Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Today’s blacklisted American: Amazon blacklists book because it says something someone at Amazon doesn’t like

November 1, 2022 12:04 pm Robert Zimmerman

Book banned by Amazon
Banned by bookseller Amazon.

The modern dark age: Amazon has without explanation removed a book about Islam, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology and written by ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq, essentially blacklisting it from sale.

A search at Amazon confirms this fact. The book is no longer available there.

The publisher, New English Review, said this in its press release:

Amazon’s banning of the Warraq book follows on the heels of their earlier banning of another NER Press title, “Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal” by Peter McLoughlin, which chronicles the actions, or rather the inaction, of the police, social services, justice system and government in the face of the widespread phenomenon of very young British girls being groomed and then pimped out and held in virtual sex slavery by gangs of grown men.

…As usual, no specific reason has been given for this latest book’s removal. NER Press appealed and that appeal was denied within two hours. “The Islam in Islamic Terrorism” had been on sale since May of 2017 and “Easy Meat” since March of 2016. Both had over 85% five-star ratings and both sold well. Mr. Warraq is the author of 17 books and “The Islam in Islamic Terrorism” was also translated into Korean.

Nor are these two books the only books Amazon has banned. » Read more

10 comments

Japanese private lunar lander HAKUTO-R now scheduled for launch on November 22nd

November 1, 2022 9:45 am Robert Zimmerman

The private lunar lander HAKUTO-R, built by the Japanese company Ispace, has now been scheduled for a November 22, 2022 launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch of the first commercial lunar lander mission to attempt a landing on the Moon was originally scheduled between November 9 -15. However, ispace stated that after consulting with SpaceX, the new tentative launch date would be moved to November 22 because it “allows for best preparation for the mission when considering the fuel-loading schedule for the lander and launch date availability.” SpaceX has a busy schedule at the Cape and NASA still has the Artemis 1 launch scheduled for November 14.

HAKUTO-R’s primary mission is to test the lander. However, it also includes several customer payloads, the most significant of which is the Rashid rover from the United Arab Emirates. Rashid, which is about the size of a Radio Flyer red wagon, will operate for one lunar day, about two weeks. While its main mission is to test the engineering and to train the engineers who built it, it will have two cameras for taking pictures. In addition, on its wheels are test adhesive patches of different materials, designed to see how each material interacts with the Moon’s abrasive dust.

3 comments

Astronomers discover a new large potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid

November 1, 2022 9:36 am Robert Zimmerman

Using a variety of ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered three new near-Earth asteroids orbiting the Sun but inside Earth’s orbit, with one of these asteroids having the possibility of one day in the future impacting the Earth.

An international team using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, has discovered three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) hiding in the inner Solar System, the region interior to the orbits of Earth and Venus. This is a notoriously challenging region for observations because asteroid hunters have to contend with the glare of the Sun.

By taking advantage of the brief yet favorable observing conditions during twilight, however, the astronomers found an elusive trio of NEAs. One is a 1.5-kilometer-wide asteroid called 2022 AP7, which has an orbit that may someday place it in Earth’s path. The other asteroids, called 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, have orbits that safely remain completely interior to Earth’s orbit. Also of special interest to astronomers and astrophysicists, 2021 PH27 is the closest known asteroid to the Sun. As such, it has the largest general-relativity effects of any object in our Solar System and during its orbit its surface gets hot enough to melt lead.

You can read their paper here [pdf].

2002 AP7 is the largest such potentially dangerous asteroid discovered in eight years. Its present orbit however never brings it closer to the Earth than 4.4 million miles, and it will be many thousands of years before that orbit might result in an impact. This of course doesn’t prevent foolish mainstream news outlets like the New York Times to label it a “planet-killer.”

The importance of this study however is that it underlines the possibility that there might be other such asteroids lurking close to the Sun that are difficult to spot. This is a blind spot in our asteroid surveys that needs to be eliminated.

14 comments

Lockheed Martin invests $100 million in startup satellite maker Terran Orbital

November 1, 2022 9:14 am Robert Zimmerman

Lockheed Martin has now invested $100 million in the startup smallsat-maker Terran Orbital, which has already been building satellites of a wide variety for customers.

Under the deal, which runs through 2035, the smaller Florida-based firm will build SAR and other advanced payloads, as well as satellite sub-assemblies, for the aerospace behemoth, Terran said in a press release today. These include electro-optical, hyperspectral, infrared and secure communication payloads, as well as things like star trackers and flight computers.

With this deal, Terran has also decided that it will no longer launch its own radar constellation, as that constellation would have competed directly with its radar satellite customers. Instead, it will make its radar satellite for others, including Lockheed Martin.

