Category: Points of Information

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

December 18, 2024 Quick space links

6:36 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.

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SpaceX launches reconnaissance satellite

4:08 pm

SpaceX yesterday launched a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings completed their ninth and tenth times respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

132 SpaceX
62 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 151 to 94, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 132 to 113.

Hat tip to reader Geoffrey Carman. I had missed this launch and he let me know.

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Curiosity looks down and across Gale Crater

10:43 am

Curiosity looks down across Gale Crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was part of a panorama created by 24 photos taken by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity on December 16, 2024.

The view looks west at the foothills that fill the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. In the far distance, about 20 to 30 miles away, can be seen the western rim of Gale Crater, obscured by the dust in the Martian atmosphere.

Curiosity is presently contouring west along the mountain slope. As it goes it will pass a series of canyons coming down the mountainside. The goal is to eventually reach the canyon the science team has chosen to take for climbing that mountain.

Note the rocky ground. One of the surprises found as Curiosity left the crater floor and started climbing Mount Sharp about four years ago is the rockiness of the terrain. Unlike Earth, Mars’s atmosphere and environment does not have the activity to smooth out this landscape. While science data suggests flowing water was once present here, it wasn’t here long enough to smooth things out. And the atmosphere is just too thin.
» Read more

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Astronomers discover 1st binary star system orbiting Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole

9:40 am

The stars orbiting Sag A*
The stars orbiting Sag A*. Click for original image.

Using infrared spectroscopic data gathered from 2005 to 2019 by the Very Large Telescope in Chile, astronomers have identified the first known binary star system to orbit Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”), the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.

You can read their science paper here [pdf]. The white dot at the center of the map to the right marks the location of Sagittarius A*, while the red dot marks the present location of the binary star, dubbed D9. The other objects are the stars previously identified orbiting the central black hole, all of which are now believed to be single stars. The binary D9 has an estimated orbit around Sagittarius A* of 432 years and is thought to be less than three million years old. The two stars have approximate masses of 3.86 and 2.8 solar masses, with the smaller orbiting the larger every 372 days.

There is a lot of uncertainty in these numbers, but the data identifying the binary is quite firm. This discovery, as well as the many other stars now known to orbit Sagittarius A*, show that star formation so close to a supermassive black hole is not only possible, it is common, something astronomers a decade ago thought impossible.

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New manned Dragon capsule forces NASA to shuffle ISS crew launch and return schedules

9:03 am

In order to give SpaceX more time to complete work on a new manned Dragon capsule, raising its fleet of capsules to five, NASA has shuffled its springtime ISS crew launch and return schedules.

The change gives NASA and SpaceX teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission. The new spacecraft is set to arrive to the company’s processing facility in Florida in early January. “Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

…NASA and SpaceX assessed various options for managing the next crewed handover, including using another Dragon spacecraft and manifest adjustments. After careful consideration, the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, following completion of the new Dragon spacecraft, was the best option for meeting NASA’s requirements and achieving space station objectives for 2025.

This decision however impacts the return of the Dragon crew presently on board ISS, including the two astronauts launched in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule and whose stay was extended from its initial length of one-to-eight weeks to more than six months when NASA made the decision to bring Starliner home unmanned. Instead of returning in February 2024, that crew will now have to return after the next crew arrives in late March.

Most of the press has focused on this two month extension to the Starliner crew, but to me the real news is that SpaceX is building a fifth manned capsule, as yet unnamed. Having five reusable capsules will give the company greater flexibility. I suspect SpaceX decided to build this additional capsule because, in addition to its ISS missions for NASA, it is going to be flying in 2025 both an Axiom mission to ISS as well as a 30-day mission to Vast’s Haven-1 space station. That latter mission will tie up one manned capsule for many months both before and after that long flight.

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Second launch attempt by Japanese rocket startup fails about 90 seconds after liftoff

1:11 am

Japanese spaceports
Japanese spaceports

The second orbital launch attempt by Japanese rocket startup Space One of its Kairos rocket failed about 90 seconds after liftoff when the rocket started to spiral out of control and mission controllers were forced to destroy it.

The link above starts just before launch. You can see the rocket begin to fly out of control, and start spiraling. Shortly thereafter it disappears from view.

The map to the right shows the location in Japan of its private launch facility, dubbed Spaceport Kii. The spaceport of Japan’s space agency JAXA, where all of the country’s previous launches have taken place, is at Tanegashima on a island in the south of Japan.

Space One’s first orbital attempt failed in March when the rocket blew up mere seconds after lift-off.

