Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black., You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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 or subscription:


4. 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.

Another pit on Mars!

12:53 pm

Isolated small pit on Mars
Click for full image.

It has been several months since my last Martian pit update, mostly caused by the lack of new pit images coming down from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I think this lack is not because of a lack of additional pits or caves but instead signals the completion of a first high resolution survey of the known pits so far found on Mars. A full list of all past pit updates can be found at the bottom of this post.

Regardless, the image to the right, cropped to post here, is the only such image in months, taken on April 14, 2020, and shows a small isolated pit in the lava slopes between the giant volcanoes Arsia and Pavonis Mons. In the full photograph you can see how isolated is this pit. To the limits of the image there are no other such features, the terrain a relatively smooth plain with only some small ridges and and a scattering of what seem to be partly obscured or eroded small craters.

The overview below map shows this pit’s relationship to the volcanoes as well as to all other known nearby pits.
» Read more

One comment

State Dept employee destroyed evidence in Russian collusion hoax

10:52 am

Not only does it appear that almost all the sources for the Steele dossier — used by the Obama FBI and Justice Department to instigate spying operations on the Trump administration — were Russian, it now appears that, at the request of the dossier’s author a former State Department employee destroyed State Dept evidence relating to that dossier.

Earlier this year, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele revealed he had destroyed nearly all the records detailing his dirt-digging on Donald Trump and Russia. “They no longer exist,” Steele told a British court.

Now comes word that Steele’s primary and longtime contact inside the Obama State Department, Jonathan Winer, also destroyed records of the former British MI6 agent’s contacts inside that federal agency, including many of the 100-plus unsolicited intelligence reports Steele provided the Obama administration. “I destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him,” Winer is quoted as saying in a little noticed passage of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on the Russia collusion scandal.

Winer apparently destroyed the records at Steele’s request, the report said. “After Steele’s memos were published in the press in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to make note of having them, then either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the Department of State or return them to Steele, out of concern that someone would be able to reconstruct his source network,” the committee’s report released last month stated. [emphasis mine]

And why was Steele worried that his sources might be uncovered? Apparently they were all foreign, Russian or Ukrainian in nature, meaning that his dossier was actually an operation of enemies to the United States, which was then used by the Obama administration to foist the hoax that Trump was in collusion with Russia. Thus, it was Obama and his administration who were colluding with foreign powers, for their own political gain, not Trump. That collusion by Obama and his cronies even went so far as to destroy evidence.

3 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 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

Sweden declares victory over COVID-19

9:45 am

Sweden appears to have successfully weathered the Wuhan virus epidemic, with a current infection rate one of the lowest in the world, and that country did so with no lockdown, no mask mandates, and few restrictions on the lives of its citizens.

The country now has one of the lowest infection rates on the planet, and it’s difficult not to admire how it has handled the past year, with no strict lockdown or compulsory face mask rules. All businesses, schools and public places remained open in Sweden for the duration.

“Sweden has gone from being the country with the most infections in Europe to the safest one,” Sweden’s senior epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell commented to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “What we see now is that the sustainable policy might be slower in getting results, but it will get results eventually,” Tegnell clarified.

“And then we also hope that the result will be more stable,” he added.

Tegnell previously warned that encouraging people to wear face masks is “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus.

To put it more bluntly, Sweden did not panic, looked at the early data, not the junk models, and correctly decided to treat COVID-19 as a variation of the flu. As a result the country’s population has now mostly acquired immunity, killing the epidemic, even as its economy avoided an unnecessary crash and an absurd loss of freedom for its citizens.

16 comments

Russia wins spacesuit contract for India’s Gaganyaan manned mission

9:29 am

The new colonial movement: The Russian Zvezda design center in Roscosmos has won the spacesuit contract to build the spacesuits and capsule seats for India’s Gaganyaan manned mission, targeted for a ’22 launch.

It is not surprising that the Russians won this contract. India does not have a lot of time to get the mission off the ground, and needs help. The Russian spacesuits are practical and proven, and are far superior to anything available from NASA. The only other option available at this moment would be the flight suits SpaceX designed for its Dragon missions and flown once. I suspect the Indians want something that has been used and tested more.

