practically every place they have gained power. Why anyone should expect it to be different here?

In fact, we have evidence to believe Harris would do exactly this, based on her own track record. In 2016 Harris tried to use the power of her position as California’s attorney general to force conservative organizations to hand her their confidential tax information so she can obtain the names of their donors. Her effort failed, but only because a judge ruled against her. And he did so because he recognized that Harris and her liberal supporters posed a violent threat to those donors.

Harris also joined a lawsuit by seventeen Democratic attorneys general aimed at harassing climate skeptics.

She has also publicly fantasized about the idea of killing Trump, Pence, or Sessions. She might claim that she was merely making a joke, but this really is not something you should joke about, especially if you are aiming for a position where you will be able to wield great power.

No matter. The American public, especially in the states dominated by Democratic elected officials, wants this. I consider her the frontrunner in the race for Democratic presidential candidacy And if you do not agree, be warned. They’re coming for you next.

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New report predicts the boom in smallsats will continue in 2019

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: A new analysis of the state of the smallsat industry predicts that the boom in smallsats will continue in 2019.

Coming off an excellent performance in 2018, SpaceWorks analysts project between 294 – 393 nano/microsatellites (1 – 50 kg) will launch globally in 2019, an 18% increase over last year. Of the 262 spacecraft SpaceWorks predicted to launch in 2018, 253 actually launched. “SpaceWorks showed unprecedented accuracy in last year’s forecast, with our prediction coming within 5% of actual nano/microsatellites launched.” stated Caleb Williams, Lead Economic Analyst at SpaceWorks, “Changes to our forecasting methodology, in combination with greater launch consistency and better execution on the part of small satellite operators contributed to our ability to accurately forecast market growth.”

2019 projections remain strong and have been updated to reflect the advancements of dedicated small satellite launch vehicles, changing attitudes of civil and military operators, and the rapid progress of commercial satellite IoT ventures. SpaceWorks analysts continue to gain confidence in the small satellite market as operators begin promising less and delivering more. “The rapid progress of operators focusing on IoT applications is expected to continue and communications applications are expected to quadruple their market share over the next 5 years” says Stephanie DelPozzo, SpaceWorks Economic Analyst, “overall, the maturing capabilities of small satellites are expected to open additional opportunities for growth and keep investors interested in the market during the near-term.” [emphasis mine]

The phrase I’ve highlighted is significant. It appears big government and commercial investors have finally jumped on the smallsat bandwagon after years of resistance.

The report also notes that the number of smallsat launches in the past five years has grown by 150%.

Everything in the full report confirms my sense that we are seeing a bifurcation in the aerospace industry, with the the unmanned branch producing smaller components while the manned space branch learning how to affordably build larger.

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New technique could make nickel as strong as titanium

9:18 am

A new technique that allows metals to mimic the internal structure of wood could make nickel, and other metals, far far strong.

Led by James Pikul, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at Penn Engineering, the new study looked at new ways to take metal and give it the porous structure that gives wood its strength. In the past, this has been done by finding ways to turn molten metal into foam, or using 3D printing with hundred-nanometer precision to build up wood-like metal bit by bit. The problem is that metal foam is crude by modern engineering standards, while the 3D printing process is slow and very hard to scale up from lab-bench scales.

“The reason we call it metallic wood is not just its density, which is about that of wood, but its cellular nature,” Pikul says. “Cellular materials are porous; if you look at wood grain, that’s what you’re seeing  –  parts that are thick and dense and made to hold the structure, and parts that are porous and made to support biological functions, like transport to and from cells. Our structure is similar. We have areas that are thick and dense with strong metal struts, and areas that are porous with air gaps. We’re just operating at the length scales where the strength of struts approaches the theoretical maximum.”

According to the researchers, the key was to go to much smaller scales to produce much greater increases in strength. They manage this by suspending plastic spheres a few hundred nanometers wide in water, which is allowed to evaporate. As the water disappears, the spheres drop into a neat geometrical, crystalline pattern. This is then electroplated with a thin layer of chrome and the spaces between the spheres are filled with nickel. The plastic is then dissolved, and what’s left behind is an open network of metallic struts with 70 percent empty space – making it light enough to float in water.

