Scroll down to read the most recent posts.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands. Instead, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation:

4. A Paypal subscription:


5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.

July 27, 2021 Zimmerman Space Show podcast

10:12 am

The podcast of my two-hour appearance last night on The Space Show with David Livingston is now available here.

Thank you to David and tor everyone who called or emailed questions. Twas a very good show, to my mind. It also allowed me hone my verbal description of my new book, Conscious Choice. When I finish a book, I tend initially to get buried in the details in describing it in interviews. This appearance allowed me to get an idea on how to talk about the book quickly, in summary. I think it went well, and will certainly get better with future appearances.

2 comments

Blue Origin working to make 2nd stage of New Glenn reusable

8:53 am

Capitalism in space: According to this Ars Technica article by Eric Berger yesterday, Blue Origin has begun working on a project dubbed Jarvis, focused on making the upper stage of its orbital and as yet unlaunched New Glenn rocket reusable.

Bezos had been asking his senior staffers about reusable upper stages, but advisers told him such an approach was unlikely to work, sources said. Bezos also seems to have been told the SpaceX “fail forward” method of rapidly prototyping and testing Starships, with few processes and procedures, would be unlikely to succeed.

However, over the last year, Bezos took note as SpaceX launched and landed its Starship vehicle. This is one of the reasons he decided to initiate a project named “Jarvis” at Blue Origin within the reusable second-stage program. Sources said Bezos has walled off parts of the second-stage development program from the rest of Blue Origin and told its leaders to innovate in an environment unfettered by rigorous management and paperwork processes. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentences indicate evidence that the management that Bezos brought in to run Blue Origin for him in 2017 was definitely old school big space managers, with limited vision and timid about risk-taking, and that Bezos is beginning to recognize this and shift control of the company away from them.

This is excellent news, and suggests that we shall finally see some real progress at Blue Origin, something that has been lacking for the past four years. It also suggests that Bezos now recognizes he needs to make his rocket competitive with what SpaceX has, and is taking steps to make that happen

Isn’t competition and freedom wondeful? When allowed to flourish it makes things happen fast, and with amazing daring.

11 comments

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 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.

German startup rocket company raises $75 million

8:41 am

Capitalism in space: The German startup rocket company Isar Aerospace announced today that it has raised $75 million, bringing the total in private investment capital it has obtained to $180 million.

The initial funding had funded construction of their Spectrum smallsat rocket. This new funding the company says will be used to expand their manufacturing and to begin work on making their rocket reusable.

Spectrum, the rocket Isar is developing, is a two-stage vehicle designed to place up to 1,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit. The vehicle is powered by Aquila engines that the company is also building.

Guillen said the company is preparing to start tests of the full Aquila engine soon on a test stand in Kiruna, Sweden. Isar is also working on a launch site in Norway, having signed an agreement in April with Andøya Space for exclusive use of a pad at a new site under development by the state-owned launch site operator.

A first launch of Spectrum from Andøya is expected in the second half of 2022, she said. The company expects to conduct three to four launches in 2023, with a long-term goal of about 10 launches per year. While Andøya is well-suited for launches to sun-synchronous orbits, Isar is considering alternative launch sites, such as French Guiana, for missions to lower inclination orbits.

Isar is one of three German smallstat rocket company startups, and appears from all accounts to be ahead of the other two, Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse Technologies, in funding and development.

There is some long term historical context to these German rocket companies. Following World War II, Germany was forbidden to build such things, both legally and culturally, as rockets too closely resemble the V2 rocket used by Hitler to bomb Great Britain. Even when Germany joined the European Space Agency as a partner the rocket building was left mostly to the French and the Italians.

This has now changed, partly because the rockets are small, partly because Europe has been shifting to the capitalism model in its space industry, partly because the memories from World War II have faded, and partly because ESA’s subsized effort at Arianespace to build a new low-cost replacement for its Ariane 5 rocket has not been successful. The Ariane 6 costs too much, and is thus not garnering customers from within ESA.

I think it will be really great to start listing separate European private companies in my launch race updates. Doing so will only emphasize the global acceleration of the competition to get into space.

8 comments

The Music Man – Till There Was You

6:00 pm

An evening pause: Sung by Shirley Jones, from one of the greatest American musical films ever made, The Music Man (1962).

