Category: Points of Information

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

NASA considering commercial communications satellites for Mars

9:10 am

Capitalism in space: NASA officials have revealed that they are considering hiring commercial communications companies to build and launch a communications network of satellites to support its Mars science missions.

In recent presentations to advisory committees, NASA officials have discussed the possibility of working with industry to place several satellites into orbit around Mars that would serve as relays for other missions, notably the proposed Mars Ice Mapper. Such satellites, they said, could greatly increase the amount of data missions can return to Earth and end reliance on aging science missions that also serve as data relays.

One proposal presented at those meetings features three satellites in equatorial orbits at altitudes of 6,000 kilometers. The satellites would be equipped with radio links for communicating with other spacecraft in orbit and on the surface as well as to and from Earth. The satellites may also include laser intersatellite links to allow them to communicate with each other.

Based on the number of missions ongoing and planned for Mars, the agency has recognized it needs to establish a dedicated system for communicating with those missions, rather than depending on the science orbiters they have in orbit. That they are looking to commercial companies to build this for them, with NASA acting merely as a customer, as an excellent sign that the agency has now completely accept this approach, as I recommended in Capitalism in Space, rather than acting as the big boss that controls everything.

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China launches military surveillance satellite

8:55 am

China yesterday launched a military surveillance satellite using its Long March 3B rocket.

No word on whether the first stage or its strap-on boosters landed on any homes, or whether they had grid fins for better controlling their descent, as China has tested previously.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

32 China
22 SpaceX
13 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. still leads China in the national rankings, 35 to 32. That lead will hopefully widen in less than an hour with the first SpaceX launch of its second generation Dragon cargo freighter to ISS.

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Chang’e-5 sample capsule docks with return vehicle in lunar orbit

8:37 pm

According to the official Chinese state-run press Chang’e-5’s capsule containing samples from the Moon has successfully rendezvoused and docked with its return vehicle in lunar orbit, the first time an unmanned craft has done such a thing autonomously.

The news report at this point provides no other details, other than to state that the return capsule and orbiter will next separate from the ascent capsule and “wait for the right time to return to Earth.” Earlier reports had suggested an arrival on Earth around December 16, which would suggest an exit from lunar orbit in about a week.

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Arizona House Speaker refuses to recall legislature to choose electors

4:03 pm

The election has been stolen: Rusty Bowers, Arizona Republican House Speaker, has now categorically declared that he “cannot and will not” recall the legislature to review the election results and choose electors based on that, despite the Constitution’s clear language that gives the state legislature that full power.

He noted that such an action would violate the oath lawmakers took to uphold the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions, along with, “the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud. Under the laws that we wrote and voted upon, Arizona voters choose who wins, and our system requires that their choice be respected.”

Bowers did, however, support an audit of the voting machines in Maricopa County to assuage concerns of tampering, but that call wasn’t taken up by Republican county officials who run elections.

So what will Bowers do if that audit discovers enough vote tampering and cheating to make the entire election suspect and unreliable? Will he, as so many Republican leaders do over and over, shake his head, whine how terrible it is, but he can do nothing? That’s what Republican leaders have been doing for decades, which of course now brings us to this moment.

Note too that Bowers is entirely wrong. Though it is traditional to let the voters decide, the actual words of the Constitution puts the decision with the state legislature. Period. It is Bowers’ responsibility by law to act.

If he does not use his power, as outlined in the Constitution (which by the way is the supreme law of the land), do not expect many Republicans to be elected in future years. First, Democrats are basically being told they have carte blanche to cheat, and cheat they will. It is also clear that the Republican leadership in the state house seems totally sanguine about the way the vote was run, and will likely do nothing to fix it come the next legislature. It took enormous pressure to get Bowers to even request this one audit of Maricopa County. He really does not appear very interested in identifying the problems and fixing them.

Second, why should anyone vote for any Republican, when it is clear they will not do anything?

With the last bit of optimism I have left, below are the phone numbers for the Republican leadership in the Arizona state legislature. If you live in Arizona, call them and tell them they are abdicating their responsibility as lawmakers. More importantly, tell them they are contributing to the fall of the American democracy by their inaction.

  • Senate President: Karen Fann, 602-926-5874
  • Senate Majority leader: Rick Gray, 602-926-5413
  • Speaker of the House: Russell Bowers, 602-926-3128
  • House Majority leader: Warren Petersen, 602-926-4136
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Hayabusa-2’s samples from Ryugu land in Australia

2:07 pm

The return capsule carrying the asteroid samples grabbed by Hayabusa-2 from Ryugu successfully parachuted down in the outback of Australia today.

Officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, confirmed shortly after 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) that the Hayabusa 2’s nearly 16-inch (40-centimeter) sample carrier landed in Australia. Touchdown likely occurred several minutes earlier.

Recovery teams dispatched via helicopter began hunting for the 35-pound (16-kilogram) capsule using estimates of its landing site derived from a radio beacon signal. Mission managers expected it could take several hours to find the capsule and recover it. The landing occurred before dawn in Australia.

Since the article above was posted the capsule was located, and it was found much quicker than first expected.

This was the second sample return mission by the Japanese. The first, Hayabusa-1, successfully returned its capsule in 2010, but because of many technical problems during the mission it only brought back a few microscopic samples. In fact, the technical problems were so bad it was really a miracle the capsule came back at all.

Hayabusa-2 however has been a complete success, showing that they learned from the first mission and applied those lessons to the second.

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LRO snaps picture of Chang’e-5 on Moon

8:52 am

Chang'e-5 on the Moon, taken by LRO
Click for full image.

The science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) late yesterday released an image taken of Chang’e-5 on the surface of the Moon. The image to the right, reduced to post here, is that photo.

