Rocket Lab delays first launch of new Neutron rocket

9:41 am

Rocket Lab has delayed the first launch of its new larger Neutron rocket from late 2024 to mid-2025 in order to complete the testing of that rocket’s new methane-fueled Archimedes engine.

Many component, subsystem, and all-up system tests will be conducted throughout the test campaign. These tests will validate Archimedes’ transient start-up, steady-state, and shut down performance. The engine test and development campaign is a key driver of the schedule for Neutron’s first launch, which the Company today confirmed is now expected to take place no earlier than mid-2025.

That testing will also certify it for use in as many as twenty flights, as the Neutron rocket is being designed from the get-go to be reusable.

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China successfully completes first launch of new Long March 6C rocket

9:33 am

China today successfully completed the first launch of its new Long March 6C rocket, lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the north interior of China.

The rocket uses kerosene as its fuel, rather than the toxic hypergolic fuels used in its older rockets, and is part of an effort to replace all those older rockets. Thus, when its lower stage crashes inside China, the risks of it harming anyone is reduced somewhat. China released no information on where that first stage crashed on this first launch.

The rocket placed four satellites in orbit.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

47 SpaceX
19 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 31, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 38.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Starliner launch scrubbed due to valve issue

9:21 am

Yesterday’s Starliner launch was scrubbed before launch because ULA had detected an issue with a valve on the Atlas-5’s Centaur upper stage, causing that valve to flutter because it had not closed in the proper position.

At the press conference that followed, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno explained that during an unmanned launch, engineers would have simply cycled the valve, which almost always works to get it to seat properly. ULA launch rules however forbids it from doing so on a manned launch, because that would be the equivalent of fueling the tank with people on board the rocket. The Atlas-5 was initially not built for manned flights, and though it has been upgraded to man-rate it, those upgrades did not permit ULA this capability, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which get fueled entirely after the crew boards Dragon.

They are reviewing the data to see if the valve will need to be replaced. If not, the launch could happen quickly. If it does, the launch will be delayed slightly longer, but not significantly. Right now ULA, NASA, and Boeing are targeting a May 10th launch.

It is worth listening to Tory Bruno’s explanation of the situation because of its clarity. I have embedded his comments below, time-stamped to when he began speaking.
» Read more

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

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

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

 

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

The long delay in Israel’s final Gaza offensive has harmed everyone except the terrorists

5:32 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

Despite several months of delay forced on it by the Biden administration in its effort to placate the Democratic Party’s Islamic wing, Israel today began its final offensive against Hamas’s last Gazan stronghold in the southern city of Rafah.

According to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), “The IDF is currently conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah in southern Gaza.” It has also dropped leaflets throughout Rafah telling the general population to evacuate to the west and north into areas that Israel has set up to hold non-combatant refugees.

The initiation of this offensive is likely linked to Hamas’s actions this weekend. First Hamas proudly took credit for bombing the border crossing used to bring humanitarian aid to the city. That attack killed three Israeli soldiers, and put an end to the aid. Hamas also continued to stall and refuse to negotiate, and then when it was clear the offensive was about to start it suddenly announced it had accepted a ceasefire deal offered to it by Qatar and Egypt that Israel had no part in negotiating and had already rejected.

What will happen next is somewhat unclear. Israel will without doubt be able to take Rafah and likely eliminate the remaining four or so battalions of Hamas terrorists. Will it be able to do so without a large number of civilian casualties is unclear, as Hamas has a policy of using those civilians as shields. It will likely try to do so again.

The ramifications of the long delay in this offensive are however important. It occurred partly because Israel’s army wanted to regroup, but mostly because the Biden administration has been desperately trying to prevent it. The White House has threatened Israel in a number of ways if it moved forward with the attack, most recently by putting a hold on a shipment to Israel of ammo. Biden officials have also stated several times that they are considering a major change in its policy towards Israel if the Rafah offensive occurs.

Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made it clear that Israel has no intention of making any peace deal with Hamas. In the past month however it did appear the Israeli government was holding off on the offensive in order to placate the White House and hopefully work out a deal to get the hostages released.

In the end, the delay has served no good purpose, and in fact has had many negative consequences, against Biden, the Gazan people themselves, and the United States.
» Read more

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May 6, 2024 Quick space links

3:18 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.

 

 

 

  • Chang’e-6 is carrying a surprise mini-rover

    • The rover is very simple, and likely capable of only a few tasks and a short life span on the surface. Nonetheless, it shows that China continues to push the envelope, taking every opportunity to improve its space capabilities.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Another non-story about Venus

12:33 pm

Venus as seen in ultraviolet by Mariner 10, February 5, 1974
Venus as seen in ultraviolet by Mariner 10,
February 5, 1974. The identity of the material
that causes the dark streaks still remains unknown.

The uncertainty of science: In the next few days you might see a few news articles in the mainstream press touting a new study that “Now for the first time!” explains why there is no water on Venus.

Be warned. You are reading bad reporting of relatively insignificant research that some specialists studying Venus might find of interest but for everyone else is hardly news. Prior to the internet age most science reporters would have read the press release and tossed it aside. And if they tried to sell it as a story their editors would have quickly told them to find something better to write about.

How do I know this? The press release‘s title gives it away: “Venus has almost no water. A new study may reveal why.”

First, any press release that uses qualifiers like “may” or “could” or “might” guarantees a finding of less interest. Almost invariably such “discoveries” are nothing more that a new computer simulation or model that shows interesting output, but has nothing to do with new observations of actual data. In essence, this is garbage in, garbage out. The computer models might help explain things, but no one should take the results that seriously. Good scientists (of which there appear to be fewer and fewer) never do. Good journalists should do the same.

In this case that is exactly what we have. To quote:
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

11:22 am

It just keeps going and going: SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

47 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 30. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 37.

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A supernova factory

9:44 am

A supernova factory

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2023 as part of a survey of galaxies where recent supernovae have occurred. One occurred in 2020 in this galaxy, which is about 240 million light years away and dubbed UGC 9684.

Remarkably, the 2020 supernova in this galaxy isn’t the only one that’s been seen there — four supernova-like events have been spotted in UGC 9684 since 2006, putting it up there with the most active supernova-producing galaxies. It turns out that UGC 9684 is a quite active star-forming galaxy, calculated as producing one solar mass worth of stars every few years! This level of stellar formation makes UGC 9684 a veritable supernova factory, and a galaxy to watch for astronomers hoping to examine these exceptional events.

This image provides scientists a high resolution baseline should another supernova occur. It will not only make it easier to spot a future supernova, it also increases the chances that the progenitor star that went boom could be identified.

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Watching the first manned launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule

9:30 am

UPDATE: Launch scrubbed due to an issue on the upper stage. When a new launch date is announced I will put up a new post.

———————–
The first manned launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is presently targeting a 10:34 pm (Eastern) launch tonight from Cape Canaveral, lifting off on ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket.

The flight will carry two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, and will dock with ISS a little over 24 hours later for a week of testing docked to the station.

The live stream for tonight’s launch is embedded below. Though that coverage will include several prelaunch and post launch press conferences, the key coverage of the launch itself will begin at 6:30 pm (Eastern) on May 6th, about four hours before the launch itself. It will also include the capsule’s docking with ISS on May 8th. Most of the prelaunch coverage will be NASA PR, even though the only time NASA is participating significantly is when ISS is involved. Boeing is operating the capsule and ULA is operating the launch.

» Read more

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Another Starship/Superheavy update

9:15 am

Link here. The report details the extensive work being done by SpaceX engineers and construction crews at Boca Chica, not only upgrading and testing the 30th Starship and 11th Superheavy prototypes that will fly on the fourth orbital test flight but also improving and expanding the launch facilities there.

