SpaceX launches Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule to ISS

10:22 am

SpaceX today for the first time launched a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo freighter to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 10th flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. Cygnus will rendezvous with ISS in two days, where it will be berthed to the station using a robot arm. It will then stay docked for six months as astronauts unload about 8,200 pounds of cargo.

SpaceX was used as a launch provider because Northrop Grumman’s own rocket Antares is presently unavailable because the engines for the first stage as well as the stage itself were previously built by Russia and the Ukraine respectively, both of which the company cannot no longer buy due to the Ukraine War. SpaceX has a contract for three flights, with today’s launch the first. Firefly has a contract from Northrop Grumman to built a new first stage for Antares, with a first launch targeting mid-2025.

The launch was SpaceX’s 10th in January. With a goal of 150 launches in 2024, this puts the company slightly behind the pace required to meet that goal.

The 2024 launch race:

10 SpaceX
6 China
2 Iran
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan

2 comments

India and France sign deal to partner selling flights on their rockets

9:21 am

India and France have apparently signed a deal to not compete in selling flights on their biggest rockets, but instead work together to keep prices under their control.

Under the terms of the MoU [memorandum of understanding], NSIL’s [the commercial space division of India’s government] heavy-lift launch vehicle, LVM-3, and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 will be at the forefront of this joint endeavor.

The article at the link provides no information at all about the specifics of this deal. I am simply guessing that is it designed to control prices, especially because France by itself does not own the Ariane-6 and thus can not award launch contracts for it. All it can do is convince India to not charge less for its comparable LVM rocket (a variation of its GSLV rocket). If so, it is a bad deal for India, which can easily undercut any price that Arianespace can charge for the expensive Ariane-6. It will drive business from India, since other companies (such as SpaceX, ULA, and hopefully Blue Origin in the near future) will be under no obligation to match Ariane-6’s high cost.

It is also possible that the deal is simply an empty political gesture, timed during the visit to India by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Its vague language suggests this. It gives Macron a photo op, but as an MOU it leaves India under no long term obligation.

One comment

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

The Pentagon picks Northrop Grumman’s orbital refueling port as its standard

9:05 am

Having reviewed the designs of several orbital refueling ports, the Space Force has chosen Northrop Grumman’s port as the standard it wishes future military satellites to use.

In a move that could shape the in-orbit satellite servicing market, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command designated Northrop Grumman’s Passive Refueling Module (PRM) as a favored interface to enable future in-space refueling of military satellites. The PRM has a docking mechanism to allow a refueling vehicle in orbit to transfer propellant to another satellite to extend its useful life.

Northrop Grumman said the Space Systems Command, which oversees in-space logistics and services programs, also will support the company’s development of an orbital fuel tanker for geosynchronous orbit missions that would carry up to 1,000 kilograms of hydrazine fuel and deliver it to client satellites on demand.

Lauren Smith, program manager for in-space refueling at Northrop Grumman, said the selection of the PRM was based on the maturity and technical viability of the design, as well as the company’s experience servicing satellites in orbit. Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics subsidiary remains the only commercial firm to have successfully serviced satellites in geostationary orbit, having docked twice with client Intelsat satellites some 22,000 miles above Earth to extend spacecraft life.

Note that even though Northrop Grumman’s MEV spacecraft has twice docked with defunct Intelsat satellites to return them to service, the spacecraft did no refueling. Instead, it brought its own fuel and engine, and used that to control the satellite.

Other companies developing refueling services with ports they had hoped would become the standard include Astroscale and Orbit Fab. Both have launched demo missions, but neither has yet completed a refueling mission as well. Though this Space Force decision is not exclusive, and leaves open the possibility of further awards to these other commercial refueling port designs, it will likely force everyone to move towards the Northrop Grumman design.

