Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

On the road

September 24, 2018 8:01 am Robert Zimmerman

My previous post was written from Flagstaff, Arizona, where Diane and I are temporarily stuck. Yesterday we had planned to drive to Zion for a week of hiking and sightseeing. South of Flagstaff the car overheated when all the antifreeze leaked out from below. Calls to insurance got a tow truck, which got us and the car to Flagstaff. Hopefully it will be fixed quickly and we will head out to Zion later today.

During this unplanned adventure I could not help wonder at how, in this case, satellites and smart phones have made life much better. In the past getting stranded on the side of the road in a remote place could mean hours of waiting. Unless the highway patrol saw you you had no way of contacting anyone. Yesterday however we immediately called our insurance’s roadside assistance, who arranged a tow truck. I then used the car GPS to local a hotel in Flagstaff near the car repair place and then used the phone to call them to make reservations. We were at the hotel, with the car in the shop, only two and a half hours after we had been forced to pull off to the side of the road. And we did this from a spot on the interstate miles from anything.

If only smart phones did not come with other baggage. Sadly they do, since no gain is ever truly one-sided. One must take the good with the bad, while trying to minimize the bad as much as possible.

Posting shall continue all week, though the timing might be different than normal.

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Bill increases funding to FAA space office, adds other provisions

September 24, 2018 7:27 am Robert Zimmerman

A bill about to be approved by Congress increases funding to the FAA Office of Commercial Transportation while also requiring that office to create several new regulatory positions.

The bill authorizes a significant increase in spending for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, from the $22.6 million it received in fiscal year 2018 to a little more than $33 million in 2019, growing to nearly $76 million in 2023. Appropriators, though, have not matched that authorized increase for 2019, with House and Senate versions of spending bills funding the FAA offering just under $25 million for AST.

The reauthorization bill includes several policy provisions associated with commercial spaceflight as well. One would require the FAA to designate an official within its air traffic organization to serve as the single point of contact for working with the head of AST on airspace issues associated with commercial launch activity.

Another provision establishes an “Office of Spaceports” within AST intended to support commercial licensing of launch sites and develop policies to promote infrastructure improvements at such facilities. It also requires AST to develop a report within one year of the bill’s enactment on spaceport policies, including recommendations on government actions to “support, encourage, promote, and facilitate greater investments in infrastructure at spaceports.” It directs the Government Accountability Office to prepare a separate report on ways to provide federal support for spaceports.

The bill creates a category of commercial spaceflight vehicles known as “space support vehicles” that cover parts of launch vehicles systems flying for other purposes, such as training or testing. Such vehicles would include the aircraft used by air-launch systems. The bill allows commercial flights of space support vehicles without the need for a full-fledged airworthiness certificate from the FAA.

It is hard to say if these provisions will help or hurt the growth of commercial space. It does appear that Congress’s goal was to help, but their methods always include more spending and greater bureaucracy.

The article also reviews a number of bills not yet agreed to by Congress that would address the regulation of Earth observation satellites as well as satellite servicing. It quotes a number of industry experts supporting the laws being proposed, but once again, it is unclear if those laws would help or hurt. My previous review of one of these laws presently working its way through the House was decidedly mixed. It will clarify and simplify many of the regulatory problems that presently exist, while creating more bureaucracy.

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Japan successfully launches unmanned cargo ship to ISS

September 22, 2018 1:00 pm Robert Zimmerman

Japan today used a Mitsubishi H-2B rocket to successfully launch an unmanned cargo ship to ISS.

The cargo ship will take five days to rendezvous and dock with ISS. Its most interesting piece of cargo is a small capsule with a heat shield, designed to return experiment samples to Earth.

JAXA says the the capsule has an internal volume of about 30 liters, and astronauts could load up to 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of specimens inside the landing craft, which features a thermos-like container to store refrigerated biological samples. That is a fraction of the carrying capacity of the Dragon capsule, but the new HTV Small Return Capsule will offer station managers a new way to make sure time-critical items can return to Earth for analysis.

Astronauts will assemble the return capsule after the HTV arrives at the station, and mount it into position over the HTV’s forward hatch for deployment once the supply ship leaves the station.

