Orbital tug startup Impulse Space raises $150 million

9:12 am

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced yesterday that it has raised $150 million in private investment capital, money it will use to develop its planned two tugs, dubbed Mira and Helios.

So far the company, founded by former SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has only flown one mission, a demo mission of Mira last year that had some communications and software problems but was still declared a success.

Both Mira and Helios use chemical propulsion systems that offer large amounts of delta-v, or change in velocity, that can be provided quickly. Impulse said when it announced Helios that the vehicle could take a five-ton satellite from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit in less than a day.

It hopes to fly an upgraded version of Mira late next year, and the first Helios mission in 2026.

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Carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide found on the surface of Pluto’s moon Charon

9:03 am

Using spectroscopic data from the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have detected both carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on the surface of Pluto’s moon Charon, adding these chemicals to the previously detected water ice and ammonia-bearing chemicals that give the planet its gray and red colors.

The team compared the spectroscopic observations with laboratory measurements and detailed spectral models of the surface, concluding that carbon dioxide is present primarily as a surface veneer on a water ice-rich subsurface. “Our preferred interpretation is that the upper layer of carbon dioxide originates from the interior and has been exposed to the surface through cratering events. Carbon dioxide is known to be present in regions of the protoplanetary disk from which the Pluto system formed,” Protopapa said.

The presence of hydrogen peroxide on the surface of Charon clearly indicates that the water ice-rich surface is altered by solar ultraviolet light and energetic particles from the solar wind and galactic cosmic rays. Hydrogen peroxide forms from oxygen and hydrogen atoms originating from the breakup of water ice due to incoming ions, electrons or photons.

The theory proposing the dry ice comes from the interior is interesting, but there simply is not enough data to take it very seriously at this point.

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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 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

Russia delays first launch of new Soyuz-5 rocket to 2026

8:52 am

According to Russia’s state-run press, the first launch of its new Soyuz-5 rocket will not occur in 2025 as previously predicted, but has been delayed to 2026.

No reason for the delay was given, but I suspect it is because Russia has still been unable to negotiate a deal with Kazakhstan for the use of the planned launchpad at Baikonur. In 2023 Kazakhstan seized control of the Soyuz-5 launchpad, and has apparently so far refused to agree to a new deal for allowing Russia to use it.

These negotiating delays with Kazakhstan are not the Soyuz-5 rocket’s only issues. Russia first announced the rocket in 2015, with its first launch planned for 2022. Thus, long before Kazakhstan retook its launchpad in 2023 the project was behind schedule. Other plans in 2019 to launch it from the former commercial Sea Launch platform that Russia took over have come to nothing.

Kazakhstan’s unwillingness to negotiate almost certainly stems from Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. It now fears Russia, and is very reluctant to give it more control of Kazakhstan’s assets.

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Engineers shut down one science instrument on Voyager-2 to conserve power

8:38 am

In order to keep the spacecraft functioning as its nuclear power source dwindles, engineers have now shut down one of Voyager-2’s operating science instruments in order to keep four instruments operating.

Mission engineers at NASA have turned off the plasma science instrument aboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft due to the probe’s gradually shrinking electrical power supply.

Traveling more than 12.8 billion miles (20.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, the spacecraft continues to use four science instruments to study the region outside our heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun. The probe has enough power to continue exploring this region with at least one operational science instrument into the 2030s. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence is the first time I have ever seen any prediction for the life of Voyager-2 to extend past 2030. Previously, project engineers have consistently stated that the power would run down sometime around 2026. This extension suggests the decision has been made to do whatever can be done to keep the spacecraft functioning for as long as possible, not so much to do science but to test the limits of its engineering. To do so, they will step-by-step shut down instruments rather than keep them all going.

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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.

October 1, 2024 Quick space links

3:29 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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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

Busy cooking

3:20 pm

I have not posted this afternoon because I am cooking my quarterly batch of tomato meat sauce, as per my mother’s recipe that was handed to her from our Italian-Jewish relatives. Time consuming, but I get enough frozen to last for at least three months.