5 comments

The dark matter in the Milky Way is not behaving as its supposed to

8:56 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists using precise data of the motions of the outer stars of the Milky Way from the Gaia orbiting telescope have found they do not rotate the galaxy’s center as fast as expected, based on the theory of the existence of dark matter.

Dark matter was proposed to explain why in other galaxies the speed of rotation of outer stars does not appear to decline with distance (as seen for example with the planets in our solar system) but remains the same, no matter how far out you go. That extra speed suggests there must be unseen matter pulling on the stars.

[N]ew results that combine Gaia measurements with those from APOGEE (Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment), performed on a ground-based telescope in New Mexico, USA, and which measures the physical properties of stars to better judge their distance, have indeed measured the Milky Way’s rotation curve for stars out farther than ever before, to about 100,000 light years. “What we were really surprised to see was that this curve remained flat, flat, flat out to a certain distance, and then it started tanking,” says Lina Necib, who is an assistant professor of physics at MIT, said in a statement. “This means the outer stars are rotating a little slower than expected, which is a very surprising result.”

…The decline in orbital velocity at these distances implies that there is less dark matter in the center of our galaxy than expected. The research team describe the galaxy’s halo of dark matter as having been “cored,” somewhat like an apple. The crew also says there’s not enough gravity from what dark matter there seems to exist there, to reach all the way out to 100,000 light years and keep stars moving at the same velocity.

The rotation data of other galaxies, while somewhat robust, also includes a number of assumptions might be fooling us into thinking that the speeds are higher than expected. The more precise data gathered nearby, in the Milky Way, is now suggesting those assumptions and that distant data must be questioned.

Or to put it more bluntly, dark matter remains an ad hoc solution to a mystery that astronomers really don’t understand, or have sufficient data to explain. It might very well be a wild goose chase that has made them miss the real answer, whatever that might be.

17 comments

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 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.

January 29, 2024 Quick space links

5:18 pm

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.

 

6 comments

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

The FBI must be wiped clean, or wiped out, on Day One of the next Repubican administration

1:05 pm

Christopher Wray, the world's most powerful mobster

Should Donald Trump become president in 2024 and the acts to make major changes within the federal executive bureaucracy, cleaning house from top to bottom with major firings and layoffs (something he should have done in his first administration and failed to do), without question the first agency he must attack mercilessly is the FBI.

There are numerous documented examples in the past decade where the FBI has been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans, investigating, harassing, and even arresting people because they held beliefs that opposed the agenda of the Democratic Party. In some cases the individuals attacked were simply religious Christians who opposed abortion. In other cases the victims were ordinary Americans who simply made public their support of Trump.

Nor were just everyday Americans attacked. The FBI has arrested Republican candidates for office. Its officials have altered evidence to justify illegal seach warrants against Republicans. Its management also targeted and framed Trump officials it did not like. Officials there also abused the FISA court, submitting error-filled applications that were used to get warrants to spy on Americans. It redacted information to hide its misbehavior, claiming dishonestly that the redactions were for national security reasons.

This list is only a very small selection of the many such stories reported in the past decade. Any one of these corrupt actions would justify firing everyone at the FBI and zeroing out its budget as quickly as possible. Last week however the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals provided us another reason: It ruled that FBI agents literally committed theft in rummaging through hundreds of security deposit boxes at a bank in wealthy Beverly Hills, confiscating millions of dollars it had no right to grab, simply because the cash was there and the agents and the agency wanted that money for their own pockets.
» Read more

20 comments

The internal structure of 19 galaxies, as seen in the infrared by Webb

9:48 am

The internal structure of 19 galaxies, as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Scientists using the Webb Space Telescope today released false color infrared images of nineteen different spiral galaxies, each showing the complex internal structure that traces of spiral arms, but not always.

A compliation of those infrared images is to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here.

[Webb]’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured millions of stars in these images, which sparkle in blue tones. Some stars are spread throughout the spiral arms, but others are clumped tightly together in star clusters.

The telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) data highlights glowing dust, showing us where it exists behind, around, and between stars. It also spotlights stars that have not yet fully formed – they are still encased in the gas and dust that feed their growth, like bright red seeds at the tips of dusty peaks. “These are where we can find the newest, most massive stars in the galaxies,” said Erik Rosolowsky, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The data suggests, not unexpectedly, that the central parts of each galaxy are older, formed first, with starbirth occurring later in the outer regions. A lot of further analysis however will be required to understand all the patterns exhibited in these images and their larger significance in connection with galaxy formation.

One comment

Communications with SLIM lunar lander re-established

9:29 am

According to Japan’s space agency JAXA, engineers last night successfully re-established communications with its SLIM lunar lander sitting up-side down on the Moon, the Sun finally shifting to the western sky so that its westward-facing solar panel could get light and provide power.

Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed! Science observations were immediately started with the MBC, and we obtained first light for the 10-band observation.

One image was immediately downloaded. Engineers will attempt to initiate as many operations as possible in the next few days, before the Sun sets at the end of the month and the spacecraft shuts down again, likely forever.

Leave a comment

SpaceX completes two launches on Sunday

9:20 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully completed two Starlink satellite launches, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from opposite coasts.

First the company launched 23 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral in Florida, using a first stage flying its eighteenth time. That first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Next less than five hours later the company launched another 22 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg in California, using a first first stage flying its ninth time. That first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The 2024 launch race:

9 SpaceX
6 China
2 Iran
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan

2 comments

Bi-partisan bill proposed giving space traffic management to Commerce, not FCC

3:07 pm

On January 25, 2024 a bill sponsored by a bi-partisan group of senators was introduced assigning the job of managing orbital traffic and the removal of defunct satellites to the Commerce Department, essentially telling both the FCC and NOAA that the attempt by those agencies to grab this power, outside of their statutory authority, will be opposed by elected officials.

The bill puts the responsibility of managing satellite and spacecraft traffic and the regulations regarding de-orbiting satellites to Office of Space Commerce (OSC) within Commerce. It is also supported by the comercial industry, which has not been happy especially with the FCC’s regulatory power grab. Unlike the regulations the FCC is creating, this bill relies heavily on industry advice and consensus, the very people who not only know best what needs to be done, but are the only ones qualified to do it.

Of course, the bill must pass both the Senate, House, and be signed by the President before it becomes law. Whether that can happen remains uncertain, especially since there appear to be a lot of factions inside DC who want to give federal agencies like the FCC legal carte blanche to regulate however they see fit, superseding Congress, the Constitution, and the law. And it seems that Congress now is so weak, those factions might just get what they want.

3 comments

Another Chinese pseudo-company vertically lands a prototype 1st stage

11:52 am

According to China’s state-run press, the Chinese pseudo-company Expace yesterday successfully completed a short hop, with a methane-fueled prototype first stage of its next generation Kuaizhou rocket taking off and landing vertically.

The flight time lasted 22 seconds, and the rocket hovered in the air for nine seconds, with a height accuracy of 0.15 meter. The landing posture of the test rocket was stable, the landing position accurate and the rocket body in good condition, signifying the success of the experiment, according to the company.

Several things. First, this “company” is directly affliated with one of China’s government space agency. Its presently operating Kuaizhou rocket uses solid-fueled stages, adapted directly from missile technology that could only be obtained with full permission of that government. Second, there appears to be a plethora of these Chinese rocket “startups” now flying and testing methane-fueled engines. Want to bet the Chinese government told them all to share design information?

Third, there is also a plethora of Chinese pseudo-companies testing vertical take-off and landing for their first stages. Want to bet the Chinese government also told them to share design information?

Without question China’s space industry is moving fast, and will definitely be a competitive threat in the coming years — assuming outside events, such as war or economic collapse, don’t overwhelm things. However, it is a big mistake to see its industry as made up of independent, privately owned, and competing companies. They raise investment capital, compete for contracts from the government and other Chinese commercial entities, but in the end, everything they do is coordinated from above, by the Chinese communists.