Diane and I have been watching a lot of those ’40s, 50s, and 60s American musicals. To today’s bitter and cynical youth, these films might seem to portray a too-perfect world filled with too much happiness and wealth. And while there is some truth to that cynical view, it is mostly wrong. The America portrayed in these films was actually quite like this. People were free, they were generally happy, and they lived a life of prosperity that no one before had ever seen. Nor are future generations likely to see such a life again during the coming dark centuries. These musicals provide a window into that time.

These musicals as well as most of the Hollywood movies prior to the 1960s are also quite unique in the history of literature and art in that they told stories not of kings or rulers or nobility, but of ordinary people. Such stories were rarely told before the coming of America. This fact also tells us much about the culture that then existed. It was ruled by those ordinary people, and thus the art and literature catered to them.

Which is why the Marxist power-driven culture that now dominates this country is desperate to ban the viewing of such art and the learning of that history. It tells a tale they cannot stomach.

20 comments

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 ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from 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

Fractured crater close to the Phoenix lander on Mars

2:37 pm

Fractured crater on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on May 3, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a remarkably fractured crater that lies only a few miles to the southeast of where the now-inactive Phoenix lander put down back in 2008, at the very high latitude of 69 degrees north.

Phoenix was purposely sent to this high latitude to find out what the ground and atmosphere was like there. It found the following:

Phoenix’s preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.

Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

Below is an overview map showing the location of both this crater and the Phoenix lander.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

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

Today’s blacklisted American: Tenured professor fired, given no due process, because one student didn’t like what he was doing

11:46 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Berea College
No first amendment allowed at Berea College!

Persecution is now cool! The administration at Berea College, a Christian university in Kentucky, fired tenured professor Dave Porter because one student complained about a research survey he was conducting.

Porter’s offense was to have done a survey of attitudes on campus. One student claimed that the survey was a retaliation against her for having filed a Title IX complaint. Writes Porter, “The campus was quickly polarized, and the administration saw a crisis looming. Apparently, the dean had received information from a former student that current students were fearful of attending my classes. There was no investigation and suggestions of mediation or compromise were squelched by the dean’s claim that I was ‘unrepentant and unapologetic.’” [emphasis mine]

More details in this essay Porter himself wrote:
» Read more

12 comments

FCC tightens rules for giving grants to broadband companies

8:51 am

The FCC under the Biden administration has informed the companies who obtained subsidies to encourage broadband access in rural areas that the money can only be spent in those areas, not on infrastructure improvements in facilities located in regions that already have good internet access.

The Federal Communications Commission told SpaceX and other companies on Monday that the billions in rural broadband subsidies it doled out last year can’t be used in already connected areas like “parking lots and well-served urban areas,” citing complaints. The commission, in an effort to “clean up” its subsidy auction program, offered the companies a chance to rescind their funding requests from areas that already have service.

The companies that got the subsidies must do the work to determine they qualify for the money, wrote Michael Janson, director of the FCC’s Rural Broadband Task Force, in a letter addressed to SpaceX’s finance director David Finlay. Similar letters, first reported by Bloomberg, were sent to other recipients of the commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, a $9.2 billion auction to expand broadband into rural areas that lack or have no service.

The news reports I’ve seen of this story have all been from the generally leftwing press, and have been written to hammer SpaceX. No matter. This program is rife with corruption and the misuse of taxpayer money. SpaceX doesn’t need the nearly billion dollar subsidy it got, or if it does need the billion, it should get it from private investment. As should all the other companies getting cash in this program.

Sadly, the Biden administration does not appear interested in ending the program. Instead, I get the sense what it really wants to do is send the cash to its own cronies, instead of the cronies favored by the Trump adminstration. Thus, do not be surprised if Blue Origin’s as-yet unbuilt Kuiper constellation starts to be a recipient of funds, even as the money is cut from SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

3 comments

An astrophysicist explains cosmology’s theoretical failures

8:37 am

Link here. The astrophysicist, Paul Sutter, does a very nice job of outlining the conundrum that has been causing astrophysicists to tear their hair out for the past decade-plus.

