Category: Points of Information

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

December 20, 2024 Quick space links

3:44 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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China launches a communications test satellite

3:36 pm

According to China’s uninformative state-run press, it today launched “a test satellite for communication technology,” its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No other details about the satellite were released. Nor did the state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.

As is usual for China, it is doing a lot of launches at the end of the year. Though weather might be a factor, I also suspect it is the ordinary “use-it-or-lose-it” symptom of a government-run communist society. Budgets are set for the year. Government agencies find that they better launch or they will lose that budgeted amount in the next year’s budget.

This might not apply to China but if so it would explain its strange end-of-year launch pattern.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

132 SpaceX
64 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 151 to 96, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 132 to 115.

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Perseverance takes its first good look west at its future journey

12:32 pm

Peservance looks west
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance. Though I am not 100% certain, I think this picture looks almost due west, and is aimed not only at the rover’s near term target, Witch Hazel Hill, but the rover’s long term and very important goal, the Nils Fossae ridge and canyon that appears to be crack formed during the impact that created giant 745-mile-wide Isidis Basin. Jezero Crater sits on the western rim of that impact basin.

The rover team expects to reach Witch Hazel Hill within days. To get there quickly the team has moved the rover more than a thousand feet west and dropped down from the rim about 170 feet in just the past ten days.
» Read more

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December 19, 2024 Quick space links

3:10 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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Land of dust devils

2:17 pm

Land of dust devils
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image to the right demonstrates that the atmosphere and climate of Mars is truly different in different places. The picture, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 22, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample”, it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.

I post it today almost to illustrate the difference between this location and the spot where the lander Insight landed on Mars. Earlier this week the MRO camera team released a short movie created by images of the lander taken over six years, showing how the dust around it had changed over time. I noted further how those images showed a very small number of dust devil tracks, which explained why no dust devil every crossed over the lander’s solar panels to clean them of dust.

For the picture on the right, however, there are a lot of dust devil tracks, so many near the bottom that they almost completely darken the ground.
» Read more

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Pushback: Blacklisted doctor gets lawsuit reinstated by higher court

1:25 pm

What apparently passes for medical treatment at the Hennepin Healthcare system
The kind of policies advocated by Hennepin Healthcare system
that Gustilo criticized

Fight! Fight! Fight! Back in August 2021, I reported the horrible blacklisting of Tara Gustilo, a biracial physician from the Philippines, who had been demoted and experienced a $150K cut in salary at the Hennepin Healthcare system in Minnesota simply because she had posted criticisms of the racist Black Lives Matter movement as well as the critical race theory policies, now known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), that Hennepin was pushing.

In addition to filing a discrimination complaint with the federal government, Gustilo sued, represented by the Minnesota-based Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC). You can read her lawsuit here [pdf].

That lawsuit however had been dismissed by a lower court. Last week however the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out that decision, reinstating the lawsuit.

The court’s decision can be read here. The court specifically noted that Gustilo’s right to free speech appeared to have been violated, and that fact must be considered by a jury.
» Read more

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Vast signs deal with SpaceX for two ISS tourist missions

12:34 pm

Depending on whether it gets NASA contractual approval, the space station startup Vast has now signed a deal with SpaceX for flying two tourist missions to ISS.

These two missions expand Vast’s launch manifest with SpaceX, which includes the company’s Falcon 9 rocket delivering Haven-1 to low-Earth orbit and a subsequent Dragon mission to fly crew to the commercial space station. Haven-1 will also be supported by Starlink laser-based high-speed internet.

Axiom, which has flown three tourist missions to ISS and has a fourth planned, is also bidding for the next two tourist slots NASA has made available for ISS in the coming years. It is not clear who will get those slots. Axiom has the advantage it has done it before, but the rumors that it lost money on those flights and now has a cash shortage work against it. Vast hasn’t yet flown, but it is moving fast to fly and occupy Haven-1 next year. NASA might want to give it at least one of those slots to balance the scales.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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More evidence SLS and Orion are on the way out

11:12 am

An article today by a local Fox station in Orlando calling NASA’s decision to fly the next Artemis mission using the Orion capsule as a return to the bad culture that caused both shuttle accidents is strong evidence that the political winds are now definitely blowing against the future of both NASA’s SLS rocket and its Orion capsule.

