Category: Points of Information

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

Saturn’s core is a slushy mix of rocks and liquid

9:31 am

Saturn's rings
Click for more information.

Using archival data from the Cassini orbiter that mapped ripples in the rings of Saturn, scientists have produced a model of Saturn’s core that suggests it is a slushy soup that as it sloshes about shifts the gas giant’s gravitational field.

By using the famous rings like a seismograph, scientists studied processes in the planet’s interior and determined that its core must be “fuzzy.” Instead of a solid sphere like Earth’s, the core of Saturn appears to consist of a ‘soup’ of rocks, ice and metallic fluids that slosh around and affect the planet’s gravity.

…Not only does the planet’s core seem sludgy, it also appears to extend across 60% of the planet’s diameter, making it much larger than previously estimated. The analysis showed that Saturn’s core might be about 55 times as massive as the entire planet Earth. Of the total mass of the core, 17 Earth masses are made of ice and rock, with the rest consisting of a hydrogen and helium-based fluid, the study suggests.

The image above was taken in 2017, and shows both a density wave in the rings (the parallel lines in the center) caused by a Saturn moon, and numerous “propellers”, small distortions in the rings caused by slightly larger objects.

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Ingenuity’s 12th flight successful

9:15 am

Ingenuity's shadow just before landing.

According to the Perseverance science team, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its twelfth flight on Mars early yesterday, making a short scouting round trip over an area called South Seitah to provide images that the team can use to plan the rover’s future route.

All told, Ingenuity flew just under 1,500 feet flying about 30 feet above the ground for just under three minutes. The picture to the right was taken just before landing, and shows the helicopter’s shadow on the ground. It is one of six so far downloaded. The remaining images will follow later.

The announcement was made on Twitter, and included some embarrassingly over-the-top prose:

The #MarsHelicopter’s latest flight took us to the geological wonder that is the “South Séítah” region.

South Seitah is hardly a “geological wonder”. It is a sandy area with some rocks and interesting geology.

I’m not sure why, but the Perseverance rover team seems prone to do this with their press releases and announcements. The claim they make over and over that Perseverance’s prime mission is to look for ancient life is junk Now they call a relatively undistinguished and small area on a crater floor a “wonder.”

Makes one think they somehow feel a need to justify what they are doing, something that is patently absurd. They are controlling a robotic rover and helicopter tens of millions of miles away as both explore a place on another planet no one had ever visited before. That certainly is spectacular enough, and does not need purple prose to justify.

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Blue Origin files lawsuit against Starship lunar contract award

8:40 am

What a joke: Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin on August 13th filed a lawsuit in federal court, attempting to overthrow the contract award NASA gave SpaceX’s Starship in its manned lunar lander Artemis project

In a court filing on Friday, Blue Origin said it continued to believe that two providers were needed to build the landing system, which will carry astronauts down to the Moon’s surface as early as 2024. It also accused Nasa of “unlawful and improper evaluation” of its proposals during the tender process. “We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” Blue Origin said.

The article then goes on to list the basic facts that make this lawsuit absurd. First, NASA had not been appropriated enough money by Congress to award two contracts, and had it done so, it would have violated the law. Second SpaceX’s bid was the lowest bid, far less than Blue Origin’s expensive price. Third, SpaceX was already test flying early prototypes of its Starship lander, while Blue Origin had built nothing. Fourth, many other technical issues made SpaceX’s bid superior.

Finally, the GAO, as an independent arbitrator, has already ruled against a Blue Origin protest, stating unequivocally that NASA had done nothing wrong in its contract process.

This lawsuit makes Blue Origin appear to be a very unserious company. Rather than putting its energies towards building rockets and spacecraft to demonstrate its capabilities, it focuses its effort on playing legal games in the courts. Such behavior will only make it seem less appealling when next it bids on a NASA or Space Force contract.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches five satellites

8:54 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket today successfully launched five satellites into orbit, completing the company’s third launch in 2021 and the second Vega launch this year.

With only three launches so far in 2021, Arianespace does not make the leader board, which is presently as follows:

26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains 31 to 26.