One of my readers requested I share the recipe, so here it is. The quantites below are for making a large batch, 9 meals for two (splitting a meatball), and an additional uncounted number of pasta dishes (meat ravioli, spaghetti, rigatoni, etc). Usually lasts Diane and I about three months.

Ma Zimmerman’s spaghetti sauce
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Astronomers detect exoplanet half as massive as the Earth around second closest star system

11:28 am

Using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, astronomers have detected evidence of an exoplanet about half as massive as the Earth orbiting Barnard’s Star, only six light years away and the second closest star system.

Barnard’s Star is a prime target in the search for exoplanets due to its proximity and its status as a red dwarf, a common type of star where low-mass planets are often found. Despite a promising signal detected in 2018, no planet had been definitively confirmed around it until now. The ESPRESSO spectrograph [on VLT] … enabled the astronomers to detect Barnard b, a subterrestrial planet that orbits the star in 3.15 days. The team also identified signals indicating the possible presence of three other candidate exoplanets, which have yet to be confirmed.

Back in the 1960s using the less precise instruments of the time, astronomers thought they had detected an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s Star. That detection however proved false. The detection is real, however, and adds weight to the growing evidence that planets can form around red dwarf stars, the most common stars in the universe with the longest lifespan, predicted to be many tens of billions of years. Having planets around such stars significantly increases the chances of habitable planets, even if those planets do not harbor life of its own.

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Gogo buys competitor Satcom Direct

9:53 am

Gogo, which provides internet access for business jets, has now purchased its main competitor Satcom Direct, in order to provide a service that can better compete with Starlink.

Satcom Direct would get $375 million in cash and five million shares from Gogo under a deal announced Sept. 30, subject to regulatory approvals, and up to $225 million in extra payments tied to performance targets over the next four years, suggesting around $636 million in maximum total proceeds.

Gogo has historically dominated the small and midsize part of the business aviation market and connects about 7,000 planes, according to William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma, while Satcom Direct has a commanding market share for long-haul.

Combined, William Blair estimates the companies are providing Wi-Fi to around 8,200 of the 9,200 business jets that currently have connectivity — or nearly 90% of the market.

Gogo’s share price has dropped 70% since 2022 in the face of Starlink’s recent signing of numerous airline companies. The stock market obviously thinks Starlink is eventually going to capture the business jet customer as well. This deal will possibly allow Gogo to compete more effectively.

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Data from two different studies suggest Betelgeuse has a Sun-sized companion star

9:46 am

Betelqeuse
An optical image of Betelgeuse taken in 2017 by a ground-based
telescope, showing its not unusual aspherical shape.
Click for original image.

Two different independent studies have uncovered evidence that the red giant star Betalgeuse likely has an unseen companion star about the mass of the Sun and orbiting it every six years.

MacLeod and colleagues linked a six-year cycle of Betelgeuse brightening and dimming to a companion star tweaking its orbit, in a paper submitted to arXiv.org September 17. MacLeod examined global, historical measurements dating back to 1896.

Separately, Jared Goldberg of the Flatiron Institute in New York and colleagues used the last 20-odd years of measurements of Betelgeuse’s motion on the sky, which have the highest precision. That team also found evidence of a companion nudging the bigger star, submitted to arXiv.org August 17.

Previous observers noticed Betelgeuse’s light varying on a roughly six-year cycle. In 1908, English astronomer Henry Cozier Plummer suggested the cycle could be from the gravity of a companion star tugging Betelgeuse back and forth.