Moreover, their astronauts are being trained by the Russians. Better and simpler to have them use the suits the Russians use.

Leave a comment

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.

Astronomers look at one patch of sky and see no signs of alien life

9:12 am

Worlds without end: Using an Australian radio telescope array focused in the FM frequencies, astronomers did a seventeen hour sweep of one small of sky and found no evidence of alien transmissions.

“We observed the sky around the constellation of Vela for 17 hours, looking more than 100 times broader and deeper than ever before. With this dataset, we found no technosignatures—no sign of intelligent life.”

Professor Tingay said even though this was the broadest search yet, he was not shocked by the result. “As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, ‘space is big, really big’. … And even though this was a really big study, the amount of space we looked at was the equivalent of trying to find something in the Earth’s oceans but only searching a volume of water equivalent to a large backyard swimming pool.

The radio array used in this search is only a small precursor to a much larger array, dubbed the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which is under construction and many times more sensitive.

10 comments

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

Strange glacial flow features on Mars?

1:16 pm

Flow features in Reull Vallis
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 May 26, 2020, and shows what the scientists dub “Flow features in Reull Vallis.”

These features are typical in the mid-latitudes, and once again suggest the presence of buried glacial ice. The two lobes on the left and right both evoke such flows, as does the material in the drainage channel near the top of the photo.

What is more intriguing however are the strange features in the box. Below is that section, at full resolution.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Sunspot update: More evidence of an upcoming maximum

11:39 am

NOAA last week updated its monthly graph for tracking the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity. As I have done now for every month since 2011, I am posting that graph elow with additional annotations by me to show the past and new solar cycle predictions.

August 2020 sunspot activity

The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community for the previous solar maximum. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007 for the previous maximum, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The blue curve is their revised May 2009 prediction. The red curve is the new prediction, first posted by NOAA in April 2020.

August continued the trends seen in the past two months whereby sunspot activity actually exceeded the prediction for this particular month.

Does this mean the prediction of a weak maximum in 2025 will be wrong? Hardly. Sunspot activity in any given month can easily be above or below the prediction, as is obvious if you compare the fluctuations of the last maximum with the prediction. We will not really know if these higher numbers the past few months mean anything until a lot more time has passed, with the gathering of a lot more data.

What is clear is that the activity does herald the next maximum. As in the past few months, the sunspots in August all had polarities that assigned them to the new maximum. While it is not impossible for there to be a handful of sunspots in the next few months that belong to the last maximum, it now appears that the last cycle is pretty much over. We are entering the ramp up to the next maximum, presently predicted by a portion of the solar science community aligned with NOAA to be a weak one.

Above all, the real scientific mystery remains: Scientists do not really yet understand the causes and processes that produce this sunspot cycle. They know without question that it is caused by cycles in the Sun’s magnetic dynamo, but their understanding of the details behind this process remain quite unknown.

Furthermore, the Sun’s importance to the climate on Earth is unquestioned. What we still do not know is its precise influence on long term climate changes. There is circumstantial evidence that it causes cooling and warming of the climate on scales of decades and centuries, but this remains unconfirmed. Once again, our understanding of the details behind the changes in the climate remain quite unknown.

And as always, the devil is in the details.

2 comments

India sets early 2021 for launch of lunar lander/rover

9:14 am

The new colonial movement: Chandrayaan-3, India’s second attempt to put a lander/rover near the south pole of the Moon, has been rescheduled for launch in early 2021, delayed approximately six months due to the Wuhan flu panic.

The mission has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and the follow-up lockdowns. The launch which was planned for 2020 will now take off for the Lunar surface sometime in early 2021.

Chandrayaan-3 will be a mission repeat of Chandrayaan-2 and will include a Lander and Rover similar to that of Chandrayaan-2, but will not have an orbiter, a statement quoting Singh said. Planned to land on the South Pole of the Moon, Chandrayaan-2 was launched on July 22 last year. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed on September 7, crashing India’s dream to become the first nation to successfully touch down on the lunar surface in its maiden attempt.

