The splatter surrounding a mid-latitude Martian crater

12:26 pm

A channel in the splatter of a Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 12, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists simply label as “Northern Mid-latitude Terrain”.

I have focused in on that meandering channel and the landscape around it. On Earth we would assume that channel marks the drainage of a river or stream, possibly also shaped by a glacier at some point because of its U-shaped profile. This guess is strengthened by the elevation data from MRO, which shows the channel descending to the southwest about 440 feet along its 2.2 mile length.

The channel and the eroded look of the surrounding terrain suggests strongly the presence of near-surface ice at this location, which is not unreasonable based on its 32 degree north latitude. The wider look below only adds further strength to this hypothesis, but also adds a lot more details explaining the genesis of this strange landscape.
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Webb takes infrared image of Supernova SN1987A

10:04 am

Annotated infrared image from Webb
Click for original image.

The Webb Space Telescope has taken its first infrared image of Supernova SN1987A, the closest supernova to Earth in five centuries at a distance of 168,000 light years away in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud.

The annotated image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows that supernova remnant as Webb sees it. Most of the structures identified here have been observed now for decades as the material from the explosion has been expanding outward. However,

While these structures have been observed to varying degrees
by NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and Chandra X-ray Observatory, the unparalleled sensitivity and spatial resolution of Webb revealed a new feature in this supernova remnant – small crescent-like structures. These crescents are thought to be a part of the outer layers of gas shot out from the supernova explosion. Their brightness may be an indication of limb brightening, an optical phenomenon that results from viewing the expanding material in three dimensions. In other words, our viewing angle makes it appear that there is more material in these two crescents than there actually may be. [emphasis mine]

I highlight that one word because it is unnecessary, and is only inserted to punch up Webb’s abilities for public relations purposes. Moreover, the rest of the text of the full press release at the link is even worse. It provides little information about the evolution of this supernova since its discovery more than three decades ago, but instead waxes poetic again and again about how wonderful Webb is.

Though Webb certainly has much higher resolution than the earlier infrared space telescope Spitzer and can do far more, this tendency of NASA press releases to use these superlatives only devalues Webb. The images themselves sell the telescope. No need to oversell it in the text.

Meanwhile, the significance of SN 1987A is not explained. Since the development of the telescope by Galileo in the early 1600s, there has been no supernova inside the Milky Way. SN 1987A has been the closest, so it has been photographed repeatedly in multiple wavelengths to track the evolution of the explosion’s ejecta. Webb now gives us a better look in the infrared, though in truth the small amount of new details is actually somewhat disappointing.

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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

Firefly notifies Space Force that it is ready to launch military payload at a moment’s notice

9:39 am

As part of a military program to improve the speed of launching payloads, Firefly and its payload provider Millennium have now notified the Space Force that both are ready to launch a satellite any time in the next six months, and do so fast.

Although this mission has been promoted as a 24-hour call-up, it is being planned in multiple stages and the companies have spent months rehearsing and preparing. The intent of the demonstration is to help the Space Force and the space industry contractors figure out processes to accelerate the planning and execution of national security missions.

Firefly and Millennium are now officially in a six-month “hot standby phase.” At any point during that time the Space Force will give the companies an alert notification, kicking off a 60-hour window to transport the payload to Firefly’s launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. conduct fueling operations and integrate it with the Alpha rocket’s payload adapter.

Space Force officials will then issue Firefly a launch notice with the final orbit requirements. Firefly will then have 24 hours to update the trajectory and guidance software, encapsulate the payload, transport it to the pad, mate to Alpha, and stand ready to launch at the first available window.

It appears that SpaceX has already done a similar thing with a fast classified launch several years ago, announcing the contract award and launching a classified payload within weeks. This new test is likely to show Firefly’s ability to do the same.

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Vikram takes movie of Pragyan rover as it roves

9:30 am

Pragyan as seen by Vikram
Click for movie.

Using one of Vikram’s lander cameras, engineers have produced a short movie of India’s Pragyan rover as it rotated to avoid a small crater about ten feet ahead.

The picture to the right is from that 16-second movie, near its end. It appears that the engineers operating Pragyan were unhappy with almost any route ahead from its present position, as they rotated Pragyan almost 360 degrees, and even attempted forward motion at one point and then resumed rotation.

It is not clear if any of the craters visible in this picture are the crater that caused the detour. The movie however does provide a sense of scale. Pragyan is small, but it is able to maneuver easily using its six wheels.

