Category: Points of Information

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

Skylab astronaut Gerry Carr passes away at 88

9:22 am

R.I.P. Gerry Carr, the commander of the last and longest Skylab mission in the 1970s, has passed away at 88.

Carr’s first and only spaceflight was as the commander of Skylab 4 (also referred to as SL-4 or “Skylab 3” as appeared on the crew’s mission patch). The third of three crewed stays of increasing duration aboard the orbital workshop, Carr and his Skylab 4 crewmates, Ed Gibson and William “Bill” Pogue, set what was then a record spending 84 days in space.

“We proved, I think, just absolutely, positively that the human being can live in weightless environment for an extended period of time,” Carr said during a NASA oral history interview in October 2000. “But medically, we gathered the data that I think gave the Russians and other people the understanding and the courage to say, ‘Okay, we can stay up for longer periods of time.'”

The obituary at the link includes Carr’s lifelong effort to explain that the crew never “mutinied,” as the press has tried to say for decades. Instead, they spent days and repeated long communications with mission control trying to get it to understand that the crew was being overworked because NASA was micro-managing their workload from the ground. They finally made mission control recognize this, after a long public conversation. Sadly, NASA had to relearn this lesson again in the 1990s during its first long missions on the Russian Mir space station (See chapters 3 and 12 in Leaving Earth).

0 comments

UAE’S Hope Mars Orbiter images Mars

9:09 am

The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope Mars Orbiter has successfully imaged Mars for the first time using its star tracker camera, proving both that the spacecraft is on course and that its pointing capabilities are working as well .

“The Hope probe is officially 100 million km [60 million miles] into its journey to the Red Planet,” Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE, wrote on Twitter on Monday (Aug. 24). “Mars, as demonstrated in the image captured by the probe’s star tracker, is ahead of us, leaving Saturn and Jupiter behind. The Hope probe is expected to arrive to Mars in February 2021.”

The star tracker is designed to keep Hope on course, telling the spacecraft precisely where it is. In addition, the probe carries a more traditional camera for use once it arrives at Mars and begins its science work.

Arrival in Mars orbit will take place in February ’21.

0 comments

Astronomers discover three merging supermassive black holes

9:03 am

Using telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered three different galaxies that have pairs of supermassive black holes at their center, with all three likely to merge at some point in the future.

First the scientists used the Subaru Telescope to survey more than 34,000 known quasars, high energy supermassive black holes.

The team identified 421 promising cases. However, there was still the chance many of these were not bona-fide dual quasars but rather chance projections such as starlight from our own galaxy. Confirmation required detailed analysis of the light from the candidates to search for definitive signs of two distinct quasars.

Using Keck Observatory’s Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) and Gemini Observatory’s Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer, Silverman and his team identified three dual quasars, two of which were previously unknown. Each object in the pair showed the signature of gas moving at thousands of kilometers per second under the influence of a supermassive black hole.

From this survey work they now tentatively estimate that only 0.3% of all known quasars are likely made up of a binary, which in turn gives them a rough estimate of how often galaxies with such supermassive black holes collide and merge. This in turn helps them develop theories on galaxy formation.

1 comment

Delta 4 Heavy launch scrubbed

11:15 pm

Tonight’s launch of ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy was scrubbed due to a variety of technical problems. They have not set a new launch time, though they say they are aiming for the early morning hours of August 28.

This was to have been the first of four American launches in the next four days. The next, a Falcon 9 launch of an Argentinian radar Earth observation satellite, was scheduled for tomorrow, August 27th, at 7:19 pm (Eastern). No word on whether it is going forward as planned, though it might be since the ULA launch has shifted after it, to August 28th.

The third, by Rocket Lab, is presently scheduled also for August 28rd at 11:05 pm (Eastern), launching out of New Zealand.

The fourth, another SpaceX launch of more Starlink satellites, had been scheduled for 10:30 am (Eastern) on August 29th. Once again, this schedule could change due to tonight’s ULA scrub.

Stay tuned. I suspect all three companies are going to aggressively work to get all four launches off as fast as possible, even if not exactly as presently scheduled.

2 comments

What OSIRIS-REx will grab from the asteroid Bennu in October

6:16 pm

Closest view of Nightingale taken by OSIRIS-REx

On August 11th the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx did a sample grab-and-go rehearsal that put the spacecraft as close as 135 feet from the asteroid Bennu. During the rehearsal the spacecraft’s mapping camera (MapCam) snapped 22 images of the approach, showing the landing site, dubbed Nightingale, at the highest resolution yet.

From those images the science team created a movie. To the right is the closest image from that movie, lightened slightly and reduced to post here. It gives us the best view of the Nightingale landing site we will have prior to the October sample grab.