A static fire test of both vehicles could happen in the next week or so, though this remains uncertain.

Though it appears that SpaceX will be ready to fly by mid- to late-May, the key factor on when that fourth test flight occurs remains this:

…there is still no news on when Flight 3’s mishap investigation will be completed.

That investigation is being conducted by SpaceX. Once submitted to the FAA that agency will have to review it and issue its own conclusions (essentially rubber-stamping it), something that is guaranteed to take time. In the past it took the FAA from two to seven months to do this rubberstamping, with the time shortening after each flight. There have been indications that it hopes to reduce that time even further with this and later flights. We should therefore expect it to take anywhere from one to four weeks this time.

Thus, a May launch remains unlikely, as I predicted from the get-go. Expect the launch to occur in June, which though delayed will still be an improvement over the FAA’s past red-tape approval processes.

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Russia to NASA: We’ll wait a bit before putting our astronauts on Starliner

8:54 am

Even though Russia and NASA have a barter deal whereby one astronaut from each country flies free on each flight of its spacecraft, Russia it appears will forego flying any Russians on Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the immediate future.

At the May 3 briefing, though, NASA officials said it was unlikely that a Russian cosmonaut would be assigned to Starliner-1 [the first operational flight after the first manned demo flight launching today]. “We expect, on the Roscosmos side, they’re more likely to want to see a long-duration flight also, so we think they’ll want to start to fly with us on Starliner-2,” said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager.

That would appear to disrupt the ongoing series of seat exchanges between NASA and Roscosmos. “We’re still working through that with our Roscosmos counterparts. It’s our desire to continue to do integrated crew,” she said, adding that NASA and Roscosmos don’t have an agreement yet in place for exchanging crews in the timeframe that will include Starliner-1.

This isn’t a surprise. Russia made the same decision with SpaceX’s Dragon manned capsule, waiting until it had flown a few times before agreeing to allow its astronauts on it. With Boeing Russia might be more hesitant, consider the problems Starliner has had in development plus the overall quality control issues known to exist at Boeing.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse completes suborbital test launch

9:55 am

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse yesterday succesfully completed its first suborbital test launch, launching from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia.

The 12-metre, 2.5-tonne test rocket dubbed “SR75” lifted off shortly after 0500 GMT from a launch site in Koonibba, South Australia. It is capable of carrying small satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 pounds) to an altitude of up to 250 km (155 miles) while being fuelled by paraffin, or candle wax, and liquid oxygen.

Paraffin can be used as a cheaper and safer alternative fuel for rockets, reducing satellite transportation costs by as much as 50%, according to HyImpulse.

The company hopes to launch its SL-1 rocket on its first orbital test flight next year.

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The pro-Hamas campus mobs were almost as barbaric as Hamas itself

2:29 pm

Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob
Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob

With the mobs of pro-Hamas protesters finally cleared from many occupied college campuses, we are now finding out just how much these rioters resembled the Hamas barbarians whose effort to murder Jews these protesters supported.

To the right is a screen capture from video taken during a short walk through of the inside of the Portland State University’s Millar Library, following the removal of the pro-Hamas rioters. The place was trashed in the most childish way. You can seem more evidence here. As noted by that report:

Paint splattered on floors. Spray-painted messages and screeds covering walls. Furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras disabled. Fire extinguishers missing and entrances blocked by stacks of chairs. “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” a facilities manager at Portland State University said Thursday as he examined the destruction left behind after a three-day occupation by pro-Palestinian protesters in Millar Library.

It also was reported that rare archival materials were stolen by the student mob.

The situation was the same at numerous universities. » Read more

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SpaceX last night launched another 23 Starlink satellites

11:42 am

The bunny is so fast I missed one: Last night, only a few hours after SpaceX launched two satellites for Maxar, out of Vandenberg in California, the company followed this with another launch of 23 Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th launch, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leader board that I posted earlier today for the Chang’e-6 launch thus gave the wrong totals for SpaceX and the American launch industry. Below are the corrected numbers for the 2024 launch race:

46 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 53 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 46 to 37.

