Category: Points of Information

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

Company defends its satellite constellation from NASA criticism

9:21 am

The founder of AST & Science, the company that wishes to launch a constellation of 243 communications satellites, has defended its effort from criticisms expressed by NASA in a comment to the FCC.

“We’re not a bunch of cowboys launching satellites,” said Abel Avellan, founder of AST & Science, in an interview. “This is a serious, well-funded project.” … Avellan said the “SpaceMobile” satellites do indeed have a very large cross-sectional area perpendicular to the ground, as this is the only way to deliver direct satellite-to-broadband signals. “There is no magic,” he said. “If you want something to connect directly to a handset, it’s not going to be a CubeSat.”

Each of the satellites will include a large antenna, comprising an area as large as 900 meters squared. However, Avellan said the satellites will fly edge-on, “like a frisbee, but without the spinning.” He said the satellites’ cross-section along the direction of motion is only about 3 meters squared. The company has calculated that the probability of a collision occurring at random—assuming no avoidance maneuver—to be only about 1-in-5,000 over its lifetime, or 1-in-20 across the entire constellation.

It appears that neither the company nor NASA has as yet begun direct discussions about these issues. NASA’s concerns however could seriously hamper the company’s future.

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United Arab Emirates announce plans for lunar rover mission

7:59 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced plans to launch its first unmanned probe to the Moon, a small rover dubbed Rashid with a target launch date in 2024.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai says its in-house teams will develop, build and operate the 10-kilogram rover, which is named after the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, who ruled Dubai at the UAE’s creation in 1971.

The team will hire an as-yet unannounced space agency or commercial partner to carry out the launch and landing, the riskiest part of the mission. If successful Rashid would be one of several rovers made by private firms and space agencies that are set to populate the Moon by 2024.

This project is a great opportunity for the various new private aerospace companies in the U.S. developing interplanetary capabilities for sale to others.

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China launches ten satellites for Argentinian company

7:52 am

China today used its Long March 6 rocket to successfully launch ten satellites for the Argentinian company Satellogic S.A.

The satellites form the beginning of a 25-satellite constellation designed to do Earth resource observations. The Chinese rocket in turn is designed to capture the emerging smallsat market.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

28 China
19 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. remains ahead of China 30 to 28 in the national rankings.

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SpaceX launches Space Force GPS satellite

4:37 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched the GPS satellite that on a previous launch had experienced a launch abort at T-2.

This was a completely new Falcon 9 rocket, with two of its original engines replaced after the company had traced the issue that caused the launch abort. The first stage successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, and will fly again on the next GPS launch by SpaceX for the Space Force.

The satellite has been deployed successfully, completing the launch.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

27 China
19 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 30 to 27 in the national rankings.

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Rocket Lab will try to recover 1st stage on next launch

3:04 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced today that it will attempt to recover the 1st stage of its Electron rocket on its next launch, using parachutes to slow its descent into the ocean and then fishing from the sea.

On its next mission set for liftoff later this month, Rocket Lab will try to recover the first stage of its Electron small satellite launcher after parachuting into the Pacific Ocean downrange from the company’s privately-run spaceport in New Zealand, officials announced Thursday.

The attempt to retrieve the Electron rocket’s first stage moves Rocket Lab closer to eventually capturing falling boosters in mid-air with a helicopter, then reusing the hardware. The reuse initiative is aimed at increasing Rocket Lab’s flight rate, and could result in cost savings, according to Peter Beck, the company’s founder and CEO.

The flight is presently scheduled for November 15 from New Zealand. It appears the goal with this recovery is not to reuse the 1st stage, but to recover it so they can determine how it fared during re-entry. For re-use they will capture the first stage using a helicopter, before splashdown and is exposed to saltwater.

When they attempt the helicopter capture on an actual launch remains unclear.

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Terraced mesa inside Martian depression

1:14 pm

Terraced mesa inside depression
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 1, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a very puzzling terraced mesa inside an enclosed depression or sinkhole (the western half of which can be seen in the full image).