The capsule, which carries no engines of its own, will jettison after the HTV completes its deorbit burn. The re-entry craft will deploy a parachute and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, where recovery teams will retrieve it and bring it back to Japan for inspections.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

25 China
16 SpaceX
8 Russia
7 ULA
5 Europe (Arianespace)
5 Japan

For Japan to be tied with Europe this late in the year either indicates that Europe is sagging, or Japan is growing. I suspect it is partly both. In the national rankings China still leads the U.S. 25 to 24.

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Minerva probes send back first pictures

September 22, 2018 12:51 pm Robert Zimmerman

Ryugu's surface

Super cool images! The two Minerva probes released two days ago from Hayabusa-2 have both sent back spectacular images from the surface of Ryugu.

The image on the right was captured by the rover dubbed 1A. I have rotated it to show the surface on the bottom, but the actual picture was taking during one of the rover’s bounces while it was moving, so the returned picture had the surface on left. The white brightness is from sunlight. From the press release:

We have confirmed both rovers landed on the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The two rovers are in good condition and are transmitting images and data. Analysis of this information confirmed that at least one of the rovers is moving on the asteroid surface.

MINERVA-II1 is the world’s first rover (mobile exploration robot) to land on the surface of an asteroid. This is also the first time for autonomous movement and picture capture on an asteroid surface. MINERVA-II1 is therefore “the world’s first man-made object to explore movement on an asteroid surface”. We are also delighted that the two rovers both achieved this operation at the same time.

Other released images were taken just after release. One shows a blurred picture of Hayabusa-2, while the other sees Ryugu’s surface below.

Both of these rovers are designed to travel on the surface by a series of hops, taking advantage of Ryugu’s tiny gravity. There will be more images I’m sure from them in the coming days.

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Democrats have abandoned the presumption of innocence

September 22, 2018 12:49 pm Robert Zimmerman

Link here. As I’ve said numerous times in the past year, they’re coming for you next. As carefully documented in the article, no longer does the Democratic Party believe that everyone should be innocent until proven guilty. Now their standard is everyone who opposes their agenda is automatically guilty of any crime any Democratic Party supporter lodges against them.

Any accusation must be accepted, no matter how flimsy, unprovable, or blatantly partisan. If a Democrat says you are guilty of any crime, your career must be ruined and you must be hounded from public life.

Meanwhile, if a Democrat such as Keith Ellison in Minnesota, presently running for that state’s attorney general, is creditably accused of abusing his girlfriend, with good documentary evidence to back up the accusation, we must ignore it completely. All Democrats are always innocent, and any attempt to make them accountable for anything they do is unacceptable.

If we the public accept this standard, the American experiment in democracy is dead. The Democrats will have an endless and unchallengeable veto on everything.

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Historian discovers long-lost original of Galileo letter

September 22, 2018 9:41 am Robert Zimmerman

An historian doing different research in the library of Great Britain’s Royal Society has accidentally discovered a long-lost original of a letter by Galileo that might clarify the events surrounding his eventual trial with the Inquisition.

The seven-page letter, written to a friend on 21 December 1613 and signed “G.G.”, provides the strongest evidence yet that, at the start of his battle with the religious authorities, Galileo actively engaged in damage control and tried to spread a toned-down version of his claims.

The question that has been bothering historians for hundreds of years is whether the letter, used as evidence against Galileo during his inquisition trail, was doctored by the inquisition or Galileo. During the trial Galileo presented a milder version that he claimed was the original. This original, with corrections in Galileo’s hand, suggests it was he that did the rewrite.

The story of how postdoctoral student from Italy, Salvatore Ricciardo, found it in a British library however is as interesting:

Ricciardo uncovered the document when he was spending a month this summer touring British libraries to study any handwritten comments that readers might have left on Galileo’s printed works. When his one day at the Royal Society was finished, he idly flicked through the online catalogue looking for anything to do with Castelli, whose writings he had recently finished editing.

One entry jumped out at him — a letter that Galileo wrote to Castelli. According to the catalogue, it was dated 21 October 1613. When Ricciardo examined it, his heart leapt. It appeared to include Galileo’s own signature, “G.G.”; was actually dated 21 December 1613; and contained many crossings out. He immediately realized the letter’s potential importance and asked for permission to photograph all seven pages.