The company has some major Japanese investors, including Canon Electronics and Mitsubishi, so I would expect it will have the finances to try again.

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FAA issues license for SpaceX’s seventh test flight of Starship/Superheavy

7:33 pm

My, what a difference an election makes! FAA today proudly announced that it has issued the launch license for SpaceX’s seventh test flight of Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica, now tentatively set for mid-January.

I say “proudly” because of this quote in the announcement:

“The FAA continues to increase efficiencies in our licensing determination activities to meet the needs of the commercial space transportation industry,” said the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation Kelvin B. Coleman. “This license modification that we are issuing is well ahead of the Starship Flight 7 launch date and is another example of the FAA`s commitment to enable safe space transportation.”

For the past three years it was like pulling teeth to get the FAA to issue these licenses for Starship/Superheavy test flights. Every time SpaceX had to wait from one to six months extra, and would only get the license mere hours before launch. During that time the FAA made no effort to “increase efficiencies” in its licensing process. Instead it found more ways to slow things down, not just for SpaceX but for the entire launch industry.

Trump gets elected and now suddenly the agency is interested in reducing red tape? What you are seeing instead a lot of bureaucrats desperately trying to convince the incoming administration that the delays for the past three years were not their fault, that they were really against red tape!

Or to put it more bluntly: “Please don’t fire us!”

I hope Trump doesn’t fall for this. A major house-cleaning in management and regulations is necessary at the FAA, and it must be done fast.

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December 17, 2024 Quick space links

7:23 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.

2 comments

Using a new first stage booster, SpaceX launches two communications satellites

7:16 pm

In what has become a rare event, SpaceX today used a brand new first stage to successfully place two SES communications satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.

The first stage landed safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their second and twenty-second flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

131 SpaceX
62 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 150 to 94, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 131 to 113.

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Starlink revenue in 2025 now projected to be $11.8 billion

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: According to one industry market research firm, SpaceX is expected to earn $11.8 billion in revenue in 2025 from its Starlink satellite constellation, a gigantic increase from its estimate for 2024.

SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink is projected to reach $11.8 billion in revenue next year, driven by strong consumer demand and growing U.S. military contracts, according to a new market analysis. The forecast, released by the market research firm Quilty Space, represents a substantial increase from the estimated $7.7 billion in revenue for 2024, highlighting Starlink’s rapid growth trajectory in the satellite communications market.

The rise in revenue has been fueled by two factors, the growth in consumer subscribers to the system, and the addition of Space Force contracts that use SpaceX Starshield version of its Starlink satellites.

These numbers are quite spectacular. In the past seven years SpaceX had raised about $12 billion in private investment capital to build both its Starlink constellation and its Starship/Superheavy rocket. Starlink now produces that amount of money for the company each year.

In other words, SpaceX no longer needs NASA as a customer. It has the resources to complete development of Starship, in all its iterations, without any government help. If it wishes to funnel some of this income back into Starship and Superheavy to launch its own missions to Mars, it can.

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Europe to spend $11 billion to build its own Starlink government constellation

9:26 am

The European Union has now finalized its $11 billion plan to build a government-owned 290 satellite constellation, dubbed IRIS2, to compete with Starlink and the many other private constellations already launching.

On 16 December, ESA, the European Commission, and the SpaceRIDE consortium, led by European satellite operators SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat, signed a €10.55 billion, 12-year concession contract to develop the IRIS2 constellation.

…Under the contract terms, the EU will contribute €6 billion, the consortium €4 billion, and ESA €550 million toward the total value. In addition to the consortium’s three leads, the key partners include Thales Alenia Space, OHB, Airbus Defence and Space, Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat, and Thales SIX.

As is usual for government projects, and especially for European ones, the time table for construction and launch is as slow as molasses. The first satellite won’t be launched until 2029, with the service not available until 2030. By that time there will be multiple such constellations in orbit, not just Starlink, offering services at rates far less than this system will likely offer.

This project is really nothing more than crony capitalism, creating a project to funnel government money to all these big European corporations. Fortunately, the project does demand they commit some of their own funds, which will at least act to keep them relatively honest.

Europe however would be better off leaving this to the companies entirely. If both SpaceX, OneWeb, and Amazon can build their internet constellations without government funds, why can’t these big European companies?

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New computer simulations suggest Saturn’s rings are not young but formed at the same time as the solar system

9:12 am

A bright spot in Saturn's rings
Click for original source.

The uncertainty of science: Scientists doing computer simulations now posit that Saturn’s rings are not young, between 100 to 400 million years old as has been believed for the last few decades, but formed instead when Saturn formed, 4.6 billion years ago.