19 comments

The future of astronomy, as seen by PBS News in 1991

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Today is the 75th anniversary of the moment astonomers took the lens cap off the Hale Telescope at Palomar, what astronomers call “first light.” In honor of this anniversary, tonight’s evening pause is a somewhat well-done news piece produced by PBS in 1991, describing the state of ground-based astronomy at that time, which was actually another key moment in the history of astronomy. After decades of no advancement following the Hale telescope, the field was about to burst out with a whole new set of telescopes exceeding it significantly, based on new technologies. We today have become accustomed to those new telescopes, but in 1991 they were still incomplete or on the drawing board.

This was also after the launch of Hubble but before it was fixed, so this moment was also a somewhat dark time for astronomy in general. Watching this news piece gives you a sense of history, as seen by those living at that time. It also lets you see some good examples of the standard tropes of reporters as well as some astronomers. They always say this new telescope (whatever and whenever it is) is going to allow us to discover the entire history of the universe, even though it never can, and never will.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

15 comments

Major donor to Cornell pulls funding, demands firing of university president

3:15 pm

These might be the worst colleges in the country
These are probably the worst colleges in the country,
and it includes Cornell.

Jon Lindseth, a major donor to Cornell for years, has published an open letter to the university’s board of trustees, condemning strongly its bigoted “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies and demanding their shutdown along with the firing of university president Martha Pollak.

I am proud to count myself one of several generations of Lindseths who are Cornell alumni and invested donors, but I am alarmed by the diminished quality of education offered lately by my alma mater because of its disastrous involvement with DEI policies that have infiltrated every part of the university.

President Pollack’s shameful recent response to clear acts of terrorism and antisemitism compared with her swift and strong response to the George Floyd tragedy demonstrates that Cornell is no longer concerned with discovering and disseminating knowledge, but rather with adhering to DEI groupthink policies and racialization. … Today the instruction Cornell offers is in DEI groupthink applied to every field of study. The result is a moral decay, some call it “rot,” that falls in line with prevailing ideology and dishonors basic principles of justice and free speech. Under President Pollack’s leadership the university continues to put more value on DEI’s broad application rather than merit. This was not how Cornell became one of the country’s leading institutions and a proud member of the Ivy League.

» Read more

12 comments

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs SLIM on the Moon

1:16 pm

LRO images showing before and after SLIM's landing
Click for blink animation.

Scientists using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) were able on January 24, 2024 to obtain a photograph of the SLIM landing site on the Moon, and produce a before and after blink animation showing the lander on the ground.

The two pictures to the right, before and after, were taken from that animation. The bright speck in the after image is SLIM, sitting upside down on the surface. The faint streak of light material going from right to left lower in the photo comes from the fresh ejecta material thrown out from the nearby 1,425-foot-wide Shioli Crater to the west.

This picture confirms once again that SLIM achieved its main goal, landing precisely within a tiny landing zone only 300 feet across.

The landing occurred in the morning on the Moon, so the Sun was in the east. Because SLIM got flipped upside down just before touchdown, its one solar panel ended up facing west, where no sunlight could touch it. Based on the shadows in this picture, east is to the left, and west to the right. The solar panel is sitting in the shadow on SLIM’s right side.

In about a week the Sun will begin setting to the west, illuminating that panel. Engineers in Japan hope that at that time the panel will begin to recharge the spacecraft’s batteries, and it will then begin to operate again, if only a short while before the Sun sets and the very cold and hostile lunar night begins. There is little expectation of SLIM surviving that long two-week lunar night, even if it gets its batteries fully charged.

4 comments

Ingenuity’s final resting site on Mars

1:00 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity's damaged propeller
Click for orignal image.

