Starlink being tested in Antarctica

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: The National Science Foundation (NSF) has begun testing a single Starlink terminal at its McMurdo station in Antarctic, with the hope that the service can improve communications at the station significantly.

Everyone at the base shares a 17 Mbps link, according to the United States Antarctic Program, which severely limits what people can do. The station actually blocks people from using high-bandwidth apps like Netflix, cloud backups, and video calls, with the exception of once-weekly Skype or FaceTime sessions at a public kiosk or mission-critical communications.

The addition of Starlink probably doesn’t mean that McMurdo residents will be able to hold a Netflix movie night or anything — the terminals can handle around 50-200 Mbps, which still isn’t a ton to go around, even during the winter when far fewer people are at the base — but it could help make transferring important scientific data off of the icy continent easier.

According to SpaceX’s plans, this new service in Antarctica means that by year’s end Starlink will be available on all seven continents.

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New theory: Saturn’s rings came from a lost and destroyed moon

9:24 am

The uncertainty of science: According to a new computer simulation, scientists have proposed that the reason Saturn’s rings are tilted 27 degrees is because they were created by the destruction of a moon 160 million years ago, an event that was also linked to the way the orbits of Saturn and Neptune interact, combined with the on-going slow evolutionary changes in Titan’s orbit around Saturn.

Wisdom and his colleagues believe Saturn acquired its tilt because of a peculiar synchronicity: the precession of Saturn’s spin axis—the way it wobbles like a top with a particular rhythm—is suspiciously in tune with a precession in Neptune’s orbit. If Saturn and Neptune were trapped in this resonance, Saturn’s tilt would be “kind of vulnerable to other forces that could cause it to change,” says Rola Dbouk, an MIT graduate student in planetary science. In 2020, Cassini scientists discovered what the study team thinks is that external stimulus: Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is migrating away from Saturn by 11 centimeters a year. In a study published today in Science, Dbouk, Wisdom, and colleagues show how Titan’s migration, in combination with the Saturn-Neptune resonance, could have ratcheted up Saturn’s tilt over the course of 1 billion years.

The work also yielded a potential explanation for the origin of Saturn’s rings. Using Cassini’s measurements of Saturn’s gravitational fields to model the planet’s interior structure, the researchers refined calculations for the wobble of Saturn’s spin axis and found it is no longer in sync with Neptune. “Something kicked it out of the resonance,” Dbouk says. They first ruled out the possibility that chaotic changes in the orbits of some of the largest of Saturn’s dozens of moons could be responsible. But when they added another moon to the mix, things got interesting.

In simulations, the researchers included an object about the size of Iapetus, Saturn’s third largest moon, orbiting about 43 Saturn radii out—between the orbits of Titan and Iapetus. They found this moon could have provided the necessary nudge to the resonance if it were suddenly knocked from its orbit because of chaotic interactions with its neighbors about 160 million years ago.

To say that this theory is uncertain is no different that saying the sky is blue. It is so uncertain that it is difficult to take it seriously. It could be right, but as one scientist quoted at the article noted, there is no way to test it.

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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

CAPSTONE update: Situation improved but not resolved

9:13 am

Advanced Space, the company operating the CAPSTONE smallsat lunar orbiter that is on the way to the Moon, has issued a hopeful update on the efforts to regain full control of the spacecraft after it began tumbling out-of-control on September 8th.

The communications situation has dramatically improved, the power state of the spacecraft appears to be sufficient for continuous (duty cycled) heating of the propulsion system which dropped below its operational temperature, Over the past few days, CAPSTONE’s power – though limited by the orientation of the spacecraft in its spin relative to the Sun – appears to be sufficient for heating of the propulsion system. When the spacecraft propulsion system temps are at +5C for 12+ hours the system will be further evaluated for use in the recovery operation. Information on the cause of the anomaly has been obtained and is being evaluated, and recovery plans that mitigate risk of further anomalous behavior are being developed. We do not have a timeline for a recovery attempt.

It appears they have not yet done the detumble maneuver that the engineers think will bring the spacecraft back to nominal operations. However, the spacecraft appears to also be on its planned course towards the Moon, so all signs suggest a full recovery is likely.

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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.

September 15, 2022 Quick space links

3:44 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches commercial radar satellite

1:49 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place a commercial radar Earth observation satellite into orbit.

This was the company’s 30th successful launch. As of this writing, the satellite itself has not yet deployed.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 57 to 37 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 57 to 56. The 57 successful American launches so for this year ties for third place with 1964 and 1967 for launches in a year. The record number of U.S. launches in a single year was 70, in 1966. That record should almost certainly be topped this year.

SpaceX will once again attempt to launch 54 Starlink satellites later tonight, having cancelled several times this week due to weather.

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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

Pushback: Fraternities break free from USC’s draconian supervision

11:59 am

What USC wants its students to become
What USC wants its students to become

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Faced with the university’s arbitrary rule that shut them down “without explanation or cause,” ten of the fourteen fraternities that serve the students at the University of Southern California (USC) have broken their affiliation with the university and formed their own oversight body.

Not surprisingly, the university immediately implied that these fraternities were acting to encourage “sexual assaults,” “drug abuse,” “mental health abuse,” and “underage drinking,” and should be blacklisted by USC students. Officials from the new independent council immediately disputed these slanderous claims:

“I want to say unequivocally that no, we are not disaffiliating to dodge these social event policies that were put into place,” Harrison Murphy, a representative from the new council, told The Los Angeles Times.