“Strange as it might seem, it has gone unnoticed for centuries, as if it were transparent,” says Giudice [Ricciardo’s doctoral supervisor]. The misdating might be one reason that the letter has been overlooked by Galileo scholars, says Giudice. The letter was included in an 1840 Royal Society catalogue — but was also misdated there, as 21 December 1618.Another reason might be that the Royal Society is not the go-to place in the United Kingdom for this type of historical document, whose more natural home would have been the British Library.

The historians are now trying to trace how long the letter has been in the Royal Society library, and how it arrived there. They know that it has been there since at least the mid-eighteenth century, and they have found hints in old catalogues that it might even have been there a century or more earlier. The researchers speculate that it might have arrived at the society thanks to close connections between the Royal Society and the Academy of Experiments in Florence, which was founded in 1657 by Galileo’s students but fizzled out within a decade or so.

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Russia considering getting out of Gateway

September 22, 2018 9:26 am Robert Zimmerman

The new colonial movement: In expressing a desire not to play a secondary role in its next space station, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said today that Russia might pull out of its partnership with NASA in building its Gateway lunar station.

Russia agreed last year to work with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on plans for the moon-orbiting Deep Space Gateway, which will serve as a staging post for future missions.

But the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said Russia might exit the joint program and instead propose its own lunar orbit space station project. “The Russian Federation cannot afford to play the second fiddle role in it,” he was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency, without much further elaboration.

A spokesman for Roscosmos said later that Russia had no immediate plans to leave the project.

Russia’s problem is that they simply don’t have the cash to build their own lunar station. They could build a new station of their own in Earth orbit, and that might be what they end up doing. In fact, based on the knowledge they gained from both Mir and ISS, they might be able to design that station for short interplanetary flights, such as to the Moon and back, once built.

If I was Rogozin, that is exactly what I would do. Get out of NASA’s boondoggle, and build something in Earth orbit that will really demonstrate interplanetary travel.

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Robert DeMayo – The Star Spangled Banner

September 21, 2018 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: DeMayo does not sing the anthem, but interprets it using American Sign language. I am posting this now, in defiance of the new NFL season, with its spoiled million dollar football players spitting on this country and its freedoms that made them rich.

Stay with it. If you watch closely you will begin to understand the sign language, and the power of the song’s words will then start to hit you, in a new way.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

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Mountains on the Moon

September 21, 2018 1:53 pm Robert Zimmerman

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced slightly to post here, shows several high mountains on the far side of the Moon. If you click on the image you can see it at full resolution.

The summit of the unnamed peak in the foreground (50.2° S, 236.6° E) has an elevation of 6710 meters, about 7000 meters (about 23,000 feet) of relief relative to the low point at the bottom of the image. The two peaks on the horizon, 200 kilometers in the distance (about 125 miles), have summit elevations of 4320 meters (14,200 feet) and 4680 meters (15,350), respectively and both rise more than 6000 meters (almost 20,000 feet) above their surroundings.

In the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team release in June, they noted that the high peak here is actually taller than Denali (Mount McKinley), the highest peak within the U.S. And it has no name. They also note that the peak is likely 4 billion years old, and has experienced extensive erosion in that time, meaning that it is also likely shorter than it once was.

I don’t have anything to add, other than this would be an amazing place to put up a resort, with trails taking you to the top of the mountains. In the lighter gravity, the hike would actually be somewhat easy, even wearing a spacesuit. And you wouldn’t have to worry about a thinning atmosphere as you climbed higher, as you do on Earth. You’d be carrying it with you.

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Want to look at every planetary map ever made? You can!

September 21, 2018 9:25 am Robert Zimmerman

Two Polish academics have created a web-available catalog intended to contain every planetary map ever created, beginning in 1600 through the present.

“Our catalogue is being updated regularly with both newly resurfaced historic maps and new additions. For the future, we plan to add maps that have been published in journal articles and digitize maps that do not yet include GIS formats,” added Hargitai. “We live in a transition period where static maps that characterized the last 400 years may become extinct, replaced by dynamic digital map services and tools. In the digital platforms it is becoming difficult even to define what we consider to be a ‘map’, and not just layers of spatial data. Maps are used for mission planning, surface operation, and post-mission analysis. In the near future, they will be key components of planning and operating new human missions.”

