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Space Perspectives unveils luxurious interior of Neptune high altitude balloon

9:41 am

Capitalism in space: Space Perspectives has now unveiled the high class stateroom interior that it plans to put inside its Neptune high altitude balloon that will take tourists to 30+ miles altitude.

Space Perspective just released artist’s illustrations of the interior of Spaceship Neptune, which will include 360-degree panoramic windows and even a restroom with a view. The announcement Tuesday (April 12) coincided with the anniversary of the first human spaceflight by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

Based on the imagery, Spaceship Neptune’s cabin appears to come in at least a couple of configurations. One has reclining seats, for example, while another with couches can accommodate a “more intimate dinner for two or special event,” Space Perspective representatives said in a statement on Tuesday.

Space Perspective will provide food and beverage services, and the capsule features mood lighting that can be dimmed to see stars or the curvature of Earth outside. Also included in the capsule’s “Space Lounge” will be a telescope, interactive screens and decorations such as floor lamps and plants to “remind us of the interconnected nature of our planet,” the company added.

The company hopes to begin commercial flights by ’24, each of which will last about six hours. Tickets are priced at $125K each, with the company saying it already has 600 people on its waiting list.

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Astronomers confirm comet with largest nucleus ever found

9:29 am

Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers determined that the nucleus of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014 UN271) is about 80 miles wide, making it the largest comet on record.

The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.

The behemoth comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. But not to worry. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won’t be until the year 2031.

The previous record holder is comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to be 60 miles across. It was discovered in 2002 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project.

This measurement does have a great deal of uncertainty, as Hubble cannot yet resolve the nucleus, and thus its diameter was determined by computer models based on the size of the comet’s coma, or surrounding atmosphere.

The comet itself has an orbit 3 million years long, which means it has zipped into the inner solar system many many times. The reason its nucleus remains so large is because its orbit never gets that close to the Sun, so its material does not get burned off so much with each perihelion. That it exists suggests there could be many such large comets which never dip close to the Sun.

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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

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.

MAVEN and Al-Amal scientists sign agreement to collaborate

1:20 pm

Scientists running the Mars orbiters MAVEN (from NASA) and Al-Amal (from the United Arab Emirates [UAE]) have signed an agreement to share data and — more importantly — coordinate their observations of the Martian atmosphere.

A new partnership that encourages the sharing of data between NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) project and the Emirates Mars Mission’s (EMM) Hope Probe (Al-Amal in Arabic) will enhance scientific returns from both spacecraft, which are currently orbiting Mars and collecting data on the Red Planet’s atmosphere. The arrangement is expected to add value to both MAVEN and EMM, as well as the scientific communities involved in analyzing the data the missions collect.

MAVEN went into orbit around Mars in 2014. Its mission is to investigate the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars, offering an insight into how the planet’s climate has changed over time. “MAVEN and EMM are each exploring different aspects of the Martian atmosphere and upper-atmosphere system,” said Shannon Curry, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “Combined, we will have a much better understanding of the coupling between the two, and the influence of the lower atmosphere on the escape to space of gas from the upper atmosphere.”

The EMM Hope Probe, which went into Mars orbit in 2021, is studying the relationship between the upper layer and lower regions of the Martian atmosphere, giving insight into the planet’s atmosphere at different times of the day and seasons.

What this agreement means is that the two science teams can more quickly match up the data from both orbiters, and figure out the relationships between both.

4 comments

Pushback: Black waitress sues NYC mayor over COVID shot mandate

12:10 pm

Virginia Alleyne, blacklisted by the Democratic Party
Virginia Alleyne, blacklisted by
the Democratic Party

Don’t comply! A waitress who formerly worked at Yankee Stadium but lost her job because of the COVID shot mandate imposed by New York City mayor Eric Adams is now suing him and the city. Her suit is also fueled because of Adams’ arbitrary decision to cancel the mandate for wealthy athletes.

Virginia Alleyne’s Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit claims Hizzoner’s exemption for athletes and performers is “arbitrary and capricious” and an “abuse of discretion.”

“For him to allow millionaires to work and to punish the workers who are the lifeblood of this city is just horrendous,” Alleyne told The Post. “So many workers have lost their jobs, yet he’s rewarding the millionaires because he doesn’t want them coming after him,” she continued. “We are being punished by a blatant and egregious double standard.”

