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FCC votes to create its own space bureaucracy, despite lacking statutory authority

9:55 am

On January 9, 2023 the commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission FCC voted [pdf] to create its own space bureaucracy designed to regulate the lifespan of new satellites, despite lacking legal authority to do so.

As noted almost as an aside by this news article,

In order for the planned changes to go into effect, the FCC will first have to obtain congressional approval for the reorganization and place a notice in the Federal Register.

This vote pushed forward the plan announced in November that attempts to expand the regulatory power of the FCC beyond its legal authority. Expect Congress to push back somewhat, but right now most power in Washington is held by unelected bureaucracies like the FCC, not the elected legislators as defined by the Constitution. The FCC will continue to push hard, and mostly win in this power game. Congress right now is too divided and weak to fight back.

The result will be new regulations on satellite construction made by non-engineers and paper-pushers in the FCC, not engineers and managers in the companies actually building the satellites.

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Construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii remains in limbo

9:33 am

Despite the successful power grab by protesters that stopped construction and took management of the telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii away from the University of Hawaii and gave it to a newly created board made up of “observatory representatives, Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners, local business and education officials, and experts in land management,” construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii remains in limbo.

But there is another actor in this drama: the National Science Foundation (NSF). TMT has accrued substantial financial backing from its university backers and the governments of China, Japan, India, and Canada, but it is still far from fully funded and has asked NSF to fill the gap. TMT’s request has come in partnership with the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), another U.S.-led effort to build a massive new telescope. GMT’s site is already being prepared in Chile but it is also in financial straits.

Together, the two projects are seeking $3 billion from NSF in exchange for the wider U.S. astronomical community gaining access to a large slice of both scopes’ observing time. That proposal was judged by U.S. astronomers as their top priority for ground-based astronomy in the community’s decadal survey published in November 2021. NSF is now assessing whether this is a good investment for U.S. taxpayers.

Considering that Congress now believes that money grows on trees, and there is no reason not to fund anything anyone wants no matter how much debt it produces, I expect that the NSF will eventually fund both telescopes. There is however the slim possibility that the NSF will look at the new and very complex managerial make-up now running things in Hawaii and decide it is impractical and guaranteed to produce problems. The goals of the different members of this board are so contradictory that any construction on Mauna Kea will likely have to be renegotiated over and over again, causing further delays.

Of course, endless funding and delays could be considered a feature, not a bug, by our present corrupt federal government. In that case the NSF will celebrate these delays.

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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

Lunar Flashlight cubesat in trouble

9:18 am

The mission of NASA’s test cubesat Lunar Flashlight is now threatened because of a problem with its experimental thrusters that use what the agency labels a new “green” propellant.

The spacecraft, called Lunar Flashlight, launched last month on a mission to seek out water ice on the moon. The probe was also expected to test a new “green” propellant during its four-month voyage to the moon, but its thrusters have a problem, NASA said on Thursday (Jan. 12). “While the smallsat is largely healthy and communicating with NASA’s Deep Space Network, the mission operations team has discovered that three of its four thrusters are underperforming,” NASA wrote in an update. “Based on ground testing, the team thinks that the underperformance might be caused by obstructions in the fuel lines that may be limiting the propellant flow to the thrusters.”

Engineers are now devising a plan to fire the thrusters longer and more frequently to make up for the lower thrust. If successful, the cubesat will enter its planned lunar orbit in about four months, where it will use infrared lasers to search for ice in the permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles while testing a variety of other new technologies.

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China completes two launches today

9:07 am

China today continued its normal fast pace of winter launches, launching twice from two different spaceports.

First, a Long March 2C rocket launched a communications satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest Sichuan Province. Then, a Long March 2D rocket launched three classified technology test satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

As I noted in yesterday’s quick space links, the drop zones for both were in China. No word as yet on whether anything fell near habitable area.

At present the 2023 launch race consists entirely of China with four launches, and SpaceX with two.

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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.

January 12, 2023 Quick space links

3:34 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • Sierra Space shows off Dream Chaser mock up

    • This is just empty PR. Sierra Space is taking forever to build Tenacity, the first cargo version of its proposed Dream Chaser fleet. In fact, its pace rivals Blue Origin for slowness and non-achievement.