In essence, we are looking at the material that OSIRIS-REx will grab, though which particular rocks will be grabbed from this gravel pile are of course unknown. The spacecraft’s equipment is designed to capture pebbles smaller than 0.8 inches across. There are a good number of such rocks here, interspersed with a lot of larger rocks, including the several more than a foot across.

As I have noted previously, this landing site is about half the diameter of the landing sites the spacecraft was designed to touch down on. The rehearsal however gives us strong hope that OSIRIS-REx will be able to hit the bullseye. See this second movie, which shows the approach from two different cameras, with a wider context image provided to show how the spacecraft successfully hones in on its target.

1 comment

Five charts prove the continuing COVID-19 panic unwarranted

4:08 pm

Link here. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is doing better than almost every other country in the world, and the numbers also show that the epidemic is dying off.

On confirmed cases per million, the U.S. ranks 9th, but this is in part due to the extensive testing we’ve done. In fact, despite what Biden and Co. will have you believe, we are in the top of the pack when it comes to COVID-19 tests per capita. (Note that only four of the other 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations do better than the U.S. on tests per capita. Also, every country that does better than the U.S. has a significantly smaller population — some just tens of thousands. In fact, if you add up the populations of every country in the top 17, it equals a little more than half the U.S. population. )

When it comes to the case fatality rate – the share of confirmed cases who have died – there is no comparison. Not only does the U.S. outperform most countries – as well as the world overall – the case fatality rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining.

Finally, there’s the chart Democrats really don’t want you to see: The number of new COVID-19 cases peaked a month ago and has been trending downward ever since.

Make sure you take a look at where Sweden stands when compared to everyone else. For a country that imposed no odious lock downs, their numbers are quite good, and in fact beat nations like Italy and the United Kingdom, which imposed strict rules and house arrests.

25 comments

NASA/Boeing set summer ’21 for first manned Starliner mission

4:00 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA and Boeing have tentatively scheduled the launch of the first manned Starliner mission to ISS for the summer of 2021.

Boeing Co said on Tuesday it aims to redo its unmanned Starliner crew capsule flight test to the International Space Station (ISS) in December or January, depending on when it completes software and test hardware production development.

If the test mission is successful, Boeing and NASA will fly Starliner’s first crewed mission in summer 2021, with a post-certification mission roughly scheduled for the following winter, the company added.

Everything of course depends on the success of the unmanned demo flight. If the capsule has any further problems, as it did on its first unmanned demo flight, the manned flight will likely be delayed again.

15 comments

Wormlike glacier on Mars

9:30 am

Glacial flow in the mid-latitude southern cratered highlands
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows a very typical glacial-type feature found frequently in the mid-latitudes of Mars. Taken on May 23, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it is labeled a “Lobate Flow Feature within Channel in Nereidum Montes.” Nereidum Montes is a rough mountainous region along the northwestern margin of Argyre Basin, the second largest impact basin on Mars, after Hellas Basin.

Scientists using Europe’s Mars Express orbiter have already found a great deal of glacial evidence in these mountains. I have also posted images of other glacial features on the north edge of Argyre. This image just reinforces that data.

This particular glacier however resembles the kind of glaciers one sees on Earth more than most Martian glaciers. As it meanders down its valley, large cracks form near its edges as friction slows their passage and drags them apart. In fact, the glacier itself might have very well carved the canyon. According to Dan Berman, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, who had requested this image,

While I can’t say for sure, the canyon was likely formed by a glacier. Whether or not the ice that remains today is part of that glacier, or one that formed later, is impossible to say.

» Read more

3 comments

Virgin Galactic searching for profits outside of space tourism

7:52 am

Not a surprise: After almost two decades of development and no commercial suborbital tourism flights, the new management of Virgin Galactic (with Richard Branson having sold off his majority shares) is now searching for other ways to make money with its assets.

Among them, renting out the WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) launch support aircraft for government or private businesses to use for science, research, and national security applications. There’s just one problem: Legally it cannot do that.

Because WhiteKnightTwo is considered an experimental aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration using it in this manner would be a violation of 14 CFR 91.319(a)(2), which states that “no person may operate an aircraft that has an experimental certificate – (1) For other than the purpose for which the certificate was issued; or (2) Carrying persons or property for compensation or hire.” In a filing made Tuesday The Space Company and Virgin Galactic jointly petitioned for exemption from the regulations.

It appears the new management is recognizing that the suborbital tourism market is weak (with the coming of orbital tourism), and needs to shift gears, any way it can.

8 comments

The colors of Mars

1:07 pm

The different colors of Mars
Click for full image.

