Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Japan’s Team Hakuto has signed a deal to partner with another Google Lunar X-Prize competitor, Team Indus, to share the cost and launch together on a Indian PSLV rocket.
Essentially, both competitors will launch together. They will then race to the Moon to see which can first achieve the X-Prize goal of landing and roving 500 meters.
According to Pentagon officials Russia today conducted the fifth test of its anti-satellite Nudol missile, designed to directly hit a satellite after launch from the ground.
Few details of the test were revealed. The Russians deny that Nudol is an anti-satellite missile, claiming instead that it is designed to attack enemy missiles.
Embedded below the fold. We spent the first half of this podcast discussing the changes to Trump’s NASA transition team, trying to get a handle on what those changes might mean.
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Link here. Despite being a CNN article, the review is reasonable and fair-minded, though it tends to see these picks as more conservative than they are. Overall, however, I would agree with the analysis, except that I see Trump’s cabinet, heavily dominated by businessmen, as leaning more towards practical management than conservative ideology.
I am about to start another two hour appearance with David Livingston on The Space Show. The subject of Trump’s NASA policy is sure to come up.
Link here. I suspect that most of my readers will be able to guess what computer we are talking about, and even where it is located.
The competition heats up: Several of Trump’s most listened-to advisers are trying to convince him to put more commercial space advocates on his NASA transition team.
The appointments, which are expected to be announced shortly, partly reflect Mr. Thiel’s influence, the people said. The billionaire investor, who is Mr. Trump’s most prominent Silicon Valley supporter, is among more than two dozen people on the executive council overseeing the government-wide transition.
Along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Republican Congressman Robert Walker—two other champions of commercial space endeavors—Mr. Thiel has argued forcefully inside the transition that the original team sent to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was skewed toward appointees closely identified with legacy space projects run by Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., the people said.
This is good news. While my previous post, The squealing of pigs, focused on Trump’s environmental policy at NASA and elsewhere, his approach to commercial space remains unclear. These changes will help move his administration away from the pork of SLS and toward the competitive commercial space sector.
Let me add that this story reaffirms my belief that the best way to get Trump to shift to the right is to surround him with conservatives. Interestingly, it appears that Trump himself has chosen to do this. His first instincts might not be conservative, but he apparently is quite willing to take the advice of those who instincts are.
The competition heats up: Japan’s space agency JAXA has signed an agreement with ispace inc, a private lunar mining company that is also behind Japan’s only competing team in the Google Lunar X-Prize competition.
It is not clear if what this agreement entails. X-Prize competitors have to announce a contract with a launch company before the end of 2016, and this announcement does not say whether JAXA will provide that service to Japan’s competitor.
During standard vibration testing to simulate launch, engineers have detected what they call “anomalous readings” in the James Webb Space Telescope.
During the vibration testing on December 3, at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, accelerometers attached to the telescope detected anomalous readings during a particular test. Further tests to identify the source of the anomaly are underway. The engineering team investigating the vibe anomaly has made numerous detailed visual inspections of the Webb telescope and has found no visible signs of damage.
It is a good sign that they have found no damage. It is also a good thing that they detected these issues now, on the ground, where they can fix them. Webb, almost a decade behind schedule and $8 billion over budget, will be placed at a point a million miles from Earth, where no repair crew will be able to reach it.
The competition heats up: Japan today successfully launched its new Epsilon rocket on its second flight, placing in orbit a Japanese satellite designed to study the Van Allen belts.
The rocket is designed to launch Japan’s smaller satellites at a lower cost. During its first launch in 2013 JAXA made a big deal about how this rocket could be used to launch commercial satellites, but now I sense no interest in marketing it to the private sector.
A bit of history not generally known. Hat tip to reader Peter Fenstermacher.
When I wrote Genesis, the Story of Apollo 8, I learned that Lindbergh was a big fan of the 1960s space program. He and his wife Anne, who in the 1960s was an established writer of note, visited the Apollo 8 astronauts just before launch. They were both amazed at the amount of fuel the Saturn 5 rocket burned. Lindbergh calculated that in the first second of flight it would burn “ten times more fuel than I did all the way to Paris.”
The competition heats up: OneWeb, in its effort to build a constellation of 900 satellites to provide internet services worldwide, has raised $1.2 billion.
Japan-based SoftBank invested $1 billion of the total $1.2 billion, and has also become a strategic partner, with one of its directors, Ronald Fisher, joining OneWeb’s board of directors. Combined with the $500 million OneWeb raised in June 2015, the total amount gathered now stands at $1.7 billion out of an expected total cost of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion for the full constellation of 900 small satellites. OneWeb Founder Greg Wyler told SpaceNews that thanks to SoftBank, the company has raised more from investors than originally anticipated, allowing OneWeb to forgo a third investment round.
They plan to build a factory in Florida capable of building 15 satellites per week.
Because the red giant star Betelgeuse rotates far faster than it should, astronomers are now theorizing that when it expanded into its present red giant phase about 100,000 years ago it swallowed a companion star which contributed its own angular momentum to the system to speed up the rotation.
This theory is bolstered by evidence of a shell of matter surrounding Betelgeuse that is possibly a remnant of that destroyed star.
Fascists: Even as the Electoral College gathers today to confirm Donald Trump as the next President, its members are being overwhelmed with death threats, hate mail, harassing phone calls, and boycotts, all part of a campaign to get them to vote against Trump.
The nation’s 538 presidential electors have been thrust into the political foreground like never before in American history. In the aftermath of a uniquely polarizing presidential contest, the once-anonymous electors are squarely in the spotlight, targeted by death threats, harassing phone calls and reams of hate mail. One Texas Republican elector said he’s been bombarded with more than 200,000 emails. “I never can imagine harassing people like this. It’s just f—– up,” said Jim Rhoades, a Republican elector from Michigan who runs a home inspection service. “I’ve lost a bunch of business.”
It is important to highlight the tactics that the members of the left and the Democratic Party use to push their agenda. They don’t try to persuade. They instead intimidate.
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China’s Chang’e-3 lander has just celebrated its third year of operations on the lunar surface.
The article includes a link to where you can download data from this and other Chinese lunar missions.
Swiss Space Systems, which only a few years ago appeared to be on the cusp of competing successfully in the new space industry, was declared bankrupt on December 14.
The biggest factor to the company’s failure could be the attack that occurred against the company’s president in September, of which it appears he has not completely recovered. The attack itself remains unexplained, but before the attack the president had received threats, and the company’s offices were broken into and vandalized.
The Russians have once again delayed the next Proton rocket launch, this time for an additional week to December 28.
This will be the first Proton launch since June, when the rocket’s second stage did not perform as expected. The Russians have released no information about their investigation into that launch, other than repeatedly delay the next Proton launch for almost a half year.
The competition heats up: ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket successfully launched a commercial communications satellite on Sunday.
In its sixty-seven flights before Sunday’s launch, the Atlas V has achieved sixty-six successes, including a stretch of fifty-seven missions going back to October 2007. The only mission which was not a complete success, June 2007’s launch of the NROL-30 mission, a pair of naval intelligence satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office – reached a lower-than-planned orbit but the satellites were able to correct for this using their own propulsion. ULA describes the launch as successful from its customer’s perspective, while independent analysts consider it a partial failure.
Though the article notes that most Atlas 5 launches have been for the government, the company has recently been aggressively courting the private sector.
As someone who has appeared as a guest on The Space Show more than anyone else (including this coming Tuesday), I think it is important to support the show. David Livingston is right now holding his annual fund drive, and I urge my readers to provide the show their support, in what ever way you can. As David notes in his fund-raising email,
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