 

 

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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

The modern American blacklist culture is wide and deep, and will require a lot of dredging to clear

1:43 pm

What some conservatives are going to have to face to bring liberty back to America
What some conservatives are going to have to face
to bring liberty back to America

A wise man once said that to beat your enemy you need to know him better than he knows himself. It is to this purpose I write this essay.

Even now, with blacklisting, censorship, and intolerance against dissent the normal standard held by our leftist elitist intellectual class, conservatives still assume naturally that anyone they meet anywhere, whether on the street, at their job, or among their family, are old-fashioned freedom-loving Americans who — whether they are Republicans or Democrats — will stand together for liberty wherever tyrants strike.

This assumption is 100% wrong, and it is why conservatives have been so steadily losing ground in the battle for freedom for decades. Blacklisting is now acceptable to a large percentage of Americans on the left. Censorship and violence against their opponents is okay, and is actually considered the right thing to do for many ordinary Democrats.

Just yesterday the Democrats themselves in Congress proved this point. When faced with a bill that simply condemned the more than hundred violent attacks against “pro-life facilities, groups, and churches” since the May 2, 2022 leak of the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v Wade, 208 out of 211 Democrats voted against it.

The bill did not support the banning of abortion. All it demanded that Congress:
» Read more

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Racing above the clouds of Jupiter

11:28 am

Racing above the clouds of Jupiter
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo above, reduced in size to post here, was created from a raw Juno image by citizen scientist Kevin Gill. From his caption:

A low perspective over Jupiter’s North Polar Storms. Used imagery from the Juno spacecraft’s recent Perijove 47 to render a simulated view as if the viewer were only a few thousand kilometers above the clouds. Applied simulated altimetry, shadowing, and upper atmospheric transparency depth in Blender and Photoshop to render this.

To get some perspective on how large Jupiter is, the planet’s curve is about comparable to the same curve seen by astronauts of the Earth at a height of about 300 to 400 kilometers. In this image however we are about ten times higher.

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First exoplanet confirmed by Webb

10:23 am

Astronomers have used for the first time the Webb Space Telescope to confirm the existence of an exoplanet, previous noted in data from the orbiting TESS telescope.

Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter. The research team is led by Kevin Stevenson and Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, both of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The team chose to observe this target with Webb after carefully reviewing targets of interest from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which hinted at the planet’s existence. Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) captured the planet easily and clearly with only two transit observations.

The data is still preliminary, so more analysis is necessary to provide some information about the planet’s atmosphere.

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German rocket startup signs deal with UK spaceport

10:17 am

Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), a German rocket startup, has signed a deal with the SaxaVord spaceport in the Shetland Islands of Scotland to fly its first launch from there later this year.

Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has signed a multi-year deal with the SaxaVord spaceport, being built in Unst, for the first launch of its satellite-carrying rockets. After testing at the site in mid-2023, it hopes to launch to a 500km orbit by the end of the year.

Because of the failure of the Virgin Orbit launch from Cornwall earlier this week, the honor of being the first orbital launch from within the United Kingdom remains ungrabbed. Both SaxaVord and Spaceport Sutherland, also in Scotland but at a different location, are now competing for that honor. Both now have planned launches this year, assuming the Civil Aviation Authority of the UK can issue a permit in less than fifteen months.

Meanwhile, Rocket Factory is competing with two other German startups for the honor of being the first commercial private European rocket company to reach orbit.

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China is planning 60-plus launches in 2023

10:08 am

According to an article today in China’s state-run press, China is planning 60-plus launches in 2023, matching approximately its launch rate in 2022.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is expected to have more than 50 launches, and other Chinese space enterprises will have more than 10 launches.

If this number is accurate, it suggests a slowdown in activity by the many pseudo-companies that the Chinese government has allowed to form to compete for government and commercial business. Two years ago it appeared that these companies were launching at a faster rate, even many of those launches were failures.

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American camera snaps picture of shadowed floor of Shackleton crater

10:03 am

floor of Shackleton Crater
Click for original image.

Using ShadowCam, a NASA-funded camera designed to take high resolution images of the permanently shadowed regions on the Moon, scientists have snapped the first picture of shadowed floor of Shackleton crater.

That image, reduced to post here, is to the right. I have added some labels to clarify what we are seeing. The arrow points to a boulder track caused when the boulder rolled down the crater rim slope.

