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

Private Indian company scrubs suborbital test launch

9:08 am

The private Indian company Agnikul yesterday scrubbed its first suborbital test launch from its privately owned spaceport on the east coast of India when it detected issues during a dress rehearsal countdown.

On Friday, Agnikul Cosmos Private Limited’s Agnibaan was slated to launch from the company-owned launchpad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) located inside Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) facility at Sriharikota.

“Agnikul is holding the launch out of an abundance of caution based on certain minor observations from the full countdown rehearsals last night,” it said in a statement. The company will announce a new date and time for the launch. The IIT-Madras incubated start-up is 3-D printing its space vehicle – Agnibaan, with single piece 3D-printed engine.

My post earlier this week about the location of this private launchpad was in error. The launchpad might be privately owned, but it is not at a different location from ISRO’s main Sriharikota spaceport. It is located within that spaceport, and exists because the Modi government several years ago required ISRO to let private companies use its facilities. Agnikul decided to use this to its advantage, building a whole launchpad within the Sriharikota site.

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ISRO completes second drop test runway landing of its own mini-reusable shuttle

8:56 am

Pushpak about to land
Click for original image

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday successfully completed the second runway landing of its own mini-reusable shuttle, dubbed Pushpak, after the vehicle was dropped from a helicopter at an altitude of 2.8 miles.

This mission successfully simulated the approach and high-speed landing conditions of RLV returning from space. With this second mission, ISRO has re-validated the indigenously developed technologies in the areas of navigation, control systems, landing gear and deceleration systems essential for performing a high-speed autonomous landing of a space-returning vehicle. The winged body and all flight systems used in RLV-LEX-01 were reused in the RLV-LEX-02 mission after due certification/clearances. Hence reuse capability of flight hardware and flight systems is also demonstrated in this mission. Based on the observations from RLV-LEX-01, the airframe structure and landing gear were strengthened to tolerate higher landing loads. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentences I think are the most significant. ISRO is pushing hard for reusability.

The concept of this spacecraft is somewhat comparable to the X-37B, though all the engineering can be applied to larger shuttles that can carry cargo and humans in and out of orbit. At the moment however Pushpak is simply an engineering test prototype, not yet ready for orbital flights. For example, the landing gears are too large and cannot be retracted, something unacceptable for orbital flights.

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Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black., You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:


1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.


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March 21, 2024 Quick space links

3:23 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.

 

  • Rocket Factory Augsburg touts its proposed Argo cargo freighter

    • The link provides a detailed description of this new spacecraft, clearly intended to provide ferrying services to the upcoming future space stations, with its most likely customer the Starlab station being built by Voyager Space, which is partnering with ESA and Airbus. This German company hopes to launch it by 2028.

 

 

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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.

SpaceX launches a cargo Dragon to ISS

2:18 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched a Dragon freighter to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The cargo Dragon was flying for the fourth time. It will dock with ISS on March 23, 2024. The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing back at one of SpaceX’s landing pads at Cape Canaveral.

This was also the first Dragon launch from this particular SpaceX launchpad in four years. The company only recently reconfigured it for Dragon flights, both manned and unmanned, so that it has two options for launching NASA manned missions. NASA had demanded this before it would give SpaceX permission to launch Superheavy/Starship from that rocket’s new launchpad in Florida. The agency thought it was too close to SpaceX’s first manned launchpad, and wanted an option in case a Superheavy launch failure damaged the Dragon launchsite. With this success SpaceX is one step closer to flying operational Superheavy/Starship flights out of Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

28 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 33 to 21, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 28 to 26.

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Some more “What the heck?” geology on Mars

2:00 pm

What the heck?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small part of a region dubbed Iani Chaos, but what this geology shows is way beyond my pay grade.

Why there are those tiny aligned mounds, oriented at right angles to the slope, is not clear at all. Nor is it obvious what created the lighter chaotic terrain at the base of the slope.