The orbiter of the mission is working fine and has been sending data, ISRO had indicated that the third moon mission will utilise the orbiter already in the lunar orbit.

India has literally ceased all launches in 2020, since the arrival of the coronavirus. Moreover, though four launches are listed as targeting September launches, none yet have launch dates. It seems that the fear and terror of COVID-19 has caused India’s large space bureaucracy to shut down, even as I am sure they continue to receive their paychecks.

Leave a comment

Update on Starship development

9:01 am

Capitalism in space: Link here. The update outlines the status of Starship prototypes #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 as well as the first Super Heavy prototype, all of which are being prepped for future tests.

It is expected that #7 will be tested next, a tank pressure test intended to be tested to failure sometime in the next few weeks. The goal here is to obtain the engineering limits of the alloy being used in this particular prototype so that engineers will know how to use it in future builds.

Leave a comment

China launches another remote sensing satellite; crashes 1st stage near homes

8:54 am

The new colonial movement: China today used its Long March 4D rocket to launch another remote sensing satellite.

UPDATE: It appears the first stage booster crashed near a populated area. Footage of the crash can be seen here. Note that the red smoke indicates very toxic materials. Anyone who goes close risks serious health problems.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

22 China
15 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

In the national rankings the U.S. still leads China 24 to 22.

5 comments

China successfully lands its reusable version of the X-37B

10:33 am

The new colonial movement: After only two days in space, China today successfully landed what appears to be its reusable version of the X-37B.

No photos of this spacecraft have been released, nor has China provided any specific information about its shape or design. What we know however suggests it is similar in concept to the unmanned, pick-up-truck-sized X-37B.

Apparently this short flight was to test its ability to reach orbit and then return autonomously. According to the state-controlled Chinese press, it did so.

10 comments

The icy Erebus Mountains near where Starship will land on Mars

2:20 pm

Overview of all SpaceX images in Arcadia Planitia

Glacial filled crater in Erebus Montes
Click for full image.

It has been several months since I posted any new photos of the region on Mars which SpaceX considers its prime candidate landing site for its Starship spacecraft/rocket, now under development. The map to the right shows the location of all the images that SpaceX has obtained from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of this landing region, located in the northern lowland plains at the border between Arcadia and Amazonis and to the east of the Erebus Mountains. (See my post on November 13, 2019 for an analysis of the reasoning for SpaceX to choose this region, along with links to each of the numbered images.)

Time to take another look, this time at the very center of the southern cluster of the Erebus mountains. The crater to the right, its location indicated by the tiny red rectangle on the map above, was taken by MRO on May 6, 2020, and shows the typical glacial features scientists find in mid-latitude Martian craters. The floor appears filled with glacial material, with the repeated cyclical flows repeatedly coming down off the north-facing interior rim. That rim would generally be colder and get less sunlight, so snowfall is more likely to pile up there and then flow downward like a glacier, only to sublimate away once it moves out of shadow.

What makes these mountains enticing, only about 400 miles from the Starship landing zone, is not simply what is inside this crater, but what surrounds it. Below is the wider view provided by MRO’s context camera.
» Read more

One comment

InSight has buried its Mole

9:58 am

The Mole buried

Using the scoop on InSight’s robot arm, engineers have now successfully filled the large hole that had formed around the spacecraft’s mole, the drill that has been trying but failing to dig down about fifteen feet so that a heat sensor could measure the internal temperature of Mars.

The image to the right shows the filled hole with the mole’s communications tether snaking away. Earlier this month they used InSight’s scoop to scrape surface material into the hole, as planned in June. According to the mole’s principle investigate, Tilman Spohn,

I had estimated that the first scrape of 12 centimetres swath length would raise the bottom of the pit but leave the Mole sticking out of the sand. By the way, this was the condition for some to agree to the quite controversial ‘scratch test’. As one can see in the image from Sol 600 shown below, that estimate was not quite right. The scraping was a complete success! The scrape was much more effective than expected and the sand filled the pit almost completely. The Mole is now covered, but there is only a thin layer of sand on the back cap.

Their next step will be to use the scoop to press down on the dirt of the filled hole, with the hope this added pressure will keep the dirt pressed against the mole as it hammers downward, thus holding it place with each downward stroke.

