Cubesat company raises $80 million

8:56 am

The competition heats up: Spire, a cubesat satellite company focused on data gathering from space, has raised an additional $40 million in investment capital, bringing the total it has raised since 2012 to $80 million.

With the new funds, the company will support further growth and expand its constellation from 20 satellites in 2015 to more than 100 by the end of 2017.

The latest round of financing comes at a time when the need for advancements in weather and maritime data is at an all-time high. With the potentially catastrophic 2016 Weather Gap right around the corner, Spire offers a solution to the $2.4 trillion dollar global problem. Emerging as a leader in the ‘Space Race 2.0,’ Spire is the only commercial weather data provider with scheduled launches in 2015. The company will begin deploying its satellites on a near monthly basis beginning September 2015.

Though the company is willing to gather data in more ways than just weather, its offer to provide weather data suggests that the transition from government to private weather satellites is soon approaching. And there is no reason it shouldn’t. Weather data is very valuable. Just as private cable companies put up satellites to provide communications, so should weather outlets like the Weather Channel. It will pay for itself, and will likely provide us better data than any NOAA satellite.

In addition, this story indicates once again that the age of cubesats is now upon us.

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Contractor’s assets seized at Vostochny

8:42 am

In the heat of competition: Government officials have seized the assets of one of the contractors at Russia’s new Vostochny spaceport, still under construction, for failing to pay its debts to another contractor.

For a project that has been under the close supervision of Vladimir Putin since September, there sure has been a lot of hanky-panky going on.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

New Horizons gets closer

11:30 pm

Pluto and Charon

Cool image time! Even as the engineers successfully completed last night their last course correction engine burn, the New Horizons science team released an image showing both Pluto and Charon.

The 23-second thruster burst was the third and final planned targeting maneuver of New Horizons’ approach phase to Pluto; it was also the smallest of the nine course corrections since New Horizons launched in January 2006. It bumped the spacecraft’s velocity by just 27 centimeters per second – about one-half mile per hour – slightly adjusting its arrival time and position at a flyby close-approach target point approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.

The image, which I have cropped to focus on the planets, is still somewhat fuzzy, though it also shows the increasing sharpness as the spacecraft gets closer.

Only two weeks to go!

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Another Dawn image of some of Ceres’ bright spots

10:37 am

The double bright spot, not over-exposed

Cool image time! As part JPL’s regular release of images from Dawn, one image of Ceres’ bright double spots was purposely not over-exposed. Thus, the surface is almost black (as it really looks), while the small cluster of spots stands out brightly but with some additional detail. (If you download the full image and use a graphics program to brighten it you will see that this is the double bright spot located inside a large crater.)

I have cropped and enlarged the original image to focus on the double spot. As you can see the brightest spot has a mottled look, almost like we are looking down at a snow-capped peak.

Though the leading theory remains that this is ice, this theory has not been confirmed yet. Make no assumptions or you may discover you are wrong.

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Road to Mauna Kea to remain closed for the rest of the week

10:22 am

The University of Hawaii, which manages the astronomy facilities on top of Mauna Kea, said today that the road to the summit will remained closed for at least the rest of this week so that they can do repairs and maintenance resulting from the protests last week.

I think I finally understand what is going on, and why the protesters themselves offered last week to remove the boulder barricades they had built, something that had not made sense to me at the time.

Because of landslides and the hostile environment, the road needs constant maintenance. The barricades prevented that, which gave the governor and the University the justification to shut the road. And by shutting the road, the University has essentially locked the protesters out. I am sure that the repairs could be done much faster, but the University is probably dragging its feet to make sure they get all the protesters out and things cool down. When the reopen the road, I expect them to make sure it is secure and only official personal use it.

This is why the protesters suddenly offered to remove the barricades. They realized that they had shot themselves in the foot, and wanted to remedy the situation in a way that would allow them to continue protesting. It appears they have failed.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Russian sets record for most time spent in space

10:08 am

Russian astronaut Gennady Padalka has now set the record for the most total time spent in space, passing the previous record of 803 day set by Sergei Krikalev.

Padalka is due to return to earth on 11 September, by which time he will have spent 878 days in space – almost two and a half years. On 21 June he celebrated his 57th birthday in orbit. The commander said at a press conference before his flight in March that he would like to try for 1,000 days in space after his current record-breaking mission is over.

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NASA to waste $150 million on SLS engine that will be used once.

10:01 am

Government marches on! NASA’s safety panel has noticed that NASA’s SLS program either plans to spend $150 million man-rating a rocket engine it will only use once, or will fly a manned mission without man-rating that engine.

The Block 1 SLS is the “basic model”, sporting a Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS), renamed the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for SLS. The current plan calls for this [interim] stage to be used on [the unmanned] Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) and [manned] Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2), prior to moving to the [Exploration Upper Stage] – also to be built by Boeing – that will become the workhorse for SLS.

However, using the [interim upper stage] on a crewed mission will require it to be human rated. It is likely NASA will also need to fly the [Exploration Upper Stage] on an unmanned mission to validate the new stage ahead of human missions. This has been presenting NASA with a headache for some time, although it took the recent ASAP meeting to finally confirm those concerns to the public.