The elevation difference between the low and high points is about 400 feet. The slope continues up to the west for another 600 feet to the top of a north-south ridgeline. The patterns here suggest vaguely some flows downhill, such as that widening east-to-west gap, but only vaguely.

The look at the overview map only compounds the mystery.
» Read more

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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

Mob of Democrats threatens violence against conservative students at the University of Memphis

11:55 am

Democrats in Georgia in 1915, lynching Leo Frank
Democrats in Georgia in 1915, lynching Leo Frank

In a now typical display of the modern leftist protest movement, a mob of Democrats threatened to kill attendees at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Memphis on March 20, 2024 where Kyle Rittenhouse was scheduled to appear.

A savage mob terrorized conservative students attending a Turning Point USA event featuring Kyle Rittenhouse at the University of Memphis. The mob literally chased conservative students shouting obscenities and violent threats. Several students who had been attending a campus Bible study were also caught up in the melee. Eyewitnesses say the mob made direct threats against TPUSA leadership. Radical black activists cheered the chaos. There are no reports of arrests. The TPUSA group later found refuge in a nearby safe house

When Rittenhouse attempted to give his speech, he was shouted down and forced to go directly to Q&As. Though it seemed from at least one clip that this Q&A proceeded with some civility (though interspersed with many angry catcalls from the crowd), it ended abruptly after thirty minutes, which according to Rittenhouse was because they had a hard cut off time.

At the first link are numerous videos showing that mob in all its glory, one of which is embedded below. It shows several attendees of the event being escorted into the building by police, as the mob surrounds and chases them, shouting curses and threats.
» Read more

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Citizen scientist project discovers 16 active asteroids

10:39 am

A project that has enlisted approximately 8,300 ordinary citizens to review more than 430,000 photos taken by a telescope in Chile has discovered sixteen asteroids that produce comae and tails like comets.

Identifying and tracking active asteroids whose activity specifically appears to be due to the sublimation of ice – known as main-belt comets – is a particular interest of the project team, as it is an essential part of understanding the abundance and distribution of volatile material like ice in the Solar System.

…The project, utilizing publicly available Dark Energy Camera (DECam) data from the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile, involved the examination of more than 430,000 images of known minor planets by 8,300 volunteers, where images identified by citizen scientists as being likely to contain active asteroids were then passed on to the science team for confirmation and additional analysis.

You can read the research paper here. If you want to participate, the Active Asteroids project is still on-going, and can be accessed here.

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Six launch companies give updates on the status of their rockets

9:03 am

Link here. The event was a panel at a conference where officials from SpaceX, ULA, Mitsubishi, Arianespace, Relativity, and Rocket Lab gave presentations.

Based on what is reported at the link, the Mitsubishi update was the most significant:

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) successfully launched its H3 rocket Feb. 16 after the rocket’s inaugural launch failed nearly a year earlier, a setback that Iwao Igarashi, vice president and general manager at MHI, called a “nightmare.” “There were no major problems with the rocket” on its second flight, he said.

We will have to see. Though everything worked as planned on the second flight, the true test on whether Mitsubishi has overcome the issues from the first launch will be the rocket’s third launch, presently scheduled for sometime next year.

A Relativity official said their Terran-R rocket is still targeting a first launch in 2026, while Rocket Lab was hopeful that the first launch of its larger Neutron rocket would occur by the end of this year.

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China Long March 2D launches “group of satellites”; Russia scrubs manned Soyuz launch

8:45 am

China today successfully launched what it simply labeled as “a group of satellites”, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No other useful information was released about the payloads. Nor was there any word as to the crash site of the rocket’s first stage, which uses toxic hypergolic fuels and landed somewhere in China.

Meanwhile in Russia a launch of a Soyuz-2 rocket carrying three astronauts to ISS was aborted at about T-20 seconds for reasons that as yet remain unclear. According to NASA the next launch opportunity is March 23, 2024.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

27 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 32 to 21, while SpaceX remains ahead of the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 26.

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Rocket Lab launches classified smallsat for National Reconnaissance Office

12:36 am

Rocket Lab in the early morning hours of March 21, 2024 successfully launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, its Electron rocket lifting off from Wallops Island in Virgina.