The 57-year-old Upper East Side single mom said she was placed on unpaid leave from her job as a waitress at the stadium’s high-end restaurant Legends Suite Club in September because she is unvaccinated.

This quote from her lawyer illustrates quite starkly how incredibly arbitrary and capricious Adams’ edict is:
» Read more

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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

ULA orders 116 rocket engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne for its Vulcan upper stage

10:33 am

Capitalism in space: In order to meet its contract with Amazon to launch a lot of Kuiper satellites, ULA has now ordered 116 rocket engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne for the Centaur upper stage of its new and as-yet unlaunched Vulcan-Centaur rocket.

Aerojet said this was the company’s largest ever contract for the RL10 engine. The large purchase of rocket engines comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement April 5 that it selected Arianespace, Blue Origin and ULA to launch up to 3,236 satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband constellation.

CEO Tory Bruno said ULA plans to fly Vulcan’s first mission late in 2022. Winning the Amazon deal would more than double the annual rate of Vulcan launches to as many as 25 per year, and ULA will ramp up production to meet the demand, Bruno said last week at the Space Symposium.

ULA’s engine choice for Vulcan’s upper stage dates back to 2018 when it selected a variant of the RL10, the same engine used to power the upper stages of ULA’s legacy rockets Atlas 5 and Delta 4 Heavy. Over the past 60 years, more than 450 RL10 engines have flown on various ULA heritage vehicles.

Meanwhile, ULA hopes to get its first BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, needed for the Vulcan first stage, this summer. Vulcan-Centaur cannot make its first launch until it gets some flightworthy BE-4 engines, and these are now three years behind schedule.

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Interstellar meteor impacted Earth in 2014

10:28 am

According to classified military data just released, it appears that an asteroid from interstellar space impacted the Earth in 2014, with some of its pieces possibly hitting the ocean in the south Pacific.

The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor—and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system—which was initially flagged by a pair of Harvard University researchers in a study posted on the preprint server arXiv in 2019.

Amir Siraj, a student pursuing astrophysics at Harvard who led the research, said the study has been awaiting peer review and publication for years, but has been hamstrung by the odd circumstances that arose from the sheer novelty of the find and roadblocks put up by the involvement of information classified by the U.S. government.

The speed and angle in which the object hit the atmosphere are why the scientists believe it comes from outside the solar system.

Siraj is actually hoping to mount a mission to recover parts of this asteroid, something that is extremely unlikely. First, the meteor itself was small, so it likely all burned up in re-entry. Second, even if pieces survived, finding them on the bottom of the Pacific is likely impossible.

5 comments

Russia backs off its threats to leave ISS partnership

10:19 am

In several short news posts on Russia’s state-run press today, the Putin government indicated that it has backed off from its threats to end the partnership at ISS quickly.

First, Roscosmos’s head, Dmitry Rogozin, announced that it will proceed with its barter deal with NASA and allow astronauts from NASA and others to fly on Soyuz while Russian astronauts fly on Dragon and eventually Starliner.

“Why give up something that is useful? Anna Kikina [Russian woman cosmonaut] flew to Houston (USA) to familiarize herself with the design of the modules of the ISS American segment and the Crew Dragon spacecraft whose crew she may join. On our part, we are not ruining anything and keep to preliminary accords, although we continue waiting for the government’s decision on the program of cross flights,” Rogozin explained.

Second, Rogozin made statements that suggested Russia will maintain its full partnership on ISS through ’24, and maybe beyond.

Now Russia has to set up its mind about the year until which it cooperates on the ISS project, Rogozin said. “Yes, the Americans want it [cooperation] to last until 2030. The previous talks said that it would be until 2028. But let me repeat again that we have to decide on the main thing: to continue cooperation on the ISS or switch to the ROSS [Russian Orbital Service Station]. Subsequently, we will decide on what to do with our two new modules on the ISS that we docked last year,” Rogozin said.

In other words, Russia ain’t going no where. It might decide eventually to launch a new core module for their own station, and then transfer the newer modules on ISS to it, but none of this will happen until a final date for ISS’s deorbit is established.

Based on Rogozin’s earlier bombastic threats, I had expected Russia to take a harder position. It appears cooler heads in Roscosmos convinced Rogozin and Putin that in terms of cost and safety, a quick exit made no sense.

