Category: Points of Information

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

Webb detects high altitude jet stream above Jupiter’s equatorial band

9:40 am

Jupiter's newly discovered jet stream
Click for original false-color infrared image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope’s infrared capability, scientists have now detected a high altitude jet stream that flows above the equatorial band of Jupiter at speeds estimated to 320 miles per hour.

The false-color infrared image to the right shows evidence of this jetstream in three places by the brightest features seen there. From the caption:

In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Auroras, appearing in red in this image, extend to higher altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of the planet. By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. In Webb’s images of Jupiter from July 2022, researchers recently discovered a narrow jet stream traveling 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) sitting over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks.

These features sit about 25 miles higher than the planet’s previously detected cloudtops.

This discovery only proves what has always been evident, that Jupiter’s atmosphere is very complex with many features earlier optical observations could not see. It also only gives us a hint of that complexity. It will take numerous Jupiter orbiters observing in all wavebands, not just Webb in the infrared millions of miles away, to begin to untangle that complexity. And that untangling will take decades as well, since global weather unfolds over time. You can’t understand it simply by one snapshot. You have to watch the changes from season to season and from year to year. As Jupiter’s year is 12 Earth-years long, this research will take many lifetimes.

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Blocked by its own American government, Varda now looks to Australia

9:18 am

Because the U.S. military as well as the FAA refused to issue Varda a license to land its recoverable capsule from orbit — carrying actual HIV pharmaceuticals that can only be manufactured in space — the company is now negotiating with a private range in Australia for landing rights.

The agreement between Varda and Southern Launch, a company based in Adelaide, Australia, would allow Varda’s second mission, scheduled to launch in mid-2024, to reenter and land at the remote Koonibba Test Range. “We plan, with the Koonibba Test Range, to conduct a reentry operation as soon as our second orbital mission, which the launch and reentry would be in mid-2024,” [Delian Asparouhov, the company’s chairman, president, and co-founder,] told Ars.[emphasis mine]

In other words, Varda’s first launched capsule, in space now but unable to land, has become a total loss, simply because the U.S. government blocked its return. The HIV drugs it produced while in orbit will never become available for sale. Nor will Varda be able to use it to demonstrate the returnable capability of its orbiting capsule.

Such a loss could easily destroy a startup like Varda, which is certainly not yet in the black as it develops its technology.

What is most disgusting about this blocking is that at the same time the military and the FAA refused Varda permission to land, those agencies had no problem letting NASA drop its OSIRIS-REx sample capsule in the same landing range in Utah.

Right now our federal government has become the enemy of the American people, doing whatever it can to stymie them, whether by intention or by incompetence.

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Russia announces revised schedule for its lunar unmanned projects

9:04 am

NPO Lavochkin, the Roscosmos division that builds Russia’s lunar landers, has now announced a revised schedule for all of that country’s proposed lunar unmanned projects, following the failure of its Luna-25 lander in August.

The program calls for at least six missions, including orbiters, landers, and a rover, launching from 2027 through the 2030s. However, this quote from the article is the reality:

As often before, the latest strategy relied on the development time frames that had never been demonstrated by NPO Lavochkin in comparable projects in the past three decades.

What is worse is the 100% failure record of Lavochkin’s planetary probes once launched. It takes forever to build anything, and then what it builds and launches doesn’t work.

Not that this absimal record will cost Lavochkin anything. The Russian government and the bureaucracy that controls it does not allow any competition. Instead, like prohibition-era mobsters, divisions like Lavochkin carve up territories that they control, and allow no one else in. For example, Lavochkin owns planetary research while Energia, another division in Roscosmos, controls manned space flight as well as its launch industry. No one else is allowed it enter these markets, which means Lavochkin can fail repeatedly for the next century and nothing will change.

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Japan awards Ispace $80 million to develop larger lunar lander

8:49 am

The Japanese government, not its space agency JAXA, today announced it has awarded the commercial company Ispace an $80 million grant to develop a larger lunar lander, following its failed attempt earlier this year to land its first Hakuto-R1 lander on the Moon.

Japan will provide a subsidy of up to 12 billion yen ($80 million) to moon exploration startup ispace (9348.T) as part of a grant programme for innovative ventures, industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said on Friday.

