Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Take A Pebble
An evening pause: Performed live 1970.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
October 11, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Relativity signs multi-launch agreement with Intelsat
The launches are for Relativity’s new Terran-R rocket, not yet launched, and will begin as early as 2026. The deal likely also allows Intelsat complete freedom to go elsewhere if Relativity has problems delivering.
- Blue Origin confirms that Brent Sherwood, head of the company’s Advanced Development Programs, is retiring
This is likely part of the house-cleaning in connection with the exit of CEO Bob Smith. The company desperately needs new leadership willing to get something, anything, done.
- Astra considering selling 51% of its propulsion division as well as parts of other divisions
If so the company would be selling its most productive division at this point, suggesting its future is dim indeed.
- A picture of the outside of OSIRIS-REx’s sample collector
The rocks and dirt in the middle right are extra material from Bennu that were captured and retained outside the collector. The scientists say a preliminary look at the material has found carbon and water (held in molecules of other material), but that is not news, as we already knew both were there.
- Spacewalk on ISS cancelled as engineers assess the coolant leak from Russia’s Nauka module
This leak is far more serious than the previous two leaks, as it is part of ISS itself, not a Progress or Soyuz capsule that is there only temporarily.
- Sierra Space selected by DARPA for its “10-year lunar architecture study”
The tweet suggests merely that Sierra has been selected to enter contract negotiations, not that it has won a contract.
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
You can’t negotiate with someone who wants to kill you
The horrors that occurred in Israel this past weekend when Hamas terrorists committed an organized attack on innocent civilians living near the Gaza Strip should finally put an end to demands that Israel negotiate with these people. Such negotiations are as pointless as the endless negotiations seen in the 1930s with Hitler. All you will do each time is to give up ground that is then used by these villians to continue waging war against you.
I say this with utter confidence for two reasons:
1. For decades the founding documents of both the Palestinian Authority (in control of the West Bank) and Hamas (in control of Gaza Strip) have made it very clear that they do not recognize the existence of Israel, and that their eventual goal is its utter destruction, including the elimination of all its citizens. Hamas this weekend demonstrated how these thugs intend to achieve that elimination, by killing every Israeli Jew they can find.
2. Repeatedly Israel has demonstrated forcefully its willingness to live in peace with the Palestinians, and each time has been met with hate and murder. In Gaza specifically Israel unilaterially exited in 2005, actually forcing Israelis who had settled there to give up their property so that Gaza could be handed in its entirety to the Palestinians as their own independent nation. At that moment the Palestinians had an opportunity to prove they wanted to live in peace. Instead, they elected a terrorist organization to run Gaza, and have spent the last two decades using it as a base for attacking and killing Israelis.
The attack this past weekend simply underlined these two fundamental facts. » Read more
Massive landslide in Martian canyon
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 5, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The image shows a gigantic landslide collapse on the southern interior wall of a long meandering canyon on Mars dubbed Bahram Vallis. The collapse was what scientists call a mass wasting event, in which the entire section of cliff wall breaks off and moves downward as a large unit. In this case the falling section, a half mile wide and long, got squeezed near the bottom, piling up rather than flowing out into the canyon floor.
At this particular location the canyon is 2.4 miles wide, with cliff walls about 1,700 feet high. Imagine when this piece broke off: In one instance a giant section of mountain about a half mile long fell about a thousand feet. Even in Mars’ thin atmosphere the sound must have been thunderous.
» Read more
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.
South Korea is in final negotiations to cancel two Russian launch contracts
As has been expected since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, South Korea is in the process of canceling two Russian launch contracts, with the negotiations apparently now in the final stages.
“The Korea Multipurpose Satellite 6 and the next-generation mid-size satellite Compact Advanced Satellite 500-2, both developed by Korea, were initially scheduled to be launched into space using Russian launch vehicles, but due to the war between Russia and Ukraine and the subsequent international sanctions against Russia, there were uncontrollable circumstances that prevented the use of Russian launch vehicles,” the Ministry of Science and ICT said in a statement.
“Since then, Korea has been negotiating with Russia on the terms of termination of the satellite launch contract and it is currently being finalized.”
South Korea has already found a different rocket for the first satellite, scheduled for launch on Arianespace’s Vega-C rocket when it resumes flights in April 2024 (after completing upgrades resulting from a December 2022 launch failure). As for the second satellite, no public decision has yet been announced, though contract bidding has been on-going.
Meanwhile South Korea is accelerating development of its own Nuri rocket, which it has successfully launched two times already.
Russia in turn no longer has any international customers for its rockets. Its invasion of the Ukraine has cost it hundreds of millions of dollars of lost business, all of which will likely not return for decades.
Astrobotic resumes suborbital test flights of assets purchased from Masten bankruptcy
The startup lunar landing company Astrobotic has resumed flights and testing of the suborbital spacecraft built by the company Masten Space Systems and obtained when that company went bankrupt.
Astrobotic announced Oct. 10 that it completed the first campaign of test flights by Xodiac, a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle, since acquiring it and other Masten Space Systems assets last year. Xodiac conducted four flights from Mojave, California, hovering just off the ground to test plume-surface interactions ahead of future lunar landing missions, supporting research by the University of Central Florida.
Xodiac was built several years ago by Masten Space Systems, based in Mojave, and made more than 150 low-altitude flights for a variety of technology demonstration investigations. However, the company filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 and its assets acquired by Astrobotic that September for $4.5 million.
