ESA unveils dual orbiter mission to Mercury

10:31 am

After twenty years of development, the European Space Agency this week finally unveiled the completed dual orbiters that it hopes to launch on a seven year journey to Mercury in October 2018.

The 4,100-kilogram BepiColombo consists of two orbiters that will launch together — the ESA-managed Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the JAXA-owned Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The two spacecraft will be delivered to the orbit around Mercury stacked on top of each other by the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM). During the seven-year journey, the MMO will be shielded from the sun by the MMO Sunshield and Interface Structure (MOSIF), which will also serve as a mechanical and electrical interface between the two orbiters.

“MPO focuses on the planet, the surface and the interior size,” said Reininghous. “The orbit is a polar one — 480km times approximately 1500km — a little bit elliptical but extremely close to the planet as such with a return period of 2.3 hours. The data return is estimated at 1.5 gigabit per year.”

The MMO will focus on the planetary environment including the planet’s atmosphere, according to Reininghous. “The orbit is also polar but far more elliptical — 590 km times approximately 11,700 km. It has a period of 9.3 hours. The data return is approximately 10 percent of what we expect from the MPO.”

The European orbiter is much larger and more expensive, with Japanese probe budget being about a tenth the cost.

According to ESA, the mission took so long to build because in 2004, after about seven years of development, ESA suddenly realized that its orbiter’s thermal protection was inadequate, and required a complete redesign. To me, this is either outright incompetence (they knew from the start they were going to Mercury) or a clever way to extend the funding so that it provides an entire lifetime’s work for its builders. Think about it. Twenty-one years from concept to launch, then seven years to fly to Mercury, and then one to two years in orbit. That’s more than thirty years for this single mission.

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Roskosmos completes investigation into deadly post launch debris fire

10:21 am

Russia’s space agency Roskosmos has completed its investigation into the brush fire that caused two deaths at the impact site of the first stage of Soyuz rocket on June 14.

The report reveals several interesting details. First, it appears that the impact sites for abandoned first stages of Russian rockets are considered “planned.” This is not hyperbole. If the launch proceeds as intended, it should be possible to calculate with some accuracy where the abandoned first stage will hit the ground.

Second, it appears the deaths occurred when high winds caused the flames from the impact brush fire to engulf the two workers, one of whom died immediately, with the second dying several weeks later in the hospital.

Third, the agency will do more thorough reconnaissance of impact sites, before and after impact, before sending crews there. It will also augment the equipment and crews, depending on need.

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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

“We will get better aim.”

3:03 pm

Leftwing fascists: A protester at the Tucson office of Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) was arrested after telling staffers there that the real solution to the “Republican problem” is “better aim.”

“You know how liberals are going to solve the Republican problem? They are going to get better aim,” he said. “That last guy tried, but he needed better aim. We will get better aim.” The protester was likely referencing last month’s shooting in Alexandria, Virginia.

Nothing to see here. So what that actual Republican congressmen were shot, one nearly killed, by a Democratic party supporter who had campaigned for Bernie Sanders? So what that actual threats and simulations of violence against Trump and Republicans can be seen almost daily in leftwing culture?

No. What we need to get outraged about is a silly tweet sent out by Trump

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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.

Pablum from Pence on space

12:31 pm

If you want to waste about about 25 minutes of your life, you can listen to the speech that Vice President Mike Pence gave today at the Kennedy Space Center here, beginning at the 49:30 minute mark.

My advice is that you don’t do it. Pence said nothing. He handed out a lot of empty promises and cliches, without any specifics or details of any kind. He confirmed for me what I have suspected of Pence for several years, that despite the fact that he lives and breathes a conservative and honorable personal life, as a politician he is a hack.

He made a big deal about the recreation of the National Space Council, which he now leads. However, as this article by Eric Berger properly noted the people who seem to be exerting the most influence on that council, on Trump, and on Pence are from the big space companies that have spent more than a decade and a half spending about $40 billion trying to build a big rocket (SLS) to fly a single unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule.

My pessimism here might be misplaced. We still do not know who will be on this space council. Furthermore, the Trump administration has been very good at doing a lot of public relations and soft stroking of its opponents in order to put them off guard prior to hitting them hard, where it hurts. This might be what Pence was doing here.

Nonetheless, the lack of any substance in Pence’s remarks makes me fear that he will be easily influenced by the big players who simply want the federal cash cow to continue sending them money, whether or not they ever build anything.

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New Horizons’ next target might be smaller than predicted

10:43 am

The uncertainty of science: Because all attempts to observe an occultation of a star on June 3 by New Horizons’ next target failed, astronomers now think Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 is much smaller than previously believed.

The discovery observations using Hubble and other ground-based telescopes had estimated its size as between 12 to 25 miles in diameter. The null result from the June 3 event suggests it is smaller than that.

