Category: Points of Information

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

SpaceX to raise another $750 million in stock sale; earnings rise to $8 billion in ’23

8:49 am

According to anonymous sources, a new stock sale at SpaceX is likely to raise another $750 million because of enthusiasm on Wall Street for the stock due to the company’s growing earnings, which are expected to double to $8 billion this year.

Last week, CNBC reported that Elon Musk’s SpaceX valuation reached nearly $150B following an announcement of a stock sale by existing investors. According to a copy of the purchase offer sent by CFO Bret Johnsen, which CNBC obtained, the company has entered into an agreement with new and existing investors to sell up to $750 million in stock at a price of $81 per share. This represents a 5% increase from the previous secondary sale at $77 per share, which valued the company at approximately $140B. SpaceX has not provided any comments regarding the purchase offer.

Though the article does not say, that revenue comes from two sources, SpaceX’s rocket launches and its Starlink constellation. In the first case the company dominates the launch industry, because its launch price is so much cheaper than everyone else. In the second case, Starlink is producing so much revenue because Elon Musk forced the company to move fast and get its satellites in orbit quickly. Though both SpaceX and Amazon announced their internet constellations at about the same time, Amazon has still not launched any satellites, while SpaceX has more than 4,000 in orbit. This active and operating constellation has allowed SpaceX to grab market share that Amazon is now likely never to get, even when it begins launching.

All this makes SpaceX very appealing to investors, which is why its private stock price has gone up. It is also why it has been able to raise now almost $11 billion in private investment capital for building both Starlink and its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

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Rocket Lab launches seven satellites; recovers first stage from ocean

6:46 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place seven smallsats into orbit, lifting off from New Zealand.

The first stage used parachutes to softly splash down in the ocean, where it was recovered for refurbishment and relaunch. As this stage is the first in which this full reuse will be attempted, the ability to refurbish the stage after its salt water swim remains the critical factor. We will not know its state until a complete inspection plus static fire engine tests are completed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

47 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 54 to 26, and the entire world combined 54 to 45, while SpaceX alone still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 47 to 45.

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July 17, 2023 Quick space links

4:38 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

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Flat-topped Martian mesa

3:58 pm

Flat-topped mesa on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on April 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows only one of many flat-topped mesas in a chaos terrain region dubbed Oxia Chaos.

The mesa top is about 540 feet above the floor of the canyon to the north, which in turn is about 840 feet below the flat terrain north of it. That flat terrain to the north is not part of the chaos terrain, however, but the northern rim of the plateau that surrounds the chaos. Moreover, this particular piece of rim is separating from the plateau, as shown near the top of this January 16, 2008 context camera image from MRO. At some point in the future it will break off and fall into that canyon and on top of this mesa.
» Read more

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California Democrats retreat on their effort to defend child slavers

12:34 pm

The Democratic Party: eagerly supporting pedophilia
The Democratic Party: caught in the act of eagerly
supporting pedophiles

Pigs fly! After initially killing a bill on July 12, 2023 that would have increased the penalties on child sex traffickers, the Democrats who completely control the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee reversed course one day later and voted to advance the bill.

With a final vote of 6-0, including two abstentions from progressive Democrats, the bill now moves to the Appropriations Committee, after which, if it is approved, can move the bill to be voted upon by the entire State Assembly. If passed, SB 14 will make trafficking of minors a serious felony that would qualify under California’s three strikes law, which keeps dangerous, serial criminals off the streets, and make individuals convicted of the crime ineligible for early release. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the two abstentions by Democrats. Even after a nationwide uproar over their willingness to block harsh penalties on those who traffic young children for sexual slavery, these two Democrats, including Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), still could not bring themselves to vote for the bill.

Nonetheless, the reversal by the rest of the Democrats on the committee marks a major event. » Read more

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Chandrayaan-3 completes second orbital maneuver

9:32 am

Chandrayaan-3's mission profile

According to India’s space agency ISRO, its lunar lander/rover Chandrayaan-3 today completed second orbital maneuver, raising the spacecraft’s orbit around the Earth from 41,762 by 173 kilometers to 41,603 x 226 kilometers.

