Category: Points of Information

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

Judge blocks Camden spaceport land purchase pending March 8th vote

8:36 am

Capitalism in space: A state judge has blocked Camden County in Georgia from purchasing any land for its proposed spaceport until after the county’s citizens vote on approving or rejecting the spaceport project on March 8, 2022.

Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett’s injunction delivered a new victory for the residents and environmentalists who’ve remained critical of the county’s ambitious plans to launch rockets off Georgia’s coast toward sensitive barrier islands.

This week, a probate court judge ordered a March 8 election after a petition circulated by opponents received enough signatures for a referendum asking if the county should repeal its land-acquisition agreement with Union Carbide Corp. for the former industrial site where an environmental covenant restricts use of the land.

Essentially, the project will live or die depending on how county residents vote.

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Watching Elon Musk’s update on Starship tonight

3:53 pm

Starship mounted by tower on Superheavy

Tonight at 8 pm (central) Elon Musk is going to give a presentation updating the world on the status of SpaceX’s Starship project, with the fully stacked Starship/Superheavy as his backdrop. The photo to the right is a screen capture showing that stacking.

I have embedded the live stream below. Or you can watch it on SpaceX’s website or on its youtube channel.

The biggest question is the regulatory situation for Boca Chica. Will Musk report progress in getting operations approved there by the federal government, or will he outline how the federal government is acting as a barrier to progress? Or will he sidestep the issue (for diplomatic reasons) and focus his talk entirely on technical issues?

We can only wait and see.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Private school makes enemies list of parents

3:31 pm

Lovett ememies list
Click for original.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats (and their supporters) have got ’em: Two officials at the Lovett School, an expensive private K-12 school in the Atlanta area, have assembled an enemies list of “insubordinate” parents.

The picture to the right is a screen capture of an email sent to one of these officials, Jennifer Boutte, director of community relations, showing the list of parent enemies (blurred out to protect the privacy of these individuals). In it one official, Cholle [sp?] Wabrok, thanked Boutte for apparently assembling the list, adding

It is long overdue. I am disgusted by some of these parents, need to prioritize our efforts as some have too much influence. Our watch list — to keep hard-copy only?

» Read more

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Astra launch fails when upper stage starts tumbling after stage separation

2:02 pm

Capitalism in space: Astra’s first attempt to launch from Cape Canaveral and put commercial cubesats in orbit failed today when the upper stage started to tumble immediately after the first stage had separated.

Embedded below is video showing that tumbling. The full replay of the launch live stream can be viewed here.

The silver lining of this failure is that the first stage and all launch operations appeared to function perfectly, right up until after stage separation. Nonetheless, it is a failure, and the company will need to try again and succeed if it wants to survive in the aggressive new launch market.
» Read more

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NASA/NSF express collision concerns for SpaceX’s Starlink constellation

10:00 am

Capitalism in space: In a February 8th letter to the FCC, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA expressed their concerns about the collision possibilities of SpaceX’s full 30,000 satellite Starlink constellation with other spacecraft.

The letter raised several issues about the proposed constellation, primarily because it would increase the number of tracked objects in low Earth orbit by more than a factor of five. “An increase of this magnitude into these confined altitude bands inherently brings additional risk of debris-generating collision events based on the number of objects alone,” the agency stated. “NASA anticipates current and planned science missions, as well as human space flight operations will see an increase in conjunctions.”

The letter did not oppose the constellation, but simply outlined issues that the agencies thought SpaceX needed to address before the constellation’s full deployment. It also noted that these concerns apply to other planned large satellite constellations.

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SpaceX stacks Starship on Superheavy on orbital launchpad

9:37 am

Starship mounted by tower on Superheavy

Capitalism in space: SpaceX for the first time used the giant arms on the launch tower at its Boca Chica orbital launchpad to stack Starship on top of Superheavy, with the fully stacked giant rocket to act as a backdrop to Elon Musk’s update on the project scheduled for airing tonight at 8 pm (Central).

You can see a time lapse of the several hour process here.

The use of a launch tower to stack a rocket is apparently a first, and provides solid evidence that SpaceX’s plan to catch Superheavy with that tower and put it on the ground has a chance of success.

SpaceX has not yet announced how Musk’s presentation will be aired, but when this information is available I will embed it on Behind the Black.

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Earthlike exoplanet in habitable zone detected orbiting nearest star

9:21 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers think they have detected an Earthlike exoplanet, in habitable zone, orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system.

