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ESA commits more than $100 million to encouraging private space companies

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: The governmental officials representing all of the partners in the European Space Agency this week decided to commit $122 million to a program designed to encourage private independent and competing space companies.

This budget represented a 17% increase.

The ScaleUp programme, which has two elements, supports a company along its entire life cycle. First, it assists in the development of the enterprise with business incubation, business acceleration, intellectual property and technology transfer services (ScaleUp Innovate), and then, it facilitates the scaling up of their products on new markets (ScaleUp Invest).

ScaleUp is business-focused and not technology or sector specific and applies within all ESA programmes. This programme targets start-up companies, applied research and innovation centres, and more mature companies such as SMEs, Mid-Caps and large system integrators.

While encouraging news, the language of the press release and the size of the budget indicates that these European governments are being dragged kicking and screaming into this new capitalist aerospace world. It is clear that ESA has been losing out by sticking with its government-run and government-owned Arianespace operation. At the same time, it is also clear that ESA officials and their governments are showing the same reluctance Congress showed in the last decade when NASA wanted to transition from its government-run and -owned system. At that time, Congress consistently resisted budgeting the commercial space line in NASA’s budget, thus delaying the launch of both Dragon and Starliner significantly.

In the end the effectiveness of competition, private property, and freedom however won out in the U.S. I expect it will do the same in Europe, though it might take another decade or so before Europe’s governments realize it.

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Launch of Ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar lander delayed two days

9:28 am

Ispace yesterday announced that the launch of its Hakuto-R lunar lander, carrying a number of private and government payloads including the UAE’s Rashid rover, has been delayed two days to November 30, 2022 due to weather and scheduling issues.

The spacecraft will be launched from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9 rocket. The weather and the Thanksgiving holiday forced NASA and SpaceX to push back the launch of a cargo Dragon to ISS to November 26th. This in turn impacted Hakuto-R’s launch date.

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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

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

6:01 pm

An evening pause: As Linus most correctly notes, “Ours is the first country in the world to make a national holiday to give thanks,” and then adds, in saying grace before the dinner:

In the year 1621, the Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving feast. They invited the great Indian chief Massasoit, who brought ninety of its brave Indians and a great abundance of food. Governor William Bradford and Captain Miles Standish were honored guests. Elder William Brewster, who was a minister, said a prayer that went something like this: “We thank God for our homes and our food, and our safety in a new land. We thank God for the opportunity to create a new world for freedom and justice.”

Accurate and well put. Keep Brewster’s prayer in mind the next time someone tries to slander the U.S.

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Perseverance data so far finds no evidence of lake in Jezero Crater

10:40 am

The uncertainty of science: Though scientists had assumed the presence of an ancient delta that once flowed into Jezero Crater meant a lake once filled the crater, Perseverance data from its first year of roving has so far found no evidence that a lake every existed.

[A] summary of the first year of data from the rover, published in three different papers being released today, suggests that Perseverance has yet to stumble across any evidence of a watery paradise. Instead, all indications are that water exposure in the areas it explored was limited, and the waters were likely to be near freezing. While this doesn’t rule out that it will find lake deposits later, the environment might not have been as welcoming for life as “a lake in a crater” might have suggested.

Jezero Crater, like Gale Crater where Curiosity is roving, is located in the Martian dry equatorial regions. Though the data from Gale suggests a lake had once existed there, the data also suggests strongly that any water there acted more like water in cold climates like Iceland, existing mostly as glacial ice.

The jury is still out, but these results from Perseverance once again point to ice and glaciers as a possible explanation for many of the geological features on Mars that we on Earth automatically assume were caused by liquid water.

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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.

Rocket Lab wins launch contract abandoned by Astra

10:32 am

NASA yesterday awarded Rocket Lab the contract to put its constellation of TROPICS satellites into orbit, on two different launches.

This contract replaces Astra as the launch provider, which has abandoned launches while it develops a new rocket.

Astra’s contract, valued at $7.95 million, was for three launches on its Rocket 3.3 vehicle – a rocket that Astra later announced would be discontinued, in favor of a larger and more powerful Rocket 4.

But Rocket 4 is still under development – and may not be ready to launch until 2024. NASA decided not to wait that long, and said in September that it would modify the TROPICS launch contract with Astra for “comparable scientific payloads” on the new rocket.