This decision to back off was also probably influenced by Russia’s losses in the Ukraine. It is no longer in a strong negotiating position in anything, has lost almost all its economic partnerships with the west, and thus does not wish to lose the one partnership that remains, on ISS.

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Curiosity retreating from Greenheugh Pediment

10:05 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Because of the incredible roughness of the ground on the Greenheugh Pediment, the science team for the rover Curiosity has decided to make a major change in their route. Rather than continue their traverse across this terrain, as planned for years, they have decided to back off in order to protect Curiosity’s dinged wheels, and find a more friendly route up Mount Sharp.

“It was obvious from Curiosity’s photos that this would not be good for our wheels,” said Curiosity Project Manager Megan Lin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “It would be slow going, and we wouldn’t have been able to implement rover-driving best practices.”

The gator-back rocks aren’t impassable – they just wouldn’t have been worth crossing, considering how difficult the path would be and how much they would age the rover’s wheels.

So the mission is mapping out a new course for the rover as it continues to explore Mount Sharp, a 3.4-mile-tall (5.5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014. As it climbs, Curiosity is able to study different sedimentary layers that were shaped by water billions of years ago. These layers help scientists understand whether microscopic life could have survived in the ancient Martian environment.

The plan is to retrace the rover’s path back through Gordon Notch and then head uphill though another gap that will take it directly onto the next sedimentary layer, dubbed the sulfate unit. On the overview map above, the red dotted line shows the long-planned route. The yellow lines indicate the area seen in the panorama I posted on April 6th, when Curiosity was at its farthest into the pediment. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s position two days ago. You can see that it has retreated backwards.

This change means the scientists will likely not get a close look at Gediz Vallis Ridge. However, it also means the rover will likely reach Gediz Vallis much sooner that previously planned.

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Neptune’s cooling when it should be warming

9:45 am

Neptune since 2006

The uncertainty of science: Observations of Neptune during the past seventeen years using the Very Large Telescope have shown the planet mostly cooling during this time period, even though Neptune was moving into its summer season.

Astronomers looked at nearly 100 thermal-infrared images of Neptune, captured over a 17-year period, to piece together overall trends in the planet’s temperature in greater detail than ever before. These data showed that, despite the onset of southern summer, most of the planet had gradually cooled over the last two decades. The globally averaged temperature of Neptune dropped by 8 °C between 2003 and 2018.

The astronomers were then surprised to discover a dramatic warming of Neptune’s south pole during the last two years of their observations, when temperatures rapidly rose 11 °C between 2018 and 2020. Although Neptune’s warm polar vortex has been known for many years, such rapid polar warming has never been previously observed on the planet. “Our data cover less than half of a Neptune season, so no one was expecting to see large and rapid changes,” says co-author Glenn Orton, senior research scientist at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the US.

The sequence of photos above show that change over time. Lower latitudes generally get darker, or cooler, while the south pole suddenly brightens, getting hotter, in 2020.

The scientists have no idea why this has happened, though they have theories, ranging from simple random weather patterns to the influence of the Sun’s sunspot cycle.

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Rocket Lab breaks ground on Neutron rocket factory

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday broke ground on the construction of its larger proposed Neutron rocket factory at Wallops Island, Virginia, right next door to where the company plans to launch it.

The 250,000 square foot Neutron Production Complex is being constructed on a 28-acre site adjacent to the NASA Wallops Flight Facility and Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The complex will support Neutron production, assembly, and integration, and is expected to bring up to 250 highly-skilled roles to the region. Construction will also soon begin on a launch pad for Neutron at the southern end of Wallops Island, near Rocket Lab’s existing launch pad for the Electron rocket.

Neutron will largely reusable, its first stage returning to Earth for reuse, and carrying with it the skin of the second stage. The design combines this skin with the fairings that protect the payload and second stage engine, so that only the second stage engine is lost in orbit.

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ISRO hires company to build future PSLV rockets

9:13 am

Capitalism in space: For the first time, India’s space agency ISRO is about to hire a private company to build five PSLV rockets, rather than supervise the construction in-house.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and L&T consortium has emerged as the lowest bidder to make 5 Polar Space Launch Vehicles (PSLVs) for ISRO. “The company is the lead partner with L&T sharing the work. Other vendors too will be involved with the consortium in the manufacturing of the launch vehicles (LVs). However, the contract is yet to be formalised/ awarded,” HAL said in a statement.

