Category: Points of Information

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

Japan’s space agency JAXA was hacked this summer

10:12 am

According to officials of Japan’s space agency JAXA, its computer system was hacked this summer but only learned of that break-in recently.

The illegal access is believed to have occurred around summer, but JAXA was unaware of the attack until the police contacted the agency, according to the sources. A full investigation was launched after JAXA reported the cyber-attack to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, which has jurisdiction over the agency.

Although no large-scale information leakage has been confirmed at this stage, an official related to JAXA said: “As long as the AD server was hacked, it was very likely that most of the information was visible. This is a very serious situation.”

Earlier hacks to JAXA’s systems have also occurred in 2016 and 2017, with the culprits identified as working under the direction of the Chinese military. It is very likely that China is involved this time as well. China has previously been identified as the perpetrator of hacks of JPL from 2009 to 2019, during which much of JPL’s files on its planetary missions was stolen. It was thus no surprise when later Chinese planetary missions looked like upgraded copycats of those missions.

Why China is attempting to steal anything from Japan’s space program is puzzling however, considering its recent failures. If anything, China’s space program is presently far more advanced than Japan’s, and it should be Japan trying to steal from China.

6 comments

NASA to fly Indian astronaut to ISS next year

9:52 am

During meetings in India between NASA and ISRO officials, instigated by administrator Bill Nelson’s visit this week, the mission details for the flight of an Indian astronaut to ISS in 2024 are now being worked out.

A Nasa delegation led by Nelson held a meeting with minister of state for science & technology Jitendra Singh on Tuesday. “I had a discussion with the minister on what the Indian astronaut would do on the space station. And the two of us talked about the fact that things that are important to India in scientific research, the Indian astronaut ought to have that as a choice to do. If there is a particular part of research that he or she would be interested in, then I want to encourage that,” Nelson later said at a media interaction. “Nasa will help train the Indian astronaut to fly to ISS by end of 2024. Those details are being worked out. Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will announce that,” Nelson said.

Though this plan for NASA to fly Indian astronaut to ISS next year was first announced in June, it was overshadowed by India’s decision at that time to sign the Artemis Accords.

It is also important to recognize that the real arrangements are all being done by others, that Nelson and the India government officials are merely there to get their faces on television.

If this flight happens as planned, next year could be very exciting for India’s manned space program, since it also hopes to fly its own manned mission at that time.

One comment

SpaceX buys the company that makes its Dragon parachutes

9:38 am

According to a Florida bankruptcy filing dated November 22, 2023, SpaceX has purchased for $2.2 million Pioneer Aerospace, the company that has been manufacturing the parachutes used by its Dragon cargo and manned capsules.

Apparently SpaceX bought the company in order to make sure its parachutes would still be available. This purchase also brings that operation into SpaceX itself, so that the company is no longer dependent on an outside vendor. Since its early days SpaceX has attempted to build as much as possible in-house, and this buy follows that policy.

2 comments

Dragonfly mission to Titan delayed by a year because of budget shortfalls

9:26 am

Even as NASA gave engineers approval to move forward on building the helicopter set to fly on the Dragonfly mission to the Saturn moon Titan, it also revealed that the mission’s launch has been delayed by at least one year because of budget shortfalls.

In a presentation at a Nov. 28 meeting of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said agency leadership decided to postpone formal confirmation of the mission earlier this month, a milestone where the agency sets an official cost and schedule for the mission.

The delay in confirmation by NASA’s Agency Program Management Council (APMC), she said, is based on uncertainty about how much money will be available for the mission and other parts of NASA’s planetary science portfolio given broader budget pressures on the agency. “Because of these incredibly large uncertainties in FY ’24 and FY ’25 funding and budgets, the decision was made at that APMC to postpone the official confirmation,” she said.

The launch had been scheduled for 2027. When it will launch now is unclear.

Apparently (and not surprising since this is a NASA project) the mission is beginning to cost more than originally predicted. Furthermore, this shortfall is enhanced by the cost overruns from the Mars Sample Return mission. In fact, it appears that these cost overruns are impacting NASA’s entire planetary program, causing delays on many smaller missions in order to fund Mars Sample Return and the Europa Clipper mission (set to launch next year). Just as Webb wiped out most of NASA’s astrophysics missions in the 2000s and 2010s, this handful of big planetary missions is wiping out most of NASA’s planetary program.

