Spinlaunch conducts first prototype test launch

9:18 am

Spinlaunch prototype suborbital launcher

Capitalism in space: Spinlaunch on October 22, 2021 successfully completed the first launch of a prototype using its radical spin technology that spins the payload to high speeds and then releases it upward.

On October 22, the company completed its first test flight at its Spaceport America base in New Mexico, successfully launching a prototype vehicle from its Suborbital Accelerator which reached supersonic speeds and was recovered for reuse thereafter. It plans to conduct further test flights across 2022 with different vehicles and at different launch velocities, as it plans for its first customer launches in late 2024.

In the photo to the right, note the vehicles and cherry-pickers in the lower right corner. They provide some scale. There is also a video showing this test flight on the company’s webpage. Lots of music, few details, but the video does show the prototype rocket-shaped payload rising upward after release.

If this technology becomes viable, it offers the possibility of an incredibly cheap method for putting bulk payloads into space, such as water, fuel, and other resources that will not be harmed by the initial high accelerations.

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History Unplugged – The Age of Discovery 2.0: Episode 3

10:57 pm

Episode three of the six part series, The Age of Discovery 2.0, from the podcast, History Unplugged, is now available here.

This episode features Robert Zubrin. From the description:

A new space race has begun. But the rivals, in this case, are not superpowers but competing entrepreneurs. These daring pioneers are creating a revolution in spaceflight that promises to transform the near future. Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin spells out the potential of these new developments in an engrossing narrative that is visionary yet grounded by a deep understanding of the practical challenges.

Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars.

Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this—to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn’t enough for all.

Listen to it. It is definitely worth your time.

The next episode is mine.

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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 or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, 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

New space tug to launch in January ’22

3:45 pm

Capitalism in space: A ew space tug, designed and built by the company Spaceflight, is set to launch in January ’22 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and deploy 13 satellites in two different orbits.

In a mission Spaceflight dubs SXRS-6, the OTV [orbital transfer vehicle] will first place four microsatellites and five cubesats in Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO) at 525 kilometers altitude, after being deployed from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

About a month later, following various commissioning and system tests, Sherpa-LTC1 will use its bipropellant, green propulsion subsystem from Benchmark Space Systems to maneuver to 500 kilometers, where it will deploy its remaining four cubesats.

This technology gives cubesat owners greater flexibility. Even if they launch as a secondary payload that is not placed in the right orbit, the tug can still get them to their preferred orbit.

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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.

NASA admits manned lunar landing can’t happen before ’25

3:37 pm

NASA administrator Bill Nelson admitted today that the goal of landing Americans back on the Moon by 2024 was impossible, and that the agency has now delayed that target date one year to 2025.

Nelson attempted to blame the delay on Blue Origin’s lawsuit against NASA for its award of the manned lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

He blamed the shifting timeline on a lawsuit over the agency’s moon lander, to be built by SpaceX, and delays with NASA’s Orion capsule, which is to fly astronauts to lunar orbit. “We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025,” Mr. Nelson said, adding that NASA will need to have more detailed discussions with SpaceX to set a more specific timeline.

This however is a bald-faced lie. The Trump 2024 deadline was never realistic. Moreover, delays in SLS and Orion have been continuous and ongoing for years, all of which made a ’24 landing quite difficult and if attempted extremely unsafe. Even as it is, trying this mission by ’25 is risky, especially if it depends on SLS. Moreover, as the article notes, how SLS, Orion, and SpaceX’s Starship will team up to get this mission — designed by a committee — to and from the Moon remains exceedingly unclear.

With great confidence I predict that if the lunar mission depends on SLS in any manner, it will not launch in ’25 either.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Hiring white men a sin at major investment firm

11:27 am

Discriminated against in Seattle
Eagerly discriminated against at
State Street Global Advisors

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Not only has the investment firm State Street Global Advisor, one of the largest in the world, decided that white men must be considered last in any hiring decision, the company has installed a race- and sex-based apartheid system designed to favor those groups in all matters.