4 comments

Newly upgraded solar telescope sees first light

9:39 am

Early image from upgraded solar telescope.

Astronomers have finished a major instrument upgrade of the GREGOR solar telescope in the Canary Islands, making it possible for them to observe features on the Sun’s surface as small as thirty miles in diameter.

The image to the right is an example of the telescope’s new capability, showing the Sun’s granular surface features. From the introduction of the paper describing the upgrade:

GREGOR is Europe’s largest solar telescope. … Its 1.5 m diameter with an optical footprint of 1.44 m allows us to resolve structures on the Sun as small as 50 km at 400 nm.

…A past drawback of GREGOR was that its image quality did not reach the theoretical limit, partly because a risk was taken with untested technologies, such as silicon carbide mirrors, which could not be polished well enough, and partly because of design problems. These difficulties have recently been solved by replacing all silicon carbide mirrors with mirrors made of Zerodur, which can be polished to the required quality, and by redesigning the AO relay optics. GREGOR now operates at its diffraction limit. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the initial mirrors did not work as promised, requiring them to replace them to get the telescope to function as initially designed. By the image above, it looks like their upgrade has worked admirably.

8 comments

Rocket Lab reveals it also launched its own satellite on August 30th

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today revealed that along with placing a customer’s commercial radar satellite into orbit on August 30th, it also launched the prototype of its own satellite during the Electron rocket launch.

The company calls its satellites Photons, but rather than number them it will give each their own name. This particular satellite has been dubbed “First Light.”

The satellite is primarily a technology demonstrator, a way to test Photon’s systems in orbit and show customers what the spacecraft is capable of. First Light will stay up for the next five or six years, if all goes according to plan, Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said during a teleconference with reporters today (Sept. 3).

Photon should be attractive to a variety of customers, allowing them to focus on their sensors and other instruments without having to worry about building and operating an entire spacecraft, Rocket Lab representatives have said.

The goal is to offer this smallsat as a platform to those who wish to launch an instrument into space but don’t want to spend the money building the satellite itself. The company also intends to use a Photon satellite for a science mission to Venus in 2023.

3 comments

China launches its version of X-37B

9:05 am

The new colonial movement: It appears that China has launched its version of a reusable X-37B mini-shuttle, or at least, that is most likely first guess, based on the meager data available.

China launched a new experimental reusable space vehicle on Thursday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using a Long March-2F/T – Chang Zheng-2F/T – launch vehicle. Launch from the LC43/91 launch complex, under a veil of secrecy with no official launch photos or even a launch time disclosed.

Chinese media emitted a laconic report referring, that “the test spacecraft will be in orbit for a period of time before returning to the domestic scheduled landing site. During this period, it will carry out reusable technology verification as planned to provide technical support for the peaceful use of space.”

More at the link, though the lack of information, especially the refusal to even give a launch time, strongly indicates China wants to limit knowledge of this spacecraft’s position in space, thus limiting the ability of others to photograph it. What is known however does point to this being a variation of a small reusable unmanned shuttle, like the X-37B.

While once again China has not come up with something new, copying (or stealing) the idea from someone else, having such a vehicle gives them a significant capability. They can now test many different technologies in orbit for long periods, and get them back to Earth for study afterward.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

21 China
15 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. continues to lead China 24 to 21 in the national rankings.

2 comments

A star with giant misaligned rings

8:52 am

Star with misaligned rings

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected a nearby star, dubbed GW Ori, with multiple rings of dust with several tilted in relation to the others.

The rings, with dust equaling 75, 170, and 245 Earth masses each, are 46, 188, and 336 astronomical units (au) each from their star. (An au is the distance of the Earth to the Sun.) If you look closely at the image to the right, you can see that the inner rings are circular, while the outer rings appear oval, suggesting that we are looking directly down at the inner rings, but the outer rings are tilted to our line of sight. Moreover, another team of astronomers

…observed GW Ori with ALMA and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Near infrared observation with VLT showed for the first time that the innermost ring casts a shadow on the outer rings, which is clear evidence of disk misalignment. Kraus and his colleagues also performed a computer simulation and suggest that the triple star system can create misaligned rings, without gravitational assistance from planets. The two teams have different theories for the origin of the misaligned rings, but no conclusions have been reached so far. Nevertheless, GW Ori is a precious example to understand planet formation in the complex gravitational environment around multiple stars. [emphasis mine]

As noted, there is no agreement on the cause of the misalignment, only that it does exist.