Xodiac is now part of Astobotic’s Propulsion and Test Department, which includes other assets from Masten Space Systems as well as many of its former employees, who say they have picked up where they left off before the bankruptcy.
Astrobotic has also resumed development work on a larger Masten suborbital spacecraft, Xogdor, also designed to launch and land vertically, but actually reach space.
Because Astrobotic is mostly focused on developing lunar landers, Masten’s technology is perfect for refining that capability for landing on the Moon. It is also ideal should Astrobotic decide to develop a reusable rocket for launch from Earth.
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
Tanya Tucker & Delbert McClinton – Tell me about it
An evening pause: Performed live 1993.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
October 10, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Sierra Space reiterates its commitment to Orbital Reef and its contracts with NASA
Based on the statement, which makes no mention of Blue Origin, this suggests that the rumors about a break-up between Sierra Space and Blue Origin on this project were really referring to Blue Origin getting kicked out, which will be especially embarrassing for Jeff Bezos as he and his company were the originators of the Orbital Reef space station concept.
- Mission team for UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter get award at 2023 International Astronautical Congress
Well deserved, though in this day and age one can’t help wondering how much of this award was given for political reasons beyond the team’s actual achievement.
- A news source other than BtB notices China dropping any mention of Russia in its latest presentation about its lunar base
Jay and I both noted this change by China in the October 4, 2023 quick space links, one week ago. Nor was this a surprise, as from the beginning I predicted Russia would not contribute much of anything to this partnership, and China began leaving Russia out of its presentations as early as September 2022.
- China’s Hubble-class space telescope to enter “final prototype phase” in April 2024
This date suggests that the telescope is delayed, and will not launch next year as previously announced as recently as February 2023.
Broken Martian ice sheets?
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture was what the camera team call a “terrain sample,” which usually means the picture was taken not as part of any specific research request, but because there was a gap in the camera’s schedule, and in order to maintain the camera’s temperature the team then picks something to fill that gap.
Because of the relative randomness of such pictures, they sometimes show little of immediate interest. More often than not, however, the camera team chooses well, and snaps something cool.
In this case they achieved the latter. The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, inside the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country. Everything in this region seems covered with glacial and ice debris, and this picture is no different. Rather than a glacier however we have what looks like a broken ice sheet, surrounded by that utterly unique and as-yet unexplained Martian geological feature dubbed brain terrain.
October 12 Falcon Heavy launch of Psyche probe faces bad weather
At present there is only a 20% chance that the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe will occur on October 12, 2023 at 10:16 am (Eastern) as planned out of Cape Canaveral.
The launch window only extends until October 25, 2023, after which the entire project would have to be redesigned, requiring a significant delay.
SpaceX has become very adept at threading the needle when weather restricts its Starlink launch abilities, but it has less flexibility with Psyche. To increase its chances it has scrubbed a planned Starlink launch this week from Cape Canaveral in order to give the Falcon Heavy launch more launch opportunities.
Regardless, the live stream can be accessed here.
Aerojet Rocketdyne satellite power units are chronically failing
According to space insurers, problems on power units built by Aerojet Rocketdyne on four different satellites are going to cost the industry about $50 million in claims this year.
According to multiple insurance sources, Yahsat’s Al Yah 3, Avanti Communications’ Hylas 4, and Northrop Grumman’s two Mission Extension Vehicles (MEV-1 and MEV-2) are operating with reduced power to their thrusters following a problem with onboard Power Processing Units (PPUs).
The PPUs from Aerojet Rocketdyne provide the electrical power their thrusters need for station-keeping in geostationary orbit (GEO). One of the sources said Al Yah 3, Hylas 4, and MEV-2 have each lost one of two onboard PPUs since the issue emerged in 2022. The youngest of these spacecraft, MEV-2, launched in 2020.
While the article at the link focuses on the impact to space insurers for these additional claims, what I see are serious quality control problems at Aerojet Rocketdyne, now part of the company L3Harris after a summer acquisition. The new management of L3Harris better aggressively address this, or else it will find its $4.7 billion acquisition a big waste of money.
SpaceX blasts FAA for claiming falling satellites could by 2035 kill someone every two years
In a letter response to an FAA report to Congress issued last week, SpaceX has strongly criticized the FAA for claiming falling satellites from the many big constellations being launched now could by 2035 kill someone every two years.
The FAA’s report actually claimed that some of the risk of death from these satellites would come from space junk impacting airplanes. From the report:
“Some debris fragments would also be a hazard to people in aircraft. Projecting 2019 global air traffic to 2035 and assuming that a fragment that would injure or kill a person on the ground also would be capable of fatally damaging an aircraft, the probability of an aircraft downing accident (defined in the Aerospace report as a collision with an aircraft downing object) in 2035 would be 0.0007 per year.”
As SpaceX’s response correctly notes, this claim of a threat is absurd. Not only do the satellites from these constellations always burn up in the atmosphere — making the risk zero — the chances of a collusion that the FAA claims are still so infinitesimal they should not have been considered worth mentioning. SpaceX also noted that the FAA’s analysis was based on obsolete Iridium satellites from the 1990s that are no longer being launched, not the kind of satellites and the preventive actions modern satellite companies take in flying them.
It appears this report is just another example of the full court press of the administrative state against not just SpaceX but all of private enterprise. By exaggerating the risk of space debris, the FAA is trying to justify more regulation and restrictions in an effort to garner more power to itself at the expense of freedom.