For this launch Rocket Lab made no attempt to recover its first stage. As of posting the payloads had not yet been deployed.

A Chinese Long March 2D launch was also scheduled to occur just prior to the Rocket Lab launch, but as of posting there was no word on whether that launch had taken place.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

27 SpaceX
11 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise presently leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 32 to 20, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 25.

2 comments

March 20, 2024 Quick space links

3:34 pm

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

 

 

4 comments

Cracking terraces in Valles Marineris

3:27 pm

Overview map

Cracking terraces in Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Inset

Today’s cool image returns us to the truly spectacular terrain found on the floor of West Candor Chasma, one of the giant side canyons that form Valles Marineris, the biggest canyon in the solar system, many times larger than the Grand Canyon on Earth.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 5, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). On the overview map above its location is indicated by the red dot in the inset. The two green dots mark previous cool images from August 2022 and February 2024.

All three images show the same wild alternating dark and light terracing, suggesting many sedimentary layers like those seen in our Grand Canyon, but enhanced by the different erosion processes of the thin Martian atmosphere and its one-third Earth gravity.

The second image to the right zooms in on the area indicated by the rectangle. What makes this area doubly interesting are the cracks that appear to cut through the terraces. In the north-south crack it also appears that the terraces are now offset on each side of the crack.

Apparently, some event, likely an earthquake that occurred after the terraces formed, caused the ground to rip apart, with the earth shifting sideways on either side. Though the seismometer on the InSight lander detected no major quakes in this region, this image suggests they have occurred here, sometime in the past.

To give you a sense of scale, the canyon’s nearby rim to the west is about 14,000 higher, making that canyon wall two to three times taller than the walls of the Grand Canyon.

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Is the Republican Party finally doing the election due diligence it should have been doing since 2020?

1:31 pm

The Republican Party: Finally waking up?
The Republican Party: Is it finally waking up?

Too late is better than nothing: Three stories in the past week suggest that after almost four years of twiddling its thumbs, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is finally beginning to do the hard work necessary to prevent Democratic Party vote tampering in the 2024 election.

This new apparently aggressive approach began almost immediately after Michael Whatley and Lara Trump took over as co-chairs of the committee from Ronna McDaniel, who for seven years seemed incapable of achieving anything beneficial for Republicans, or conservatives for that matter. In addition, a new chief of operations, Chris LaCivita, was brought in.

Four days after these people took over they did a complete house-cleaning of the staff at the committee.

As we reported Monday night, political director Elliott Echols and one of his top staffers, Tripp Looser; communications director Keith Schippert; Mike Mears (chief of staff to former co-chair Drew McKissick); and the lead data director were all given their walking papers. We also reported at that time that an email went out to staff from Sean Cairncross, LaCivita’s number two, stating that all existing vendor contracts were going to be reviewed.

We now know that every one of the RNC’s regional political directors, state directors, RNC Community Center staffers, and members of its election-integrity team were fired. Some of those let go were informed that they could reapply for their old positions, and the rest were simply let go but paid until the end of March.

This article also outlines the major restructuring of the entire committee management staff and programs. Included in these changes was the hiring of two people to coordinate the committee’s election integrity legal effort.

LaCivita brought in Charlie Spies, one of the most experienced Republican election law attorneys out there, as chief counsel, and former Trump attorney Christina Bobb as senior counsel for election integrity.

The arrival of Spies and Bobb has apparently resulted in immediate action, in two states, with more predicted. Two days after these changes the committee sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for failing to maintain proper voter rolls, as required by law. One week later the committee followed up with a similar lawsuit against Nevada’s secretary of state Cisco Aguliar. As noted in the introduction to the Michigan lawsuit (available here [pdf]):
» Read more

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Spanish high-altitude balloon company to fly fullsize prototype capsule from Saudi Arabia

10:20 am

The Spanish high-altitude balloon startup Halo is now planning to fly from Saudi Arabia the second test flight of its fullsize prototype tourist capsule.