Moreover, the launches will occur at Wallops Island, strengthening Rocket Lab’s presence there. The company will attempt its first launch there in early December, a launch delayed for two years because of holdups created by NASA’s bureaucracy. With this new contract, NASA’s management will now have an incentive to speed use of Wallops by Rocket Lab, not slow it down.

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Ingenuity completes 34th flight using new hazard avoidance software

10:24 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity yesterday completed its 34th flight on Mars, a short vertical up-and-down flight lasting only eighteen seconds in order to test just installed new hazard avoidance software.

The tan dotted line on the map to the right shows Ingenuity’s recent flights and ends where it sits today. The white dotted line marks Perseverance’s travels.

Ingenuity’s navigation software was designed to assume the vehicle was flying over flat terrain. When the helicopter is flying over terrain like hills, this flat-ground assumption causes Ingenuity’s navigation software to think the vehicle is veering, causing Ingenuity to start actually veering in an attempt to counter the error. Over long flights, navigation errors caused by rough terrain must be accounted for, requiring the team to select large airfields. This new software update corrects this flat-ground assumption by using digital elevation maps of Jezero Crater to help the navigation software distinguish between changes in terrain and vehicle movement. This increases Ingenuity’s accuracy, allowing the pilots to target smaller airfields going forward.

The new software is part of an effort to use Ingenuity to test helicopter flying in Jezero Crater in preparation for the two sample return helicopters which will eventually land here to grab Perservance’s core samples and bring them to the ascent vehicle for return to Earth.

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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

November 23, 2022 Quick space links

3:26 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s stringer, trolling Tweeter so you don’t have to.

 

 

 

  • Ground-based images of ISS and Tiangong-3, side-by-side

    • Jay correctly notes, “The scale is off, the picture shows Tiangong-3 as larger than what it is.” Comparing the Russian modules on ISS with Tiangong-3’s modules, I estimate that Tiangong-3 is about 30% smaller than shown.

 

 

 

  • UK to build the new lander for ESA’s Franklin Mars rover

    • The launch of this long delayed rover is now targeting ’28. It was originally supposed to launch in ’20, was first delayed until ’22 because of parachute issues, then was delayed again when Europe and Russia ended their space partnership due to the Ukraine War.

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Today’s blacklisted American includes anyone at a Vermont high school who dares say a boy is a boy

2:16 pm

Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl
Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl

We now return for the third time to the saga of Randolph Union High School in Vermont, a place where apparently you are not allowed to state the simple biological fact that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. Worse, you must allow boys to enter a girls’ dressing room and ogle them freely, and if you dare challenge this absurdity, you will be fired or suspended.

This craziness began in late September, when a boy claiming to be a girl (because he wanted to play on the girls volleyball team) entered the girls dressing room and watched the girls change, much to their discomfort. When the girls complained to school officials, the officials immediately banned those girls from using their own dressing room, reserving it now solely to this one boy.

The story became even more insane when the local television station, WCAX, decided to censor itself. It had covered this story with reasonable accuracy when the story broke. In mid-October however it decided that its job was publishing the agenda of the queer community, not reporting the news, and it censored its own story, removing it from the internet. (You can still watch it here however.)

Meanwhile, school officials have continued their track record of insanity. These officials not only locked the girls from their own locker room, they suspended one girl, Blake Allen, because she had been the most outspoken of all, appearing in that censored WCAX story. As part of her punishment, school officials demanded she admit 2+2=5 in a “reflective essay.”
» Read more

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Hungary to pay $100 million to Axiom for astronaut mission to ISS

12:35 pm

Hungary has budgeted $100 million to fly a Hungarian astronaut on a 30 day mission to ISS, arranged as a private mission though the American space company Axiom.

“This is a program which is being carried out with the cooperation of the American company Axiom Space and its extent is $100 million,” said [Péter Szijjártó, Hungarian foreign minister,] of the initiative. “This will end up in a 30-day-long research mission of a Hungarian astronaut with three other astronauts at the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025, depending on what time NASA confirms access to the International Space Station.”