Up until now, no one at NASA would admit that their SLS plans called for flying humans with an upper stage that has not been man-rated. They don’t have the funds to man-rate it, and even if they get those funds, man-rating it will likely cause SLS’s schedule to slip even more, something NASA fears because they expect the commercial manned ships to be flying sooner and with increasing capability. The contrast — a delayed and unflown and very expensive SLS vs a flying and inexpensive commercial effort — will not do SLS good politically.

However, if they are going to insist (properly I think) that SpaceX and Boeing man-rate their capsules and rockets, then NASA is going to have to man-rate its SLS systems as well. The result: more problems for SLS, contributing to what I believe will be its inevitable cancellation.

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The future roadmap of religious persecution in America

10:13 am

The article describes the inevitable legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. Some key quotes:

The first attacks will be on small churches that don’t have the wherewithal to mount a legal defense against the IRS and against civil lawsuits. They will be confronted with a loss of their tax exempt status and the personal bankruptcy of their corporate officers if they do not allow homosexual weddings. The effect this will have on small congregations will be profound. Some will become “house churches”, much like what you see in Communist China. Many, however, will fall in line. The larger Protestant denominations will toe the line. Some, like the Episcopalians, are only nominally Christian as is. The Lutherans (ELCA variety) have had actively homosexual clergy for some time as have the Methodists. The two big targets for the government will be the Southern Baptist Convention — which is a voluntary association of independent churches — and the Roman Catholic Church. The pressure will ratchet up on them until they are confronted with confiscation of property or “discovering” hidden meanings in Scripture that reveal homosexual marriage has always been allowed.

Churches won’t disappear but the churches that you will see on Main Street will be peddling a warmed over and watered down version of Christianity that is a combination soup kitchen and twelve step program sans belief in a higher power. Real Christian churches will go underground but it will be a rearguard action. Christianity that chooses to ignore the very Word of God is not a religion, it is a cultural artifact.

The real price will be paid by those of us who are not actually employed by our churches. Organizing to resist homosexual marriage will bring down the FBI upon you as surely as if you were organizing a KKK chapter and with more alacrity than if you were an al Qaeda cell or blocking a polling station in Philadelphia. If you work for a large corporation or are in the military you can look forward to having your affirmatively support of homosexual marriage becoming an item on your performance appraisal. [emphasis mine]

And then there’s this:

Rather consistently local judges and others have said that religious liberty does not prevail for individuals who own businesses or engage in commerce. In effect, you can have religious liberty, so long as you don’t own a business. Here too there are legal nuances, but the fundamental trajectory is clear: Anyone who opposes the celebration of same-sex unions and lifestyle are going to be increasingly entangled in the courts and face more and more charges. [emphasis mine]

Read it all. If you don’t believe it will happen you are living in a fool’s paradise. Either Americans stand up now and defy the tyrannical strain that is beginning to dominate our society, or we will find all of our remaining but shrinking freedoms gone.

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Falcon 9 explodes two minutes into launch

9:43 am

Today’s Falcon 9 rocket launch of a Dragon freighter to ISS ended in failure slightly past 2 minutes after lift-off when the upper stage exploded.

My first thought about this failure is the supply problems it causes at ISS. The Progress failure in April strained the supply lines, making this Dragon flight somewhat critical.

In a presentation to a committee of the NASA Advisory Council here April 9, NASA officials said that food supplies on the ISS would reach a threshold called “reserve level” on July 24, and go to zero by Sept. 5. That assumed that the station received no more supplies beyond a SpaceX Dragon cargo mission launched to the station in April.

The other major limiting consumable is a solid waste container known by the Russian acronym KTO. Without additional cargo missions beyond the Dragon flight, KTO supplies would reach the reserve level July 20 and be exhausted on Sept. 2. Other consumables, including water, would not reach reserve levels until later in the year or early 2016.

In other words, some of the station’s toilets are going to begin to overflow without more supplies. It is possible however that this problem will be alleviated by the planned July 3 launch of the next Progress, especially since NASA officials claimed just prior to the launch failure today that ISS had enough supplies to last through October.

As for the launch failure, I expect that SpaceX will quickly pinpoint the problem and schedule another launch. I have embedded video of the launch below the fold. Prior to the explosion of the first stage all looks completely normal. In fact, immediately before the failure the announcer notes this fact, making what happens next especially shocking.

Update: I have corrected the first paragraph, correcting it from “first stage” to “upper stage.”
» Read more

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Audi joins race to the Moon

9:55 am

The competition heats up: The carmaker Audi has joined one of the teams competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize.

Audi’s part in the project will be to supply technical know how though its Audi Concept Design Studio, including the application of its quattro all-wheel drive technology and its experience in lightweight construction, electric mobility, and piloted driving. The company says it will also help in testing, trials, and quality assurance.

