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December 27, 2024 Quick space links

2:58 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • Air & Space touts the navigational work done by Jim Lovell during Apollo 8 in 1968
    For most of the mission, Lovell’s work was merely a back-up to calculations provided by ground computers and plugged into the capsule computer for use with its inertial measuring unit (IMU). Only once was Lovell’s navigation necessary, when he accidentally rebooted the IMU so it thought it was on the launchpad, not on its way back to Earth. To reprogram it he had to do his sextant sightings and enter those numbers into the computer.
3 comments

Blue Origin finally gets FAA license to launch New Glenn, now targeting January 6, 2025

2:27 pm

The first completely assembled New Glenn, on the launchpad
The first completely assembled New Glenn,
on the launchpad

The FAA, after months of apparent delays, today finally issued Blue Origin a license to launch its New Glenn rocket for a period covering the next five years.

As has now become the FAA’s custom, in issuing this license it also brags about its success in issuing the license “well in advance of the statutory deadline” for doing so.

What a crock. Blue Origin and NASA were originally targeting an October launch of New Glenn carrying two Mars orbiters, but had to cancel when the rocket couldn’t lift off during the six-day launch window. Though delays at Blue Origin certainly contributed to this cancellation, I suspect the FAA’s red tape played a major factor as well.

According to another source, Blue Origin is now targeting a launch date of January 6, 2025. The company is presently doing a static fire test on the launchpad.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

7 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

Why this place in Valles Marineris is NOT a good place to establish trails and inns

11:57 am

Overview map

North rim and the top of the trail
Click for original image.

In my cool image yesterday I highlighted a location along the north rim of the gigantic Valles Marineris canyon on Mars that appeared a great place to establish a hiking trail. The trail would take hikers down from the rim to the floor of the canyon, a distance of more than 20 miles with an elevation loss of more than 31,000 feet, more than the height of Mount Everest. The image to the right shows the top of that trail, at the rim. The white dot on the overview map above shows its location in Valles Marineris.

Because of the trail’s length I also suggested that future colonists would likely set up inns along the way, so that hikers would have places to stay as they worked their way downhill day-by-day.

There is however one major reason not to build at this particular location, and it involves the most significant geological detail I noticed in the picture to the right. Note the arrows in both this image as well as the inset above. In the picture they mark a sudden drop paralleling the rim. In the inset they also show a series of parallel cracks further north.

The cliff and the cracks suggest that the entire cliff of this part of the north rim has subsided, and is in fact beginning to separate from the plateau, and will soon (in geological terms) collapse into a spectacular avalanche. If you look at the cliff face in the inset you can see two extended outflow piles that apparently came from smaller earlier such collapses.

Could this entire cliff face, the size of Mount Everest, actually separate and crash into the canyon? If you have doubts, then take a look at the image below.
» Read more

3 comments

Eutelsat-OneWeb stock plummets

10:02 am

Despite its merger with Eutelsat in 2023, the stock value of the combined Eutelsat-OneWeb satellite company has plummeted in the past year, more than halving the value of the OneWeb portion that was saved from bankruptcy by both the government of the United Kingdom and investors from India in 2020.

The collapse means the UK’s investment is worth €133m (£110m), representing a near £300m paper loss for the taxpayer. … However, while the all-share deal implied a value of €12 per share, Eutelsat’s stock has since imploded. In the past 12 months, it has halved and is trading at record lows of €2.58.

Eutelsat was facing its own collapse before the merger, as its business was geosynchronous communications satellites which are now losing their business to the low-Earth orbit constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlab and OneWeb’s. The merger was the company’s attempt to join this new market.

OneWeb however has had its own repeated problems completing that its constellation, and faced bankruptcy in 2020 because of delays from the COVID panic as well as delays in launching the Ariane-6 rocket. Then Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine in 2022 meant it lost all its remaining planned launches, forcing it to scramble to find other launch providers.

Stock market analysts don’t expect the combined company to begin earning profits for at least the next three to five years, which casts an even greater pall on its future.

2 comments

Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of 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.

Parker probe phones home, signalling it has successfully survived its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun

9:42 am

Parker flight plan
The flight plan for Parker. Click for original.

NASA today reported that it has received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe, indicating all of its systems are in good health following its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun on December 24, 2024.

The mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland received the signal just before midnight EST, on the night of Dec. 26. The team was out of contact with the spacecraft during closest approach, which occurred on Dec. 24, with Parker Solar Probe zipping just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface while moving about 430,000 miles per hour.

Not only was this the closest any human-built object has gotten to the Sun, it was the fastest any human-built object has ever traveled.

This close fly-by was Parker’s 22nd of the Sun since launch. In its nominal mission it plans to do two more close approaches as shown in the graphic to the right, both of which will be comparable to the record just set.

2 comments

Chinese solid-fueled rocket fails during launch

9:26 am

The commercial division of a Chinese space agency, dubbed CAS Space, late yesterday experienced a launch failure of its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

A statement by the pseudo-company described the failure tersely:

We can confirm that the first two stages were nominal. Stage 3 lost attitude three seconds after ignition and the self-destructing mechanism was activated.

Nothing was said about where the first two stages crashed inside China, or whether they landed near habitable areas.

According to the first link above, this was the second launch failure by China in 2024, which is incorrect. This was the third launch failure for China (see here and here for previous two). That article also says this was the 68th total launch this year, suggesting China has completed 66 successful launches. This does not jive with my count, which presently says China has had 64 successful orbital launches this year. I suspect the two additional launched might have been suborbital tests — such as first stage hop tests (here, here, and here) — which I do not include in these totals. It also might be including the accidental launch of one first stage during a static fire test when it broke free and launched itself unintentional.

More recent information from my readers (see the comments below) suggests that, though the numbers above are not correct, my own count for China’s total successful orbital launches needs adjusting as well. I had marked a March 13th Chinese launch as a failure because the satellites were not placed in their proper orbit. However, using their thrusters engineers were eventually able to get them into place and they are operating. I have therefore increased China’s totals below by one.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

134 SpaceX
65 China
17 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 154 to 97, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 134 to 117.

8 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

December 26, 2024 Quick space links

3:34 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Leave a comment

Just one of many potential hiking trails down into Valles Marineris

12:10 pm

Overview map

Just one of many potential trails into Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 15, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The white dot on the overview map above shows the location, on the northern interior wall of the vast Valles Marineris canyon on Mars.

As my readers know, I tend to look at the spectacular Martian photos coming back from the orbiters and rovers as much from a tourist perspective as that of a scientist. Thus, for this picture, my first thought was to consider the possibility of a trail weaving its way down the nose of that ridgeline and into the canyon. In the Grand Canyon such ridgelines often provide a route down where walking is possible the entire way, with no need for climbing or ropes.

To illustrate my thought, I have indicated the potential trail with the white line. All told this trail covers about 7.2 miles, and drops 12,500 feet. Such a drop is very steep for trails on Earth, with an average grade of 14 degrees and about three times the grade considered reasonable. On Mars, however, with its one-third gravity, I think a grade this steep would be reasonable, though certainly daunting mentally. You would not only be descending on a very steep slope, you would be doing so on the peak of this ridge, with drops of one to two thousand feet on either side.

Amazingly, the inset on the overview map shows that this trail gets you less than halfway to the bottom. All told, the drop from canyon rim to floor at this location is about 31,000 feet over 20 miles, a drop that is greater than climbing down from the top of Mount Everest. If I was to install a trail here I’d also build an inn or two along the way as rest stops for hikers.

What the trail would do is get you to the bottom of this particular ridgeline. From here the trail would have to drop off into the western hollow and from then on descend on top of its alluvial fill. The slope would be as steep, but it would be possible to alleviate that by putting in switchbacks. This would lower the grade, but increase the distance traveled significantly.

Geologically, this image shows to my eye one particular feature that is quite significant, at the rim. I will discuss this tomorrow, in my next cool image.

3 comments

New climate research debunks CO2’s ability to warm the atmosphere, even as other research shows CO2 greens the Earth

10:19 am

Climate models versus data
Click for full resolution graph.

Research that the political activists in the climate field (posing as scientists) refuse to cite is increasingly documenting two important and very encouraging facts about atmospheric carbon dioxide.

First, CO2’s ability to warm the climate is much more limited than claimed, suggesting just one more error (out of many) in the many global-warming climate models that have consistently failed to correctly predict the actual climate for at least two decades, as indicated by the graph to the right, published in January 2024. This new error involves the point where an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can no longer cause any increase in warming.

