Tag: engineering

Scientists think methane detections by Curiosity come from the salts in the local soil

10:09 am

According to experiments conducted on Earth, some scientists believe the unexpected puffs of methane detected by Curiosity periodically come from the salts in the local soil.

Led by Alexander Pavlov, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the researchers suggest the gas also can erupt in puffs when seals crack under the pressure of, say, a rover the size of a small SUV driving over it. The team’s hypothesis may help explain why methane is detected only in Gale Crater, Pavlov said, given that’s it’s one of two places on Mars where a robot is roving and drilling the surface. (The other is Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Perseverance rover is working, though that rover doesn’t have a methane-detecting instrument.)

The theory, based on those experiments, is complicated and unconfirmed, but if so it suggests that much of the soil of Mars, its regolith, will be somewhat toxic, requiring some processing to make it possible for plants to grow in it. This is not a new discovery, but confirms past data that suggested that perchlorate — a mild acid — is found everywhere on Mars.

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Hubble celebrates 34 years in orbit with a new photo of the Little Dumbbell Nebula

9:53 am

The Little Dumbbell Nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! To celebrate the 34th anniversay of its launch in 1990, astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a new photo of the Little Dumbbell Nebula (also known as M76), located about 3,400 light years away and one of the most well-known planetary nebulae in the sky.

That picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. From the caption:

M76 is composed of a ring, seen edge-on as the central bar structure, and two lobes on either opening of the ring. Before the star burned out, it ejected the ring of gas and dust. The ring was probably sculpted by the effects of the star that once had a binary companion star. This sloughed off material created a thick disk of dust and gas along the plane of the companion’s orbit. The hypothetical companion star isn’t seen in the Hubble image, and so it could have been later swallowed by the central star. The disk would be forensic evidence for that stellar cannibalism.

The primary star is collapsing to form a white dwarf. It is one of the hottest stellar remnants known at a scorching 250,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 24 times our Sun’s surface temperature. 
The sizzling white dwarf can be seen as a pinpoint in the center of the nebula. A star visible in projection beneath it is not part of the nebula.



Pinched off by the disk, two lobes of hot gas are escaping from the top and bottom of the “belt,” along the star’s rotation axis that is perpendicular to the disk. They are being propelled by the hurricane-like outflow of material from the dying star, tearing across space at two million miles per hour.

Since launch Hubble has made 1.6 million observations of over 53,000 astronomical objects, and continues to be in high demand by astronomers, with only one request in six able to get time on the telescope. Not surprisingly, almost all of Hubble’s biggest discoveries were unexpected. Its future right now rests with its last three working gyroscopes used to orient it precisely. When one more fails, it will go to one-gyro mode, which will limit the precision of that orientation significantly. At that point the sharpness of the telescope’s imagery will sadly decline.

The only comparable orbital optical telescope now planned is China’s Xuntian optical telescope, scheduled for launch next year. It will fly in formation with the Tiangong-3 space station, allowing astronauts to periodically do maintenance missions to it. As I noted many times previously, American astronomers better start learning Chinese, assuming China even allows them access. Nor will these American astronomers have a right to complain, as it was their decision to not build a Hubble replacement, in their 2000, 2010, and 2020 decadal reports.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse’s first suborbital rocket arrives in Australia

9:32 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse today announced that its first suborbital rocket, the SR75, had arrived in Australia for its planned first test launch.

On 28 February, Southern Launch, the commercial outfit that manages the Koonibba Test Range, revealed that a launch attempt of the suborbital SR75 rocket would occur between late April and early May. This likely gives the team little room for the unexpected as it prepares for launch.

Those launch dates depend on whether Australia’s government will issue the launch licenses on time. So far its ability to do so in a timely manner has been difficult if not impossible. For example, the rocket startup Gilmour, which wants to launch from Bowen at about the same time, has been waiting more than two years to get its approval, delaying its first orbital test launch by more than a year.