The announced delay is also a typical NASA’s negotiating tactic with Congress, trying to pressure elected officials to cough up more money. For decades NASA would announce the need for crippling cuts to major and popular science projects unless Congress allocates it more cash for its most expensive projects, and for decades Congress has gladly done so. No one ever asks whether those expensive projects might be better off redesigned, or cancelled.

Leave a comment

Space industry expresses opposition to White House regulatory proposal

9:10 am

Not surprisingly, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), the industry group that represents pretty much the entire new commercial space business, has sent a letter to both the House and Senate expressing strong opposition to the November 15th White House regulatory proposal that would impose heavy regulation on both launches and the construction of any private facility in space.

“We oppose the recently released National Space Council (NSPC) proposal on the topic in its current form, which fails to consider the points that CSF and many other stakeholders raised during the NSPC listening sessions last year,” CSF said in its letter to Congress.

The organization raised several concerns, including how responsibilities would be split between the two departments and the potential for “duplicative and conflicting” requirements between Commerce and Transportation. “For some operations, it is unclear which agency would hold the authority to issue a relevant license, or if multiple licenses would be needed,” it stated.

The group is concerned about giving additional responsibilities to the FAA’s commercial space transportation office without also significantly increasing its budget, noting that the office is struggling to keep up with its current launch and reentry licensing. At an October hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, industry officials recommended increasing that office’s budget to handle launch licensing work, without any discussion of it taking on additional responsibilities.

CSF was also worried that the proposed mission authorization system could disrupt plans by NASA to shift from the International Space Station to commercial stations by the end of the decade. “Introducing a bifurcated and unclear regulatory regime for commercial space stations,” the letter stated, “could risk U.S. leadership in low-Earth orbit.”

Apparently the entire space industry came to the same conclusion I did after reading the White House proposal after its release:

Essentially, these new rules — purposely written to be vague — will allow the government to forbid any activity in space by private citizens it chooses to forbid. No private space station could launch without government approval, which will also include the government’s own determination that the station will be operatied safely. Once launched, the vagueness of these regulations will soon allow mission creep so that every new activity in space will soon fall under its review.

Since no one in the government is qualified to supervise things like this, in the end politics and the abuse of power will be the rule.

It must be noted that the entire Democratic Party caucus in the House apparently approves of this power grab, because they immediately abandoned all support of the previously negotiated proposal that the industry and Congress had worked out and a House committee was about to pass. Their opposition forced that committee vote to be canceled. According to that committee, it will resume its consideration of that bill today. We shall see if this industry opposition changes any of their minds.

2 comments

November 28, 2023 Quick space links

3:23 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

The next three links are all from China, touting either concepts or the engine tests. Some will turn out real, some not.

Leave a comment

Close-up of Helene, one of Saturn’s many many moons

2:04 pm

Helene, as seen by Cassini in 2011
Helene, as seen by Cassini in 2011

Cool image time! Though the Saturn orbiter Cassini is long gone, having been sent into Saturn’s atmosphere to burn up in 2017, its image archive of magnificent pictures is still available to peruse. To encourage others to do so, NASA today issued a series of press releases, listing the spacecraft’s top ten pictures from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, comes from the 2011 collection and was taken on June 18, 2011. It shows a close-up of 21-mile-wide Helene, one of Saturn’s many many moons and only discovered in 1980. Back in 2010 I featured another Cassini image of Helene, but that picture did not reveal the small surface features seen in the photo to the right.

The light and dark streaks probably indicate dust flowing downhill on the surface. Though the gravity of this object is tiny, it will be enough for dust to act like almost like a liquid, flowing down grade and then pooling in the central pond at the lowest point near the center of the picture. That process is so much like liquid flowing that it appears to have even eroded gullies on slopes near the top and bottom of the picture.

Side note: NASA’s “Science Editorial Team” also issued a press release today that falsely and ignorantly claimed these releases were “to celebrate 10 years since arriving at Saurn,” implying that Cassini arrived in 2013 and is still functioning.