Headquartered in Madrid, the company, which specialises in stratospheric commercial flights, will embark on its sixth test flight from the kingdom in June, the company said in a release, with conditional approval from the Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST), the Saudi Arabia authority responsible for space regulation.

Halo Space CEO Carlos Mira said in a statement that this test will validate the integrated operation of all critical systems, “bringing us one step closer to our goal,” which includes plans to begin commercial flights in 2026.

The company plans to set up bases for flights in Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Australia, and Spain, where it hopes to do high altitude tourist balloon flights to about 20 miles elevation. We should also not be surprised if it does classified reconnaissance flights for Saudi Arabia as well.

Whether it will do what it says however still depends on the final outcome of a lawsuit against it by another Spanish company, Zero 2 Infinity, which claims Halo stole its technology. The courts have ruled in Zero 2’s favor, but whether a final settlement has occurred is unclear.

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SpaceX’s next Superheavy/Starship launch, according to SpaceX

10:06 am

According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, the company hopes to be ready to fly its fourth orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship in about six weeks, and will not attempt to deploy any Starlink satellites, as I speculated earlier this week.

“We’ll figure out what happened on both stages,” she said, not discussing what may have gone wrong with either, “and get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks,” or early May. She added that the company doesn’t expect to deploy Starlink satellites on the next Starship launch, as some had speculated. “Things are still in trade, but I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them.”

The story however provided one very important tidbit of information about the launch license process from the FAA. Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted that after the second test flight in November 2023 “the company completed that report in several weeks.”

That statement confirms my conclusion in late December that SpaceX had been ready to launch in early January, but couldn’t do it because the FAA had to spend another two months rewriting SpaceX’s investigation report.

We should therefore not be surprised if the same thing happens on the next test flight. Shotwell says SpaceX hopes to be ready to launch in early May. That means it will likely submit its report to the FAA around then. Expect the agency to then spend at least one to two months retyping the report, as it has done now after both the first and second flights.

Based on this information, we should now expect the fourth flight to occur sometime in the June-July timeframe, with July more likely.

I am sure that the people at the FAA want to move as quickly as possible. I am also sure their bosses in the White House are demanding they dot every “i” and cross every “t”, with meticulous care, so that things cannot move as fast as desired. That has been the pattern since Joe Biden took office, and I have seen no evidence of that changing now.

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A relatively dim star is expected to become one of the brightest in the sky later this year

9:49 am

As it has done twice before at intervals of 80 years, a relatively dim star is expected to go nova later this year, becoming for a short time one of the brightest stars in the sky.

Located in the Northern Crown constellation, T Coronae Borealis (T CrB) is a pretty average looking star, most of the time. With a brightness of about magnitude +10, it’s right on the limits of what you could see with a pair of binoculars, and even if you do go looking there’s not much to see.

At least, that’s the case for about 79 out of 80 years. But on that 80th year, the star suddenly brightens drastically up to around magnitude +2, which puts it on par with the north star Polaris. That makes it one of the brightest stars in the night sky, easily visible with the naked eye even when washed out by city lights. This once-in-a-lifetime outburst last occurred in 1946, and before that 1866.

And lucky for stargazers, T CrB seems to be about two years ahead of schedule, with astronomers predicting it will flare up again between March and September 2024. It’ll appear as a bright ‘new’ star for a few days with the naked eye, and a little over a week with binoculars, before it settles down again for another few decades. Astronomers noticed last year that T CrB had started to dim, which data from 1945 showed preceded the last brightening event.

The star is actually a binary, made up of a white dwarf and a red giant. The white dwarf is pulling material from the red giant, and as that new material piles up, it eventually gathers enough mass to go critical and produce a thermonuclear explosion. The result is a nova, a smaller version of a supernova that unlike supernovae occurs repeatedly.

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Orbit Fab announces price tag for installing its refuelling port on satellites

9:40 am

Orbit Fab has now set a price of $30,000 for its satellite refuelling port, should companies decide to install one on their satellites.