NASA has yet to award missions to Axiom Space beyond its Ax-2 mission scheduled for the spring of 2023, but is evaluating proposals for two private astronaut missions that could include an Axiom Space flight in that timeframe.

It is clear that negotiations for arranging this mission between Axiom, NASA, and Hungary are on-going. Based on Szijjártó’s description, it is possible that the Hungarian astronaut could fly on a dedicated private Axiom mission to ISS, with two other paying passengers and an Axiom commander, or fly as an extra passenger on a normal ISS crew rotation flight. Furthermore, the ’24 or ’25 launch date suggests the vehicle might not be a Dragon capsule. By that time Boeing’s Starliner should be operational, thus giving Axiom and NASA an alternative. That time frame also corresponds to about when Axiom hopes to launch and dock its own module to ISS.

Nor is Hungary the only foreign country that has signed a deal with Axiom for a manned flight. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have agreements as well.

All told, the biggest obstacle right now to this new market is the number of ports on ISS. It seems Axiom has a strong incentive to get its own module launched and attached to ISS as soon as possible, if only to increase the docking ports available for these flights.

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Frozen glacial eddies on Mars?

11:38 am

Overview map

Frozen glacial eddies on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 26, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Though the science team labels this image vaguely as showing “Features in Mamers Valles,” the features are likely glacial ice since this location is at the western end of the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, where glacial features are seen everywhere.

The white dot marks this picture’s location in Mamers Valles, as shown on the overview map above. This particular Martian channel, that meanders in a wildly random manner (including a few sharp ninety degree turns), is theorized [pdf] by some scientists to have formed not by surface flows but by a subterranean drainage that created voids. On the surface the voids caused sagging, collapses, and the eventual formation of the surface channel.

Under such conditions, any ice in the channel would not necessarily have a clear flow direction, thus providing an explanation (though hardly certain) of the eddy-like shape of these features.

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Webb makes its first detailed survey of an exoplanet’s atmosphere

9:23 am

Astronomers have now completed the first detailed survey of an exoplanet’s atmosphere using the Webb Space Telescope, looking at a gas giant about one third the mass of Jupiter about 700 light years away.

Using three of its instruments, JWST was able to observe light from the planet’s star as it filtered through WASP-39b’s atmosphere, a process known as transmission spectroscopy. This allowed a team of more than 300 astronomers to detect water, carbon monoxide, sodium, potassium and more in the planet’s atmosphere, in addition to the carbon dioxide. The gives the planet a similar composition to Saturn, although it has no detectable rings.

The team were also surprised to detect sulfur dioxide, which had appeared as a mysterious bump in early observation data. Its presence suggests a photochemical reaction is taking place in the atmosphere as light from the star hits it, similar to how our Sun produces ozone in Earth’s atmosphere. In WASP-39b’s case, light from its star, slightly smaller than the Sun, splits water in its atmosphere into hydrogen and hydroxide, which reacts with hydrogen sulfide to produce sulfur dioxide.

The data also suggested the clouds in the atmosphere are patchy, and that the planet’s formation process was not exactly as predicted.

These observations are part of a program to study 70 exoplanets during Webb’s first year of operation, using its infrared capabilities to get spectroscopy not possible in other wavelengths.

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First commercial passenger spacewalk on Dragon will involve depressurizing entire spacecraft

9:12 am

According to an interview to Space.com by the four crew members on next year’s private manned Dragon flight financed by Jared Isaacman, the spacewalk, the first involving commercial passengers, will include all four passengers, since Dragon will not have an airlock and will be depressurized entirely when the hatch opens.

“We’ve collectively taken the position that we’re all going for an EVA,” Isaacman said, adding that the spacecraft cabin is to be depressurized in a hard vacuum. “Whether you’re sticking your head outside, you are doing an EVA. We are contemplating two people on the outside of the vehicle,” Isaacman said, “and two would be inside making sure that everything is going correct.”

To accommodate the spacewalk, this Crew Dragon will not be outfitted with a transparent dome, as was the case for the Inspiration4 mission.

The mission is presenting targeting March ’23 for launch.

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France, Germany, and Italy agree on allowing competition from European rocket startups

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: France, Germany, and Italy yesterday signed an agreement [pdf] whereby they agreed to push European policy-makers to allow competition from independent European rocket startups for launch contracts.

