Intuitive Machines delays launch of its Nova-C lunar lander two months

10:04 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

Intuitive Machines yesterday announced that it has decided to delay the launch of its Nova-C lunar lander from in November launch window to a new window beginning on January 12, 2023.

The company did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay. However, executives warned at a media event Oct. 3 that “pad congestion” at LC-39A could delay their launch. The mission has to launch from that pad, rather than nearby Space Launch Complex 40, because only LC-39A is equipped to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants on the pad shortly before liftoff.

That pad is used for Falcon 9 crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station as well as Falcon Heavy launches. The pad is scheduled to host the Falcon 9 launch of the CRS-29 cargo mission Nov. 5 followed by a Falcon Heavy mission for the Space Force in late November. Converting the pad between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches can take up to three weeks.

The landing site is indicated by the green dot on the map of the south pole to the right. Note that this landing will be the closest to the south pole yet, though not at the south pole. It will also be the first to land next to a crater that has a permanently shadowed interior, though Nova-C will not be able to enter it because it carries no rover and is only designed to last through the first lunar day.

Based on the present launch schedule, Astrobotic now gets the first chance to successfully land a privately built lunar lander. It is scheduled to launch on December 24, 2023 on a Vulcan rocket. The Japanese company Ispace attempted and failed to land its Hakuto-R1 spacecraft in April.

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Genesis cover

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

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

October 27, 2023 Quick space links

4:20 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

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

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

 

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

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

The son of one of the co-founders of Hamas tells it like it is

2:13 pm

Rather than write another long essay detailing (based on facts) the evil and genocidal nature of Hamas in Gaza, I think it better today to let Mosab Hassan Yousef, the oldest son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, do the speaking. An interview of him by Sky News Australia conducted yesterday is embedded below.

His passionate horror of Hamas — from long very personal experience — is evident and clear. So is his intellectual honesty. He will not lie to himself for the sake of alliance, ethnicity, religion, or anything. All that matters is the truth, which he states very bluntly.

“This is my message: an ex-Hamas member, as a son of one of Hamas’ founders, enough of this. If we don’t stop them now, the next war is going to be deadlier and only God knows what will happen next if Hamas is not finished as soon as possible,” Mr Yousef said.

“They opened the gates of hell on the Palestinian people.

“They are willing to actually sacrifice many Palestinian children, the entire Palestinian people and use them as fuel to … achieve their ideological agendas, their religious agendas.”

To underline the truth of his words, for his own protection Yousef now lives in the United States, his location was kept secret, and he refused to answer any personal questions about his specific plans. He knows better than anyone that Hamas will kill him if it can. It is a organization of violence, hate, and murder. Defy it, no matter who you are, and it will have no mercy upon you.

For such an organization civilized people should exhibit no mercy. It must be treated as the Nazis were treated in World War II. It must be obliterated, no matter the cost.

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A new global map of the near-surface ice on Mars

1:51 pm

Global map of near-surface ice on Mars
Click for interactive map.

A project begun in 2019 to use all the presently available orbital data to compile a global map of the near-surface ice on Mars has now been released that global map, shown by the graphic above, taken from Figure 16.7 from the project’s science paper.

The various areas in blue show the evidence of ice down to about 5 meters, or about 15 feet, with darker blue areas indicated ice at greater depth. The study focused on latitudes below 60 degrees latitude, while also blocking out areas above one kilometer in elevation (as indicated in black on the map above). As the paper noted,
» Read more

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Leaving Earth cover

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

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

 

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

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

Giant airship gets clearance for test flights

10:45 am

A giant rigid-frame balloon airship, dubbed Pathfinder-1 and reminiscent of the airships from the early 20th century, has gotten clearance to begin flight tests at Moffett Field in California.

At 407 ft (124 m) long and 66 ft (20 m) in diameter, it’s considerably longer than the “flying buttocks” of the Airlander 10, although less than half of its width. It might not qualify as the world’s largest aircraft, but it’s still absolutely enormous, approaching twice the length of an Airbus A380.

…Currently housed in a monstrous hangar in Mountain View, California, Pathfinder 1 has already flown indoors earlier this year. According to IEEE Spectrum, the company has now been awarded the special airworthiness certificate required to fly this beast outdoors – at less than 1,500 ft (460 m) of altitude, and within the boundaries of Moffett Field and the neighboring Palo Alto Airport’s airspace.