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PLD Space announces its upcoming plans

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Having received in late January a $43.5 grant, bringing its total funding to more than $120 million, the Spanish rocket startup PLD Space today announced its upcoming plans.

[T]he company intends to inaugurate the first serial space rocket factory in Spain in mid-2024. The facilities will also enable vertical integration of the launchers. The industrial site, whose building work is already underway, will house the factory for the first MIURA 5 units [the company’s orbital rocket] as well as the company’s head offices. In total, PLD Space will be able to count on 18,400 square metres of industrial facilities in Elche (Alicante).

…Also scheduled for 2024, construction work is to begin on the launch base at the European CSG spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana), which belongs to CNES [France’s space agency]. This site, covering over 15,700 square metres, will host MIURA 5’s first launches.

That France is now leasing launch facilities to private companies illustrates starkly how Europe is steadily abandoning Arianespace, the European Space Agency’s government-run commercial company. Instead, Europe is now choosing competition and private enterprise as its model. Expect these new companies, including PLD, to achieve big things in the coming years.

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Voyager-1 back on line after software patch works

9:09 am

For the first time since November, Voyager-1 is sending data back to Earth coherently, after engineers figured out a way to isolate a corrupted computer chip.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The software patch was sent to the spacecraft on April 18, 2024, taking 22.5 hours to get there. It then took 22.5 hours for a response. On April 20th they received a confirmation that the patch had worked. Over the next few weeks more patches will be sent to Voyager-1 to allow it to resume sending science data back to Earth.

Both Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 were launched almost a half century ago, in 1977, and both are now more than more than 15 billion miles from Earth, traveling in interstellar space. Their computers are also the longest continuously running operating systems. Both only have a little more than two years left in their nuclear power supply, which was always expected to run out of power about a half century after launch. That both have continued to function for that entire time is a magnificent testament to the engineers who designed them.

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Patchy arms in a nearby spiral galaxy

9:16 am

Patchy arms in spiral galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to study this southern hemisphere galaxy in detail. The galaxy, dubbed ESO 422-41, is located about 34 million light years away, and thus is a relatively close neighbor. From the caption:

A spiral galaxy, with a brightly shining core and two large arms. The arms are broad, faint overall and quite patchy, and feature several small bright spots where stars are forming. A few foreground stars with small diffraction spikes can be seen in front of the galaxy.

The patchy nature of the two arms makes each somewhat indistinct, so that at first glance this galaxy looks more like a elliptical blob, until you look close and notice those arms winding around that bright core. And as patchy as those arms are, the patches of blue are regions where new stars are forming.

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China launches “remote-sensing” satellite

10:41 am

China today successfully launched what its state-run press stated was “a remote-sensing” satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No other information about the satellite was released. The state-run press also provided no information about where the rocket’s lower stages, which carry very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

41 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 47 to 28, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 34.

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Update on SpaceX’s preparations for the 4th test flight of Superheavy/Starship

11:10 am

Link here. The article is definitely worth reading, as it tells us that SpaceX is pushing hard to be ready to launch in early May, as Musk has promised. The article also thinks SpaceX will be able to ramp up later launches to one every two months.

The article however is I think being naively optimistic about this timeline, because it naively assumes the FAA will quickly approve the launch licenses to meet that schedule. I guarantee the FAA won’t, as it has taken it one to four months after SpaceX was ready to launch to approve the licenses for the previous launches. The length of that approval process has shrunk each time, but FAA still made Space X wait each time, for no reason.

Making that schedule even more unlikely is SpaceX’s desire to do as many as nine test launches per year at Boca Chica. While the company could certainly do this, the environment reassessment issued in 2022 limits it to only five launches per year. It needs a waiver from the FAA and the Biden administration,
a waiver no one should expect considering the Biden administrations hostility to Musk.