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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.

Soviet satellite from 1991 breaks up

9:14 am

Ground observations have detected the break up of a Soviet satellite launched in 1991, resulting in at least seven pieces of debris.

Another possible orbital impact event: 7 debris objects cataloged from a defunct Soviet communications satellite launched in 1991. Debris appears to be from either Kosmos-2143 or Kosmos-2145, two of 8 Strela-1M sats launched on the same rocket.

Though the report speculates the break-up was caused by an impact, that is not certain. Moreover, though this increases the amount of space junk, don’t be triggered by reports of disaster. The pieces are likely all flying in about the same orbit close together, which means they do not increase the actual danger from them by much. That orbit has caused no issues from this satellite for more than three decades.

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China’s Long March 2D launches 3 satellites

8:55 am

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

The state-run press provided no other information, including whether the rocket’s lower stages crashed near habitable areas. According to the flight path, the crash zones were near major population centers, including one city with a population of nine million.

SpaceX meanwhile scrubbed a Falcon 9 launch this morning at Vandenberg due to an issue with one first stage engine, but it is still scheduled to launch 22 Starlink satellites this afternoon from Cape Canaveral. The live stream is here.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

59 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 68 to 38. It also leads the entire world combined, 68 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 59 to 61 in successful launches.

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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

August 30, 2023 Quick space links

3:46 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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The utter ignorance of modern educators on proud display the last two days in Colorado

3:32 pm

Jaiden and school official
Click to watch the video

In the last few days a story about a 12-year-old boy who was banned from classes because he had a Gadsden flag sticker on his backpack has gone viral, with the school, The Vanguard School, forced to cancel its parents night because of the outrage.

School officials had claimed that the Gadsden flag was not allowed at the school because it had “its origins in slavery and the slave trade,” a false statement of such utter ignorance of American history it leaves anyone with any education breathless with astonishment. The picture to the right shows the student Jaiden reacting in bemused disbelief at the moment that school official (in the background) made this absurd claim. He clearly knows more about American history than this brainless school official.

Not surprisingly, the uproar quickly caused the school’s board of directors to call an emergency meeting in which they backed down, especially as Jaiden had said he intended to continue to come to classes with the sticker on his pack, and would even do a sit-in if they dared try to kick him out again.

My purpose in mentioning this story however is to show how it illustrates so completely the bankruptcy of our education system today. Educators simply do not know American history, even though they are the people we expect to teach it. And when that ignorance is discovered, as in this case, they can’t just admit error and apologize, they have to equivocate and add more lies to their foolishness.
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Reviewing a book blacklisted by Amazon because it dared say things Amazon doesn’t like

1:35 pm

The Plague of Models, blacklisted by Amazon
The Plague of Models, blacklisted by Amazon

They’re coming for you next: Last week I posted an essay on the over-use and misuse of computer modeling in today’s scientific community, focused specifically on the unreliability of all climate models to successfully predict any actual climate trends.

One of the individuals who read my essay, Kenneth Green, immediately commented here on Behind the Black to note that he had just published a book on this very subject, entitled The Plague of Models: How Computer Modeling Corrupted Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations, describing how the misuse of models has resulted in the proliferation of government regulations based not on actual data but on computer models that in many ways are nothing more than the opinions of the computer programs.

Green also noted that Amazon has refused to make his book available for sale, essentially banning it for no justifiable reason. As he explained to me in an email,

My publisher, who is a start-up small Canadian publisher specializing in public policy books, tried to upload The Plague of Models to Amazon, as he had previously done with half a dozen other books while working at previous institutions as in-house publisher.

This time, unlike his previous experiences, the book was taken down shortly after it was uploaded (and we know the upload process worked, since the book was available briefly for preview, so there was no technical issue with the manuscript file). The publisher got a form-letter email saying that the book had been taken down because it may have violated some (non-specific) Amazon Term of Service. When he sent a note back requesting clarification/appeal, he got another form letter, this one repeating that the book may have violated some term of service, and warning that any attempt to re-upload would get his entire account terminated.
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Buried ridges at the bottom of a Martian abyss

11:03 am

Buried ridges in a Martian abyss
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image could be labeled a “What the heck?!” photo, as the origin of its most distinct feature is utterly baffling. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what look like a collection of meandering ridges peeking out from a terrain covered by thick dust.

