Euclid’s first images look good

9:19 am

Scientists have determined that the first test images from the two cameras on the recently launched orbiting Euclid space telescope are sharp and as expected.

Both VIS and NISP provided these unprocessed raw images. Compared to commercial products, the cameras are immensely more complex. VIS comprises 36 individual CCDs with a total of 609 megapixels and produces high-resolution images of billions of galaxies in visible light. This is how astronomers determine their shape. The first images already give an impression of the abundance that the data will provide.

NISP’s detector consists of 16 chips with a total of 64 megapixels. It operates in the near-infrared at wavelengths between 1 and 2 microns. In addition, NISP serves as a spectrograph, which splits the light of the captured objects similar to a rainbow and allows for a finer analysis. These data will allow the mapping of the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies.

Knowing that 3D distribution will allow scientists to better determine the nature of both dark energy (related to the acceleration of the universe’s expansion) and dark matter (related to an undiscovered mass that affects the formation and shape of galaxies).

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India officials confirm Australian beach debris comes from an old PSLV rocket

9:12 am

Officials from India’s space agency ISRO have confirmed that the large metal cylinder that washed up on an Australian beach on July 16th came from an old PSLV rocket, which which one remains at present unknown.

“We have concluded the object located on a beach near Jurien Bay in Western Australia is most likely debris from an expended third-stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The PSLV is a medium-lift launch vehicle operated by ISRO,” the space agency tweeted.

A day after the object surfaced on July 16, the ISRO had confirmed to HT that the object was a part of PSLV upper stage but an old one. ISRO chairman S Somanath had said, “This is a part of PSLV upper stage but an old one. It is not from a recent mission, it must be older.” PSLV’s third stage is a solid rocket motor that provides upper stages high thrust after the atmospheric phase of launch.

If this came from an upper stage, it means it survived re-entry far better than expected, and then survived floating the the ocean for a long period. Since it does not appear as yet that the agency has determined which launch the object came from, we do not know how long.

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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, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, 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

India’s PSLV rocket places seven satellites into orbit

6:23 pm

India today (July 30th in India) successfully used its PSLV rocket to put seven satellites into orbit, launching from its coastal Satish Dhawan spaceport. This was the first time since India panicked over COVID and shut down in 2020 that the country has managed two launches within one month.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab (with a launch planned for later tonight. Live stream here— Launch aborted at T-0)
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 50, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 50.

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Momentus completes deployment of all payloads launched on board its Vigoride-6 tug

9:14 am

Momentus yesterday announced that it has successfully completed deployment of all the payloads that were launched in April on its Vigoride-6 orbital tug.

So far, in three demonstration missions in fourteen months, the company has deployed fifteen customer satellites using its Vigoride tug, though two were sent into an incorrect orbit because of a “human error in the mapping of a software command.”

The company next two missions are presently scheduled to be launched in November 2023 and February 2024.

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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.

ESA successfully completes controlled re-entry of its Aeolus satellite

9:07 am

Engineers for the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday successfully completed the controlled re-entry of its Aeolus satellite above Antarctica, where it burned up in the atmosphere.

The spacecraft would never have hit the ground had its re-entry — which would have happened anyway in just a matter of weeks — been allowed to happen in an uncontrolled manner. However, ESA decided to use the satellite to practice disposal techniques it wishes to make standard for all future satellites, especially those whose orbit keeps them in space long after their mission is finished.

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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

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches the heaviest geosynchronous communications satellite ever

8:15 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon Heavy rocket to place a Hughes geosynchronous communications satellite into orbit, the heaviest ever, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The two side boosters successfully completed their third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral only a few seconds apart. The rocket’s two fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights. The center core stage was not recovered as planned.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 49.

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July 28, 2023 Quick space links

3:22 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches three satellites

2:22 pm

China yesterday successfully placed three “remote-sensing” satellites into orbit, using its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its interior Xichang spaceport.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

50 SpaceX (with a Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for tonight. Live stream here.)
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 57 to 30, and the entire world combined 57 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 50 to 49.

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Black diversity administrator fired for demanding color-blind policies files lawsuit against university

1:23 pm

Tabia Lee
Tabia Lee

Bring a gun to a knife fight: As I reported in March, Tabia Lee was fired as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education [OESE] at De Anza College in California when she repeatedly demanded historical accuracy and color-blind policies from both her department and the rest of the college. Here is just one example of what she was trying to do and the opposition she faced:

Lee found herself constantly harassed and slandered because she tried to bring to her work an even-handed philosophy that attempted to deal with the problems of racial conflict fairly. For example, when Jewish students and faculty members told her they had experienced anti-Semitism on campus, Lee tried to organize a campus event to discuss the problem.