Orbit Fab on March 19 … unveiled pricing for the RAFTI refueling ports, setting the price tag at $30,000 per unit. Executives said the number was based on market research into the pricing of fill and drain valves widely used across the satellite industry. “With a qualified port design, satellite manufacturers can now incorporate RAFTI with more confidence, knowing it has passed rigorous testing,” said Adam Harris,Orbit Fab’s chief commercial officer.

Clearing these tests paves the way for Orbit Fab to deliver the first 100 RAFTI units to U.S. government and commercial customers over the next year, Harris said.

Once in orbit, an Orbit Fab refueling tanker will rendezvous with the satellite, dock at the port, and pump new fuel into the satellite.

While no actual refueling missions are presently scheduled, the company is negotiating with both the Air Force and Space Force to fly such a mission to satellites they have already outfitted with this port.

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Indian rocket startup to attempt suborbital test launch this week

9:30 am

India's spaceports
India’s spaceports

Agnikul, one of the two rocket startups in India attempting to enter the launch market, is targeting March 22, 2024 for the first suborbital test launch of its Agnibaan rocket, lifting off from its own private launch site off the eastern coast of India.

Agnikul Cosmos is all set to conduct the maiden launch of the Agnibaan launch vehicle on Friday. The maiden test is aimed at validating the working of the first stage of the rocket that will power the vehicle in future missions.

Dubbed Agnibaan SOrTeD, the Sub Orbital Technology Demonstrator mission will see the maiden launch from India’s first private launchpad which has been developed with assistance from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The map shows the location of Agnikul’s launch site, south of ISRO’s long established spaceport at Sriharikota. The third spaceport at India’s southern tip is a new facility being built by ISRO.

If this launch is successful, Agnikul will have caught up with the other Indian rocket startup Skyroot, which conducted its own suborbital test launch in November 2022.

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ESA: Euclid vision cleared after being fogged by ground ice, after launch

9:13 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that engineers have successfully “de-iced” the optics of its new Euclid space telescope that developed after it was launched in July 2023.

It was always expected that water could gradually build up and contaminate Euclid’s vision, as it is very difficult to build and launch a spacecraft from Earth without some of the water in our planet’s atmosphere creeping into it. For this reason, there was an ‘outgassing campaign’ shortly after launch where the telescope was warmed up by onboard heaters and also partially exposed to the Sun, sublimating most of the water molecules present at launch on or very near Euclid’s surfaces. A considerable fraction, however, has survived, by being absorbed in the multi-layer insulation, and is now being slowly released in the vacuum of space.

After a huge amount of research – including lab studies into how minuscule layers of ice on mirror surfaces scatter and reflect light – and months of calibrations in space, the team determined that several layers of water molecules are likely frozen onto mirrors in Euclid’s optics. Likely just a few to few tens of nanometres thick – equivalent to the width of a strand of DNA – it’s a remarkable testament to the mission’s sensitivity that it is detecting such tiny amounts of ice.

While Euclid’s observations and science continue, teams have come up with a plan to understand where the ice is in the optical system and mitigate its impact now and in the future, if it continues to accumulate.

It appears this new process has worked, according to a short update at the link.

Normally spacecraft are vented both on the ground during thermal testing, as well as when they reach orbit. It appears some of these normal procedures were either insufficient for Euclid’s needs, or threatened its optics if done as usual. This press release suggests that Euclid required very targeted venting processes that would not harm its sensitive optics, and that the procedures have worked.

I must admit I am suspicious of these claims. During development and after launch Euclid has had a number of problems. First, back in 2017 the NASA instrument on the telescope had to be completely rebuilt when it was found to be defective. Second, after launch engineers discovered unexpected light leaks on the mirror that now limit where it can look. Third, the telescope required a software patch to fix its pointing system, which was confusing cosmic rays for guide stars, causing it to shift positions randomly.

