May 17, 2023 Quick space links

3:49 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

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Alien textured Martian lava

2:23 pm

Alien textured Martian lava
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the science team labels “regularly textured ground on Pavonis Mons.”

The arrow in the picture indicates the downhill trend. If you look at the full image, you will see that this texture pattern extends in all directions for a considerable distance, both uphill and down, and even covers the entire floor of a depression that appears to contour along the grade instead of going downhill.

The latitude here is very close to the equator. So, even though the elevation is high, being on the slopes of a giant volcano, there is probably no near surface ice here.
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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

May 17, 2023 Zimmerman/Pratt on Texas podcast

1:35 pm

Robert Pratt today posted the second part of our long discussion begun last week about some of the more egregious recent examples of blacklisting in America. You can listen to it at the Pratt on Texas podcast, at this link. I have also embedded it below.

This might have been one of the best discussions between Robert and myself about the Enlightenment, about rational thought, about religion, and about critical thinking (or the lack thereof in modern society). I strongly urge my readers to spend 26 minutes listening. It is well worth it.
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Today’s blacklisted American: 12-year-old sent home from school twice for understanding the 1st amendment better than his teachers

1:04 pm

The shirt that offended teachers at Nichols Middle School
Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.

They’re coming for you next: When 12-year-old Liam Morrison came to Nichols Middle School in Massachusetts on March 21, 2023 wearing a T-shirt with the words “There are only two genders” on the front, two teachers pulled him from class and told him he would have to remove the shirt or he couldn’t return to class. He refused, and so his father came to pick him up.

The teachers claimed he was causing a disruption, that some other unnamed students felt unsafe seeing the shirt. Liam however had experienced the exact opposite. Not only did he hear no complaints, he found many other students telling him they liked the shirt and wanted one for themselves.

Rather than retell his tale in its entirety, however, let’s hear it from his own mouth. I have embedded below Liam Morrison’s statement to the Middleborough School Committee on April 13. Note how clear and articulate he is. If I had to guess, he is getting a lot of education outside of his Massachusetts public school, because based on these events I would have no faith they are teaching him anything of value.
» Read more

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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.

Astronomers make first radio observations of key type of supernova

10:45 am

The uncertainty of science: Using a variety of telescopes, astronomers have not only made the first radio observations of key type of supernova, they have also detected helium in the data, suggesting that this particular supernova of that type was still atypical.

This marks the first confirmed Type Ia supernova triggered by a white dwarf star that pulled material from a companion star with an outer layer consisting primarily of helium; normally, in the rare cases where the material stripped from the outer layers of the donor star could be detected in spectra, this was mostly hydrogen.

Type Ia supernovae are important for astronomers since they are used to measure the expansion of the universe. However, the origin of these explosions has remained an open question. While it is established that the explosion is caused by a compact white dwarf star that somehow accretes too much matter from a companion star, the exact process and the nature of the progenitor is not known. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentences are really the most important take-away from this research. Type Ia supernovae were the phenomenon used by cosmologists to detect the unexpected acceleration of the universe’s expansion billions of years ago. That research assumed these supernovae were well understood and consistently produced the same amount of energy and light, no matter how far away they were or the specific conditions which caused them.

This new supernovae research illustrates how absurd that assumption was. Type Ia supernovae are produced by the interaction of two stars, both of which could have innumerable unique features. It is therefore unreasonable as a scientist to assume all such supernovae are going to be identical in their output. And yet, that is what the cosmologists did in declaring the discovery of dark energy in the late 1990s.

It is also what the scientists who performed this research do. To quote one of the co-authors: “While normal Type Ia supernovae appear to always explode with the same brightness, this supernova tells us that there are many different pathways to a white dwarf star explosion.”

Forgive me if I remain very skeptical.

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What kind of barred spiral galaxy is the Milky Way?

10:14 am

Three types of barred spiral galaxies
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Though astronomers have long believed that the Milky Way galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy, defined as having a major straight arm coming out in two directions from its nucleus with other spiral arms surrounding it, determining the exact structure has been difficult because of our presence within the galaxy.

The image to the right, taken from a paper just published, shows three different types of barred spirals. On the left is one where the surrounding spiral arms hardly exist. In the center the central bar is surrounded by multiple arms. On the right is a barred spiral with just one major spiral arm.