The website is here. At the moment the catalog seems significantly incomplete, with only several hundred maps available. Hopefully this will expand with time.

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Stratolaunch considering launching hypersonic rocket tests from its Roc airplane

September 21, 2018 9:04 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch is now considering building and launching hypersonic rocket test program using its giant Roc airplane.

In the concept study presented this week, Corda and his colleagues provide a detailed description of a delta-wing testbed plane called the Hyper-Z. It would be 83.4 feet long, with a wingspan of 32.4 feet and a launch weight of about 65,000 pounds.

Stratolaunch’s hydrogen-fueled PGA rocket engine would serve as the plane’s main propulsion system, but it could also be equipped with an air-breathing propulsion system, such as a scramjet engine. The flight profiles could accommodate a maximum speed of Mach 11, or a maximum altitude of 477,000 feet.

Hyper-Z would be launched from Stratolaunch’s mammoth twin-fuselage carrier airplane [Roc], which has a record-setting wingspan of 385 feet.

I must emphasize that this is only a concept proposal at this point. The company still has to verify the operation of Roc.

What this proposal does suggest to me is that the company is still struggling to find a profitable use for Roc, and customers to go along with it. This concept appears to be a lobbying effort to both the military and NASA, offering them Roc as a testbed for such flight tests.

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NOAA awards three more experimental commercial weather contracts

September 21, 2018 8:56 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: NOAA this week awarded three commercial companies contracts to provide the agency weather data in its expanding effort to get this data not from government satellites but from private sources.

In the Sept. 17 announcement, NOAA said it was issuing contracts to GeoOptics, PlanetIQ and Spire to provide GPS radio occultation weather data from satellites currently in orbit or planned for launch in the coming months. That technique measures the refraction of GPS signals as they pass through the atmosphere and are received by the companies’ satellites, which can provide temperature and pressure profiles to support weather forecasting models.

The awards represent round two of NOAA’s Commercial Weather Data Pilot program, an effort by the agency to experiment with buying data from commercial providers to determine its usefulness, as well as to examine various technical and programmatic issues with such data buys.

NOAA’s management bureaucracy has resisted this transition to private enterprise, much as NASA’s bureaucracy has. Nonetheless, NOAA’s inability to built and launch weather satellites at a reasonable cost and in a practical timeframe is forcing it to change.

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More details about Sunspot Observatory closure confirms child porn investigation

September 21, 2018 8:49 am Robert Zimmerman

News stories this morning provide further confirmation that the closure of the Sunspot Observatory in New Mexico occurred in connection with a child porn investigation. The key quote that explains why the FBI closed the facility:

The search warrant provided to a judge the justifications for agents to search computers, cellphones or tablets owned by the janitor, Joshua Lee Cope, and the house trailer where he lives. An FBI agent seized the laptop at the observatory on Aug. 21, 2018, and took it to the FBI office in Las Cruces, court documents said. FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said Thursday that no one has been charged and the investigation is ongoing.

Cope, 30, lives on property owned by his parents in La Luz, the search warrant said. A phone message left for Cope at a telephone number listed for his parents seeking comment was not immediately returned.

After Cope could not find his laptop, the court documents said, he began to act frantically and told the chief observer that there was a “serial killer in the area, and that he was fearful that the killer might enter the facility and execute someone.”

The observatory closed, without consulting FBI agents, after Cope’s comments about the serial killer and his erratic behavior, the warrant said.

My guess is that the observatory became concerned about Cope’s behavior, and closed to protect itself and its other employees, forcing everyone to leave. This also explains the cryptic nature of their closure announcement, as they also did not want to implicate anyone and risk a lawsuit.

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Creeping into Ryugu

September 20, 2018 10:16 pm Robert Zimmerman

Ryugu

Cool images! As Hayabusu-2 creeps to its closest approach to Ryugu in preparation to releasing its first two mini-landers, dubbed MINERVA-II-1 and 2, the images coming down about once every half hour show the asteroid increasingly closer, with the spectacular shadow of Hayabusa-2 with its solar panels clearly visible.