The graphic to the right shows the entire mission profile of Chandayaan-3. It still has three more orbital adjustments to make in Earth orbit before it does its trans-lunar-injection burn to send it to the Moon. Once it arrives in lunar orbit it will then have to make six orbital adjustments to lower its orbit before making the descent to the surface.

The lunar landing itself is presently scheduled for August 23, 2023.

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An apparent rocket section washes up on Australian coast

9:19 am

What appears to be a section of India’s PSLV rocket washed up on the western Australian coast yesterday, though at the moment the identity of the wreckage as not been confirmed.

Dr Alice Gorman, an expert in the field of space archaeology, said she believes the object is a fuel cylinder that came from the the third stage of India’s polar satellite launch vehicle rocket (PSLV), as many have suggested on social media.

The article includes a picture of that stage in orbit during a 2017 launch, and the similarity is obvious. If true, its specific launch at present remains unknown, though it appears it could have been floating in the ocean for years, a fact that is surprising in itself.

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SpaceX launches using its second Falcon 9 first stage on its sixteenth flight

9:14 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 54 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The Falcon 9 rocket used a first stage flying on its sixteenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. That is the second 1st stage in SpaceX’s fleet to complete that many flights. Both first stages completed their sixteen flights in only three years, which means that those two first stages have actually flown more times than the entire United States rocket industry did annually from 2000 to 2019. I don’t have a full count, but I suspect both stages have launched in those three years more satellites then the totals for almost all other nations, excepting possibly Russia and the U.S. Both probably allowed SpaceX to amortize the cost of those launches considerably, possibly as much as 90%.

Just remember: Rocket industry experts were insisting even as late as 2016 that it was impractical to make rocket stages reusable, that to make a profit “a partially reusable rocket would need to launch 35-40 times per year to maintain a sizable production facility while introducing reused hardware into the manifest.” Based on that calculation, these experts determined with utmost certainty that a partly reusable rocket — like the Falcon 9 — could never make a profit.

Elon Musk must have agreed, and decided he needed an extra profit center for the Falcon 9. Starlink has provided that profit center. It not only needs that many launches, and pays for them, its profit stream from its internet customers is already adding to SpaceX’s bottom line.

Regardless, Musk has proved these “experts” utterly wrong. I always thought they were talking through their hat, but had no way to prove it. Thank you Mr. Musk for proving the point.

Note too that the two fairing halves on this flight were also reused, completing their ninth and tenth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

47 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 53 to 26, and the entire world combined 53 to 45, while SpaceX alone now leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 47 to 45.

And it is doing this with that impractical, unprofitable, and impossible reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Heh.

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House committee imposes major cuts to Justice, FBI, Commerce

11:15 am

As had been suggested by its decision to not impose any cuts (or increases) to the NASA budget, the House appropriation subcommittee in charge of Commerce, Justice, Science-related agencies imposed all of the 28.8% cuts required by the House leadership on the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Commerce department.

Overall, the bill appropriates $58.4 billion for programs under the jurisdiction of the committee, a $23.8 billion cut compared to the current fiscal year. It eliminates 14 “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the covered agencies, cuts spending on “wasteful” climate change programs, and saves more than $50 million by ending the Biden administration’s plan to replace auto fleets at the Department of Commerce and Department of Justice with electric vehicles.

According to the GOP summary, the Commerce Department would see a $1.4 billion cut in discretionary funding, and the Department of Justice would see a $2 billion cut. Federal science agencies together would face a $1.1 billion cut under the bill.

The FBI’s budget is to be cut $1 billion, or 9% (an actual cut, not a reduction in the increase in spending), with $400 million of that coming from salaries and expenses. It also forbids the agency from spending a dime on its planned dream of a new posh and palatial headquarters in the DC suburbs, twice the size of the Pentagon and costing more than $3 billion.