The new lander is targeting a 2027 launch, and according to the company’s own statement [pdf] will replace the Hakuto-R lander being used on its first two lunar missions, as well as the Apex lander the American division of Ispace is now building for NASA. It also appears that the contract is fixed price, and will only be paid out when the company achieves actual milestones of development.

In other words, the Japanese government is doing what NASA is now doing, moving away from a government model, where its space agency JAXA builds and controls everything, to a capitalism model, where it buys what it needs from the private sector. That JAXA did not issue this award demonstrates this transition, in that until now all such space contracts were through that agency solely.

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October 19, 2023 Quick space links

2:31 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • Suborbital Dutch rocket to be launched in 2024 from German ocean platform

    • The link is in German, requiring a translation tool. From Jay a translation of the lede: “In April 2024, a rocket from the Dutch company T-Minus will be launched for the first time as part of a demonstration mission from a mobile launch platform of the “German-Offshore Spaceport Alliance” (GOSA) in the North Sea.”

 

  • Europe posts revised Ariane-6 test schedule

    • The schedule as now planned:
    October: Combined test, launch rehearsal with ignition of the main stage, Kourou, French Guiana
    November: Combined test, long-duration firing of the main stage with Vulcain 2.1 engine, Kourou, French Guiana
    December: Upper stage firing test, Lampoldshausen, Germany
    They then hope to be ready for a 2024 launch.

 

 

 

 

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Posting shall be light today…

12:09 pm

Because of a scheduled surgery in the family early this morning, I am wiped out. All is well with everyone, but I had too little sleep last night, leaving me with little energy to think today.

I might post if I get the hankering, but I doubt I’ll have the mental capacity to write any essays.

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At Senate hearings numerous launch companies complain of regulatory bottleneck

8:18 am

At a hearing in the Senate yesterday officials from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic all expressed strong concerns about how the regulatory bottleneck at the FAA is damaging the entire launch business.

Gerstenmaier emphasized that the FAA’s commercial space office “needs at least twice the resources that they have today” for licensing rocket launches. While he acknowledged the FAA is “critical to enabling safe space transportation,” Gerstenmaier added that the industry is “at a breaking point.”

“The FAA has neither the resources nor the flexibility to implement its regulatory obligations,” Gerstenmaier said.

…The other four panelists’ testimonies largely echoed SpaceX’s viewpoint on the need to bolster the FAA’s ranks and speed up the process of approving rocket launches. Phil Joyce, Blue Origin senior vice president of New Shepard, said the FAA “is struggling to keep pace” with the industry “and needs more funding to deal with the increase in launches.”

Likewise, industry expert Caryn Schenewerk, a former leader at SpaceX and Relativity Space, said that the FAA’s recent changes have yet to “streamline licensing reviews” and instead have “proven more cumbersome and costly.”

Wayne Monteith — a retired Air Force brigadier general who also led the FAA’s space office — said that Congress should consider consolidating space regulations. “I believe a more efficient one stop shop approach to authorizing and licensing space activities is necessary,” Monteith said.

As always, the focus is on giving the government agency “more resources”. No one ever suggests that maybe its inability to meet the demand is because of mission creep, in which the government continually grabs more regulatory power than it is supposed to have, which then requires it to have additional resources, which then allows it to grab even more power, which then requires more resources, and on and on the merry-go-round goes.

To really solve this problem we need to trim the regulatory framework. The FAA’s responsibilities must be cut, not enhanced. It must be told it “will issue” launch licenses, rather than take the position it “might issue” them. It also must be told to cut back on the checklists it is demanding from companies. All that should concern it is scheduling and arranging air traffic and the launch range to prevent conflicts. Beyond that any regulation is simply overreach, and is something that was never under its control in the past.

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SpaceX to push for more than 140 launches in 2024

8:04 am

At a Senate hearing yesterday, a SpaceX official revealed the company is aiming to achieve 144 launches in 2024, an almost 50% increase from the record-setting pace it is maintaining this year.

“This year, we’re going to attempt to fly 100 flights,” Bill Gerstenmaier, the vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said on Wednesday (Oct. 18) during a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Space and Science. “As we look to next year, we want to increase that flight rate to about 12 flights per month, or 144 flights,” he added during the hearing.