You can download the two papers here and here. This quote from the first paper’s abstract not only explains why the star has not been detected previously, but suggests its doomed future:

The companion star would be nearly twenty times less massive and a million times fainter than Betelgeuse, with similar effective temperature, effectively hiding it in plain sight near one of the best-studied stars in the night sky. The astrometric data favor an edge-on binary with orbital plane aligned with Betelgeuse’s measured spin axis. Tidal spin-orbit interaction drains angular momentum from the orbit and spins up Betelgeuse, explaining the spin–orbit alignment and Betelgeuse’s anomalously rapid spin. In the future, the orbit will decay until the companion is swallowed by Betelgeuse in the next 10,000 years. [emphasis mine]

The presence and future capture of this small companion star will help astronomers better calculate future fluctuations of Betelgesue itself. That capture is also going to occur relatively soon, on astronomical time scales.

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During fly-by Juice snaps picture of Earth’s radiation belts

9:32 am

Juice image of Earth's radiation belts
Click for original graphic.

During its fly-by of Earth on August 19-20, the European Jupiter orbiter Juice used its NASA instruments, designed to study the radiation environment around the gas giant, to snap a false color image of the Earth’s radiation belts, as shown in the graphic to the right. From the caption:

On Aug. 19, JENI and its companion particle instrument Jovian Energetic Electrons (JoEE) made the most of their brief 30-minute encounter with the Moon. As Juice zoomed just 465 miles (750 kilometers) above the lunar surface, the instruments gathered data on the space environment’s interaction with our nearest celestial companion. It’s an interaction scientists expect to see magnified at Jupiter’s moons, as the gas giant’s radiation-rich magnetosphere barrels over them.

On Aug. 20, Juice hurled into Earth’s magnetosphere, passing some 37,000 miles (60,000 km) above the Pacific Ocean, where the instruments got their first taste of the harsh environment that awaits at Jupiter. Racing through the magnetotail, JoEE and JENI encountered the dense, lower-energy plasma characteristic of this region before plunging into the heart of the radiation belts. There, the instruments measured the million-degree plasma encircling Earth to investigate the secrets of plasma heating that are known to fuel dramatic phenomena in planetary magnetospheres.

The dotted line shows the trajectory of ESA’s Juice spacecraft during its lunar-Earth gravity assist, with the white rings indicating equatorial distances of 4 and 6 Earth radii. The colors indicate the strength of the energetic neutral atoms detected by the instruments, and show the million-degree hot plasma halo that circles the Earth.

The data proved that the instruments are functioning as intended, and will thus be able to achieve their main goal, studying the much more active and energetic radiation belts of Jupiter.

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FAA grounds SpaceX again

9:10 am

According to a report in Reuters, the FAA yesterday announced that it has grounded SpaceX from any further launches, two days after SpaceX had already paused launches, the action triggered when the second stage of Saturday’s Falcon 9 launch to ISS failed to fire its de-orbit burn properly, thus causing the stage to splashdown outside its target zone in the Pacific.

This action is a perfect example of the FAA’s extraneous interference. SpaceX was already on the case. It doesn’t need the FAA to kibbitz it, since no one at the FAA has any qualifications for providing any useful advice. All the FAA accomplishes here is get in the way.

The FAA’s action also likely falls outside its statutory authority. The stage landed in the ocean, causing no damage or threat to public safety, the only areas the FAA’s authority resides. And if the agency now deems returning equipment part of its licensing requirements, why did it didn’t say anything about the uncertain nature of the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which targeted a landing on land and could have easily ended up crashing in the wrong spot because its own thrusters were untrustworthy?

The FAA is playing favorites here, and needs to be reined in, badly.

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September 30, 2024 Quick space links

4:39 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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Course carnage at Harvard as more than 30 queer and Marxist classes get axed

12:39 pm

Harvard: where you get can get a shoddy education centered on hate and bigotry
Harvard: where you can spend a lot of money
and still get a shoddy education

It appears the student body at Harvard is beginning to realize that classes focused on the queer agenda or racist Marxist indoctrination will not teach you much of substance and could even hurt your future career, and are thus increasingly not signing up for these courses.

This fall more than 30 such courses at Harvard have been cancelled, with the History and Literature department losing the most.