The rover, now named the “Audi lunar quattro,” is scheduled to launch sometime in 2017 and is aimed at a landing zone north of the lunar equator somewhere near 1972 Apollo 17 mission landing site, through the law prevents the rover from actually visiting it because it’s a protected area. “The concept of a privately financed mission to the moon is fascinating,” says Luca de Meo, Audi Board Member for Sales and Marketing. “And innovative ideas need supporters that promote them. We want to send a signal with our involvement with the Part‑Time Scientists and also motivate other partners to contribute their know‑how.”

I should note that the article is wrong when it states “the law prevents the rover from actually visiting” the Apollo 17 site. This law was passed by the U.S. Congress, and this Google team and Audi are not based in the U.S. They are not under its jurisdiction.

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Hawaii governor condemns protesters

9:40 am

Pigs fly! The liberal Democratic governor of Hawaii today strongly condemned the protesters against the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) for blocking the roads to Mauna Kea and made it clear that his administration will do what is necessary to prevent that from happening again.

To quote his statement:

“We expected there to be a protest when construction resumed, and there was. We hoped we would not have to arrest people but were prepared to do so, and we did when they blocked the roadway. We also saw, in what amounts to an act of vandalism, the roadway blocked with rocks and boulders. We deployed to remove the rocks and boulders, but the protesters wisely chose to remove them themselves. And then we saw more attempts to control the road. That is not lawful or acceptable to the people of Hawai‘i. So let me be very direct: The roads belong to all the people of Hawai‘i and they will remain open. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure lawful access.”

Forgive my cynicism and hostility to the Democratic governor. In my experience, it is rare for a Democrat to actively oppose liberal protesters such as these. Normally, Democrats encourage their misbehavior, and do what they can to aid them. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri Democrat governor Jay Nixon intentionally delayed calling out the National Guard in order to allow the riots to continue. Similarly, the Democratic mayor of Baltimore intentionally restrained the police in order to allow the demonstrators, in her own words, “space to destroy”. And then there was the entire Occupy Wall Street protests, all of which trespassed illegally in Democratically controlled urban areas. In every case, there trespass was allowed, and even applauded, by Democrats.

David Ige however has made it clear that he will no longer tolerate any blockage of the road to Mauna Kea, and will do what is necessary to allow the legally agreed construction of the the TMT to go forward. Hooray for him!

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Cruz proposes requiring judges to face voters periodically

6:45 pm

In response to this week’s decisions by the Supreme Court, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today proposed several laws and constitutional amendments, one of which would require judges to face the voters periodically and be removed if rejected.

Cruz’s analysis here is interesting in that he recognizes the right of Congress to impeach and remove judges, but also recognizes that this Congress, under this Republican leadership, just won’t do it. As he notes,

A Senate that cannot muster 51 votes to block an attorney-general nominee openly committed to continue an unprecedented course of executive-branch lawlessness can hardly be expected to muster the 67 votes needed to impeach an Anthony Kennedy.

He also correctly notes that if something isn’t done, the movement to amendment the Constitution using Article V convention of the states will likely gain momentum, something that we all know carries its own risks, including changing the Constitution in ways that are not beneficial.

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The foolish petty Republican response to the Supreme Court

9:23 am

The Supreme Court rules that it has the right to ignore the actual words written in a law so it can provide support to a particular political position. The Republican response? Let’s force the judges to enroll in Obamacare!

The Supreme Court rules that the will of the electorate, which has rejected same-sex marriage in more than thirty elections, should be ignored because it wishes to support a particular political position. The Republican response? So far, a lot of bluster and toothless proposals.

What should they do to answer both rulings? They control Congress. The Constitution gives them the right and the power to impeach and remove judges. It is time for them to show they really oppose these decisions and move to fire the justices who ruled on these two cases.

Any other action will show us that they really do not have the courage to defend the will of the electorate.

I should add that I really do not expect the Republicans in Congress to do what I suggest. They are cowards, and have repeatedly shown that they will not stand up to leftwing attacks. They will fold here as well.

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An update on Rosetta’s effort to re-establish contact with Philae

8:47 am

This update describes the status of the effort by the Rosetta science team to re-establish a stable communications channel with the Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P/C-G.

Confirmed contacts between Rosetta and Philae have been made on 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23, and 24 June, but were intermittent during those contact periods. For example, the contact on 19 June was stable but split into two short periods of two minutes each. Conversely, the contact on 24 June started at 17:20 UT (on board Rosetta) and ran for 20 minutes, but the quality of the link was very patchy and only about 80 packets of telemetry were received. Prior to this, on Tuesday, 23 June, there was a 20-second contact, but no stable link was established and consequently no telemetry data were received.

There are many reasons why the contacts have been so intermittent, much of it related to Philae’s position on the surface. To improve things, they are carefully adjusting Rosetta’s position relative to the comet while avoiding placing the spacecraft in a position where the coma’s dust will cause problems.

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Lois Lerner’s hard drive failed because of “impact”

3:05 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: It appears that the reason Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed initially is because of “an impact of some sort.”

So, how often have you seen a hard drive fail because something got thrown at it, or it got thrown at something? And if such a thing happened, how often do you think it happens by accident?

And of course, the IRS immediately did its job and had that hard drive shredded and destroyed, so that no one could look at it and determine precisely how it failed.

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