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Blue Origin completes delivery of the two BE-4 engines for ULA’s second Vulcan launch

10:04 am

Blue Origin this week completed delivery of the two BE-4 engines needed for the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for sometime this fall.

That launch was originally targeting an April launch, but according to official announcements has been delayed until the fall because final ground testing of its payload, Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle, is not complete. It appears that Blue Origin also contributed to that delay, as it is now obvious that its engines were not available as planned in time for that April launch.

This delay also raises questions about Blue Origin’s ability to ramp up BE-4 engine production to meet the needs of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Both have large launch contracts with Amazon to launch its Kuiper constellation, while ULA also has almost as many contracts with the U.S. military. To meet those contracts, Blue Origin will have to produce several hundred BE-4 engines yearly in the very near future. Right now it appears it can only produce about one per year.

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Boeing to reduce staffing for SLS due to overall delays in Artemis

9:53 am

Boeing announced yesterday that it is going to reduce the staffing for its SLS rocket, caused by delays in other parts of the program that force it to stretch out operations.

When Boeing cites “external factors,” it is referring to the slipping timelines for NASA’s Artemis Program. In January officials with the space agency announced approximately one-year delays for both the Artemis II mission, a crewed lunar flyby, to September 2025; and Artemis III, a lunar landing, to September 2026. Neither of these schedules are set in stone, either. Further delays are possible for Artemis II, and likely for Artemis III if NASA sticks to the current mission plans.

Although the SLS rocket will be ready for the current schedule, barring a catastrophe, the other elements are in doubt. For Artemis II, NASA still has not cleared a heat shield issue with the Orion spacecraft. That must be resolved before the mission gets a green light to proceed next year. The challenges are even greater for Artemis III. For that mission NASA needs to have a lunar lander—which is being provided by SpaceX with its Starship vehicle—in addition to spacesuits provided by Axiom Space for the lunar surface. Both of these elements remain solidly in the development phase.

What Boeing is telling us indirectly is that, though NASA has not yet announced any further delays in those launch dates for Artemis-2 and Artemis-3, those dates are going to be delayed, quite possibly by one or more years.

None of this is a surprise. I have long been predicting that the first manned lunar landing in the Artemis program will not take place before 2030. In fact, that date was obvious the moment NASA announced its plan to make the Lunar Gateway space station an integral part of the program, back in 2018, when it was called LOP-G.

Now that SLS development is complete and NASA considers it “operational”, Boeing is merely reducing the staffing to maintain its assembly line, reducing it accordingly because of expected delays when additional rockets will be needed.

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Analysis of Io’s atmosphere suggests it has been volcanically active for its entire 4+ billion year history

9:34 am

By analysizing the isotobes in Io’s atmosphere, scientists now believe that it has been volcanically active since its initial formation at the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

de Kleer et al. found that both elements [ sulfer- and chlorine-bearing molecules] are highly enriched in heavy isotopes compared to average Solar System values due to the loss of lighter isotopes from the upper atmosphere as material is continuously recycled between Io’s interior and atmosphere. The findings indicate that Io has lost 94% to 99% of the sulfur that undergoes this outgassing and recycling process. According to the authors, this would require Io to have had its current level of volcanic activity for its entire lifetime.

This data suggests that Io, as well as Jupter’s other three large Galilean moons (Europa, Calisto, and Ganymeded) have been in their present orbits since their formation 4.5 billion years ago. It also means that, while Io’s geological history keeps getting wiped out by its volcanic activity, the other three contain detailed geological records of the solar system’s entire history. Combine that with the geological data we will eventually get from Mars, it appears that we shall someday be able to document that history far beyond anything expected.

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FAA to now require that reentry spacecraft get landing license before launch

4:05 pm

We’re here to help you! The FAA is now going to require that any company planning to launch a payload or spacecraft into orbit to get both its launch and landing licenses before launch, in order to avoid the situation that occurred last year when Varda launched its capsule and then had difficulties getting its landing license approved due to red-tape confusion between government agencies.