In the two decades since astronomers discovered dark energy, we’ve come upon a little hitch: Measurements of the expansion rate of the universe (and so its age) from both the CMB [cosmic microwave background] and supernovas have gotten ever more precise, but they’re starting to disagree. We’re not talking much; the two methods are separated by only 10 million or 20 million years in estimating the 13.77-billion-year history of the universe. But we’re operating at such a level of precision that it’s worth talking about.

If anything, this failure for two measurements of data spanning billions of light years — which is billions in both time and space — is a perfect illustration of the uncertainty of science. Astrophysicists are trying to come up with answers based on data that is quite thin, with many gaps in knowledge, and carries with it many assumptions. It therefore is actually surprising that these two numbers agree as well as they do.

Sutter, being in the CMB camp, puts most of the blame for this failure on the uncertainty of what we know about supernovae. He could very well be right. The assumptions about supernovae used to measure the expansion rate of the universe are many. There is also a lot of gaps in our knowledge, including a full understanding of the process that produces supernovae.

Sutter however I think puts too much faith in theoretical conclusions of the astrophysics community that have determined the age of the universe based on the CMB. The uncertainties here are as great. Good scientists should remain skeptical of this as well. Our knowledge of physics is still incomplete. Physicists really don’t know all the answers, yet.

In the end, Sutter however does pin down the biggest problem in cosmology:

The “crisis” is a good excuse to keep writing papers, because we’ve been stumped by dark energy for over two decades, with a lot of work and not much understanding. In a sense, many cosmologists want to keep the crisis going, because as long as it exists, they have something to talk about other than counting down the years to the next big mission.

In other words, the discussion now is sometimes less about science and theories and cosmology, but instead about funding and career promotion. What a shock!

11 comments

Bezos offers to waive $2 billion in payments to get lunar lander contract

5:57 pm

In an open letter to NASA administrator Bill Nelson, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos offered to waive $2 billion in payments should NASA decide to switch its contract for building the manned lunar lander contract from SpaceX to the Blue Origin team, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper.

Blue Origin and its industry partners ⁠— including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper ⁠— bid $6 billion to design and build a competing landing system. After SpaceX won the award, Blue Origin’s team and Dynetics, the third competitor for a NASA contract, filed protests with the Government Accountability Office. The GAO is due to rule on those protests by Aug. 4.

In his letter to Nelson, Bezos revisits the issues laid out in Blue Origin’s protest and complains that NASA “chose to confer a multi-year, multibillion-dollar head start to SpaceX” in the Human Landing System competition. He noted that NASA gave SpaceX a chance to revise its bid to fit NASA’s financial needs, and that Blue Origin wasn’t given a similar opportunity. “That was a mistake, it was unusual, and it was a missed opportunity,” Bezos wrote. “But it is not too late to remedy.”

Bezos then offered to waive all payments in the 2021-2023 fiscal years, up to $2 billion, “to get the program back on track right now.” He said that would be in addition to the $1 billion in corporate contributions that was previously pledged.

The article notes there may be some legal issues blocking such an offer. I also wonder what Blue Origins partners think about this. Has Bezos discussed it with them? Is he offering to cover their profits as well?

We must also be cognizant of one important detail: The Blue Origin team’s proposal lost the bid largely because was ranked below SpaceX’s for both financial and technical reaosns. Even more important, that team’s lander does yet not exist, even in prototype. No significant work has been done. And Blue Origin itself has so far failed to launch anything into orbit, with its orbital rocket New Glenn two years behind schedule. None of this inspires confidence.

SpaceX meanwhile has been test flying its Starship lander in repeated flight tests, demonstrating its capabilities.

Consider this bidding war from a custoner’s perspective. Blue Origin has yet to prove it can build what it promises. SpaceX is already doing so. And it bid less as well.

On August 4th the GAO will rule on the protests of both losers, Blue Origin and Dynetics. Anything can happen, but I strongly expect them to rule in favor of NASA and SpaceX.

And even if they do rule that the contract must be rebid, the bottom line remains: Blue Origin has got to stop trying to win its contracts in the courts, and finally start build the orbital spacecraft and rockets it has been promising for years. I have every faith it can be done. Bezos just has to get his company focused once again in doing so.

16 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Mob tries to blacklist actress for shaking Trump’s hand

1:18 pm

Addison Rae must be banned for shaking Trump's hand
Stone her! She shook Trump’s hand!

