SpaceX has caused a 77% drop in price for transferring data by satellite

9:12 am

According to a new study, SpaceX’s lower launch costs and its Starlink satellite constellation has caused a 77% drop in the price for transfering data by satellite in the past five years.

The costs involved in providing capacity have also declined in recent years following satellite manufacturing advances — and greater availability of launches thanks primarily to SpaceX. The average cost base of supplying HTS capacity in North America has dropped from around $40 a month per megabit per second in 2019 to about $12 in 2023, according to Euroconsult.

However, Euroconsult expects costs to stabilize over the next two to three years in the Americas and Europe, potentially slowing down the decline in capacity prices.

I think Euroconsult might be wrong about that last conclusion. Increased competition in the launch industry as well as the launch of other satellite constellations will force further drops in prices. The only threat to this continuing drop will outside forces, such as an overall economic collapse, war, or increased regulation.

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Abraham Lincoln – an annual tribute to celebrate his birthday

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The memory of this man and what he stood for and accomplished must not be forgotten, which is why I try to celebrate his memory each year with a tribute on his birthday. As I wrote in 2021,

[T]hough he freed the slaves, I think Lincoln’s most enduring contribution to American history, a contribution that now has sadly been lost, was his limitless good will for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. Had he not been assassinated, American history might have been far better because Lincoln would have had the clout to ease the worst elements of Reconstruction, while forcing through reforms in the former southern slave states.

Those reforms did not happen until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and are now being abandoned in the 2020s by black supremacists in the academic community who are imposing new racist Jim Crow laws nationwide, designed to favor blacks and other minorities.

Listen to the words of the first song, which was a Lincoln campaign song. He stood for freedom for all, and put his life on the line for that principle. From the pictures you can see the evolution of this kind-hearted but determined man from youth to mid-age, with all the troubles of the Civil War reflected in his face and mouth.

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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, 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

February 12, 2024 Quick space links

3:27 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.

 

 

 

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Martian dunes with strange splotches

2:00 pm

Martian dunes with splotches

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 20, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels as “Dunes with Blotches.”

The blotches, or as I call them splotches, are the round dark patches on dunes themselves. Though their darkness is reminiscent of the dark patches that appear as spider features in the south polar regions of Mars, there are problems linking the two. The spiders form when the winter mantle of dry ice that falls as snow begins to weaken when the Sun reappears in the spring. Sunlight travels through the clear dry ice to warm the base of the mantle, causing it to sublimate into carbon dioxide gas. That gas however is trapped at the base, and only escapes when the thin mantle cracks at weak points. As the gas puffs out it carries with it dust, which leaves dark patches on the surface that disappear when the mantle disappears entirely by summer.

In the southern hemisphere at the poles the ground is somewhat stable, so the trapped gas appears to travel along the same paths each year to the same weak spots. This in turn causes it to carve spidery patterns in the ground, like river tributaries, except here the tributaries of gas flow uphill to their escape point. At the north pole the ground is not as stable. Instead we have many dunes, so that the dry ice mantle sublimates away at different places each year. There is no chance to form such spider patterns over time.

Making these splotches more puzzling is the season. This picture was taken in the winter, at a time one would think no dry ice is sublimating away.
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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.

Pushback: 9-year-old slandered by left goes to Super Bowl wearing face paint

12:13 pm

Holden Armenta on his way to the Superbowl
Holden Armenta in face-paint and headdress,
on his way to the Superbowl. Click for video.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Though this will the third time in less than a week I have devoted my column to this story, this update today is absolutely essential, because it might be the happiest and most hopeful story I have reported in years.

The screen capture to the right was taken from a short X video posted by one of the two podcasters who had started a GiveSendGo campaign to send Holden Armenta to the Super Bowl. Armenta had been slandered falsely by Deadspin senior writer Carron Phillips, who claimed the boy was a racist because he attended a Kansas City Chiefs game in blackface, when all the boy did was put on facepaint of the team’s colors to cheer them on, like any ordinary 9-year-old boy. Worse, both that news outlet and Phillips compounded the false slander by refusing to correct their error when it was clearly documented it was false. That defiance was made even more disgusting when it was revealed that Armenta and his family are actually American Indians themselves.

Even though the fund-raising campaign fell short of its $22,000 goal, raising about half that, it appears that the podcasters decided to take Holden and his family to the game anyway. Kudos to them!