This is exactly what Republicans should have been doing for decades, and were too cowardly to attempt. If an agency of unelected employees in the executive branch abuses its power and causes harm to innocent citizens, something the FBI and the Justice Department have been eagerly doing since Trump became president, then it is the responsibilty and obligation of Congress to use its power of the purse to cut those agencies’ funding.

Even now, however, no one should be confident these cuts will end up in the final bill. This is only the recommendations of one subcommittee. There are still many Republican cowards in the full House, and even more in the full Senate, who will gladly team up with the Democrats (who are all in favor of the abuse of power and the harm to innocent citizens) to reinstate the cuts.

Nonetheless, this is a start. It indicates that we might finally have turned a real political corner towards reform.

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Farewell Skipper

4:01 pm

Skipper and Emma in 2016
Emma and Skipper

Today there will be no political column, because to be honest, there are things in life more important. After fortunately a very short illness, we were forced to put to sleep our dog Skipper, as shown to the right in 2016, with then-a-very-young Emma behind him, plotting evil. Emma passed away prematurely a year and a half ago at only a decade of life. At his passing Skipper was about seventeen years old.

We think Skipper was a mix of Schipperke and Chihuahua. Both breeds are known for their uppity nature. Skipper had that in spades. For almost his entire life he was active, friendly, and independent. He would only do what he wanted to do, which sometimes was great and sometimes not so great. For example, we have a dog door and a very large fenced back yard. He liked to go outside and bark at the coyotes, sometimes facing off against them with only our six-foot-high cattle fence in-between. The coyotes were unphased, but to Skipper, he had declared that our yard was his territory. Stay out!

Until the last year he also like to bark when visitors arrived, but his only desire in doing so was to get petted. If they stopped, he’d bark again. Pet me!

His outside barking was not always perfect however. If we didn’t close the dog door, he would always go outside at about 4 am every night, plant himself five feet from our bedroom window, and bark relentlessly. I’m the boss! One of us would have to get up and bring him in.

Yes, he wasn’t perfect, but Diane had rescued him in 2012 when he had been for several years shifted from one foster home to another. His original owner had died, and the foster organization had been unable to find him a permanent home. We gave one to him, one he liked quite a lot, and for this the heavens smiled.

I’d go on, but I need to dig a grave in the backyard, next to the graves of Emma, Fitz, and Wolfie.

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Another look at the vastness of Valles Marineris on Mars

1:06 pm

The vast Valles Marineris
Click for interactive map.

This week I have returned several times to the giant Valles Marineris canyon on Mars in an attempt to capture its incomprehensible and glorious scale. Without question this canyon is going to become one of the prime tourist spots when humans begin living and working throughout the solar system. Fortunately, its vast size will mean that it will take many many centuries before it even becomes close to crowded there.

Today I try a different approach, using the global mosaic created by scientists at Caltech from the context camera images taken by Mar Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). That mosaic processes the images to allow one to see the surface from an oblique angle. The picture to the right covers one small part of the eastern end of Valles Marineris (the white rectangle in the inset), but though small the scale once again is gigantic.

The three white dots are our reference points, one on the north rim, one on the south, and one in the middle on the peak of that central mountain chain. Beginning from the south, the distance from the rim to the middle mountain peak is 43 miles, with the elevation dropping almost 13,000 feet to the floor of the south canyon, than rising almost 10,000 feet to the middle peak. The northern canyon is smaller. From the peak to the north rim is 27 miles, dropping about 9,300 feet and then rising about 8,500 feet to the north rim.

From rim to rim the distance is about 70 miles. Since the middle mountain chain about 18 miles wide, it fills only about 25% of the entire canyon.

In every case, the Grand Canyon would be merely be a small side canyon here. The depths are twice as deep, and the distances are many times larger. In width alone at this point Valles Marineris is seven times wider than the widest part of the Grand Canyon, and this is by far not Valles Marineris’s widest point.
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NASA survives first budget review in Congress

9:51 am

The first 2024 budgets approved by Senate and House appropriation committees for NASA maintain about the same current numbers from NASA’s 2023 budget.