Persecution is now cool! Addison Rae, an actress who IMDB calls TikTok’s second most popular and highest earning performer, was attacked by a mob on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter for daring to shake hands with Donald Trump at a Las Vegas boxing event on July 11th.

As shown on a video at the link, “the two shook hands and she mentioned that she just “had to say hi” and that it was “so nice to meet you.”

How dare she?! The mob effort grew so loud that a Buzzfeed “news” reporter wrote a story expressly focused on determining if Rae was a Trump supporter, with the reporter stating:

[C]onsidering Rae has ignored questions about whether or not she is a Trump supporter, I decided to test her digital footprint and see for myself. So, I scrolled through all of her likes in 2016, when the Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump election reached its peak, to see just how many of these accidental Twitter bugs I could find.

The reporter, Alexa Lisitza, discovered a variety of tweets in 2016 that suggested Rae actually might have had an open mind about Trump, and was not all-hate all-the-time, and might even have decided to vote for him. As the reporter concluded, “That’s it for 2016. Who knows what lies in the years spanning throughout the election, but do with this information what you will.” The implication of course is that Rae should be blacklisted for this blasphemy.

Nor was this Buzzfeed article unique. » Read more

10 comments

A hiker’s view from Mount Sharp

10:10 am

A hiker's view of Gale Crater, taken by Curiosity
Click for full image.

A quick cool image! The photo to the right, reduced to post here, was taken yesterday by Curiosity’s left navigation camera. It looks west across the floor of Gale Crater, at the base of a nearby butte.

The crater rim, as seen by the distant mountains, is about 25 miles away. The butte that towers above Curiosity is probably no more than 50 feet high.

Below is a panorama showing the full view to the west, with Navarro Mountain (the nearby 450-foot-high foothill at the base of Mount Sharp) on the left edge. Based on the rover’s planned route, it will travel to the right of the butte rather than climbing up onto the saddle on the left. This will take it to the western side of Navarro Mt, where it will eventually head south into the canyon Gediz Vallis.
» Read more

4 comments

1st water vapor in Ganymede’s atmosphere, detected using data from Hubble

9:06 am

Using Hubble data, astronomers have detected the first evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede.

Though larger than the blistering planet Mercury, the Jovian moon Ganymede is no place to go sunbathing. Located ½-billion miles from the Sun, the water ice on its surface is frozen solid in frigid temperatures as low as minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes the ice as hard as rock. Still, a rain of charged particles from the Sun is enough to turn the ice into water vapor at high noon on Ganymede.

This is the first time such evidence has been found, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope’s spectroscopic observations of aurora on Ganymede spanning two decades. The auroras are used to trace the presence of oxygen, which then is linked to the presence of water molecules sputtering off the surface. Ganymede has a deep ocean located an estimated 100 miles below the surface. That’s too deep for water vapor to be leaking out.

This detection has a margin of uncertainty, but it provides a baseline for the up close observations planned for Europe’s JUICE orbiter, set to launch in ’22 and arrive in Jupiter orbit in ’29. JUICE’s study focus will be the three Galilean moons that appear to have lots of ice, Ganymede, Calisto, and Europa.

Leave a comment

Russians detach Pirs module in anticipation of Nauka arrival to ISS

8:48 am

With the engine problems of Russia’s new ISS module Nauka apparently resolved sufficiently for its rendezvous and docking expected on on July 29th, Russian astronauts today undocked the 20-year-old Pirs module, which then used its engines so that it safely burned up over the Pacific Ocean.

The article provides a nice history of Pirs, which was originally intended for Russia’s Mir-2 station, never built after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Pirs, meaning “pier,” traces its origins back to the Mir-2 space station — which was itself a Soviet project that’s design began in 1976. Mir-2’s long and troubled history would eventually find it in the early 1990s where major design changes to launch its various modules via the Buran space shuttle were underway.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Mir-2 emerged the following year as a four-module station — including a Docking Module, which would become Pirs. In 1993, Mir-2 officially merged with the long-delayed NASA/European/Japanese/Canadian space station Freedom project to become the building blocks of the International Space Station.

The module, which provided the Russian half of ISS needed extra docking ports, was originally expected to be replaced after about five years with a larger module, but this was never built.

15 comments

Deleted

8:39 am

This post incorrectly reported a Chinese launch as occurring today when it had actually occurred (and was reported previously. I have therefore deleted it. Sorry about the error.