The Taiwanese scientists found that ground temperature warming of 0.3°C was associated with the increase from 100 ppm to 350 ppm and there was no additional warming at all as CO2 rose further from 350 ppm to 400 ppm. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 420 ppm.

Seven Austrian scientists have also recently concentrated on CO2 and the infrared spectrum, noting that a future doubling of the gas up to 800 ppm “shows no increase in the IR absorption for the 15 u-central peak”. It is concluded that this can lead to 0.5°C warming at most. The scientists argue that climate models and their CO2 influences should be revised. Much more experimental evidence about IR radiation should be collected “before appointing current warming trends and climate change mechanisms monocausal to greenhouse gas theories”.

The second paper can be read here [pdf]. In their conclusion the scientists bluntly state that “Climate models and their CO 2 forcings should be revised.”

Nor are these two papers the only ones who have come to this conclusion. Research by others in the last two years repeatedly show that CO2 has a limited ability to warm the climate. Furthermore, all the global-warming climate models in the graph above have always recognized this fact, in that they don’t really depend on CO2 to do the warming. Instead, they depend on a convoluted theory whereby the small increase in CO2 will interact with the large amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (the real global warming component) to cause it to significantly warm the climate. This hypothesis is clever, but it continues to fail in all of its predictions.

The second positive consequence in the increase in atmospheric CO2 is its impact on plant life. It is causing a greening of the planet, which can only mean bigger crops, more food, and less starvation for every human being on Earth.
» Read more

15 comments

The known history of the Colossus of Rhodes

9:16 am

New research provides a more detailed and realistic history of the 100-foot-high statue from the ancient world called the Colossus of Rhodes.

The Colossus was a 30-metre-high bronze statue of the god Helios, built to commemorate the victory of the Rhodians over Demetrius of Macedonia, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed in 282 BCE, it fell in an earthquake only 56 years later in 226 BCE. The usual story is that the fragments remained untouched for 880 years until the invasion by the Umayyad caliph Muawiya I. However, literary and geological evidence suggest a more complex, and more likely, story involving several reconstructions, finishing with a devastating earthquake in 142 CE.

No one knows what it looked like or even the exact place it stood. The research ties its history however to the known earthquakes and later that had taken place at Rhodes, and thus provides a reasonable timeline for its destruction and removal. It also debunks this bit of “misinformation”:

In popular imagination, the Colossus stood astride the harbour entrance with ships sailing between his legs. This idea was first mentioned by an Italian pilgrim in 1395, who wrote that the Colossus stood with one leg at the end of the mole with the windmills and the other near St John’s chapel, later a fort. These sites are 750 metres apart, necessitating a statue 1500 metres high — a truly colossal edifice even by modern standards

The reason we don’t know where the statue actually stood is because the bronze used to forge it was exceedingly valuable. Once it was determined it could not be rebuilt that bronze did not remain in place for long.

7 comments

Russia launches earth resources satellite

9:53 am

Russia today successfully launched the last in a five-satellite constellation of satellites focused on mapping Earth resources, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The rocket’s core stage and four side boosters fell into frequently-used drop zones in Kazakhstan and Russia.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

134 SpaceX
64 China
17 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 154 to 97, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 134 to 117.

Leave a comment

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

10:01 pm

A Christmas Eve pause: As I have done now for several years on Christmas day, I bring you the classic 1951 version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim. In my opinion still by far the best adaption of the book and a truly wonderful movie.

And as I noted in a previous year:

Dickens did not demand the modern version of charity, where it is imposed by governmental force on everyone. Instead, he was advocating the older wiser concept of western civilization, that charity begins at home, that we as individuals are obliged as humans to exercise good will and generosity to others, by choice.

It is always a matter of choice. And when we take that choice away from people, we destroy the good will that makes true charity possible.

It is also most important that we all heed the words of Christmas Present: ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.’”

6 comments

Repost: The real meaning of the Apollo 8 Earthrise image

1:56 pm

I wrote this essay in 2018, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. I have reposted previously, but I think it is worth reposting again and again, especially because stories about Apollo 8 still refuse to show the Earthrise image as Bill Anders took it. Even today, the Air and Space Museum did it wrong again, and it seems to me to be a slap in the face of Anders himself, who died this year while flying.
———————————————

Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer
Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the moment when the three astronauts on Apollo 8 witnessed their first Earthrise while in orbit around the Moon, and Bill Anders snapped the picture of that Earthrise that has been been called “the most influential environmental picture ever taken.”

