Category: Points of Information

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

China: We like dumping out-of-control rockets on your head!

3:49 pm

China has now signaled that it intends to ramp up the launch rate of its Long March 5B rocket, its most powerful rocket but also a rocket with a core stage that falls to Earth out-of-control after each launch, risking injury and damage to others.

Liu Bing, director of the general design department at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), told Chinese media that the the Long March 5B, designed for launches to low Earth orbit, would be used together with the Yuanzheng upper stage series to launch multiple satellites for constellations.

Though not clearly stated, the launcher and YZ-2 combination could be used to help deliver high numbers of satellites into orbit for the planned national “guowang” satellite internet megaconstellation.

It is very possible that with the addition of an upper stage, engineers could reconfigure the rocket so that the first stage is shut down and separated earlier so that it immediately falls into an ocean drop zone following launch. At the same time, making sure that drop zone is always over the ocean might be difficult for some polar launches.

What China really has to do is to upgrade the engines on the core stage so that they can be restarted. At present these engines can only be started once, and once shut down they are dead. If the stage reaches orbit — which it has done on all previous launches — there is then no way to control it, and since that orbit is unstable the stage crashes to Earth, who knows where, shortly thereafter. With restartable engines the stage could easily be de-orbited properly.

China has expressed utter contempt for the complaints of other nations about these out-of-control crashes, claiming the risk is infinitesimal. While quite small, it still exists.

Ted Muelhaupt of the Aerospace Corporation said in July that the odds of debris from the reentry following the launch of the Wentian module ranged from one in 230 to one in 1,000. This was more than an order of magnitude greater than internationally accepted casualty risk threshold for the uncontrolled reentry of rockets of one in 10,000, stated in a 2019 report issued by the U.S. Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices.

Small or not, China is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, and every out-of-control crash has been a violation of that treaty. This behavior clearly makes China a rogue nation, not to be trusted.

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Pushback: VMI alumnus cancels $1 million bequest because of the school’s support of critical race theory and its slandering of those who disagree

1:38 pm

VMI: adopting anti-American indoctrination
VMI: eager to push anti-American indoctrination

Today’s blacklist story is a perfect one for Veterans Day. In open letter published today in the Roanoke Star, Douglas Conte and an alumnus of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), announced that he had changed his will to remove a $1 million bequest to the school because of its aggressive support of critical race theory — in defiance of orders by the state government — as well as its aggressive slandering anyone who disagreed with the school administrators.

In the brief span of just two years since the abrupt dismissal of General Peay as Superintendent, the Institute has traveled far down the path of political correctness. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) ideology, have sunk their toxic roots into the fabric of VMI life.
» Read more

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Advanced Space wins lunar orbiter contract with Air Force

9:21 am

Advanced Space, the company that is presently running the CAPSTONE mission that will arrive in lunar orbit on November 13th, has won a $72 million contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to build and operate a new experimental lunar orbiter.

The mission, dubbed Oracle, is targeting a 2025 launch and will operate in lunar orbit for two years.

“Our primary goals for the program are to advance techniques to detect previously unknown objects through search and discovery, to detect small or distant objects, and to study spacecraft positioning and navigation in the XGEO realm,” said James Frith, the principal investigator. XGEO refers to the space beyond geosynchronous orbit out to the moon. Oracle will operate in the vicinity of Earth-moon Lagrange Point 1, about 200,000 miles from Earth. The GEO belt, by comparison, is about 22,000 miles above Earth.

An additional goal of Oracle is to help mature AFRL’s green propellant technology. “While there are no specific plans yet to refuel Oracle, AFRL wants to encourage civil and commercial development of on-orbit refueling services,” said Frith.

The federal government’s transition from the building rockets, spacecraft, and satellites to simply buying them from the private sector continues. In the past, when the Air Force attempted to design and build everything, a project like this would have cost at least five times more and taken two to five times longer to get launched. Now, it hires Advanced Space to do it, and gets what it wants quickly for lower cost.

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UK govt requests public comment on Shetland spaceport

9:11 am

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of the United Kingdom, tasked with regulating space operations, has requested public comment on the environmental impact of the proposed Shetland spaceport, dubbed SaxaVord and presently under construction.

Shetland Islands Council granted planning permission in February, with Lockheed Martin and Skyrora among the companies looking at launching satellites, as early as next year.

One of the environmental considerations is for no launches or tests between mid-May and the end of June to avoid disturbing breeding birds. U nst’s 135 bird species include red-throated divers, merlins, puffins and Arctic terns.

The spaceport has said it expects to conduct at least 30 launches a year, once operational. That number is probably optimistic.