In a notice published in the Federal Register April 17, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation announced it will no longer approve the launch of spacecraft designed to reenter unless they already have a reentry license. The office said that it will, going forward, check that a spacecraft designed to return to Earth has a reentry license as part of the standard payload review process.

In the notice, the FAA said that decision was linked to safety concerns of allowing spacecraft to launch without approvals to return. “Unlike typical payloads designed to operate in outer space, a reentry vehicle has primary components that are designed to withstand reentry substantially intact and therefore have a near-guaranteed ground impact as a result of either a controlled reentry or a random reentry,” it states.

While this seems to fall directly under the FAA’s basic authority, to make sure launches and landings pose no risk to the general public, I guarantee it is also going to slow the growth of the new space manufacture industry. I fear that with time approvals will be delayed, some so much that companies will go bankrupt waiting for approval. The FAA will never be able to guarantee perfection in this matter, and as bureaucrats tend to be cautious, expect it to increasingly oppose re-entries by new companies.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

3:48 pm

Bunny march on! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

41 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 47 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 33.

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Ancient flood lava in the Martian cratered highlands

2:13 pm

Ancient flood lava on the cratered highlands of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The ridges were the primary reason this photo was taken, as they cover a 50-mile-square region of relatively flat terrain that also appears to be a series of steps downward to the west. The dotted line on the picture indicates one of those steps downward, with the plain to the west of that line about 100 to 200 feet lower that the plain to the east.

My first guess was that these ridges might be inverted channels, but that really didn’t make sense considering their random nature completely divorced from the downward grade. Then I took a wider view, and came up with a better guess.
» Read more

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Rocket startup Orbex raises another $16.7 million in private investment capital

9:28 am

The British rocket startup Orbex has raised another $16.7 million in private investment capital, bringing the total it has raised now to over $100 million.

It remains unclear when the company’s Prime rocket will complete its first launch. It now says it will have its rocket and launch facility at the Sutherland spaceport ready by the end of this year, but it had previously hoped to launch the rocket in 2023. It appears that goal failed because the spaceport could not get either the spaceport license or its own launch license approved by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Those licenses have still not been issued, even though the applications had been submitted in Feburary 2022, more than two years ago.

Those delays by the CAA probably explains why the company has had four different CEO’s in the past year. Though the fault of the delays lies with the government, others have had to take the blame. Meanwhile, company officials now state that it is now exploring using other launch sites, including its own near the equator.

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TESS has resumed science operations

9:15 am

Engineers have successfully returned TESS to full science operations, without providing as yet any explanaton as to why on April 8, 2024 it went into safe mode or what they did to fix the issue.

The Aprill 11 press release announcing the safe mode had only mentioned that the shut down had occurred “during scheduled engineering activities.” The lack of information continues to suggest that someone did an “Oops!” during those activities, and NASA is too embarassed to reveal that fact.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites; but with streaming issues

2:43 pm

SpaceX today succeeded in launching another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. However, after stage separation and the ignition of the upper stage, with the rocket operating normally, the live stream from X suddenly went down. The problem was not with the rocket, as all feeds from both stages disappeared, with the entire live stream going blank.

The first stage was on its twelfth launch. SpaceX has now confirmed that it landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has also confirmed as successful orbital insertion.

This was SpaceX’s 40th launch so far in 2024, all successful. To get some perspective on the company’s continuing and spectacular success, the entire United States could not achieve that many launches in any year from 1969 through 2019, and in 2020 it merely matched this number (because SpaceX that year launched 25 times). And SpaceX has done it this in only three and a half months. Based on this pace, its goal of 150 launches in 2024 appears increasingly possible.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

40 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 46 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 40 to 33.

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Io on Juno’s 60th close fly-by of Jupiter

2:01 pm

Volcano Plumes on Io
Click for original image.

Io as seen by Juno
Click for original image.