The last few days have seen numerous articles celebrating this iconic image. While all have captured in varying degrees the significance and influence of that picture on human society on Earth, all have failed to depict this image as Bill Anders, the photographer, took it. He did not frame the shot, in his mind, with the horizon on the bottom of the frame, as it has been depicted repeatedly in practically every article about this image, since the day it was published back in 1968.

Instead, Anders saw himself as an spaceman in a capsule orbiting the waist of the Moon. He also saw the Earth as merely another space object, now appearing from behind the waist of that Moon. As a result, he framed the shot with the horizon to the right, with the Earth moving from right to left as it moved out from behind the Moon, as shown on the right.

His perspective was that of a spacefarer, an explorer of the universe that sees the planets around him as objects within that universe in which he floats.

When we here are on Earth frame the image with the horizon on the bottom, we immediately reveal our limited planet-bound perspective. We automatically see ourselves on a planet’s surface, watching another planet rise above the distant horizon line.

This difference in perspective is to me the real meaning of this picture. On one hand we see the perspective of the past. On the other we see the perspective the future, for as long humanity can remain alive.

I prefer the future perspective, which is why I framed this image on the cover of Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 the way Bill Anders took it. I prefer to align myself with that space-faring future.

And it was that space-faring future that spoke when they read from Genesis that evening. They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Yet, they were also still mostly Earth-bound in mind, which is why Frank Borman’s concluding words during that Christmas eve telecast were so heartfelt. He was a spaceman in a delicate vehicle talking to his home of Earth, 240,000 miles away. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” They longed deeply to return, a wish that at that moment, in that vehicle, was quite reasonable.

Someday that desire to return to Earth will be gone. People will live and work and grow up in space, and see the Earth as Bill Anders saw it in his photograph fifty years ago.

And it is for that time that I long. It will be a future of majesty we can only imagine.

Merry Christmas to all, all of us still pinned down here on “the good Earth.”

7 comments

December 24, 2024 Quick space links

1:36 pm

Today has been, not surprisingly, a very slow news day, so I’ve been spending it trolling the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) archive for more cool images from Mars.

BtB’s stringer Jay however found some quick links, so here they are. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

2 comments

Binbam – What is Hanukkah?

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Most of this season I honor the Christmas holiday for my Christian readers with pauses of beautiful Christian music. Tonight however I thought it would be nice to take a break and present this short video describing the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. This year Hanukkah begins on Christmas, December 25, and runs through January 2, 2025, so I am a little early, but that’s all right.

Like almost all Jewish holidays, part of Hanukkah’s purpose is to celebrate a victory over oppression. In this case it celebrates the revolt of the Maccabees against the Greek effort to obliterate the Jews. Or as Jews like to joke about all Jewish holidays, “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat!”

3 comments

December 23, 2024 Quick space links

4:09 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Leave a comment

Post COVID data in the UK: Those who got the jab substantially increased their chances of death

12:43 pm

How health scientists determined policy against COVID
How health officials and governments determined
policy against COVID during the epidemic.

Data assembled by the government of the United Kingdom now proves unequivocally that getting the jab during the COVID panic was a very bad idea. It did less than nothing to prevent you from getting the virus, and in fact significantly increased your chances of dying.

[T]he data show that 30 percent of the UK population remained completely unvaccinated as of July 2022. 34 percent were not double vaccinated, and 50 percent were not triple vaccinated.

However, the vaccinated population accounted for 95 percent of all COVID-19 deaths between January and May 2023.

The unvaccinated population, meanwhile, accounted for just five percent of Covid deaths.

Perhaps the most troubling information revealed in the data is the fact that deaths increased among the groups who received more “vaccine” doses. The vast majority of the deaths are among those vaccinated four times. This quad-vaxxed population accounts for 80 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and 83 percent of all Covid deaths among the vaccinated.

The numbers for many other time periods following the introduction of the jab are comparable.
» Read more

25 comments

A Martian river of sand

11:33 am

Overview map

A Martian river of sand

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 26, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The red dot in the overview map above marks the location, within the western reaches of the vast Martian canyon dubbed Valles Marineris.