The scientists label this dust-covered ground, as well as the ripple dunes to the south in the full image, “sand sheets.” Without question, the ground here seems to resemble a Sahara-like terrain. It is utterly featureless, other than the few bedrock features that poke up out of that sand. In the full image some peaks stick out, but it the meandering ridges in this section that are most intriguing. They are reminiscent of rimstone dams in caves, but what formed them remains baffling, since cave rimstone dams are formed by the interaction of limestone and water, and there is absolutely no evidence of any near surface ice at this location in the dry equatorial regions of Mars.

All the ridges signify is a buried terrain formed in some inexplicable way.
» Read more

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Scientists believe they have recovered the first known interstellar meteorite

8:52 am

A scientific expedition in the Pacific off the coast of Papua New Guinea has found what it thinks are spherules from the first known interstellar meteorite that hit the Earth on January 8, 2014 and dubbed IM1. From their preprint paper [pdf]:

On 8 January 2014 US government satellite sensors detected three atmospheric detonations in rapid succession about 84 km north of Manus Island, outside the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea (20 km). Analysis of the trajectory suggested an interstellar origin of the causative object CNEOS 2014-01-08: an arrival velocity relative to Earth in excess of ∼ 45 km s−1, and a vector tracked back to outside the plane of the ecliptic. The object’s speed relative to the Local Standard of Rest of the Milky-Way galaxy, ∼ 60 km s−1, was higher than 95% of the stars in the Sun’s vicinity.

In 2022 the US Space Command issued a formal letter to NASA certifying a 99.999% likelihood that the object was interstellar in origin.

Using a “magnetic sled” that they dragged across the seafloor, the scientists collected about 700 spherules thought to come from the meteorite, of which 57 have been analyzed and found to have properties that confirm their interstellar origin. As they note in their paper, “The spherules with enrichment of beryllium (Be), lanthanum (La) and uranium (U), labeled “BeLaU”, appear to have an exotic composition different from other solar system materials.”

The “BeLaU” elemental abundance pattern does not match terrestrial alloys, fallout from nuclear explosions, magma ocean abundances of Earth, its Moon or Mars or other natural meteorites in the solar system. This supports the interstellar origin of IM1 independently of the measurement of its high speed, as reported in the CNEOS catalog and confirmed by the US Space Command.

Based on the sparse data, the scientists speculate that these spherules could have come from the crust of an exoplanet, the core collapse of a supernova, the merger of two neutron stars, and even possibly “an extraterrestrial technological origin.” They have no idea, but all these are among the possibilities.

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Starlink makes deal with Japanese cell phone company

8:33 am

SpaceX has now partnered with the Japanese cell phone company KDDI to provide satellite-to-cellular service in remote areas of Japan that do not have good cell tower service.

The companies plan to start with SMS text services as early as 2024 and will eventually provide voice and data services. Almost all existing smartphones on KDDI network will be compatible with this new service as it employs the device’s existing radio services.

Since Starlink now has more than 5,000 satellites in orbit, it can offer its services to a wider ranger of customers worldwide, and has been slowly signing them up, from country to country.

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Pragyan snaps first pictures of Vikram sitting on the Moon

8:28 am

Vikram as seen by Pragyan
Click for original image.

India’s space agency ISRO has released the first two pictures from the Pragyan rover showing the Vikram lander that bought both to the Moon safely.

The picture to the right is the close-up image, which shows two of Vikram’s science instruments. CHASTE is a probe that has been measuring the temperature of the Moon’s regolith at this spot, while ILSA is a seismometer for measuring the seismicity around the landing site.

Both spacecraft have been on the lunar surface now for one week, which means they are both halfway through their nominal two-week mission that lasts until lunar sunset, occurring on September 4th. Neither were designed to survive the 14-day-long lunar night, though engineers will attempt to kept both alive.

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August 29, 2023 Quick space links

3:38 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pushback: Court rules against East Lansing’s attempt to blacklist Christian for following his beliefs

1:38 pm

Country Mills Farms-banned!
The Tennes are a normal family! We must blacklist them!

They’re coming for you next: Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on a August 2021 post, and is a victory, of a sort. As I reported then, after farmer Steve Tennes (shown to the right with his family) made the egregious error of stating his strongly held Christian belief that marriage is for a man and a woman only, and he would only rent his farm for such marriages, and not same-sex marriages, the city government of East Lansing decided to specifically write rules that would ban his farm from participating in its local farmer’s market.

The ban against their business, Country Mill Farms, was begun in 2016. Though a court quickly ruled that it was unconstitutional, the city renewed the ban in 2018 and has maintained it since, claiming the court’s ruling only applied to the 2017 season.