The House committee is recommending $25.367 billion, just shy of the $25.384 billion NASA has now. The Senate committee is proposing $25.000 billion, a greater reduction from current spending. Biden requested a 7.1 percent increase for FY2024, $27.2 billion.

In the House the Republican leadership is requiring this House committee to impose a 28.8% cut in the total money allocated to all the agencies under its control (Justice, Commerce, and Science). It appears the committee members have decided to find the cuts in the other departments, such as the Justice Department. In fact, this first budget review strongly suggests Justice is about to see huge cuts, something that corrupt and partisan agency richly deserves.

As for NASA, the Senate report [pdf] had harsh words for the growing expense of the Mars Sample Return mission, and proposed major cuts, including the possibility of eliminating the project entirely. Instead, the Senate committee preferred wasting that money on Artemis and SLS.

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UK government reluctantly admits its space regulatory framework is a problem

9:36 am

According to a report issued by a committee formed by a number of members of the United Kingdom’s parliament, the regulatory licensing framework for its space launch industry is a problem that needs fixing, and in a hurry.

The report also expressed concern about the licensing delays that led to the Virgin Orbit launch being postponed. Virgin Orbit and some of its satellite customers were critical of the UK regulatory process, which was led by the Civil Aviation Authority.

But the committee concluded there was no evidence that the regulatory system contributed to the failure of the Virgin Orbit. The report did state, however, that there is “insufficient co-ordination between the large number of regulatory bodies involved in licensing launches, and this continues to place unnecessary burdens of complexity and administration on companies”.

The MPs [members of parliament] are calling on the Government to take steps to improve the licensing system of UK satellite launch.

It is amusing how these politicians speak from both sides of their mouths. First they say the regulatory system did not contribute to Virgin Orbit’s failure, but then admit the regulatory system is so complex and messy that anyone can see that it certainly did contribute to that failure. It took that system fifteen months to approve the launch, even though Virgin Orbit expected that approval to come in half that time.

Whether this MP report will force action remains unclear. As I noted earlier this week, Orbex applied for a launch license seventeen months ago for a launch it hopes to complete at the Sutherland Spaceport before the end of this year, and it is as yet unclear if any license has been issued. The UK’s two spaceports cannot compete if it is going to take one to two years for each launch license to be approved

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Rocket Lab gets two-launch deal with Japanese satellite company

9:27 am

Rocket Lab today announced that it has signed a two-launch deal with the Japanese satellite company Synspective, bringing to six total the number of Synspective satellites its Electron rocket will place in orbit.

Rocket Lab has been launching for Synspective since 2020 when the Company deployed the first satellite in Synspective’s synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation, which is designed to deliver imagery that can detect millimetre-level changes to the Earth’s surface from space. Since that first mission, Rocket Lab has been the sole launch provider for Synspective’s StriX constellation to date, successfully deploying three StriX satellites across three dedicated Electron launches. Including the two new missions, Rocket Lab is now scheduled to launch three missions for Synspective beginning in late 2023 from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.

This deal illustrates Rocket Lab’s continuing strong position in the launch market, while simultaneously illustrating the lack of any Japanese presence. Japanese Synspective might prefer to work with a Japanese rocket, but none exists that can compete with Rocket Lab.

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ULA officially admits first Vulcan launch is delayed to end of year

9:19 am

Though the announcement was not news or unexpected, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno yesterday officially confirmed that the first Vulcan launch will not occur before the fourth quarter of this year, not this summer as hoped.

In a call with reporters July 13, Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, said the changes to the Centaur upper stage stemmed from an investigation into a test mishap in March, where hydrogen leaked from a Centaur test article and ignited, damaging both the stage and the test rig. The company announced June 24 that it would delay the launch to make “minor reinforcements” to the Centaur.