Astronomer João Faria and his collaborators detected Proxima Centauri d by measuring tiny shifts in the spectrum of the star’s light as the planet’s gravity pulled it during orbit. The team used a state-of-the art spectrograph called ESPRESSO at the Very Large Telescope, a system of four 8.2-metre telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile. The results were published on 10 February in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This ‘wobble’ technique looks for changes in the star’s motion along the line of sight from Earth, and ESPRESSO can detect variations of just 10 centimeters per second. The total effect of the planet’s orbit, which lasts only five days, is about 40 cm/s, says Faria. “I knew that ESPRESSO could do this, but it was still surprised to see it showing up,” says Faria, who is at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Porto, Portugal.

Though the scientists are very confident about their results, the detection is at present only a candidate planet, as its existence has not been confirmed by an second independent method. Also, the method of detection cannot pin down the exoplanet’s mass very precisely, though it suggests the exoplanet has rocky planet mass, not too different than Earth’s.

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China plans more than 50 launches in 2022

9:14 am

China today released what it calls a blue paper outlining its space plans for 2022, predicting it will launch more than fifty times while completing assembly of its Tiangong space station.

The Shenzhou-14 astronauts will be aboard Tianhe core module for the arrival of the 20-metric-ton-plus Wentian and Mengtian modules, both now expected to launch in the second half of the year, later than earlier tentative times of June and August respectively. The module launches will complete the T-shaped orbital outpost. Tianzhou-5 will launch ahead of Shenzhou-15, both scheduled for late in the year.

Work on the Long March 2F, Long March 5B and Long March 7 rockets for launching Shenzhou, space station module and cargo missions respectively continued during the recent Lunar New Year holiday, according to CASC [China’s space agency]. The module launches will be followed closely, partly due to the significance of the missions, but also because of the use of the Long March 5B, the two previous launches of which saw the large first stages make high-profile uncontrolled reentries which sparked acrimony.

The rocket maker, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), says it has further optimized the two new Long March 5B rockets to ensure mission success without providing details. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words, as well as the delay in launch of these two modules, suggests China might have done some work on its Long March 5B to control the de-orbit of its core stage.

China also says the year will also include the first six month long mission on Tiangong, as well as the first arrival of two crews to the station.

My present count of all proposed launches for 2022 is just under 200, more than double the average number of launches (89) completed annually since the launch of Sputnik. U.S. companies alone right now are predicting 100 launches. While all of these numbers are uncertain, it looks like ’22 will be a banner year for space exploration.

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Forty just-launched Starlink satellites lost because of geomagnetic storm

8:47 pm

SpaceX revealed today that because of the unexpected and ill-timed arrival of a geomagnetic storm from the Sun, 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites launched on February 3rd were lost and will quickly burn up in the atmosphere. As noted at Teslarati:

SpaceX says it “commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag” as soon as it was aware of the issue but that “the increased drag…prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers.” Based on that phrasing, the most obvious explanation is that the added drag caused up to 40 of the satellites to fall far enough into the atmosphere that their ion thrusters would no longer be able to raise their orbits faster than the drag was lowering them. Raising their solar arrays into the position needed for maximum power generation (and thus maximum sustained thrust) would also drastically accelerate reentry.

A lot of the press and those who love to attack SpaceX have made a big deal about this, but the real news of this story is the unprecedented impact of a geomagnetic storm on some newly launched satellites. Such a thing has never happened before, and only happened now because SpaceX does not raise the orbits of any Starlink into a more stable orbit before making sure the satellite is functioning properly. If it is not, the company leaves it in a low orbit so it quickly burns up and does not add to the amount of space junk in orbit. This approach is also somewhat unprecedented, but it also demonstrates SpaceX’s generally rational and responsible approach to what it does in commercial space.

Because of this approach, however, these satellites were vulnerable to this storm. The timing had to be just perfect to destroy them, and sadly for SpaceX it was. I fully expect SpaceX to add solar activity as a factor in timing future Starlink launches.

Note: I didn’t initially comment because I don’t see this as that big a deal. The effort to slander SpaceX by some (see the quotes for example near the end of this article) however changed my mind.

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Parker images the surface of Venus

3:23 pm

Parker image compared to radar maps of Venus
For original images go here and here.

During its flybys of Venus in July 2020 and February 2021 the Parker Solar Probe used its wide field camera to take images of the night side of Venus in red optical and near infrared wavelengths, essentially measuring the heat (in the range of 863 degrees Fahrenheit) being emitted by the planet’s surface.

The resulting images, the first orbital photos of Venus’ surface in the optical, showed continent-sized surface details that matched previously made radar maps, and confirmed as expected that the higher altitudes are cooler than the lower.

The paper outlining these results can be read here.

The two pictures to the right compare previous radar maps (on the right) with the new Parker image (on the left). The central dark and cooler area is a region called Aphrodite Terra, which like Earth’s continents sits higher than the surrounding terrain.

Note that though cooler, the surface at these dark areas is still hellishly hot, more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Exploring the surface of Venus is going to be a far far far more challenging task that going to Mars.

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