Hat tip to reader MDN to letting me know.

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Curiosity’s journey in Gediz Vallis approaching its end

11:28 am

Panorama taken on May 1, 2024
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was created using 31 pictures taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on May 1, 2024. It looks uphill into Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon that the rover has been traversing since August 2022.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The red dotted line, on both the panorama and the overview indicate the rover’s planned route, with the white dotted line marking the route it actually traveled. The yellow lines indicate approximate the area covered by the panorama.

Coming into view inside Gediz Vallis is that small outcrop in the center of the canyon that the science team has targeted for inspection for years. It will be the last spot the rover visits in Gediz Vallis before turning west to head uphill in a parallel canyon. To see that route look at the map in this September 2023 post. Curiosity will travel west past two canyons before turning uphill again in the third.

Even then, Curiosity will still be in the low foothills at the base of Mount Sharp. The peak, blocked from view by the mountain’s lower flanks, is still 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher up. The journey to get there has really only begun, even after a dozen years exploring Gale Crater.

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Scientists observe orangutan use plant to heal a wound

9:45 am

In what might be the most sophisticated medical treatement yet seen by a wild animal, scientists in 2022 observed an orangutan named Rakus treat a face wound with a poultice it made from a plant known by locals to have medicinal value.

Rakus was observed eating the stems and leaves of the creeper akar kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria), which local people use to treat diabetes, dysentery and malaria, among other conditions. Orangutans in the area rarely eat this plant.

In addition to eating the leaves, Rakus chewed them without swallowing and used his fingers to smear the juice on his facial wound over seven minutes. Some flies settled on the wound, whereupon Rakus spread a poultice of leaf-mash on the wound. He ate the plant again the next day. Eight days after his injury, his wound was fully closed.

Other animals have been seen using plants or insects for medicinal reasons, but none had done anything as complicated as Rakus. Nor have researchers of orangetans ever seen another do anything similar in more than two decades of research. It is thus unclear how Rakus knew what to do. Did he figure it out on the spot, or had he seen it done in the past by others when unobserved?

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Lockheed Martin withdraws bid to buy Terran Orbital

9:35 am

Lockheed Martin yesterday withdrew its early March offer to buy the satellite manufacuture Terran Orbital, purchasing the shares it did not already own for approximately $500 million.

No reason was given, but it appears the other shareholders at Terran Orbital objected to the purchase, and Lockheed probably decided the fight wasn’t worth it.

In that proposal, Lockheed offered to acquire the roughly two-thirds of Terran Orbital stock it did not already own. Lockheed also proposed to pay more than $70 million to buy outstanding stock warrants and either assume or repay $313 million in Terran Orbital debt, putting the total value of the proposal at more than $500 million.

Lockheed, besides being a major investor in Terran Orbital, is a major customer of the company, buying dozens of its smallsat buses for programs such as satellites for the Space Development Agency. Lockheed said in its offer letter that it accounted for 81% of Terran Orbital’s backlog.

Terran Orbital responded to the proposal March 4 with a stockholder rights plan, or “poison pill” move, to prevent a hostile takeover. It acknowledged the proposal and said an independent board committee would evaluate it as part of an ongoing strategic review.

Both companies now say they will continue to work together in the future.

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China launches Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon

9:17 am

Chang'e-6 landing zone

The new colonial movement: China today successfully launched its Chang’e-6 sample return mission to the far side of the Moon, its Long March 5 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Unlike the Long March 5B, whose core stage reaches an unstable orbit and later crashes uncontrolled somewhere on Earth, the core stage of Long March 5 does not, and thus returns to Earth immediately, over the ocean.