You can read their paper here [pdf].

The young age had been based on data from the Cassini orbiter, which showed the ring particles to be very bright and clean. If old those particles would have been darker as they accumulated dust over time on their surface. The new computer simulations suggest a process whereby those particles get “cleaned,” thus making it possible for the rings to be very old, possibly as old as Saturn itself.

Must I point out the uncertainties? The paper itself admits in its abstract “uncertainties in our models that assume no porosity, strength, or ring particle granularity.” Seems these assumptions make the conclusions very uncertain indeed.

Then again, the previous young estimates of the age of the rings had many similar assumptions and uncertainties. Essentially, we don’t have enough information to make any definitive determinations.

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T-Mobile initiates direct-cell-to-satellite texting using Starlink

8:50 am

As expected after the most recent Starlink launch, T-Mobile has now begun offering its customers beta registration for using Starlink satellites for texting in areas where no cell towers exist.

The free beta program is available to all T-Mobile customers with compatible devices and postpaid voice plans, the telco announced Dec. 16, although first responders will receive priority access due to limited initial capacity. The company declined to detail capacity and device restrictions but said the beta program would gradually expand to more devices via software updates. “Spots are limited but the service will be available in most areas and most of the time,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said.

The goal right now is to test the system and get user feedback.

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Thailand signs the Artemis Accords

8:26 am

Thailand yesterday became the 51st nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance in space.

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

Trump created the accords with the goal to create an alliance with enough clout to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property. Biden rewrote the goal to accomplish the exact opposite, as NASA states in all recent press releases about new nations joining:

The Artemis 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.

I expect there to be a shift back to the original goals in the second Trump administration.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

11:21 pm

Two launches today. First China launched four Earth observation radar satellites, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.

SpaceX then launched a GPS-type satellite for the Space Force, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. Little was released about the payload and what information was released was not very informative. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing softly on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

130 SpaceX
62 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 149 to 94, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 130 to 113.

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December 16, 2024 Quick space links

5:01 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.

  • On this day in 1984 the Soviet Union launched Vega-1
    The spacecraft not only flew past Venus on its way to flying past Halley’s Comet, it also put a lander on Venus and a French balloon in its atmosphere.
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    On the Space Show tomorrow

    4:36 pm

    I will be doing a long 90 minute-plus appearance with David Livingston on the Space Show tomorrow evening, beginning at 7 pm (Pacific). I hope my readers will consider calling in with questions or disagreements or comments. The show is always better with listener interaction.

    I definitely plan to talk about my proposal for rethinking NASA’s Artemis program, as outlined in this two-part essay:

    Part 1 of 2: What NASA’s next administrator should do if SLS and Orion are cancelled

    Part 2 of 2: De-emphasize a fast Moon landing and build a real American space industry instead December 11, 2024

    I very much would like to hear other people’s opinions about my suggestions.

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    A galactic eye in heaven

    12:30 pm

    A galactic eye in space
    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 as part of a project to study the star formation processes over time in this galaxy, located about 76 million light years away.

    A prominent bar of stars stretches across the centre of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar. Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disc takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.

    As NGC 2566 gazes at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions. The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive. Using these data, researchers will measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, helping to piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and stars themselves.

    To get the full picture, astronomers have also obtained infrared data from the Webb Space Telescope and millimeter/submillimeter radio wavelength data from the ALMA telescope.

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    The Insight lander on Mars as seen from orbit over six years

    12:07 pm

    Insight as seen by MRO over six years
    Click for movie.

    Using photos taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from 2018 to 2024, researchers have compiled a short movie showing how the dust around the Mars lander Insight changed over time.

    This video shows images taken by HiRISE between Dec. 11, 2018, just a couple weeks after InSight landed on Mars, and Oct. 23, 2024. In the images, InSight often appears as a bright, blue dot due to its reflection of sunlight. A dark halo was scorched into the ground by the spacecraft’s retrorocket thrusters; this halo fades away over time. Dark stripes that can be seen on the surface are tracks left by passing dust devils. [emphasis mine]

    You can see the movie here. The image to the right was the first picture taken by MRO only three weeks after landing.

    Insight eventually shut down because this dust accumulated on its solar panels, and the lander never was blessed with having a dust devil cross over it to blow that dust away. This video illustrates why. Out of the seven images making up the short movie, only three show dust devil tracks, and in each case only a few tracks are seen. No other tracks are detected.

