Late yesterday China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket successfully launched classified government satellite into orbit.
The Kuaizhou rocket is supposedly operated by the pseudo private company Expace, but nothing it does happens without the approval of the Chinese government.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
44 China
26 SpaceX
20 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
China now leads the U.S. 44 to 41 in the national rankings.
Using its Soyuz-2 rocket Russian tonight successfully launched a military reconnaissance designed to provide the Kremlin with early warning of missile launches worldwide.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
43 China
26 SpaceX
20 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
China remains ahead of the U.S. 43 to 41 in the national rankings.
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.
"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
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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An evening pause: By Beethoven.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
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.
“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.
According to a tweet by the Ingenuity team, the Mars helicopter successfully completed its 16th flight on Mars on November 21st.
“#MarsHelicopter continues to thrive!” mission personnel wrote in a tweet posted Monday (Nov. 22). “The mighty rotorcraft completed its 16th flight on the Red Planet last weekend, traveling 116 meters northeast for 109 seconds. It captured color images during the short hop, but those will come down in a later downlink.”
No images have as yet been downloaded from the flight.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced today that based on the data obtained during its previous launch in November, the company will attempt a helicopter recovery in the air of its Electron rocket’s first stage, starting with its first launches in 2022.
With the success of this latest mission, Rocket Lab will now move to aerial capture attempts with a helicopter for future recovery missions in the first half of 2022. Rocket Lab’s recovery helicopter will include auxiliary fuel tanks for extended flight time during the capture attempt. While Rocket Lab’s engineers and recovery vessel will also be stationed at sea, Rocket Lab’s primary objective will be to return Electron’s booster to the mainland while attached to the helicopter. Improvements to the launch vehicle for this next recovery attempt will include a thermal protection system applied to the entire stage and its nine Rutherford engines to help it endure heat of up to 2,400 degrees Celsius during re-entry, and modifications to the parachute system including an engagement line for the recovery helicopter to capture and secure the booster.
The company has a launch scheduled for the end of November, but apparently it is not going to attempt a first stage recovery by helicopter during that mission.
If successful, Rocket Lab will have become the second company able to reuse its first stage, and thus cut the price it charges for launches significantly.
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.
"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
Russia today successfully launched a new Progress freighter carrying Prichal, a new docking hub for the Russian half of ISS.
If all goes as planned, Prichal will dock to Nauka in two days.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
43 China
26 SpaceX
19 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
China still leads the U.S. 43 to 41 in the national rankings. This launch was the 111th successful launch in 2021, which tied the number from 2018 that had been the highest since the 1990s.
Last night SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched NASA’s DART asteroid mission.
The first stage landed successfully, completing its third flight. This was SpaceX’s 26th launch in 2021, setting a new record for the company and in fact for any private company ever.
DART’s mission is to test one method for changing an asteroid’s orbit.
After launch tonight, DART will take aim on an asteroid called Dimorphos. The spacecraft will strike Dimorphos at nearly 15,000 mph (about 6.6 kilometers per second).
The primary science goal of the mission is to measure how the high-speed collision next September, which will destroy the DART spacecraft, disrupts the orbit of Dimorphos around nearby Didymos. The data could help plan a future mission to deflect an asteroid on a course to hit Earth.
Dimorphos and its larger companion Didymos pose no near-term threat to Earth, but the asteroids will be close enough to our planet next year for astronomers to observe DART’s impact using ground-based telescopes. The asteroids orbit the sun in an elongated path that occasionally bring them into Earth’s neighborhood. That makes them potentially hazardous asteroids, although scientists say there is no near-term threat from the pair.
No space mission has ever explored Didymos and Dimorphos, but scientists who have observed them through telescopes say the asteroids are about a half-mile (780 meters) and 525 feet (160 meters) in diameter, respectively.
An Italian cubesat is also on board, and will separate from DART about ten days before impact so that it can observe the impact with two camera.
The leaders in 2021 launch race:
43 China
26 SpaceX
18 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
China now leads the U.S. 43 to 41 in the national rankings. For the U.S. SpaceX’s launch last night topped the U.S. total from last year, which was this country’s highest launch total since the 1960s.
An evening pause: Hat tip Cotour.
Engineers working to reactivate the instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope have successfully brought a second camera out of safe mode.
NASA continues bringing the Hubble Space Telescope back to normal science operations, most recently recovering the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument Sunday, Nov. 21. This camera will be the second of Hubble’s instruments, after the Advanced Camera for Surveys, to resume science after suspending the spacecraft’s observations Oct. 25. The Wide Field Camera 3’s first science observation since the anomaly will be Nov. 23.
The team chose to restore the most heavily used Hubble instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, which represents more than a third of the spacecraft’s observing time. Engineers also began preparing changes to the instrument parameters, while testing the changes on ground simulators. These changes would allow the instruments to handle several missed synchronization messages while continuing to operate normally if they occur in the future. These changes will first be applied to another instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, to further protect its sensitive far-ultraviolet detector. It will take the team several weeks to complete the testing and upload the changes to the spacecraft.
The telescope’s other instruments remain in safe mode as the engineers continue to investigate the problem that caused the shut down on October 25th.
China’s high pace of launches in 2021 continued yesterday with another launch, this time placing an Earth observation satellite into orbit using its Long March 4C rocket.
This was China’s 43rd successful launch in ’21, three more than it had predicted it would achieve at the start of the year and the most any single nation has accomplished since the Russians completed 49 in 1994.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
43 China
25 SpaceX
18 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
China now leads the U.S. 43 to 40 in the national rankings.
An evening pause: The music video story imposed on the song is somewhat predictable and unoriginal, but the song is top notch.
Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