As an example of the variety of smallsats Terran Orbital has been building, it manufactured the smallsat lunar orbiter CAPSTONE for NASA, now on its way to the Moon but being operated for NASA by a different private company, Advanced Space.

1 comment

Orbex signs 50-year lease at Sutherland spaceport

November 1, 2022 9:03 am Robert Zimmerman

The British startup rocket company Orbex has signed a 50-year lease to operate its own launchpad at the Space Hub Sutherland spaceport in Scotland.

The company will lease Space Hub Sutherland from a local development agency for an initial period of 50 years with an option to extend for a further 25 years. Orbex will soon commence construction at the 10-acre launch site on the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland. The bulk of the construction work will be contracted out to technology solutions company Jacobs, which also does a lot of work for NASA.

The company hopes to launch its Prime rocket in ’23. At present it is testing launch operations of a prototype on its launchpad. All told, Orbex has raised a little over $100 million in private investment capital.

0 comments

Mengtian module docks with China’s Tiangong-3 space station

November 1, 2022 8:54 am Robert Zimmerman

Tiangong-3 station, when completed

The new Mengtian module has docked with the main port of China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

The graphic to the right shows the planned design of the station. Mengtian however is not yet in its side port as shown, but in the main docking port in line with the core module where a Shenzhou crew capsule is shown docked. At some point soon the astronauts on board will use a small robot arm to move Mengtian from the main port to its side port. (This system is very similar to one the Russian’s used on Mir.)

Furthermore, the large vertically oriented solar panels have not yet been installed on the station. These will likely need to be delivered, and require spacewalks to deploy.

0 comments

Falcon Heavy launches successfully for 1st time since 2019

November 1, 2022 8:16 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully put a military reconnaissance satellite using its Falcon Heavy rocket, its first launch since 2019.

The two side boosters and core stage all made their first flight. The core stage was intentionally not recovered, as it needed to use all its fuel for getting the satellite to its orbit. The two side boosters successfully landed at SpaceX’s two landing sites at Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

50 SpaceX
47 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 70 to 47, though it still trails the rest of the world combined 74 to 70.

This year’s 70 successful launches ties the previous high for the United States in a single year, set in 1966. With two months still left in the year, it looks like that record will be broken, by a lot.

9 comments

October 31, 2022 Quick space links

October 31, 2022 9:20 pm Robert Zimmerman

Courtesy of BtB’s string Jay, who has been sending them to me for the past week. Unfortunately, my isp decided to only send me about half my emails during that time, and I only discovered this today. Ugh, modern big corporations. They operate like badly run feudal plantations.

Thus, tonight’s quick links will catch up on some stories we missed from late last week.

Starlink now available for moving vehicles

Airbus begins testing of the Orion service module for Artemis-2, the mission that NASA claims will land humans on the Moon

I honestly fear that mission, since I have no faith in SLS, even if the first unmanned test flight works perfectly. To put humans on it and send them to the Moon seems frightfully unsound.

On next Atlas-5 launch, ULA will test inflatable heat shield designed to bring its Vulcan 1st stage engines safely back to Earth

The launch is now set for November 9th. More information about the heat shield test here.

In general this seems far too complex and expensive, especially since SpaceX has demonstrated on more than a hundred 1st stage returns that if the speed is properly controlled the engine does not need a heat shield to protect it.

Japan delays by one year, to ’24, the launch of an upgraded HTX unmanned cargo freighter

The HTV-X is to be launched on Japan’s new H3 rocket, which has also experienced delays and is yet to fly.

This image compares the HTV-X with the older HTV. The X is actually smaller, but it has larger solar panels.

China completes manufacture of the 4m primary mirror to be used on its Hubble-class orbiting optical telescope, planned for launch in ’24.

If this works as planned, the telescope will fly in formation with the Tiangong-3 station, from which astronauts will periodically fly maintenance missions. At four meters diameter, this telescope is significantly larger than Hubble’s 2.4 meter primary mirror, and will thus be more capable.

Blue Origin delivers second BE-4 flightworthy engine to ULA

ULA can now install the engines in the first Vulcan rocket and begin testing. Whether it will be ready for its first flight early next year remains unknown. It is even more uncertain whether Blue Origin can ramp up its BE-4 assembly line so as to produce enough of these engines for all of the planned launches of the Vulcan as well as Blue Origin’s own as-yet-unflown New Glenn rocket.

10 comments

Speakeasies Swing Band – Black Swamp Village

October 31, 2022 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: Another piece with Catarina Sisinni the lead singer. Seems perfect for Halloween.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

1 comment

The knobby floor of a Martian crater

October 31, 2022 5:21 pm Robert Zimmerman

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small portion of the knobby floor of a 70-mile-wide ancient and eroded unnamed crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars.