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Regional Martian dust storms help suck water from Mars

2:55 pm

Orbital data now shows that both global and regional dust storms on Mars help remove the planet’s water, allowing it to reach higher atmospheric elevations where solar radiation breaks it up and it escapes into space.

Scientists have long suspected that Mars, once warm and wet like Earth, has lost most of its water largely through this process, but they didn’t realize the significant impact of regional dust storms, which happen nearly every summer in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Globe-enveloping dust storms that strike typically every three to four Martian years were thought to be the main culprits, along with the hot summer months in the southern hemisphere when Mars is closer to the Sun.

But the Martian atmosphere also gets heated during smaller, regional dust storms, according to a new paper published August 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy. The researchers, an international team led by Chaffin, found that Mars loses double the amount of water during a regional storm as it does during a southern summer season without regional storms.

This conclusion is based on data gathers from three different orbiters during a regional dust storm in early 2019.

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A Martian river of ice

12:59 pm

Glacial flow on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 13, 2021 by the high resolution camea on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It spans the entire 4.7 mile width of the southern hemisphere canyon dubbed Reull Vallis. The white arrow indicates the direction of the downhill grade

The scientists title this image “Lineated Valley Fill.” The vagueness of this title is because they have not yet confirmed that this lineated valley fill is a glacier flowing downhill to the west.

Nonetheless, the material filling this valley has all the features one expects glaciers to exhibit. Not only is the the lineation aligned with the flow, it varies across the width of the canyon as glaciers normally do. At the edge the parallel grooves are depressed, probably because they are torn apart by the canyon walls as the glacier flows past. In turn, at the center of the flow the grooves are thinner and more tightly packed, and appear less disturbed. Here, the flow is smooth, less bothered by surrounding features.

This pattern also suggests the merging of two flows somewhere upstream.

A glance at the spectacular Concordia glacier in the Himalayas near the world’s second highest mountain, K2, illustrates the similarity of this Martian feature to Earth glaciers.

Reull Vallis itself flows down to Hellas Basin, the deepest basin on Mars. As it meanders downhill along its 650 mile length it steadily gets wider and less distinct as it drops into Hellas. Along its entire length MRO has photographed numerous similar examples of this lineated fill, all suggesting that under a thin layer of debris is a thick glacier, slowerly carving this canyon out.

The overview map below illustrates these facts nicely, while further reinforcing these glacial conclusions.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Illinois University now proudly discriminating according to race

12:15 pm

The Civil Rights Act of 1964: repealed the University of Illinois
The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Doesn’t exist at the University of Illinois

Genocide is coming to America: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has established a mentoring program, with financial rewards, that expressly discriminates against Asians and whites (unless the whites happen to have Latin American genes).

From the program’s own webpage:

[W]e are pleased to launch the Milliman Mentorship Program, an actuarial mentorship program for students of underrepresented minorities (Black, Latino, Native American) at the University of Illinois.

…This program is currently targeted towards students of color, early in their college career, who may be interested in a STEM-oriented career.

The webpage then lists the benefits, including financial support and additional free mentoring assistence.

As noted at the Campus Reform article at the first link, this is clearly a violation of numerous civil rights laws.
» Read more

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China, politics, and space

11:17 am

This interesting essay today describing China’s space policy and its ramifications for the United States found this most significant quote from a Chinese official:

A senior official with the CNSA’s lunar program has been reported by the Daily Beast as saying the moon and Mars (and presumably myriad other rocks out there) are the equivalent of the islands in strategic locations in the Indo-Pacific region that China contests with Japan and other countries:

The universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island. If we don’t go there now even though we’re capable of doing so, then we will be blamed by our descendants. If others go there, then they will take over, and you won’t be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough.

The fact the CCP views real estate in the solar system the same way as real estate on Earth is both instructive and amusing.

I don’t find this Chinese attitude amusing in the least. It suggests quite starkly China’s intention to claim all the land it occupies in space, in direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty. Unlike the western nations, it doesn’t care that under that treaty’s restrictions, it can’t provide property rights to its citizens. It will possess everything it gets in space, for itself.

