Inspection of leaking Progress after undocking detects no obvious damage

1:10 pm

After undocking the Progress freighter from ISS yesterday, Russian astronauts on the station rolled it so that all sides of its service module could be photographed and inspected in the hope of spotting the leak in its coolant system that sprung on February 11th.

No visual damage has been detected at the Progress MS-21 spacecraft after it undocked from the International Space Station. “After the Progress MS-21 cargo spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station’s Poisk mini-research module, footage was made of its exterior surface and no visual damage was detected,” the statement [from Roscosmos] reads.

Initially the Russians postponed its de-orbit as they considered the idea of redocking the freighter to another port on the Russian half of ISS in order to inspect it more closely, but eventually they decided to fore-go that plan and de-orbit it on February 19th, one day later.

In watching the live stream of the undocking and the roll maneuver, I thought I saw a partial reddish-orange stain, similar to the stain around the hole that occurred in the Soyuz capsule in December, but it was mostly hidden behind other equipment and the Russians seemed to not consider this significant.

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SpaceX launches an Inmarsat communications satellite

9:10 pm

SpaceX tonight used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch an Inmarsat communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This was SpaceX’s second launch today. The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its third flight. Both fairings were also previously flown.

The 2023 launch race:

12 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise now leads China 13 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 13 to 9. By itself SpaceX leads the world combined 12 to 9.

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Genesis cover

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

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

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.

February 17, 2023 Quick space links

5:14 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, except for the last two.

 

 

  • Damaged Progress to undock from ISS shortly

    • Live stream is here, scheduled to go live around 6:15 pm Pacific. Following undocking the freighter will be maneuvered so that the leak in its coolant system on its service module can be photographed.

 

  • U.S. military is loosening its rules for bidding on its launches

    • The language in the screen capture at the link is typical bureaucratic blather, but the bottom line is that the military is no longer limiting bidding on launch contracts to just SpaceX and ULA, a foolish program I have begging the military to abandon for years. At this point they will let others bid on missions that are less risk tolerant. Expect with time this policy to loosen even more, as more competition can only save the military money, while providing it more redundancy and capability.

 

 

 

 

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SpaceX launches 51 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg

4:35 pm

At 11:12 (Pacific) SpaceX today successfully launched another 51 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage making its ninth flight.

The first stage successfully landed on its drone ship in the Pacific. The fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights.

The 2023 launch race:

11 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise now leads China 12 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 12 to 9. By itself SpaceX leads the world combined 11 to 9, and that lead will grow later today should the next Falcon 9 launch at 10:59 pm (Eastern) tonight from Cape Canaveral succeed.

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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

Today’s blacklisted American: Professor sues University of Texas for threatening his job because he criticized it publicly

1:08 pm

University of Texas at Austin to Professor Richard Lowery:
University of Texas at Austin to Professor Richard Lowery:
“Nice job you got here. Shame if something happened to it.”

They’re coming for you next: Professor Richard Lowery is now suing the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) for its attempts to silence him, including threatening his job, cutting his pay, and monitoring his speech, actions instigated against Lowery because he was publicly critical of the university’s racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies as well as the university’s efforts, led by its president Jay Hartzell, to insert political propaganda into its courses.

Lowery is being represented by the Institute for Free Speech, which filed his lawsuit [pdf] on February 8, 2023.

The campaign [against Lowery and his allies at the university] started by pressuring Carlos Carvalho, another professor of business at the UT McCombs School who is also the Executive Director of the Salem Center for Public Policy, an academic institute that is part of the McCombs School. Lowery is an Associate Director and a Senior Scholar at the Salem Center and reports to Carvalho.
» Read more

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A galaxy’s structure of gas and dust, as seen in the infrared by Webb

10:04 am

NGC 1433 as seen in the infrared
NGC 1433 as seen in the infrared. Click for original image.

Scientists have now released 21 papers on the gas and dust structures in nearby galaxies, based on infrared images from the Webb Space Telescope, used in collaboration with other telescopes looking in other wavelengths.