The process is however very expensive, and so far has only produced some very small samples.

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ArianeGroup successfully test fires new solid rocket motor

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: ArianeGroup, the private consortium building Europe’s next generation of rockets, has successfully test fired the new solid rocket motor it will use for both its Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets.

The P120C is designed and built by a European consortium involving a joint venture known as Europropulsion, a venture between ArianeGroup and Avio, as well as CNES, the Italian ASI space agency, and Airbus Safran. This multinational venture uses the Avio facilities in Colleferro, Italy to manufacture the carbon fiber composite casing, a facility in France to build the ArianeGroup composite steerable nozzle, and the propellant casting and integration facilities in French Guiana to build up and prepare these boosters for flight.

The P120C, through its common use across launch vehicle lines and use of existing facilities, is designed to reduce costs as a competitive response to newer companies like SpaceX that have dramatically lowered launch costs and captured an increasing share of the worldwide launch market, dethroning the ArianeGroup from the dominating position it had held until very recently.

Without doubt they are going to save money using this solid rocket motor on both rockets. I remain somewhat skeptical, however, about whether they will achieve enough cost savings to compete with SpaceX. The seeming lack of interest by their primary European customers for Ariane 6 suggests this. It appears that its price might still be too high.

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Next Long March 5 launch delayed six months to July

9:01 am

The next launch of China’s largest rocket, the Long March 5, has now been delayed another six months until July.

The second Long March-5 rocket was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern province of Hainan on July 2, 2017, but a malfunction happened less than six minutes after its liftoff.

In October the Chinese had predicted this launch would occur in January, so this new schedule represents a six month delay. This further delay also confirms to me that their problem in 2017, which the Chinese have never fully explained other to say it caused damage to a turbopump in one first stage engine, resulted from a fundamental design flaw in the rocket’s first stage engines, requiring major reworking.

This delay also delays the launch of the first module of their space station, as well as their first sample return mission to the Moon.

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Parker begins second orbit around Sun

8:43 am

The Parker Solar Probe has completed its first full orbit of the Sun and has begun full science operations.

On Jan. 19, 2019, just 161 days after its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its first orbit of the Sun, reaching the point in its orbit farthest from our star, called aphelion. The spacecraft has now begun the second of 24 planned orbits, on track for its second perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on April 4, 2019.

Parker Solar Probe entered full operational status (known as Phase E) on Jan. 1, with all systems online and operating as designed. The spacecraft has been delivering data from its instruments to Earth via the Deep Space Network, and to date more than 17 gigabits of science data has been downloaded. The full dataset from the first orbit will be downloaded by April.

They have been somewhat tight-lipped about any results from the data already obtained. I suspect it has not yet been analyzed fully, and the scientists are reserving comment until they complete their first science papers and get them published.

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January 26, 2019 Zimmerman on Martian Revelation

3:15 pm

I did a long two-hour appearance on a live internet show this past weekend. If you want to listen, you can do so here. Be warned, the audio starts automatically, and I do not appear until the show’s second hour, though you can jump forward.

In some ways this is one of the more interesting interviews I’ve done in awhile. We touched upon SLS, NASA, the bureaucracy, the failure of the federal government in all things, the Space Force, Trump and his real failures and successes, and most importantly, the fundamental necessity of Americans to stop asking the government to do things for them.

Even more entertaining, this was one of the rare times you can hear two guys from the New York metropolitan area having it out, both with loud brass New York accents.

Give it a listen.

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Weird Martian fracture feature

1:24 pm

Fractured collapse feature on Mars

Cool image time! When I first looked at the high resolution Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) image on the right, my immediate reaction was, “What the heck is that?” The image to the right is cropped and reduced, but if you click on it you can see the full image at high resolution.

The fractured terrain appears to be all within a collapse. To my eye it appears that while the overall surface has sunk, the fractures indicate an area where there has been an eruption upward, which after the eruption collapsed again, so that the fractured area remains at the apparent bottom of the collapse sink. I was immediately reminded of Upheaval Dome in Yellowstone National Park, which some geologists believe was formed by a “salt bubble” rising upward to create a salt dome.