At least, this is what I think they have agreed to. I have read the article and the agreement several times, and remain somewhat unsure of their intent. The agreement is couched in the typical bureaucratic language specifically designed to obscure meaning. The article does little to clarify things.

It appears this is the key language in the agreement:

The proposed acknowledgement of operational European NewSpace micro and mini launch systems for ESA satellite launch service procurements, upon its adoption by Council, would effectively represent a first step towards an evolution of the launch service procurement policy for ESA missions as referred to in the ESA Council Resolution adopted in 2005.

What I gather is that these three countries no longer want European launch contract awards limited to the Arianespace rockets Ariane-6 and Vega-C. They want bidding opened to all European rocket startups, and they want the elimination of rules that require all contracts distributed by quota to European countries.

Germany already has three commercial rocket startups on the verge of their first launch, and apparently wants the European Space Agency to stop favoring Arianespace in launch contracts. That France and Italy are going along with this is significant, since Ariane-6 is dominated by French developers and Vega-C is dominated by Italian developers.

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Controllers lose contact with Orion for almost an hour

8:43 am

NASA engineers unexpectedly lost all contact with Orion for 47 minutes just after midnight last night.

NASA’s Mission Control Center at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston unexpectedly lost data to and from the spacecraft at 12:09 a.m. CST for 47 minutes while reconfiguring the communication link between Orion and Deep Space Network overnight. The reconfiguration has been conducted successfully several times in the last few days, and the team is investigating the cause of the loss of signal. The team resolved the issue with a reconfiguration on the ground side.

At present the loss of signal caused no issues with the spacecraft. However, its cause has not yet been pinpointed.

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SpaceX successfully launches communications satellite for Eutelsat

8:06 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched a geosynchronous communications satellite for Eutelsat. This was the third launch that SpaceX has done for this European company, which previously had traditionally been launched by Arianespace. Because of the delays and higher cost to use Arianespace’s new Ariane 6 rocket, the company chose to go with SpaceX instead.

The first stage, which had flown ten times previously, successfully completed its eleventh flight, but was not recovered because all of its fuel was needed to get the satellite to its proper orbit.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

53 SpaceX
52 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 77 to 52 in the national rankings, but trails the rest of the world combined 80 to 77.

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Dick Cavett – Burt Lancaster in the circus

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This interview of Burt Lancaster on the Dick Cavett Show took place on July 21, 1969 (the day after Neil Armstrong took that first step on the Moon).

I could not help noting how humble and gracious Lancaster seemed. He might have been one of the world’s most charismatic actors, but he surely did not appear full of himself. The second part of this interview can be watched here.

Hat tip Cotour.

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November 22, 2022 Quick space links

4:35 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pushback: Court rules against college’s attempt to censor students

1:33 pm

One poster that Clovis Community College tried to censor
One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against Clovis Community College in California, ruling that it violated the free speech rights of its students when college officials removed posters put up by students from the college’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter that condemned communism and socialism.

The lawsuit [pdf] was filed for the students by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

The college insists that it reserves the right to remove flyers over “inappropriate or [offensive] language or themes.” The lack of any definition for those vague terms would weigh heavily with the court in granting the preliminary injunction.

FIRE produced emails showing that a college administrator offered to “gladly take down” the flyers after “several people” said that they were “very uncomfortable” with the flyers, including a person who allegedly threatened a “harassment claim” if the posters were not taken down.

» Read more

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Curiosity’s wheels: Maybe not so bad after all

11:09 am

Comparison of one wheel on Curiosity
To see the original images, go here and here.

Today the science team for the Mars rover Curiosity downloaded more photos of its wheels, a survey taken routinely now after every 500 meters or 1640 feet of travel. Unlike the pictures made available yesterday that showed some of the worst damage to one of Curiosity’s middle wheels, these new images included the wheel I have been tracking since 2017 as a baseline to see if further damage has occurred.

The photos to the right show that wheel, with the top photo from August and the bottom created from two pictures taken on November 20, 2022. The numbers indicate the matching treads. The “+” sign in the top image indicates a location where new damage was spotted in August.

