Category: Points of Information

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

Satellite data shows this year’s ozone hole one of the biggest on record

9:53 am

The uncertainty of science: New data from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite has determined that the ozone hole this year over the south pole was one of the biggest on record.

The hole, which is what scientists call an ‘ozone depleting area,’ reached a size of 26 million sq km on 16 September 2023. This is roughly three times the size of Brazil.

The size of the ozone hole fluctuates on a regular basis. From August to October, the ozone hole increases in size – reaching a maximum between mid-September and mid-October. When temperatures high up in the stratosphere start to rise in the southern hemisphere, the ozone depletion slows, the polar vortex weakens and finally breaks down, and by the end of December ozone levels return to normal.

Despite the claims of scientists that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were creating the hole, requiring their ban in refrigerators, air conditioning, and aerosol sprays in 1987, the arrival of the ozone hole each year is actually a normal seasonal occurance caused by the interaction of the Earth’s tilt and the impact of solar radiation on the upper atmosphere. More interaction, and oxygen molecules break-up into ozone. Less interaction, and there is less ozone.

Thus, despite the ban of these products now for almost forty years, the size of the ozone hole continues to fluctuate significantly from year to year, for reasons that are not yet understood entirely. Some scientists attribute this year’s large size to a volcanic eruption in 2022, but this is merely a theory, not yet proved.

It also must be noted that when the ban was imposed in 1987, we only had data of the ozone hole going back a decade or so. Environmentalists posited then that the hole hadn’t existed before CFCs, but they really hadn’t known that. It will likely take a century of research to really get a good idea of the hole’s normal behavior from year to year. We might find that there was no reason to ban CFCs, that the hole is a natural seasonal occurance like snow in winter and heat in summer.

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A nearby active galaxy, viewed head on by Hubble

9:39 am

Active galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and is the third of a seven-day celebration of galaxies by the Hubble science team. Previous images in the series can be found here. From the caption for this particular image:

At the center of NGC 6951 lies a supermassive black hole surrounded by a ring of stars, gas, and dust about 3,700 light-years across. This “circumnuclear ring” is between 1 and 1.5 billion years old and has been forming stars for most of that time. Scientists hypothesize that interstellar gas flows through the dense, starry bar of the galaxy to the circumnuclear ring, which supplies new material for star formation. Up to 40 percent of the mass in the ring comes from relatively new stars that are less than 100 million years old. Spiral lanes of dust, shown in dark orange, connect the center of the galaxy to its outer regions, contributing more material for future star formation.

This galaxy, located about 78 million light years away, has also seen six different supernovae in the past quarter century. Compare that with the Milky Way, which has not seen a supernova now in more than four hundred years.

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Northrop Grumman abandons its own proposed space station; partners with Voyager’s Starlab

9:25 am

Northrop Grumman today officially confirmed rumors from earlier this week: It is abandoning construction of its own proposed space station and will instead join Voyager Space’s Starlab station project, using an upgraded version of its Cygnus freighter to be the station’s cargo ferry.

As part of this new partnership, Northrop will provide cargo services to Starlab for up to five years. The upgrades will allow Cygnus to dock directly to a station port, rather than rendezvous and get berthed using a robot arm. This upgrade will also make Cygnus a more saleable product for providing cargo to other stations as well, as they come on line.

Northrop Grumman was one of four proposed private space stations projects that won NASA contracts, Axiom in 2020 and the other three in December 2021, with its award fixed at $125.6 million, of which $36.6 million has been paid to the company for meeting specific development milestones. NASA is now going to distribute the rest of that award among the remaining projects after some renegotiations.

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China to expand Tiangong space station

9:10 am

Tiangong-2 station after expansion

The new colonial movement: At the 47th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Chinese officials yesterday revealed that they intend to expand their Tiangong space station, almost doubling it in size.

The graphic to the right illustrates this, with the proposed new modules in magenta at the top.

“We will build a 180 tons, six-module assembly in the future,” Zhang said. Tiangong currently has three modules, each with a mass of around 22 tons.

A multi-functional expansion module with six docking ports will first be launched in the coming years to allow this expansion. This will dock at the forward port of the Tianhe core module. Full size modules can then be added to Tiangong. SpaceNews understands that the timeline for such launches is around four years from now. An expanded Tiangong would be just over a third of the mass of the roughly 450-metric-ton International Space Station (ISS).

The officials also said that they plan to add additional inflatable modules to the existing part of the station, as well as attachment points allowing for external experiments exposed to the environment of space.

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SpaceX successfully launches 22 Starlink satellites

10:57 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

70 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 81 to 45, and the entire world combined 81 to 72. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) by only 70 to 72.

SpaceX this year has now matched the record number of launches set by the U.S. in a single year that lasted from 1966 until last year. And it has done this with the year only 3/4s complete. Its goal of hundred launches this year is still well within reach.