More occultations are upcoming, so stay tuned.

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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

Universities increasingly encouraging segregated events

10:14 am

Bigoted academia: Colleges across the United States are increasingly encouraging segregated graduation ceremonies, creating events that limit attendance to one race, ethnicity, or sexual perversion.

The article describes in detail such college-approved events at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Colorado in Boulder, and the University of Georgia. It also notes similar events at the University of California-Berkeley, South Dakota State University, Portland State University, Arizona State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Otterbein University in Ohio.

Would you want your kids to attend places that encourage segregation and the exclusion of people solely because of their race, ethnicity, or sex? I wouldn’t. I would also strongly suggest that any donations to these schools would be far better spent elsewhere.

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Team Indus needs to raise $40 million for Google mission

9:48 am

Capitalism in space: Team Indus, one of five remaining competitors for the Google Lunar X-Prize, announced today that they are now looking for the last half of the total $80 million they need to fly their mission by December.

While hardware and technology aspects have been met, Team Indus is discussing raising finances of roughly ₹120-130 crore ($15-20 million) to meet its total mission costs of around ₹520 crore ($80 million), co-founder Rahul Narayan said on Wednesday. The startup is also offering branding opportunities for their products and services on what will be the first Indian private Moon mission, he told journalists.

Team Indus is part of aerospace innovations company Axiom Research Labs, Bengaluru. It is the lone Indian entry in the global contest, the Google Lunar XPrize worth over $20 million.

It appears that they have so far raised $40 million, and need at least $40 million more to fly the mission. It also appears that if they raise only $20 million they will fly anyway with the hope that they win the $20 million prize to make up the difference.

It is very late in the game to raise this money, which means their success remains a very touch-and-go prospect. What improves their chances however is how they are now selling themselves, not as a Google X-Prize contestant, which is nothing more than a publicity stunt, but as a smallsat construction company that can build satellites for anyone at a low cost. This is very smart.

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Israel and India sign three new space agreements

9:33 am

The new colonial movement: India and Israel have inked three new development agreements between their different government space agencies.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to Israel has deepened cooperation in space technology between the two countries as the two sides on Wednesday signed three agreements relating to space. The first memorandum of understanding was between Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and Israel Space Agency for cooperation in electric propulsion for small satellites, second was on cooperation in GEO-LEO optical links and third pact was on cooperation in atomic clocks (which are satellite components meant to provide precise locational data).

The third agreement is especially interesting. It indicates that India no longer wants to work with the German company that built its most recent GPS satellites because that company’s atomic clocks all had problems. Unlike the ESA, India has decided that such failures should not be rewarded with more work.

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XCOR shuts down

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: XCOR, the company that was going to fly tourists on the Lynx reusable suborbital plane by 2013, has laid off its last remaining employees.

Though years ago I predicted this failure accurately, I do not celebrate it. I would have much preferred to have been dead wrong, and to have seen Lynx built and flying, making money from space tourism. At the same time, I am also utterly realistic about the realities of capitalism. To have big successes you need to also have sad failures. XCOR unfortunately belongs to the latter.

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German government sets ethical rules for self-driving cars

9:08 am

What could possibly go wrong? The German government’s Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has established twenty ethical rules for the design and software of self-driving cars.

The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has recently defined 20 ethical principles for self-driving cars, but they’re based in the assumption that human morality can’t be modeled. They also make some bold assertions on how cars should act, arguing a child running onto the road would be less “qualified” to be saved than an adult standing on the footpath watching, because the child created the risk. Although logical, that isn’t necessarily how a human would respond to the same situation.

So, what’s the right approach? The University of Osnabrück study doesn’t offer a definitive answer, but the researchers point out that the “sheer expected number of incidents where moral judgment comes into play creates a necessity for ethical decision-making systems in self-driving cars.” And it’s not just cars we need to think about. AI systems and robots will likely be given more and more responsibilities in other potential life-and-death environments, such as hospitals, so it seems like a good idea to give them a moral and ethical framework to work with.

It appears these geniuses came up with these rules based on a “virtual study.”

In virtual reality, study participants were asked to drive a car through suburban streets on a foggy night. On their virtual journeys they were presented with the choice of slamming into inanimate objects, animals or humans in an inevitable accident. The subsequent decisions were modeled and turned into a set of rules, creating a “value-of-life” model for every human, animal and inanimate object likely to be involved in an accident.

“Now that we know how to implement human ethical decisions into machines we, as a society, are still left with a double dilemma,” says Professor Peter König, an author on the paper. “Firstly, we have to decide whether moral values should be included in guidelines for machine behaviour and secondly, if they are, should machines act just like humans?”

I know that my readers will immediately reference Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, but that really doesn’t work. Asimov’s laws were incorporated into a science fiction “positronic brain” that was supposedly built almost organically, so complex in formation no one really understood it. Once the laws were incorporated into each brain they could not be tampered with without destroying the brain itself. Our coming robots will have no such protection.