Bruno also poo-pooed the significance of a failure of a Blue Origin BE-4 engine during a static fire test in mid-June, a failure that had been kept secret until this week.

“This doesn’t indict the qualification at all,” he said, noting that BE-4 engines have more than 26,000 seconds of cumulative runtime. “We’re very confident in the design and the workmanship of the assets that have passed acceptance. This is not unexpected.”

Forgive me if I don’t take him entirely at his word. I guarantee his engineers are looking at that failure very closely to make absolutely sure it doesn’t indicate issues with the two engines on that first Vulcan rocket. It is very likely this is part of the reason that first launch is now delayed until the end of the year.

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Solid-fueled second-stage motor for Japan’s new Epsilon-S rocket explodes during static fire test

9:10 am

A solid-fueled second stage of Japan’s upgraded Epsilon-S four-stage rocket exploded 57 seconds into a two minute static fire test today, likely preventing that rocket’s planned first launch this year.

Police received an emergency call shortly after 9 a.m. from a nearby resident reporting that she heard “a loud noise and saw smoke” rising from the Noshiro Rocket Testing Center.

JAXA said that an explosion occurred during a combustion test of the second-stage engine of the Epsilon S rocket, which is an improved model of the small solid-fuel Epsilon rocket, at the facility in the prefecture in the northeastern Tohoku region.

While explosions during static fire tests of liquid-fueled rockets occur periodically, for a solid-fueled motor to explode seems much rarer, and suggests the mix and placement of the solid-fuel within the stage did not occur properly.

This failure continues a string of failures within Japan’s government-run space program, including a failure during the first launch of its new large H3 liquid-fueled rocket earlier this year. At present Japan’s space agency JAXA has set August 26th for one of the last launches of the rocket the H3 is replacing, the H2A, carrying an X-ray space telescope and a small lunar lander. Though today’s failure involves very different technologies and should therefore not impact that launch, it is possible JAXA will stand down entirely to see if there was some systematic issue throughout its management. It sure appears there is.

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India successfully launches Chandrayaan-3

8:35 am


Click for interactive map.

India today successfully launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover probe toward the Moon, carried aloft by its LV-M3 rocket (a variation of its GSLV) from its coastal spaceport in Sriharikota.

Chandrayaan-3 carries the Vikram lander, which will bring the Pragyan rover to the surface. Pragyan will spend about two weeks operating on the lunar surface. The location is indicated by the red dot on the map to the right, in the high southern latitudes. The white cross marks the lunar south pole. Russia’s Luna-25 is scheduled to launch sometime in mid-August.

It will take time to get Chandrayaan-3 into the right lunar orbit for landing, which is presently scheduled for August 13, 2023.

For India this was its fifth successful launch for the year, the most since 2019, before it panicked over COVID. The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

46 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 52 to 26, and the entire world combined 52 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 46 to 45.

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July 13, 2023 Quick space links

3:53 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • ULA’s CEO says Blue Origin is manufacturing two BE-4 engines per quarter

    • 8 engines a year, eh? New Glenn requires seven to launch. ULA will need two for each Vulcan launch. I don’t see this working as planned. If true ULA has a serious problem, and New Glenn will not fly for years.

    Jay adds this link for comparison: SpaceX produces one Raptor-2 engine every two days, and was previously manufacturing 400 Merlin engines per year (before the reuse of the Falcon 9 first stage reduced the need for so many engines).

 

 

 

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Enthusiastic censorship and blacklisting at St. Philip’s College in Texas

3:27 pm

St. Philip's College, home to blacklisting and censorship
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship

They’re coming for you next: The university was conceived as a place of where young minds would be exposed to new ideas in order to challenge their youthful assumptions and unbridled certainty, with the determined goal to teach critical thinking. (For those who no longer know what critical thinking is, it is the concept that you question everything rigorously, including most importantly your own assumptions.)