The article interviews former NASA astronaut Charles Camarda, who expressed strong reservations about NASA’s willingness to make believe the failures of the Orion heat shield on its only test flight could be dismissed.

“The way they’re attacking the problem is echoes of Challenger and Columbia, using exactly the same bad behaviors to understand the physics of the problem,” [former astronaut Charles Camarda] said. “They’re not using a research-based approach.” Camarda worries NASA is pressing ahead with the current heat shields because he says “a lot of the engineers are afraid to speak up, and that’s a serious problem.”

The point is not the article itself, but that a mainstream propaganda news outlet is publishing this perspective. This fact suggests that there is a growing willingness within the political community to end both SLS and Orion, and articles such as this are used to strengthen that narrative. Politicos in DC have a great fear of canceling big projects, and for them to agree to do so requires a great deal of groundwork to make sure the public will accept the decision. Articles such as this one are thus published in the propaganda press for exactly this reason.

In other words, the Washington swamp has now begun its own campaign to cancel SLS and Orion.

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Alabama Republican congressman introduces spaceport funding bill to help a non-spaceport

10:00 am

In an example of the typically corrupt behavior of the Washington swamp, Alabama Republican congressman Dale Strong yesterday introduced a bill dubbed the Spaceport Project Opportunities for Resilient Transportation (SPACEPORT) act that has a lot of high-minded goals, but is mainly designed to funnel federal money to local regions. To quote Strong himself:

“The U.S. is the global leader in space, and North Alabama is at the forefront of that effort,” Strong said. “As former Chairman of the Madison County Commission, I worked closely with local city officials and commercial space stakeholders to secure Huntsville International Airport’s designation as the first entry site for space vehicle landings. I understand the preparation, coordination, and support required to safely and efficiently manage space launches and reentries. North Alabama is ready to leverage our unparalleled civil, commercial, and national security space expertise to support space infrastructure projects and the future of space exploration.” [emphasis mine]

Huntsville International Airport is not a spaceport. Giving it cash for this is nothing more than pork and a waste of the taxpayer’s money.

Strong’s bill is merely a proposal, and has been announced I think mostly to give this guy a photo-op. Nonetheless, it shows that we cannot trust any politician to do what they say. The Republicans always run on cutting the budget, but here we have a Republican eagerly proposing we spend money we don’t have in order to provide pork to his district. It is essential that his own constituents tell him in no uncertain terms that this kind of legislation is not what they hired him for. If they don’t, then things in Washington will only continue to do downhill.

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Activists sue Texas commission for allowing SpaceX to use its Superheavy deluge launch system

9:45 am

The same activist groups that have repeatedly used lawfare to try to block SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica have now sued the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for allowing SpaceX to use its deluge launch system during Starship/Superheavy launches, claiming that dumping potable drinking water into the ground somehow damages the environment.

The groups — the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, along with the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and Save RGV — filed the lawsuit Monday after the agency decided last month to allow SpaceX to continue its operations for 300 days or until the company obtained the appropriate permit.

These three groups represent only a very tiny handful of people in the Rio Grande Valley. The people the media interviews from Save RGV always includes the same persons, suggesting that few people in south Texas support it. The “Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas” in turn is a fake Indian tribe. It no longer exists, and when it did it existed in Mexico, not Texas. Finally, the “South Texas Environmental Justice Network” is simply an umbrella organization created on top of other two to make it appear they have more support than they do.

The real question that local journalists should be asking is where are these groups getting their money for all their lawsuits? I suspect it comes from outside the region, from leftist political organizations whose goals have nothing to do with the environment.

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Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander wins its fourth lunar NASA contract

9:32 am

Peregrine landing site

NASA yesterday awarded the rocket startup Firefly a $179.6 million contract to carry six NASA science instruments to the Moon on its Blue Ghost lunar lander, the third lander contract the company has won and the fourth Moon contract overall.

[The four contracts include] three lunar landers as well as one to provide radio frequency calibration services from orbit to support a radio science payload on the second lander mission.

The first mission, Blue Ghost 1 or “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is scheduled for launch in mid-January, with a landing in the Mare Crisium region of the near side of the moon about 45 days after launch. Blue Ghost 2 will follow in 2026, landing on the lunar farside. That mission will also deploy ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite into orbit. Both the second and third Blue Ghost missions will use Firefly’s Elytra Dark as an orbital transfer vehicle, delivering the landers to lunar orbit. Those vehicles will remain in lunar orbit to provide communications services.