The image on the right was downloaded about 10 pm (Pacific) tonight. The boulder-strewn field of Ryugu is also clearly visible. The black areas are where data has not yet been downloaded. The bright area under the shadow is merely an optical illusion.

UPDATE: A look at this webpage provides some details. When this image was taken the spacecraft was about 60 100 meters above the surface, its closest approach yet. This was also when the MINERVA-II landers were to be deployed.

All later images at the first link above were from a greater distance.

UPDATE: I have corrected the post. They released both MINERVA-II rovers, and they did it about 100 meters distance from the asteroid, not 60. We will not know the mini-landers’ status until late today.

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Nordic Choir – Sure on this Shining Night

September 20, 2018 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: From a James Agee poem:

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

Hat tip Danae.

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On the radio

September 20, 2018 11:27 am Robert Zimmerman

A slight correction to my previous announcement about tonight’s Coast to Coast appearance. I am appearing from 10 pm to 12 midnight, not the later hours I had indicated by mistake.

Should be fun.

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Rocket Lab signs another satellite launch contract

September 20, 2018 9:34 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has signed another satellite launch contract, this time with the Luxembourg-based company Kleos Space.

US orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has signed a contract with Luxembourg-based satellite technology company Kleos Space to launch the scouting mission satellites that will geolocate maritime radio to guard borders, protect assets and save lives.

The multi-satellite system of the Kleos Scouting Mission (KSM) will form the cornerstones of a 20-system constellation that will geolocate VHF transmissions from marine vessels to provide global activity-based intelligence data as a service. The Kleos Space constellation will detect radio transmissions and pinpoint their origin and timing, enabling governments and organizations to detect activity such as drug and people smuggling, illegal fishing and piracy, and also identify those in need of search and rescue at sea.

The contract is for launches in mid-2019, which suggests that Rocket Lab is increasingly confident that it will be able to ramp up operations significantly once it makes its next two launches in November and December.

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Hayabusa-2 sees its shadow

September 20, 2018 9:24 am Robert Zimmerman

Ryugu, with Hayabusa-2's shadow

During its aborted landing rehearsal last week Hayabusa-2 imaged its own shadow as it approached within 600 meters of Ryugu.

The shadow is only a little dot on the surface of the asteroid, but to have resolved it is quite impressive. The image on the right has been annotated by me to indicate the shadow.

They have not said when they will do another landing rehearsal. Meanwhile, two of the spacecraft’s mini-landers are expected to be released sometime in the next few days.

Update: Based on the raw navigation images being released in real time from Hayabusa-2, the release of the MINERVA-II-1 has begun, with Hayabusa-2 moving in towards Ryugu in preparation for that release.

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Curiosity has problem sending back its stored data

September 20, 2018 9:10 am Robert Zimmerman

The science team running Curiosity found this week that the rover is suddenly unable to send back its stored data.

Over the past few days, engineers here at JPL have been working to address an issue on Curiosity that is preventing it from sending much of the science and engineering data stored in its memory. The rover remains in its normal mode and is otherwise healthy and responsive.

The issue first appeared Saturday night while Curiosity was running through the weekend plan. Besides transmitting data recorded in its memory, the rover can transmit “real-time” data when it links to a relay orbiter or Deep Space Network antenna. These real-time data are transmitting normally, and include various details about the rover’s status. Engineers are expanding the details the rover transmits in these real-time data to better diagnose the issue. Because the amount of data coming down is limited, it might take some time for the engineering team to diagnose the problem.

On Monday and Tuesday, engineers discussed which real-time details would be the most useful to have. They also commanded the rover to turn off science instruments that were still on, since their data are not being stored. They’re also preparing to use the rover’s backup computer in case they need to use it to diagnose the primary computer. That backup computer was the rover’s primary one until Sol 200, when it experienced both a hardware failure and software issue that have since been addressed.

In other words, the rover is functioning, they can communicate with it in real time, but any data stored on board for some reason is not being transmitted.