The company aims to triple the number of Black, Asian and other minority staff in senior positions by 2023, the Sunday Times reported. If executives don’t meet the target, they will face lowered bonuses.

Recruiters will now have to establish panels of four or five employees, including a woman and a person with a minority background, when hiring middle management staff. The firm will still hire white men, [said Jess McNicholas, the bank’s head of inclusion, diversity and corporate citizenship in London,] but recruiters are required to show that women and minority applicants were interviewed by the panels.

The company is pledging to “hold ourselves accountable for strengthening black and Latinx owned businesses.”

The comments to this policy at the link are astonishing in their almost uniform hostility to this discriminatory policy. This is a typical comment:
» 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

Viasat to buy Inmarsat for $7.3 billion

9:35 am

Two long time traditional communication satellite companies today announced a merger, with the U.S.-based Viasat to buy the UK-based Inmarsat for $7.3 billion.

In a surprise move, California-based Viasat this morning announced a plan to acquire UK-based Inmarsat for a cost of some $7.3 billion — potentially creating a commercial satellite communications behemoth worth $4.1 billion in 2021 revenue, of which 40% is in government sales, including to the Defense Department.

While the acquisition will require approval from regulators, the combined company already is planning an expansion of its on-orbit assets, including two polar orbiting satellites that can bring capacity to the Arctic.

The bulk of business for both companies has in recent years been government military contracts, launching geosynchronous communications satellites. Both however have been under strong competitive pressure from the newer satellite constellations in lower orbit. Additionally, the push within the Space Force to shift from single large satellites to many redundant smallsats has put pressure on both companies.

This merger suggests a consolidation is occurring in these big old satellite companies as they struggle to adjust to a changing satellite market. Viasat for example was founded in 1986, while Inmarsat began in 1979, with both companies exclusively launching the traditional geosynchronous communications satellites. Both now are faced with new technologies in low Earth orbit, which has many advantages over high geosynchronous orbits. They need to adapt and change, or die.

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Lucy’s solar panel problem could be due to strap

9:20 am

According to the engineering team for the Lucy asteroid mission, they now think the incomplete deployment of one of the probe’s solar panels was caused by a strap.

The joint Anomaly Response Team has been studying the array using an engineering model. Initial tests indicate that the lanyard that pulls out the solar array may not have completed the process successfully; however, it is still uncertain what caused this condition. The team is conducting more tests to determine if this is indeed the case, and what the root cause might be.

An attempt to characterize the array deployment by attempting to move it would occur no earlier than Nov. 16.

Meanwhile, they have been turning on Lucy’s instruments one by one, with everything functioning as planned, except for that one solar panel. The panel however is a serious concern, as the spacecraft is heading out to the orbit of Jupiter, where it will need every inch of solar panel surface area to get enough power to operate. At the moment it appears the panel is deployed somewhere between 75% to 95%.

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Japan’s Epsilon rocket launches nine smallsats

9:07 am

Japan today successfully launched nine small satellites into orbit using its smallsat Epsilon rocket.

The article at the link provides a detailed description of all the satellites, which are either testing new technology or were built by college students for educational purposes, including a satellite built by Vietnamese engineers.

Epsilon itself has only flown five times since its first launch in 2013, which suggests its price is high and thus it does not attract many customers.

This was Japan’s second launch in 2021, which means it does not make the leader board. The leaders in the 2021 launch race remains as follows:

41 China
23 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China still leads the U.S. 41 to 36 in the national rankings.

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Hubble camera back in operation

2:16 pm

Good news! As engineers work to fix the problem that caused the Hubble Space Telescope to shut down on October 25th, they have now successfully returned Hubble’s most important camera back to doing science.

The Hubble team successfully recovered the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument Nov. 7. The instrument has started taking science observations once again. Hubble’s other instruments remain in safe mode while NASA continues investigating the lost synchronization messages first detected Oct. 23. The camera was selected as the first instrument to recover as it faces the fewest complications should a lost message occur.