As you can see, this wheel does not appear to have experienced any additional damage in the more than three months since that August update. While the damage to Curiosity’s wheels remains very concerning, it does appear based on this one wheel that — despite the generally very rough terrain the rover has been traversing since it entered the foothills of Mount Sharp — the wheels in general seem to be holding up.

Though I have not done a careful comparison of these new wheel images with earlier ones, none of the new images appear to show any additional significant damage. It appears that the travel criteria the science team adopted years ago — right after discovering the wheel damage — continues to work to protect the wheels. It picks the rover’s path more carefully to avoid sharper rocks, and includes software that stops the rover should it sense it is crossing a rock sharper than desired.

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Six of the ten cubesats launched toward the Moon by SLS still working

9:46 am

The Moon as seen by ArgoMoon
Click for full image.

Of the ten cubesats launched toward the Moon by SLS last week, six are still working while four have problems that are likely killing their missions.

The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by ArgoMoon, an Italian cubesat that is working perfectly. The large impact basin visible is Orientale Basin, located just on the edge of the visible face of the Moon but partly hidden on the far side.

A summary of the status of all ten can be found here. Of the other five still functioning properly, all have been able to maintain proper communications.

Possibly the biggest disappointment however is the failure of Japan’s Omotenashi lander, which was going to attempt a lunar soft landing. Shortly after launch it began tumbling, and engineers were never able to regain full control or communications. The landing attempt has now been abandoned.

Side note: Orion itself also captured some images as it zipped past the Moon yesterday, but they do not appear as high quality as ArgoMoon’s pictures.

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Astronomers spot asteroid mere hours before it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere

9:29 am

For only the sixth time, astronomers this past weekend were able to image an asteroid just before it hit the Earth’s atmosphere and burned up over Canada.

The mini-asteroid, less than 3 feet (1 meter) wide, was spotted by astronomer David Rankin at Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona, according to SpaceWeather.com. Subsequent observations by other astronomers confirmed that the rock, coming from the direction of the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, was on a collision course with Earth.

Only three hours after the first detection, the object, since dubbed C8FF042, sliced through the sky above Canada and landed in Lake Ontario, according to NASA.

While it is believed that most of the meteorite’s pieces that reached the ground fell into Lake Ontario, there is a chance some pieces might still be found along the south coast of the lake between Hamiliton and Niagara Falls.

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CAPSTONE enters its planned lunar orbit

9:21 am

After experiencing serious tumbling shortly after launch, engineers have successfully put the technology test smallsat CAPSTONE into its planned lunar orbit (the same to be used by NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station), where it will spend at least six months gathering data.

In addition to studying this unique orbit, CAPSTONE’s mission also includes two technology demonstrations that could be used by future spacecraft. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, or CAPS, is a navigational software developed by Advanced Space that would allow spacecraft operating near the Moon to determine their position in space without relying exclusively on tracking from Earth. CAPSTONE will demonstrate this technology by communicating directly with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been in orbit around the Moon since 2009. CAPSTONE will also demonstrate one-way ranging using a chip-scale atomic clock, which could allow spacecraft to determine their position in space without the need for a dedicated downlink to ground stations.

CAPSTONE is also demonstrating a third technology as well as the use of capitalism in space. The third technology is demonstrating the viability of using a tiny inexpensive smallsat for these kinds of interplanetary missions. The capitalism is that CAPSTONE was built by a private company, Terran Orbital, not NASA, and is being operated by another private company, Advanced Space, not NASA. It was also launched by a private company, Rocket Lab, not NASA. All three have proved or are proving that it is faster and cheaper for the government to merely act as the customer to private enterprise, rather than being the builder/operator and boss.

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ABL’s RS1 rocket has another abort at launch

9:10 am

In making its third attempt to launch its first RS1 rocket, ABL engineers experienced their second abort at T-0, with the rocket shutting down just as its engines ignited.

The first attempt on Monday, Nov. 14, was scrubbed due to off-nominal data on the first stage during propellant loading. A second attempt on Thursday, Nov. 17, was aborted due to turbopump oxygen inlet conditions at engine ignition. The most recent attempt on Monday, Nov. 21, was aborted during engine ignition at T-1.75 seconds.

The company is now targeting December 7th for their fourth launch attempt. The rocket carries two customer cubesats, but its main mission is to demonstrate its ability to reach orbit.