The photos above and to the right were both taken by Juno during its 60th close fly-by of Jupiter on April 9, 2024. The image above, cropped slightly to post here, was processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, who states the following:

The stretched and enlarged crop is derived from a reprojected Io image with a margin of 100 km greater than Io’s nominal radius. Two plumes are obvious. The plume on the night siide is visible in several frames of the PJ60 Io sequence.

That Juno captures plumes like this on every close fly-by tells us the extent of activity that is on-going on the moon. Basically, eruptions are continuous and never ending.

The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was processed by Eichstädt and enhanced by citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos. It gives us a global view of Io’s many volcanoes and flood lava plains.

During that 60th fly-by Juno’s closest approach to Io was 10,778 miles. Though close, this is not as close as the approach of 930 miles during the 57th and 58th fly-bys. Nor will future fly-bys be as close again. This is essentially Juno’s last close look at the volcano world.

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Sweden signs Artemis Accords

9:55 am

Sweden yesterday became the 38th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, one day after Switzerland had officially signed.

The alliance now includes the following nations: 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, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The press release once again focuses on “reinforcing” the Outer Space Treaty, rather than using the accords to get around that treaty’s limitations of private property. More and more it appears the Biden administration and the global community wants to use this alliance not to encourage the establishment of a legal framework for private ownership, but to retain that power within the governments involved.

As I said last week, “Under these circumstances, I wonder why China and Russia haven’t signed on as well.”

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NASA approves Dragonfly mission to the Saturn moon Titan

9:50 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has given final approval for the Dragonfly helicopter mission to the Saturn moon Titan.

With the release of the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget request, Dragonfly is confirmed with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028. This reflects a cost increase of about two times the proposed cost and a delay of more than two years from when the mission was originally selected in 2019. Following that selection, NASA had to direct the project to replan multiple times due to funding constraints in fiscal years 2020 through 2022. The project incurred additional costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain increases, and the results of an in-depth design iteration. To compensate for the delayed arrival at Titan, NASA also provided additional funding for a heavy-lift launch vehicle to shorten the mission’s cruise phase.

The rotorcraft, targeted to arrive at Titan in 2034, will fly to dozens of promising locations on the moon, looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and the early Earth before life developed. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a vehicle for science on another planetary body. The rotorcraft has eight rotors and flies like a large drone.

Be prepared for the project to go overbudget, as NASA’s biggests projects almost always do.

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Engineers say goodbye to Ingenuity

9:45 am

Ingenuity with missing blade
Ingenuity with its missing blade. Click for original image.

Because Perseverance is about to move out of range of direct communications with the disabled Ingenuity helicopter, engineers have now completed their final transmission from the helicopter yesterday, confirming that a new software update has been successfully installed.

The telemetry confirmed that a software update previously beamed up to Ingenuity was operating as expected. The new software contains commands that direct the helicopter to continue collecting data well after communications with the rover have ceased.

With the software patch in place, Ingenuity will now wake up daily, activate its flight computers, and test the performance of its solar panel, batteries, and electronic equipment. In addition, the helicopter will take a picture of the surface with its color camera and collect temperature data from sensors placed throughout the rotorcraft. Ingenuity’s engineers and Mars scientists believe such long-term data collection could not only benefit future designers of aircraft and other vehicles for the Red Planet, but also provide a long-term perspective on Martian weather patterns and dust movement.

The engineers belief that the helicopter could collect data for as long as twenty years. That data will sit on Ingenuity until such time as a later exploration team arrives, either manned or unmanned. There is also the possibility that later in Perseverance’s mission it could pass nearby again, allowing engineers to grab some of the data then.

According to the press release, those same engineers are now exploring future helicopter missions to Mars. Based on imagery I have seen coming down from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the as yet unstated target locations could be inside the eastern end of Valles Marineris or on the northern perimeter of Hellas Basin.