Getting to 12 launches per month will be a challenge, but not an unreasonable one. So far this year the company has routinely launched more than six times per month, but it has been pushing that rate since the summer, with it many times trying to do launches almost daily for a stretch. Often its biggest problem isn’t the company or rocket, but the weather and scheduling at Cape Canaveral, as there are others that wish to launch there.

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Erosion revealing ridges on Mars?

12:16 pm

Erosion revealing lava dikes 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 June 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team calls the features here “narrow ridges”, but what makes these criss-crossing ridges interesting is their location within the picture.

They appear only inside the hollows and depressions, as if erosion had stripped out a top layer of softer material to reveal these ridges, made of a harder material. The almost random but straight orientations of the ridges also suggest they formed along faults or cracks, which also suggests we are seeing dikes where lava was pushed up from below.

Whether the eroded softer material is lava or volcanic ash is unclear, though it certainly resembles the ash layers seen in the giant Medusa Fossae Formation ash field on the opposite side of Mars.

As always, a wider look helps clarify things.
» Read more

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Israel negotiating with SpaceX to use Starlink

10:23 am

Israel is now in negotiations with SpaceX to get use of its Starlink constellation for communications, especially in the region around Gaza where the present conflict is ongoing.

Starlink currently isn’t available in Israel, so this would be the first time the service is introduced in any capacity. As it seeks to bolster its own communications during wartime, it is also looking into halting cell and internet communications in Gaza, that same official said.

“The activity of coordinating the Israeli company Starlink is taking place, enabling the operation of communication terminals by the company SpaceX, which will allow a wide broadband internet connection in Israel,” Israel Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi said on X. “Additionally, under the guidance of the minister, the ministry promotes the purchase of these satellite devices for the benefit of regional councils and community leaders in conflict zone settlements.”

By having Starlink available, Israel could use it as it shut down the cell and internet capabilities being used by Hamas.

Whether a deal will be made remains unclear, as Musk has shown ambivalence about Starlink’s contribution in the Ukraine war.

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Location of mud volcanoes in Martian chaos terrain suggest past existence of mud lake

10:18 am

Mud volcanoes in the inland sea

Scientists mapping the location of mud volcanoes in chaos terrain in the dry equatorial regions of Mars have found numerous mud volcanoes, adding weight to the theory that an intermittent shallow lake once existed there.

The inset on the overview map to the right indicates the location of those mud volcanoes (of two types) in white and orange dots. What is significant is that none of the volcanoes are found on the mesas within this chaos terrain, only in the low flats below. From the caption:

Both feature types result from sedimentary volcanism – instead of magma upwells and eruptions, wet sediments, and salts reach and breach the surface, forming mounds and flows. Interestingly, these mounds only occur over the chaotic terrain floor materials and not on the mesas (red-shaded areas) they embay. This suggests a material composition link rather than a genesis by regional extensional forces generated by magmatic rises.

The blue areas are where this same science team think an intermittent inland sea once existed. This new data reinforces that hypothesis.

Features that look like mud volcanoes are common in the icy northern lowland plains. Finding them in the dry equatorial regions strengthens the theory that water was once common there. For this reason the scientists are proposing a mission to this location, especially because the possibility of water might increase the chances of discovering past life.

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Review of orbital images confirms source of largest Mars quake was not an impact

9:35 am

Location of May quake
The white patches mark the locations on Mars of the largest quakes
detected by InSight. The green dotted patch marks this particular 4.7 quake.

Scientists reviewing images from several different orbiters have confirmed that the source of the largest Mars quake detected by InSight, 4.7 magnitude, was not caused by a meteorite impact and thus proves that movement in the interior of Mars is still occurring.

The quake, which had a magnitude of 4.7 and caused vibrations to reverberate through the planet for at least six hours, was recorded by NASA’s InSight lander on Wednesday 4 May 2022. Because its seismic signal was similar to previous quakes known to be caused by meteoroid impacts, the team believed that this event (dubbed ‘S1222a’) might have been caused by an impact as well, and launched an international search for a fresh crater.