The camera will be used to image the moon’s permanently shadowed regions with a resolution of better than 6.6 feet (2 meters) per pixel

ShadowCam is one of six instruments on the South Korean lunar orbiter, Danuri, which is now in lunar orbit and beginning its science phase. This was therefore only a successful test image to make sure the camera was working as planned.

Though the area photographed was in shadow (otherwise it would have saturated ShadowCam’s sensitive camera), this first image appears to show no ice at the base of the crater. This simply could be that this part of the crater floor is not permanently shadowed, but gets illuminated enough to melt off any ice. Or it could be that no ice exists in these places. We need to wait and see.

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Russia and Europe negotiating return of rockets and satellites

9:44 am

Russia and Europe have begun negotiations concerning the return of the various rockets and satellites that were left stranded in both countries when Russia invaded the Ukraine and all cooperative international agreements between the two entities broke off.

[I]n January 2023, an industry source told RussianSpaceWeb.com that Arianespace representatives were exploring a potential deal with Roskosmos on the exchange of Soyuz rocket components stranded in French Guiana for a group of 36 OneWeb satellites stuck in Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after the aborted 14th launch for the Internet constellation. The satellites were held at the Russian-controlled facility in Kazakhstan per the order by Rogozin, but the newly appointed head of the Roskosmos State Corporation Yuri Borisov was reportedly opened to negotiations on their fate.

There are many obstacles blocking this deal, the biggest being the on going war itself. It will be necessary to engineers to both places to facilitate the return, and the war right now makes that difficult if not impossible.

Ironically, Russia is likely in more need of this deal than Europe. OneWeb of course wants its satellites back, but it can replace them. Russia it appears is having trouble building complex things like rockets, and needs these rockets and components to replace components it no longer can get in the west.

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Saudi Arabia withdraws from Moon Treaty

10:15 pm

On January 5, 2023, Saudi Arabia submitted its official withdrawal [pdf] from Moon Treaty, to be effective one year later.

The 1979 Moon Treaty is not the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which almost all space-faring nations have signed. The Moon Treaty has been signed by almost no one because its language literally forbids private ownership.

In a sense, the Artemis Accords, which Saudi Arabia recently signed, is in direct conflict with the Moon Treaty, and no nation can really honor both. The Artemis Accords were designed by the Trump administration to get around the less stringent restrictions on private enterprise imposed by the Outer Space Treaty. That it has encouraged the Saudis to leave the Moon Treaty, however, suggests that the Artemis Accords might eventually cause a major abandonment of the Outer Space Treaty as well. To withdraw from such treaties up until now has been considered taboo. Saudi Arabia might have broken that spell.

If so, this action by the Saudis could be the best news for the future exploration and settlement of the solar system that has occurred in years, even more significant than that first vertical landing of a Falcon 9 rocket. It might finally force a major revision in the Outer Space Treaty so that each nation’s laws can be applied to its own colonies.

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Astronomers discover more than 800 new supermassive black holes

3:54 pm

Using archival data from both the orbiting Chandra X-Ray telescope and the ground-based Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope (SDSS), astronomers have discovered more than 800 new supermassive black holes hidden in the center of galaxies.

By systematically combing through the deep Chandra Source Catalog and comparing to SDSS optical data, the researchers identified 817 XBONG candidates, more than ten times the number known before Chandra was in operation. Chandra’s sharp images, matching the quality of those from SDSS, and the large amount of data in the Chandra Source Catalog made it possible to detect this many XBONG candidates. Further study revealed that about half of these XBONGs represent a population of previously hidden black holes.

The key to this discovery is the use of telescopes observing in different wavelengths, X-rays with Chandra and optical with SDSS. Combined the data showed evidence of the hidden supermassive black holes.

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January 11, 2023 Quick space links

3:29 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

2 comments

A collapse on Mars

1:34 pm

A collapse on Mars
Click for full image.

The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on October 27, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The full photo was simply labeled as a “collapse feature”, and because it contained a few other sinks to the north beyond the top edge of this cropped picture, it is unclear if the scientists were referring to this sink in particular.

This sink is the most interesting however, because it really looks like something had sucked material out from below, causing the surface crust to fall downward, intact except for some cracks along the perimeter of the collapse.

The overview map below as always provides some context that might explain what we are seeing.
» Read more

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A new hotspot map of Io, based on Juno data

11:52 am

Hot spot map of Io
Click for original figure.

