Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
The Japanese asteroid probe Hayabusa-2 has successfully completed the course corrections necessary prior to the release of its sample return capsule on December 5th, with the capsule landing in the Australian outback the next day.
To put it mildly, the scientific community is waiting eagerly to get their hands on the probe’s samples from the asteroid Ryugu.
Energia, the division in Roscosmos that manages the Russian manned program, including its share of ISS, has proposed that Russia build its own space station after 2025, and the reasons it gives strongly suggest they are worried about the condition of their 20-year-old and leaking Zvezda module.
The International Space Station’s systems are likely to keep breaking down after 2025, Energia company, which manages the Russian module, said and suggested building a national station instead. “Russia has commitments regarding the ISS through 2025. Several elements are already seriously damaged and about to stop functioning. Many of them are impossible to replace. After 2025, we expect many ISS elements to start breaking down en masse,” the deputy director-general of Energia, Vladimir Soloviev, said at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. [emphasis mine]
They don’t mention Zvezda by name, but the highlighted words point to it. Assuming the persistent leaks in the module are related to stress damage and age, this statement is recognizing publicly that replacing Zvezda is very difficult, or impossible, and that it is on the verge of complete failure.
Whether Russia has the money or resources to get another station built soon after 2025 is questionable, however. If they do decide to go it alone, I doubt they could launch a replacement before 2030, at the earliest, and likely much later than that.
If they do end the partnership with the U.S., it is unclear what happens to ISS. If the Russians choose to undock their portion of the station it will leave ISS somewhat crippled. It has been my impression that without all of the environmental systems in the Russian half, ISS cannot function. This might no longer be true, and will likely not be true with the planned arrival of Axiom’s private modules by the mid-20s. Timing however of all this remains critical.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was photographed by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on August 5, 2020. It shows a cluster of the crescent-shaped gullies, apparently carved from desert sand by the prevailing winds.
Those prevailing winds here are from the southwest to the northeast. As the wind blows the sand to the east, it hits a more solid object, such as a mountain buried in the sand, which forces the wind and the blown sand to go around, much as water passes a boulder in river rapids. That solid object also causes an eddy to form at its face, the wind forced downward and then around and up, carving out the gullies by lifting the sand at the base of that solid object. The result are these crescent gullies, dubbed blow-outs.
The overview map helps explain why there is so much sand here, enough apparently to bury whole mountains.
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Capitalism in space: Having completed all preliminary static fire tests, SpaceX has now set November 30th as the target date for 50,000 foot high hop for its eighth Starship prototype.
SpaceX is understood to be conducting a Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the test flight, with this final Static Fire test providing key data to the final go to proceed towards SN8’s big day.
Elon Musk has already calibrated public expectations on the expected outcome of SN8’s test, noting that “understanding exactly how the body flaps control pitch, yaw & roll during descent, such that the ship is positioned well to relight, flip & land, would be a big win.” As opposed to expecting SN8 to land feet first on the landing pad.
Musk’s point is important. The primary engineering goal for this first hop will be to find out whether they truly understand how to control and fly Starship. Their knowledge in this area is only computer based, and thus is very incomplete, and could very well be wrong, resulting in a failure that prevents a proper clean landing.
Such as failure however would actually be an engineering success, as it would give them the data needed to make later prototypes work. As for landing, they know how to do that already. Once they get the flying right, the landing should follow.
SpaceX has said it will live stream that hop. Should be a thrill to watch.
Embedded below the fold in two parts
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Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has announced that the company’s first effort to recover a 1st stage of its Electron rocket during a November 19th launch was a complete success.
On Rocket Lab’s latest launch Nov. 19, the rocket’s first stage made a controlled reentry after stage separation, then released a drogue and a main parachute before splashing down about 400 kilometers downrange from its New Zealand launch site, where it was recovered by a boat.
The recovery itself went as planned. “The test was a complete success,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in a call with reporters Nov. 23. “The stage splashed down completely intact. What it proved to us is that this is a feasible approach, and we’re really confident that we can make Electron a reusable launch vehicle from here.”
Eventually they plan to snatch the stage out of the air using a helicopter prior to hitting the water, but are presently focusing instead on developing the proper thermal protection and attitude control systems for the flight back to Earth. They are presently taking that first stage apart and analyzing what worked and didn’t work in protecting it during that flight.
According to Beck, they will do another splashdown recovery early in ’21 to refine things. They also hope to reuse some of the recovered components from both splashdown tests on later flights.
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers, using new data from the Gemini North ground-based telescope, have found that a star that brightened in 1670 and was labeled a nova is much farther away than previously thought, which means that 1670 eruption was far too powerful for a nova, but not powerful enough to make it a supernova.
By measuring both the speed of the nebula’s expansion and how much the outermost wisps had moved during the last ten years, and accounting for the tilt of the nebula on the night sky, which had been estimated earlier by others, the team determined that CK Vulpeculae lies approximately 10,000 light-years distant from the Sun — about five times as far away as previously thought. That implies that the 1670 explosion was far brighter, releasing roughly 25 times more energy than previously estimated [4]. This much larger estimate of the amount of energy released means that whatever event caused the sudden appearance of CK Vulpeculae in 1670 was far more violent than a simple nova.