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Isolated flat-topped mesa inside large Martian crater

1:17 pm

Isolated flat-topped mesa
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 18, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The camera team labels this “layers in butte”, but because we are looking straight down at this 400-foot-high butte, it is difficult to see any layers at all. Based on most Martian geology however it would be shocking if this butte is not made up of multiple horizontal layers, ending with that flat surface layer at the top. Moreover, the base of the mesa to the northeast is clearly made up of a series of terraces that appear obscured at other points due to the presence of dust and dunes.

A side view would help clarify the number of layers and their thickness, but it does appear that this butte contains evidence of the geology that once covered this whole area, but over eons has eroded everything away but this butte.
» Read more

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Scientists: Any ice trapped in Ceres’ permanently shadowed craters has to be very young

10:51 am

The permanently shadowed craters at Ceres' north pole
The permanently shadowed craters (blue) at Ceres’
north pole. Click for original image.

Scientists reviewing the archive data from the Dawn probe that orbited the asteroid Ceres from 2016 to 2018 have found that the permanently shadowed craters at the asteroid’s poles are periodically exposed to sunlight due to long term variations in Ceres’ orbit, meaning that any of the ice in those craters detected by Dawn must be extremely young.

When Ceres reaches its maximum axis tilt, which last occurred about 14,000 years ago, no crater on Ceres remains perennially shadowed and any ice in them must have quickly sublimated into space. “That leaves only one plausible explanation: The ice deposits must have formed more recently than that. The results suggest all of these ice deposits must have accumulated within the last 6,000 years or less. Considering that Ceres is well over 4 billion years old, that is a remarkably young age,” Schorghofer said.

This does not mean that Ceres doesn’t have ice. In fact, it is very ice rich, below the surface. This data instead suggests that the surface remains active, and that there are processes bringing that underground ice to the surface on a regular basis. Except for these craters, which remain permanently shadowed for long time spans, that ice sublimates away relatively quickly. This result fits with earlier data from Dawn, that suggested many active locations on the surface, including its most distinct crater, Occator.

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Using Gaia data scientists discover the heaviest stellar black hole ever found

10:30 am

In digging into the precise motion data from the Gaia space telescope scientists have discovered the Milky Way’s heaviest stellar-sized black hole, with a mass thirty-three times the mass of our Sun.

Stellar black holes are formed from the collapse of massive stars and the ones previously identified in the Milky Way are on average about 10 times as massive as the Sun. Even the next most massive stellar black hole known in our galaxy, Cygnus X-1, only reaches 21 solar masses, making this new 33-solar-mass observation exceptional.

Remarkably, this black hole is also extremely close to us — at a mere 2000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, it is the second-closest known black hole to Earth.

The only known black hole inside the Milky Way that is larger is Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the supermassive central black hole at the galaxy’s center and weighing over four million solar masses. That creature is a very different thing, as it involves the long term evolution of the galaxy itself. Stellar-sized black holes only involve the death of a single star, with possible additions from a handful of others.

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NASA admits that its Mars Sample Return project needs new ideas

10:09 am

The present plan for Mars Sample Return
The present plan for Mars Sample Return

In issuing yesterday its reponse [pdf] to the February 28, 2024 audit [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general (IG) of its Mars Sample Return mission (MSR), NASA has admitted that its Mars Sample Return project needs new ideas and major changes. From the press release:

“The bottom line is, an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away,” said [NASA administrator Bill] Nelson.

The agency will today issue a call for proposals from the private sector for alternative ideas for picking up the samples on Mars and getting them up into orbit.

This NASA response to the IG report however changes little else in overall project, and almost certainly will not succeed in either reducing cost or shortening the timeline in any way.
» Read more

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NASA: The piece of space junk that crashed through a Florida house came from ISS, and we released it

8:56 am

After completing a careful analysis of the 1.6 pound object that had crashed through two floors of a house in Florida on March 8, 2024, NASA engineers have confirmed that it came from the cargo pallet that was dumped from ISS in March 2021.