The photo to the right was downloaded from Ingenuity today, and looks downward at the ground below the helicopter, showing the shadow of one of its propellers, with the damage at its tip indicated by the arrow.

It is this damage that forced NASA management to retire the helicopter yesterday. With the tip of one of Ingenuity’s two propellers damaged, the helicopter simply can no longer fly reliably, or at all.

The green dot on the map above shows Ingenuity’s final resting spot. The blue dot shows Perseverance’s present position. Perseverance will surely at some point approach Ingenuity closely to get better pictures of the damage to help engineers better figure out what happened and why. For example, did the propellor simply break during flight? And if so, why?

I freely admit that my optimistic speculations last week were wrong, that Ingenuity was merely having communications issues with Perseverance. I also suspect the Ingenuity engineers were hoping the same thing, and were far more disappointed than I to discover otherwise.

7 comments

NASA’s useless safety panel once again sticks its nose where it isn’t qualified to go

11:13 am

For the third year in a row, the annual report of NASA’s generally useless and often corrupt safety panel, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), is once again focused not on technical safety issues related specifically to engineering — the reason the panel was first formed in 1968 following the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed three asteronauts — but NASA’s general management and long term strategies and plans, something that is entirely the responsibility of Congress and elected officials.

As the press release notes right at the top, “The report highlights 2023 activities and observations on NASA’s Strategic Vision and Guiding Principles, Agency Governance, and Moon to Mars Program Management.” On none of these issues does this panel have any expertise, or even qualifications. Most of its membership are former government bureaucrats, with only one panel member coming mostly from the private sector.

More important, while the panel is supposed to be review NASA’s engineering to make sure it is not getting sloppy, its panelists are all management types, not engineers.

To give the panel some credit, its report [pdf] does actually note the many risks NASA is taking on its various Artemis manned lunar flights, including more than a dozen engineering designs which will be flown for the first time on the first Artemis manned mission to land on the Moon. However, while this should be the panel’s number one concern, it buries it inside the report, and simply recommends that NASA redistribute these firsts across multiple missions. How NASA should do this is not addressed.

Last year I simply noted ASAP’s annual report in a quick links post, adding that “It has been so wrong so many times in the past, clearly biased against private space while favoring NASA, its analysis is simply worthless.” That conclusion still applies.

The sooner Congress stops wasting any money on this panel, the better. It provides no real service except to slow down development. And it is now putting itself above Congress in its effort to influence strategic and programming.

Leave a comment

Lucy’s upcoming travels leading to its exploration of the Trojan asteroids

10:16 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Click for original image.

The Lucy engineering team today issued an update, outlining the spacecraft’s upcoming fly-bys in 2024 that will carry it to its next asteroid rendezvouses, first with an asteroid in the main belt, and then with four Trojan asteroids orbiting in Jupiter’s orbit but 60 degress ahead.

The map to the right shows this route. The solid red/white line indicates Lucy’s travels in 2024.

In late January, Lucy will begin the series of two deep space maneuvers. On January 31, the spacecraft will briefly operate its main engines for the first time in space. After analyzing the spacecraft’s performance during that brief burn, the team will command the spacecraft to carry out a larger maneuver, nominally on February 3. Combined, these two maneuvers are designed to change the velocity of the spacecraft by around 2,000 mph (approximately 900 meters per second) and will consume roughly half of the spacecraft’s onboard fuel.

That first brief burn will not only test the engines, it will also tell engineers whether one of Lucy’s solar panels — still not fully deployed and latched properly — will not be disturbed by it. If not, they will proceed with the second burn.

After this it will zip past the Earth, which will slingshot it out to Jupiter orbit, passing one main belt asteroid along the way.

One comment

Northrop Grumman writes off $100 million on its fixed-price Lunar Gateway contract

10:00 am

Northrop Grumman announced on January 25, 2024 that it has written off another $42 million on its fixed-price contract with NASA to build the main habitable module for its Lunar Gateway space station, bringing the total losses so far to $100 million.