The problem is that Cassini arrived in orbit around Saturn in 2004 and as I noted above ended its mission in 2017. It thus appears that the NASA Science Editorial Team is unable to do even one five-second web search to find out what really happened.

Just another data point indicating the dark age we now live in.

3 comments

Pentagon is now all-in on capitalism in space

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Based on recent remarks from officials as well as a number of newly issued contracts, the U.S. military has now decided to completely shift from designing and building its own space hardware — which it has increasingly done badly at great cost — to simply becoming a customer buying products from the private sector.

First we have remarks and press announcements from top Pentagon officials, stating this policy change.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who has spearheaded Pentagon efforts to bring cutting-edge technology into defense programs, is overseeing the military’s first commercial space integration strategy.

The new strategy comes as the Pentagon seeks to tap into advancements in commercial space technology to maintain an advantage over China, now seen as America’s top military competitor. “At Deputy Secretary Hicks’ direction, the Department is currently developing our first DoD Commercial Space Integration Strategy in order to drive integration and ensure the availability of commercial space solutions during competition, crisis and conflict,” Pentagon Spokesman Eric Pahon said Nov. 27 in a statement to SpaceNews.

Nor are these merely words. On November 22, 2023 the military announced a request for proposals from twenty different commercial space companies to provide all of its military needs in orbit, with potential contracts worth up to $900 million.

The Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (PLEO) Satellite-Based Services contract, first announced in July, is run by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) on behalf of the Space Force’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO), a central marketplace for satellite services operated by the Space Systems Command.

…The PLEO contract “supports the Department of Defense’s requirement to provide worldwide, low-latency PLEO services,” said DISA. The IDIQ contracting method allows the Department of Defense, other federal agencies and international allies “to procure fully managed satellite-based services and capabilities for all domains (space, air, land, maritime and cyber) with a consistent, quality-backed, low-latency offering.”

This shift is excellent news, not only for the commercial space industry but for the American military itself. The former is guaranteed to grow and innovate as these companies compete for military business, while the latter will get what it needs more quickly and at much lower cost.

Leave a comment

Starlink now operating for Israel in Israel and Gaza

9:26 am

As part of Elon Musk’s trip to Israel this week he negotiated a deal with the Israeli ministry of communications to activate Starlink over both Israel and Gaza, allowing its use by the military there.

The deal is in addition to Tesla’s recent announcement that Israelis can now charge their cars for free at its charging stations.

Musk’s trip also has put the lie to the slanders of the left that have accused him of being an anti-Semite simply because he correctly noted the leftist bias of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), made worse by its effort to censor and blackball people. That slander has had no traction, because Elon Musk is very well known to the public, and it quickly recognized that it was an utter lie. Musk’s trip to Israel simply underlines the dishonesty of that accusation.

2 comments

British scientists get their own Bennu sample to study

9:16 am

The British History Museum has now received a small sample of material from the asteroid Bennu, brought back to Earth by the planetary probe OSIRIS-REx.

The first two years of research at the Natural History Museum will focus on non-destructive tests, such as X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy to learn about Bennu’s mineral composition and structure. The largest grains in the sample are on the order of millimetres wide, while the smallest are mere dust particles. “It doesn’t sound like a lot of material, but it’s plenty to work with,” King said.

The museum is home to one of the world’s leading meteorite collections, and the staff are well-used to handling small amounts of extremely precious materials from outer space. Unlike meteorites that have been baked and battered on their fiery passage through Earth’s atmosphere, the dust and rocky fragments from Bennu were brought to Earth in pristine condition, allowing scientists a rare glimpse of the unaltered asteroid.

The last sentence says it all. Up until recently, researchers have had a distorted view of the overall make-up of asteroids because the oldest kinds, carbonaceous chondrite, are the most delicate and get significantly changed by their passage through the Earth’s atmosphere. The samples from Bennu and Ryugu are changing this, and will eventually revolutionize the understanding scientists have of our present solar system.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

9:00 am

SpaceX last night successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its seventeeth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. That SpaceX now has several first stages that have been reused this much and it isn’t considered news is in itself a story. The company has actually gotten this rocket to perform like an airplane, a goal that Elon Musk aspired too more than a decade ago.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

87 SpaceX
53 China
15 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 99 to 53 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 99 to 84. SpaceX meanwhile widens its lead over the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 87 to 84.