Why knobby? Usually such terrain on Mars signifies an very ancient and well eroded region of chaos terrain, its knobs the leftover worn remains of ancient mesas cut by eons of glacier flow.

If this is so, the location as shown in the overview map below suggests if there were ever any glaciers — or any near surface ice — at this location, it had to be a very long time ago.
» Read more

0 comments

CAPSTONE makes course correction, now on target for lunar orbital insertion on November 13th

October 31, 2022 1:39 pm Robert Zimmerman

Engineers have successfully overcome the valve issue that had caused the CAPSTONE lunar probe to tumble, and have made a subsequent mid-course correction that has put the spacecraft on target for entering lunar orbit on November 13, 2022, as planned.

The CAPSTONE spacecraft successfully completed a trajectory correction maneuver on Thursday, Oct. 27, teeing up the spacecraft’s arrival to lunar orbit on Nov. 13.

CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode following an issue in early September that caused the spacecraft to spin. The team identified the most likely cause as a valve-related issue in one of the spacecraft’s eight thrusters. The mission team will design future maneuvers to work around the affected valve, including the two remaining trajectory correction maneuvers scheduled before CAPSTONE’s arrival to orbit at the Moon.

Though it appears the CAPSTONE team has figured out how to deal with that malfuncting valve, it is unclear what the long-term ramifications of that valve will be. If it is still leaking it likely means the mission will be shortened because of loss of fuel, as well as the need to use more to compensate.

1 comment

Today’s blacklist victim: Distinguished scientist and long-time journal editor forced to resign due to threats

October 31, 2022 12:40 pm Robert Zimmerman

Jose Domingo, blacklisted scientist
Dr. José Luis Domingo, blacklisted scientist

The modern dark age: Dr. José Luis Domingo, an often cited expert on toxicology and editor for the last seven years of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, has been forced to resign his position because of threats and slanders directed at him after he approved the publication of a peer-review paper that documented the potential harmful effects of the mRNA COVID shots.

About a month after the paper was published, Domingo said, he began receiving angry emails and messages. These included insults, calls to resign, demands to retract the paper, and even threats. One email asked him how he could sleep at night, knowing that the scientific paper that he had allowed to be published would lead to the death of millions of people.

The angry messages, he said, were filled with ad hominem attacks against him and against the paper’s co-authors, but did not specify their scientific objections to the contents of the paper.

…Since then, pro-vaccine factions have increased their personal campaign against him, going so far as to adding false information to the Wikipedia entry about him, as well as attacking the Wikipedia page of the journal itself. Both, he said, were negatively modified by pro-vaccination activists. Indeed, an Oct. 4 version of his page, accessed via internet archive, included a subheading entitled “Antivaccine controversy” that accused Domingo of “spreading disinformation during the pandemic.” That paragraph has since been removed.

Domingo even offered — in a gesture of open-mindedness and good will — to publish one of the more-detailed attack messages, if the writers would agree to peer review. They did agree, and then discovered that with peer-review you need to have some facts to back up your accusations. They did not, and their paper was rejected.

No matter. These individuals then found another journal, Stem Cell Reviews and Reports, to publish their attack essay, demanding once again that Domingo retract the paper while once again accusing him of causing the death of millions by its publication:
» Read more

10 comments

Distant interacting galaxies

October 31, 2022 11:25 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of known “weird and wonderful galaxies.” This particular pair is dubbed Arp 248, and is estimated to be about 200 million light years away.

Two spiral galaxies are viewed almost face-on; they are a mix of pale blue and yellow in colour, crossed by strands of dark red dust. They lie in the upper-left and lower-right corners. A long, faint streak of pale blue joins them, extending from an arm of one galaxy and crossing the field diagonally. A small spiral galaxy, orange in colour, is visible edge-on, left of the lower galaxy.

The connecting stream indicates that these galaxies are interacting with each other, gravity drawing stars and gas from the upper galaxy towards the lower.

0 comments

Al-Amal orbiter tracks unusual northern summer dust storm on Mars

October 31, 2022 10:04 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for full figure.

Scientists, using UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter, have documented the occurrence of a rare high northern latitude summer dust storm whose origin appears linked to both a major canyon in the northern ice cap as well as the giant sand dune seas that surround that ice cap.

The EMM [instrument on Al-Amal] observed a distinct dust cloud on 10 September 2021. That was outside of the classical Martian dust storm season. The observed dust cloud is an arc-shaped dust storm, typically observed at the northern polar cap edge. This type of non-season dust storm is a well-known phenomenon, but this particular case is interesting because the dust cloud has frontal structure. A large atmospheric front is unusual in this location and season.