The video of Holden is joyous in numerous ways. » Read more

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The volcanic world of Io, as seen by Juno in all its fly-bys

9:16 am

Map of Io
Click for full resolution image.

The mosaic of images above, reduced and sharpened to post here, was compiled by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt, Jason Perry, and John Rogers from images taken of the Jupiter moon Io during the three close fly-bys by the orbiter Juno that occurred during its 55th, 57th, and 58th orbits. From the caption:

Global map of Io by JunoCam, combining maps from PJ55, PJ57 and PJ58. Both the sunlit side and the Jupiter-lit-dark side are included. PJ55 map by Gerald Eichstädt; PJ57 map by Jason Perry; PJ58 map by Gerald Eichstädt and John Rogers. Some scaling and shifting was performed in order to align the maps with each other and with the USGS Voyager/Galileo map. Colours were adjusted for better compatability. –John Rogers.

A labeled version, showing the names of many volcanoes but only of the areas photographed during the most recent 58th orbit fly-by on February 3, 2024, can be seen here.

As Juno’s later fly-bys will be progressively farther away, we will no longer get better views of Io until another spacecraft arrives in a Jupiter orbit capable to returning to Io, possibly decades from now. Though Europa Clipper will arrive in Jupiter orbit April 2030, that orbit is designed to repeatedly fly close past Europa, and will likely never get close to Io.

Thus, this map provides a baseline for determing any changes that occur on Io in the coming years.

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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

Ukraine: Russia using Starlink; Musk: No we don’t allow it

8:40 am

Over the weekend Ukrainain officials reiterated the claim from last week that Russia soldiers are using Starlink terminals illegally in occupied territories.

Earlier on Sunday, Ukrainian military intelligence said Russia is using Musk’s satellites to facilitate communications on the battlefield. The intelligence agency posted audio of an exchange between two Russian soldiers from the 83rd Assault Brigade in the Donetsk region, claiming that the Russians were speaking over Starlink.

Ukraine intelligence did not specify how many terminals it believed Russia had or how they might have been obtained. Still, Ukrainian Military Intelligence Spokesperson Andriy Yusov said that the use of Starlink by Russians was becoming “systemic.”

Musk soon responded on X, stating that SpaceX does not sell any of its terminals in Russia, and it immediately blocks use of stolen terminals in Russia once detected.

Musk however was very careful to say nothing about what happens in the occupied territories of the Ukraine where Russia troops operate. In the recent slow gains of territory that the Russians have achieved it could have captured terminals and begun using them, in their correct location. SpaceX would have no way to knowing who the user is.

I expect SpaceX will now take actions to deal with this issue, using information provided by the Ukrainians.

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Greece signs Artemis Accords

10:00 am

Greece yesterday became the 35th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance established by these bi-laterial individual agreements between the U.S. and each nation.

The full list of signatories to the Accords is now as follows: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

The original goal of the Artemis Accords, established during the Trump administration, was to create an alliance focused on allowing property rights in space that would also act to establish legal rules to protect those rights, something that the Outer Space Treaty forbids. It appears that under the Biden administration those goals have increasingly been pushed aside for the globalist goals of the UN. The language of NASA’s press release illustrates this:

“As humanity embarks on a great adventure, returning to the Moon and preparing for traveling beyond the Moon, the Artemis Accords serve as a beacon of collaboration and cooperation among nations, paving the way for a sustainable and peaceful exploration of space,” said [Giorgos Gerapetritis, Greek’s foreign minister].

The Artemis Accords reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. They also strengthen the commitment by the United States and signatory nations to the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices NASA and its partners support, including the public release of scientific data. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted word is one of the many buzzwords used by globalists to signal their priorities, similar to the use of the term ” equitable access” by Belgium officials when it signed the accords in January. Rather than focus on allowing private enterprise and freedom, the focus now is to establish rules to control what people do.

The right leadership from the United States could change this shift in focus, but right now the U.S. does not have such leadership.

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SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites

11:50 pm

After about four scrubs due to weather, SpaceX today finally launched another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage successfully completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

12 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran

At present American private enterprise leads the entire world combined 14 to 13 in successful launches.

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February 8, 2024 Quick space links

1:49 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.

 

 

Posted early because I am off to be a volunteer at this year’s annual Night to Shine event, founded by Tim Tebow.