As a number of my readers have noted, the U.S. lead this year is entirely due to SpaceX, indicating a dominance that is actually unhealthy. Other American companies need to come forward and challenge it, because the competition will spark innovation and better rocketry. With no competition, it is inevitable that even SpaceX could get lazy.

12 comments

November 27, 2023 Quick space links

3:44 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • Astra obtains $2.7 million in new financing

    • The status of this company is right now entirely unknown. It is not clear how this financing impacts the proposal of the company’s founders to buy up the stock and take Astra private. Nor is it clear how this financing satisfies other loans that have already expired and had to be paid. Based on the article, it seems to me that the company will soon have to shut down due to lack of cash.

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Mars’ giant sinkholes

12:15 pm

The floor of one of Mars' giant sinkholes

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of the floor and northern slope of Hebes Chasma, one of the many very large enclosed pits that can be found to the north of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. Though Hebes seems small next to the 1,500 mile long Valles Marineris, it still is 200 miles long by 80 miles wide, and could easily fit a half dozen Grand Canyons within it.

For example, the Grand Canyon is from 4,420 to 5,400 feet deep, hiking down from the south and north rim lodges respectively, which sit about ten miles apart. On this picture, the peak on the right sits about 5,300 feet above and only about 3.8 miles from the low spot on the bottom left, which means this one small picture encapsulates the Grand Canyon. And yet, the northern rim of Hebes sits another 21,000 feet higher and twelve miles away. And the entire chasma itself extends 50 miles to the west, 150 miles to the east, and 50 miles to the south.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Blue Origin begins third major expansion of Huntsville facility

9:03 am

Blue Origin has been issued a $8.4 million building permit by local Huntsville authorities as part of the third major expansion of its rocket-manufacturing facility there.

According to the report, of the 377 permits issued so far in October and November, this was the largest. All three expansions have occurred in the past three years.

The article however includes this ridiculous statement:

The aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has emerged as one of the top commercial spaceflight companies as the country has placed a renewed effort on returning to the moon and eventually to Mars.

How could Blue Origin be “one of the top commercial spaceflight companies” when it has still not launched anything into orbit? Even the tiny rocket startup Astra, now on the verge of bankruptcy, put more mass into orbit than Blue Origin. Everyone has, since the mass Blue Origin has put into orbit so far equals a nice fat zero.

This expansion however does suggest that something positive might finally be happening at the company. With the removal of Bob Smith as CEO and Jeff Bezos now living in Florida and closer to the action it could be that the continuing string of non-accomplishment that has made Blue Origin a bit of a joke in the space industry might possibly be ending.

We shall have to wait and see, however.

13 comments

Russia launches military satellite

7:59 pm

Russia today successfully placed a classifed military satellite in orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.

The satellite is likely a reconnaissance satellite. No word on where the rocket’s core stage and strap-on boosters landed inside Russia, though launches from Plesetsk generally head north over very empty regions and the Arctic, and as the satellite appears to have an orbit with an inclination of 67 degrees that is likely in this case.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

86 SpaceX
53 China
15 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 98 to 53 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 98 to 84. SpaceX meanwhile maintains its lead over the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 86 to 84.

Leave a comment

Did the Capitol police instigate violence by firing on peaceful January 6th demonstrators?

2:16 pm

Screen capture from bodycam of officer, preparing grenade to throw into crowd
Screen capture from bodycam of officer,
preparing grenade to throw into crowd.

Video evidence recently released by House speaker Mike Johnson, combined with many videos taken by participants during the January 6, 2021 demonstrations on Capitol Hill, now suggest strongly that the violence was instigated by the DC police, not the January 6th demonstrators, who until then had been peaceful.

The video at the second link above ties together police bodycam footage with surveillance footage and smart phone footage — all time-stamped — and shows the Capitol security police firing on the demonstrators, who until that moment were doing nothing wrong and were simply standing in front of the Capitol in a crowd, chanting “USA! USA!”