If all goes as planned, the first rockets will be delivered late in ’24.

This contract changes less than it seems, though it is a step in the right direction. ISRO has for years hired private subcontractors to build its rockets and components. What is different now is that it appears that HAL is now the lead contractor, not ISRO. HAL however does not appear to own the rockets it builds, and thus will not be able to build more to sell launches to others. Until this happens, India’s space industry will remain wholly government run.

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Today’s blacklisted American: News staffers at CBS demand network blacklist Republican

1:12 pm

CBS NEWS: Home of blacklisting

The new dark age of silencing: When the news division at CBS recently decided to hire Mick Mulvaney, a former Republican congressman and a former chief of staff for President Trump, there was a outraged revolt among the network’s news staff, demanding that the hiring be cancelled and that CBS blacklist all such partisan Republicans.

[Jeremy Barr, liberal Washington Post media reporter,] “obtained” a recording of a staff meeting led by CBS News co-president Neeraj Khemlani. Surely, the staffer recording this meeting was outraged that Khemlani said “getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms.”

Anonymous CBS News Democrats were alarmed “the network was jeopardizing its long history of journalistic excellence.” And you thought Dan Rather already did that.

“I know everyone I talked to today was embarrassed about the hiring,” said a CBS News employee who “spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.” This is the most ridiculous use of anonymous sourcing – to protect liberals while they publicly campaign against their bosses.

» Read more

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Perseverance arrives at Three Forks at the base of Jezero Crater’s delta

12:01 pm

Panorama of delta in Jezero Crater
Original images found here, here, here, and here. Click for full resolution.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from four navigation camera images taken by the Mars rover Perseverance on April 10th. Because the lens on Perseverance’s navigation cameras produce slightly curved images which are taken in pairs, the panorama is made of two parts, each a pair perfectly matched images looking from a different angle. I have overlapped the pairs but as you can see, the match at the center is imperfect. While this does not produce a single smooth image, the two paired panoramas show the foot of the entire delta that had flowed into Jezero crater in the past and is the prime geological target of the rover. What is it made of? What caused it to flow into the crater? When did it do it? How was Mars different when it did so? Was the crater wet? Was the delta mud when it flowed, or was it sediment under water, pushed out by that flowing water?

The location map to the right is taken from the “Where is Perseverance?” webpage but annotated to show the planned routes of both Perseverance and Ingenuity, as shown by the tan dashed lines. The red dot marks Perseverance present location, the green dot Ingenuty’s. The yellow lines the approximate area covered by the panorama.

What next? Expect Perseverance to move as close to the base of the delta’s cliff as possible and spend at least several months studying it. Ingenuity meanwhile will be flown to the west to scout the various hollows that are potential routes for Perseverance to climb up onto the delta.

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Astroscale demo to test space junk removal struggles with failed thrusters

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: Astroscale demo mission, ELSA-d, has been unable to complete a docking with its target vehicle as planned because four of the eight thrusters on the capture “servicer” vehicle have failed.

Engineers had separated the servicer from the target in January so that it could perform a rendezvous and then docking, from a distance, but that test was halted when engineers detected what the company only labeled as “anomalous spacecraft conditions.” This new announcement reveals what that problem was.

With safety always paramount, the Astroscale team has used a complex mix of burns with the remaining thrusters, aerodynamic drag and the natural perturbations of Earth’s gravity to bring the servicer safely back to a distance where operations can continue.

This revised plan began on February 18th, and has now apparently been mostly completed. However, rather than dock, the company has decided to only approach as close to 160 meters (525 feet) to test some sensors, and then retreat. Whether they will then attempt a recapture remains undecided.

Astroscale’s goal is to convince satellite companies to install its magnetic capture device on their satellites. Astroscale’s servicer could then use it to dock with a defunct satellite and deorbit it or maybe fix it. This demo flight was to prove the rendezvous and capture device worked.

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NASA will not load fuels in SLS upper stage in next dress rehearsal countdown attempt

12:29 am

In the next attempt to complete the first “wet dress rehearsal” of NASA’s SLS rocket tomorrow, April 11th, the dress rehearsal will not be as wet as originally planned.