    In other words, over six years this region simply did not get a lot of dust devils. The odds of one crossing over InSight was thus quite low. Ironically, the image to the right shows that a dust devil crossed very close to the lander about the time it landed in 2018, probably just beforehand since the dark scorch created by the lander’s thrusters cover the track. No dust devil ever got that close again.

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    Another American rocket startup gets a multi-launch contract

    10:25 am

    The American rocket startup Vaya Space announced today that it has been awarded a multi-launch contract to use its proposed Dauntless rocket to place up to 250 small satellites in orbit for the satellite startup Space Telecommunications.

    Vaya has been around since 2017, has won contracts with the Air Force in connection with developing its hybrid-solid-fueled rocket, and in 2022 completed a test suborbital launch. It hopes to launch Dauntless for the first time in 2026.

    This contract is probably like most launch contracts awarded to rocket startups. It allows the company to claim progress, while giving the satellite company the right to go elsewhere at no cost should the rocket not launch on time.

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    Ispace awarded $5.83 million loan from Japanese government

    10:01 am

    Ispace landing map

    The planetary lander startup Ispace today announced that it has been awarded a $5.83 million loan from the Japan Finance Corporation, a government corporation designed to issue loans to encourage Japanese businesses.

    The money will be issued this month, and Ispace will have ten years to pay it back. Depending on whether the company is profitable or not, the interest rate will be either 0.5% or 4.15%.

    Ispace’s one lunar landing attempt so far, Hakuto-R1, was a failure when its software thought it was close to the ground at three miles altitude and shut off its engines. The company however is going to try again, with the launch of its second lander, dubbed Resilience, scheduled for a January 2025 launch. It will also carry the company’s own Tenacious micro-rover, and will hopefully land as shown in the map to the right, in the north of the Moon’s near side.

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    China launches first set of satellites for planned internet megaconstellations

    9:42 am

    China today successfully launched an unknown number of satellites in the first launch of one of its planned internet megaconstellations designed to compete with Starlink, its Long March 5B rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

    Not revealing the number of satellites launched is probably a violation of the Outer Space Treaty, which requires each signatory to inform others of its launches and at a minimum the number of objects placed in orbit. This constellation, dubbed Guowang, is hoping to launch as many as 13,000 satellites, and that will require some coordination to prevent it from interfering with the constellations launched by others. Not revealing the size of this satellite group makes such coordination impossible.

    In a bit of good news, it appears China has solved the problem of its Long March 5B rocket, which in the past had used its core stage to place objects in orbit. After payload deployment that core stage would be in an unstable an orbit that would quickly decay, allowing the stage to crash uncontrolled, thus threatening habitable areas worldwide. The rocket’s new upper stage now takes the payloads into orbit, so the core stage can drop off sooner and fall into the ocean harmlessly.

    The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

    129 SpaceX
    61 China
    16 Russia
    13 Rocket Lab

    American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 148 to 93, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 129 to 112.

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    FAA eliminates a stupid licensing requirement imposed when it “streamlined” its launch licensing regulations

    9:18 am

    We’re from the government and we’re here to help! The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced last week that it will stop demanding rocket companies redo a flight safety analysis that have already been done by the rocket’s spaceports, a new bit of red tape that was apparently added when the agency introduced its Part 450 “streamlined” licensing regulations in 2021.

    The FAA announced Dec. 13 that it will accept flight safety analyses performed by federal launch ranges in California, Florida and Virginia in applications for launch licenses under regulations known as Part 450. That decision means that companies will no longer have to perform similar analyses specifically for the FAA as part of the licensing process. Launch companies had complained of the duplication of work needed to carry out FAA analyses in addition to those required by the ranges they were launching from.

    The FAA’s own bureaucracy had recognized the stupidity of this requirement (as well as many others) in July 2023 report [pdf], but the agency’s management did nothing. Apparently the political appointees who ran the agency during the Biden administration either liked this red tape — slowing American business — or were too dense to take action.

    Trump’s election victory has now obviously forced some action. Not only has the agency suddenly recognized this particular problem, one week after Trump’s victory it announced the formation of an independent committee of industry and academia to review, once again, its Part 450 regulations.

    It seems this committee is largely a Potemkin Village to make the Trump leadership think the agency is doing something. Instead, the FAA should do what it did last week, and adopt the many recommendations of the July 2023 report, now. The committee can then move forward cleaning up Part 450 in other areas instead of simply repeating that past work.

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    Boeing to take more than a decade to refit two 747s for Air Force One

    7:30 pm

    Utter incompetence: According to recent news reports, Boeing will not be able to deliver the two 747s it is refitting to be the president’s Air Force One fleet until 2029, even though it signed a $3.9 billion contract to do so in 2018.