Because of the lightweight materials being used, Pathfinder-1 will use helium, not hydrogen, to lift it. The hope is that this airship can be used to transport cargo. The project is financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

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Is a recently discovered near Earth asteroid a piece from the Moon?

10:38 am

The uncertainty of science: Researchers now think they have enough information to claim that a recently discovered near Earth asteroid, dubbed Kamo`oalewa, could actually be a piece of the Moon, flung from it during a asteroid impact in the past few million years.

The 2021 study found that Kamo`oalewa’s spectrum was unlike that of other near-Earth asteroids but matched most closely that of the moon. Based on this, the team hypothesized that the asteroid could have been ejected from the lunar surface as a result of a meteoroidal impact.

In the new study, Malhotra and her team wanted to determine the feasibility for a knocked-off piece of the moon to get into this quasi-satellite orbit – a phenomenon that is quite unlikely, Malhotra said. Moon fragments that have enough kinetic energy to escape the Earth-moon system also have too much energy to land in the Earth-like orbits of quasi-satellites, she said.

With numerical simulations that accurately account for the gravitational forces of all the solar system’s planets, Malhotra’s group found that some lucky lunar fragments could actually find their way to such orbits. Kamo`oalewa could be one of those fragments created during an impact on the moon in the past few million years, according to the study.

The scientists add that the asteroid’s solar orbit, which keeps its flying in relative formation with the Earth for millions of years, strengthens this hypothesis.

It must be noted that this remains an unconfirmed hypothesis. A spacecraft would have to visit Kamo’oalewa and obtain samples to study to confirm it.

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UK awards German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg $4.3 million for first launch

10:32 am

The United Kingdom has given a $4.3 development grant to the German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) to pay for launch preparations at the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The real news from this article however is the continuing delays for anyone to launch from Great Britain. Previously the two Scottish spaceports, one in Shetland and the other in Sutherland, had anticipated the first launches in 2023, from the three companies RFA, Orbex, and ABL. Now it appears that those launches could be delayed into the middle of 2024.

RFA currently expects to launch its three-stage, 30-meter-tall RFA One rocket at some point during the three months to the end of June, recently delayed from the end of this year.

…ABL had planned to conduct its SaxaVord Spaceport launch in 2023, but has yet to announce a date for its next launch attempt anywhere after its inaugural mission from Alaska failed to reach orbit Jan. 10.

ABL is gearing up for its second launch attempt, hopefully before the end of this year, but it will do it from the Kodiak spaceport in Alaska.

One can’t help wondering if these delays are connected the red tape from UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which delayed issuing a launch licence to Virgin Orbit so long it literally helped bankrupt the company. For example, Orbex applied for its launch license from Sutherland in January 2022, and 22 months later it apparently has still not gotten an approval from the CAA.

This grant from the UK government might be that government’s effort to keep RFA — faced with CAA delays — from switching its launch site out of Great Britain.

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No launch of Starship/Superheavy until February?

10:15 am

Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q
Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q,
during April test launch

In an email statement released on October 19, 2023 by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and reported by Bloomberg news today, FWS decided to initiate a ” a formal review of the upgrades SpaceX has made to its Starship launch system”, beginning on October 5.

Most of the Bloomberg article is behind a paywall, but the second paragraph is really the key quote:

The FWS now has as long as 135 days to create an updated biological opinion about how Starship and its launches impact the local environment, however the agency does not “expect to take the full amount of time,” a representative said in the statement.

If FWS does take the full time period, no launch can occur before February. Nor should anyone naively believe its statement that it does not expect to take the full amount of time. For example, SpaceX completed installation of its upgraded Starship/Superheavy launch system, including the water deluge equipment at its base, in early August. Why did Fish and Wildlife wait till now, almost three months later, to begin its review?
» Read more

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Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket launches military satellite

9:40 am

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a classified military surveillance satellite, lifting off from its Plesetsk spacesport in northern Russia.

A graphic at the link shows the rocket’s flight path crossed over almost all of Russia as it flew east, with its lower stages and fairings crashing on land. Though the drop zones were inside Russia, there are very isolated regions in the high Arctic latitudes, with few inhabited areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 88 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 88 to 77. SpaceX by itself now trails with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 76 to 77.

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Belén Bandera & Carla Motis – El Testament d’Amèlia

6:01 pm

An evening pause: From Wikipedia: “El testament d’Amèlia is a popular Catalan folk song. It tells the story of a young lady in her deathbed who knowingly drank the poisoned drink given to her by her stepmother, whom she knows has been sleeping with her husband.”

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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