I can’t help wondering if this icing on the mirrors was also due, not to actual planning as suggested by ESA’s press release, but to poor ground testing and engineering that missed what is a common problem on spacecraft and thus required a post-launch improvised fix. I admit I might be wrong, but I still wonder.

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China launches communications orbiter towards the Moon

8:19 pm

Using its Long March 8 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, China today launched its second Quequiao communications satellite to the Moon, designed to relay data from its landers on the far side back to Earth.

The Queqiao 2, or Magpie Bridge 2, satellite was lifted atop a Long March 8 carrier rocket that blasted off at 8:31 am from a coastal launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in China’s southernmost island province of Hainan.

After a 24-minute flight, the satellite was released from the rocket and then entered into a lunar transfer trajectory. At the same time, the solar wings and communication antennas smoothly unfolded.

This satellite is in preparation for the May launch of China’s Chang’e-6 lunar mission to grab samples from the Moon’s far side and bring them back to Earth. In the meantime it will test its capabilities by relaying data from the Chang’e-4 lander and its Yutu-2 rover, still in operation on the far side after landing there in January 2018.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

27 SpaceX
11 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 31 to 20, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 24.

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March 19, 2024 Quick space links

3:33 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who has finally returned from the Solomon Islands after his DX ham expedition (a week late). As he wrote me,

Flights got cancelled on my last week and we were stuck for another week in the Solomons. One of the reasons why we got flown off was it is election time next month, so all the politicians are flying as well. Never fly Fiji Airlines and Solomon Airlines.

I did go to the sites of the battles during the Guadal Canal campaigns during WW2, those are bloody battles that you do not hear or read about.

The Solomon Islands is a third world country and they hate the Chinese. The people are pissed off that their elected officials sold their fishing rights to the Chinese for $85,000. Yes, you read that correctly, a multi-million dollar industry for $85,000 USD. Lots of graft and corruption there. They have so much potential, and they squander it. Only a three hour jump to the west is Fiji, and it enjoys a huge booming tourist economy.

On to the quick links. 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.

  • ULA’s CEO touts the Vulcan upper stages now ready in its manufacturing building

    • Three are shown in the image, suggesting ULA is ready for at least that many launches, assuming Blue Origin delivers the necessary first stage engines.

 

  • Boeing has begun fueling Starliner for launch

    • Takes about two weeks. Once completed the capsule will be sent to ULA’s assembly building for stacking on the rocket. This loading however says they are now committed to the May launch.

 

 

 

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Make no mistake, Israel is about to begin the final defeat of Hamas in Gaza

1:38 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

If anything should illustrate the bankrupt, mindless, stupid and out-of-touch mentality of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it has been the efforts recently of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) to push for a major slow-down or even shut down of Israel’s war against the murderous Hamas leadership and its minions in Gaza.

Biden wants Israel to slow down and to limit its offensive and not move into the last Hamas stronghold in its southern city of Rafah. Schumer has called for new elections in Israel to remove Netanyahu, who Schumer called “an obstacle to peace.”

Both, along with many members of their party, are presently considering ways to punish Israel if it defies them and invades Rafah, including withholding military aid.

Both men are actually excellent examples of the majority of the modern Democratic Party, willing to excuse rape and murder of women and children, if it furthers their political agenda. Both want the American Muslim vote, and are willing to tolerate any evil by Islamic terrorists to get it. In fact, it is very likely that they are doing this because of a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism and Jew-hate within their party ranks.

What these leaders of the Democratic Party do not understand at all is that Israel is no longer interested in compromising with them, with Hamas, or with any Islamic terrorists anywhere. As Netanyahu made clear in his response to these calls this past weekend, Israel is moving forward in this war, and nothing is going to stop it.
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Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford passes away at 93

9:45 am

Apollo 10 astronaut Tom Stafford, who also flew two Gemini missions as well as the Apollo-Soyuz mission, passed away yesterday at the age of 93.

Stafford’s first flight was on Gemini 6, which achieved the first rendezvous in space when it maneuvered close to Gemini 7 during its two week mission. He then flew on Gemini 9, which was to attempt the first docking but was stymied when the shroud on the Agena target vehicle failed to release, blocking the docking port. The crew could only rendezvous again.