A thick layer of salt, formed by the evaporation of ancient landlocked seas, underlies much of southeastern Utah and Canyonlands National Park. When under pressure from thousands of feet of overlying rock, the salt can flow plastically, like ice moving at the bottom of a glacier. In addition, salt is less dense than sandstone. As a result, over millions of years salt can flow up through rock layers as a “salt bubble”, rising to the surface and creating salt domes that deform the surrounding rock.

Context image for fracture feature

The process and materials involved were certainly different on Mars. Nonetheless, it does appear we are looking at an eruptive feature unrelated to molten lava. The context image to the right, showing this feature’s location in Mars’ vast northern lowlands, also shows that it has occurred on terrain that has bulged upwards relative to the surrounding lowlands. Nearby MRO images also show similar bulge/collapse features.

To decipher the geological mystery here, we would also need to know when this happened and whether there ever was a liquid ocean residing on top of it, before, during, or after the eruption. We also do not know well the make-up of the underground materials, including whether any frozen water and salt is present.

To be honest, we really don’t know much. I am sure a planetary scientist studying this feature could fill us in on some of these details, such as information provided by the colors in the color image. Even so, I am sure any good scientist would also admit to unknowns.

To get some real answers, we need to be there. It is as simple as that.

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Virgin Galactic lays off 40 workers

3:39 pm

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic earlier in January laid off 40 workers, saying it was in preparation for moving their launch operations to New Mexico where they will be doing their commercial flights.

This is about 5% of their payroll, so at first glance it does not appear to be a significant number. Yet, if they were about to move to commercial operations I would think their payroll would grow, not shrink.

The article itself buys into the company’s tediously overworn sales pitch (that they have been pushing for more than a decade) that they are about to start commercial operations, flying paying tourists, but this is just not credible. For example, as part of this sales pitch they made a big deal about hiring Under Armour to make the flight suits for their flights. Yet, no designs have been released, even though Virgin Galactic has been working on doing commercial tourist flights for more than fourteen years. Only now they realize they need flight suits?

In 2017 I predicted that Virgin Orbit would fly a commercial flight before Virgin Galactic, even though Orbit only started to seriously build its rocket in 2015, about a dozen years after Galactic got started. I stand by that prediction, which I expect will prove true this year.

At the time I also predicted that Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceship will never make orbital space, defined by practically everyone since around 1970 to be 67 miles elevation, or 100 kilometers. I also stand by that prediction, because only just before Unity’s flight to barely 50 miles did the issue of the definition of space reappear after almost a half century. Virgin Galactic has been pushing to get the definition changed because their spacecraft probably cannot get to 67 miles.

I just wish reporters would stop buying into Branson’s sales pitch. Show some skepticism, damn it. Your job isn’t to be a public relations agent for him.

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Recent events in the Mideast

12:55 pm

Link here. The article is written from a pro-Israeli perspective, but then, we do (or should) support the only democracy and free nation in the Middle East. The final paragraph summaries the events of the past week quite well:

This was a good week for Israel both militarily and politically. Israel continues to charter inroads on the African continent while at the same time, its military stands ready to check aggression emanating from nefarious elements to the north, south and east.

It appears that increasingly, moderate Muslim nations in the Middle East and Africa are realizing that it is in their interest to abandon their blind support of the Palestinian leadership, who has no interest in peace or even allowing any Jew to live. For these nations, the rational choice is Israel, who has steadfastly supported the idea that different peoples can live together in peace, and has demonstrated that position repeatedly. (I need only refer to Israel’s unilateral exit from Gaza to prove this statement, but if necessary I could also reference their peace treaty with Egypt, their exit from the Sinai peninsula, their willingness to supply electricity and other services to Gaza, etc).

I provide this information as a service to my readers, considering that every other mainstream media source seems too busy reading and sending out snarky slanders on Twitter about things that really have little significance.