NASA said April 7 that engineers found a problem maintain helium purge pressure in the ICPS [SLS’s upper stage] after changing out a regulator in the mobile launch platform. At that time, the agency said it was able to restore normal pressure but was still studying the source of the problem, now linked to the faulty valve in the ICPS itself.

Because that issue, NASA now plans to limit the amount of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant loaded into the ICPS during the WDR. NASA said the countdown rehearsal will be modified with “minimal propellant operations” on the ICPS, but didn’t elaborate on how much propellant would be transferred into the upper stage.

As usual, NASA officials are now making believe that they will achieve all their goals for the dress rehearsal if they complete it without completely fueling the upper stage. This is intellectually dishonest. This dress rehearsal was intended to test all aspects of the rocket’s launch countdown, including the fueling of all its stages. If they complete it without successfully fueling the upper stage, they will not achieve all their goals. Period.

The plan right now is to attempt this revised launch rehearsal tomorrow, then return the rocket to the vehicle assembly building where engineers will replace the faulty valve. At that point it is unclear what the agency will do next.

Though this incomplete test will have taught them a lot, if they do not redo the dress rehearsal with full loading of all stages but instead proceed to a launch attempt in the present target window from June 6 to June 16, they will be doing so with a greater risk. Of course, if the new valve works during that launch attempt, then all should be well. In fact, this risk appears quite reasonable.

Nonetheless, the fundamental problem remains: NASA is under pressure to launch, and held off this kind of testing until very late in the program. Finding these problems now puts serious limits on the ability of the agency to fix them. This in turn puts serious limits on the reliability of SLS.

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Splonk went the crater!

12:59 pm

Splonk went the crater!
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 18, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “degraded crater in Utopia Planitia.”

There is a lot of intriguing geology in this one image. First of course is the crater itself. We have to ask, is it from an impact or from some volcanic process? The location, at 44 degrees north latitude, argues that some form of ice or mud process was involved. Maybe we are looking at a frozen eruption from an underground ice layer. If this was instead caused by an impact, the crater’s ringlike structure could have been created by the ripples of melted ice and mud emanating away but then quickly refreezing.

Surrounding the crater are many small fissures, the largest ones all oriented in a north-south direction. If there is an ice layer near the surface, these cracks might be caused by that ice sublimating away. Why the largest cracks orient in the same direction however is a mystery.

The color variations suggest [pdf] dust (red-orange) as well as a variety of minerals (green). Since no blue appears visible in this version of the photo, if this crater was shaped by melting or erupting ice, that ice is well covered by that layer of dust and debris.

The location map below as always provides context.
» Read more

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Pushback: NJ gym-owners who refused to obey COVID edicts regain business license

11:30 am

Bill of Rights, canceled in New Jersey these past two years
The Bill of Rights, canceled in New Jersey
these past two years.

A profile in courage: The owners of a New Jersey gym, Atilis Gym, who refused to comply with any of the absurd Wuhan flu restrictions imposed by Democratic Party Governor Phil Murphy and his health department have had their business license restored after two years, during which they managed to keep the gym functioning by asking for donations by those who used it.

[Ian] Smith claimed that as a result of not complying with lockdown orders, he and [Frank] Trumbetti received more than 90 citations, along with ten gym members who received citations; 9 criminal charges; that both he and Trumbetti were arrested, as well as one member; that local police changed the locks on the building, backed up their plumbing, and eventually boarded up the gym; that they were fined $15,497.76 every day they remained open, for 5 months; that $173,000 in fundraising for their legal defense was seized by the state; and that they owe more than $300,000 in legal bills. “And they took our business license,” Smith wrote. “Our ability to pursue the American dream. All for what? We were right all along. To date, 391,683 visits to our facility and people got healthier, happier, and better.”

“Well, it paid off,” Smith continued. “The township folded. They reinstated our business license. It took them 2 years to realize that nothing would make us kneel. … We made it. 2 years without charging a single member – just donations and [T-Shirt] sales. All the legal bills, fines, normal overhead, and safety equipment. We were able to do it because of you all. Thank you all again.”

Expect these owners to follow up with lawsuits to recover damages for the state’s illegal acts to try to destroy them.