The company blamed the latest charge primarily on “cost growth stemming from evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges.” The company offered the same explanation when it reported the charge in the second quarter.

Northrop received a $935 million fixed-price contract from NASA in July 2021 to build the module, which is based on the company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft. HALO will provide initial living accommodations on the Gateway and includes several docking ports for visiting Orion spacecraft and lunar landers as well as additional modules provided by international partners. It will launch together with the Maxar-built Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) on a Falcon Heavy.

In a fixed price contract NASA is not suppose to issue change orders. What must be happening is that either the company or NASA are recognizing there are some issues with the initial and then revised designs, forcing Northrop Grumman to issue its own change orders, delaying development and adding costs.

That the company is having problems however is a bit baffling. First, space station module design is not new. There is a history going back decades on how to do this. Second, Northrop is basing this module design on its already launched Cygnus freighters. Though unmanned, these freighters still have to be habitable after docking with ISS. It should not be so difficult to upgrade them.

Regardless, the company has now become hostile to bidding on any future fixed price contracts, or if it does, it will bid much higher (a decision that caused it to lose in another recent bidding contest). Hopefully this decision on fixed price contracts, similar to Boeing’s own decision, will not cause NASA to abandon such contracts. Just because these big, old-space companies can’t work efficiently doesn’t mean others can’t. Fixed-price is how every business in the real world must function. For most NASA projects such a deal is realistic. If these old companies can’t function practically let new companies bid instead. This will be better for NASA and the entire American space industry.

3 comments

Lockheed Martin & Boeing get Space Force satellite development contracts

9:43 am

The Space Force has awarded Lockheed Martin and Boeing $66 million contracts each to design their own version of a new communications satellite for the military.

Over the next 15 months, the companies will create prototype satellites showing how they would meet the Space Force’s requirements for the MUOS satellites. DoD announced the contract awards Jan. 25.

The Space Force is expected to select one of the companies in 2025 to manufacture two flight-ready narrowband satellites to modernize the existing constellation of five MUOS satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Narrowband communications use relatively small amounts of data, but are critical for military operations.

A third unnamed company also bid but was not selected. The choice of Boeing for this competition is surprising, considering its numerous management and engineering problems across a wide range of products, from airplanes to space capsules. NASA itself has been so dissatisfied with Boeing’s work that in 2020 it decided at that time “to eliminate Boeing from future award consideration.” That decision appears to still stand. As far as I can remember Boeing not won any NASA contracts since.

Moreover, Lockheed Martin built the current MUOS satellites in orbit, while Boeing does not have a big reputation in recent years building satellites.

All told, it will therefore be extremely surprising if Boeing wins this competition. I suspect the Space Force issued this contract to help keep Boeing a viable company and to give it an opportunity to get its act together. Rewarding incompetence however is rarely successful.

3 comments

Ingenuity’s mission on Mars is over

3:55 pm

Ingenuity takes off!
Ingenuity takes off on its first flight, April 19, 2021.
For full images go here and here.

NASA today announced that Ingenuity’s mission on Mars has now ended due to damage sustained to one of its propellers during its 72nd flight.

While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight.

Ingenuity’s engineering mission was designed initially to simply prove that air-powered flight in Mars’ thin atmosphere was possible by a test program of four flights over 30 days. It worked so well that it just kept going and going. During its almost three years of operation on Mars, the helicopter completed 72 flights, for a total air time of about 128 minuntes. It flew a total of about eleven miles, reaching a maximum speed of over 22 miles per hour and a top altitude of about 79 feet. On its 69th flight it traveled a record 2,315 feet, almost a half mile.

All future Mars missions have been changed forever by the success of Ingenuity and its designers and engineers. For example, there are already hints of a helicopter mission to Mars’ giant canyon Valles Marineris. In addition, NASA redesigned its Mars Sample Return Mission to include helicopters based on what it learned from Ingenuity.