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Astronomers detect matter falling into black hole at 30% of the speed of light

September 20, 2018 9:05 am Robert Zimmerman

Using the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope astronomers have detected matter falling into the central supermassive black hole at 30% of the speed of light in a galaxy a billion light years away.

Using data from XMM-Newton, Prof. Pounds and his collaborators looked at X-ray spectra (where X-rays are dispersed by wavelength) from the galaxy PG211+143. This object lies more than one billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices, and is a Seyfert galaxy, characterised by a very bright AGN [active galactic nucleus] resulting from the presence of the massive black hole at its nucleus.

The researchers found the spectra to be strongly red-shifted, showing the observed matter to be falling into the black hole at the enormous speed of 30 per cent of the speed of light, or around 100,000 kilometres per second. The gas has almost no rotation around the hole, and is detected extremely close to it in astronomical terms, at a distance of only 20 times the hole’s size (its event horizon, the boundary of the region where escape is no longer possible).

Astronomers have theorized for several decades that the reason Seyfert galaxies have such active nuclei is exactly because matter is falling into the central black hole. This observation appears to confirm that theory.

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September 19, 2018 Zimmerman Beyond Reality appearance

September 20, 2018 8:54 am Robert Zimmerman

If you want to listen to my appearance yesterday on Beyond Reality Radio, the podcast is now available on youtube here, cued to the start of the segment.

This appearance was a real pleasure, because it was very clear the hosts had not only researched things beforehand so they could come up with good questions, they also listened to what I actually said. I hope to appear again on their show.

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Sunspot observatory shut down for child porn investigation?

September 19, 2018 8:56 pm Robert Zimmerman

According to one New Mexico television station, the Sunspot Observatory was shut down last week in connection with a investigation into child porn.

A federal search warrant reveals that Sunspot Solar Observatory was shut down as FBI agents conducted computer forensic searches for child pornography.

The source of child pornography was traced to an IP address used at the observatory and a source within the building observed a computer with “not good” images on it, the warrant states.

An investigation by the FBI revealed that a janitor is the main suspect in the search, however he has not been charged with a crime even though his name in on the warrant.

This might also explain why the post office was searched, assuming they were trying to trace further porn material there.

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On the radio + September 18, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

September 19, 2018 8:40 pm Robert Zimmerman

The Batchelor podcast is embedded below the fold in two parts. Meanwhile, I will be on the radio for extended appearances both tonight and tomorrow night. Tonight I make what I think will be my first appearance on Beyond Reality Radio from approximately 12 midnight to 2 am (eastern). Tomorrow I make another one of my long appearances on Coast to Coast from 12 midnight to 2 am (pacific).

Every one of these should be a blast.
» Read more

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Leaving Home | A Tragicomedy

September 19, 2018 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: This does not go in exactly the direction you think it will.

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

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The volcano Llullaillaco

September 19, 2018 11:18 am Robert Zimmerman

Cool image time! The image on the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows a volcano not on Mars or the Moon or any of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, but here on Earth in South America!

Llullaillaco is a stratovolcano at the border of Argentina and Chile. It lies on a high plateau close to the Atacama Desert. At an elevation of 6723 m ASL, it is the second highest active volcano in the world. About 150,000 years ago the volcano’s southeastern flank collapsed, producing a debris avalanche that traveled 25 kilometers. The youngest dated rocks are about 5600 years old; but there are local reports of activity from the 1800s. The perspective image looking east was acquired December 19, 2014.

If you click on the link you can see the full image. It was taken by one of the instruments on the Earth-observation satellite Terra, launched in December 1999. Though the website for this image does not state so, I suspect that some of the colors we see here are false colors, as some of the data comes from the infrared.

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Update on SpaceX and Boeing’s private commercial crew capsules

September 19, 2018 10:06 am Robert Zimmerman

Link here. The key piece of news is that both companies now believe they meet NASA’s safety requirements.

[D]uring a panel discussion at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Forum here Sept. 18, executives of the two companies said they now believed their vehicles met that and related safety requirements.

John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for the commercial crew program at Boeing, said the company was assessing three separate requirements, including the overall loss of crew as well as ascent and entry risks and loss of mission. “Our teams have been working that for a number of years,” he said, noting those analyses have driven changes to the vehicle design, such as increased micrometeoroid and orbital debris protection. “Where we are now is that our analysis shows we can exceed the NASA requirements for all three of those criteria,” he said.