“In terms of energy released, our finding places CK Vulpeculae roughly midway between a nova and a supernova,” commented Evans. “[T]he cause — or causes — of the outbursts of this intermediate class of objects remain unknown. I think we all know what CK Vulpeculae isn’t, but no one knows what it is.”
Recent research has also suggested that the cause of the eruption was not from the interaction of a binary system with one normal star and a white dwarf, as believed for decades, but possibly a binary system with a brown dwarf, or a red giant star, or two normal stars. All are remain possible, none however have been confirmed.
Capitalism in space? New FAA documents suggest that government regulators are not happy with the rapid and spectacular development by SpaceX of its Super Heavy/Starship rocket at Boca Chica, Texas, and are eager to impose restrictions and delays.
The issue revolves around revisions to SpaceX’s original FAA approval for its work at Boca Chica because the company has switched from flying Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to developing and flying Starship and Super Heavy. While the FAA has been cooperative in issuing the necessary revisions, other agencies have raised red flags.
But the most important document of the bunch is the written reevaluation signed by the FAA on May 22. The file spans 26 pages, was required for SpaceX to receive its suborbital launch license from the FAA on May 28, and incorporates concerns from state and federal environmental agencies.
In the reevaluation, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service took issue with several aspects of SpaceX’s plans and ongoing activities. Those criticisms targeted the “fluid nature” of the company’s construction projects, excessive road closures to Boca Chica Beach (which Brownsville locals prize), around-the-clock work that may affect nocturnal threatened or endangered species, prototype explosions, and sprawling wildfires the company has triggered.
The FAA responded to each concern in the document, ultimately determining “there are no significant environmental changes, and that all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met” with SpaceX’s suborbital test-flight plans.
However, SpaceX does not yet have the FAA’s go-ahead to launch any Starships to orbit from Boca Chica.
In its replies to concerns noted by other agencies — some of which call for a new EIS [environmental impact statement], which could take years to complete (an eternity in Musk time) — the agency repeatedly noted it is working with SpaceX to draft an “environmental review” of those plans.
Should Joe Biden and the power-hungry and controlling Democrats take control of the executive branch of the federal government, expect the FAA’s desire to help SpaceX to quickly end.
Due to the discovery of a faulty valve on a Soyuz rocket being prepared for launch in French Guiana, Roscosmos has delayed today’s Soyuz rocket launch from Plesetsk, Russia, until December 3rd to allow engineers to inspect similar valves on that rocket.
This quote from Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, from the first link, describing the problem, is somewhat amusing:
“The ‘faulty valve’ would be launched with the rocket, and it would return to Earth being just a heap of mishap metal, that would be the problem. There are always some flaws, but in our case, they cost too much. Happily, the low-quality detail was timely detected by the quality control system. However, in general, I do note a sharp decline in our suppliers’ responsibility and quality of their work,”
It appears the quality control problems with Russia’s aerospace industry are continuing. No one, including the Russians, should be surprised by this, as that industry has no competition to stimulate quality work and force bad companies out of business. Instead, everything is managed by Roscosmos from on top, with much of that management designed to eliminate competition entirely and protect the companies that presently exist..
Screen capture from launch live feed
The new colonial movement: China today successfully used its Long March 5 rocket to launch its Chang’e-5 on the first lunar sample return mission since the 1970s.
If all goes well, the return capsule will return to Earth with its sample on December 15th.
China provided a live stream, in English, which I have embedded below the fold.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
31 China
21 SpaceX
12 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 34 to 31 in the national rankings.
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Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 15, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a truly strange bunch of blocks beside a clean flow neatly organized in almost straight parallel lines.
What is going on? This location is at 38 degrees south latitude, a latitude where scientists have found a lot of features that resemble water ice glaciers, generally protected from sublimating away by a thin layer of dust and debris.
A first guess is that the smooth glacial flow at the lower right is disturbing the glacial material next to it, causing it to rip apart and break up. At the same time, the hollowed look of these glacial blocks suggests that the ice below that protective debris layer is also slowly sublimating away, causing the surface to sink.
The wider shot below helps confirm this impression.
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In a meeting that is essentially unprecedented, the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia met yesterday evening in Saudia Arabia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Saudi Arabia Sunday night to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The meeting is the first known encounter between senior officials from the enemy states. Yossi Cohen, Israel’s chief spy and head of the Mossad, also attended the meeting, as did U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Netanyahu reportedly kept his trip a secret from alternate Israeli Prime Minister Benny Gantz and foreign minister Gaby Ashkenazi.
Prior to the election, and at about the time that the UAE and Bahrain had signed peace accords with Israel, there were rumors that Saudi Arabia would follow suit, but only after the re-election of Trump. While the Arab country’s covert relations with Israel in recent years have been generally improving, such a public agreement would have signaled a major change, including a public admission that the Saudis were no longer tying their diplomatic relations to Palestinian demands.
I suspect the two leaders met to discuss whether that a public agreement now makes sense, given the strong possibility of an anti-Israeli and anti-Saudi American government under Joe Biden (who has already said he wishes to reinstate the Iran deal and reopen ties with that country).
In other words, as expected, a Joe Biden victory might very well cause the cancelling of this major peace deal. I hope not, but it would be understandable for Saudi Arabia, faced with an invigorated hostile Iran to the north, now getting aid from the U.S..
