Category: Points of Information

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

India successfully launches Chandrayaan-3

8:35 am


Click for interactive map.

India today successfully launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover probe toward the Moon, carried aloft by its LV-M3 rocket (a variation of its GSLV) from its coastal spaceport in Sriharikota.

Chandrayaan-3 carries the Vikram lander, which will bring the Pragyan rover to the surface. Pragyan will spend about two weeks operating on the lunar surface. The location is indicated by the red dot on the map to the right, in the high southern latitudes. The white cross marks the lunar south pole. Russia’s Luna-25 is scheduled to launch sometime in mid-August.

It will take time to get Chandrayaan-3 into the right lunar orbit for landing, which is presently scheduled for August 13, 2023.

For India this was its fifth successful launch for the year, the most since 2019, before it panicked over COVID. The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

46 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 52 to 26, and the entire world combined 52 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 46 to 45.

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July 13, 2023 Quick space links

3:53 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • ULA’s CEO says Blue Origin is manufacturing two BE-4 engines per quarter

    • 8 engines a year, eh? New Glenn requires seven to launch. ULA will need two for each Vulcan launch. I don’t see this working as planned. If true ULA has a serious problem, and New Glenn will not fly for years.

    Jay adds this link for comparison: SpaceX produces one Raptor-2 engine every two days, and was previously manufacturing 400 Merlin engines per year (before the reuse of the Falcon 9 first stage reduced the need for so many engines).

 

 

 

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Enthusiastic censorship and blacklisting at St. Philip’s College in Texas

3:27 pm

St. Philip's College, home to blacklisting and censorship
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship

They’re coming for you next: The university was conceived as a place of where young minds would be exposed to new ideas in order to challenge their youthful assumptions and unbridled certainty, with the determined goal to teach critical thinking. (For those who no longer know what critical thinking is, it is the concept that you question everything rigorously, including most importantly your own assumptions.)

It seems most American colleges no longer practice this. In fact, many now teach the exact opposite. Faced with ideas you don’t like, students are encouraged to complain, and hide in “safe spaces” so they don’t have to question anything.

It also appears that St. Philip’s College in Texas is the poster child of this new “teaching” concept. This semester it fired two different teachers when several anonymous students complained because those professors expressed some basic facts in their classrooms that conflict with the modern queer agenda and the leftist hostility to open debate.

First, Dr. Johnson Varkey was fired in January 2023 because he had the audacity during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology.

Four students walked out of that class in protest, and then complained to the administration. Within weeks it terminated Varkey, with no due process. In its termination letter [pdf] (part of the response by Varkey’s attorney’s at the non-profit legal firm First Liberty), it claimed
» Read more

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A Martian gully formed by disappearing glacial ice?

11:53 am

Puzzling Martian gully
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the rim of a seventeen-mile wide crater, and was the scientists label a “gully without apron,” meaning that though something has caused material to disappear within that gully, beginning high on the rim wall, there does not appear to be any piled up apron or debris at the gully’s base.

The blue colors imply the possibility of frost within the gully, while the orange suggests dust or coarse surface material.

The cracks emanating away at right angles from the gully’s base suggest glacial ice, which makes sense based on the location.
» Read more

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Senate committee approves Biden’s FCC nominees

10:13 am

Despite apparent opposition to the Biden nominees by Republicans, the Senate committee involved has approved the three FCC nominees and moved that the process proceed to a vote in the full Senate.

The article also includes these paragraphs, describing absurdities that could only occur in Congress:

[Ted] Cruz [R-Texas] moved that all the nominations, including Damelin and a nominee for the National Transportation Safety Board plus a list of Coast Guard promotions, be favorably reported. There were no objections and the motion was agreed to.

Immediately thereafter, however, Cruz and other Republicans asked to be recorded as no on Gomez and/or Starks and two Democrats as no on Carr. It’s not possible to discern from the webcast who was speaking in all instances, but the bottom line is that all the nominations were approved and now can go to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. The requests to be recorded as no are a signal that the rest of the confirmation process will not be easy.

Cruz moves the nominees should be “favorably” reported, but then announces he and others are against some.

All in all, this appears to be another example of Republican failure theater. Make it sound like you are trying to block Biden’s policies, but then do whatever is necessary to let them to go into effect. Considering that the Democratic Party appointees at the FCC have been pushing for regulatory power beyond the commission’s statutory authority, it seems absurd for any Republican senator (or Democrat senator for that matter) to okay any Biden nominees who would continue that power grab. And yet, the Republicans appear willing to go along.