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South Pacific – You’ve Got to Be Taught

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This clip includes the scene that leads up to the song, and helps explain its dramatic context.

To be honest, this has never been one of my favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein songs. The musical, South Pacific, is magnificent, and has been featured before as an evening pause, but this song to me always seemed a bit preachy. It was written in the 1950s, however, and thus for its time was, as was the musical, important components of the civil rights movement that ended the bigoted discrimination against blacks in the United States.

I should add that as a child who loved this musical when I first heard and saw it in the early 1960s, I never understood what Nellie’s problem was. Why did it matter that the kids’ mother had been Polynesian?

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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Will Dawn head to another asteroid?

4:31 pm

NASA is still reviewing the proposal by the Dawn science team that they send the spacecraft to another asteroid in its last years before its fuel runs out.

The spacecraft has continued operations despite problems with its reaction wheels, used for attitude control. After suffering the loss of two of its four reaction wheels earlier in the mission, a third wheel malfunctioned in April. The spacecraft went into safe mode briefly, but controllers resumed operations with hydrazine thrusters taking over for the failed wheel. That failure will eventually lead to the end of the mission when the spacecraft runs out of hydrazine. “It does reduce our lifetime because we have to use hydrazine at a faster rate,” Raymond said at the SBAG meeting in June.

That lifetime, she said, is dependent on the spacecraft’s orbital altitude. Dawn has spiraled out to a higher orbit during its extended mission, which reduces the amount of hydrazine needed for attitude control. “The lifetime is now highly dependent on orbital altitude because we need to use the jets to fight the gravity gradient torques,” she said. In its current high orbit, Raymond said that Dawn had sufficient hydrazine, as well as xenon propellant used for the ion engine, to operate at least through the end of 2018.

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Five satellite Air Force contract up for bid

4:26 pm

Capitalism in space: The Air Force has announced that it will be soliciting bids from SpaceX and ULA for a 5-satellite launch contract.

Claire Leon, director of the Launch Enterprise Directorate at the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, told reporters that grouping launches together was an effort to streamline and speed the acquisition process at a time when the national security sector is demanding ever-increasing access to space. “By doing five at once, it makes our acquisition more efficient and it allows the contractors to put in one proposal,” she said.

This grouping however might make it impossible for SpaceX to win the contract, as the company’s Falcon 9 rocket might not be capable of launching all five satellites, and its Falcon Heavy has not yet flown the three times necessary before the Air Force will consider using it.

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Fastest stars in Milky Way escaped from Large Magellanic Cloud?

9:01 am

Astronomers have proposed that the fastest stars in Milky Way actually escaped from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the largest nearby satellite dwarf galaxy.

The LMC is the largest and fastest of the dozens of dwarf galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way. It only has 10% of the mass of the Milky Way, and so the fastest runaways born in this dwarf galaxy can easily escape its gravity. The LMC flies around the Milky Way at 400 kilometres per second and, like a bullet fired from a moving train, the speed of these runaway stars is the velocity they were ejected at plus the velocity of the LMC. This is fast enough for them to be the hypervelocity stars. “These stars have just jumped from an express train – no wonder they’re fast,” said co-author Rob Izzard, a Rutherford fellow at the Institute of Astronomy. “This also explains their position in the sky, because the fastest runaways are ejected along the orbit of the LMC towards the constellations of Leo and Sextans.”

Their calculations predict how many hypervelocity stars should be detectable and where in the sky they should be. If right, the data from Gaia, soon to be released, should prove them right or wrong.

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Qatar blockade threatens worldwide helium supply

8:54 am

The recent blockade imposed against Qatar by other Middle East countries, supposedly because of its support of terrorism, threatens the world’s supply of helium.

Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of helium and its second-largest producer, accounting for 25% of global demand (see ‘Helium supplies’). So the blockade will inevitably cause shortfalls over the next few months, says Phil Kornbluth, a consultant based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, who specializes in the helium industry.

Countries likely to be most affected are those closest to Qatar. But Asian countries such as India, China, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore are also at risk. “But none of us are immune,” adds William Halperin, a researcher in low-temperature physics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of helium, producing about twice as much as Qatar. That production is for our local markets, while Qatar exports it worldwide.

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1776 – Hatching an Egg

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this last year for the Fourth of July. It is worth watching again, and again, and again. From the 1976 movie version of the 1972 musical, 1776. As I said last year, not only did the musical capture the essence of the men who made independency happen, it is also a rollicking and entertaining work of art.

