Russia launches military satellite using Angara rocket; new global record for launches

9:00 am

Russia today successfully launched a classified military satellite using its new Angara rocket in its Angara-1.2 configuration.

Like ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6, Angara is modular, so depending on the payload’s launch needs, it can have additional strap-on boosters, from none to four. This launch had no side boosters at all.

The launch was the 135th of 2022, passing the record set last year of 134 successful launches for the entire world in one year. In 2022 the record was broken in the last week. This year the record has been broken two and a half months before the end of the year. Based on the number of planned launches for the rest of the year, 2022 is likely to easily exceed 150 launches.

And the reason this number going through the roof is because of the advent of private enterprise, private ownership of rockets, and intense competition. New rocket companies are sprouting up everywhere worldwide, each with their own rocket competing aggressively for business by lowering costs. The lower costs make it possible for more satellite companies to find financing because making money will be easier. This in turn results in more customers for the rocket companies, which encourages more competition which pushes the price down further.

The cycle feeds on itself, and will only end when the full potential of space exploration is reached. And since that potential is literally endless, this growth for the human race is also endless. The only thing that could stop it is if human civilization decides to stop it, intentionally, either from willful ignorance or fear.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

47 SpaceX
45 China
15 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 67 to 45 in the national rankings, but now trails the rest of the world combined 68 to 67.

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OSIRIS-REx does mid-course correction

8:36 am

To better refine its path back to Earth in order to properly aim its sample return capsule, engineers had OSIRIS-REx do a short successful 30 second engine burn on September 21, 2022.

Nor will this be the only course correction prior to sample return on September 24, 2023 in Utah.

To ensure a safe delivery, “Over the next year, we will gradually adjust the OSIRIS-REx trajectory to target the spacecraft closer to Earth,” said Daniel Wibben, trajectory-and-maneuver design lead with KinetX Inc. “We have to cross Earth’s orbit at the time that Earth will be at that same location.” Wibben works closely with the Lockheed Martin team in Littleton, Colorado, that flies the spacecraft.

Last month’s maneuver was the first time the OSIRIS-REx team changed the spacecraft’s trajectory since it left Bennu on May 10, 2021. Following this course adjustment, OSIRIS-REx would pass about 1,367 miles (2,200 kilometers) from Earth. A series of maneuvers beginning in July 2023 will bring OSIRIS-REx even closer, to 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the surface, close enough to release its sample capsule for a precision landing – via parachute at the Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert.

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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

China launches military satellite

8:31 am

Using its Long March 2D rocket, China today successfully launched a satellite in its classified Yaogan series, suspected to be for military reconnaissance.

In fact, so little is known about the Yaogan satellites that we aren’t even sure how many were placed in orbit today. Normally a Yaogan launch puts three satellites into orbit (which is what this Space.com article assumes). The story from China’s state-run press above however does not say this at all. Instead, it implies that only one Yaogan satellite was launched.

Regardless, the leaders in the 2022 launch race:

47 SpaceX
45 China
14 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 67 to 45 in the national rankings. It is now tied with the entire world combined 67 to 67. This launch today also brings the launch total this year to 134, which ties the record for the most successful launches in a single year, set last year. With two and a half months still to go, 2022 should end up breaking that record significantly.

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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 successfully launches communications satellite

10:32 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched a Eutelsat communications satellite using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage completed its third mission, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings completed their fourth flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

47 SpaceX
44 China
14 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 67 to 44 in the national rankings. It now leds with the entire world combined 67 to 66.

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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

Two solar eclipses coming to the U.S. next year

12:47 pm

The next eclipses to cross the U.S.
Map by Michael Zeiler (GreatAmericanEclipse.com). Click for original.

The U.S. public will get to see two different solar eclipses during a six month period, starting one year from today.

The map to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the dates and the path of both eclipses.

On 14 October 2023, anyone under clear skies within a path that sweeps from Oregon to Texas and then through parts of Central and South America will see an annular (“ring”) eclipse. Just six months later, on 8 April 2024, a total solar eclipse will sweep from Mexico to Texas to the Canadian Maritimes, plunging day into night and revealing the magnificent solar corona for anyone fortunate to be within the path of totality and under clear skies. Nearly everyone in North America will have a partial solar eclipse both days.

As always with eclipses, great care must be taken to watch it. With the 2017 eclipse Diane and I had good filters, but even so I noticed my eyes were very tired for several days afterward.

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Pushback: Central Florida U forced to end censorship and blacklisting

12:31 pm

University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech
University of Central Florida: Its hostility to free
speech had better change soon!

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In a settlement late last month [pdf] resulting from an April ruling against it by the courts, the University of Central Florida agreed to end its programs and policies designed to censor and even blacklist students who expressed opinions the university did not like.

The lawsuit [pdf] was brought by the legal organization Speech First, a student membership organization which acts to stop colleges from squelching the first amendment rights of students.

UCF officials agreed to pay $35,000 in legal fees, rewrite a harassment policy and discontinued the bias response team in a settlement with Speech First.

…The settlement “led to the elimination of UCF’s Stasi-like bias response team and ensured that the university’s policies actually consider the fundamental rights of their students,” Cherise Trump, the group’s executive director, wrote in a news release [pdf]. “Our win in the Eleventh Circuit not only set precedent in all of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, but it also guarantees that universities recognize that the law is not on their side when they want to violate their students’ rights and shut down dissenting ideas.”

The college’s bias response teams were structured to report and punish any student for…
» Read more

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Perseverance spots Phobos

10:57 am

Phobos, as seen by Perseverance on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on January 12, 2022 by one of the high resolution cameras on the Mars rover Perseverance, and shows the Martian moon Phobos.

As noted in an update today by Claire Newman, one of the members of the science team,

This provides a measurement, using visible light, of the amount of dust in the nighttime atmosphere, which can be compared to similar measurements made by looking at the sun during the daytime, and to nighttime measurements of dust abundance made in the infrared by MEDA [another Perseverance instrument].

There have been three attempts to land on Phobos, all by the Russians, all of which failed. At present a Japanese mission to Phobos, dubbed Mars Moons eXploration or MMX, is scheduled to launch in 2024. This is a planned sample return mission, and will also include a rover.

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Lucy to fly past Earth on October 16th

10:13 am

Lucy solar panel graphic
Artist’s impression of solar panel

As part of its planned route to get to the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit, the planetary probe Lucy is scheduled to fly only 220 miles above the Earth’s surface on October 16th.

Lucy will be passing the Earth at such a low altitude that the team had to include the effect of atmospheric drag when designing this flyby. Lucy’s large solar arrays increase this effect.

“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”

That solar array remains unlatched (as shown in the graphic above), but because it is almost completely deployed and is producing about 90% of its intended electricity, engineers have ceased efforts to complete deployment and latching.

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