Their resistance to tyranny was very painful for these brave men, but their courage cannot be applauded enough. They did what more Americans should have done, and did not. They stood up to the idiotic health orders of the state, that were based on no science at all and were completely useless:
» Read more

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New data contradicts accepted standard model of particle physics

9:35 am

The uncertainty of science: After years of analysis, physicists have refined their measurement of the mass of one important subatomic particle, and discovered that its weight violates the accepted standard model of particle physics, threatening to overthrow it entirely.

W bosons are elementary particles that carry the weak force, mediating nuclear processes like those at work in the Sun. According to the Standard Model, their mass is linked to the masses of the Higgs boson and a subatomic particle called the top quark. In a new study, almost 400 scientists on the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) collaboration spent a decade examining 4.2 million W boson candidates collected from 26 years of data at the Tevatron collider. From this treasure trove, the team was able to calculate the mass of the W boson to within 0.01 percent, making it twice as precise as the previous best measurement.

By their calculations, the W boson has a mass of 80,433.5 Mega-electronvolts (MeV), with an uncertainty of just 9.4 MeV either side. That’s within the range of some previous measurements, but well outside that predicted by the Standard Model, which puts it at 80,357 MeV, give or take 6 MeV. That means the new value is off by a whopping seven standard deviations.

Further cementing the anomaly, the W boson mass was also recently measured using data from the Large Hadron Collider, in a paper published in January. That team came to a value of 80,354 MeV (+/- 32 MeV), which is comfortably close to that given by the Standard Model.

Personally, I always take this level of physics with a great deal of skepticism. The data involves a lot of assumptions and uncertainties. That other researchers came up with a different number illustrates this.

Nonetheless, these results could suggest that the standard model, the consensus theory for decades, is either incomplete, or wrong. The former would be more likely, but no possibility should be dismissed. And even if wrong, much of that model still works so well any new model must include large parts of it.

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French company raises €2 million to launch commercial solar sail

9:23 am

Capitalism in space: The French startup Gama has successfully raised €2 million to build and launch its first test solar sail, with the goal of eventually selling those sails for other interplanetary missions.

Gama plans to deploy a 73.3-sq-metre solar sail in a 550km-altitude orbit in October. It will be launched as an additional payload on a SpaceX rocket.

There have been a number of previous solar sail deployment tests by Nasa and the American space advocacy group the Planetary Society. However, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency had been the only organisation to successfully sail on sunlight. In 2010 it used a solar sail to power the experimental Ikaros (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun) spacecraft to Venus.

If successful the company will follow with two more test missions in ’24 and ’25, first testing at higher orbit and testing in interplanetary space.

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Starlink delivers 5,000 terminals to Ukraine; loses license in France

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: Starlink today continued its aggressive support for the Ukraine in its war with Russia by delivering another 5,000 terminals to that beleaguered country.

Space reporter Joey Roulette tweeted Wednesday that the majority of the terminals — 3,667, to be exact — as well as the associated internet service were donated directly by SpaceX at a cost of “roughly $10 million,” with USAID purchasing the remaining 1,333 terminals. These numbers apparently came from an earlier version of the USAID release; the updated release doesn’t give dollar figures and refers only to 5,000 Starlink terminals donated by a public-private partnership.

Roulette also suggested in another tweet that France and Poland had made contributions to the Starlink shipments to Ukraine, citing an earlier conversation with SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell. The USAID announcement only refers to the American partnership, however.

In a second story today, however, Starlink lost its ability to provide service in France, when a court ruled its license had been issued improperly.

France’s Conseil d’État ruled April 5 that French telecoms regulator ARCEP should have launched a public consultation before authorizing Starlink in February 2021.

“In law, they should normally cease [providing services] immediately, pending ARCEP’s public consultation” following the court’s decision, a Conseil d’État spokesperson told SpaceNews.

The court case was apparently instigated by two French environmental groups, who are demanding more regulations against the large satellite constellations.

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Relativity still targeting a ’22 first launch

8:56 am

Capitalism in space: The startup rocket company Relativity is still targeting this year for the first test launch of its 3D-printed Terran-1 rocket, according to its CEO Tim Ellis.

The company has raised more than $1 billion in private investment capital.

If successful, Relativity will join Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra as a small satellite launch provider, all capable of launching military and commercial smallsats quickly. The competition will guarantee that their prices will be low as well.