Though it has been generally accepted that the Milky Way belongs in the center category, astronomers remain unsure about the actual spiral structure. Previous work had suggested the galaxy actually had four major arms, not two as seen by most barred spirals. As noted in the paper, “If that is the case, the [Milky Way] may be an atypical galaxy in the universe.”

The research from the new paper however now proposes that the Milky Way is actually not atypical, but instead more resembles the center image, with two main arms and multiple segmented arms beyond. From the abstract:

Using the precise locations of very young objects, for the first time, we propose that our galaxy has a multiple-arm morphology that consists of two-arm symmetry (the Perseus and Norma Arms) in the inner parts and that extends to the outer parts, where there are several long, irregular arms (the Centaurus, Sagittarius, Carina, Outer, and Local Arms).

The astronomers cheerfully admit that this conclusion is uncertain, and will need many further observations for confirmation.

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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

Italy delays restart of its gravitational wave detector Virgo

9:36 am

After three years of upgrades, the engineers running Italy’s Virgo gravitational wave detector have decided to delay its restart later this month due to unexplained noise issues found inside some older components.

Getting to these parts to find the cause of the noise however will not be simple, as they are housed inside a vacuum chamber.

[According to Virgo spokesperson Gianluca Gemme. “Until we break the vacuum and open the towers to check the interferometer components directly, we cannot be one hundred percent sure what the problem is. … We therefore decided to take action now to resolve the technical issue that is slowing down the interferometer’s sensitivity growth. These are operations that, apart from the work we will have to do, involve time to remove and then restore the ultra-high vacuum conditions.

Once this work is completed it will then require further testing to make sure all is well. It is therefore unclear when Virgo will resume observations.

Meanwhile, the two detectors in the United States plan to resume operations as scheduled later this month. Without Virgo working in tandem, however, the resolution for any detections will be reduced.

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ULA’s first Vulcan rocket returns to assembly building after fueling tests

9:22 am

After completing a tanking test, engineers have now moved ULA s first Vulcan rocket back to the assembly building for some additional work prior to the first wet dress rehearsal countdown and static fire test.

A ULA spokesperson said the company’s engineers “collected excellent data” during the May 12 tanking test, which mimicked a launch countdown with holds, readiness polls, and other milestones. “Based on the test, there are several parameters that will be adjusted prior to conducting the Flight Readiness Firing,” the ULA spokesperson said in a statement. “We are rolling back to the Vertical Integration Facility, where our access is better and the vehicle is protected to isolate and perform those adjustments.”

The static fire test will occur prior to attaching two strap-on solid-fueled side boosters, provided by Northrop Grumman, that are needed for the first launch. That launch is presently scheduled for sometime this summer, but first the static fire test has to take place successfully, with no issues, and these boosters need to be attached.

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China’s Long March 3B puts another GPS-type satellite into orbit

8:58 pm

China early on Wednesday, May 17, 2023 (China time) used its Long March 3B to successfully launch a GPS-type satellite, adding one more satellite to its constellation of similar satellites.

As the launch was from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the interior, the rocket’s core stage and four strap-on boosters crashed somewhere inside China. No word on whether they landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

31 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 35 to 18 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 35 to 30. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including other American companies, 31 to 34 in launches this year.

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May 16, 2023 Quick space links

4:49 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

  • Astra and Momentus face cash crunch

    • Both have serious financial issues, but Momentus probably a better chance of surviving since it is actually flying its Vigoride tugs. Astra has nothing flying at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

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Brain terrain in and around pedestal crater on Mars

1:13 pm

Brain terrain in and around a pedestal crater on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

As I noted in a cool image only two weeks ago, brain terrain is a geological feature wholly unique to Mars that planetary geologists still do not understand or can explain. They know its knobby interweaving nodules (resembling the convolutions of the human brain) are related to near surface ice and its sublimation into gas, but no one has much confidence in any of the theories that posit the process that forms it.

In this case the brain terrain not only fills the crater, it appears to surround it as well, but only appearing at spots where a smooth top layer has begun to break apart. Moreover, the crater appears to be a pedestal crater, whereby much of the less dense surrounding terrain has vanished, leaving the compacted crater sitting higher.
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Surprise! The mainstream press still refuses to admit there was never any evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians

11:38 am

CNN's Jake Tapper, the face of the corrupt mainstream media
CNN’s Jake Tapper, the face of the corrupt mainstream
media

The release of the Durham final report [pdf] this week has produced a flurry of stories, reiterating the wholly unsurprising news that there was never any evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians and the entire story was a fraud, based on no evidence and drummed up by Democratic Party operatives working for Hillary Clinton both inside and outside of the FBI and Department of Justice.

