Confirmed: All debris cleared from Perseverance sample tube

8:40 am

Mosaic showing the clearing of debris
Click here and here for original images.

The Perseverance science team today announced in an update that their effort to clear the sample tube of bits of core sample has succeeded, as indicated partly by the two images above that I posted on January 19th.

According to the report, the two small pieces visible bottom center fell out after two small rotations of the carousal. Other pieces however remained, and these were removed as followed:

On Monday, Jan. 17, the team commanded another operation of the rotary percussive drill in an attempt to dislodge more material from the tube. With the tube’s open end still pointed towards the surface, we essentially shook the heck out of it for 208 seconds – by means of the percussive function on the drill. Mastcam-Z imagery taken after the event shows that multiple pieces of sample were dumped onto the surface. Is Tube 261 clear of rock sample? We have new Mastcam-Z images looking down the drill bit into the sample container that indicate little if any debris from the cored-rock sample remains. The sample tube has been cleared for reuse by the project.

The team is now discussing their next step, which could be drilling a new hole at this spot or moving on.

1 comment

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

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.

It is finally time to end the Wuhan panic of the past two years

1:56 pm

How governments today determine policy
How governments today determine policy

When looked at dispassionately, the news about COVID in the past few months has consistently proven two very basic points. First, the reasons to fear COVID are now definitely gone, assuming they ever existed at all. Second, the oppressive lockdown and mask policies imposed by most governments were an epic failure.

Rather than write a lot of text, I am going to provide my readers instead a nice linkfest, divided up into a variety of subcategories. Not only do the recent facts prove the failure of the government reaction to COVID, all these stories should be cause for celebration, as they show that not only has the Wuhan flu never been as dangerous as the fear-mongers have claimed, its limited but serious threat to the aged and sickly is now also fading.

The real question is whether the public and governments will actually celebrate, or stick their heads in the sand because they have fallen in love with their fear of COVID.

So, let’s take a look at the recent facts:
» Read more

80 comments

NASA: No further Artemis Moon landings for at least two years after first in 2025

11:53 am

The tortoise appears to be dying: NASA today announced that there will be a two-plus year pause of Artemis missions to the lunar surface after it completes its hoped-for first manned Moon landing in 2025.

In presentations at a two-day meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee Jan. 18 and 19, agency officials said the Artemis 4 mission, the first after the Artemis 3 mission lands astronauts on the moon, will not attempt a landing itself.

Instead, Artemis 4 will be devoted to assembly of the lunar Gateway. The mission will deliver the I-Hab habitat module, developed by the European Space Agency and the Japanese space agency JAXA, to the Gateway. It will be docked with the first Gateway elements, the Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost, which will launch together on a Falcon Heavy in late 2024 and spend a year spiraling out to the near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon.

Essentially, the Biden administration appears to be switching back to NASA’s original plans, to require use of the Lunar Gateway station for any future lunar exploration, thus delaying that exploration considerably. Do not expect any of this schedule to take place as promised. The 2025 lunar landing will be delayed, as will all subsequent SLS launches for Artemis. The rocket is simply too complicated and cumbersome to even maintain one launch per year, while inserting Gateway into the mix only slows down lunar exploration even more.

NASA officials also revealed that they are limiting their lunar landing Starship contract with SpaceX to only that single planned ’25 Moon mission. For future manned missions to the Moon the agency will request new bids from the entire industry.

NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) Option A award to SpaceX last year covers only development of a lander and a single crewed flight on Artemis 3. NASA will acquire future landings through a separate effort, called Lunar Exploration Transportation Services (LETS). The goal of LETS is to select one, and possibly more, companies to provide “sustainable” landing services.

The timing of LETS — a draft request for proposals is scheduled for release this spring — means there will be a gap of a couple years before the first landing service acquired through that program would be ready. “It’ll be about two years from the Option A award to the LETS award before we’ll have this sustainable lander,” Kirasich said. “It’s a different lander with more aggressive requirements than Option A.”

It appears that Jeff Bezos’ political lobbying efforts have paid off, and that NASA is now reopening bidding so that his consortium, led by Blue Origin, can once again compete for that lunar lander contract. Whether the Bezos’ team will be able to propose anything comparable to Starship is however very questionable.

None of this really hurts SpaceX. Its contract with NASA helps them develop a Starship lunar lander. Then, while NASA twiddles its thumbs building Gateway, it will be free to fly its own lunar missions, selling tickets on the open market. I suspect that — should NASA succeed in landing humans in ’25 — the next American manned landing on the Moon will be a bunch of SpaceX customers, not that second Artemis mission sometime in the late 2020s.

SpaceX of course will also be able to bid on that second lunar landing competition. And it will be hard for NASA not to award Starship a further contract, even if others are competing against it. Starship will be operational. The others will merely be proposed.

32 comments

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

Latvian/Bulgarian commercial partnership to launch cubesats to monitor space weather

11:30 am

Capitalism in space: Mission Space, a Latvian company, plans to build a constellation of 24 cubesats designed to monitor space weather and solar activity, using cubesats manufactured by the Bulgarian company EnduroSat.