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Pushback: Paypal’s blacklisting causes it to lose significant business

1:15 pm

Paypal: hostile to freedom

It never pays to antagonize your customers: Paypal announced last week that it is laying off 2,500 workers, a reduction of its work force by about 9%, repeating a similar round of layoffs one year ago.

In other words, the company has shrunk by almost 20% since January 2023. The article notes the following financial issues:

Shares of the payments giant have plunged more than 20% over the past year as earnings faltered and the company lowered its full-year guidance for adjusted operating margin. PayPal named [Chief Executive Officer Alex Chriss] last year to replace Dan Schulman.

PayPal was an early disrupter in the payments industry, but rivals including Apple Inc. and Zelle have since crowded the space, leaving PayPal struggling to keep pace. At least four analysts downgraded the stock this month, citing a range of concerns from rising competition to pressure on profitability.

What the article ignores is the blackballing and censorship by Paypal under the leadership of Dan Schulman that directly antagonized its customer base.
» Read more

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Status of ULA sale offer, as seen by bankers

12:31 pm

Link here. The article outlines the perspective of the banking community to the sale, relative to the three potential known purchasers, Blue Origin, Cerberus, and Textron.

[M]ost contended that a deal should have been finalized years ago, as SpaceX now dominates the global rocket launch market and has grabbed share from ULA’s best customer, the U.S. military. The sticky part of a sale, those bankers said, is the need for new ownership that can both streamline ULA and invest in further innovation.

The price is another sticking point: Bankers suggested ULA’s owners initially sought more than $4 billion for the company, but the consensus of a reasonable winning bid was in the range of $2 billion to $2.5 billion. As one banker emphasized to me, there’s more competition among heavy launch vehicles like Vulcan today than there was a decade ago, and the rocket’s only just getting going now.

First, it appears that Textron has already dropped out. Second, the reason the sale was delayed was solely the fault of Blue Origin, as delays in delivering its BE-4 rocket engine to ULA caused the first launch of the Vulcan rocket to be delayed years. The sale couldn’t happen until that rocket was proven flightworthy.

The analysis between Blue Origin and Cerberus makes it hard picking either as the likely winner. It suggests that while Blue Origin, as a rocket company, might be able to more quickly take advanage of the ULA’s assets, Cerberus would be a better managerial fit, more able to trim the fat and make ULA more competitive. For sure, Blue Origin shows no ability to trim fat or work fast.

The bankers also indicated a dark horse could still appear.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Axiom commercial manned mission to ISS splashes down safely

10:15 am

The four astronauts on Axiom’s third commercial manned mission to ISS successfully splashed down safely today in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida, with SpaceX recovery crews quickly picking them and the capsule Freedom up from the water.

The crew, made up of three European passengers and one Axiom employee, spent 21 days in space, about 17 on ISS. Axiom sold the tickets, and then purchased the ride from SpaceX and the time on ISS from NASA.

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SpaceX denies Russian claim that Starlink terminals sold illegally will work in the Ukraine

9:48 am

Russian media sources have recently claimed that Starlink terminals are being sold illegally to Russians for use in the Ukraine and in Russia near the Ukraine border, where they will supposedly work. SpaceX has now denied that claim.

[A]ccording to a report from Russian media outlet ComNews, vendors have been selling the equipment because it allegedly works near the country’s borders and in Ukraine, including the Russian-occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with Crimea.

That’s contrary to the official Starlink map, which shows the internet access restricted in Russian-occupied areas. Still, as evidence, ComNews cites the online pages of several vendors, including one that notes the Starlink dish can be used in the “CBO,” a reference to Russian military operation in Ukraine. Although the Russian military has a ban on using Starlink equipment, some volunteer military troops have been buying it up.

The terminals are supposedly obtained secretly through Dubai. The SpaceX denial on X noted that they would deactivate any unauthorized terminal and that…

Starlink also does not operate in Dubai. Starlink cannot be purchased in Dubai nor does SpaceX ship there. Additionally, Starlink has not authorized any third-party intermediaries, resellers or distributors of any kind to sell Starlink in Dubai.

This story however does raise the long-standing question of how SpaceX can control the use and ownership of its terminals. Once shipped to a legal customer, what is to stop that customer from selling that terminal to anyone who can then ship it and sell it to some third party in a blocked region? SpaceX can probably identify the location of its terminals, and if one is found not to be where it should be, deactivate it. But could smugglers eventually block SpaceX from getting this location data?