…During its time on Mars, InSight (which was co-designed by the University of Oxford) recorded at least 8 marsquake events caused by meteoroid impacts. The largest two of these formed craters around 150m in diameter. If the S1222a event was formed by an impact, the crater would be expected to be at least 300m in diameter. Each group examined data from their satellites orbiting Mars to look for a new crater, or any other tell-tale signature of an impact (e.g. a dust cloud appearing in the hours after the quake).

After several months of searching, the team announced today that no fresh crater was found.

You can read their paper here. To do the survey, the team used data from the American orbiters Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and also enlisted help from scientists controlling the data from Europe’s Mars Express, China’s Tianwen-1, India’s Mangalyaan, and the United Arab Emirates’ Al-Mal.

The results suggest the quake occurred at “a dip-slip fault in the mid-crust, consistent with an origin between 18 and 28 km depth,” as stated in the conclusion of their paper. More analysis is necessary, but this result proves that the Martian interior still active enough to produce relatively large quakes..

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Russian geosynchronous spy satellite making close-up inspections of other commercial satellites

9:13 am

A second Russian “inspector” spy satellite in geosynchronous orbit is being directed to move relatively close to other commercial satellites, close enough to obtain high resolution images.

According to data gathered by California startup Slingshot Aerospace, the satellite known as Luch-5X or Olymp-K-2 [Norad ID 5584] began moving east to west shortly after its launch on March 12 — in what company officials told Breaking Defense on Oct. 6 shows a “pattern of life” that includes making stops nearby non-Russian satellites.

So far it the closest it has gotten to another satellite is about 10 miles, just far enough away so as to avoid triggering any collision concerns but close enough that good cameras will see fine details. It is believed the satellite so far under surveillance is a communications satellite from Eutelsat that covers Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia, suggesting a link to the wars in the Ukraine and Gaza.

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India rocket startup Agnikul raises $26.7 million in new private investment capital

9:01 am

The new colonial movement: The Indian rocket startup Agnikul has now raised an additional $26.7 million in private investment capital, bringing its total cash on hand now to about $40 million.

The company hopes to complete the first suborbital launch of its Vikram-S rocket in mid-November. If successful, it will be the second private rocket startup in India to do it, joining Skyroot, which did its first suborbital test flight last year. Both companies plan orbital versions of these rockets, and are also likely bidding to take over the SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket from India’s space agency ISRO. The Modi government is offering to literally give it to a private company to operate for profit.

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Ingenuity completes 62nd flight on Mars

8:50 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On October 12, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingeniuty successfully completed its 62nd flight on Mars, flying a total of 880 feet for just over two minutes while setting a new ground speed record of 22.4 miles per hour.

The flight was a scouting trip to the northeast about 440 feet, then returning to land back at about its take-off point. The green line on the overview map above shows the route of that flight, with the green dot marking Ingenuity’s landing spot. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location.

The distance and time of the flight, as well as the speed record, were almost identical to the flight plan released prior to the flight.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites, using a first stage flying for the 16th time

8:28 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canavera with a first stage flying for the 16th time.

The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. By my count SpaceX now has two stages that have flown seventeen times, and one that has flown sixteen times. While not there yet, its fleet of first stages is getting close to accumulating more flights than NASA’s space shuttle fleet.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

74 SpaceX
46 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 86 to 46, and the entire world combined 86 to 74. SpaceX by itself is once again tied with the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 74 to 74, with another launch scheduled for late tomorrow.

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October 17, 2023 Quick space links

3:44 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • India targets its first manned landing on the Moon by 2040

    • This was simply Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opportunity to give his Kennedy-like Moon speech, something politicans have been doing over and over again since 1961. Only Kennedy met his goals. All the others have simply been empty political speeches that were never fulfilled.

    This is not to say India won’t try, as it certainly appears that the new colonial movement in space is heating up. It just means we should not take his speech very seriously.

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More Martian inverted rivers?

12:19 pm

More Martian inverted rivers?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 23, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “branching deposits,” two wiggling ridgelines with other ridges branching off from them.

