Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

• Amateur astronomer images the just launched X-37B
  He also captured a smallsat in the imagery.

• Billboard for new Chinese spaceport at Haiyang touts planned 4 land-based launchpads and 4 semi-floating pads off the coast
  This site on China’s northeast coast would give it more launch capacity without having to drop stages on their citizens’ heads.

• NASA reposts the spectacular images of the asteroid Dimorphos after its impact by DART, taken by the Italian LICIACube spacecraft as flew past the asteroid immediately thereafter
  The images found that 35.3 million pounds of rubble spewed from the asteroid.

• On this day in 2006, the IAU passed its idiotic new definition of a planet expressly designed to take that designation from Pluto
  Almost no planetary scientist agrees with that definition. They generally ignore it.

After losing all communications with Europe’s probe Juice on July 16th, on its way to Jupiter, engineers have finally re-established communications and found the spacecraft to be in sound condition.

Six attempts to steer the medium-gain antenna back towards Earth were unsuccessful. Recovery efforts continued overnight, lasting almost 20 hours and focusing on manually powering up Juice’s onboard communication systems.

Eventually, a command succeeded in reaching Juice and triggering a response. The command activated the signal amplifier that boosts the strength of the signal that Juice sends towards Earth. Contact was re-established, and Juice was found to be in excellent condition. No systems had failed, and all telemetry was nominal.

The root cause was traced to a software timing bug. The software function that switches the signal amplifier on and off relies on an internal timer. This timer is constantly counting up and restarts from zero once every 16 months. If the function happens to be using the timer at the exact moment it restarts, the amplifier remains switched off, and Juice’s signal is too weak to detect from Earth.

The spacecraft has a scheduled fly-by of Venus on August 31st, so regaining contact was critical. It has already done one Earth fly-by, with two more scheduled, before it arrives in Jupiter orbiter in July 2031.

India’s space agency this week successfully conducted a parachute drop test of its Gaganyaan manned capsule, planned for its first manned orbital mission in 2027.

ISRO has done smaller drop tests into a pool. This was the first by helicopter over the ocean.

The first unmanned Gaganyaan orbital test flight is targeting a December 2025 launch.

SpaceX last night successfully launched an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its third flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon, carrying 5,000 pounds of cargo, will dock at ISS on August 25, 2025 in the early morning. During its mission at ISS it will also do a test engine burn to see if it can raise ISS’s orbit, the kind of orbital adjustments that have been routinely done by the Russian Progress freighters.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

104 SpaceX
47 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 104 to 83.

According to a whistle-blower, there has been financial misconduct in international management of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) being built in remote western Australia.

In response to the disclosure, a copy of which has been seen by the Guardian, Zerbi has initiated an investigation into claims that public funds from member states have been lost through trading accounts – and then covered up by the organisation through the shuffling of funds internally.

At the centre of the misconduct allegations is a claim that at least £12m (A$25.1m) was lost through investment in three money market funds, with one fund allegedly losing 45% of its value. The Guardian has seen balance sheet extracts and statements that appear to confirm the investments by the SKAO, which is headquartered at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester.

The report also calls for an investigation into claims funds are being shifted within the organisation, and currency fluctuations being fabricated to conceal these losses from the governing council overseeing the project.

The project is significantly overbudget.

SKA management denies the alliegations, though it has at the same time begun its own investigation.

This corruption likely stems from the project’s international setup, which apparantly makes it “immune from normal legal processes and exempt from paying tax.” In addition, “international staff employed on the project in Australia are hired on diplomatic visas.” Under these conditions we should not be surprised if some hanky-panky with large sums of money took place.

Rocket Lab today successfully launched the second of two launches for an unnamed customer, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

103 SpaceX
47 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 103 to 83.