Instead, she said, coworkers told her the event wasn’t important and that Jewish people are white oppressors.

…Her career at De Anza College ended when her tenure was denied because the college claimed she had an “inability to demonstrate cooperation in working with colleagues and staff” and an “unwillingness to accept constructive criticism.” This was followed by a vote by the college administration to dismiss her the end of this academic year.

Lee has now filed suit challenging her firing. You can read her complaint here.
» Read more

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Meandering ridge exiting glacier on Mars

11:34 am

Overview map

Meandering ridge exiting glacier on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates the complex explanations scientists sometimes have to come up with explain the strange geology seen on Mars. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a whitish “ridged flow-like feature” that appears to exit out of the massive hill to the west.

The white dot on the overview map above as well as in the inset marks this location, smack dab inside the 2,000-mile-long strip of glacier country in the Martian northern mid-latitudes. As you can see from the inset, that massive hill is actual the foot of a large apron of material, likely ice-infused, that has sagged down from the large 5,400-foot high mesa to the west.

The white material is likely what the scientists call an inverted river. Once it was a channel in which either water or ice flowed. With time the weight of that material compacted the riverbed so that it was denser than the surrounding terrain, much of which was likely soft anyway because of a high ice content. When that surrounding terrain eroded away, the riverbed resisted that erosion, and instead became the raised ridge we now see.

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Trial operations begin for China’s new radio array for observing the Sun

10:02 am

Engineers have begun trial operations for a almost two-mile diameter antenna array in China designed to observe the Sun.

The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT) consists of 313 dishes, each with a diameter of 19.7 feet (6 meters), forming a circle with a circumference of 1.95 miles (3.14 kilometers). A 328-feet-high (100 m) calibration tower stands in the center of the ring. The array has undergone half a year of debugging and testing, demonstrating the capability to consistently and reliably monitor solar activity with high precision. Trial operations officially started July 14, according to CCTV News.

This design is a variation of the VLA radio antenna in New Mexico, which has 28 antennas arranged not in a circle but in a Y-configuration that can be extended or shortened. That additional capability is probably why VLA is focused on astronomical observations, not just the Sun.

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NASA puts off planetary mission competition for budget reasons

9:55 am

NASA has decided for budget reasons to delay the competition by scientists for a planetary mission by at least one year because of new budget constraints which the agency claims come from the budget limits imposed by Congress.

NASA has planned to release the announcement of opportunity, or AO, for the fifth New Frontiers mission in November, after releasing a draft version for public comment early this year. The release of the final AO would have kicked off a competition ending with the selection of a mission in the fall of 2026 for launch in the early 2030s.

However, after a debt-ceiling agreement enacted in early June that would keep non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 levels for fiscal year 2024, NASA tapped the brakes on those plans. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said at a June 21 meeting of the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee that the release of the AO would likely be delayed beyond November as NASA evaluates the implications of the debt-ceiling deal.

That claim is likely bogus. I suspect the real reason the agency has been forced to delay this project is because of cost overruns in other already existing planetary missions, most specifically the Mars Sample Return mission, whose budget has apparently doubled from about $4 billion to $8-$9 billion. Congress is likely not going to increase NASA’s budget in 2024, so this cost overrun forces it to find savings elsewhere.

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NASA changes have cost Northrop Grumman $36 million on its Lunar Gateway module

9:47 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday revealed that unexpected requirement changes to the specifications of its HALO module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station has raised its cost for this fixed price contract by $36 million.

In the company’s fiscal second quarter financial results released July 27, the company announced an unfavorable estimate-at-completion adjustment of $36 million for its work on the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, one of the first elements of the Gateway. The company blamed the charge on “evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges” that caused cost growth on the program.

…“We think that is best applied for commercial items or production programs with stable requirements and mature designs,” [the company’s CEO] said of fixed-price contracts. “As it’s turning out on the HALO program, the requirements are not as stable as we or the government anticipated, and we’re working with them to address that change management as we go forward.”

The HALO module was an upgrade of the company’s Cygnus cargo freighter, with its original fixed-price contract for $935 million.

On a fixed-price contract, NASA is not supposed to change its specifications. The company gets somewhat general requirements from NASA, and then builds the product to its own specifications. It appears that either NASA managers don’t seem to understand this and are causing the company problems, or the company itself had not anticipated some design and construction issues before bidding and are struggling to address them now. In the latter case Northrop Grumman managers might have themselves not understood the nature of fixed-price contracts, and had assumed NASA would simply pick up any increase in the project’s budget, as it does in cost-plus contracts. It apparently is not, and thus this old big space company is now suddenly forced to face reality.