Furthermore, the firing began at about 1:07 pm, eight minutes before Trump had finished giving his speech blocks away. The audience to his speech didn’t begin arriving at the Capitol until more than an hour later, when they found doors to the building open and security police welcoming them in.

Thus, the violence, set off by the police, had nothing to do with anything Trump said.
» Read more

25 comments

Striped terrain on Mars

12:39 pm

Overview map

Striped terrain on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image will be a mystery with the answer below the fold. Before you look at the answer, however, you must try to come up with your own explanation for the picture to the right, cropped to post here, that was taken on September 25, 2018 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

What we see in this picture is what looks like a striped terrain, alternating bands of light and dark. What caused the bands? Why the different colors?

The overview map above provides some clues. The white rectangle inside Juventae Chasma near the map’s center marks the area within which this picture was taken, though the picture to the right covers only about a pixel inside that rectangle.

Can you guess what these stripes reveal, from this little information? For this quiz to work you must make a guess, but be prepared to be wrong and quickly reassess your conclusions. Such is the real scientific method, so rarely taught now in schools.
» Read more

2 comments

Ariane-6’s core stage completes full 7 minute engine test

8:45 am

Engineers yesterday successfully completed a two-hour dress rehearsal countdown and fueling of an Ariane-6 first stage followed by a full seven minute engine burn, simulating what that stage would do during a launch.

The test took place on Ariane-6’s launchpad in French Guiana.

The November 23 test sequence was run the same way as the previous ones, with a launch sequence and final countdown representative of a launch, including removal of the mobile gantry and filling the launcher’s upper and core stage tanks with liquid hydrogen (-253° Celsius) and liquid oxygen (-183° Celsius). The test ended with the ignition of the core stage Vulcain 2.1 engine, followed by more than 7 minutes of stabilized operation covering the entire core stage flight phase. All functional aspects of Ariane 6’s core stage during the flight phase were tested.

According to the European Space Agency, only one more engine test of the Ariane-6’s upper stage remains before the spring launch can be attempted, and that engine test is planned for next month in Germany.

With the retirement of the Ariane-5 rocket in July, Europe has had no large rocket to launch payloads. Originally Ariane-6’s first launches were supposed to be in parallel with Ariane-5’s last launches, but its development is four years behind schedule.

One comment

China delays till ’25 the launch of its Hubble-class optical space telescope

9:34 am

China today revealed that it is delaying the the launch of its Xuntian space telescope from early next year to 2025.

Zhan Hu, project scientist of Xuntian space telescope system, revealed that the delay was necessary for the team to finalize a preflight “engineering qualification model.” This model will undergo rigorous performance tests early next year. Despite the setback, China is making significant strides by domestically developing all five instruments for Xuntian, a first for the country, Scientific American reported.

The optical telescope, designed to somewhat comparable to Hubble, is intended to fly close to China’s Tiangong-3 space station where astronauts will periodically fly over to do maintenance and repair. Its primary mirror, two meters in diameter, is only slightly smaller than Hubble’s 2.4 meter mirror.

The article says the launch was supposed to happen before the end of this year, but that is incorrect. The launch has been targeting the spring of 2024 since February.

4 comments

China launches classified satellite

9:23 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to launch what it described as “a technology experiment satellite for satellite internet technologies”, the rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

No other information was released. While the satellite could be a test satellite for a constellation comparable to Starlink, the lack of information suggests otherwise.

No word also on whether the rocket’s first stage, using toxic hypergolic fuels, landed near habitable areas. The drop zone was over heavily populated areas in China.

Furthermore, China’s Kuaizhou-1 rocket had also been expected to launch today from Xichang in the wee hours of the morning, also carrying a classified payload. No word yet on whether that launch occurred, was scrubbed, or was simply the Long March 2D launch, the name of the rocket misunderstood prior to launch because of China’s secrecy.

Putting that unknown launch aside, here are the present leaders in the 2023 launch race:

86 SpaceX
53 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 98 to 53 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 98 to 83. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 86 to 83.