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Another process arrest for Mueller

12:08 pm

They’re coming for you next: The office of special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted and arrested Roger Stone, another Trump associate, accusing him of perjury and witness tampering.

Stone is not accused of doing anything in any way related to Russia or collusion. Instead, he is accused of lying to Congress about contacts he made, through a third party, to Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks. He is also accused of trying to get that third party to lie as well.

Perjury and witness tampering are certainly crimes, but they are merely more process crimes, the only kinds of crimes Mueller so far has found. Stone’s actions in trying to contact Assange were not illegal. His crime only exists because of the witch hunt that is being run by Mueller, designed to persecute anyone connected with Trump. It also has nothing to do with so-called Russian collusion by Trump and his campaign, the ludicrous accusation that was used to create Mueller’s investigation and is supposedly its focus. He has nothing, and so he has to create something.

I should also note that it appears Stone was arrested by FBI agents pounding on Stone’s door, with CNN camera’s conveniently there to record it. I wonder how much of this is theater created for the cameras. Had Mueller’s office told Stone he was about to be arrested, I would think he would have surrendered himself peaceably.

Or maybe not. Maybe it was Stone who decided to force the FBI to come to his house and cart him away. In today’s America the issues of right and wrong, crime and innocence, and justice no longer matter much. All that matters is politics, and how you can use power and the media to do the most harm to your political enemies.

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Plato Crater on the Moon

11:47 am

Plato Crater's west rim

Cool image time! The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team this week released a new high resolution image of the western rim of 63-mile-wide Plato Crater, located near the visible edge of the Moon’s near side. On the right is a slightly reduced version cropped to show the area of most interest.

Plato crater is prominent, yet from our vantage point on Earth we never truly see it as it is. That’s because it is located far enough north of the lunar equator (center latitude 51.62°N, center longitude 350.62°E) on the curving surface of the spherical Moon that it appears foreshortened. Plato is round like most other impact craters, but from Earth we see it as an oval aligned east to west.

A dark floor makes 101-kilometer-wide Plato crater stand out against a light-colored lunar highlands background. Plato crater is also prominent by association; the crater is located just north of 1145-kilometer-wide Mare Imbrium. A small part of this mare is visible at lower left in our Featured Image. Mare Imbrium is made up of many basalt layers laid down by violent volcanic episodes over a span of about 1.5 billion years. The basalts fill the Imbrium Basin, which a large asteroid or comet impact excavated about 3.85 billion years ago. When we look at a bright full Moon, round dark Mare Imbrium captures our gaze, then we see Plato crater, which is estimated to be about a hundred million years younger than the Imbrium Basin.

The western rim of Plato crater — visible on the east (right) side of our Featured Image — includes a 23.4-kilometer-wide slump block. The roughly triangular piece of rim broke free when an asteroid impact excavated Plato crater. Its eastern edge stands up to 1.4 kilometers above the crater’s dark floor. Part of the floor is visible in the image just above right center, east of the long shadow of the rim. [emphasis mine]

That block is thus 14.5 miles wide, and almost a mile high. I am trying to imagine what it was like when it broke off the rim and fell eastward into the crater floor. I am having trouble doing so.

Below is a image of the entire crater, with the area of the image above indicated by a white box. It shows clearly how this crater splashed into the basalt lava plain of Mare Imbrium.
» Read more

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A detailed update on China’s numerous smallsat rocket companies

10:18 am

Link here. Based on this report, we should expect the first orbital launches from several of these Chinese smallsat rocket companies in 2019.

These numerous companies are ostensibly independent private companies who have raised Chinese investment capital. This is partly true. It is not the entire story however.

While the companies emerging in China’s nascent commercial launch sector are being backed by private funds, the firms are also apparently receiving significant support from the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND), a government body overseeing the country’s space activities.

A national military-civilian integration strategy is also crucial to the progress made, facilitating the transfer of required and sensitive technologies to the startups, as well as opportunities to share facilities and expertise. [emphasis mine]

Unlike Russia, China’s government might have decided here to embrace competition to encourage innovation, but we mustn’t forget that these companies only exist because the Chinese government allows them to exist. Everything that happens in China’s space industry is done with the approval of the government, for the government’s purposes. Once these companies succeed, the government will co-op them. I guarantee it.