This success strongly suggests they have pinpointed the software issue that caused the shutdown, and can now step-by-step reactivate all the other instruments in the coming week.

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Frozen lake bed in the Martian high latitudes?

2:03 pm

Frozen lakebed in the Martian high latitudes?
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image comes from today’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) high resolution picture of the day, rotated and cropped to post here. The original was taken back on March 28, 2017.

What formed those strange circular ridges and the many small cracks and hollows? The caption provided is somewhat vague and I think confusing:

This formation looks like a crater from a meteor impact rather than an ancient caldera of a volcano. Connected to the crater is a carved-out area that resembles a lake bed. At high resolution, we might be able to determine the likelihood of a water lake bed or lava bed. This observation will give insight into some of the interesting geology of this area.

The crater this caption is referring to is not visible in the image provided. It can be seen to the west of this location, in the MRO context camera picture below.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: If you are unvaxxed you are banned from hospital care in Colorado

10:55 am

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: It appears it wasn’t enough to ban one woman in Colorado from receiving a desperately needed kidney transplant because she and her donor had not gotten their COVID shots. Now, Jared Polis, the Democratic Party governor of Colorado, has told all hospitals in the state to ban everyone from getting treatment if they refuse to get the experimental drugs being touted, falsely, as vaccines against COVID.

Polis’ order reportedly gives health care professionals the authority to prioritize crisis care under the direction of the state health department. “If you are unvaccinated, a regular trip to the grocery store, a night out to dinner are more dangerous than they have been at any point during this pandemic,” Polis said, according to NBC News. “The delta variant is brutally effective at seeking out the unvaccinated, like a laser-guided missile.”

“While the state has a nearly 80 percent partial vaccination rate, unvaccinated people with severe Covid-19 are overwhelming hospitals, many of which reported being over 90 percent capacity,” said Scott Bookman, Covid-19 incident commander for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The language of this executive order makes it clear that it authorizes discrimination against those who are not vaccinated for COVID-19.

Polis’ order was likely issued in response to the kidney transplant story in order to give the state’s hospitals some political cover as they ramp up their discrimination against those who refuse to get the experimental COVID shots.

Some news reports suggest that this order really only applies to elective treatments, but that does not appear to be the case. The actual order states:
» Read more

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New catalog of 90 gravitational wave detections published

9:24 am

The scientists operating the world’s three gravitational wave detectors today released a new catalog of all their detections, totaling 90 with 35 never before published.

All signals come from merging black holes and neutron stars. The new catalog contains some surprises, such as an unusual neutron-star–black-hole merger, a massive black hole merger, and binary black holes revealing information about their spins.

…The researchers have also published two papers accompanying their new catalog today. One looks at what the events can tell us about the population of compact objects in our Universe, how often they merge, and how their masses are distributed. In the other paper the researchers employed the gravitational waves to better understand the expansion history of the cosmos by measuring the Hubble constant.

Because of the tiny sample so far detected, these generalized results cannot be taken too seriously, though they do give hints at the larger context.

All three observatories are now undergoing upgrades, and will resume operations in a few weeks.

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Crew on China’s space station complete first spacewalk

9:17 am

The crew on China’s Tianhe space station have successfully completed their first spacewalk, with two astronauts spending 6.5 hours on the exterior of the station, testing their new spacesuits, the station’s robot arm, and the overall equipment used during such outside activities.

Zhai Zhigang was doing his second spacewalk, the first in thirteen years. Wang Yaping was doing her first, which made her the first Chinese woman to walk in space. This was her second space mission, the first in 2013 when she was the second Chinese woman fly in space.

The third crew member, Ye Guangfu, stayed on aboard the station to coordinate activities with the crew outside.

The crew is expected to do one to two more spacewalks during the rest of their six month mission. During that time two more large modules will be launched to the station.