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China launches classified remote sensing satellite

8:57 pm

Using its Long March 2D rocket, fueled by toxic hypergolic fuels, China today launched another classified remote sensing satellite from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

No word where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China, or whether they landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

69 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 80 to 45, and the entire world combined 80 to 72. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) by only 69 to 72.

SpaceX however has another Starlink launch scheduled to lift off shortly. The good live stream can be found here, using no distracting announcers while also using SpaceX’s own X feed.

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October 4, 2023 Quick space links

3:17 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Today’s blacklisted American: Man’s life ruined because a black man slandered him for profit

1:40 pm

The North Face: promoting bigotry and discrimination worldwide
The North Face: eagerly promoting bigotry
and discrimination worldwide

They’re coming for you next: Mountain-climber John Talbot lost his job and his career as a projessional climber for the sports apparel company Outdoor Research because black mountain-climber, Manoah Ainuu, sponsored by a different sport gear company The North Face, used his Instagram account to slander and defame Talbot, accusing Talbot falsely of being a racist while threatening Ainuu with violence.

Worse, there was no evidence that Talbot ever did any such thing, a fact that Ainuu himself later admitted.

Talbot is now suing both Ainuu and North Face. You can read the lawsuit here [pdf], summarized as follows in the press release from the non-profit legal firm, America First Legal, that is representing Talbot.

As alleged in the complaint, Ainuu, a paid climber and brand ambassador for The North Face, used his large Instagram audience to communicate defamatory claims that Mr. Talbot had made racist comments to Ainuu and tried to assault him, all because Ainuu wanted to increase his fame and advance The North Face’s social justice mission, even if it meant maliciously destroying the reputation and career of Mr. Talbot, a man Ainuu had just met.

As further alleged, Ainuu communicated his defamatory claim repeatedly online and solicited others to republish them. Moreover, Ainuu repeatedly directed the defamatory statements to Mr. Talbot’s employer, a competitor of The North Face – actions which North Face’s Global Senior Athlete Coordinator endorsed.

Talbot alleges that as a result of Ainuu’s actions, done with the approval and for the benefit of The North Face, Mr. Talbot was fired from his job, even after Ainuu later admitted to Mr. Talbot’s employer that he did not say anything racist or offensive. Meanwhile, Ainuu has continued to operate as a paid climber and brand ambassador for The North Face.

Talbot remains unemployed. He is suing Ainuu and North Face for damages not less than $75,000, plus punitive damages and attorney’s costs.

It is important to note that this slanderous behavior by Ainuu is apparently not unique, and in fact has been his modus operandi for years, according to people who know him personally.
» Read more

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Enigmatic terrain amid camera problems on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

11:47 am

Enigmatic terrain amid MRO camera problems
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image not only shows us some puzzling lava terrain on Mars, it highlights the continuing camera problems on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that began last month and now appear to be permanent.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on MRO. The black strip through the middle of the picture highlights MRO’s ongoing problem, as described by the science team in its monthly download of new MRO high resolution pictures:

The electronics unit for CCD RED4 started to fail in August 2023 and we have not been acquiring images [data] in this central swath of the images. The processing pipelines will be updated to fill this gap with the IR10 data for some products. The 3-color coverage is now reduced in width.

The picture shows the failure of this electronics unit. The color strip is now only about half as wide as normal, with the other half the black strip with no data. As the problem first appeared in July, and remains unresolved, it probably is permanent. Though MRO’s high resolution camera can still produce images, they will be less useful, their center strip blank.

This failure should not be a surprise. In fact, it is remarkable that so little has gone wrong with MRO considering its age. The spacecraft was launched in 2005, entered Mars orbit in 2006, and has been working non-stop now for about seventeen years. Moreover, it was built in the early 2000s, making it almost a quarter century old at this point. How much longer it can survive is an open question, but a lifespan of twenty years is usually the limit for most spacecraft. The Hubble Space Telescope however gives us hope MRO can last longer, as Hubble has now been in orbit for 33 years, and continues to operate.

Despite this data loss, the picture still shows some intriguing and puzzling geology
» Read more

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Japan’s space agency JAXA studying new reusuable rocket concepts

9:50 am

Even as it struggles to complete the first launch of its H3 hydrogen-fueled expendable rocket, Japan’s space agency JAXA has begun study work on new reusuable rocket concepts, working with its long-time rocket partner Mitsubishi.

Few details were released, but it appears they are studying a replacement for the H3, possibly using methane fuel rather than hydrogen (which is very difficult and expensive to handle), that would be ready for launch in the 2030s.

Meanwhile, the H3 remains grounded after its March 2023 launch failure, when its upper stage engine failed to ignite. No new launch date has been set. Because Japan has no more H2A rockets left, and its smaller Epsilon rocket is also grounded due to launch and test problems, JAXA right now has no capability to launch anything.

Japan’s policy towards space was changed this year to encourage the development of independent, privately owned rockets, but this transition from government-run to commercial has barely begun, and might not go anywhere based on this new study. It appears both JAXA and Mitsubishi are fighting to hold onto their turf.

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