Meanwhile, it is beginning to appear that — at least in these early stages — the CAA is not going to be helpful to Great Britain’s effort to develop a space industry. Not only does this action suggest it is not enthused about this spaceport and is putting up barriers to it, it has slow-walked the licensing of the Virgin Orbit launch from Cornwall, costing that company so much money because of the delay that its liquidity was threatened.

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SLS rides out hurricane; engineers now assessing damage

9:00 am

NASA’s SLS rocket has apparently successfully survived on the launchpad the hurricane-force winds from Nicole, though engineers will need to inspect the rocket to see if there is any less obvious damage that might delay the now scheduled November 16th launch.

With blastoff on a long-delayed maiden flight on tap next week, sensors at pad 39B recorded gusts as high as 100 mph atop a 467-foot-tall lightning tower near the rocket. But winds at the 60-foot-level, which are part of the booster’s structural certification, peaked at 82 mph, just below the 85 mph limit.

The observed winds were “within the rocket’s capability,” said Jim Free, manager of exploration systems at NASA headquarters. “We anticipate clearing the vehicle for those conditions shortly.”

“Our team is conducting initial visual check outs of the rocket, spacecraft and ground system equipment with the cameras at the launch pad,” he tweeted. “Camera inspections show very minor damage such as loose caulk and tears in weather coverings. The team will conduct additional on-site walk down inspections of the vehicle soon.”

If no issues are found, the countdown will begin on November 14th.

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Divers for documentary discover large piece of Challenger

8:55 am

Divers for a television documentary have discovered a large piece from the shuttle Challenger that broke up 74 seconds after launch in 1986.

The piece is more than 15 feet by 15 feet (4.5 meters by 4.5 meters); it’s likely bigger because part of it is covered with sand. Because there are square thermal tiles on the piece, it’s believed to be from the shuttle’s belly, Ciannilli said.

The fragment remains on the ocean floor just off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral as NASA determines the next step. It remains the property of the U.S. government. The families of all seven Challenger crew members have been notified.

The History Channel will air a show describing this discovery on November 22nd.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Student mob shuts down Ann Coulter speech at Cornell

4:59 pm

The modern dark age: Despite Cornell University’s refusal to agree to their demands and cancel the lecture, a mob of students prevented her from speaking last night, forcing her in the end to cancel her lecture because she could not get a word out without being interrupted.

What appears to have happened, the Review added, is that protesters “seemed to be employing a chain tactic, beginning just as soon as the last heckler was removed, so as to continuously speak over Coulter.”

As The College Fix previously reported, Cornell University had denied a student petition to disinvite Coulter.

And at the beginning of Coulter’s talk Wednesday evening, the dean of students warned the audience that disruptors would be removed and referred to the Office of Student Conduct, the Review reported.

» Read more

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November 10, 2022 Quick space links

4:25 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • Images of China’s Tiangong-3 station, from in space and from the ground

    • Here, here, and here. The first was taken from the Tianzhou-4 cargo ship after it undocked. The second is a nice short movie. The third’s ground-based telescope was a bit unsteady, to put it mildly.

 

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A cliff face of volcanic erosion on Mars

12:11 pm

A cliff face of volcanic erosion on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is a variation of yesterday’s, showing another area on the edge of Mars’ largest volcanic ash field, dubbed the Medusae Fossae Formation and about the size of India. This time however the edge is an abrupt cliff, not the slow petering out of wind-shaped mesas.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 27, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what I very roughly estimate to be a 1,500 to 2,500 foot high cliff that appears to delineate the edge. To the north we have a plateau of intersperse layers of flood lava and ash. To the south those layers have eroded away, leaving a rough lava plain with a handful of scattered wind-sculpted mesas.

The overview map below, by providing a wider view of his region, makes its nature clearer.
» Read more

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Rocket Lab sets date for 1st launch from Wallops

9:38 am

On the same day it won a contract to build a control center for Globalstar’s satellite constellation, Rocket Lab also set December 7, 2022 as the target date for its first Electron launch from Wallops Island in Virginia.

The company had originally hoped to launch from Wallops two years ago, but delays caused by NASA’s bureaucracy in approving the flight termination software made that impossible.

With two operating launchpads, one in New Zealand and one in the U.S., Rocket Lab should now be able to ramp up its launch pace, assuming it has the customers. So far this year the company has done about one launch per month.

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Atlas-5 completes last launch at Vandenberg

8:58 am

ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket early this morning successfully launched a NOAA weather satellite, completing this soon-to-be-retired rocket’s last launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The company also successfully tested an inflatable heat shield it wants to use to safely recover and reuse the first stage engines on its new Vulcan rocket.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

51 SpaceX
48 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 74 to 48 in the national rankings, but trails the rest of the world combined 76 to 74.

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