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Australian industrial space park threatened with shut down

10:03 am

With the loss of government funds caused by decisions of the new Labor government in Australia, a space-centered industrial park proposed for Adelaide Airport is threatened with shut down.

The previous government was going to contribute about $20 million to build a shared facility, and this had encouraged a number of space manufacturers to add their own $26 million. With the loss of that $20 million from the government two of those companies have now backed out.

The article also notes a number of other space-related areas where government funding is being cut off. All this appears to be the result of the change in government, and the decision of the new Labor government to end such subsidies.

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Extremely Large Telescope in Chile marks halfway point in construction

9:51 am

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has now celebrated the halfway point in its construction, with completion targeting 2028 when its 39-meter mirror will make it by far the largest telescope in the world.

The 39-meter diameter, or 127 feet or 1,535 inches, is about four times larger than the largest telescope that presently exists, the 10-meter telescope in the Canary Islands. By the time ELT begins operations however the 21-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile should also be in operation.

Sadly, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii will likely not exist, even though it had intended to begin construction before ELT and GMT and be operational now. Leftist opponents in Hawaii have shut construction down now for almost eight years, with little signs of it ever proceeding.

Not that any of this really matters. In the near term, ground-based astronomy on Earth is going to become increasingly impractical and insufficient, first because of the difficulties of making good observations though the atmosphere and the tens of thousands of satellites expected in the coming decades, and second because new space-based astronomy is going to make it all obsolete. All it will take will be to launch one 8-meter telescope on Starship and ELT will become the equivalent of a buggy whip.

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Final close-out of all science research at Arecibo

9:38 am

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proceeding with the final close-out of all science research at the now shuttered Arecibo radio telescope, ending all funding for the remaining science instruments that still function and letting go all scientists on staff as of August 14th.

In October 2022, NSF announced it would not rebuild the giant telescope, saying it was following community recommendations for the best use of scarce research dollars. It is now shutting down most of the smaller instruments as well. As scientists depart, “all the expertise associated with instruments is leaving,” Brisset says. Olga Figueroa-Miranda, director of the observatory, says people from UCF, Puerto Rico’s Metropolitan University, and Yang Enterprises, an engineering firm, will be let go, including herself. She has yet to find a new position.

The NSF has budgeted money to turn the telescope’s visitor center into a science education facility, but this is not likely to be very successful, as there will be no scientists at this somewhat remote location, which will in itself discourage any traffic.

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New Viasat geosynchronous communications satellite in trouble

9:31 am

Launched in April, a new geosynchronous communications satellite for the company Viasat is in trouble, with “an unexpected event” occurring during the deployment of its antenna reflector.

Shares of Viasat fell as much as 36% in early trading Thursday, putting it on track for its biggest one-day loss since going public in December 1996. Viasat did not disclose the identity of the reflector’s manufacturer in its release. Dankberg said his company is “working closely” with the manufacturer to resolve the problem. A Viasat spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the manufacturer is a top aerospace and defense company – but noted that it is not Boeing, which built the 702MP+ bus that is the spacecraft’s structure and power.

The company is under severe competitive pressure from the Starlink and OneWeb satellite constellations. This loss could be crippling, even if it obtains a full insurance payment of $420 million.

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July 12, 2023 Quick space links

4:28 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • China unveils proposed plan for first manned lunar mission before 2030

    • The plan calls for separate rockets, one for the manned ascent/descent Earth capsule, and the second for the lunar lander/ascent spacecraft. The two will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit. This is all engineering by powerpoint at this point, though based on China’s track record I’d give it more credence than most of NASA’s recent promises.

 

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More sightseeing in Valles Marineris on Mars

3:01 pm

More sightseeing on a mesa in Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

The opportunity to see more mind-blowing examples of spectacular views on Mars compels me to post another great view of a mesatop within Valles Marineris, the biggest known canyon in the solar system. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an 800-foot-high mesa with two points at its end, the cliff wall below highlighted by numerous layers, many alternating between light and dark material.

The erosion features on the top of the mesa suggests some flow down its middle and into the gap between its two end points. This is the dry equatorial region of Mars, so no near surface water is presently found. In the far past maybe ice, or theorized catastrophic floods of water, caused this erosion.
» Read more

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