Leave a comment

Bright-tipped perplexing terrain on Mars

1:29 pm

Perplexing terrain on Mars
Click for full image.

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 June 24, 2020, and shows a bit of inexplicable country in Arabia Terra, the widest and largest transition zone region on Mars between the northern lowland plains and southern cratered highlands.

The stuff visible in this image falls into what I call “What the heck?” geology. It is very clear we are looking at a collection of straight and curved ridges and mesas, all of which for some reason are bright at their tips and edges. Some of the curved ridges might be the rims of craters, but only some. Other ridge lines look more like leftovers following a strange erosion process. The problem is that to my uneducated eye I can find little rhyme or reason to these shapes. The mesas and canyon on the image’s right edge might be explained by the erosion processes that create chaos terrain on Mars, but that process does not do a good job of explaining anything else in the photo.

That this uncaptioned image is merely labeled “Arabia Terra” suggests that the scientists involved in getting this image were equally perplexed by it, and could not give it a better description.

The overview map below provides some location context, including how this geology relates to the landing site of Europe’s Rosalind Franklin rover, now scheduled for a 2022 launch.
» Read more

2 comments

Another successful Starship prototype hop

11:15 am

Starship prototype #6 in flight

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully completed a 150-meter high hop of its sixth Starship prototype, the second such hop but the first for this prototype. They have now flown two different prototypes, plus Starhopper, all successfully. No flight failures, so far.

Next they will be doing a pressure tank test, to failure, of the seventh prototype. That prototype is using what they think will be a better steel alloy, and they want to find out its limits. I have also heard that they will either fly this prototype again or fly the fifth again, sometime in the next two weeks.

I have embedded a few more images below the fold.
» Read more

13 comments

FAA issues Wallops Island launch license to Rocket Lab

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA has now issued a five year launch license to the smallsat rocket company Rocket Lab, allowing them to launch their Electron rocket from the company’s launch site on Wallops Island, Virginia.

The Launch Operator License allows for multiple launches of the Electron launch vehicle from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2, eliminating the need to obtain individual, launch-specific licenses for every mission and helping to streamline the path to orbit and enable responsive space access from U.S. soil.

The company hopes to do its first launch from the U.S. before the year is out. It will then have two spaceports, allowing it to double its launch rate.

Leave a comment

SpaceX attempting another Starship hop today

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: Engineers at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas are today preparing the sixth Starship prototype for its first 150 meter hop, the second hop of a Starship prototype overall.

The launch window is anytime between 8 am and 8 pm (Central). I have embedded the livesteam below the fold if you wish to watch. Based on previous attempts, they will try for a morning launch before noon, and if there are issues they will recycle and try again in the afternoon.
» Read more

6 comments

Northrop Grumman successfully tests SLS solid rocket booster

9:03 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday successfully test fired a solid rocket booster to confirm its design for use on NASA’s long-delayed and overbudget SLS rocket.

The test, completed at the T97 test area at Northrop Grumman‘s facility in Promontory, Utah, took place on Wednesday, September 2, 2020, at 1:05 PM Mountain Daylight Time (19:05 UTC). A single five-segment SLS solid rocket motor with a thrust of up to 3.6 million pounds was ignited, and burned for approximately two minutes.

The booster is an expanded version of the solid rocket boosters used on the space shuttle, with five segments instead of four, and in fact will use previously flown segments from past shuttle launches. Since this booster will not be recovered, these launches will be the last time those segments fly.

3 comments

Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches 53 satellites

9:02 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket tonight finally resumed commercial operations more than a year after a July 2019 launch failure, successfully placing 53 small commercial satellites into orbit.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
14 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains at 23 to 20.

Leave a comment
1 … 351 352 353 354 355 … 1,102