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High Russian officials lambast Roscosmos and its head

10:02 am

At a meeting earlier this week several high Russian officials sharply criticized both Roscosmos and its head, Dmitry Rogozin, for repeatedly predicting grand future successes even as the state of the Russian space program worsens.

On Wednesday, the prime minister of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, expressed his displeasure with the situation. During a meeting in Moscow with senior Roscosmos officials, Medvedev made sharply critical remarks that were reported by several Russian news organizations, including Gazeta.RU and RIA Novosti. (Translations were provided to Ars by Robinson Mitchell).

“This is a blunt and direct assertion: We need to quit projecting future plans, stop talking about where our missions will land in 2030, get to work, talk less, and do more,” Medvedev said. “We need to be more active in commercializing our space industry and increase Russia’s international market share of commercial launches.” [emphasis mine]

Medvedev as well as Russia’s deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov were blunt in noting that Roscosmos has done a bad job of competing in the commercial launch market, even as it made empty “grandiose projections” of its future deep space exploration plans.

Whether these criticisms will have any significant effect remains to be seen. Russia has structured its entire space industry into a single government-run corporation. Within Russia there is no competition, and everything is run from the top down. Such a set-up discourages innovation and risk-taking, the very things Russia needs for it to successfully compete on the world stage.

Imagine you are a young Russian guy with a clever idea for building smallsats in your basement. Or you are a young rocket engineer who has an idea about building rockets better. In Russian neither of these guys would be free to do anything, as all space projects must be supervised by Roscosmos. Roscosmos however is a government bureaucracy, and such bureaucracies are routinely loath to take risks and give power and opportunity to new people outside its power structure. Your project would either be squashed, or co-oped by the powers-in-charge so that it would not fly, as intended.

We see this in NASA today, with its decades-long resistance to new space companies like SpaceX. Fortunately, the U.S. aerospace industry has not been consolidated into a single government entity, run by NASA. Nor can it be, at least for now. The Constitution prevents government from doing this, while the political system allows for competition, even among politicians. The result has been that political appointees in both the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations have over the past dozen years pushed the idea of reducing NASA’s control over space, and have thus made possible the arrival of a viable commercial and very competitive space industry.

In Russia, under Putin, they did exactly the opposite in 2015, ending competition and consolidating their industry under full government control. The results since have not been pretty. In 2015 Russia led the world in launches with 34. In 2018 they only launched fifteen times, the lowest total for that country since the 1960s.

Nor do I expect this trend to change in the near future, notwithstanding the blunt talk above by Russia’s leaders. At least for the next decade, I expect Russia to be a very minor player in space.

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“It’s Time To Finally Legalize Post-Birth Abortion!”

9:56 pm

Link here. Read it all. Though it is immediately labeled as sarcasm, to me the horror of it is that it follows impeccably the arguments made by the left for almost all of the modern cultural issues that they consider important. All it does is extend those arguments to their natural conclusion, as has happened in past centuries when the left gained the power to follow through on their agendas.

And be warned: The kind of people who find such arguments reasonable are now in power.

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New image of Ultima Thule

6:10 pm

Ultima Thule

The New Horizons science team today released the newest and highest quality image yet of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule. The image can be seen by clicking on the slightly reduced and cropped to the right.

Obtained with the wide-angle Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) component of New Horizons’ Ralph instrument, this image was taken when the KBO was 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometers) from the spacecraft, at 05:26 UT (12:26 a.m. EST) on Jan. 1 – just seven minutes before closest approach. With an original resolution of 440 feet (135 meters) per pixel, the image was stored in the spacecraft’s data memory and transmitted to Earth on Jan. 18-19. Scientists then sharpened the image to enhance fine detail. (This process – known as deconvolution – also amplifies the graininess of the image when viewed at high contrast.)

