Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Today both China and Russia successfully placed satellites into orbit. China’s Long March 2D rocket placed four “technology test” satellites into orbit, while Russia used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a military communications satellite.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
4 China
3 SpaceX
2 Arianespace (Europe)
2 Russia
The U.S. continues to lead China 6 to 4 in the national rankings.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
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Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 3, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows three strange teardrop-shaped depressions, clearly wind-swept and partly buried by dust and sand.
The location on Mars of these depressions is in the transition zone between the southern cratered highlands and the northern lowlands. This is also a region dubbed the Medusae Fossae Formation, a region where it appears a great deal of volcanic material was laid down during one or more eruptive events 3 to 3.8 billion years ago.
Whether these depressions were formed during those events is impossible to tell from the available data, especially because the underlying bedrock is buried in dust.
Their shape appears to have been caused as the wind slowly exposed three buried peaks of hard rock. The wind, blowing from the southwest to the northeast, would hit the peaks, producing an downward eddy that would churn out dust from the windward side. The wind and dust would then blow around the peaks, creating the teardrop tail on the leeward side to the northeast.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, in space now for fifteen years, will undergo a two week computer software upgrade.
The maintenance work involves updating battery parameters in the spacecraft’s flash memory – a rare step that’s been done only twice before in the orbiter’s 15 years of flight. This special update is necessary because it was recently determined that the battery parameters in flash were out of date and if used, would not charge MRO’s batteries to the desired levels.
In addition to the battery parameters, engineers will use this opportunity to update planetary position tables that also reside in flash. The spacecraft will go into a precautionary standby mode, called safe mode, three times over the course of the update. It will also swap from its primary computer, called its Side-A computer, to its redundant one, called Side-B.
During these two weeks the spacecraft will suspend its science and communications operations.
Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket today successfully launched a Japanese communications satellite and a South Korean landsat satellite.
The standings in the 2020 launch race:
3 China
3 SpaceX
2 Arianespace (Europe)
1 Rocket Lab
1 Russia
1 Japan
1 ULA
1 Northrop Grumman
The U.S. continues to lead China 6 to 3 in the national rankings.
The uncertainty of science: Scientists today released their first measurements from Juno of the amount of water found in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The Juno science team used data collected during Juno’s first eight science flybys of Jupiter to generate the findings. They initially concentrated on the equatorial region because the atmosphere there appears more well-mixed, even at depth, than in other regions. From its orbital perch, the radiometer was able to collect data from a far greater depth into Jupiter’s atmosphere than the Galileo probe – 93 miles (150 kilometers), where the pressure reaches about 480 psi (33 bar).
“We found the water in the equator to be greater than what the Galileo probe measured,” said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Because the equatorial region is very unique at Jupiter, we need to compare these results with how much water is in other regions.”
These results remain very preliminary, especially because they have not yet gathered data at higher latitudes. Regardless the amount so far detected, 0.25% of all molecules in Jupiter’s atmosphere. seems remarkably small, suggesting that Jupiter has relatively little hydrogen or oxygen in its atmosphere.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has signed a deal with the space tourism company Space Adventures to fly four tourists on a single crew Dragon flight.
The private spaceflight company founded by billionaire Elon Musk has signed an agreement with the U.S. space tourism company Space Adventures to launch up to four passengers on an orbital trip aboard a Crew Dragon space capsule. The mission would last up to five days and could launch as early as late 2021, Space Adventures representatives told Space.com.
The trip will not go to ISS, but remain free-flying in orbit.
Essentially, Space Adventures, which flew all its previous space tourists on Russian Soyuz capsules and has two more such flights scheduled in 2021 to ISS, is now adding the American company SpaceX to its staple. This gives them two places they can buy flights, which gives them some bargaining room to get prices down.
This is exactly what I hoped would happen if NASA stopped building spacecraft and instead bought its rides from privately built and owned capsules. Owned by SpaceX and built for profit, crew Dragon is not limited to only serving NASA’s needs. They can sell it to others to make more money. Here they are doing so.
I also would not be surprised if SpaceX reuses the Dragon capsules used on NASA flights for these tourist flights. NASA doesn’t want reused capsules, yet, so SpaceX will be accumulating once-used capsules capable of flying again. I bet they will use them here.
Engineers have confirmed that the first Solar Orbiter instrument that they have activated is working and in good health.
“Until the end of April, we will be gradually turning on the in-situ instruments and checking whether they are working correctly,” says Yannis Zouganelis, ESA’s deputy project scientist for the Solar Orbiter mission. “By the end of April, we will have a better idea of the performance of the instruments and hopefully start collecting first scientific data in mid-May.”
Through November 2021 the spacecraft will make fly-bys of the Sun, Venus, and Earth to get it into its prime orbit, which will pass Venus regularly to further raise its inclination so that eventually it will be as high as 33 degrees, allowing it to better see the Sun’s poles.
Click for full image.
The image to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and provides a close-up of the relative smooth terrain found in the region on Mars that the Chinese have said is one of their prime landing sites for their 2020 Mars rover and lander. According to planetary scientist Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona,
There was a presentation at the European planetary & science conference in Geneva last fall, and a Chinese scientist gave an update on their plans and showed this area with the lat-long coordinates. That’s what I’m going on.
McEwen also admits that “there might have been a change since then. I’m not in the loop.” No one outside China really is, as that government remains quite opaque on these matters. They will likely only reveal their final landing site choice as we get closer to launch.
This location, on the northern lowlands plains of Utopia Planitia, makes great sense however for a first attempt by anyone to soft land on Mars. In fact, in 1976 these plains were the same location that NASA chose for Viking 2, for the same reasons. (The Viking 2 landing site was to the northeast of the Chinese site, just beyond the right edge of the overview map) While there are plenty of craters and rough features, compared to most of Mars’s surface, Utopia could be considered as smooth as a bowling ball.
Even so, a look at the full image shows that there are numerous features nearby that would be a threat for any robotic lander. McEwen notes,
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Jeff Bezos yesterday announced that he plans to spend $10 billion of his own money on “climate change,” awarding grants to “scientists, activists and nonprofits.”
“I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change,” Bezos said in the post.
I wonder if has any idea what he means by “climate change.” From this and other quotes, I would guess he does not. Instead, it appears his knowledge of the climate field is similar to most leftist politicians and activists, superficial and based on slogans and soundbite claims.
Meanwhile, this story suggests that a good portion of the $4.6 billion he has gotten by cashing out his Amazon stock in the past few years will go to this initiative, rather than his space company Blue Origin.
Capitalism in space: Blue Origin yesterday cut the ribbon on its main rocket engine factory in Huntsville, Alabama, while also announcing that production of their BE-4 engine for both ULA’s new Vulcan rocket and their own New Glenn rocket will begin in a few months.
In the meantime, made-in-Kent engines are being tested at Blue Origin’s West Texas site. Smith said two flight readiness engines will be delivered in May to United Launch Alliance. They’ll be used for integrated tests of ULA’s Vulcan first-stage booster, which is taking shape not far from Huntsville in Decatur, Ala.
This is excellent news. For the past year and a half the company has released little information about their progress with the BE-4 engine, suggesting that they might be experiencing issues. Yesterday’s news bursts that pessimistic balloon, indicating that both the Vulcan and New Glenn rockets will be flying, maybe as soon as next year.
The new colonial movement: Engineers have reactivated China’s Chang’e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover for their 15th lunar day on the far side of the Moon.
As usual, the story in China’s state-run press reveals little. This time however it does mention that Yutu-2 will continue traveling to the west, first to the northwest and then to the southwest.