The picture looks at the flow of dust and sand going down the canyon’s southern rim, with particular focus on the central canyon in the picture’s center. The photo was taken as part of a long-term project, begun in 2020 to monitor this river of sand to see if any changes occur over time. Clearly the sand is flowing downhill, almost like a river, with the dunes almost resembling waves. The geological issue is to determine how fast. Based on the resolution available to me, it is impossible to tell it there have been any changes in the past four years, but the full MRO dataset might reveal more information.

To get an idea of scale, the elevation loss from the top to the bottom in this picture is about 6,000 feet. While this seems like a substantial amount, it pales when placed in the context of Valles Marineris. For example, the elevation loss for the canyon’s northern wall is about 25,400 feet, making that wall exceed in height most of the mountains in the Himalayas. And that wall extends for more than 1,500 miles.

Valles Marineris’ southern wall is more complex. It rises about 18,000 feet from the floor of the canyon to the top of the peak on which this slope sits, but then drops 6,700 feet into a parallel side canyon. From there the rise to the southern rim is about 11,000 feet. All told the southern rim sits about 23,000 feet above the canyon floor, once again a drop that would exceed most mountains on Earth.

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Using Hubble to monitor a fading supernova

9:38 am

Barred spiral
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a monitoring program of the fading supernova that occurred in this galaxy in 2014, 60 million light years away. I have added a white dot to indicate the approximate location [pdf] of that supernova, as it is now too dim to see clearly in the original image. From the caption:

Researchers have determined that SN 2014cx was a Type IIP supernova. The “Type II” classification means that the exploding star was a supergiant at least eight times as massive as the Sun. The “P” stands for plateau, meaning that after the light from the supernova began to fade, the level reached a plateau, remaining at the same brightness for several weeks or months before fading further. This type of supernova occurs when a massive star can no longer produce enough energy in its core to stave off the crushing pressure of gravity. SN 2014cx’s progenitor star is estimated to have been ten times more massive than the Sun and hundreds of times as wide. Though it has long since dimmed from its initial brilliance, researchers are still keeping tabs on this exploded star, not least through the Hubble observing programme which produced this image.

The blue regions in the galaxy’s periphery suggest younger stars, while the gold color in the interior suggests an older population.

One comment

Dubai-based AI/3D printing company successfully test fires an aerospike engine

9:15 am

LEAP71's aerospike test engine
Click for original image.

The Dubai-based startup LEAP71, focused on using AI software to quickly develop rocket engine designs it can then 3D print, has successfully test fired a prototype aerospike engine on December 18, 2024 during a static fire test campaign conducted in the United Kingdom.

Aerospikes are more compact and significantly more efficient across various atmospheric pressures, including the vacuum of space. They forego the conventional bell-shaped nozzle by placing a spike in the center of a toroidal combustion chamber [as shown in the photo to the right]. Since it is surrounded by 3,500ºC hot exhaust gas, cooling the spike is an enormous challenge.

Josefine Lissner, CEO and Co-Founder of LEAP 71, stated: “We were able to extend Noyron’s physics to deal with the unique complexity of this engine type. The spike is cooled by intricate cooling channels flooded by cryogenic oxygen, whereas the outside of the chamber is cooled by the kerosene fuel. I am very encouraged by the results of this test, as virtually everything on the engine was novel and untested. It’s a great validation of our physics-driven approach to computational AI.”

The spike in the center acts as one wall of the nozzle, and the changing pressure of the atmosphere acting as the other side of the nozzle, allowing the nozzle size to change as the rocket rises, thus making its thrust as efficient as possible.

This test was apparently with a small scale prototype, not a full scale engine. LEAP71 engineers are going to have to go though a lot more iterations using their AI software and 3D printing to get to a version usable on a rocket. The company claims that development will go far faster this way. That this company did its testing in the UK but is based in Dubai suggests its capital comes from that Middle Eastern country, which is trying to develop a space industry of its own, but it is mainly relying on British designers — at this point — to get things done.

It will have to do so quickly, since another startup, German-based Polaris Spaceplanes, in November 2024 actually completed the first test flight ever of a prototype using an aerospike engine.

After decades of speculation about the advantages of an aerospike engine but no successful flights, we now have a race between two companies to be the first to fly one, and the effort is going on in Europe.

3 comments

SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites

10:44 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Kennedy in Florida. Thirteen of the satellites were configured for direct-to-cell capabilities.