The leaders in the 2021 launch thus remain as follows:

23 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 29 to 24 in the national rankings.

3 comments

Update on Ingenuity’s 10th flight and Perseverance’s first sample drilling

3:54 pm

Ingenuity landing at end of 10th flight

The news coming from the Perseverance and Ingeniuty science teams has been sparse this past weekend, even though Perseverance had begun drilling its first core sample that it will stored for pickup by a later unmanned robot, and Ingenuity had attempted its 10th and most challenging flight yet.

We do have images however, and the two to the right give us hints about what has happened.

First, the top picture on the right was taken by Ingenuity’s navigation camera just prior to landing. The camera looks straight down and is used by the helicopter to adjust its flight. The dark area is the helicopter’s shadow. Based on this picture and the four preceding images (taken over an eleven second period), it appears the helicopter was landing safely. No other images have yet been downloaded, nor has the Ingenuity team announced any results, so we do not yet know if the flight proceeded as planned.

UPDATE: The flight was a success, as per this JPL announcement:

With the #MarsHelicopter’s #flight success today, we crossed its 1-mile total distance flown to date. It targeted an area called “Raised Ridges,” named for its #geographic features. Flight 10 is #Ingenuity’s most complex flight profile yet, with 10 distinct waypoints and a new #record height of 40 feet (12 meters).

Drill and core sample in the ground

The second image, taken by Perseverance’s left navigation camera and cropped and reduced to post here, is more puzzling. It shows what appears to be the core sample still in the ground after drilling. While this could be entirely as planned, it seems very surprising. Most of what I can find online describing the operation for obtaining these samples implies that the robot arm would drill the hole, and then retract the sample immediately to place it in storage. Nothing suggests the arm would be retracted with the sample still in the ground.

I think however the odds of this picture revealing a problem are low. This JPL press release from February 2021 implies vaguely that the core sample will be released in this manner before retraction. After the core sample, with bit, is separated from the arm, the release suggests they will lift the arm away to inspect the drilling process, then return the arm to retract the core sample for storage. This does make some sense, though grabbing that sample again will be quite challenging.

If this was not supposed to happen as described, then there is a problem that must be resolved. I expect more details in the next day or so to clarify this situation.

5 comments

Ingenuity’s next flight set for today

9:00 am

Flight plan for Ingenuity's 10th flight
Click for full image.

Though circumstances can obviously change, the Ingenuity/Perseverance science teams have scheduled Ingenuity’s 10th Martian flight for sometime later today, with a flight plan, shown to the right, that is even more ambitious.

Flight 10 will allow us to reap the benefits of our previous flight. Scheduled for no earlier than this Saturday (July 24), Flight 10 will target an area called the “Raised Ridges” (RR), named for the geographic features that start approximately 164 feet (50 meters) south-by-southwest of our current location. We will be imaging Raised Ridges because it’s an area that Perseverance scientists find intriguing and are considering visiting sometime in the future.

From navigation and performance perspectives, Flight 10 will be our most complex flight to date, with 10 distinct waypoints and a nominal altitude of 40 feet (12 meters). It begins with Ingenuity taking off from its sixth airfield and climbing to the new record height. It will then head south-by-southwest about 165 feet (50 meters), where upon hitting our second waypoint, take our first Return to Earth (RTE) camera image of the Raised Ridges, looking south. Next, we’ll translate sideways to waypoint 3 and take our next RTE image – again looking south at Raised Ridges.

Imagery experts at JPL hope to combine the overlapping data from these two images to generate one stereo image. Flying farther to the west, we’ll try for another stereo pair of images (waypoints 4 and 5), then head northwest for two more sets of stereo pairs at waypoints 6 and 7 as well as 8 and 9. Then, Ingenuity will turn northeast, landing at its seventh airfield – about 310 feet (95 meters) west of airfield 6. Total time in the air is expected to be about 165 second.

Unlike the previous flights, this one will involve several turns while in the air. The engineers are definitely pushing the envelope with each flight, thus not only gathering scientific data about Jezero Crater but also advancing their engineering knowledge on the art of robotic flying on Mars.