“Murphy said members that separated from USC did so because they felt the university’s policies toward Greek organizations were unfair and flawed,” The Los Angeles Times reported. “For instance, he said, USC banned all social events from November 2021 through January 2022 even for fraternities that had done no wrong.”

A look at university’s long and complex policy [pdf] for supervising these fraternities makes if very clear why so many have told the university to go jump in a lake. The number of inspections, meetings, and consultations required, combined with a lot of odious paperwork, appears absurdly unreasonable and costly. The policies also apparently allowed the school to shut a fraternity down merely on hearsay accusations, based on incredibly vague standards. Note the highlighted words below:
» Read more

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Billionaire wants to build spinning space station for testing artificial gravity

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Billionaire Jed McCaleb, who earned billions in software and cryptocurrency, has started a company dubbed Vast to develop and build a spinning space station for testing the pros and cons of artificial gravity.

McCaleb is self-financing at the moment, though he hopes to turn his station eventually into a money-making proposition. His company is also right now very small, but he clearly is going for the best in who he is hiring:

Currently, the company has about 20 employees, including Kyle Dedmon, former SpaceX vice president for construction and facilities; Tom Hayford, a systems engineer who has worked for Relativity Space and SpaceX; Molly McCormick, a former SpaceX human factors engineer and Honeybee Robotics program manager; and Colin Smith, a former SpaceX propulsion engineer. In addition, former SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann is advising the company.

This new private space station joins by my count the four other American private space stations now proposed, including Axiom’s station, a partnership led by Sierra Space building Orbital Reef, Nanorack’s Starlab station, and Northrop Grumman’s upgrade station based on its Cygnus freighter.

That’s five private space stations under development in the United States. And there could be others that I have missed.

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Overlapping galaxies

9:22 am

Overlapping galaxies, as seen by Hubble
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, and captures two galaxies that happen to overlap in their line of sight to Earth.

The two galaxies, which have the uninspiring names SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, lie more than a billion light-years from Earth. Despite appearing to collide in this image, the alignment of the two galaxies is likely just by chance — the two are not actually interacting.

This image was taken as part of the citizen-scientist project dubbed Galaxy Zoo, whereby volunteers review lower resolution images of strange-looking galaxies and propose the best for Hubble higher resolution imaging.

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Astronomers propose method for predicting the stars that will go supernovae

9:12 am

The uncertainty of science: Using a computer model based on the most recent data that suggests red supergiant stars like Betelgeuse are the kind of stars that produce certain kinds of supernovae, astronomers now think they have a method for predicting which of those stars are about to go supernovae.

You can read the science paper here. From the link above:

In a few examples, astronomers have looked back at old catalogs and found images of the stars before they exploded, and they all seem to be red supergiants like Betelgeuse. That’s a clear indication that those kinds of stars are supernova candidates, ready to go off at a moment’s notice.

The stars that result in these kinds of supernovas are thought to have dense shrouds of material surrounding them before they explode. These shrouds are orders of magnitude denser than what’s measured around Betelgeuse.

More importantly, the data suggests that once this shroud of material forms, the supernova will follow, in just a few years. As the scientists conclude in their paper:

The final overarching conclusion we can make from this work is that, shortly before core-collapse, [red supergiants] must undergo some prodigious mass-losing event which radically alters the appearance of the star. Therefore, the signature of an imminent explosion should be a dramatic change in the progenitor stars’ optical – near-IR photometry on timescales of less than a month. Such a signature should be detectable in the coming era of wide-field short cadence photometry. [emphasis mine]

Near-IR (infrared) photometry is exactly in the wavelengths in which the James Webb Space Telescope operates. Thus, if it is lucky and sees this kind of star in an image, and a supernova follows shortly thereafter, this theory will have been proven correct.

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Company providing satellite engines for smallsats raises $28 million

8:58 am

Capitalism in space: Morpheus, a German company focused on providing small satellites engines for maneuver and de-orbit, has successfully raised $28 million in private investment capital.

Morpheus, a company originally focused on producing miniature electric thrusters, has broadened the scope of its business to offer propulsion systems and software to help satellites maneuver in orbit and deorbit at the conclusion of their missions.

Last year, Morpheus unveiled a suite of products designed to reduce the cost and complexity of operating satellite constellations. The Sphere Ecosystem includes thrusters with nontoxic propellant, plug-and-play autopilot, space mission software and a web application.

This is not the only German company moving into the new space market. Three startup rocket companies have all successfully raised capital. Morpheus’s success, along with those rocket companies, suggests that Germany is quickly transitioning from a government-run space industry to a privately-run one.

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Update on SpaceX’s Starship and Superheavy

8:50 am

Link here. The article not only outlines the test program leading to the first launch of prototypes Starship #24 and Superheavy #7, it describes the status of later prototypes, as well as the construction of SpaceX’s Starship launch site in Florida. Key quote:

Booster 7’s gradual approach to static fire testing will allow the teams to fix issues as they test and fully mature procedures and software ahead of the long-awaited orbital flight of Starship. Should this gradual testing go without a hitch, it could culminate in one or perhaps even two 33-engine static fire tests of Booster 7 on the OLM [orbital launch mount].

Once this testing is completed and any issues found fixed, it’ll be cleared to proceed into another phase of testing: Ship 24 will then be stacked on top of Booster 7 for combined tests. This could include launch countdown simulations, an eventual full-up countdown, and a 33-engine static fire test.

SpaceX hopes to complete this by mid-next month and clear both vehicles for launch shortly after. However, as we’ve seen in the past few weeks, any issues encountered during this intense test campaign could well mean a slip to later into the year and, perhaps, into next year.

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