Mission Space plans to make its software model of the near-Earth radiation environment available in mid-2022, before launching its Aurora-1 detectors with EnduroSat in the fourth quarter of the year.

Mission Space was founded in 2020 to offer space weather monitoring as a service. With data supplied by its constellation, Mission Space will provide data and analytics to government agencies in addition to establishing a cloud-based platform to help commercial satellite operators prepare for solar storms, assess risks and monitor radiation levels.

EndoroSat already has five satellites in orbit, with ten more planned for launch in the next two years.

I think that both these companies demonstrate that a modern satellite business truly can be started in someone’s garage. Because cubesats are so small and are also somewhat standardized, you don’t need a large facility to build them.

0 comments

SpaceX’s Starship gets Air Force point-to-point cargo study contract

10:46 am

Capitalism in space: The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has signed a $102 million five year contract with SpaceX to study the practicality of using its Starship spacecraft as a method for transporting large cargo point-to-point on Earth.

[Program manager Greg] Spanjers said the SpaceX work is focused in four areas: collecting data from commercial orbital launches and landings; exploring cargo bay designs compatible with U.S. Transportation Command containers [TRANSCOM] and support rapid loading and unloading; researching landing systems that can operate on a variety of terrain; and demonstrating the heavy cargo launch and landing process.

The emphasis on landing options and interoperability with TRANSCOM containers and loading processes is an important element of the project, Spanjers noted, because the department’s vision for how the point-to-point capability could be used is broader than just the commercial business case. While companies are primarily interested in delivering cargo to and from established sites, the military wants to deliver supplies and humanitarian aid to locations that may not have spaceports.

This contract is in many ways similar to NASA’s manned Starship lunar lander contract. Both provide SpaceX some cash for developing a different version of Starship, even as the bulk of development money for building Starship comes from the private investment community.

22 comments

NRO to buy radar data from private companies

10:37 am

Capitalism in space: The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has signed contracts with five commercial companies to purchase the Earth radar data that they produce to see if that data will be useful for future reconnaissance and surveillance.

The National Reconnaissance Office announced Jan. 20 it has signed agreements with commercial radar imagery providers Airbus U.S., Capella Space, Iceye U.S., PredaSAR and Umbra.

These agreements are study contracts that give the NRO access to the data collected by these companies’ synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and are intended to help the agency better understand the quality of commercially available imagery. “We know that users across the national system for geospatial intelligence are eager to explore commercial radar, and these contracts will allow us to rapidly validate capabilities and the benefits to the national mission,” NRO Director Chris Scolese said in a statement.

Essentially, NRO is looking to see if it can fill some of its radar data needs from inexpensive privately built satellites, rather than build and launch its own very costly radar satellites. The agency is already doing the same with commercial optical data.

0 comments

Debris from Russian anti-sat test just misses Chinese satellite

10:28 am

A Chinese satellite was almost destroyed on January 18th when a piece of debris from Russia’s November 15th anti-satellite test zipped past at a distance of less than a few hundred yards.

Expect more such events in the coming years.

This quote from the article I found somewhat ironic:

In an article from Beijing tabloid Global Times Jan. 20, cited experts stated that further close encounters cannot be ruled out. “Currently, they keep a safe distance but the chance for these two getting close in the future cannot be excluded,” said space debris expert Liu Jing.

Aerospace commentator Huang Zhicheng, told the publication that the growing issue of space debris should be addressed, including through international legal mechanisms. “It is not only necessary to conduct research on experimental devices or spacecraft to remove space debris, but also to formulate corresponding international laws and regulations on the generation of space debris under the framework of the UN,” Huang said. [emphasis mine]

Since anything published in the Chinese press must be approved by the Chinese government, this statement is essentially what the Chinese government wants said. For China however to demand other nations obey international law and not create more space junk that threatens others is hilarious, considering that China this year will likely launch two rockets whose core stages will crash to Earth uncontrolled, in direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty that China is a signatory to.

Since China doesn’t obey the treaties it signs, why should it expect others to do the same?

5 comments

Contact restored with InSight after dust storm

10:19 am

The InSight science team has regained communications with the lander on Mars following a dust storm that caused it to shut down all operations entirely.

Though the tweet from the science team says the space craft is out of safe mode, that really doesn’t appear to be the case. Safe mode is a condition where a robot ceases all science operations, hunkers down, and awaits further orders. All that has happened here is that the engineers have regained contact after communications were lost on January 7th. No science is being done.

The resumption of communications is excellent news, however. They must now access how much power the lander’s solar panels are generating to see if they can turn InSight’s main instrument, its seismometer, back on. Those panels might be badly covered with dust, preventing operations.

5 comments

Judge clears way for land acquisition for Georgia spaceport

10:11 am

The judge overseeing the lawsuit against the Georgia spaceport that Camden County officials wish to build has ruled that the county can proceed with its deal to purchase land, denying the request to delay it.

It seemed the judge ruled on very technical legal grounds, related to the late date the opponents filed their request.

The spaceport’s future still remains somewhat in limbo, even if the land is purchased. A petition to hold a referendum pro or con, still being checked for the accuracy of its signatures, would require a special county election which the voters would decide.

0 comments
1 … 822 823 824 825 826 … 2,929