The largest survey of nearby galaxies in Webb’s first year of science operations is being carried out by the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) collaboration, involving more than 100 researchers from around the globe. The Webb observations are led by Janice Lee, Gemini Observatory chief scientist at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and affiliate astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The team is studying a diverse sample of 19 spiral galaxies, and in Webb’s first few months of science operations, observations of five of those targets – M74, NGC 7496, IC 5332, NGC 1365, and NGC 1433 – have taken place.

The image to the right is Webb’s infrared image of NGC 1433, estimated to be 46 million light years away. The bright areas extending outward in the spiral arms are believed to be star-forming regions. From the caption:

At the center of the galaxy, a tight, bright core featuring a unique double ring structure shines in exquisite detail with Webb’s extreme resolution. In this case, that ‘double ring’ is actually tightly wrapped spiral arms that wind into an oval shape along the galaxy’s bar.

NGC 1433 is a Seyfert galaxy, which are typically relatively close to Earth and has a supermassive black hole at the center eating material at a high rate. The brightness and lack of dust in the MIRI image of NGC 1433 could hint at a recent collision with another galaxy.

When comparing Webb’s infrared view with Hubble’s optical view, taken in 2014 and found here, the differences are definitely striking. Webb sees the gas and dust that is dark in Hubble’s images, while Hubble sees things at much higher resolution and thus sees more fine detail.

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China releases data sets from Chang’e-4 lander

9:12 am

China today released another set of data from the instruments on the Chang’e-4 lander, which landed on the far side of the Moon on January 3, 2019, bringing with it China’s Yutu-2 rover.

The datasets include 3,991.1 MB of 803 data files obtained by the four scientific payloads on the Chang’e-4 lander and rover between December 26, 2021 and January 10, 2022.

The data was posted on the official website of the Lunar and Planetary Data Release System, though none of the press reports from multiple China’s state-run press sources include it. All are simply the same three paragraph story, word for word. That site however is here, though it is entirely in Chinese and the English pages fail to load.

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For only 7th time, searchers find meteorite immediately after fall

8:57 am

For only 7th time, searchers on February 15th found a fragment of a meteorite that had only fallen to Earth three days before, and was furthermore only discovered mere hours before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

From the tweet of the discoverers:

FRIPON/Vigie-Ciel finds a fragment of asteroid 2023CX1 in Seine Maritime!!! The discovery was made by Loïs Leblanc, an 18-year-old student, part of the field research team.

Vigie-Ciel (“Sky Watchers”) and FRIPON are a volunteer project that searches for meteorites. The asteroid itself was discovered by Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky while doing routine survey scan for near Earth asteroids.

The find was the second time Sárneczky has spotted an asteroid just hours before it broke apart in Earth’s atmosphere as a fireball, following an incredible find in March 2022.

By finding meteorites this quickly after arrival scientists get a more pristine sample, since the asteroid has not been exposed to the Earth’s environment for any extended length of time.

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The February 2023 Behind the Black fund-raising campaign-THANK YOU

8:01 am

My annual February fund-raising campaign is now over. I decided to shorten it by two weeks because I was tired of begging my readers for money. As expected, this will likely make this a much smaller campaign then previous years. So be it.

Nonetheless, I sincerely and with deep gratitude thank all those who donated. Without your support I could not keep doing this, not so much because of the need for income to pay the bills, but because it tells me that there are people out there who want me to do this work.

For those who did not contribute during the campaign, the tip jar is still somewhere on this webpage. Please consider adding your vote of support to Behind the Black.

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First launch of Japan’s H3 rocket aborts at T-0

8:25 pm

In its first attempt to launch its new H3 rocket today the rocket’s main liquid-fueled engines ignited, but then the two strap-on solid rockets failed to ignite at T-0, causing that main engine to shut down to protect the rocket and payload.

I have embedded the live stream below, cued to about T-39. At the end of the broadcast the rocket appeared in good condition, though it was still unclear what the caused the problem.

At the moment there is no word when JAXA, Japan’s space agency, will attempt another launch. The H3 is years behind schedule, and was developed in the hope it would be more efficient and cost less to launch than the H2A rocket Japan presently uses.
» Read more

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