3 comments

The Oort Cloud: what little is known

5:47 pm

Link here. This is one of the best articles on the theorized Oort Cloud, in that right off the bat the author recognizes this important fact:

We know so little about it that its very existence is theoretical — the material that makes up this cloud has never been glimpsed by even our most powerful telescopes, except when some of it breaks free.

The cloud’s existence is extrapolated from the arrival of long period comets, and seems to make sense. Yet, without any direct observations it remains a theory only, and an unproven one at that.

4 comments

SpaceX wins contract to launch Europa Clipper to Jupiter

5:41 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA today awarded SpaceX a $178 million contract to use its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch Europa Clipper to Jupiter.

If all goes according to plan, Clipper will lift off in October 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and arrive in orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. The probe will then study Europa in depth during nearly 50 close flybys of the moon over the course of about four Earth years, mission team members have said.

The award is not really a surprise. Falcon Heavy is really the only operational rocket with the power capable of launching this mission. Because for years Congress had mandated Europa Clipper be launched on SLS, it was designed with more mass than normal for such planetary missions. Delays in the SLS program however finally forced Congress to relax that mandate, but that left NASA with a payload too heavy for all operational rockets except Falcon Heavy, and even that requires this six year flight, with flybys of the Earth and Mars to get it to Jupiter.

The price for the launch is significantly greater than SpaceX normally charges for its Falcon Heavy, but since it was the only game in town, I suspect SpaceX drove a hard bargain.

10 comments

Ice, lava, quakes, and faults, all in one Martian image

1:04 pm

A lot of geology in one picture
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on April 25, 2021. It grabbed my attention because it possibly captures a whole range of Martian geological processes, all in one place, including evidence of quakes, of lava, of faults, and possibly of glaciers.

First, ignore the black rectangle, which is merely a small section of lost data.

The picture itself shows a wide north-south fissure, as indicated by the distinct western cliff and the fainter and less pronounced eastern cliff. This fissure, likely formed along a fault, was created when the crust was pushed and stretched upward by the pressure of underground volcanic magma, part of the long series of eruptions that formed the many similar and parallel north-south fissures south of the shield volcano Alba Mons.

The overview map below illustrates this fissure’s relationship with Alba Mons.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Today’s blacklisted American: Democrats introduce Senate bill demanding companies censor social media

11:54 am

Democrats: No soapbox free speech allowed
Democrats: No soapbox allowed! Photo: GeorgeLouis

Blacklists are back and the Democrats got ’em! Two Democrats, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-New Mexico), yesterday proposed a new law that would force social media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to immediately remove any posts on their platforms that includes medical information those Democrats disagree with.

If the companies do not do so, they will be held liable for those posts.

As has become typical of Democrats, they label any information they disagree with as “misinformation.” To make sure their definition is sustained, their bill would have the federal government determine what is correct and not correct. That definition would then be used to justify silencing any other opinions.

Such a law would essentially repeal the First Amendment of the Constitution. Free speech will be banned. Only government-approved speech in connection with health will be allowed. If such a law was upheld by the courts (a very distinct possibility in today’s legal culture), it could quickly be expanded to cover all speech on any subject.

There is some irony in this Democratic Party proposal. » Read more

12 comments

Nauka issues apparently resolved?

10:46 am

According to a press release for Roscosmos, engineers have successfully fired the engines on Russia’s new large module for ISS, dubbed Nauka, and the module is now on course for rendezvous with the space station.

On Thursday, July 22, 2021 the Nauka Multipurpose Module Flight Control Group specialists at Moscow Mission Control Center conducted two correction maneuvers of the module that had launched to the International Space Station the previous day.

The first maneuver took place at 15:07 UTC with the module engines burn for 17.23 seconds giving an impulse of 1 m/sec. The second burn for 250.04 seconds took place at 17:19 UTC with an impulse of 14.59 m/sec.

No details were released explaining why the first course correction engine burn did not happen as scheduled.

UPDATE: I have added a question mark to the headline because there indications from a variety of sources, all unconfirmed, that the problems might still persist. We shall find out in the next two days.

6 comments

Global dust storm on Mars brought on an early spring in southern hemisphere

9:57 am

Scientists analyzing the climate effects from the 2018 global dust storm on Mars have found that while it did little to change the seasons in the northern hemisphere, it caused winter to end early in southern hemisphere.