The leftist mainstream press and the Democratic Party-controlled federal government of course reacted in mixed ways. First, Jake Tapper at CNN reluctantly admitted that the report is “devastating to the FBI, and to a degree it does exonerate Donald Trump.” In the same breath however he also tried to minimize the reports damning conclusions, which proved unequivocally that the reporting on this story from day one by him and everyone at CNN was either incompetent or outright lies.

The FBI meanwhile responded to the report with a short three sentence statement, admitting “missteps” were made but “dozens of corrective actions” have been taken since to make sure the agency “continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

Yeah, right. If you believe this hogwash from the FBI I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you, cheap.

Meanwhile other leftist mainstream news outlets scrambled to spin the report, to discredit it without even reading it.

Liars in 2017 and liars now, in 2023.

In truth, the facts brought out by the Durham report, detailed nicely in analyses here and here, simply restate what was patently obvious in 2017, for anyone with the willingness to look dispassionately at the plain facts. As I wrote in July 2017,
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Rocket Lab completes Photon transport spacecraft for Varda’s private returnable space capsule

9:20 am

The private rocket company Rocket Lab has now completed construction on the Photon transport spacecraft that the private company Varda has purchased to maneuver and then de-orbit its private returnable space capsule in which it plans to manufacture pharmaceuticals while in orbit and then return to Earth for sale.

Rocket Lab made the spacecraft at its Long Beach manufacturing site to provide power, communications, propulsion and attitude control to a capsule that will produce pharmaceutical products in microgravity. In addition to providing support during the in-space phase of Varda’s mission, the Photon will put Varda’s capsule carrying finished pharmaceuticals on a return trajectory to Earth.

This is the first of four Photon spacecraft that Varda has purchased from Rocket Lab. Varda appears to be attempting to continue the pharmaceutical work that McDonnell-Douglas did on the space shuttle, and was on the verge of flying a full-scale production mission for profit, when the Challenger accident occurred in 1986 and ended all further commercial work on the shuttle.

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Private company developing concept for resurrecting Spitzer Space Telescope

9:11 am

Using a $250K development contract from the Space Force, the small startup Rhea Space Activity hopes to develop a mission for resurrecting Spitzer Space Telescope, now several hundred million miles from Earth and out of operation for three years.

The “Spitzer Resurrector” mission would be a small spacecraft that could fit into a 1-meter-by-1-meter box and be ready to launch as soon as 2026, Usman said. It would then take about three years to cruise to the telescope, during which time the spacecraft will make observations of solar flaring. “We plan to be busy right from the start of the mission,” said Howard Smith, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, which is operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian, who is involved in the proposed rescue flight.

Once the resurrector spacecraft reaches the telescope, it would fly around at a distance of 50 to 100 km to characterize Spitzer’s health. Then it would attempt to establish communications with the telescope and begin to relay information back and forth between the ground and telescope. This would allow scientists to restart observations.

Essentially, the servicing satellite would act as a relay communications satellite, allowing Spitzer to resume doing the limited infrared observations it had been doing in the last eleven years of its life, after its coolant ran out.

The actual mission of course has not yet been funded, nor is Rhea much more than a startup, with only ten employees. The concept however illustrates the growing practicality of flying such missions. The number of servicing missions to defunct satellites is growing in leaps and bounds, and Rhea, as well as its other partners at the Smithsonian and the Applied Physics Laboratory, are simply using that knowledge for their own benefit.

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Italy awards $256 million contract for testing in-orbit robotic satellite servicing

8:59 am

The new colonial movement: The Italian Space Agency yesterday issued a $256 million contract to a partnership of several private European companies — most of which are Italian — to fly a mission testing a variety of in-orbit robotic satellite servicing capabilities.

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales of France and Leonardo of Italy, said the group is contracted to design, develop, and qualify a spacecraft capable of performing a range of autonomous robotic operations on satellites in low Earth orbit.

The company did not disclose details about these satellites or specifics about the mission, but said the servicer would have a dexterous robotic arm and test capabilities that include refueling, component repair or replacement, orbital transfer, and atmospheric reentry. The servicer will be launched with a target satellite, Thales Alenia Space spokesperson Cinzia Marcanio said, and both will be fitted with an interface for a refueling mission.

The partnership also includes the Italian companies Telespazio, Avio, and D-Orbit.