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InSight still alive

3:27 pm

InSight's power levels

The InSight science team today posted another update on the power status of the Mars lander, as shown in the graph to the right.

As of Nov. 21, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 300 and 310 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.33 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

Power levels, while critically low, remained level and sufficient to run the seismometer, though nothing else. At the beginning of the month the science team said these levels would only allow operations for a few more weeks, but here we are, a few weeks later, and InSight is still alive, though barely.

At this moment the situation is essentially day-to-day. If the lander misses two scheduled communications sessions, they will declare it dead. So far, that has not happened.

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New serious damage to Curiosity’s wheels?

11:07 am

New damage to Curiosity's wheels?
Click for original image.

I must start this post with a strong caveat. The serious damage, as posted to the right, of the zig-zag growser treads on one of Curiosity’s wheels that was photographed by one of the rover’s cameras yesterday and downloaded today, could very well not be new damage. As noted in a report in June:

The team discovered that the left middle wheel had damaged one of its grousers, the zig-zagging treads along Curiosity’s wheels. This particular wheel already had four broken grousers, so now five of its 19 grousers are broken.

The damaged wheel to the right appears to be that left middle wheel. This photo thus might simply be documenting the damage noted in June, and not new damage. Since Curiosity has six wheels (three on each side), the middle wheels like this one are likely slightly less critical and can be worked around should it no longer function well.

Nonetheless, the damage to these growsers is of concern. Previously, the wheel damage has consistently involved breakage in the metal plates between the growsers. Though the science team noted in that June report that it has “proven through ground testing that we can safely drive on the wheel rims if necessary”, the team also said that it did not think that was going to happen soon.

Based on this image, however, it is happening, at least on one wheel. Fortunately, a review of all the images downloaded yesterday does not show any other broken growsers on any other wheel, though the image survey is not thorough and does not cover the entire surface of every wheel. For example, I could not identify any images of the damaged sections of the wheel that I have been tracking since 2017. It could be that the photo’s orientation this time was significantly different, making it difficult to find a match. It could also be that the damage had increased so much that no match with an earlier photo was easily possible. Or it could simply be that the same section on the wheel was not photographed this time.

Either way, the damage on this middle wheel foreshadows the rover’s eventual future, a future that is likely getting closer because of the roughness of the mountain and rocky terrain that Curiosity is presently traveling, and appears to have no end as it now climbs Mount Sharp.

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Smeared colliding galaxies

9:29 am

Smeared colliding galaxies
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of its continuing program to collect images of unusual galaxies that had previously not been observed at high resolution.

The Arp-Madore catalogue is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. Arp-Madore 417-391, which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies have been distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving the cores of the two galaxies nestled side by side.

It is likely that this collision has been going on for many millions of years, and will not be over for many millions of years to come. In the end the two galaxies will likely merge into one whose final shape cannot be predicted.

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Orion successfully enters its preliminary lunar orbit

8:54 am

NASA’s Orion capsule today successfully completed a 2.5 minute engine burn this morning to put it in its preliminary lunar orbit around the Moon.

At the time of the burn, Orion was 328 miles above the Moon, travelling at 5,023 mph. Shortly after the burn, Orion passed 81 miles above the Moon, travelling at 5,102 mph. At the time of the lunar flyby, Orion was more than 230,000 miles from Earth.

The outbound powered flyby burn is the first of two maneuvers required to enter the distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. The spacecraft will perform the distant retrograde orbit insertion burn Friday, Nov. 25, using the European Service Module. Orion will remain in this orbit for about a week to test spacecraft systems.

NASA has been bragging that when this orbit sends Orion 40,000 miles past the Moon, it will be the farthest a man-rated spacecraft has flown from Earth since Apollo. Though true, this fact is somewhat trivial. First, SpaceX could have easily put a Dragon capsule on its first Falcon Heavy launch, instead of a Tesla, and sent that capsule into interplanetary space beyond Mars. Second, Orion is not capable of taking any astronauts farther than lunar orbit. Thus, NASA’s achievement here is somewhat overblown. Orion is not an interplanetary spaceship. It remains nothing more than an overpriced, overweight, and over-designed ascent-descent manned capsule.

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