The graphic from the right, released by China’s state-run press, shows the landing zone in red on the far side. The target is the southern rim area of Apollo Crater, marked by the uneven white outline. Apollo sits inside the South Aitken Basin, one of the Moon’s largest impact basins, 1,600 miles across, and roughly indicated by the black circle. The circle to the left of Apollo indicates Van Karman crater, where Chang’e-4 landed in 2019 with the Yutu-2 rover, both still operating.

The mission includes a lunar orbiter, a lander, an ascent vehicle, and an Earth sample return capsule. If all goes as planned, the samples will return to Earth in 53 days.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 52 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 37.

6 comments

May 2, 2024 Quick space links

3:23 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.

 

3 comments

SpaceX launches two commercial Earth imaging satellites

3:10 pm

The bunny rolls on. SpaceX today successfully launched two commercial Earth imaging Worldview Legion satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage successfully completed its 20th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. This is the third Falcon 9 booster to fly twenty times. SpaceX now has two such boosters in its fleet, and is now working to upgrade its whole booster fleet to capable of flying forty times. The two fairings on this mission also completed their thirteenth and sixteenth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 52 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 36.

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Pro-American UNC frat boys: Don’t hold a party, use the money more effectively!

2:37 pm

UNC Frat boys protecting American flag

Earlier this week a group of college students belonging to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at North Carolina University (UNC) put their bodies between a mob of pro-Hamas protesters and the American flag, as shown in the picture on the right. That mob had been attempting to remove Old Glory and replace it with the Palestinian flag. Video of the incident can be seen here, with the Hamas mob throwing bottles and garbage at the UNC students, while other American students circle about in-between, holding up the Israeli flag in defiance.

The story quickly went viral in the conservative press. Then someone set up a Gofundme fundraiser to thank the students: “Pi Kappa Phi Men Defended their Flag. Throw ’em a Rager”. As noted by John Noonan, the origanizer:

Commie losers across the country have invaded college campuses to make dumb demands of weak University Administrators.

But amidst the chaos, the screaming, the anti-semitism, the hatred of faith and flag, stood a platoon of American heroes. Armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, fueled by Zyn and White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde — laughing at their shrieks and wails and shielding the Stars & Stripes from Soviet missiles.

These boys… no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best. Help us raise funds to throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.

To the shock of everyone, the money poured in. Within days more than 13,000 people had donated over $450K, with some donations topping five and ten thousand each.

Noonan now says he has found “a world class event planner [Susan Ralston] and she is already hard at work. She worked in the White House and knows what she’s about.” Noonan and GoFundMe is also attempting to identify every student seen holding up or defending the flag. It appears the goal is to to put together a big event that will not only be a great party but a political campaign rally.

I say that’s a big mistake. » Read more

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Sunspot update: A minor uptick in sunspot activity in April

12:28 pm

It is that time of the month again. Yesterday NOAA posted its monthly update of its graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I have done now for every month since I began this website in 2010, I have posted this updated graph below, with several additional details to provide some larger context.

In April the number of sunspots on the Sun went up somewhat, the count rising to the highest level since the count hit its peak of activity last summer. The sunspot number in April, 136.5, was however still significantly less than the 2023 peak of 160. Thus it appears the Sun is likely still the middle saddle of a doubled-peaked relatively weak solar maximum, with the Sun doing what I predicted in February 2024:
» Read more

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NASA IG: Major technical problems with Orion remain unsolved

9:53 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

A just released report [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general has found the major technical problems discovered after the first unmanned Artemis mission of Orion around the Moon remain unsolved, and threaten the safety of the astronauts that NASA plans to send around the Moon on the second Artemis mission.

The problems with Orion are threefold and are quite serious, involving its heat shield, separation bolts, and power distribution.

Specifically, NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material from Orion’s heat shield wore away differently than expected during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Engineers are concurrently investigating ways to mitigate the char loss by modifying the heat shield’s design or altering Orion’s reentry trajectory.