Leave a comment

November 22, 2023 Quick space links

3:22 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who with I wish everyone a great Thanksgiving tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

  • Blue Origin shows off the now welded first stage tanks of its New Glenn rocket

    • It is assumed these are for the first launch, whenever that might be. Since there are no workers on the factory floor, Jay speculates it was taken after hours. I wonder, since this lack of activity has been seen in every such picture of this rocket assembly operation. I really wonder how many people even work there.

 

  • Jeff Bezos sells off $240 million more Amazon shares

    • Though the reporters on the CNBC video at the link speculate this money is for Blue Origin, there is no evidence of this. In fact, recently Bezos has appeared to donate almost all his stock sale cash to leftist political charities, not Blue Origin.

5 comments

Martian ice sheets sublimating like peeling paint?

2:02 pm

Overview map

Martian ice sheets resembling paint peeling
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The features are described as “ribbed terrain” in the label. To my eye they more resemble flakes of peeling paint, most especially the mesas in the lower left. On the full image there are many more examples that resemble old paint peels, barely attached to the wall.

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, deep inside the 2,000-mile-long strip in the northern mid-latitudes I dub glacier country, because everything seems covered by glacial features. This location is at 42 degrees north latitude, where plenty of near-surface ice features are found on Mars.

At first glance it looks like the top “paint-peel” layers to the south have been slowly sublimating away, leaving behind the smooth plain to the north. The problem is that this smooth area in the full image actually appears to be a glacial ice sheet of its own, filling all the low areas between mesas.

In other words, we are probably looking at layers and layers of ice sheets, each created during a different Martian climate cycle, caused by the wide swings of the planet’s rotational tilt, or obliquity.

The location is within Arabia Terra, the largest transitional zone on Mars between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands. Thus it sits above the glaciers that fill the lower regions of chaos to the north. What we have here is terrain that will eventually become chaos terrain, as the narrow faults and cracks are slowly widened into canyons by the cycles of glacial activity.

Leave a comment

Real pushback: Soldiers punished by Biden for refusing jab now sue for billions

11:48 am

Fighting the left's playbook
Fighting the left’s playbook

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The many military soldiers punished by Biden for refusing the Covid jab have now filed a class action lawsuit for what they expect to be worth billions.

Former troops are suing the U.S. government for lost pay and benefits due to the Biden administration’s military vaccine mandate, one of the lawyers who successfully brought down the Anthrax vaccine told Breitbart News.

Attorney Dale Saran, a retired Marine, and fellow attorneys Andy Meyer and Brandon Johnson are representing the former troops in three separate lawsuits they plan to turn into a class action lawsuit on behalf of all service members who were either kicked out or illegally ordered to stop drilling, resulting in loss of pay or benefits. Saran said the amount is in the “billions.”

“It’s worth billions. That’s just flat-out. That’s what it is in backpay. It’s billions of dollars,” he said.

Though only about 8,000 active-duty troops were kicked out of the military due to the Biden jab mandate, the lawyers estimate another 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers are due compensation for lost benefits because they were made inactive or forbidden from participating in drill activities.

The lawsuit has been filed in U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a specialized court where illegal military discharges are heard. Lawyer Saran won a similar suit in that court over the military’s anthrax mandates back in the late nineties. The case now is likely stronger because, as he notes,

They were basically [without] the benefit of any due process. No boards were held. They didn’t hold any administrative separation boards; they didn’t hold any hearings. They didn’t do any federal recognition boards; none of the administrative or judicial procedures were used. They just flat-out did it.

This willful refusal to follow the law has been typical behavior by the left since the start of the Wuhan panic. The law no longer applies to them. They want to do something, they do it, even if it is illegal and hurts someone else. Shutter businesses illegally, silence opponents illegally, favor some races illegally, fire soldiers illegaly, mandate jabs and masks illegally, demand health records illegally: All okay because the good people are doing it! How dare you question their righteousness?

The worst aspect of these violations of law has been the meek willingness of everyone to go along with them. Most shameful.
» Read more

43 comments

Eutelsat-OneWeb gets license approval in India

9:21 am

Less than two weeks after SpaceX obtained regulatory approval to offer its Starlink system in India, Eutelsat-OneWeb (newly merged) has now gotten its own approval.