According to The Crimson, Hist-Lit Director of Studies Lauren Kaminsky said class offerings dropped from 19 to 13 classes after five lecturers either departed or chose to do something else. The canceled Hist-Lit courses include “British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa,” “Marx at the Mall: Consumer Culture & Its Critics,” “Global Transgender Histories,” “Indigenous Genders and Sexualities in North America,” “The Making of Race across Latin America,” and “Global Histories of Capitalism.”

The course description for “Global Transgender Histories” noted students “will become familiar with some of the global vocabulary of gender identities beyond the binary and will understand the historical impacts of phenomena such as racism, imperialism, and [the] medicalization on gender identities.” Students also would’ve “discovered” the diversity of “gender-variant people” via “religious texts, poetry, art, legal cases, travelogues, newspapers, films […] and oral histories.”

» Read more

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Perseverance looks uphill

9:51 am

Perseverance looks uphill
Click for full resolution. The original images can be found here and here.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created by me from two pictures taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance (found here and here). The haziness in the air is the left over from a local dust storm in Jezero Crater during the past month.

On the overview map below, the blue dot marks Perseverance’s present position, with the red dotted line indicating the approximate planned route of the rover uphill. The yellow lines are my guess as to the area covered by the panorama above. That guess could be wrong, as not all the features in the picture match the overview map. The view could be much closer, with the hill and ridgeline nothing more than the small outcrops close to the rover.

Nonetheless, these navigation pictures show us the kind of terrain the rover will be climbing as it works its way up the rim of Jezero Crater. The ground is relative smooth, though steep. My guess is that this is about a 25% grade, which on Earth would be a problem but on Mars it is a grade that NASA’s other rover, Curiosity, has routinely traversed. Perseverance has not yet traveled this kind of steepness, but there is no reason to expect it to have any difficulties doing so.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

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Curiosity spots a corroded weathered rock

9:15 am

a weathered and corroded rock
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 29, 2024 by the close-up camera mounted at the end of the robot arm of the rover Curiosity on Mars.

This is a small rock, less than three inches across. It is embedded in the sand and soil of Mars, its surface clearly weathered and smoothed by some process. The holes and gaps in the rock could have occurred prior to that smoothing, getting exposed by it. Or possibly the holes developed during the smoothing, with sections breaking off because the material was like sandstone, easily friable.

What caused the smoothing? The data from Curiosity as it climbs Mount Sharp suggests some water process, either flowing water or glacial ice. The scientists at present tend to prefer the liquid explanation, but that requires the Martian atmosphere to have once been much thicker and warmer, conditions that no model has yet demonstrated convincingly was ever possible.

The rock is also likely another example of sulfur, part of the sulfate-bearing unit of geology that Curiosity is presently traversing.

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Proposed commercial spaceport in Azores launches two suborbital demonstration rockets

8:38 am

Santa Maria spaceport

A spaceport startup, the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC), has successfully launched two small suborbital demonstration rockets from the island of Santa Maria in the Azores of Portugal, where it hopes to eventually establish a spaceport.

The first of the two flights was launched from a mobile platform at 13:04 UTC on 27 September. The rocket reached an altitude of 5,596 metres. The second was launched at 11:49 UTC on 28 September 2024. According to the company, the second launch ‘was not perfect,’ but it did not provide any further details on what occurred during the flight.

The rocket was developed and built by ASC, and was intended to demonstrate its own rocket capabilities as well as provide information to the Portuguese government for establishing its own regulatory guidelines, as per an agreement signed in August.

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China unveils proposed spacesuit for its planned manned lunar landings

11:24 am

China's proposed moonsuit
Click for original image.

China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) yesterday unveiled its proposed spacesuit for the planned manned lunar landings it hopes to achieve by 2030.

As shown on the left, the suit draws its design from the Russian Orlan suit. The large backpack-like unit is also a hatch. The astronaut opens it, drops into the suit, and then a partner closes the unit, locking it shut. The rest of the suit is a single piece, with the central body unit rigid and the arms and legs flexible.