Scientists have compiled a new map of the many volcanic hotspots on the Jupiter moon Io, based on data obtained by Juno, including 23 spots previously undetected. From the paper’s abstract:

We mapped the hot spot distribution on Io’s surface by analyzing the images acquired by the JIRAM instrument onboard the Juno spacecraft. We identified 242 hot spots, including 23 not present in other catalogs. A large number of the new hot spots identified are in the polar regions, specifically in the northern hemisphere. The comparison between our work and the most recent and updated catalog reveals that JIRAM detected 82% of the most powerful hot spots previously identified and half of the intermediate-power hot spots, thus showing that these are still active. JIRAM detected 16 out of the 34 faint hot spots previously reported.

The map above is taken from figure 2 of the paper. The data, when compared to other earlier data, confirms that many of these hot spots are long-lived, and have been erupting now for decades.

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Ingenuity about to fly up onto the delta

10:21 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The engineering team that operates the helicopter Ingenuity on Mars announced today that the next flight, #39, will go about 456 feet and travel to the northeast.

The green dot on the map to the right shows Ingenuity’s present location. The yellow lines indicate the territory within which this flight will head. If successful it will be the first time the helicopter has left the floor of Jezero Crater, and moved uphill onto the delta that flowed into that crater sometime in the far past.

The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location. The dotted red line indicates its eventual planned route on that delta.

The engineers state that their flight goal is to “flight test new software”. This new software is supposed to allow Ingenuity to fly over rougher terrain. On the 38th flight, it proved its worth by not only flying over an area of rippled sand dunes, it landed between two.

This next flight, scheduled for sometime today, will be even more challenging, because the helicopter will have to fly upward above higher terrain.

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World View gets new lease from Pima County

9:54 am

Because the original lease was ruled unconstitutional under the Arizona state constitution, Pima County yesterday approved a new lease for the high altitude balloon company World View.

The original deal had the county build the building. World View would lease it for 20 years, guarantee employment of 400 people, and then buy the facility for $10 at the end of the lease. This was ruled unconstitutional.

Lesher said [the new lease] will give the county more flexibility and a safeguard when it comes to those terms and they’ll be able to base the appraisal price on a percentage of the fair market value. Another big change – the employee benchmark has been significantly lowered. In the original contract, World View was required to hire 400 workers, now that’s down to 125.

Until more details are provided, it is unclear what has changed to make the new deal acceptable to the courts. I suspect the big change is that World View will not have an option to buy for $10.

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TESS finds a second Earthsize planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star

9:37 am

TESS solar system

The orbiting survey telescope TESS has discovered a second Earthsize planet in a solar system of four exoplanets.

The graphic to the right, a screen capture from a short video provided by the press release, shows these four exoplanets. Planet D had previously been discovered. Planet E is the new discovery, and is thought to be 95% Earth’s mass and likely terrestrial in make-up. Both are near the inner edge of the habitable zone.

TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located around 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. In 2020, Gilbert and others announced the discovery of the Earth-size, habitable-zone planet d, which is on a 37-day orbit, along with two other worlds.

The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is about 90% Earth’s size and orbits the star every 10 days. TOI 700 c is over 2.5 times bigger than Earth and completes an orbit every 16 days. The planets are probably tidally locked, which means they spin only once per orbit such that one side always faces the star, just as one side of the Moon is always turned toward Earth.

This discovery only underlines the infinite possibilities and variables that exist for life on other worlds. These planets might be similar in mass to the Earth and get about the same heat/light energy from their sun, but the star is very different, their orbits are very different, and their environment is very different.

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Leaking Soyuz to return empty; Unmanned Soyuz to be launched to replace it

9:23 am

The Russians announced today the plan to deal with the leaking Soyuz capsule on ISS as well as provide transportation back to Earth for its three astronauts.

First, the damaged Soyuz will return empty to Earth. Second, the next Soyuz will be launched in February unmanned so that it can bring back all three astronauts. Their mission however will likely be extended. Instead of returning in March as planned, they will stay in orbit until September, when that capsule was originally going to return to Earth. If this happens, it means their flight will end up being about a full year long. For the American in that crew, Frank Rubio, this could mean he will set a new American record for the longest spaceflight.