EMM’s unique observational coverage adds value to this observation, by providing a sequence of four camera images of the frontal dust cloud, separated by 2–3 hr. The frontal dust cloud shows very little movement over 7–8 hr, that is, it is quasi-stationary. We estimated the wind speed and direction by tracking internal motion of the dust cloud. In one case, the estimated wind is consistent with near-surface easterly winds at the polar cap edge.

The two images to the right are adapted from the paper’s figure 3. The yellow line in the top image indicates the location of the dust storm’s front (about 1,200 miles long), aligned with the canyon Chasma Boreale, marked by the black line, that cuts a 300-mile-long and 4,600-foot-deep gash into the North Pole ice cap.

The storm’s wind speeds were estimated very roughly to be about 16 feet per second, about 10 mph. In Mars’ thin atmosphere these winds would be so gentle that they would be almost imperceptible.

The storm front’s alignment with Chasma Boreale is intriguing, but the overview map below suggests another intriguing alignment.
» Read more

1 comment

Watching the launch of the final large module to China’s Tiangong-3 space station

October 31, 2022 12:10 am Robert Zimmerman

UPDATE: The Mengtian module has been deployed, and is now proceeding to a rendezvous and docking within the next day or so. The core stage is in orbit, and we can only wait over the next few days to find out where it will hit the Earth.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

49 SpaceX
47 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 69 to 47, though it now trails the rest of the world combined 74 to 69.

Original post:
—————-
The launch of the final large module for China’s Tiangong-3 space station is scheduled to occur at 12:37 am (Pacific) tonight.

The module is called Mengtian, and once moved to its permanent port will complete the station in its t-shape. The rocket is the Long March 5B, the core stage of which will reach orbit, and then within a week crash uncontrolled somewhere on Earth.

I have embedded the English live stream below. A lot of Chinese propaganda (though not much different from a NASA broadcast). As I understand it, the launch window is instantaneous, so if there are any holds the launch will be scrubbed for the day.

» Read more

4 comments

Stratolaunch’s giant Roc airplane flies for 1st time with Talon engineering vehicle attached

October 29, 2022 10:04 am Robert Zimmerman

Test engineering vehicle attached on Roc

Stratolaunch yesterday successfully flew its giant Roc airplane with a Talon hypersonic engineering vehicle attached for the first time to its central fuselage.

The flight lasted just over five hours, reached an altitude of 23,000 feet, and was “focused on measuring the aerodynamic loads on the Talon-A vehicle while mated to Roc. The loads captured in flight will validate aerodynamic predictions to ensure the release mechanism will function as designed.”

The company will complete a series of captive carry flights in the coming months, culminating in a separation test of the TA-0 vehicle out over the Pacific Ocean in late 2022.

Even as these flight tests proceed, the company is building the actual Talon flight vehicles, designed as testbeds for doing hypersonic flight tests quickly and relatively cheaply. The plan is to have these flight vehicles ready for both military and commercial customers to fly them by ’23.

11 comments

NASA & ESA pick site for Perseverance to deposit its samples for pickup

October 29, 2022 9:31 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for interactive map.

Engineers at NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have now chosen the site in Jezero Crater where Perseverance will deposit its first set of core samples for later pickup by a mission to bring them back to Earth.

The location, at the base of the delta that flows into the crater and indicated by the white cross on the map to the right, will contain all the core samples collected from the floor of the crater. This area, in the middle of the flat region the science team has dubbed Three Forks, provides a good landing place for the sample return helicopter that will fly from point to point to pick these samples up. The blue dot on the map indicates Perseverance’s present position. The green dot where the helicopter Ingenuity presently sits.

Once the rover has finished collecting samples and doing its research at the base of the delta, it will deposit those samples at this point and then move up onto the delta, where it will collect more samples that will be placed at a different spot for pickup.

0 comments

NASA sets new launch date for Psyche asteroid mission

October 29, 2022 9:01 am Robert Zimmerman

NASA yesterday announced that the delayed Psyche mission, to the asteroid Psyche, now has a new launch date of October 10, 2023, with a planned arrival in 2029.

The spacecraft missed its original launch date in 2022 because of the late delivery of its flight software combined with problems with the equipment needed to test that software.

The new launch date, though only one year later than planned, will cause the spacecraft to arrive two years late because of orbital mechanics.

1 comment

China launches classified technology test satellite

October 29, 2022 8:56 am Robert Zimmerman

China today successfully launched a classified technology test satellite using its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

No word on where the expendable first stage crashed within China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

49 SpaceX
46 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 69 to 46 in the national rankings, though it trails the rest of the world combined 73 to 69.

1 comment