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A look at the war for independence

4:00 pm

For the Fourth of July. Link here. Key quote:

O’Donnell urged listeners to contemplate the incredible nation forged from Washington’s courage and humanity, mixed with the wisdom and intellect of the other Founding Fathers. He agreed with Marlow that it was amazing how much the Founders got right from the beginning. “They got it right in terms of how power is used and abused,” O’Donnell said, noting that modern Americans might be surprised how controversial the Bill of Rights was at the time. “Just putting power back to the people, it’s an incredible thing.”

“They were also paranoid, rightfully so, of a central government that would encroach upon the rights of citizens,” he continued. “These were citizen-soldiers. They didn’t want to have a situation where there was potential tyranny.”

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“People were different, not only from Swedes, but from each other.”

3:00 pm

For the Fourth of July. Link here. Key quote:

I’m not sure if I can fully convey the cultural shock of going from Sweden to Dallas in the 1990s, or if it is even wise to try. Because how can I describe what it is to taste your very first doughnut or go to Toys R Us at that age [9 years old] and see row after row of wonderfully girly Barbie dolls? I came from the country of meh to the nation of yeah. And it was nothing short of magnificent.

I was lucky enough to spend my summers there, in the heart of Texas, and with every visit I gained a growing awareness of the differences between your country and mine. America was loud. It was uncomfortable and alive. People were different, not only from Swedes, but from each other. [emphasis in original]

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A close look at the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence

11:30 am

For the Fourth of July: Link here. The author discusses it phrase by phrase, placing the words in their historical context so there will be no confusion. For anyone who is intellectually honest, however, I think the meaning is quite clear.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

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“It took two wars to make me an American.”

10:21 am

For the Fourth of July. Link here. Key quote:

My parents were born in the north, and when an international summit divided the country into communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam in 1954, their families were among a million who left all they owned to flee south away from Ho Chi Minh’s troops — troops whom my dad once had idolized as nationalist boy and girl scouts. Scouts honor no more. Escaping to America in ’75 was the second time my parents sacrificed the past to save their future. Second. Anything but communism.

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New data suggests Sun undergoing fundamental changes

8:40 am

The uncertainty of science: New data, when compared with similar data collected over decades, suggests the Sun’s solar cycle is undergoing some fundamental changes.

In work just published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team shows that the interior of the Sun has changed in recent years, and that these changes persist in the current cycle. In combination with theoretical models, the observations suggest that the magnetic field distribution in the outer layers may have become a bit thinner. Other seismic data shows that the rotation rate of the Sun has also undergone some changes in the way the Sun rotates at different latitudes.

“Again, this is not how it used to be and the rotation rate has slowed a bit at latitudes around about 60 degrees. We are not quite sure what the consequences of this will be but it’s clear that we are in unusual times. However, we are beginning to detect some features belonging to the next cycle and we can suggest that the next minimum will be in about two years,” says Elsworth.

First, they don’t know what will happen because of these changes. Second, their data confirms that the solar minimum will occur in about two years, which would make this cycle only 9 years long, one of the shortest but also one of the weakest that has been observed, two things that previously had never gone together.

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Becoming American

8:15 am

For the Fourth of July. Link here. Key quote:

The process of being an American goes on, though. As almost everyone here should be aware, being an American – not just fitting in the culture, and because that’s regional it means I’ll need to learn to talk and walk again if I move across the country again – is an ongoing process, an ongoing fight between liberty and totalitarian impulses which exist in every society and possibly in every human. And it is a struggle to free yourself from the inherited nonsense that has plagued other societies too: ideas of class and inherited rank or ability.

It is our solemn duty, no matter how many of our compatriots fail at it, to live up to our amazing luck in being citizens of the greatest nation on Earth, one founded on the belief that individuals can be self-governing and are the bosses of their own government.

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World View test balloon flight cut short due to leak

9:10 pm

The first test flight of World View’s Stratollite balloon, planned for 4 days, was ended after only 17 hours because of a leak in the balloon.

Though the mission was the longest yet for the balloon, and though they managed to test the attitude control, communications, and solar power systems, they need to find out why the balloon did not hold pressure as expected before they can begin flying missions lasting from months to even a year.

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North Korea test fires another ballistic missile

7:01 pm

North Korea today launched another test missile into nearby waters, this time landing in Japanese waters.

Update: North Korea now claims this was an ICBM that could have reached Alaska, and some of the experts quoted appear to agree.

It was estimated to have reached an altitude that “greatly exceeded” 2,500 kilometres, Japan said, prompting arms control specialist Jeffrey Lewis to respond on Twitter: “That’s it. It’s an ICBM. An ICBM that can hit Anchorage not San Francisco, but still.”

David Wright, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote on the organisation’s allthingsnuclear blog that the available figures implied the missile “could reach a maximum range of roughly 6,700 km on a standard trajectory. … That range would not be enough to reach the lower 48 states or the large islands of Hawaii, but would allow it to reach all of Alaska.”

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