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SpaceX successfully launches Axiom’s first commercial flight to ISS

8:19 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched the first commercial mission to ISS by the private company Axiom, carrying three passengers and one Axiom astronaut as commander.

The replay of the live stream of the launch is embedded below.

The first stage, which landed successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic, completed its fifth flight. The capsule Endeavour was making its third flight. This is also the second private manned mission launched by SpaceX.

Docking with ISS is scheduled for early tomorrow morning.

All in all, it was a perfect launch, on time and as planned. This has become so routine for SpaceX that we tend to take it for granted. We shouldn’t. Launching people into space remains one of the hardest things humans do, and will likely always be so.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

13 SpaceX
9 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 20 to 9 in the national rankings.
» Read more

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Video of panel discussion of Ukraine War’s impact on the global space industry

5:39 pm

Stephen Fleming, who founded the Arizona Space Business Roundtable which co-hosted the Ukraine War panel discussion on April 5th with the Arizona Technology Council has now made the video of that event available on line.

The event was intended to outline and review what the impact of the Ukraine War on the global space industry might be.

You can download a video podcast of the event here.

The speakers:

Robert Zimmerman: The impact on Russia and the Ukraine space industries
Alex Rodriguez: The impact on the world’s space-related defense and military industries
Stephen Fleming [moderator]: The impact on the rest of the world’s commercial space industries

Also speaking remotely was Jim Cantrell, former CEO of Vector and now in charge of Phantom Space.

As expected, the event ran long, though no one left or fell asleep. Instead, there were good questions and comments. Alex reminded me of something I had completely forgotten about: When NATO had expanded after the fall of the Soviet Union, it only did so after signing an agreement with Russia calling for joint military operations, in order to convince the Russians that the expansion was not intended as a threat. That agreement, signed by Yeltsin, was essentially “shredded by Putin,” as Alex noted.

Give it a watch. You might find it enlightening.

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The Ukraine War: Russia in retreat in the past week

3:43 pm

The Ukraine War as of March 31, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 31, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of April 7, 2022
The Ukraine War as of April 7, 2022. Click for full map.

In the last week the situation in the Ukraine changed quite radically. Last week there were hints that the Ukrainians were beginning to push back successfully against the Russians, but those gains appeared small and were uncertain.

These small gains in late March are indicated by the green arrows on the first map to the right, a simplified and annotated version of the map provided on March 31, 2022 by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). I strongly advise my readers to read their reports to get a fuller understanding of the overall the war situation. Anecdotal reports from either side do not tell you much.

The second map, published today by ISW and once again cropped and simplified by me to post here, shows starkly the retreat of Russian forces in the past week. The blue areas indicate regions now controlled by the Ukraine, with the arrows indicating the fast exit of Russian forces. The hatch-marked red areas surrounded by a black border are regions of the Ukraine captured by the Russians in 2014. The solid red areas are areas they captured in the past month and appear to still hold. The light red and tan areas are regions the Russians have entered but do not yet control with certainty.

The Russian effort to take the Ukraine entirely has clearly failed. Its gains after a little more than a month of battle are now shrinking. It has fled from Kiev so that the entire north and west of the country are no longer under attack. Though its military now claims Russia has finally taken central Mariupol in the south — after weeks of fighting — that capture is still not complete, with large sections of the city still outside of Russian control.

Meanwhile. the focus of the war shifts to the south and east, as both countries redeploy forces there. According to today’s ISW report:

Russian forces are cohering combat power for an intended major offensive in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the coming days. Ukrainian civil and military officials continued to warn local residents to evacuate prior to a likely Russian offensive. Russian forces will likely attempt to regroup and redeploy units withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine to support an offensive, but these units are unlikely to enable a Russian breakthrough. Russian forces along the Izyum-Slovyansk axis [circled areas just north of Luhansk] did not make any territorial gains in the last 24 hours. Russian forces are unlikely to successfully capture Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts if Russian forces in Izyum are unable to encircle Ukrainian forces on the line of contact in eastern Ukraine.

The next week will tell us whether Russia can successfully shift its effort to this region, or whether the Ukrainian forces can push back and force more Russian retreats, possibly retaking all of Russia’s gains in the past month and even possibly pushing back into territories taken in 2014.

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