Eutelsat-OneWeb is half owned by an Indian investment firm, so it is no surprise it obtained this approval soon after SpaceX. The two companies will now be competing aggressively for business in this giant country, whose technological capabilities has been renewed in recent years by the abandonment of a socialist/communist government for a leadership focused on encouraging freedom, capitalism, and competition.

Leave a comment

NASA laser communication experiment succeeds in sending data from beyond Moon

9:12 am

A NASA laser communication experiment on the asteroid probe Psyche succeeded on November 14, 2023 in sending data to and from the spacecraft as it traveled away from Earth.

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment has beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data fromnearly 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) away – about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth – to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. This is the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications.

Riding aboard the recently launched Psyche spacecraft, DSOC is configured to send high-bandwidth test data to Earth during its two-year technology demonstration as Psyche travels to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages both DSOC and Psyche.

The experiment seeks to demonstrate the advantages of optical communications, which if successful could have data speeds ten to a hundred times faster than standard high band radio communications. While the technology has been demonstrated as far away as the Moon, this is the first successful test from deep space, a key advance that suggests the technology is becoming mature enough to use on planetary missions.

If so, it could largely replace or at least supplement the various radio-antenna networks on Earth, such as NASA’s Deep Space Network, with smaller and more efficient communication links.

10 comments

North Korea launches spy satellite

8:59 am

In its third attempt this year to launch a spy satellite, North Korea today succeeded at last, its new Chollima-1 rocket lifting off from Sohae spaceport on the country’s western coast and placing in orbit what is probably a relatively primitive spy satellite with a limited lifespan.

Though launched on the coast, the flight path crossed over North Korea, with drop zones for the rocket’s lower stages in the Yellow and East China seas. The previous two launch failures (in May and August) did the same, with South Korea salvaging stages and the satellite from the first failure. The data recovered suggested the spy satellite was of “no military utility” according to the South Korean military.

As usual, U.S. and South Korean officials condemned the launch, calling it a violation of UN sanctions. Note too that this was not North Korea’s first successful launch, having managed launches in 2012 and 2016 previously, with a different rocket.

Because this was North Korea’s first success in 2023, the leader broad in the 2023 launch race remains unchanged:

86 SpaceX
52 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

However, the launch was the 180th in 2023, setting a new global record for the launches in a single year, eclipsing the record set last year. Since Sputnik in 1957 the average number of successful launches globally was generally less than a hundred. This year it is very possible the world will double that average, almost entirely because of American private enterprise, which leads China 98 to 52 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 98 to 82. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 86 to 82.

2 comments

SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

12:56 am

SpaceX early last night continued its campaign to reach 100 launches in 2023, its Falcon 9 rocket launching for the third time in just over four days, lifting off from Cape Canaveral carrying 23 more Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage completed its fifteenth launch, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

86 SpaceX
52 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 98 to 52 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 98 to 81. SpaceX by itself is now leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 86 to 81.

With this launch, the number of successful orbital launches in 2023 now matches the record total of 179 set last year. With a little more than five weeks to go, expect that number to top 200 before the year is out, especially because China has historically tended to launch a lot of rockets in December.

3 comments

November 21, 2023 Quick space links

3:30 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

7 comments

Ancient volcanic vent on Mars

2:43 pm

Volcanic vent on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture label describes it as a “Low Shield Vent and Pit Northeast of Arsia Mons,” suggesting these depressions are volcanic in nature. We know the pit in the lower left is not an impact crater because it has no raised rim of ejecta. Instead, it looks like a collapsed sinkhole, formed when the ceiling above a void could no longer support its weight. Similar, the trench to the northeast is aligned with the downhill grade to the northeast, with its features suggesting a vent draining in that direction.

The ample dust inside the trench and pit suggest that it has been a very long time since this vent was active. Research suggests volcanic activity last occurred in this region from 10 to 300 million years ago, so that gives us a rough estimate of this vent’s age. Since then any dust that is blown into it will tend to become trapped there.
» Read more

Leave a comment
1 … 81 82 83 84 85 … 899