What caused that mesa? A first scan of the image and the data suggests we are looking at sinkage related to the melting of an underground ice table. The latitude here is 34 degrees south, just far enough away from the equator for glacial activity to be possible. Moreover, the small circular depression in the upper right of the image strongly suggests an impact crater into slushy material. The implication is that this depression is the result of the melting or sublimation of underground ice, leaving behind a mesa that is made of solider stuff.

Another possibility is that the terraced mesa is actually the remains of glacial material. In the full image features inside other nearby depressions are terraced also, but are also much more reminiscent of glacial features found in many craters in the mid-latitudes. The depression is also close to the headwaters of Reull Valles, a meandering canyon where many images have shown glacial features (see for example here, here, and here).

These features however could also have nothing to do with water ice.
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Starship hop tentatively set for Nov 9-11

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Based on SpaceX’s road closure requests, it now appears that the 50,000 foot hop by the eighth Starship prototype will occur sometime between November 9th and November 11th.

This schedule remains very uncertain, as the company needs to do other tests before the hop. Depending on when these tests happen and what they learn after each, the overall schedule might change.

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Bezos sells another $3 billion of Amazon shares

8:54 am

Jeff Bezos continues to accelerate his sale of his Amazon stock, selling another $3 billion this week.

In August, Bezos offloaded more than $3.1 billion of Amazon shares, after selling more than $4.1 billion worth of shares in February. The sales this week bring his total cash out in 2020 to more than $10.2 billion so far, which is a notable jump from 2019, when Bezos sold $2.8 billion worth of shares.

While Bezos had originally said these sales were for financing his space company, Blue Origin, it now appears that the bulk of this new money is aimed at funding environmental political organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund.

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Overview of China’s lunar sample return mission

8:29 am

Chang'e-5 landing site on Moon

Link here. The Chinese mission, the first to bring back lunar samples since the 1970s, is now set for launch on November 24, 2020.

Chang’e-5 includes a lander, ascender, orbiter and returner. After the spacecraft enters the Moon’s orbit, the lander-and-ascender pair will split off and descend close to Mons Rümker, a 1,300-metre-high volcanic complex in the northern region of Oceanus Procellarum — the vast, dark lava plains visible from Earth. Once the craft has touched down, it will drill up to 2 metres into the ground and extend a robotic arm to scoop up about 2 kilograms of surface material. The material will be stored in the ascender for lift-off.

The descent and ascent will take place over one lunar day, which is equivalent to around 14 Earth days, to avoid the extreme overnight temperatures that could damage electronics, says Clive Neal, a geoscientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

…Once the ascender is back in lunar orbit, the samples will be transferred to the returner. This in-flight rendezvous will be complex and “a good rehearsal for future human exploration”, says James Carpenter, a research coordinator for human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. China plans to send people to the Moon from around 2030.

The Chang’e-5 spacecraft will then journey back to Earth, with the lander parachuting toward Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia, northern China, probably sometime in early December.

The location, as shown in the image above, is in the northern mid-latitudes of the Moon’s nearside, and is a place where some relatively recent volcanic activity might have occurred, though still in the far past.

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Why Martian mountains are different than on Earth

3:08 pm

A mountain peak on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 12, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what to any Earthling’s eye appears to be a somewhat ordinary flat-topped mountain peak with two major flanking ridgelines descending downward to the north and the south, and two minor ridgelines descending to the northwest and southwest.

This peak and its landscape would surely be quite a spectacularly place to visit, should humans ever settle Mars and begin doing sightseeing hikes across its more interesting terrain. I can definitely imagine hiking trails coming up the two minor ridges, with a crest trail traversing the main north-south ridge across the peak.

This is not however a mountain on Earth. It is on Mars, which makes its formation and evolution over time fundamentally different than anything we find on Earth, despite its familiar look.

First, what formed it? Unlike most of Earth’s major mountain chains, the mountains of Mars were not formed by the collision of tectonic plates, squeezing the crust upward. Mars does not have plate tectonics. Most of its mountains formed either from the rise of volcanoes at single hot spots, or from the wearing away of the surrounding terrain to leave behind a peak or mesa.
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