The team found that the 2018 storm had profoundly different effects in each hemisphere. At the south pole, where the vortex was almost destroyed, temperatures rose and wind speeds fell dramatically. While the vortex may have already been starting to decay due to the onset of spring, the dust storm appears to have had a decisive effect in ending winter early.

The northern polar vortex, by contrast, remained stable and the onset of autumn followed its usual pattern. However, the normally elliptical northern vortex was changed by the storm to become more symmetrical. The researchers link this to the high dust content in the atmosphere suppressing atmospheric waves caused by the extreme topography in the northern hemisphere, which has volcanoes over twice as tall as Mount Everest and craters as deep as terrestrial mountains.

These differences are likely also related to the eccentricity in the Martian orbit around the Sun, which is greater than that of Earth and actually has a direct effect on its seasons. As noted in this recently published paper about the activity scientists have now documented on the Martian surface in the past decade,

Because perihelion (the closest approach to the Sun) currently occurs [during summer in the south], southern hemisphere seasons are more extreme, with a longer winter and shorter, warmer summer

This difference is probably a major factor explaining the different effects of the global dust storm. It also is probably why the Red Planet’s two polar ice caps are so different.

This difference between the two hemispheres will also likely help drive the intitial human settlement on Mars to the north. Not only does the northern hemisphere have the flat lowland plains, making those first difficult landings easier and safer, it has a more benign climate year round.

One comment

Court rejects Viasat’s effort to stop SpaceX Starlink launches

9:31 am

Capitalism in space? A three-judge panel on July 20, 2021 rejected Viasat’s request for a temporary injunction that would have stopped all SpaceX Starlink launches until Viasat’s lawsuit against that constellation is settled.

While this decision does not settle the lawsuit, it allows SpaceX launches to continue, and likely cause the case to be expedited in the courts. The decision also suggests that the court does not favor Viasat’s claims, which are somewhat dubious on their face, and appear designed merely to shut down a successful competitor through the use of the courts.

Viasat alleged that the FCC did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it approved SpaceX satellite launches because the commission “refused to conduct any environmental assessment.” Viasat told the DC Circuit court that SpaceX launches should be halted because of potential environmental harms when satellites are taken out of orbit; light pollution that alters the night sky; orbital debris; collision risks that may affect Viasat; and because “Viasat will suffer unwarranted competitive injury.”

The FCC by the way disputes Viasat’s claims, and filed its own brief defending SpaceX.

Viasat’s real concern is that its satellite internet service will be considered inferior to SpaceX’s and will thus lose customers to it. Too bad. Competition means you step up your game and do better, not go to court to try to shut down your opposition.

9 comments

Scientists refine Martian interior based on quakes detected by InSight

9:11 am

Martian quake map as seen by InSight

Scientists today published three studies in the journal Science outlining their conclusions about the interior of Mars, based on the quakes that have been detected by InSight since it arrived on Mars in November 2018.

Reporting in a trio of studies published in the July 23rd Science, the Insight science team has now analyzed about 10 marsquakes to make the first direct observations of the structure within another rocky planet. The results — a surprisingly thin crust, an undifferentiated mantle, and a larger-than-expected core — will help determine how Mars formed and evolved.

There results are essentially what was described in April by the InSight science team at the annual 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (and reported here but no where else), though now more carefully and thoroughly described.

The discovery that the Martian crust is much thinner than expected, either 12 or 24 miles thick, with a core that is still liquid, has ramifications that might help explain both the planet’s formation and its volcanic history and giant volcanoes.

One piece of good engineering news in connection with the lander InSight:

Despite a dust-fueled energy crisis earlier this year, the solar-powered lander has since regained some power-generating capacity. “We are at least safe for this season’s winter and probably far into 2022,” Stähler says.

Leave a comment

The wind-swept volcanic ash plains of Mars

2:19 pm

Overview map

Cool image time! In Mars’ volcano country lies the planet’s largest ash deposit, dubbed the Medusae Fossae Formation. Scientists believe that this gigantic deposit, with a size comparable to the nation of India, was laid down by muliple volcanic eruptions over several billion years and is the source of most of the dust seen on the Red Planet.

The overview map on the right shows the location of this ash deposit on Mars. The white cross indicates the location of today’s cool image, found below.
» Read more

One comment
1 … 211 212 213 214 215 … 1,022