The oblique lighting of this image reveals new topographic details along the day/night boundary, or terminator, near the top. These details include numerous small pits up to about 0.4 miles (0.7 kilometers) in diameter. The large circular feature, about 4 miles (7 kilometers) across, on the smaller of the two lobes, also appears to be a deep depression. Not clear is whether these pits are impact craters or features resulting from other processes, such as “collapse pits” or the ancient venting of volatile materials.

They have only begun downloading the best data and images, so expect better images in the future.

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Federal workers will get a bonus on top of salary for shutdown

3:41 pm

The coming dark age: Because their pay will arrive late, federal workers deemed essential and required to work during the government shutdown should expect to get a significant bonus.

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees could collect late-pay penalties of at least $1,160 each — on top of anticipated back pay — after missing a second paycheck Friday due to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

The supplemental pay is being sought under a Great Depression-era law that authorizes damages for workers who are not paid on time, with potential government liability nearing $500 million as workers end a second pay cycle without a check.

A law firm representing workers suing under the Fair Labor Standards Act began a lawsuit sign-up drive Thursday on 2018governmentshutdown.com. FLSA lawsuits require opt-in, and many workers missed an opportunity to join a successful FLSA lawsuit following the 2013 federal shutdown, which resulted in four days of extra pay in addition to back pay.

It’s all a racket to fleece the taxpayer. This shutdown is and continues to be a joke designed to shovel tax dollars into the hands of government workers. Those that don’t work will still be paid, according to a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled House, the Republican-controlled Senate, and signed by so-called swamp-killer President Trump. Now we find that those that do work will not only get their salary but will receive bonuses costing the taxpayer millions.

Don’t complain however. We get the government we deserve, and based on recent elections, we don’t deserve much. The voters should have fired practically everyone in office in the past two decades, based on their repeated and continuing failure to do their job, while accumulating a debt that cannot be paid off for generations. Instead, the voters send them back, again and again and again. The turnover in Congress is pitiful in the past half century, so much so that these power-hungry crooks have found themselves well cemented to their cushy positions and able to use those positions to screw the country and the taxpayers.

The future of our country looks very bad. And it is even worsened in that no one is paying attention, being too busy fighting childish twitter wars over nothing.

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Martian glacier with moraine?

3:03 pm

Glacier flow on Mars, with moraine

Cool image time! In the past two decades numerous images and studies of the Martian terrain produced by orbiters have shown us landslides, lava flows, water and ice produced flows, and many glacial features, all vaguely familiar but often having components reminding us of the alien nature of the Martian landscape. I have posted many here at Behind the Black. (Just do a search here for the words “Mars flow” and you will have a wealth of cool images and alien geological features to explore.)

The image on the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows another such feature, but this time it is less alien and more resembling a typical Earth glacier, flowing downhill slowly and pushing a moraine of debris before it. The picture was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was part of the January image release. If you click on the image you can see the complete photograph at full resolution.

The release has no caption, but is titled “Tongue-Shaped Glacier in Centauri Montes,” referring to the largest tongue-shaped flow on the left. This feature, more than any other in the image, resembles closely many glaciers on Earth. It even has an obvious moraine at its head. As the glacial flow pushed downward slowly it gathered a pile of material that eventually began to act almost like a dam.

The location of this feature is intriguing in its own right.
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Rock from Earth, found on Moon?

2:24 pm

The uncertainty of science: Scientists studying rocks brought back by the Apollo 14 lunar mission have concluded that one sample originally came from the Earth, and if so would be the oldest known Earth rock.

It is possible that the sample is not of terrestrial origin, but instead crystallized on the Moon, however, that would require conditions never before inferred from lunar samples. It would require the sample to have formed at tremendous depths, in the lunar mantle, where very different rock compositions are anticipated. Therefore, the simplest interpretation is that the sample came from Earth.