It seems most American colleges no longer practice this. In fact, many now teach the exact opposite. Faced with ideas you don’t like, students are encouraged to complain, and hide in “safe spaces” so they don’t have to question anything.

It also appears that St. Philip’s College in Texas is the poster child of this new “teaching” concept. This semester it fired two different teachers when several anonymous students complained because those professors expressed some basic facts in their classrooms that conflict with the modern queer agenda and the leftist hostility to open debate.

First, Dr. Johnson Varkey was fired in January 2023 because he had the audacity during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology.

Four students walked out of that class in protest, and then complained to the administration. Within weeks it terminated Varkey, with no due process. In its termination letter [pdf] (part of the response by Varkey’s attorney’s at the non-profit legal firm First Liberty), it claimed
» Read more

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A Martian gully formed by disappearing glacial ice?

11:53 am

Puzzling Martian gully
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the rim of a seventeen-mile wide crater, and was the scientists label a “gully without apron,” meaning that though something has caused material to disappear within that gully, beginning high on the rim wall, there does not appear to be any piled up apron or debris at the gully’s base.

The blue colors imply the possibility of frost within the gully, while the orange suggests dust or coarse surface material.

The cracks emanating away at right angles from the gully’s base suggest glacial ice, which makes sense based on the location.
» Read more

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Senate committee approves Biden’s FCC nominees

10:13 am

Despite apparent opposition to the Biden nominees by Republicans, the Senate committee involved has approved the three FCC nominees and moved that the process proceed to a vote in the full Senate.

The article also includes these paragraphs, describing absurdities that could only occur in Congress:

[Ted] Cruz [R-Texas] moved that all the nominations, including Damelin and a nominee for the National Transportation Safety Board plus a list of Coast Guard promotions, be favorably reported. There were no objections and the motion was agreed to.

Immediately thereafter, however, Cruz and other Republicans asked to be recorded as no on Gomez and/or Starks and two Democrats as no on Carr. It’s not possible to discern from the webcast who was speaking in all instances, but the bottom line is that all the nominations were approved and now can go to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. The requests to be recorded as no are a signal that the rest of the confirmation process will not be easy.

Cruz moves the nominees should be “favorably” reported, but then announces he and others are against some.

All in all, this appears to be another example of Republican failure theater. Make it sound like you are trying to block Biden’s policies, but then do whatever is necessary to let them to go into effect. Considering that the Democratic Party appointees at the FCC have been pushing for regulatory power beyond the commission’s statutory authority, it seems absurd for any Republican senator (or Democrat senator for that matter) to okay any Biden nominees who would continue that power grab. And yet, the Republicans appear willing to go along.

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Australian industrial space park threatened with shut down

10:03 am

With the loss of government funds caused by decisions of the new Labor government in Australia, a space-centered industrial park proposed for Adelaide Airport is threatened with shut down.

The previous government was going to contribute about $20 million to build a shared facility, and this had encouraged a number of space manufacturers to add their own $26 million. With the loss of that $20 million from the government two of those companies have now backed out.

The article also notes a number of other space-related areas where government funding is being cut off. All this appears to be the result of the change in government, and the decision of the new Labor government to end such subsidies.

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Extremely Large Telescope in Chile marks halfway point in construction

9:51 am

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has now celebrated the halfway point in its construction, with completion targeting 2028 when its 39-meter mirror will make it by far the largest telescope in the world.

The 39-meter diameter, or 127 feet or 1,535 inches, is about four times larger than the largest telescope that presently exists, the 10-meter telescope in the Canary Islands. By the time ELT begins operations however the 21-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile should also be in operation.

Sadly, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii will likely not exist, even though it had intended to begin construction before ELT and GMT and be operational now. Leftist opponents in Hawaii have shut construction down now for almost eight years, with little signs of it ever proceeding.