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Endeavour undocking from ISS delayed one day; Endurance launch still set for November 10th

9:03 am

Because of high winds, the undocking of Endeavour from ISS was delayed from yesterday until today, with the landing now set for later this evening.

If conditions are favorable Monday, Crew-2 astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet will enter their Crew Dragon capsule currently attached to the International Space Station and depart at 2:05 p.m. ET. Splashdown in one of seven potential landing sites off the Florida coast is expected about eight hours later at 10:33 p.m. ET.

The 24-hour delay from Sunday to Monday, however, didn’t impact the timing for another crew waiting to swap positions. Crew-3 astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Matthias Maurer are prepping for their Falcon 9 launch currently scheduled for no earlier than 9:03 p.m. Wednesday. Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A will host.

Both NASA and SpaceX want to get Endeavour back to Earth, as it has already exceeded the six month time it is designed (at present) to stay in space.

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Curiosity: Approaching the saddle

9:21 am

The saddle ahead
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced to post here, was taken on November 5, 2021 by Curiosity’s high resolution camera, and looks forward at its planned route up onto the saddle ahead, where the rover will turn right and climb up into Maria Gordon Notch. (See this October post for a map outlining the rover’s future travels.) I think that cliff face is between 40 to 60 feet high, though this is a very wild guess.

As noted by Abigail Fraeman of JPL on the Curiosity blog on November 3, 2021,

The terrain is beginning to steepen as Curiosity gets close to the end of this region, so even though we’re only a few drives away from our last drill site … we’ve already climbed 25 m higher!

The route ahead looks equally steep, though the ground actually appears less rough, with fewer large jagged boulders that Curiosity must avoid to protect its wheels.

It will likely be at least one to three weeks however before Curiosity gets to that saddle. The science team has begun a drilling campaign at the present location, and this will take time, depending on how many holes they decide to drill.

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Ingenuity completes 15th flight

9:04 am

Ingenuity landing on November 6th
Click for full image.

No details have been released, but based on the latest raw images downloaded from the Mars rover Perseverance today, the helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 15th flight in Jezero Crater yesterday.

The image to the right is the last of five released this morning, showing the helicopter’s shadow on the ground, just before Ingenuity touched down. Note how the shadow of Ingenuity’s four legs appear oriented level relative to the ground. While the first of the five images shows the shadow tilted, as if the helicopter is making a last turn, the last four photos all show the legs oriented properly.

We will have to wait now for official confirmation.

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China begins in-orbit test of what it claims is a “space debris mitigation” satellite

9:43 am

The Space Force has now detected a second object flying next to a recently launched Chinese satellite that China claims will do an in-orbit test of a “space debris mitigation” system.

On Nov. 3 U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (SPCS) catalogued a new object alongside Shijian-21 with the international designator 2021-094C. The object is noted as a rocket body and more precisely an apogee kick motor (AKM), used in some launches for a satellite to circularize and lower the inclination of its transfer orbit and enter geostationary orbit.

Apogee kick motors usually perform a final maneuver after satellite separation so as to not pose a threat to active satellites through risk of collision. However both Shijian-21 and the SJ-21 AKM are side by side in geostationary orbit.

The close proximity of the two objects strongly suggests Chinese engineers plan to use the satellite in some manner to capture the AKM in order to de-orbit it.

While China is likely testing methods for capturing and removing space debris, using this AKM, it could also be testing military technologies, such the ability to snatch working satellites it does not own from orbit. The lack of transparency can only make everyone suspicious.

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Virgin Orbit signs deal with Japanese company to launch satellites in Japan

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit has signed a non-binding agreement with the Japanese airline company All Nippon Airways (ANA) to launch twenty times from a runway in Japan.

Under the terms of the memorandum of understanding that Virgin Orbit announced Nov. 4, ANA and several partners will fund the manufacturing of mobile ground support equipment for the LauncherOne system that will fly from a pre-existing runway. ANA would also “lead the effort to provide funds and support for [the 20 envisioned] orbital missions,” Virgin Orbit said.