Actually today’s cool image tells us less about the real colors on Mars and much about the colors captured by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The photo on the right was taken on May 2, 2020, and shows a relatively featureless area to the east of 80-mile wide Byrd Crater in the high southern latitude of Mars.

The only major features seen on this photo are a series of rounded ridges that in the larger context map at the image site look almost like drainage hollows coming down from the crater’s rim about twenty miles away.

The colors, though exaggerated and not entirely as the eye would see them, still tell us something very real about the surface. As explained here [pdf]:

In spite of the variable level of color enhancement for the Extras products, we can make some generalizations to better understand what the stretched color images are showing. Dust (or indurated dust) is generally the reddest material present and looks reddish in the RGB color. … Coarser-grained materials (sand and rocks) are generally bluer … but also relatively dark, except where coated by dust. Frost and ice are also relatively blue, but bright, and often concentrated at the poles or on pole-facing slopes. Some bedrock is also relatively bright and blue, but not as much as frost or ice, and it has distinctive morphologies.

Thus, this photo is telling us that the lower areas are covered with dust (the red), while the rounded ridgelines are covered with coarser and bigger rocks. The brightest blue, which is facing towards the south pole, might also indicate frost or ice.
» Read more

1 comment

Report: Astronomy threatened by satellite constellations

11:31 am

A report issued today, resulting from a video conference of astronomers in July, has concluded that much of ground-based astronomy is threatened by the new large satellite constellations being launched by SpaceX, OneWeb, and others.

The astronomers’ report offers six solutions for solving the problem.

  • Launch fewer or no LEOsats. However impractical or unlikely, this is the only option identified that can achieve zero astronomical impact.
  • Deploy satellites at orbital altitudes no higher than ~600 km.
  • Darken satellites or use sunshades to shadow their reflective surfaces.
  • Control each satellite’s orientation in space to reflect less sunlight to Earth.
  • Minimize or eventually be able to eliminate the effect of satellite trails during the processing of astronomical images.
  • Make more accurate orbital information available for satellites so that observers can avoid pointing telescopes at them.

Notice what solution they don’t offer? Maybe astronomy should focus on building space-based telescopes, where the view would be clear, unimpeded by both the satellites and (much more importantly) the atmosphere.

In fact, the claim in the first solution above, that launching no satellites is “the only option identified that can achieve zero astronomical impact” is intellectually dishonest. All astronomers have to do is get their observatories into space, something that is very doable and affordable with today’s cheaper launch capabilities and technology. In space the impact of the satellites will once again be zero. And they will have the added benefit of getting outside the atmosphere, which by the way is actually a bigger limitation to observations than any satellite constellation.

It seems to me that this report was written by the faction of astronomers who make their living building big ground-based telescopes. Rather than think of solutions, they want to protect their turf by attacking the achievements of others.

28 comments

A nuclear battery that never needs charging?

10:14 am

A California company, NDB (which stands for nuclear diamond battery), is developing a nuclear battery using waste products from nuclear power plants that will never need charging and will be able to replace almost any ordinary battery, from those used in computers and smart phones to AA and AAA batteries.

The heart of each cell is a small piece of recycled nuclear waste. NDB uses graphite nuclear reactor parts that have absorbed radiation from nuclear fuel rods and have themselves become radioactive. Untreated, it’s high-grade nuclear waste: dangerous, difficult and expensive to store, with a very long half-life.

This graphite is rich in the carbon-14 radioisotope, which undergoes beta decay into nitrogen, releasing an anti-neutrino and a beta decay electron in the process. NDB takes this graphite, purifies it and uses it to create tiny carbon-14 diamonds. The diamond structure acts as a semiconductor and heat sink, collecting the charge and transporting it out. Completely encasing the radioactive carbon-14 diamond is a layer of cheap, non-radioactive, lab-created carbon-12 diamond, which contains the energetic particles, prevents radiation leaks and acts as a super-hard protective and tamper-proof layer.

To create a battery cell, several layers of this nano-diamond material are stacked up and stored with a tiny integrated circuit board and a small supercapacitor to collect, store and instantly distribute the charge. NDB says it’ll conform to any shape or standard, including AA, AAA, 18650, 2170 or all manner of custom sizes.

The company says it has already built a proof-of-concept, and will begin building commercial prototypes as soon as it can reopen (they were shuttered by the Wuhan flu panic).

More at the link. Also see the video below the fold. To say this technology would be game-changing is an understatement of epic proportions. At the same time, a lot of difficult work will be required to make it practical and affordable. Don’t expect this to be available in stores for at least a few years.
» Read more

27 comments
1 … 869 870 871 872 873 … 2,411