    The delay is startling given that Boeing isn’t building the planes from scratch. During Trump’s first term, Boeing started to overhaul two 747s that were built for a Russian airline that never took the jets.

    This is more than absurd, it is obscene. Boeing is handed two flightworthy 747s and almost $4 billion, and it can’t refit the two planes in less than a decade? It seems one of the first things Trump should do once he returns to office next month is cancel this contract entirely, demand a refund from Boeing, and simply convert his present fleet of “Trump Force One” airplanes that he has been using since 2020 for use as president. Cheaper, faster, and certainly a wiser use of taxpayer money.

    As for Boeing, this story illustrates once again how far this company has fallen. Remember, it was Boeing that conceived, designed, and built the 747. Moreover, its 747 has been used for decades for Air Force One. For its engineers now to be incapable to refitting another two 747s for this purpose seems inconceivable, and suggests those same engineers should not be trusted on any new planes they build.

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    Juno spots changes on Io’s surface in just a two-month span

    10:57 am

    Before and after images by Juno of volcanic ring on Io
    Click for original image.

    New photos taken just two months apart by Juno of a region dubbed Nusk Patera on the Jupiter moon Io showed the appearance of a distinct ring that had hardly been there before.

    The pictures, taken during two recent fly-bys of the moon, are above, and show the change. From the caption:

    A red ring formed around Nusku Patera in the two months between the spacecraft’s 58th flyby on Feb. 3, 2024, and its 60th on April 9, 2024. The ring obscures some nearby features like Creidne Patera. This ring, 683 miles (1,100 kilometers) wide is likely from a Pele-type plume rich in sulfur. Similar transient red rings were observed by NASA’s Galileo mission around Grian Patera and Surt and were associated with intense but short-lived thermal “outburst” eruptions.

    In other words, sulfur from eruption from the central vent/caldera was flung into the sky enough that when it eventually settled back down it landed in a ring about 340 miles away from the center.

    Other data from Juno, also released this week here and here, detected fresh lava flows at another volcanic region of Io dubbed, Zal Patera.

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    SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

    9:39 pm

    SpaceX today successfully launched 22 Starlink satellites, 13 of which were for its direct-to-cell constellation. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg in California, its first stage completing its ninth flight by landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific.

    According to a tweet by SpaceX at the end of October, only five more launches were necessary to complete the first version of its direct-to-cell Starlink constellation. Today’s launch meets that criteria. Since the FCC has approved the constellation’s license, this means T-Mobile can start offering the service to customers, filling in all dead spots worldwide.

    What makes this launch even more unique is that for the first time in quite awhile there was a four-day-plus gap between SpaceX launches. The company has been launching so often that it has been rare for more than two days to pass this year without a launch.

    The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

    129 SpaceX
    60 China
    16 Russia
    13 Rocket Lab

    American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 148 to 92, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 129 to 111.

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    Perseverance reaches top of Jezero Crater rim

    1:41 pm

    The view west out of Jezero Crater
    Click for high resolution panorama. For original images, go here and here.

    Overview map
    Click for interactive map.

    After spending more than three and a half years exploring the floor of Jezero Crater, the rover Perseverance has finally reached the top of the crater’s western rim, and is about to begin exploring the mountainous and potentially rich mining region to the west.

    The panorama above, created from two pictures taken by Perseverance’s right navigation camera on December 11, 2024 (here and here), has been cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here. It looks west into that mountainous region, with the yellow lines on the overview map to the right indicating the approximate view. The blue dot on that map marks Perseverance’s present position, on top of Lookout Hill, the name the rover team has given to that spot on the rim.

    The low resolution of the region beyond the grey strip is unexplained. For some reason the rover team has not yet updated the interactive map showing Perseverance’s travels with the many high resolution pictures that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has taken of this region, in anticipation of Perseverance’s travels there. I expect however this will change shortly.

    Witch Hazel Hill is the first target beyond the rim, where there is an outcrop 330-feet-high with many layers. The rover will then head downhill and south to check out a spot that the scientists believe might show features existing from before Jezero Crater was formed. The rover will then head back up to the rim further south to look at an outcrop of blocks that might actually be ejecta from another much larger Martian impact.

    These blocks may represent ancient bedrock broken up during the Isidis impact, a planet-altering event that likely excavated deep into the Martian crust as it created an impact basin some 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) wide, 3.9 billion years in the past.

    Jezero sits on the northwestern rim of Isidis.

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