April 27, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Pushback: Three Idaho University students sue school for punishing them for having opinions
No free speech allowed at this college!
They’re coming for you next: Three students at the University of Idaho have sued the college’s administrators for punishing them simply because they publicly defended their religious belief.
Peter Perlot, Mark Miller, and Ryan Alexander are members of the Christian Legal Society [CLS] chapter at the University of Idaho. When Perlot and Miller joined most of the other members of CLS at a “moment of community” gathering to condemn a discriminatory slur written at another campus, a law student approached them to ask why CLS requires its officers to affirm the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Miller respectfully explained that the chapter requires this because it is the only view of marriage and sexuality affirmed in the Bible.
Soon after, Perlot left a handwritten note for the student and told her that he would be happy to discuss this further so that they could both be fully heard and better understand one another’s views. A few days later, the student and several others publicly denounced CLS’s actions at a panel with the American Bar Association. Alexander attended that meeting and explained that the characterizations were inaccurate, that the biggest discrimination he had seen on campus was the discrimination against CLS and its religious beliefs, and that he was concerned about the state of religious freedom on campus.
Three days later, the university’s Office of Civil Rights and Investigations issued Perlot, Miller, and Alexander no-contact orders against the student even though the CLS members did not receive notice that anyone had complained about them and were not given an opportunity to review the allegations against them or defend themselves.
Ingenuity photographs Perseverance’s abandoned parachute on 26th flight
Click for full image.
Click for interactive map.
In the past week the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 26th and 27th flights, with the first specifically planned to fly over the parachute that had been used by Perseverance when it landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. The first photo to the right, enhanced, cropped, and reduced to post here, is the color photo of that parachute that Ingenuity took during that flight on April 20th. Near the top of the frame you can also see the equipment used to attach the chute to the rover. The photo looks to the southwest.
The map to the right indicates the flight paths for both hops, both slightly more than 1,000 feet total. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position yesterday, the red dot Perseverance’s position. The small white dot indicates the parachute’s location.
On April 8th Perseverance had snapped a picture of the parachute, from the position indicated by the black dot. Since that photo was taken from a distance, it could not show much. Ingenuity’s more recent photo from overhead however captures the chute quite clearly, and suggests that in the year since landing the weak Martian wind has shifted its edges slightly while depositing some dust on its surface.
You can see the changes at the edges by comparing Ingenuity’s picture with a photo taken on February 19, 2021 by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In Ingenuity’s picture the near edge of the parachute especially appears to have become bunched up over time, suggesting the prevailing and strongest winds have come from the south.
SpaceX successfully launches 4 astronauts into orbit
Capitalism in space: SpaceX early this morning successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch its new capsule, Freedom, carrying four astronauts into orbit and heading to a docking with ISS this evening.
The first stage successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its fourth flight.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
16 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. now leads China 23 to 11 in the national rankings. In fact, at this moment the U.S. leads all other nations combined, 23 to 19.
Watch first flight of SpaceX’s fourth capsule, Freedom, carrying four NASA astronauts
The next launch of a NASA crew to ISS is scheduled to occur tonight at 3:52 am (Eastern) using SpaceX’s new capsule, Freedom, the fourth in the company’s fleet of manned spacecraft. Note too that the first stage of this Falcon 9 rocket will be making its fourth flight into space.
I have embedded the live stream below. As I write this, at 1:19 am (Eastern) the crew has just entered the capsule. Go here for details about the flight, which will be a five month mission.
Commander Kjell Lindgren, veteran of one previous expedition on the space station, leads the four-person crew awaiting liftoff Wednesday. He will be joined by pilot Bob Hines and mission specialist Jessica Watkins, two first-time fliers from NASA’s astronaut corps. European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, a native of Italy who spent nearly 200 days in orbit in 2014 and 2015, rounds out the crew.
If the launch goes well, Freedom will dock with ISS about sixteen hours later.
If you watch, I must once again note that every person you see aiding the astronauts will be a SpaceX employee. Except for some of the announcers and NASA’s mission control for operating ISS, the launch mission control and everything else is run by this privately owned commercial company.
Pushback: Judge rules lawsuit from professor suspended for refusing to favor black students can proceed
King’s dream of equal treatment for all
called racist at UCLA
Don’t comply: The lawsuit of Gordon Klein, a professor at UCLA for 39 years who was suspended for three weeks in June of 2021 because he refused to favor black students in grading or exempt them from final exams, will proceed following a favorable ruling by a Los Angeles county judge.
On March 30, 2022, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Jay Ford III ruled against UCLA when it attempted to have Klein’s lawsuit dismissed. Ford ruled that Klein provided sufficient evidence to “support judgment in his favor” for several of his claims. The lawsuit is scheduled for a jury trial in April 2023.
I covered Klein’s story in a blacklist column in September ’21, describing how Klein was not only suspended but was also subjected to physical threats requiring a police presence at his home.
I also noted that Klein’s lawsuit, available to read here [pdf], specifically targets not just UCLA but “…the individual administrators at the Anderson School personally liable for their wrongful and slanderous actions.” With the lawsuit now proceeding those individuals, specifically Antonio Bernardo, the Dean of the Anderson School, and the entire 26-member Board of Regents of the University of California, are facing punishment for their slanders and bigoted policies.
As always, I strongly recommend my readers spend the time to read Klein’s complaint. Rather than depend on my shortened description, read the whole thing, in all its gory details. You will no longer look at modern academia in the same way. Once an oasis for open discussion, equal treatment, and intellectual thought, established academia has now become a haven for bigotry and hate, focused specifically in destroying anyone who does not support giving minorities favored treatment.