All the more reason for the U.S. to push for the Artemis Accords, which China rejects, as those accords bypass the restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty and make property rights possible in western space settlements. In the end, every nation that establishes a base or colony in space is going to claim it, notwithstanding the Outer Space Treaty, so establishing a framework for U.S. law in those colonies is essential. The accords are a first step in doing so.

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Georgian election official resigns who announced fake water main break

10:01 am

Georgia Fulton County elections chief Ralph Jones has suddenly resigned.

Jones was the man who shuttered the official count at the State Farm Arena in Fulton County on election night in November 2020, claiming falsely to reporters that a water main had broken. Everyone was sent home, the count supposedly suspended for the night.

Surveillance cameras at the arena however continued to record his actions. Jones then joined a handful of election officials to pull boxes of ballots from under a table and continue their private count, with no independent observers on hand. The videos also appear to show these election officials illegally running the same ballots through the computer tabulators repeatedly.

At the moment we do not know which candidate those ballots were for, but Fulton County is essentially Atlanta, a city entirely controlled by the Democratic Party. Like most such cities, election boards are heavily dominated by Democrats, because it is so hard to find Republicans to serve. Want to bet that a forensic audit would discover that those ballots were all for Biden, and were also manufactured falsely?

The audit ongoing in Fulton County is finding strong evidence that this supposition is true, and that these ballots were fake and designed to steal the election in Georgia for Biden.

Jones’ resignation now, during this audit, appears to confirm these allegations.

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Ingenuity’s next flight

1:17 pm

Ingenuity's flight plane for 12th flight
Click for full image.

The Ingenuity engineering team today announced their plans for the helicopter’s twelfth flight on Mars, scheduled for early tomorrow.

Ingenuity will climb to an altitude of 10 meters and fly approximately 235 meters east-northeast toward the area of interest in Séítah. Once there, the helicopter will make a 5-meter “sidestep” in order to get side-by-side images of the surface terrain suitable to construct a stereo, or 3D, image. Then, while keeping the camera in the same direction, Ingenuity will backtrack, returning to the same area from where it took off. Over the course of the flight, Ingenuity will capture 10 color images that we hope will help the Perseverance science team determine which of all the boulders, rocky outcrops and other geologic features in South Séítah may be worthy of further scrutiny by the rover.

The map above shows South Seitah in the yellow oval. The yellow line marks Ingenuity’s past flights. The white line marks the path Perseverance has taken south since landing. The dashed lines mark Perseverance’s planned route.

Thus, the helicopter will be obtaining aerial photos of the region in Seitah where the scientists want to send Perseverance, in order to help them pick the best route.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Farm banned from farmers market because owners are Christian

1:36 pm

Country Mills Farms-banned!
The Tennes are a normal family! We must blacklist them!

They’re coming for you next: A Michigan farmer was banned from a local farmers market by the city government of East Lansing because the owners, Steve and Bridget Tennes, are Christian and had publicly stated their opposition to homosexual marriage.

The ban against their business, Country Mill Farms, was begun in 2016. Though a court quickly ruled that it was unconstitutional, the city renewed the ban in 2018 and has maintained it since, claiming the court’s ruling only applied to the 2017 season.

The logic of the East Lansing government is actually quite blatent: It believes it has the right to dictate what others can or cannot say in public, the first amendment be damned.

[C]ity officials asserted that the Tennes’ expression conflicted with East Lansing’s marriage views and its new market policy. The policy requires vendors to agree to comply with the city’s “Human Relations Ordinance and its public policy against discrimination while at the market and as a general business practice.”

It’s illegal for anyone to “make a statement which indicates that an individual’s patronage or presence at a place of public accommodation is unwelcome or unacceptable because of sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression…” among other designated classes. [emphasis mine]

In other words, East Lansing wants to forbid any dissent to the modern and very perverse sexual movement. You will not be allowed to disagree, under any condition. And if you try, you will be blackballed, censored, and squashed, as is the right of our all-knowing government.

Stalin would be proud. So would Hitler, Mussolini, and all past despots who liked killing people who disagreed with them.
» Read more

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