The Russian’s Orlan suit has been upgraded a number of times over the years, but the basic design has proved to be practical, efficient, and reliable, generally the oppose of the unwieldy and complex American suits NASA has been using since the start of the shuttle era.

The announcement was made to initiate a contest for the public to pick a name for the suit. Like all such contests, the real goal is to provide bread-and-circuses to the public so that they can think they have some say in what is happening. In the end the government will pick the name, and find someone who made the same suggestion to “award” for the idea.

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SpaceX pauses launches after de-orbit of Falcon 9’s second stage misfires

10:37 am

SpaceX today announced that, after its Falcon 9 rocket had successfully placed two astronauts in orbit in its Freedom capsule, the engine burn designed to de-orbit the rocket’s upper stage in a safe zone in the ocean misfired, and for this reason the company was scrubbing a planned launch today until the root cause was found.

After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.

We will resume launching after we better understand root cause

The company provided no further details on exactly what happened. We know the engine fired, and the stage was successfully de-orbited safely over the ocean, but we do not know how far outside its target zone. Nor do we know the extent of the “off-nominal deorbit burn.”

At present today’s scrubbed launch, placing three satellites of Starlink’s competitor OneWeb into orbit, is scheduled for tomorrow, but that is likely a contigency scheduling. SpaceX’s launch teams have gotten very good at rescheduling launches day-to-day, so that as soon as it gets the go-ahead it can go ahead.

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SpaceX launches two astronauts to ISS, setting new annual launch record for the U.S.

11:17 am

SpaceX this morning launched two astronauts to ISS in the fourth flight of the Freedom Dragon capsule, the Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. Freedom will dock with ISS tomorrow.

While most news stories will focus on the rescue aspect of this mission, its crew reduced by two so that the two astronauts launched in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule can come home on it in February, the real news story is that with this launch the United States set a new record for the number of launches in a single year. With this launch the U.S. has completed 111 successful launches in 2024, exceeding the record set last year’s of 110 launches. And this record was achieved in less than three quarters of the year. At this rate is it very likely the U.S. will double the record of 70 set in 1966 that lasted until 2022.

China meanwhile completed its own launch late yesterday, its Long March 2D rocket placing what China’s state-run press described as “its first reusable and returnable test satellite,” designed to do orbital operations and experiments, return to Earth with those materials, and then later relaunch again. This is very similar to the commercial capsules that the startup Varda is flying and using to produce pharmaceuticals for sale.

The rocket lifted off from China’s Jiquan spaceport in northwest China. No word where its lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

95 SpaceX
44 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 111 to 67, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 95 to 83.

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September 27, 2024 Quick space links

3:58 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.

 

 

 

 

16 comments

Crazy swirling Martian landscape

1:48 pm

Crazy swirling Martian landscape
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on July 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “Contacts between Likely Sulfates and Chaos Blocks.” That contact I have indicated with the dotted line. To the west the lighter terrain is likely the sulfate-bearing unit, similar to the sulfate-bearing unit that Curiosity has been traversing on Mount Sharp for the past year or so.

To the east are the chaos blocks, but I think that description is wholly inadequate. In truth, I haven’t the faintest idea how this terrain got to be the way it is. It is evident that a lot of dust and sand has gotten trapped in the hollows, leaving behind ripple dunes in some places, but why the higher ridges swirl and curve about as they do is utterly baffling.
» Read more

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Scientists locate lunar impact crater produced by LCROSS in 2009

11:07 am

Figure 2 of research paper
Taken from figure 2 of the paper. Click for
original image.

Using orbital radar and opitcal images scientists finally believe they have identified the small crater on the Moon produced when — as part of the 2009 LCROSS mission — an abandoned rocket stage crashed in a permanently shadowed section of Cabeus crater near the lunar south pole.

LCROSS was designed to study the ejecta thrown up by that impact, and found “a significant amount of water, estimated at 5.6 ± 2.9% by mass, as well as minor amounts of other volatile species.” Because the impact was in that permanently shadowed region, however, locating the new crater required new instrumentation.