China’s Chang’e 5 sample return spacecraft made a safe touchdown on the lunar surface at 10:11 EST (15:11 UTC) 01 December 2020. LRO passed over the site the following day and acquired an off-nadir (13° slew) image showing the lander centered within a triangle of craters.

The LROC team computed the coordinates of the lander to be 43.0576° N, 308.0839°E, –2570 m elevation, with an estimated accuracy of plus-or-minus 20 meters.

If all goes well, the return capsule, which lifted off from the Moon yesterday, will dock with the return vehicle in orbiter later today.

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Astra sets December 7th for next test launch of its orbital rocket

3:44 pm

Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company Astra is now targeting December 7th for its second of three test launches in its program to develop an orbital commercial rocket.

Astra plans to launch its two-stage, 38-foot-tall (12 meters) Rocket 3.2 from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island between Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, representatives of the California startup announced last month. The window on each day runs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST (1900 to 2200 GMT; 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time in Alaska).

The orbital attempt will be the second for Astra, which aims to claim a sizable chunk of the small-satellite launch market with its line of flexible, cost-effective rockets. The first test flight, in September of this year, ended with a bang about 30 seconds after liftoff. Astra’s Rocket 3.1 experienced an apparent guidance issue, prompting controllers to terminate the flight for safety reasons.

They determined the failure was a software issue that they appear to have now fixed.

The company has made it clear that has always expected that it will take three launches to reach orbit, so a failure on this launch would not surprise them. They do seem very confident however that they will succeed this time.

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Arizona legislative Republican leaders call for election audit of Maricopa County

3:17 pm

The Republican leaders of the Arizona state senate and house today called for an audit of the Maricopa County Dominion software and equipment used during election day.

This is a major change of position, as these leaders have until now resisted such action. Maybe their change of heart is because of the evidence revealed at an improvised hearing earlier this week, as well as the problems found with a random selection of only 100 ballots. Or maybe it was this:

Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem on Friday called on his fellow lawmakers to come together and recall Arizona’s certification.

Finchem said county clerks are now coming forward and admitting something is off with the canvassing and the numbers are just not adding up. “We got people coming out of the woodwork,” Finchem said adding that the legislature will just go around Governor Ducey.

“We only need to have 31 members of the House and 16 members of the Senate pass a resolution recalling our electors. It’s that simple,” he said. “Our constituents are blowing up over this.” [emphasis mine]

The Constitution in the matter of choosing the President is very clear: It is the job of the state legislatures, not the voters, not the governors, not the courts, and most especially not unelected officials in election boards. For decades these state legislatures have allowed the popular vote determine the choice, because everyone trusted the counting process. It appears no one does anymore, and when that happens, the state legislatures need to do their job.

The goal should be to determine if the vote is valid, or not. If valid, than Joe Biden won. Period. Congratulations to the Democrats, though I doubt anyone will end up celebrating their rule in the end. Their policy choices and their eager willingness to blackball and persecute their opposition will not bode well for the future.

If not valid, however, the legislature has several choices. They can call for a revote. They can choose the president themselves, picking electors that will reflect that choice. Or they can refuse to certify at all, sending the decision to the federal House of Representatives.

The state legislature has an additional responsibility, irrelevant of the presidential election. They must institute major changes that will prevent such problems ever again.

Finally, kudos must go to my own representative, Mark Finchem, for pushing this hard, and finally getting some results. The battle is not won, but at least the enemy is finally retreating slightly.

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Ice-filled crater on Mars?

12:13 pm

Crater in southern mid-latitudes
Click for full image.

Time for another of the many cool images from Mars that suggest the presence of buried glacial ice. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows an unnamed crater in the cratered southern highlands of Mars at about 44 degrees south latitude. Taken on October 2, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the crater sits at the very southernmost point of the Tharsis Bulge where the Red Planet’s four more distinctive giant volcanoes are located.

The crater is also in the middle of the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where scientists have detected many features that suggest glaciers, including a large number of craters that appear to have ice filling their interior.

Does the material in this crater’s floor suggest eroding and sublimating ice to you? It does to me. The second image below zooms in at full resolution at the north-south trench and the strange patterned terrain to its east.
» Read more

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India’s space agency signs deal with private Indian smallsat company

9:28 am

The new commercial division of India’s space agency ISRO, dubbed the Department of Space (DoS), has signed a development deal with a new private Indian smallsat startup, Agnikul Cosmos, that has plans to build a rocket that will launch from Kodiak, Alaska in ’22.

More information here.

The agreement is designed to provide technical support to the company. Initially the company had only planned to launch from an ISRO launch facility in India. It now appears they are widening their goals to include an U.S. site as well, probably to encourage sales to American satellite companies.

Their rocket, 3D printed, also appears very small, and targets the smallest size smallsat market.

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Hubble captures 20-year fading of planetary nebula

9:10 am

The fading of the Stingray Nebula
Click for full image.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have now tracked the spectacular fading of the Stingray Nebula, which when it was discovered in the mid-1990s was labeled the youngest such object ever found.

Astronomers have caught a rare look at a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades. Witnessing such a swift rate of change in a planetary nebula is exceeding rare, say researchers.

Images captured by Hubble in 2016, when compared to Hubble images taken in 1996, show a nebula that has drastically dimmed in brightness and changed shape. Bright blue fluorescent tendrils and filaments of gas toward the center of the nebula have all but disappeared, and the wavy edges that earned this nebula its aquatic-themed name are virtually gone. The young nebula no longer pops against the black velvet background of the vast universe.

Astronomers have found that the central star had been heating precipitiously in the late 20th century, from 40K to 108K degrees Fahrenheit. Since then it has begun to cool. They think that flash of heat, caused by what they think was short period of helium fusion, caused the planetary nebula to brighten, and now fade.

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