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Rocket Lab revises design of its new Neutron rocket

9:35 am

Rocket Lab has revised the design of its new Neutron rocket, reducing the number of fairing shells from four to two, and shifting the location of the first stages fins.

One of the major changes shown is how the payload fairing operates. In prior concepts, the fairing was comprised of 4 quarters that opened outward to allow second stage and payload separation. The new design shows two halves of the fairing opening. Moving from four to two fairings will provide more reliability for the rocket and fewer moving parts.

Another change is a slight design to the forward strakes (fins) that help steer the rocket back to its landing site. Unlike SpaceX, which uses grid fins, the Neutron rocket will use fins that provide more lift and can return to the launch site from further downrange. The forward fins also appear to have moved further up on the rocket, and the fairing halves size made a bit smaller.

The landing legs have also been redesigned, apparently to more closely match the design used on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

These are all relatively minor changes, none of which change the fundamental design that calls for the rocket to be almost entirely reusable.

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Contact lost with Voyager 2, hopefully temporarily

9:28 am

New but planned commands to Voyager 2, presently flying beyond the solar system, caused the spacecraft to point its antenna incorrectly so that communications with Earth have been lost.

A series of planned commands sent to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. As a result, Voyager 2 is currently unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth.

Voyager 2 is located almost 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth and this change has interrupted communication between Voyager 2 and the ground antennas of the Deep Space Network (DSN). Data being sent by the spacecraft is no longer reaching the DSN, and the spacecraft is not receiving commands from ground controllers.

The spacecraft is also programmed to periodically reset its orientation so that its antenna points to Earth, with the next reset scheduled for October 15th. Engineers hope that at that point contact will be recovered.

If not, this incident will mark the end of the mission, which launched in 1977 and has been functioning for 46 years as it has made close fly-bys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and then eventually entering interstellar space.

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Argentina signs Artemis Accords

9:16 am

Argentina yesterday became the 28th nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

Originally conceived by the Trump as a series of bi-lateral agreements between the U.S. and another country in order to strengthen property rights in space as well as build a U.S. alliance in space, the Biden administration has been more focused on the latter, using the accords more as a tool to increase international cooperation.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launches another 22 Starlink satellites

9:13 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully put another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their second flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

50 SpaceX
29 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 57 to 29, and the entire world combined 57 to 48, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 50 to 48.

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July 27, 2023 Quick space links

5:04 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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Pushback: City in Georgia forced to rescind a law that required permits for any protest

1:56 pm


“Terrorist” Jerry Gray holding his terrible sign

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After veteran Jeff Gray was issued a citation and fined for standing in front of the city hall of Blackshear, Georgia, with a sign that said “God Bless the Homeless Vets,” he sued, hiring the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to represent him.

In Blackshear, Police Chief Chris Wright approached Gray and informed him of a city ordinance requiring citizens to obtain a government permit for a “parade, procession, or demonstration” if they wanted to hold a sign outside city hall. Although Wright said it was “kind of silly,” he explained that the ordinance — nearly identical to one struck down by the Supreme Court in 1969 — meant that Gray would need to send a letter to Blackshear’s mayor and city council explaining the purpose of his one-person demonstration and obtain the council’s approval. Gray was issued a criminal citation, which was later dismissed.

» Read more

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Endless dunes in the dry Martian equatorial region

1:01 pm

Endless dunes in the dry Martian equatorial region
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of a vast dune field, 50 miles square, that sits about 225 miles south of the southern foothills of Mars’ biggest volcano, Olympus Mons.

The dunes are probably less than 20 feet high, with that one small hill only slightly higher. Their similar orientation, which extends across the entire 50-mile-square dune field, indicates the direction of the prevailing winds, which I think (but will not swear to it) is from the southeast to the northwest, which also happens to also follow the grade downhill to the northwest.

It is also possible that wind direction is the reverse, and goes uphill to the southwest.
» Read more

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Scientists think they have finally discovered what makes the Sun’s corona so hot

10:31 am

Using data from Europe’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, scientists now think they have finally pinpointed the process that causes the Sun’s corona — its atmosphere — to be many times hotter than its surface.

For decades, scientists have been struggling to explain why temperatures in the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, reach mind-boggling temperatures of over 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (one million degrees Celsius). The sun’s surface has only about 10,000 degrees F (6,000 degrees C), and with the corona farther away from the source of the heat inside the star, the outer atmosphere should, in fact, be cooler.

New observations made by the Europe-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft have now provided hints to what might be behind this mysterious heating. Using images taken by the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), a camera that detects the high-energy extreme ultraviolet light emitted by the sun, scientists have discovered small-scale fast-moving magnetic waves that whirl on the sun’s surface. These fast-oscillating waves produce so much energy, according to latest calculations, that they could explain the coronal heating.