What caused this? On Mars there are many such meandering ridges, all of which look like rivers that have positive relief, the opposite of what you would expect. The theory is that these weaving ridges were once canyons where either water or ice once flowed, compacting the streambed so that it was more dense than the surrounding terrain. When that terrain eroded away it left that streambed behind, as a raised meandering ridge.

That answer however might not apply here.
» Read more

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New Io images from Juno

9:43 am

Io as seen on October 15, 2023 by Juno
Click for original image.

The Jupiter orbiter Juno completed its 55th close pass of the gas giant on October 15, 2023, which also included a close pass of the Jupiter moon Io. The science team has now released the first images of Io from that fly-by, and several citizen scientists have released their processed versions.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was processed by Ted Stryk. It is the best view seen of this volcano-covered world since the Galileo orbiter in the 1990s. The dark patches are lava flows, with the dimensions of mountains along the terminator line between night and day clearly distinguishable.

An even closer look will occur during Juno’s 57th Jupiter orbit on December 30, 2023, when it will get within 1000 miles of Io’s surface, crossing the mid- to high latitudes of the planet’s western hemisphere.

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Blue Origin announces another big project, with few details

9:17 am

Blue Origin has now announced another proposed big project, dubbed Blue Ring, which will put a platform into orbit as part of a new division focused on in-space services.

Blue Ring serves commercial and government customers and can support a variety of missions in medium Earth orbit out to the cislunar region and beyond. The platform provides end-to-end services that span hosting, transportation, refueling, data relay, and logistics, including an “in-space” cloud computing capability. Blue Ring can host payloads of more than 3,000 kg and provides unprecedented delta-V capabilities and mission flexibility.

The company did not reveal many details about the size of this orbital platform, nor did it reveal a time schedule. It appears to be an effort by the company to enter the orbital tug/satellite repair market, though the announcement is so vague it is hard to determine what exactly is being proposed.

The list of big ambitious Blue Origin projects is long and impressive: the New Glenn reusuable rocket, the Orbital Reef space station, the Blue Moon manned lunar lander, and now Blue Ring. However, since none of these projects has yet launched, and the first is years behind schedule, no one should put much money on this new project ever seeing fruition. Right now Blue Origin needs to actually fly something before anyone should take seriously any proposal it puts forth.

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China to launch its second lunar relay communications satellite next year

9:01 am

China now plans to launch its second Queqiao lunar relay communications satellite early next year in order to support several upcoming missions, including Chang’e-6 mission to bring samples back from the far side of the Moon.

Queqiao-2 is set to launch on a Long March 8 rocket from the coastal Wenchang spaceport in early 2024, according to Zhang Lihua of DFH Satellite under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), the satellite’s developer. The 1,200-kilogram satellite will feature a 4.2-meter-diameter parabolic antenna and a mission lifetime of more than eight years, Zhang said during a presentation at the 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku, Oct. 3.

It will also be used later to provide relay communications to two additional Chang’e missions to the Moon’s south pole.

The satellite is an upgrade from the first Queqiao relay satellite, which is still operational but now at one of the Lagrange points rather than in orbit around the Moon. This new satellite is intended to be the first in a future constellation of lunar communications satellites, and is also being considered for the same use at Venus and Mars.

Once again it seems that China’s long term plan for the exploration of the solar system is not only rational and carefully thought out, it is also being implemented with increasing speed. Meanwhile in the U.S. our federal government seems schizophrenic, with one agency (NASA) trying to put together a long term plan using commercial space while other departments (FAA, FCC, Fish & Wildlife) doing everything they can to stymie this effort.

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NASA to award small contracts to develop universal payload interfaces

8:49 am

NASA yesterday announced a competition to award up to three contracts to companies to develop a universal payload interface that can be used to more easily mount payloads prior to launch.

The NASA TechLeap Prize’s Universal Payload Interface Challenge invites applicants to propose an optimized “system of systems” to enable easy integration of diverse technology payloads onto various commercial suborbital vehicles, orbital platforms, and planetary landers. The proposed universal payload interfaces should seamlessly adapt a wide range of small space payloads – be they technologies, laboratory instruments, or scientific experiments – for flight testing.

A maximum of three winners will receive up to $650,000 each to build their system plus the opportunity to flight test it at no cost. The focus is on achieving a simplified and streamlined payload integration process that has the potential to accelerate future flight-testing timelines.