More important, Ingenuity suggests that when settlers finally colonize the red planet, it is very possible that air travel will start out more important than ground transport. In fact, long distance roads might never be built, for any number of reasons, because air travel will be available from the beginning.

2 comments

African lawfare to take control of space

12:57 pm

Modern academia: Marching with Lenin!
Modern African academia, proudly marching with Lenin!

It appears that a growing cadre of African lawyers are working within international organizations such as the UN and the International Astronautical Union (IAU) to use the Outer Space Treaty as a wedge to take control of space, wresting it from the hands of private commerical companies.

I make this assessment based upon a long article about this new lawfare published today in Wired, describing the training and political goals of a number of young African layers in the field of international space law.

[S]ome players in the global south are gearing up for the orbital future not just by scrambling to launch satellites, but by building up skills in outer space law—the evolving area of international jurisprudence that introduced the “province of all mankind” concept in the first place.

Though the Outer Space Treaty is still the cornerstone of space law, other international agreements have built up around it over the years—and more still are desperately needed to regulate today’s realities in space. “This is an area of rulemaking where they’re just setting up the rules for the future, so you need to have a perspective now,” explains Timiebi Aganaba, a British-Canadian-Nigerian professor at Arizona State University who has been instrumental in driving African interest in space law. “If the system gets built without you—if you come in later—people will start quoting laws to you.”

In 2011, Aganaba helped organize the first teams of African law students to enter something called the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. The global tournament, named after an architect of the Outer Space Treaty, uses fictional court cases to train young lawyers how to think through the plausible conflicts that could soon arise beyond the atmosphere—and it is far and away the most important professional conduit into the field of space law. Students who make it to the final round of the competition argue their cases before actual judges from the International Court of Justice—the world’s highest forum for legal disputes between countries. And since 2011, teams from Africa have become a force in the competition. In 2018, South Africa’s University of Pretoria won the international championship.

If Aganaba’s name rings a bell to my readers, it is no surprise. » Read more

9 comments

All climate models continue to be wrong, overstating warming to significant degrees

12:24 pm

Climate models versus data
Click for full resolution graph.

According to a new analysis comparing actual satellite observations of the climate since 1979 with all the climate models used by the IPCC and global warming activitists, it appears that every single climate model continues to overstate significantly their predictions of warming, with that error increasing with time. From the paper’s abstract:

Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here.

While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.

The research was done by Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, who has also been the principal investigator on one climate satellite. The graph to the right, chart 2 of his paper, shows the error of every single climate model, with some models so wrong they are essentially useless to predict anything.

What is significant about this research is not that these models are wrong, it is that they are all wrong in the same direction. If the climate science community was approaching this work honestly with an effort to be unbiased, we should should expect some models to predict too little warming, and others too much. That all predict too much warming suggests that every single one of these models is tainted by politics and confirmation bias. The people who write the models want global warming to occur (almost certainly for political reasons), and so their models always lean in that direction.

What is even more disturbing is that Spencer’s work shows that the difference between the models and observations is growing, as indicated by chart 3 from his paper, below.
» Read more

19 comments

Harvard’s response to evidence of errors and fake data in papers poor and slow

11:09 am

In an interview today published by the science journal Nature of Sholto David, the blogger who identified the numerous errors and fake data in 58 papers published by major researchers and managers at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), he notes that the intitutue’s response to his evidence has generally been reluctant and disappointing.

I’ve flagged about 58 papers. In 16 or 17 of those, they say the data was collected at other institutions. Three of them, they dispute. I accept that. But I’d like to know what the dispute is. [DFCI did not respond as to why it disagrees with the anomalies flagged by David. It also said one additional paper is still under examination.]

So that seems like it’s pretty much all of them accounted for. In one sense, I’m relieved. They basically accepted that these are all errors. I stand by what’s on the blog and by what I post on PubPeer.