SpaceX’s signs up another airline to use Starlink Wi-Fi on its planes
Capitalism in space: Hawaiian Airlines has now become the second commercial airline company to agree to use SpaceX’s Starlink Wi-Fi on its airplanes.
Hawaiian Airlines said Monday that it will offer free wireless internet service from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network on flights between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, Asia and Oceania. The airline said it is in the early stages of putting the service in place on some aircraft next year.
Honolulu-based Hawaiian said it’s the first deal between Elon Musk’s space company and a major airline, although charter operator JSX announced a deal with SpaceX last week.
Expect all the American airlines to soon switch to Starlink. The low orbit of the satellites and its high speed make it superior to the other satellite options presently available.
InSight scientists publish paper describing last year’s big Martian quakes
The InSight science team has now published a paper [pdf] describing in detail what they gleaned from the two large earthquakes the lander detected on Mars last year, measuring 4.1 and 4.2 magnitudes.
The map above, figure 5 of their paper, marks their best estimate of the quakes’ locations, dubbed S0976a and S1000a. From the caption:
Mars surface relief map showing InSight’s location (orange triangle), the location of other located mars-quakes (magenta dots) that cluster around 30° distance, close to Cerberus Fossae, and S0976a, located within Valles Marineris just north of Sollis Planum. Because no back azimuth can be determined for S1000a, its location is predicted to be somewhere within the shaded region between 107° and 147° from InSight. The event’s preferred distance (116°) is marked with the white dashed line. The black dotted lines mark radii around InSight up to 80°.
A review of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) high resolution images of that part of Valles Marineris where S096a occurred will likely uncover a whole bunch taken since last August, all attempting to detect any actual surface changes produced by quake. I think I’ll do that review, and see if I can spot something.
The paper also notes the uniqueness of S1000a, which lasted 94 minutes, the longest so far detected on Mars. The complexity of its signal also makes locating it difficult, though the most likely possible locations — indicated by the white dashed line in the map above — crosses through the Tharsis Bulge where Mars’ biggest volcanoes are found.
Sadly, InSight will likely shut down before the end of this year due to loss of power, so until another seismometer is sent there no further Martian quakes will be detected.
SLS rocket rolled back to VAB
NASA’s SLS rocket has now been rolled back to the vehicle assembly building (VAB) so that engineers can assess the various problems that prevented the agency from completing a full dress rehearsal countdown last week.
Over the next several days, the team will extend the work platforms to allow access to SLS and Orion. In the coming weeks, teams will work on replacing a faulty upper stage check valve and a small leak within the tail service mast umbilical ground plate housing, and perform additional checkouts before returning to the launch pad for the next wet dress rehearsal attempt.
More details about these problems can be found here.
The bottom line is that these engineering fixes are certain to take at least two months to fix. Then NASA must decide what next to do. If it decides to redo the dress rehearsal countdown, then an actual launch cannot happen sooner than July, and only if they proceed directly to launch after completing the rehearsal. If the rocket is rolled back to the VAB after the next rehearsal the launch will be delayed further, into August or September.
And all that assumes the next rehearsal goes perfect, something that seems unlikely based on what has happened so far.
The delays are a problem because the first stage’s two strap-on solid rocket boosters are already well past their “use-by” date of January ’22. The possibility that NASA will have to unstack this rocket and replace these boosters is growing. If that happens the launch cannot occur sooner than early ’23, if then.
Worse, these delays cause all other subsequent SLS launches to be delayed as well. Right now the manned mission to the Moon, presently scheduled for ’25, is likely going to be pushed back to ’26.
NASA extends eight planetary missions, including sending OSIRIS-REx to the asteroid Apophis
Apophis’ path past the Earth in 2029.
NASA today announced that it is extending the missions of eight different planetary probes.
The missions – Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover), InSight lander, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, OSIRIS-REx, and New Horizons – have been selected for continuation, assuming their spacecraft remain healthy. Most of the missions will be extended for three years; however, OSIRIS-REx will be continued for nine years in order to reach a new destination, and InSight will be continued until the end of 2022, unless the spacecraft’s electrical power allows for longer operations.
The biggest news is the decision to extend OSIRS-REx so that it can rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis in 2029. The science team…
…will redirect the spacecraft to encounter Apophis, an asteroid roughly 1,200 feet (roughly 370 meters) in diameter that will come within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX will enter orbit around Apophis soon after the asteroid’s Earth flyby, providing an unprecedented close-up look at this S-type asteroid. It plans to study changes in the asteroid caused by its close flyby of Earth and use the spacecraft’s gas thrusters to attempt to dislodge and study the dust and small rocks on and below Apophis’ surface.
Apophis is a potentially dangerous asteroid, with a 1 in 150,000 chance it will hit the Earth in 2068. Getting as much information about it as soon as possible is crucial so that future generations will be prepared should its path eventually become a collision course.
The icy Reull Valley of Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eroded floor of a 10-mile-wide very obscured unnamed crater that sits above the northern wall of a canyon dubbed Reull Valles.
For reference the interior slope of the crater’s southern rim is labelled. The crater sits at 40 degrees south latitude. Thus, this crater is inside the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where scientists have found many glaciers on Mars. The eroded floor of this crater appears to confirm this conclusion. In the full photo the erosion is even more pronounced, as well as more chaotic, farther from that rim to the north.
Because Reull Valles sits inside that southern glacial band, it is home to much evidence of ice. The overview map below provides the context.
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Endeavour splashes down successfully
UPDATE: Endeavour has successfully splashed down, and crews are approaching to recover the capsule.
This by the way completes Endeavour’s third manned flight into space.
Original post:
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The SpaceX capsule Endeavour, carrying Axiom’s first commercial passengers, undocked with ISS last night and is scheduled to splashdown off the coast of Florida shortly.
I have embedded the live stream below, scheduled to begin shortly.
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