The team’s analyses are providing additional details about the sample’s history. The rock crystallized about 20 kilometers beneath Earth’s surface 4.0-4.1 billion years ago. It was then excavated by one or more large impact events and launched into cis-lunar space. Previous work by the team showed that impacting asteroids at that time were producing craters thousands of kilometers in diameter on Earth, sufficiently large to bring material from those depths to the surface. Once the sample reached the lunar surface, it was affected by several other impact events, one of which partially melted it 3.9 billion years ago, and which probably buried it beneath the surface. The sample is therefore a relic of an intense period of bombardment that shaped the Solar System during the first billion years. After that period, the Moon was affected by smaller and less frequent impact events. The final impact event to affect this sample occurred about 26 million years ago, when an impacting asteroid hit the Moon, producing the small 340 meter-diameter Cone Crater, and excavating the sample back onto the lunar surface where astronauts collected it almost exactly 48 years ago (January 31–February 6, 1971).

The scientists also admit that their conclusion is controversial and will be disputed. If true, however, it suggests that there is significant material on the Moon from the early Earth that can provide a window into parts our planet’s history that are presently inaccessible.

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India’s PSLV rocket successfully launches military satellite

11:21 am

The new colonial movement: India today successfully launched a military reconnaissance satellite using a new configuration of its PSLV rocket.

The launch was broadcast live here and is still on-going as I write.

Thursday’s launch, the forty-sixth overall for the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), marks the maiden flight of the rocket’s new PSLV-DL configuration. Filling a gap in payload capacity between two of the rocket’s existing configuration, the PSLV-DL will help reduce the cost of India’s access to space. Its first payload consists of a demonstration satellite built around the rocket’s upper stage, testing this concept for future applications, and a military spacecraft with an imaging payload.

During the speeches after the launch, the head of ISRO, K. Sivan, did several things of note. First, he introduced the launch’s mission director and explained that this was his last PSLV launch, as he is leaving the program to take over important aspects of their manned program, dubbed Gaganyaan. Then he let this man speak, giving him a big platform that suggests he is definitely a rising star in their program. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch his name. We shall see him again, however, for sure.

Sivan also noted that the deadline for that first manned mission is December 2021. He also outlined the next few missions, including Chandrayaan-2 to the Moon.

The 2019 launch standings:

2 China
1 SpaceX
1 Japan
1 ULA
1 India

The U.S. and China are tied 2-2 in the national rankings.

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Oblique close-up image of Ceres

9:50 am

Ceres from Dawn

The Dawn science team has released an oblique close-up image of Ceres, taken in May 2018 before the Dawn mission ended. To the right is a reduced resolution version, with the full resolution photograph viewable if you click on it.

Dawn captured this view on May 19, 2018. The image shows the limb of Ceres at about 270E, 30N looking south. The spatial resolution is about 200 feet (60 meters) per pixel in the nearest parts of the image. The impact crater to the right (only partially visible) is Ninsar, named after a Sumerian goddess of plants and vegetation. It is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter.

Bright seeps running down the interior rims of several craters are visible. To my eye, the image also suggests an overall softness to Ceres. Its surface is like a sandbox, easily reshaped significantly by each impact.

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Orbital images of Bennu

9:32 am

Close-up of Bennu's southern hemisphere

The OSIRIS-REx science team has released two new images of Bennu’s southern hemisphere, taken from orbit. The image on the right is a cropped section of the highest resolution version of a montage of two images. Click on the image to see the entire two-image montage.

These two OpNav images of Bennu’s southern hemisphere, which each have an exposure time of about 1.4 milliseconds, were captured Jan. 17 from a distance of about one mile (1.6 km). They have been cropped and the contrast has been adjusted to better reveal surface features. The large boulder – fully visible in the middle of the left frame and in partial shadow in lower portion of right frame – is about 165 feet (50 meters) across.

The cropped section to the right shows that large boulder in the middle of the frame.

I’m sorry, but when I look at this rubble-pile asteroid I cannot help but think of the cat-litter clumps I remove from our cats’ litter box. The only fundamental difference is that the grains in cat litter are made to be a uniform size, while at Bennu the grains are much coarser and not uniform. Nonetheless, this asteroid is a clump of many grains, just like those cat litter clumps, and will likely crumple easily into a cloud of grains if smacked just hard enough.

This knowledge is actually very critical, as Bennu is a potentially dangerous asteroid with an orbit that might have it impact the Earth in about two hundred years.

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