It does leave a frustrated feeling because a lot of these comments have been on PubPeer for ages. But now suddenly after the blog post, Rollins has said we’ve known about some of these concerns. Why does it take some nobody like me dropping a blog to make them start doing this?

In other words, Harvard was going to ignore David’s allegations, and only finally took action when he posted them in a way that made news.

None of this story speaks well of the scientific integrity and accomplishments at Harvard. If anything, its stone-walling and lack of transparancy indicates that it has no interest in fixing the problem. Instead, it wants to continue to tolerate shoddy research work and low standards.

Makes one question entirely all the research done at Harvard, as well as the quality of education it provides its students, at all levels. This apparently is not an elite college, despite its long held reputation. Instead it is a place where mediocre hacks fake their work while teaching their students to do the same.

4 comments

The shaky ground near the Moon’s south pole

10:54 am

Map of lunar south pole showing areas of instability
Click for original map.

According to a paper just published that reviewed and reanalyzed the seismic data gathered by the seismometers placed on the Moon by the various Apollo landings, scientists have determined that the south pole region where NASA wants its first manned Artemis lunar landing to take place happens also to be one of the Moon’s most active moonquake regions. From the paper’s conclusion:

We suggest that the lobate thrust fault scarps in the south polar region in and around the areas of the proposed Artemis III landing regions, particularly the de Gerlache Rim sites and Nobile Rim 1 regions, are potential sources for future seismic activity that could produce strong regional seismic shaking. If slip events on these young faults occur in the south polar region and elsewhere on the Moon, regolith landslides and potential boulder falls can be expected at distances of tens of kilometers from the source faults. Small amounts of water ice in the lunar regolith are expected to significantly increase the cohesion, stabilizing steep slopes against shallow landslides from seismic shaking. Based on our analysis of an N9-level event in the south polar region, we conclude that such an event poses a potential hazard to future robotic and human exploration in the region.

The map to the right is figure 10 from the paper, showing the south pole centered on Shackleton Crater. The colored dots mark areas of potential instability should a quake occur, with the blue boxes indicating all the NASA’s candidate landing sites for the manned Artemis 3 mission. Note the concentration of dots on the interior rim of Shackleton.

The planned landing site of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander, scheduled for launch in mere weeks, is beyond the top of this map, to the north.

One comment

Starliner launch in mid-April continues on target

10:35 am

In an update today from NASA, it appears the first manned flight of Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule remains on target for a mid-April launch on a ULA Atlas-5 rocket.

Engineers continue to analyze the data from the recent parachute drop test that appeared to prove out the redesign of the capsule’s parachutes. Also, the work to replace or mitigate the flammable tape in the capsule has been completed.

Boeing completed removal of P213 tape that may have posed a flammability risk in certain environmental conditions. Boeing removed more than 17 pounds, or roughly 4,300 feet, of the material from the Starliner crew module. For areas in which removal of the tape carried an increased risk to Starliner hardware, Boeing applied tested remediation techniques such as overwrapping the P213 tape with another non-flammable, chafe-resistant tape, and installing fire breaks on wire harnesses.

No explanation as yet has been released as to how it was even possible for Boeing to have used this tape, considering it has been common practice since the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 to avoid the use of flammable materials in spacecraft. Nor has any explanation been issued on how the weak link in the main parachute connection to the capsule was not discovered until only weeks before the manned flight, last summer.

Nonetheless, both issues appear solved. After years of delays and innumerable problems, Boeing might finally be ready to fly Starliner with passengers. It desperately needs this flight to be successful, especially considering the company’s other ongoing problems with its 737 airplane. It also will not receive the rest of its contract payments from NASA until this flight is a success, and the delays and problems have cost the company more than $1.5 billion. The contract was fixed price, so Boeing has had to pay for all the additional costs from its own pocket.

2 comments
1 … 63 64 65 66 67 … 1,063