Pending regulatory approvals in the United States and Japan, Oita could be ready for launch missions by the end of 2022, Virgin Orbit said.

This is the second airport in Asia that Virgin Orbit is planning to launch from, with the first in Guam.

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Endeavour and crew to return to Earth tomorrow

9:28 am

UPDATE: The landing and launch have been delayed again because of weather, with the ISS crew now targeting a splashdown tomorrow, November 8th, and the new crew targeting a November 10th launch.

The four astronauts who were brought to ISS six months ago by the Dragon capsule Endeavour will now return to Earth early tomorrow, ahead of the next crew that is now scheduled to launch to ISS on November 10th on the Dragon capsule Endurance.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission now is targeting a return to Earth no earlier than 7:14 a.m. EST Monday, Nov. 8, with a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 1:05 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7, to begin the journey home. NASA will preview the mission on Saturday, Nov. 6 and provide coverage Sunday of the mission on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

The agency decided to flip the two events in order to make sure it could get Endeavour back to Earth before it exceeded its seventh-month life limit in space.

A reminder: Both the splashdown of Endeavour and the launch of Endurance will be run by a private company, SpaceX, with the government merely acting as customer. Every worker you see, except for the astronauts, will be employees of SpaceX, not NASA.

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Ingenuity next flight will begin route retracing its path

9:20 am

Overview map

The Ingenuity engineering team has revealed that the helicopter’s 15th flight on Mars will have it begin retracing its steps, following approximately the same flight route as it heads back towards Perseverance’s landing site in Jezero Crater.

Flight #15 is the start of our journey back to Wright Brothers Field [the helicopter’s initial flight test area just north of the landing site]. Taking place no earlier than Saturday, Nov. 6 at 9:22 a.m. PT, or 12:03 LMST (local Mars time), the 254th sol (Martian day) of the Perseverance mission, Flight #15 will return Ingenuity back to the Raised Ridges region, imaged in Flight #10. In this flight the helicopter will traverse 1,332 feet (406 meters) during 130 seconds of flight, travelling at 11.1 mph (5 mps) groundspeed. We’ll capture color return-to-earth (RTE) high resolution (13MP) images, one post-takeoff pointed to the SW, and nine pointed toward the NW along the flight-path. Nominal altitude for the flight is expected to be 39.3 feet (12 meters) above ground level.

This will be the second flight of Ingenuity during Mars’ summer low air-density, requiring that the rotor blades are spun at 2,700 RPM to compensate. This flight will generate critical high-RPM motor performance, which the team will use to design and tailor upcoming low-density flights in the months ahead.

Perseverance is presently sitting in an area they have dubbed Seitah, a region the rover skirted around to get to this point. I had hoped both the helicopter and rover would return to the north cutting across Seitah and thus scout out new terrain. Instead, it appears that both the rover and helicopter will return as initially planned, traveling over the same ground both took to get where they are today.

In other words, the teams have decided to take the safest route, though it will provide them much less new science data. While this might seem prudent, it really appears overly cautious, based on the capabilities of Perseverance and the roughness of the terrain in Seitah. Curiosity is presently traveling across far more difficult terrain in the mountains at the foot of Mt Sharp, and it is doing so with wheels that are damaged and not as well designed as Perseverance’s. Not roving in uncharted terrain seems a waste of Perseverance’s capabilities.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches three earth observation satellites

9:02 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to launch three more earth observation satellites, which could be for civilian or military use.

No word also on whether the first stage carried any grid fins or parachutes to control its return to Earth, or whether it crashed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

41 China
23 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 41 to 36 in the national rankings.

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Mentour Pilot – SAS flight 751-the Gottröra Miracle

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Hat tip Björn Larsson a.k.a. LocalFluff. who adds,

This stuff is more complicated than I thought. You could pick your favourite(!) airplane crash. The fantastic Hudson river landing for example. My favourite is this one, with a happy ending, because it crashed near to where I lived as a kid back then. The crash site, a potato field, was then locally called The Gottröra International Airport. Someone even put up a sign with that name at the bus stop nearby.