This new contract will have Blue Ghost land in the Gruithuisen Domes region, as shown on the map to the right. This had been the landing target for the Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander when it launched in January 2024, but that mission failed when it developed a fuel leak shortly after launch. Astrobotic was able to operate the spacecraft through most of its trip to and from the Moon, but had to cancel the landing.

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ESA awards Avio three contracts worth $372 million for its Vega rockets

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday awarded the Italian rocket company Avio three different contracts worth $372 million to further develop its Vega family of rockets.

The first two contracts subsidize work on upgrading the Vega-C launch site at the French Guiana spaceport as well as developing the company’s planned new rocket, Vega-E.

The third contract is more significant, because it signals the coming end of Arianespace, ESA’s commercial arm. Instead of going through that government-run agency — as ESA has done for a quarter century — ESA simply bought a Vega-C launch from Avio directly, the first time it has obtained launch services directly from a European company. The contract is to place in orbit an ESA climate research satellite.

The end of Arianespace was further signaled today by the announcement that Arianespace’s chief executive since 2013, Stephane Israel, is stepping down. It was Israel who in 2015 discouraged ESA from making Ariane-6 reusable. It was Israel who for years poo-pooed competition and free enterprise, lobbying continuously that ESA should do its launches through Arianespace exclusively.

Now, more than a decade later, ESA has finally rejected Israel’s arguments, and is eliminating the middle-man Arianespace entirely, purchasing launch contracts directly from the rocket companies while having its member nations as well as itself encourage the development of many private rocket companies across Europe.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches four satellites

8:41 am

According to China’s state-run press, China early this morning successfully launched four satellites using a commercial rocket, Ceres-1, that lifted off from an off shore launch platform on the country’s northeast coast.

The rocket supposedly belongs to the pseudo-company Galactic Energy, but China’s state-run press did not think this information was important enough to mention, illustrating why I think the company is not real. The satellites were likely communications satellites intended for one of the several giant satellite constellations China is building, but that information was also left out of China’s reporting.

132 SpaceX
63 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 151 to 95, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 132 to 114.

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Axiom to speed up assembly of its space station

6:59 pm

Axiom's new module assembly sequence
Axiom’s new module assembly sequence

Capitalism in space: In order to be able to fly its space station independent of ISS more quickly, Axiom has rearranged the order it will launch some modules.

Originally, the plan was to attach Habitat 1 (AxH1) first, before the power and thermal module. Now, the on-orbit assembly sequence will start with the Payload Power Thermal Module (AxPPTM), followed by AxH1, an airlock, Habitat 2 (AxH2), and finally the Research and Manufacturing Facility (AxRMF). “The result – free-flight capability after the launch and berthing of PPTM,” [Mark Greeley, Axiom Space COO and station program manager,] explained, “[will allow] us to add modules while on orbit once we have separated from station. Our goal is to ensure a smooth transition from a government to a commercial platform, maintaining a continuous human presence on orbit to serve a community of global customers and partners, to include NASA.”

The AxPPTM primary structure will be built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, and then relocated to Houston no earlier than fall 2025, where the integration of the internal structure and systems will take place at Axiom Space facilities.

The new sequence is shown in the graphic above. This change will allow Axiom to fly free two years sooner than previously planned, in 2028. It appears NASA pushed for this change possibly because it considers remaining attached to ISS until 2030 a risk that should be avoided. NASA apparently is increasingly concerned about the state of Russia’s Zvezda module, and fears it might have a catastrophic failure due to the stress fractures in its hull. The sooner Axiom can get free of ISS the better.

This modification also appears to include some major changes from previous Axiom graphics. It appears the airlock module and its solar panels have undergone a major design change.

Below is my present ranking for the launch of the four space stations being designed and built:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, and plans to launch and occupy it in 2025 for a 30 day mission. It will then build its mult-module Haven-2 station.
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, which has also launched three tourist flights to ISS. Though there are rumors it is experiencing cash flow issues, today’s announcement suggests those rumors might be unfounded.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Though Blue Origin has apparently done little, Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building the station’s modules for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman.
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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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