You can read the paper here [pdf]. The results have not yet been confirmed, but if so it will solve one of the space age’s oldest scientific mysteries.

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Astronomers chemically map a significant portion of the Milky Way

10:19 am

The chemistry of the Milky Way's nearby spiral arms
Red indicates areas with lots of heavier elements, blue indicates
areas dominated by hydrogen and helium. Click for original image.

Astronomers have now used today’s modern survey telescopes — on Earth and in space — to map the chemistry of a large portion of the Milky Way’s nearby spiral arms, revealing that the arms themselves are rich in heavier elements, indicating greater age and the right materials to produce new stars and solar systems like our own.

If the Milky Way’s spiral arms trigger star births as predicted, then they should be marked by young stars, aka metal-rich stars. Conversely, spaces between the arms should be marked by metal-poor stars.

To confirm this theory, as well as create his overall map of metalicity, Hawkins first looked at our solar system’s galactic backyard, which include stars about 32,000 light years from the sun. In cosmic terms, that represents our stellar neighborhood’s immediate vicinity.

Taking the resultant map, the researcher compared it to others of the same area of the Milky Way created by different techniques, finding that the positions of the spiral arms lined up. And, because he used metalicity to chart the spiral arms, hitherto unseen regions of the Milky Way’s spiral arms showed up in Hawkins’ map. “A big takeaway is that the spiral arms are indeed richer in metals,” Hawkins explained. “This illustrates the value of chemical cartography in identifying the Milky Way’s structure and formation. It has the potential to fully transform our view of the Galaxy.”

You can read the science paper here [pdf]. Based on this initial mapping effort, it appears that it will not be long before a large percentage of our own galaxy will be mapped in this manner.

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FTC will not block the purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris

10:03 am

How nice of them! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday that it will not block the planned purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris, which the company expects to now complete in mere days.

The deal, if finalized, would place L3Harris on a solid footing to achieve Kubasik’s long-stated goal of positioning the company as the sixth major defense prime.

The forthcoming acquisition has also garnered support from an unlikely source: RTX, the parent company of missiles giant Raytheon. Executives from the company, which rely on Aerojet to deliver crucial parts, have been open in recent weeks that while they don’t love strengthening a competitor, they feel Aerojet is in desperate need of new leadership. “We’ve obviously always been concerned about Aerojet. But I would say some of these things have been magnified by all these external inputs,” Wes Kremer, Raytheon president, told Breaking Defense during last month’s Paris Air Show.

Aerojet has had problems for years, especially because the rocket engines it makes are very expensive. It has failed to garner any market share in the new emerging rocket industry, remaining dependent entirely on very generous government contracts and the older big space contractors. But even here, it lost out to Blue Origin when ULA was looking for engines for its new Vulcan rocket.

It is likely that after this merger, the name Aerojet Rocketdyne will vanish, a sad end to a company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the space age.

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Juno’s next fly-by of Io coming on July 30

9:54 am

Io as seen by Juno
An image of Io from the March fly-by

The Juno science team is gearing up for the spacecraft’s next fly-by of the Jupiter moon Io, scheduled for July 30, 2023.

When NASA’s Juno mission flies by Jupiter’s fiery moon Io on Sunday, July 30, the spacecraft will be making its closest approach yet, coming within 13,700 miles (22,000 kilometers) of it. Data collected by the Italian-built JIRAM (Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper) and other science instruments is expected to provide a wealth of information on the hundreds of erupting volcanoes pouring out molten lava and sulfurous gases all over the volcano-festooned moon.

The image to the right was taken from 33,000 miles during the March fly-by, almost three times farther away. The dark spots are volcanoes, and some showed significant change from earlier images.

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Boeing’s total losses due to Starliner now equal $1.5 billion

9:44 am

According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.

Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.

The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.

At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.

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OSIRIS-REx completes last major mid-course correction before sending its sample capsule back to Earth

9:38 am

OSIRIS-REx yesterday completed a 63 second engine burn, successfully aiming the spacecraft so that its September 24th drop off of its sample capsule will hit the Earth as planned.

Preliminary tracking data indicates OSIRIS-REx changed its velocity, which includes speed and direction, by 1.3 miles, or 2 kilometers, per hour. It’s a tiny but critical shift; without course adjustments like this one the spacecraft would not get close enough to Earth on Sept. 24 to drop off its sample of asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft is currently 24 million miles, or 38.6 million kilometers, from Earth, traveling at about 22,000 miles, or about 35,000 kilometers, per hour.

In the two weeks prior to that drop-off the spacecraft will do two more short burns to refine its aim so that the sample capsule will land precisely as planned on the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.

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