As part of the analysis, NASA completed an assessment of the object’s dimensions and features compared to the released hardware and performed a materials analysis. Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet. The object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.

Though the NASA press release notes the agency will revise its computer models for determining what will burn up in the atmosphere and what will not, it says nothing about reinbursing the homeowner, Alejandro Otero, for the damage to his home. Based on the Outer Space Treaty, the U.S. is likely liable for this damage. I suspect the negotiations are on-going, and if Otero doesn’t have a lawyer yet, he should get one immediately.

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A Martian rock with holes

10:52 am

A Martian rock with holes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 13, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Perseverance.

The largest rock in the picture is probably only one or a few feet or so across. It has two holes, one very visible in the center and a second less obvious in the shadow on the right. What makes the obvious hole most intriguing is that it appears it was formerly entirely enclosed by the boulder, and was exposed when a section broke off. That section is the smaller rock in the foreground. I wonder if the Perseverance team will bring the rover around to get a view of that smaller rock, to see if it has its own corresponding part of this hole.

Note the smoothness of the rocks. This smoothness is very similar to what Curiosity saw when it was either on the floor of Gale Crater, or at the base of Mount Sharp. In both cases that smoothness suggests either flowing water or glacial ice erosion, like the smooth cobbles one routinely finds in streambeds or in the moraines of glaciers.

As Curiosity climbed Mount Sharp the smoothness was replaced with a delicate flaky fleecework indicating many layers but little violent erosion capable of smoothing the surface (see for example the images here and here). It appears Perseverance is still low enough in Jezero Crater to be within the ancient active region, formed from flowing water or ice.

As for the holes, my guess is that this rock formed from lava, and the holes are what geologists call “vugs”, bubbles formed within the lava as it solidified.

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A Martian river of sand

10:16 am

A Martian river of sand
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and flipped to post here, was taken on April 14, 2024 by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, created from a total of 31 images.

The full mosaic covers a full 360 degree view from where Curiosity presently sits, inside the slot canyon Gediz Vallis. The part shown above only covers a little more than half, looking west at the butte which forms the western wall of the slot canyon, as shown by the yellow lines and the arrow in the overview map to the right. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, while the red dotted line its planned route.

What makes this part of the mosaic especially distinct is the narrow river of sand that flows downhill from the right to the left. While everywhere else the ground is heavily covered with rocks, along this strip the surface is smooth sand, with many frozen dunes resembling waves or ripples as the flows downhill slowly.

The river is formed against a low cliff wall, which is why the sand gathered along this strip. At the same time, the downhill grade to the left (north) is allowing the sand to carve a distinct path, at the base of that cliff.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mars is alien, Mars is unique, but above all, Mars is wonderful.

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China launches remote sensing satellite

9:17 am

China today successfully launched a remote sensing satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. Video of the launch can be found here.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

39 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined 45 to 27, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 39 to 33.

To my readers: Posting will be unpredictable for the next few days, as yesterday during a hike I fell, smashing my nose and cracking a rib. The nose is now pretty much fine, though it took a while for the bleeding to stop, but the rib makes doing almost anything somewhat painful. I shall see how the day goes.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites with 1st stage on record-setting 20th flight

7:44 pm

The bunny flies again! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage, landing successfully on a droneship in the Atlantic. At this moment SpaceX is beginning to collect a fleet of Falcon 9 first stage boosters that have flown almost as much as NASA’s space shuttle fleet, which flew as follows:

Discovery 39 flights
Atlantis 33 flights
Columbia: 28 flights
Endeavour 25 flights
Challenger: 10 flights

At present SpaceX has one booster with 20 flights, and two with 19, and I think one with 18. It will take a lot more launches to catch up, but it certainly appears possible for at least a few of these Falcon 9 stages to exceed the shuttle numbers.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

39 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 45 to 26, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 39 to 32.

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