The logic of the East Lansing government is actually quite blatent: It believes it has the right to dictate what others can or cannot say in public, the first amendment be damned.

The city’s new rules quite clearly stated it was illegal for anyone to “make a statement which indicates that an individual’s patronage or presence at a place of public accommodation is unwelcome or unacceptable because of sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.” You essentially had to agree to its queer agenda policies in all things, even if you were not in East Lansing or were doing business in a farm many miles away. And you better not express any dissent to those policies either!
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Update on the ongoing research of the closest supernovae in a decade

12:47 pm

Gemini North image of supernova in Pinwheel Galaxy
Click for original image, taken by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii.

Link here. Though the press release from UC-Berkeley focuses mostly of research being done by its astronomers, it also provides a very good overview of what all astronomers worldwide have been learning since Supernova SN 2023ixf was first discovered by amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki in Japan on May 19, 2023 in the Pinwheel Galaxy, only 20 million light years away. This tidbit is probably the most significant:

Another group of astronomers led by Ryan Chornock, a UC Berkeley adjunct associate professor of astronomy, gathered spectroscopic data using the same telescope at Lick Observatory. Graduate student Wynn Jacobson-Galán and professor Raffaella Margutti analyzed the data to reconstruct the pre- and post-explosion history of the star, and found evidence that it had shed gas for the previous three to six years before collapsing and exploding. The amount of gas shed or ejected before the explosion could have been 5% of its total mass — enough to create a dense cloud of material through which the supernova ejecta had to plow.

Such data is going to help astronomers better predict when a star is about to go boom, by identifying similar behavior.

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The prevailing winds in Mars’ volcano country

12:35 pm

The prevailing winds in Mars' volcano country
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is actual one new picture and four past images, which taken together reveal something about the larger wind patterns on Mars. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows a tiny wind-swept section of the giant volcanic ash field dubbed the Medusae Fossae Formation, about the size of the subcontinent of India and thought to be source of most of the dust on Mars.

The innumerable parallel thin ridges here all suggest that the prevailing winds blow from the southeast to the northwest. As they blow, the scour the surface ash out, and sometimes reveal the underlying bedrock, which here shows up as those small peaks and a handful of northeast-to-southwest trending larger ridges. Note too that the picture shown is only a small section of the full image, which shows that this landscape continues for a considerable distance in all directions.
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InSight team releases a global map of Mars’ seismic zones

10:03 am

Global map of quakes on Mars
Click for original image.

In a new paper that reviewed the entire archive of Mars quakes detected by the seismometer on InSight during its four years of operation on the Martian surface from 2018 to 2022, scientists have now released an updated global map showing the regions on Mars where seismic activity is most common. From the abstract:

Seismicity on Mars occurs mostly along or north of the boundary between the southern highlands and northern lowlands. Valles Marineris is seismically more active than previous catalogs of located events imply. Further, we show evidence that two events likely originate from the Olympus Mons region.

The map to the right is figure 6 from the paper, and shows clearly the sum total of InSight’s data. The yellow triangle marks InSight’s landing spot. The red line delineates the distant quakes from the nearby quakes detected by InSight. The green line is what the scientists identify as the border between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands. The data suggests that transition point could be linked geologically in some manner to the quakes themselves.

Though the majority of the detected quakes were in the Cerberus Fossae region, the data also suggests two other seismic active regions, one under the giant canyon Valles Marineris and the other south of Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

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Boom begins taxi tests of a one-third scale prototype of its proposed supersonic passenger plane

9:35 am

Three years after it first unveiled the XB-1 prototype of its proposed supersonic passenger plane, Boom Supersonic is finally about to begin taxi tests.

At the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave in California, Boom has been conducting ground tests of its one-third scale XB-1 prototype supersonic jet as part of its project to develop its Overture supersonic airliner. The latest round has included taxi tests in the run up to its maiden flight.

In addition to the tests, the FAA has granted the XB-1 an experimental airworthiness certificate that will allow the test aircraft to make its first flight with Chief Test Pilot Bill “Doc” Shoemaker and Test Pilot Tristan “Gepetto” Brandenburg at the controls. Along with simulator work, the pilots are practicing with a T-38 trainer that will also act as a chase plane during the flight tests.

When the prototype was first unveiled in 2020 — after several years delay — the company said it planned to begin flight tests in 2021, with the full scale jet flying by 2024. The project has clearly been delayed since then. At the same time, the company has already gotten contracts and financial support from a number of major airlines, including United and Japan Airlines.