The Russians also added these details about the puncture in the Soyuz, which is believed to have been caused by a meteor:

According to calculations, a hole in the instrument compartment of the spacecraft, observed with a camera of the American ISS Segment, could be caused by a one-millimeter particle striking the vehicle with a speed of around 7,000 meters per second. Borisov also said that a possibility of a manufacturing defect in the radiator system of Soyuz MS-22 had also been evaluated but had not been confirmed.

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ABL’s first launch attempt fails

9:14 am

The first launch of ABL’s RS1 rocket failed yesterday when the first stage engines shut down right after liftoff so that the rocket fell back onto the launchpad and exploded.

The company said in subsequent updates that the nine engines in its first stage shut down simultaneously after liftoff, causing the vehicle to fall back to the pad and explode. The company did not disclose when after liftoff the shutdown took place or the altitude the rocket reached. The explosion damaged the launch facility but no personnel were injured.

This rocket startup has raised several hundred million dollars, with its chief investor Lockheed Martin, which has also signed a contract for as many as 58 RS1 launches.

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Starlink and National Science Foundation sign deal coordinating spectrum use

9:10 pm

SpaceX and the National Science Foundation (NSF) today signed an agreement coordinating the use of radio spectrum so that Starlink satellites will not interfere with radio astronomy.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and SpaceX have finalized a radio spectrum coordination agreement to limit interference from the company’s Starlink satellites to radio astronomy assets operating between 10.6 and 10.7 GHz. The agreement, detailed in a statement released by NSF today, ensures that Starlink satellite network plans will meet international radio astronomy protection standards, and protect NSF-funded radio astronomy facilities, including the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the Green Bank Observatory (GBO).

This deal was part of a larger negotiation with the entire astronomy community to limit the problems caused to astronomy by the 3,000-plus Starlink satellites presently in orbit. These other actions include

…continuing to work to reduce the optical brightness of their satellites to 7th visual magnitude or fainter by physical design changes, attitude maneuvering, or other ideas to be developed; maintaining orbital elevations at ~700 km or lower; and providing orbital information publicly that astronomers can use for scheduling observations around satellite locations.

This agreement demonstrates again that SpaceX has tried hard to be a good citizen in this matter. It also illustrates once again that ground-based astronomical observations is becoming increasingly impractical. Astronomers have to go to space, and if Starship flies as SpaceX desires, the company will provide them a way to do it.

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January 10, 2023 Quick space links

5:11 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who probably has more energy than me at this time.

 

 

 

  • Virgin Orbit’s finances are really bad

    • The article essentially outlines the loss of revenue because the company could not launch in 2022, waiting for the UK bureaucrats to say yes. To stay afloat it borrowed lots of money, with the hope that revenues would begin pouring in with launches in 2023. That is now unlikely, at least for several months.

 

 

  • China’s CAS-Space shows off models of its future rockets

    • CAS-Space is a pseudo-company, supposedly private but really owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As Jay wrote, “Looks like they copied both SpaceX and Blue Origin.” I found the similarity to be shameless, especially with its manned capsule.

 

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China’s Mars orbiter and rover in trouble

8:37 am

Yesterday we reported a tweet from Scott Tilley that suggested engineers were having trouble establishing a communications link with China’s Mars orbiter Tienwen-1.

Today it appears that communications with China’s rover Zhurong have also not resumed following its winter hibernation from May until December.

The Post independently confirmed with two sources on Thursday that the rover should have resumed running by now, but no contact has been established.

Though Zhurong’s solar panels can be tilted to kick dust from them, during hibernation this is apparently not possible. Because the winter dust season this year was especially bad (killing InSight for example), it is possible that Zhurong experienced the same fate.

Zhurong had a 90 day mission, and instead lasted a year. Moreover, tt was never expected to survive a Martian winter. The achievement thus remains grand.

As for the Tienwen-1 orbiter, it would be a much bigger failure if communications cannot be re-established. China without question expected this orbiter to operate for years, even functioning as a communications link for later landers/rovers. Its loss will force a revision of later plans.

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SpaceX successfully launches 40 OneWeb satellites

10:02 pm

Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully placed 40 OneWeb satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This was only the second launch of this first stage, which landed successfully at Cape Canaveral. The rocket has now deployed all 40 satellites successfully, putting more than 80% of OneWeb’s constellation in orbit.

SpaceX had also planned a Starlink launch from Vandenberg in California tonight, but an hour before launch it was delayed until tomorrow.

At the moment only SpaceX and China have launched any satellites in 2023, and are both tied at 2 launches each.

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