Stafford then commanded Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing, flying his lunar module to within about ten miles of the Moon’s surface. His final mission was Apollo-Soyuz, the first joint mission between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Of the 24 Apollo astronauts that flew to the Moon, only seven still live. A truly great generation of Americans, possibly the greatest generation of all, is slowly leaving us.

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Gehrels Swift space telescope now in safe mode

9:33 am

The Gehrels Swift space telescope, used to get real time observations of gamma ray bursts and other high energy deep space events, is presently in safe mode due to the failure of one of its three gyroscopes.

On March 15, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory entered into safe mode, temporarily suspending science operations due to degrading performance from one of its three gyroscopes (gyros), which are used to point the observatory for making observations. The rest of the spacecraft remains in good health.

Swift is designed to successfully operate without one of its gyros if necessary; however, a software update is required. The team is working on the flight software update that would permit the spacecraft to continue science operations using its two remaining gyros.

The telescope has been operating in orbit for nearly twenty years, far longer than originally planned. Its observations were crucial in discovering that gamma ray bursts occur at vast distances and involve either the core collapse of a star or the merger of two neutron stars.

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India’s Vikram lander disturbed the lunar surface the least of all landers

9:29 am

According to an analysis of images taking before and after landing, engineers have concluded that India’s Vikram lander disturbed the lunar surface the least of all landers, due to its use of multiple smaller landing engines.

Presenting the new findings at LPSC on Monday, [ISRO scientist Suresh K] attributed the intriguingly short dust plume to the lack of a central engine on the spacecraft, which resulted in a lower engine thrust during descent. Starting its “rough braking phase” at an orbit of 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) above the lunar surface, when the spacecraft reached 0.4 miles (0.8 kilometers) above its targeted landing area, it switched off two of its four 800-newton engines such that two diagonal engines remained operational all the way until touchdown. The mission used the “least powerful engine till date,” [Suresh] K said. “We’ve observed very less disturbance on the surface.”

You can read their paper here [pdf].

Finding ways to reduce the dust kicked up during landings will be critical for the early missions to the Moon, before landing pads can be constructed. This research suggests that when Starship lands, it should use only its outer engines, and gimbal them sideways, in order to reduce the dust thrown up around it.

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Scientists: DART impact of Dimorphos changed its orbit and reshaped the asteroid

9:18 am

Dimorphos shape change
Click for original graphic.

According to a new study, the DART impact of Dimorphos in September 2022 not only shortened its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos, it reshaped the asteroid itself, warping its widest point sideways from its equator.

You can read the paper here.

More important, the scientists found that the changes evolved over time.

Over the following weeks, the asteroid’s orbital period continued to shorten as Dimorphos lost more rocky material to space, finally settling at 11 hours, 22 minutes, and 3 seconds per orbit – 33 minutes and 15 seconds less time than before impact. This calculation is accurate to within 1 ½ seconds, Naidu said. Dimorphos now has a mean orbital distance from Didymos of about 3,780 feet (1,152 meters) – about 120 feet (37 meters) closer than before impact.

Similarly, the reshaping of the asteroid into its present shape took time. As the scientists noted in their conclusion, “it takes time for a binary system to settle after a kinetic impact event.”

Because of Dimorphus’s rubble pile nature, its shape and orbit should continue to evolve over the coming decades, as more of the ejecta from the impact slowly falls back onto its surface and the asteroid surface adjusts over time. This in turn should also effect the orbit, though by only very tiny amounts.

I continue to wonder if the entire solar orbit of this asteroid binary system was impacted at all by these changes. Any changes would likely be tiny, but it is important to know to see if such an impact can actually do such a thing. To find out will take several more years, as ground telescopes continue to track the asteroid.

In October 2024 the European probe Hera will launch on a mission to this asteroid binary, with its arrival expected in December 2026. At that time we will get a much better look at both asteroids and how the impact affected them.

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