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NASA reveals three year delay in its New Frontiers planetary mission program

9:21 am

NASA last week revealed that because of “budget uncertainty” it will not begin accepting project proposals in its New Frontiers planetary mission program this fall as planned, and will in fact not begin accepting new proposals until 2026.

At a NASA SMD town hall meeting July 27, Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, warned a potential extended delay in the release of the New Frontiers AO. “If the planetary science funding levels that are anticipated as a result of this tight budget environment are actually realized over the next two or so years,” she said, “it is unlikely we’ll be able to solicit New Frontiers perhaps not before 2026.” That delay was made official with the release of the community announcement.

The draft AO sought proposals for missions on six topics, as recommended by the planetary science decadal survey in 2011: a comet surface sample return, a mission to Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, a lunar geophysical network, a sample return mission to the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin, a mission to characterize the potential habitability of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and a probe of Saturn’s atmosphere.

The New Frontiers program previously funded the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission to Bennu.

The article at the first link above as well as the NASA officials quoted attempt falsely to blame the budget problems on the Republican House leadership, which insisted that the committee which reviews the NASA budget as well as the budgets of Justice and Commerce cut 28.8% from among those agencies in its 2024 budget review. That committee (as well as the Senate) however was very generous to NASA, essentially giving it the same budget as previously, with only a 1% cut, while slashing budgets for departments in Justice and Commerce to make up the difference.

The real blame for this delay in NASA’s planetary program almost certainly falls on the Mars Sample Return mission, which has seen gigantic budget overruns that are apparently swallowing the entire future planetary program. NASA’s planetary budget can’t pay for any other new planetary missions as long as it must pay for the cost overruns for the sample return mission.

This is no surprise, as we’ve seen this movie before. When Webb’s budget ballooned 20x, from its proposed $500 million to $10 billion, it essentially shut down the rest of NASA’s astrophysics program, delaying or cancelling all other space telescope projects for more than a decade. Now the planetary program is experiencing its own version of this same pain.

The problem is the Mars Sample Return mission itself. Its design has been haphazard and sloppy and constantly changing. It is also reliant on older technology ideas that will soon be made obsolete by Starship/Superheavy. NASA would be wiser to delay that project to await the development of the launch capabilities that will make it cost effective, and let a fleet of other missions happen instead.

I guarantee however that NASA won’t do that, because it will require some boldness. The philosophy in Washington remains the same: Do the same failed thing over and over again in the vain hope it might work next time.

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August 28, 2023 Quick space links

3:42 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

Jay also notes that China’s X feeds “have been quiet for the last two months on the technology fronts. They have been retweeting a lot of their old stories, especially now with Chandrayaan-3 landing, they are showing Yutu-2 pictures and videos,” which suggests to Jay something is impacting China’s pseudo companies. Possibly they are feeling the larger economic crunch that China is presently experiencing.

I also wonder if this is related to the way China’s state-run press purposely avoided mentioning the name of Galactic Energy in reporting its last two successful launches. Have the ChiCons decided its success meant it will soon be time to grab it? If so, this in turn will put a scare into all these pseudo-companies, which would certainly crimp their ability to function enthusiastically.

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Bank of America blacklists Christian nonprofit for what appears to be political reasons

12:38 pm

Bank of America-eager to blacklist

They’re coming for you next: Despite operating two different bank accounts without problems since 2015, Bank of America suddenly shut down the bank accounts of the Christian charitable non-profit Indigenous Advanced Ministries in April 2023, with the bank’s letters announcing the shut down [pdf] exceedingly vague but suggesting that politics played a part.

The initial letters gave no specific reason for the closures, only stating that “upon review of your account(s), we have determined you’re operating in a business type we have chosen not to service at Bank of America.” A later letter said, without explanation, that Indigenous Advance “no longer aligns with the bank’s risk tolerance.” The nonprofit does not advocate for any political causes and has maintained the same mission since it first opened its account with Bank of America.

Officials of the non-profit suspect hostility to its mission was the reason for the cancellations, however, and they have filed a consumer complaint [pdf] against Bank of America with Tennessee’s attorney general, demanding an investigation and noting that the sudden nature of the bank’s action caused a great deal of disruption and the non-profit.
» Read more

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Residue ice in southern mid-latitude Martian crater?