The idea is to have the same interface for mounting, either on flight testing on Earth (using high altitude balloons, aircraft, or suborbital spacecraft) or in space.

Applications are due by February 22, 2024.

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ISS Russians to do spacewalk on October 25 to investigate Nauka coolant leak

8:38 am

Due to the coolant leak that appeared in a back up outside radiator connected to Russia’s Nauka module, NASA and Russia have rearranged their upcoming spacewalk schedule, with two American spacewalks now delayed until after a Russian spacewalk on October 25 that will investigate the leak.

During that spacewalk, [Oleg] Kononenko and [Nikolai] Chub will install a synthetic radar communications system on the Russian segment of the orbiting laboratory and deploy a nanosatellite to test solar sail technology. In addition, they plan to inspect and photograph the backup radiator that leaked on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

The leak itself has stopped, though neither NASA nor Roscosmos have explained why. The leaked material is considered non-toxic, but there appears to be a concern it might get into some “internal systems” and cause problems.

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October 16, 2023 Quick space links

4:29 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also deserves a hat tip for the Hubble budget story earlier today, that I had missed.

 

 

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NASA: Budget cuts to Hubble/Chandra under consideration

1:14 pm

In what is likely a negotiating ploy with Congress to prevent any budget cuts at all at NASA, the agency revealed late last week that it is considering cutting the budgets to both the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes in order to meet proposed budget limits.

In an Oct. 13 presentation to the National Academies’ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mark Clampin, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said he was studying unspecified cuts in the operating budgets of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope to preserve funding for other priorities in the division.

The potential cuts, he said, are driven by the expectation that his division will not receive the full request of nearly $1.56 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2024 because of legislation passed in June that caps non-defense discretionary spending for 2024 at 2023 levels, with only a 1% increase for 2025. “We’re working with the expectation that FY24 budgets stay at the ’23 levels,” he said. “That means that we have decided to reduce the budget for missions in extended operations, and that is Chandra and Hubble.”

That he provided no details suggests this is merely a lobbying tactic. Essentially he is saying to Congress, “If you don’t give me more money I will be forced to shut down our most popular programs. That won’t sit well with your constituents!”

That the House in its appropriations to NASA for 2024 did not cut the agency’s budget significantly also suggests this is mere lobbying. There should be no reason to trim Hubble or Chandra, which are two of the agency’s most successful projects, unless the cost overruns on SLS/Orion and the Mars Sample Return missions are forcing NASA to grab money from other programs. If so, that problem is not Congress’s, but NASA’s. The agency should reconsider those failed projects in order to keep what works working.

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Astronomers detect nano-sized quartz crystals in atmosphere of exoplanet

9:33 am

Using both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes in space, astronomers have detected nano-sized quartz crystals in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-class exoplanet orbiting its star every 3.7 days.

Silicates (minerals rich in silicon and oxygen) make up the bulk of Earth and the Moon as well as other rocky objects in our solar system, and are extremely common across the galaxy. But the silicate grains previously detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets and brown dwarfs appear to be made of magnesium-rich silicates like olivine and pyroxene, not quartz alone – which is pure SiO2.

The result from this team, which also includes researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, puts a new spin on our understanding of how exoplanet clouds form and evolve. “We fully expected to see magnesium silicates,” said co-author Hannah Wakeford, also from the University of Bristol. “But what we’re seeing instead are likely the building blocks of those, the tiny ‘seed’ particles needed to form the larger silicate grains we detect in cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs.”

These tiny quartz crystals are condensing out in the clouds themselves, due to the high temperatures and pressures there. The exoplanet itself is unusual because though its mass is one half that of Jupiter, its volume is seven times larger. This gives it a very large and deep atmosphere, thus providing the environment for crystal formation.

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Update on Starship/Superheavy: Lots of work, no sign of FAA launch approval

9:20 am

Link here. The article provides a thorough review of the work SpaceX engineers have been doing in the past six weeks since the company announced on September 5th that it was ready to do a second test orbital launch of Starship (prototype #25) and Superheavy (prototype #9), but has been stymied by the refusal of the federal bureaucracy to grant a launch license.