The significance of this deal is that Italy has gone outside the European Space Agency (ESA) to do it. For decades all European projects would be developed and flown through ESA. Italy appears to be have finally realized that it does not need that partnership, that in fact that partnership acts to hinder its own companies by requiring any mission to use companies from other nations. This deal instead keeps almost everything inside Italy.

We have seen a similar pattern in both Germany and the United Kingdom. The former has been working to encourage private German rocket companies, independent of ESA. The latter is doing the same in the UK, while also encouraging private British spaceports to launch those rockets.

These efforts strongly suggest that ESA’s monumental failure with the Ariane-6 — which is years late and will cost too much to fly — has been causing its member nations to rethink that partnership, and increasingly go it alone. ESA failed to provide them a competitive alternative for getting their payloads into orbit. They are now looking for ways to do it themselves.

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May 15, 2023 Quick space links

4:39 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

  • Several Mars images, here and here, from China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter

    • All are features at or near the Martian north pole.

 

 

 

  • Fifty years ago today Skylab was launched on the final Saturn-5 rocket

    • During the launch a side insulation panel was ripped off, destroying one of the station’s two main solar panels and also allowing the station’s temperature to rise to unmanageable levels. The other main solar panel meanwhile failed to deploy in orbit because of a strap. Astronauts led by moonwalker Pete Conrad did a series of spacewalks to free the stuck panel as well as install a new umbrella-like cover to bring the station’s temperature down to the correct levels. These successes made it possible for three crews total to occupy Skylab over the next two years.

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Glacial sinkhole in the Martian southern cratered highlands?

1:14 pm

Overview map

Glacial sinkhole in the Martian southern cratered highlands?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This is a terrain sample image, which means it was snapped not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. As usual, the camera team tried to pick something of interest, and I think they succeeded.

The two large depressions in the center of the picture do not resemble impact craters. They have no rim of ejected material and their shape is very distorted. Instead, both appear to be places where a top layer of ice/debris has sublimated away into gas, exposing a lower layer of glacial material that itself is sublimating away to form the bumpy mounds that fill the floor of the depressions.

The white dot inside the inset box on the overview map above marks this location, just south of the northern wall of a large 30-mile-wide canyon, with its northern floor even more depressed, as if the material in that raised middle a flat pile of glacial debris flowing to the southwest after leaving the gap in the crater to the northeast. An MRO context camera picture taken on January 6, 2016 gives a wider view, showing that there are a lot of these type depressions on the surface of this wide middle upraised floor, as well as some obvious impact craters.

This location is in the mid-latitude band where many glacial features are found. In this part of the southern cratered highlands there is also a lot of evidence of top layers sublimating away, as if the glacial material is a large buried ice sheet that is beginning to disappear at places where it has been exposed by impacts or shifting motion. The depression in the picture above appears to be an example.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Father gets fired immediately after speaking at school board against queer agenda

12:26 pm

Afraid and cowed by the queer movement
Afraid and cowed by the queer movement

They’re coming for you next: Immediately after Jason Brunt, a father of three boys in the public schools, gave a three minute speech at his local Sarasota School Board meeting, pleading for the school to provide his “straight” kids a safe space instead of harassing them for their preferred sexuality, queer activists began harassing his family and calling his employer with slanderous accusations, resulting in his immediate firing.

Mr. Brunt said that the attention he received turned into a living nightmare after radical progressive activists started harassing him and threatening his family, including homosexual acts toward his children. They even called his workplace with false accusations, which resulted in his immediate termination.

“However, the attention soon turned into a nightmare. Radical progressive activists began attacking me personally, sending me hate mail and threats. The situation only escalated when I began receiving phone calls at my job, making false allegations and defaming me to an obscene level. To my utter dismay, my employer decided to fire me effective immediately, citing the video as a reason for making people feel unsafe at work. It was devastating to lose a job I had worked so hard to obtain and succeed in,” Mr. Brunt said.

“As an HR professional, I am understanding and supportive of all people to express themselves as they see fit. However, it seems that today, if you disagree with the progressive ideology, you will be canceled and criminalized. It is not right that merely asking for equality and safe spaces for children like mine, I faced an all-out assault on my personal life,” he added.

So, what did this father say that was so egregious? Here is his speech:
» Read more

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NASA’s second super pressure balloon develops leak, forcing termination of mission

9:24 am

After only a day and a half after launch NASA’s second super pressure balloon, this time carrying a detector for studying cosmic rays, developed a leak that forced its controllers to terminate the mission.