Using a radar instrument on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as well as the Shadowcam instrument on South Korea’s Danuri orbiter — designed to take optical images in very low light — the scientists pinpointed that impact crater, as shown in the image to the right, overlaying both the radar and optical images. The crater is estimated to be about 22 meters across, about 25% smaller than predicted. From this the scientists conclude that the water in the ejecta plume came from close to the surface, and thus could only have been placed there in the past billion years. Before that, the location was not in shadow, and volatiles like water could not have survived if they were near the surface.

From this data the scientists believe the water was likely placed there by the “recent delivery by comets or the solar wind, rather than as a paleo-reservoir from an early volcanic atmosphere.” If so, the amount of material can be reasonably predicted, and is likely less than hoped for because it only exists in the top two meters.

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Rocket Lab completes new capsule for Varda

9:10 am

Varda's space capsule, on the ground in Utah
Varda’s first capsule on the ground in Utah.

Rocket Lab today announced it has completed testing and intergration of a new recoverable capsule for the in-space manufacturing company Varda, to be used in orbit to produce pharmaceuticals that can only be created in weightlessness.

No launch date was announced. This was the second of four capsules Rocket Lab is building for Varda, with the first having already completed its flight, where it returned to Earth after successfully crystallizng the HIV drug Ritonavir.

The most important tidbit in the press release however was this:

Varda received permission from the FAA under a Part 450 license earlier this month, making them the only company to ever secure a second reentry license.

With the first capsule, the capsule’s return was delayed almost six months because the FAA and the military couldn’t get their paperwork together to approve the return license. Varda now has that return license in hand before launch, meaning it will get the capsule back when it wants.

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Starlink now has four million subscribers

9:00 am

According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, during testimony in a hearing before the Texas state legislative committee and confirmed by a SpaceX tweet on X, Starlink now has a total of four million subscribers.

The milestone would mean that SpaceX has gained a million new customers since the end of May alone. This outpaces the company’s already impressive rate of growth: Starlink started providing beta service of its product in October 2020; it hit 1 million subscribers in December 2022, 2 million subscribers in September 2023, and 3 million in May. The constellation now comprises nearly 6,000 satellites, with service available in nearly 100 countries to individual users as well as large enterprise customers like major airlines and cruise lines.

The service is on track to generate $6.6 billion in revenue this year — an increase from roughly $1.4 billion just two years prior, according to industry research and consulting firm Quilty Space. [emphasis mine]

With $6.6 billion in yearly revenue, in two years SpaceX will get as much from its customers as it has raised in investment capital. It essentially does not need to look for more funding, as it is now earning enough to pay for both Starlink as well as the development of Starship/Superheavy. Furthermore, at this point the company no longer needs NASA’s government funds to do anything it wants to do.

Nor are these numbers the end. Yesterday it was also reported that Air France had signed up Starlink for its airplane fleet, coming after both United and Hawaiian airlines announced they were switching to Starlink as well.

No wonder the left as well as the federal bureaucracy — dominated by top-down authoritarians who love governemnt rule — are hostile to SpaceX. It no longer needs them, and that independence threatens their power.

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Orbital tug startup D-Orbit raises another 150 million euros

8:44 am

The orbital tug company D-Orbit announced today that it was able to extend its more recent round of fund-raising by 50 million euros, and raise a total of 150 million in private investment capital instead.

Japan’s Marubeni Corp. led the Series C round. Marubeni has exclusive rights to distribute D-Orbit’s services in Japan in Southeast Asia, according to the news release.

New and existing investors participating in the round include: Avantgarde, CDP Venture Capital, Iberis Capital, Indaco Venture Partners, the European Innovation Council, Neva, Phaistos Investment Fund, Primo Ventures and Seraphim Space Investment Trust. Also joining the round was a consortium led by United Ventures that included the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund.

I call the company a “startup” in the headline, but that probably is now incorrect. It already has flown fourteen orbital tug missions, with seven more scheduled in 2025. At this point it is well established, and could extend this most recent funding round.

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