For example, while waiting the company has done some tank tests with Starship prototype #26, which is not expected to fly but is being used for testing. The article outlines a lot of other details, but this is the key quote:

While Ship 26 started its engine testing campaign, SpaceX looks to be gearing up for a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for Booster 9 and Ship 25. Related notices have been posted for the coming week, marking the imminent return to a full stack for the next Starship to launch as soon as November, pending regulatory approval. [emphasis mine]

This source, NASASpaceflight.com, now admits that the FAA and Fish & Wildlife will not issue a launch license until November. Previous reports from it have tried to lay the blame for the delays on SpaceX. It now can no longer make that claim.

In April, after noting at great length the lack of harm done to wildlife by the first test launch (as admitted by Fish & Wildlife itself, the agency that is presently delaying things), I predicted the following:

[I]t appears that both the FAA and Fish and Wildlife are now teaming up to block any future launches at Boca Chica until SpaceX guarantees that the rocket and its launchpad will work perfectly. But since SpaceX must conduct launches to determine how to build and further refine the design of that rocket and launchpad, it can’t make that guarantee if it is banned from making launches.

We must therefore conclude that these federal agencies are more interested in exerting their power than doing their real job. They are therefore conspiring to shut Starship and Superheavy development entirely, or at a minimum, they are allowing their partisan hatred of Elon Musk and capitalism itself to delay this work as much as possible. As Lord Acton said in 1887, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

At that time I thought it very possible no further launches from Boca Chica would ever be approved. In May I refined that prediction, stating that come August the “…launch license will still not be approved, and we will still have no clear idea of when that approval will come. Nor should we be surprised if approval does not come before the end of this year.”

At the time that prediction was poo-pooed, with claims that I did not understand the regulatory process and that the government certainly did not want to stand in the way. It now appears my prediction was right on the money, and worse, my first prediction might be closer to the truth, that while the federal government doesn’t want to come right out and say, “No more launches from Boca Chica!”, it is imposing so many delays and requirements there that it makes the location impractical for SpaceX to use it as a launch test site.

The company desperately needs to get its second Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral operational. Otherwise it is unlikely it will ever be able to complete the development of this rocket.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches military satellite

9:17 am

China yesterday used its Long March 2D rocket to place what is believed to be a military weather satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed within China.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

73 SpaceX
46 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 85 to 46, and the entire world combined 85 to 74. SpaceX by itself now trails with the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 73 to 74.

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Telecommunications company sues Commerce and Defense Departments $39 billion for theft

12:27 pm

The telecommunications company Ligado yesterday filed a $39 billion suit against the Commerce and Defense Departments for stealing use of the communications spectrum granted to it by the FCC for the establishment of a 5G cell phone network.

Ligado’s suit filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims [PDF] makes a number of allegations, including that the Pentagon has “taken Ligado’s spectrum for the agency’s own purposes, operating previously undisclosed systems that use or depend on Ligado’s spectrum without compensating Ligado.”

Those systems, a source close to the case said, are certain classified radars rather than GPS systems.

The suit cites a high-level DoD “whistleblower” who “revealed internal emails and discussions” that the company claims show DoD and Commerce “fabricated arguments, misled Congress in testimony supporting anti-Ligado legislation, and orchestrated a public smear campaign, which included repeating those false claims to the public and threatening Ligado’s business partners with canceling their own government contracts if they worked with Ligado.”

There had been some disagreement about whether Ligado’s use of this spectrem might interfere with GPS as well as other communications services. Nonetheless, the spectrum was legally Ligado’s. If the lawsuit is correct and these government agencies arbitrarilly took possession and used the spectrum illegally, thus preventing Ligado from establishing its business, it would appear to be another example of the arrogant administrative state ignoring the law to grab power.

Once I would have considered a suit like this to simply be a failed company’s effort to recover its losses by blaming the government. I no longer assume such things. Instead, my first thought is that the allegations are true, that bureaucrats in Defense and Commerce conspirated to steal the spectrum for their own uses, and didn’t care that they were violating the law.

The truth could be a combination of all these things, but if so that still tells us some very ugly things about the people who now work in these federal agencies.

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