11:16 am

Residue ice in the southern mid-latitudes of Mars?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an unnamed 1.2-mile-wide crater at about 35 degrees south latitude with what appears to be residual glacial ice hugging its north interior wall.

As this is in the southern hemisphere, the ground immediately below the south-facing interior wall of the crater is going to be in shadow the most, and thus it will also be the place where any surface or near-surface ice will survive the longest. In this case it appears that from the bumpy nature of that residual ice it has also been sublimating away. Within it however remains the faint hint of multiple layers, suggesting about a dozen past climate cycles with each new cycle producing a new but smaller layer with less ice.

The material in the southern half of the crater floor appears to be dust formed into ripple dunes.
» Read more

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Vikram finds temperatures of lunar soil varies significantly, depending on depth

9:17 am

Temperature range of soil at Vikram landing site

Based on data from one of the instruments on India’s lunar lander Vikram, scientists have found that the temperatures of the lunar soil at the landing site vary significantly, depending on depth. The temperature dropped from 55 degrees Celsuis to -10 degrees Celsuis when going from about 10 millimeters above the surface to about 82 millimeters below the surface, as shown in the graph to the right.

That’s equivalent from going from a summer day in Death Valley of 131 degrees Fahrenheit to a winter day in Minnesota of 14 degrees Fahrenheit, in a distance of only about 3.5 inches. While it was expected that there would a temperature drop, it appears the quick temperature drop just below the surface was faster than expected.

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JAXA scrubs launch of X-Ray telescope & SLIM lunar lander due to high winds

8:57 am

SLIM's landing zone
Click for interactive map.

Because of high winds, Japan’s space agency JAXA yesterday scrubbed the last launch of its H2A rocket, carrying the XRISM X-Ray telescope and the SLIM lunar lander.

A nice description of both payloads can be found here. XRISM is a simplified reflight of the Hitomi X-Ray telescope that failed immediately after launch in 2016.

Though SLIM carries a camera and two secondary payloads, both designed to hop along on the surface and obtain some data, its main mission is engineering, testing whether a robotic spacecraft can achieve a precision landing with a target zone of 100 meters, or 310 feet. The map to the right shows SLIM’s landing site, with the white dot in the close-up inset a rough approximation of that entire target zone. If successful this technology will make it possible to put unmanned planetary probes in places previously thought too dangerous or rough.

All three craft are designed to operate for only about fourteen days, during the daylight hours of the 28-Earth-day-long lunar day.

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Update on ESA’s much delayed Space Rider X-37B copy

10:34 am

Link here. Space Rider is essentially aiming to be another re-usable mini-shuttle like the X-37B and the unnamed classified version from China. While all three are government-owned and government-run, the X-37B and China’s both were built expressly to do military classified missions. There has been no effort in either case to make them available for commercial flights.

The European Space Agency (ESA) however is developing Space Rider instead for commercial customers. It also appears the government-owned and government-run nature of Space Rider is one of the main reasons it will not fly its maiden mission this year, and won’t fly until late 2025, at the earliest.

“As an outcome of the previous ministerial council of 2019, the Space Rider received quite significant financial support to cope with Phase C and D activities. However, the participating states contributed in a way that was not possible — due to the need to comply with the Geo-return mechanism — to keep the industrial consortium as it was operating up to that moment [end-2019],” Galli said.

ESA’s Geo-return mechanism was established to boost fairness among member states, ensuring that the nations that invest in the agency will generate a “fair return.” In a nutshell, participating states in an optional development program should receive industrial contracts in a proportional way with respect to their contribution to that program to ensure that money invested benefits the countries that actually contributed to that program. That is to say for example, if you put 30% of the funds into the program, you are expected to receive as close as possible to industrial contracts accounting for 30% of the overall program.

As the program must abide by the Geo-return mechanism, Galli explained that the initial consortium involved was required to significantly be rebuilt “in compliance with the available funds and their member state relevant origin. … This caused first a not negligible delay in setting up the new industrial consortium… that was finally concluded only in late 2020 with the signature of the new contract with the prime contractors. And then, a so-called bridging design phase was needed on the subsystems affected by the change of industrial supplier, resulting in a longer-than-expected completion of the design phase.

In other words, Space Rider can’t just sell payload space to anyone. Only private businesses in those nations who help finance it can bid, and the customers don’t match well with the ESA’s nations that had been doling up the money. The consequence apparently has been a lot of complex negotiations and jury-rigging to make the two match, all of which has nothing to do with producing a viable product that makes money.

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