Benjamin Reed, director of commercial crew mission management at SpaceX, said his company was in a similar situation. “We’re looking right now to be meeting the requirements,” he said.

Kathy Lueders, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, didn’t confirm that the companies have, in fact, met those safety requirements. “We’re learning from a NASA perspective about how to understand the assessments that we’re getting from each of the contractors and how to apply it,” she said. “We at the NASA team are assessing the modeling that each of the providers has done.”

It should be understood that the requirements being discussed here really have nothing to do with actual engineering, but are based on a statistical analysis that estimates the risk to any passenger. In other words, it is a pure guess, and can be manipulated any way anyone wants. This is why NASA’s manager above is so vague. What she is really saying is that NASA is slowly being forced to accept the analysis of the contractors.

The article at the link also details the present schedule, which appears mostly unchanged (though Musk indicated there might be a slight delay in Dragon during his BFR presentation earlier this week), and the efforts by both companies to make their capsules reusable.

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British test satellite uses net to capture target

September 19, 2018 9:54 am Robert Zimmerman

A British test satellite has successfully used a net to capture a cubesat target, demonstrating the technology that someday could be used to clean space junk from Earth orbit.

“It worked just as we hoped it would,” said Prof Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Centre. “The target was spinning like you would expect an uncooperative piece of junk to behave, but you can see clearly that the net captures it, and we’re very happy with the way the experiment went.”

If this were a real capture, the net would be tethered to the deploying satellite, which would then tug the junk out of the sky. As this was just a demonstration, the net and the box (which was actually pushed out from RemoveDebris to act as a target) will be allowed to fall to Earth on their own. Their low altitude means it should take only a couple of months before they burn up in the atmosphere.

I have embedded below the fold a video showing the net capture. It is quite spectacular. This was one of three different experiments on RemoveDebris that are testing space junk removal methods. The next is the use of a harpoon.
» Read more

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China’s Long March 3B rocket successfully launches two GPS-type satellites

September 19, 2018 9:40 am Robert Zimmerman

The new colonial movement: China today successfully launched two more of its Beidou GPS-type satellites, using its Long March 3B rocket.

The rocket launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China, and almost certainly dropped its stages near habitable regions, as happened in June. The question is whether China has successfully clamped down on the distribution of any images of such events, taken by local residents. It failed to do so in June.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

25 China
16 SpaceX
8 Russia
7 ULA
5 Europe (Arianespace)

This launch puts China once again in the lead over the U.S. in the national rankings, 25 to 24. Moreover, with every launch this year China extends its new record for the most launches by that nation in a year.

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All instruments check out on the Parker Solar Probe

September 19, 2018 9:24 am Robert Zimmerman

The initial check out of the Parker Solar Probe, now on its way to the Sun, has shown all instruments are functioning properly.

“All instruments returned data that not only serves for calibration, but also captures glimpses of what we expect them to measure near the Sun to solve the mysteries of the solar atmosphere, the corona,” said Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland.

The mission’s first close approach to the Sun will be in November 2018, but even now, the instruments are able to gather measurements of what’s happening in the solar wind closer to Earth.

The spacecraft will make its first fly-by of Venus in October.

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New data says going to Mars involves significant radiation exposure

September 19, 2018 9:18 am Robert Zimmerman

New data from Trace Gas Orbiter, part of Europe’s ExoMars project, says a journey to Mars will expose humans to significant radiation.

The results imply that on a six-month journey to the Red Planet, and assuming six-months back again, an astronaut could be exposed to at least 60% of the total radiation dose limit recommended for their entire career.

The ExoMars data, which is in good agreement with data from Mars Science Laboratory’s cruise to Mars in 2011–2012 and with other particle detectors currently in space – taking into account the different solar conditions – will be used to verify radiation environment models and assessments of the radiation risk to the crewmembers of future exploration missions.

This data was gathered during the spacecraft’s journey to Mars during a time of falling solar activity. Thus, the radiation exposure came more from cosmic rays than from solar activity.

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