The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

134 SpaceX
64 China
16 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 154 to 96, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 134 to 116.

Tonight’s launch was also the 250th worldwide in 2024, a record that approximately triples the average number of successful launches each year from 1957 to 2017, when SpaceX and China began to ramp up their launch counts.

3 comments

NASA awards four companies contracts to provide communications for operations in Earth orbit

11:30 am

Capitalism in space: Rather than continue to build its own constellation of communications satellites, NASA yesterday awarded four companies contracts to provide that service to the agency’s many Earth orbit operations.

The work will be awarded under new Near Space Network services contracts that are firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts. Project timelines span from February 2025 to September 2029, with an additional five-year option period that could extend a contract through Sept. 30, 2034. The cumulative maximum value of all Near Space Network Services contracts is $4.82 billion.

The companies are Intuitive Machines, SSC Space, Viasat (based in Georgia), and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Satellite services.

Not only will these companies provide a better service faster and at less cost than the NASA TDRS satellite constellation, that there are four of them provides redundancy as well as fosters competition.

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Defunct Pentagon weather satellite breaks up

10:40 am

According to the Space Force as well as two commercial space tracking companies, a defunct military weather satellite launched in 1997 has broken up into more than fifty pieces.

The satellite, dubbed DMSP-5D2 F14, was in a sun-synchronous orbit over the poles. What makes the break-up significant is that it is not the first of this design of weather satellites to do so.

DMSP-5D2 F14 is part of a family of spacecraft that have suffered breakups in orbit. The F12 satellite broke up in October 2016, following the breakup of F13 in February 2015. In 2004, the F11 spacecraft broke up, creating 56 pieces of tracked debris. All the satellites had a battery assembly with a design flaw that made them vulnerable to explosion.

A similar spacecraft design was used for a line of civilian polar-orbiting weather satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA-16 satellite broke up in November 2015, followed by NOAA-17 in March 2021.

Overall the military launched nine satellites of this design, while NOAA launched three. Of these twelve satellites six have now broken apart. We should expect a large percentage of the remaining six to also break up.

This story explains why in the last ten years a number of companies have appeared attempting to develop the technology to remove space junk. There is a desperate need in the satellite industry for this capability, and those space junk companies are aiming to make profit from this need.

Note I do not expect or want the government to take the lead in this. This issue is mostly a need of the satellite industry, of which the world’s governments are merely just one more participant. This industry should band together to set up a fund to pay for this work, with those governments joining as just one more partner.

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Liechtenstein signs the Artemis Accords

10:16 am

The tiny nation of Liechtenstein in Europe yesterday became the 52nd nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

There has been a flurry of new nations signing the accords since the November election of Trump. I suspect his coming encouraged these nations to sign, knowing the moribund leadership of Biden will soon be replaced with something more robust. It is also likely that these nations see a renewal of Trump’s original goals for the Artemis Accords, to create an international alliance, led by the United States, with the goal of overcoming the Outer Space Treaty’s limitations on private property.

I hope this turns out to be true. This alliance gives Trump a powerful lobby he can wield to force change.

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SpaceX and Rocket Lab complete two launches overnight

10:04 am

Though one SpaceX launch early last night had a launch abort, both SpaceX and Rocket Lab completed additional launches later in the evening.

First, SpaceX completed its second Bandwagon in which 30 payloads were sent to mid-inclination orbits, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage flew its twenty-first flight, landing successfully back its landing site at Vandenberg. The two fairings completed their 14th and 18th flights.

Next, Rocket Lab completed its sixth launch of sixteen for the commercial satellite company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This was the 14th successful launch for Rocket Lab in 2024, a significant increase from the nine and eight launches it flew in 2022 and 2023.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

133 SpaceX
64 China
16 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 153 to 96, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 133 to 116.

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SpaceX experiences a launch abort at T-0

10:29 pm

During a launch attempt tonight from Cape Canaveral in Florida, SpaceX experienced a launch abort at T-0 seconds for reasons that have not yet been determined but apparently were complex enough that mission control decided to scrub for the evening. No new launch has been scheduled as yet.

The launch was to have placed four smallsats into geosynchronous orbit. The satellites were built by the satellite company Astranis, which appears to be the first to launch smallsats to geosynchronous orbit. It had already placed one in orbit, and these four satellites expand its constellation.

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