In addition, post-flight inspections of the Crew Module/Service Module separation bolts revealed unexpected melting and erosion that created a gap leading to increased heating inside the bolt. To mitigate the issue for Artemis II, the Orion Program made minor modifications to the separation bolt design and added additional thermal protective barrier material in the bolt gaps.

NASA also recorded 24 instances of power distribution anomalies in Orion’s Electrical PowerSystem. While NASA has determined that radiation was the root cause and is making software changes and developing operational workarounds for Artemis II, without a permanent hardware fix, there is increased risk that further power distribution anomalies could lead to a loss of redundancy, inadequate power, and potential loss of vehicle propulsion and pressurization.

Moreover, like with any engineering system, without understanding the residual effects of introducing design and operational changes, it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety.

This is not all.
» Read more

21 comments

The EU’s government-owned satellite constellation is faltering in its attempt to compete with Starlink and OneWeb

9:22 am

In a pattern that should surprise no one, the government-owned internet satellite constellation proposed by the European Union to compete with private constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb is now in trouble and faces significant delays, partly because its budget has already doubled, even before anything has been built, and partly because there is friction between the various European countries tasked with building it.

A new report in a German publication, Handelsblatt, provides information on some likely causes of the delay. The report indicates that the cost estimate for the Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) constellation has doubled from an initial estimate of 6 billion euros to 12 billion. Additionally, the project is exposing long-running fault lines between Germany and France when it comes to European space policy.

…Germany, which alongside France is likely to be the main financial backer of IRIS², is not happy that most of the prime contractors are based in France or linked to the nation. … And finally, it appears the operations for the constellation will be based primarily in Italy.

In other words, this government project is not being run to make a profit, but to distribute contracts to various countries in the European Union. Under these conditions, it is guaranteed to fall behind scheduled, cost a fortune, ald lose gigantic amounts of money.

These European countries are already shifting away from this failed model, abandoning its government-run rocket company Arianespace to instead encourage competing private rocket companies. It is therefore no surprise that many member countries in the EU are now having second thoughts about building this government-run satellite constellation.

Nonetheless, EU officials want Europe to have its own internet satellite constellation. Getting it however is problematic. There presently are no continent-based companies capable of building and launching it. And a government built and owned constellation is guaranteed to fail in any attempt to compete on the open market.

2 comments

Private Nova Scotia spaceport company opens spaceport to all rocket companies

9:00 am

The company Maritime Launch, which has been building a new spaceport in Nova Scotia since 2016, has abandoned its original concept of providing both the launch facilities and rocket for satellite companies, and will instead make its launch facilities available to all rocket companies.

In an interview with The Journal last week, Matier – who started the spaceport project in 2016 to launch satellites with Cyclone-4M rockets it intended to buy from a Ukrainian manufacturer – said geopolitical realities in Eastern Europe now makes that approach unworkable. “We can’t get the rockets out of Ukraine,” he said. “So, we’ve pivoted away from a customer-supplier relationship with [them] … There’s such huge demand for satellites going into orbit that there’s all these [other] rockets in development that don’t have a home. The bottleneck is really the spaceport, and that’s what we’re addressing.”

According to the article at the link, the spaceport is already negotiating with an unnamed European rocket company to do an orbital launch by 2025. Matier also said there will a suborbital launch at the spaceport this summer, but offered no details about the rocket or payload.

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Astroscale to go public

8:51 am

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug start-up Astroscale announced yesterday that it is becoming a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock market, beginning June 5, 2024.

The company plans to offer 20.8 million shares in the initial public offering, but has not announced a share price. According to filings with the exchange, Astroscale will set that price May 27.

Astroscale has raised more than $375 million through a series of private rounds, most recently a $76 million Series G round in February 2023. That funding has primarily come from Japanese investors, including a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Electric in that Series G round.

The company has also won two major contracts with Japan’s space agency JAXA, building its two ADRAS-J missions to first rendezvous and survey an abandoned upper stage (as shown to the right) and then fly a grapple mission to de-orbit that stage sometime in the future.

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