The scientific balloon launched from Wānaka Airport, New Zealand, May 13, 12:02 p.m. NZST (May 12, 8:02 p.m EDT). The balloon was in flight for 1 day, 12 hours, and 53 minutes before termination over the Pacific Ocean May 14 at 12:54 UTC (8:54 a.m. EDT). The launch was the second and final for NASA’s 2023 New Zealand balloon launch campaign.

During flight, the SPB began experiencing a leak and teams attempted to troubleshot by dropping ballast to maintain the balloon’s altitude. The determination was made to safely terminate over the Pacific Ocean. NASA will investigate the cause of the anomaly.

Meanwhile, the first balloon, dubbed SuperBIT, continues to fly, presently on its fourth circumnavigation of Antarctic while its telescope takes high resolution images of celestial objects.

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Stratolaunch’s giant airplane Roc successfully completes first drop test of payload

9:16 am

On May 13, 2023 Stratolaunch’s giant airplane Roc took off with a Talon-0 engineering test vehicle attached to its fuselage and successfully released that test vehicle, completing the plane’s first drop test.

Saturday’s outing was the 11th flight test for Stratolaunch’s flying launch pad — a twin-fuselage, six-engine airplane with a record-setting 385-foot wingspan. The plane is nicknamed Roc in honor of a giant bird in Middle East mythology.

Roc carried the Talon-A separation test vehicle, known as TA-0, during three previous test flights. But this was the first time TA-0 was released from Roc’s center-wing pylon to fly free. The release took place during a four-hour, eight-minute flight that involved operations in Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Western Range, off California’s central coast.

With this success the company appears ready to fulfill its military contract to use its Talon-1 payloads to fly hypersonic flight tests.

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SpaceX launches another 56 Starlink satellites into orbit

10:57 pm

Using its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 7th and 8th flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

31 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 35 to 17 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 35 to 29. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including other American companies, only 31 to 33 in launches this year.

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Another study suggests Saturn’s rings are young, much younger than the planet

5:59 pm

Scientists using data from Cassini, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, have confirmed earlier research that said Saturn’s rings are much younger than the planet, only about 400 million years old.

From 2004 to 2017, the team used an instrument called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer aboard NASA’s late Cassini spacecraft to analyze specks of dust flying around Saturn. Over those 13 years, the researchers collected just 163 grains that had originated from beyond the planet’s close neighborhood. But it was enough. Based on their calculations, Saturn’s rings have likely been gathering dust for only a few hundred million years.

Though I cannot cite the earlier research, I distinctly remember a study from about a decade ago that posited the rings being young, only a few hundred million years old. This research confirms this conclusion, and likely firms up the theory considerably.

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Intuitive Machines’ first mission to land on Moon delayed

5:52 pm

Intuitive Machines officials revealed during their quarterly report that the first mission of its Nova-C lunar lander has been delayed from June to late August or September.

The company announced in February plans for a June landing at Malapert A, a crater near the south pole of the moon. That date was a slip from a previously scheduled March launch, which the company said was linked to NASA’s decision to move the landing site to Malapert A.

Altemus said the company made “significant progress” in testing of the lander in recent months, such as structural tests to confirm the vehicle could handle the stresses of launch and cryogenic tanking demonstrations. “We have some functional testing” still to do on the lander, he said, but did not elaborate on the nature of those tests or their schedule ahead of shipping to Cape Canaveral for its Falcon 9 launch.

Two private companies have so far attempted and failed to land on the Moon, Israel’s SpaceIL and Japan’s Ispace. Two American companies, Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic, are both racing to achieve this goal in the coming months. This delay now puts Astrobotic in the lead, with its launch now targeting the summer.

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Engineers free stuck radar antenna on Juice probe to Jupiter’s big moons

4:24 pm

Engineers have successfully freed the 52-foot wide radar antenna on the Juice probe to Jupiter, shaking it enough to release a pin that was blocking deployment.

The pin was freed by employing “back-to-back jolts”. Imagine when you roll your car back and forth to get it freed from mud or snow. It appears this is what they did with the pin.

Juice will arrive in Jupiter orbit in 2031, where it will make numerous fly-bys of Europa, Calisto, and Ganymede, and then settle into an orbit around Ganymede alone. The radar antenna was essential for probing the ice content of these worlds, below the surface.

Hat tip to reader Mike Nelson.

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May 12, 2023 Quick space links

3:56 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

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