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Russia completes its first launch of 2024

9:28 am

Russia early today successfully completed its first launch of 2024 by launching a classified military satellite, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its military Plesetsk spaceport in the northeast of Russia.

The launch placed the satellite in a polar orbit. Though this likely means the rocket’s lower stages crashed in very remote areas of the Arctic, either in Russia or over the Arctic Ocean, no word on if they hit the ground near habitable areas.

The 2024 launch race:

11 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan
1 Rocket Lab
1 Russia

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More hiking possibilities on Mars!

2:21 pm

More hiking possibilities on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconniassance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed a “terrain sample” by the science team, this picture was likely chosen not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera schedule so as to maintain that camera’s proper temperature.

When the team needs to do this they try to pick interesting targets. In this case the location is the region of many many parallel north-south fissures that extend for more than 800 miles south of the giant but relative flat shield volcano Alba Mons. These fissures are grabens, cracks formed when underground pressure pushed the ground up and caused it to spread and crack.

What attracted me to this picture is the ridgeline. It struck me as a wonderful place to hike. I have even indicated in red the likely route any trail-maker would pick to go from the valley below up onto the ridge, and then along its knifelike edge to the south. The height of the cliff down to the east valley averages about six hundred feet, guaranteeing beautiful scenery the entire length.
» Read more

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Pushback: Parents of 9-year-old slandered by Deadspin reporter sue

11:55 am

Holden (R) with his father Bubba
Holden (R) with his father Raul, being interviewed
on television following the slander. Click for video.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: This is follow-up to my story only two days ago about the defamation and slander of 9-year-old Holden Armenta by Deadspin Senior Writer Carron Phillips. Both had falsely accused this innocent child of racism because he attended a game wearing facepaint with the red and black colors of the Kansas City Chiefs, like numerous fans have done for decades. My story was about a GiveSendGo fund-raising campaign still on-going to send Holden to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas this coming weekend to see his team play, in person.

On that same day the boy’s parents filed a lawsuit against Deadspin and its parent company, G/O Media, accusing both of defaming both Holden and themselves, and demanding actual and punitive damages.

You can read the complaint here [pdf]. It is a heart-breaking document to read, especially when it describes the painful consequences to Holden because of Phillips’ vicious and false attack.
» Read more

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A galaxy with a tail of star-forming clusters

10:34 am

A galaxy with a tail of newborn stars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of twelve different galaxies that have long tails. In this case, the galaxy is named Arp-Madore 1054-325, and the tail that trails off in the upper left is caused by the gravity of the nearby neighboring galaxy, which I think is the patch of stars just below it. Within it are many star clusters where new stars are forming. From the caption:

A team of astronomers used a combination of new observations and archival data to get ages and masses of tidal tail star clusters. They found that these clusters are very young — only 10 million years old. And they seem to be forming at the same rate along tails stretching for thousands of light-years. “It’s a surprise to see lots of the young objects in the tails. It tells us a lot about cluster formation efficiency,” said lead author Michael Rodruck of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia.

Before the mergers, the galaxies were rich in dusty clouds of molecular hydrogen that may have simply remained inert. But the clouds got jostled and bumped into each other during the encounters. This compressed the hydrogen to the point where it precipitated a firestorm of star birth.

In some ways this galaxy portends one possible future of the Milky Way, after it collides with the nearby Andromeda galaxy in the far future.

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Pieces of a defunct ESA Earth-observation satellite will hit the Earth

10:05 am

The orbit of a defunct European Space Agency (ESA) Earth-observation satellite, ERS-2, is expected to decay later this month, with most of the satellite burning up in the atmosphere but some pieces surviving to hit the ground.

The satellite will break apart when it hits an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km), according to the FAQ [from ESA]. Most of the resulting fragments will then burn up in the atmosphere. Don’t worry too much about the ones the make it down to the surface, for they’ll contain no toxic or radioactive substances, according to ESA.

The article and the FAQ both go out of their way to minimize the risks. Both are correct. However, the risk of this debris hitting anyone, though very very very VERY small, still exists.

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India’s proposed space station now has a name: Bharatiya Antariksh Station

9:56 am

Though no money has yet been allocated to build it, and India’s space agency ISRO has only begun design work, it has now apparently decided to name the space station the Bharatiya Antariksh Station.

They tentatively hope to launch a test module in 2028 to do unmanned rendezvous and docking tests, with assembly beginning in 2028 and completed by 2035.