Not that any of this really matters. In the near term, ground-based astronomy on Earth is going to become increasingly impractical and insufficient, first because of the difficulties of making good observations though the atmosphere and the tens of thousands of satellites expected in the coming decades, and second because new space-based astronomy is going to make it all obsolete. All it will take will be to launch one 8-meter telescope on Starship and ELT will become the equivalent of a buggy whip.

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Final close-out of all science research at Arecibo

9:38 am

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proceeding with the final close-out of all science research at the now shuttered Arecibo radio telescope, ending all funding for the remaining science instruments that still function and letting go all scientists on staff as of August 14th.

In October 2022, NSF announced it would not rebuild the giant telescope, saying it was following community recommendations for the best use of scarce research dollars. It is now shutting down most of the smaller instruments as well. As scientists depart, “all the expertise associated with instruments is leaving,” Brisset says. Olga Figueroa-Miranda, director of the observatory, says people from UCF, Puerto Rico’s Metropolitan University, and Yang Enterprises, an engineering firm, will be let go, including herself. She has yet to find a new position.

The NSF has budgeted money to turn the telescope’s visitor center into a science education facility, but this is not likely to be very successful, as there will be no scientists at this somewhat remote location, which will in itself discourage any traffic.

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New Viasat geosynchronous communications satellite in trouble

9:31 am

Launched in April, a new geosynchronous communications satellite for the company Viasat is in trouble, with “an unexpected event” occurring during the deployment of its antenna reflector.

Shares of Viasat fell as much as 36% in early trading Thursday, putting it on track for its biggest one-day loss since going public in December 1996. Viasat did not disclose the identity of the reflector’s manufacturer in its release. Dankberg said his company is “working closely” with the manufacturer to resolve the problem. A Viasat spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the manufacturer is a top aerospace and defense company – but noted that it is not Boeing, which built the 702MP+ bus that is the spacecraft’s structure and power.

The company is under severe competitive pressure from the Starlink and OneWeb satellite constellations. This loss could be crippling, even if it obtains a full insurance payment of $420 million.

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July 12, 2023 Quick space links

4:28 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • China unveils proposed plan for first manned lunar mission before 2030

    • The plan calls for separate rockets, one for the manned ascent/descent Earth capsule, and the second for the lunar lander/ascent spacecraft. The two will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit. This is all engineering by powerpoint at this point, though based on China’s track record I’d give it more credence than most of NASA’s recent promises.

 

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More sightseeing in Valles Marineris on Mars

3:01 pm

More sightseeing on a mesa in Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

The opportunity to see more mind-blowing examples of spectacular views on Mars compels me to post another great view of a mesatop within Valles Marineris, the biggest known canyon in the solar system. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an 800-foot-high mesa with two points at its end, the cliff wall below highlighted by numerous layers, many alternating between light and dark material.

The erosion features on the top of the mesa suggests some flow down its middle and into the gap between its two end points. This is the dry equatorial region of Mars, so no near surface water is presently found. In the far past maybe ice, or theorized catastrophic floods of water, caused this erosion.
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Real pushback: Montana’s library withdraws from ALA because it elected a Marxist/Queer leader

11:55 am

Emily Drabinski, now president of the ALA, proudly Marxist and queer
Emily Drabinski, president of the ALA and proudly
Marxist and queer

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Upon learning that the American Library Association (ALA) had voted as its new president, Emily Drabinski, a woman who is not only proudly queer (in her own words), she also is proudly Marxist, the commission for Montana’s state library yesterday voted to withdraw from ALA.

The Montana State Library Commission’s decision came in response to a 2022 tweet posted by current ALA President Emily Drabinski describing herself as a “Marxist Lesbian,” which quickly drew the attention of conservative media outlets nationwide. In his motion to “immediately withdraw” the state library from the association, commissioner Tom Burnett directed that a letter be sent to the ALA explaining that “our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.”

Burnett was joined by five other members of the commission in supporting the motion, among them state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen. Newly seated commissioner Brian Rossmann, who works as an associate professor at the Montana State University Library, cast the sole opposing vote. Commission Chair Peggy Taylor abstained.

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