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China launches Landsat-type satellite using Long March 6

2:04 pm

China today successfully placed a Landsat-type satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit, using its Long March 6 rocket. From the link:

The Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center sits at an altitude of approximately 1,500 meters (4,920 feet) above sea level, its dry climate making it an ideal launch site for the Chinese space program. Unlike the Kennedy Space Center or the Guyana Space Centre, however, Taiyuan is located inland rather than on China’s eastern coast. This means spent rocket stages can crash-land near populated regions depending on the rocket’s flight trajectory.

Some recent flights of [Long March] rockets have featured parachutes and even grid fins mounted on the first stage boosters, presumably in an attempt to mitigate any collateral damage caused by falling debris. Friday’s launch did not see this type of hardware in place.

No word yet on where the first stage booster landed, or if it landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

40 China
23 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 40 to 36 in the national rankings. Its forty successful launches so far this year is the most by a single nation since Russia completed 49 in 1994.

This was also the 100th successful launch this year. Based on the number of planned launches presently scheduled,, that number could easily rise to more than 125, the most since the early 1980s.

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The strange surface of Mars’ north pole icecap

1:02 pm

Mars' north pole icecap
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 17, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows us a very small section of Mars’ north pole icecap.

What are we looking at? The picture was taken in summer, so by this point the thin mantle of dry ice that falls as snow in the winter and covers the north pole down to about 60 degrees latitude has sublimated away. This surface thus is water ice interspersed with Martian dust.

Yet, unlike the Antarctic icecap on Earth, the ice surface is not smooth and flat. Instead, this Martian ice has a surface that is a complex arrangement of hollows and ridges, all about the same size. Why?

And what are the two larger white spots? What caused them and why are they the only differently-sized objects in the picture?

The full resolution close-up, found at the image website, provides some answers to these questions.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Rutgers bars student from remote classes because he had not gotten COVID shots

11:57 am

Clowns in charge at Rutgers
Clowns in charge at Rutgers

They’re coming for you next: Logan Hollar, a student at Rutgers University, was blocked by the college from his university email account as well as attending remote classes because he refuses to get any of the COVID-19 shots that the school is now requiring.

Logan Hollar, 22, told NJ.com he largely ignored the school’s coronavirus mandate “because all my classes were remote” from his Sandyston home, a distance of some 70 miles from the university’s principle campus in New Brunswick.

But he was locked out of his Rutgers email and related accounts when he went to pay his tuition at the end of last month — and was told he needed to be vaccinated even though he has no plans to attend in person, according to the report. “I’ll probably have to transfer to a different university,” Hollar told NJ.com, revealing at least one other student to his knowledge is in the same position.

“I find it concerning for the vaccine to be pushed by the university rather than my doctor,” he told the outlet. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence is the bottom line. » Read more

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NASA runs out of money for building second SLS mobile launcher

9:37 am

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

NASA has had to halt construction of the second mobile launcher platform for its SLS rocket because the agency has run out of money.

Overall, NASA spent almost a billion dollars on the first launcher (to be used only three times), and now has budgeted almost a half billion dollars for the second.

That’s about $1.4 billion, and apparently it is not enough.

The second Mobile Launcher (ML-2) has a cost estimate of $450 million. However, like ML-1, that cost is likely to rise over time based on the challenges involving ML-1, which ranged from being overweight to suffering from a slight lean. Both of these issues have since been resolved via engineering solutions. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate more NASA incompetence. The first platform was designed and built badly, being too heavy for its purposes while also improperly tilting sideways The agency had to spend a lot of money and time fixing these problems.

Meanwhile, SpaceX moves its Starship spaceship and Superheavy booster about in Boca Chica using simple truck movers that probably cost the company no more than a million dollars each, if that. And they became operational quickly, and are now in use.

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