None of this schedule is certain of course. ISRO has been proposing this space station since 2017. Nothing has ever come of those plans.

Only now does this seem more likely, with India’s effort to shift its space effort from a government-owned and run program to a competitive commercial industry.

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India to do 19 launches through March 2025

9:41 am

India's planned launches through March 2025

According to India’s space bureaucracy IN-SPACe, that nation has planned as many as 19 launches through March 2025.

The image to the right shows the manifest that IN-SPACe released. That agency is tasked with encouraging India’s private and independnt space industry, and it claims that 30 missions in total are planned, with half by commercial companies. This number however includes payloads and suborbital test missions, not just orbital launches. Based on the manifest to the right it appears that 19 of these missions are launches, with six being entirely private launches. One of those private launches, the first of Agnikul’s commercial Agnibaan rocket, will be suborbital.

It thus appears that in 2024 India hopes to complete 14 orbital launches. If so, this would double that nation’s previous record of seven launches in a single year. This schedule is very aspirational, with those six entirely commercial launches likely not all happening as planned.

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Solar-orbiting asteroid that is a quasi-moon of Venus gets a name

9:18 am

The asteroid 2002-VE, discoverd in 2002, is in a solar orbit that makes it a quasi-moon of Venus. This means that the asteroid and Venus are in very similar orbits around the Sun, with 2002-VE shifting back and forth periodically from within Venus’s orbit to outside it.

An official name for 2002-VE has now been approved by the International Astronautical Union, and the history of that name, Zoozve, is a silly one. It appears a podcaster had misread the name on a poster of the solar system that was on the wall of his 2-year-old son’s bedroom. (You can see the poster here). He read “2”s as “Z”s, so that instead of seeing “2002VE” he read it as “Zoozve”.

Since then he has been campaigning to make this misreading official, and has finally succeeded.

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Vibration testing of Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle completed

9:01 am

NASA engineers have now completed vibration testing of Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle, set to launch on a Vulcan rocket later this year.

Reading between the blather in the NASA press release at the link, it appears that testing was successful, proving that the Dream Chaser spacecraft can survive the vibrations of launch. This conclusion by me however remains unconfirmed. Engineers are now preparing the mini-shuttle for environmental testing.

Next up, Dream Chaser will move to a huge, in-ground vacuum chamber that will continue to simulate the space environment Dream Chaser will encounter on its mission. The spaceplane will be put through its paces, experiencing low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating.

Previously the launch date had been targeting April 2024, according to ULA officials. It now appears, from the vagueness of recent reports, as well as the actual testing now in progress, that the launch date has slipped. They appear to be targeting the first half of 2024, but are as yet unwilling to commit to a date.

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Scientists: We think the Saturn moon Mimas may have a young underground ocean

8:45 am

The uncertainty of science: Using computer modeling based on orbital data obtained from the orbiter Cassini, scientist now believe the Saturn moon Mimas may have a young underground ocean.

[I]n 2014, a team that included Lainey and that was led by Radwan Tajeddine, an astronomer then at the Paris Observatory, analysed images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which explored Saturn and its moons between 2004 and 2017. By studying how the 400-kilometre-wide Mimas wobbled in its orbit around Saturn, the researchers concluded that it had either a buried ocean or a rugby-ball-shaped core. As more scientists studied how an ocean could have formed and evolved, it became harder to explain the geology of Mimas without invoking an ocean.

In the 2024 study, Lainey and his colleagues seem to have nailed the case. They went further than they had in 2014, by analysing not just the orbit’s wobble but also how Mimas’s rotation around Saturn changed over time. The team combined Cassini observations with simulations of Mimas’s interior and its orbit to conclude that there must be an ocean 20–30 kilometres below Mimas’s surface.

The journal Nature published the paper, and the link above goes to an article in Nature describing the results, with a headline “The Solar System has a new ocean — it’s buried in a small Saturn moon.” This is very poor journalism, but very typical these days from Nature. Nowadays that journal routinely pushes the results it publishes with great certainty, even if the data is quite uncertain.

And these results are quite uncertain. They are based on computer simulations using orbital data only. No data from Mimas itself is involved. While that orbital data and computer models might suggest an underground ocean that is very young, that is the best it does, “suggest.” Without question this conclusion is very intriguing, but it should not be treated as a discovery, only a theory that still needs confirmation with much better data.

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