Tag: engineering

Solar Orbiter captures Mercury crossing in front of the Sun

9:36 am

Solar Orbiter spots Mercury in front of the Sun
Click for full movie.

The European probe Solar Orbiter successfully filmed Mercury as it crossed in front of the Sun — from the spacecraft’s perspective — on January 3, 2023.

The transit was captured by several different instruments on Solar Orbiter, as shown at the link. The picture above is a screen capture from the short movie made by its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. The black disk is Mercury, moving from the left to the right. In the background the limb of the Sun can be seen, with a distinct feature flaring out from that limb.

For Solar Orbiter, this particular transit offered a valuable chance to calibrate the instruments. “It is a certified black object travelling through your field of view,” says Daniel Müller, Solar Orbiter Project Scientist at ESA. Thus, any brightness recorded by the instrument within Mercury’s disc must be caused by the way the instrument transmits its light, called the point spread function. The better this is known, the better it can be removed. So be studying this event, the quality of the Solar Orbiter data can be ever further improved.

If the transit also produced some spectacular images, so much the better.

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VLT takes picture of exoplanet

9:20 am

VLT's picture of exoplanet
Click for original image.

The ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile has successfully taken a picture of an exoplanet four to six times larger than Jupiter that is circling its star at about the same distance as Saturn.

That picture, cropped to post here, is to the right. Other data from other observatories had suggested the star AF Leporis, 87.5 light years away, might have an exoplanet, so astronomers decided to focus VLT on it to see if it could spot it.

AF Leporis is about as massive and as hot as the sun, ESO wrote in the statement, and in addition to its one known planet the star also has a disk of debris similar to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. AF Leporis is, however, much younger than the sun. At 24 million years old, it is about 200 times younger than our star. This young age makes AF Leporis and its planetary system especially intriguing for astronomers as it can provide important insights into the evolution of our own solar system.

To snap this picture, the VLT had to use adaptive optics to smooth out the fuzziness produced by the Earth’s atmosphere, while also blocking out the star’s own light (as shown by the black disk in the image).

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China’s continued silence about Zhurong suggests Mars rover is dead

9:05 am

Zhurong's ground-penetrating radar data
The data from Zhurong’s ground-penetrating radar instrument.

Overview map
Zhurong’s final location is somewhere in the blue circle.

China’s continued silence about Zhurong — which should have come out of hibernation sometime in late December-early January — suggests the Mars rover did not survive the Martian winter, which this year was also lengthened near the end by some additional dust storms.

Zhurong went into hibernation in May 2022, at the start of winter, with plans to awaken in December. Like the helicopter Ingenuity and the lander InSight, it depends on solar power, and had to contend with a very relatively severe winter dust season this Martian year.

Even though the Chinese press has loudly touted Tianwen-1’s first two years in Mars orbit, it has made little or no mention of Zhurong, a silence that is deafening.

The silence is also foolish, because China has nothing to be ashamed of concerning Zhurong. The mission was only supposed to operate for 90 days. Instead it lasted more than a year, traveling much farther than planned. Most important, the data from its radar instrument (shown above) showed that, at this location at 25 degrees north latitude, there is no underground ice to a depth of 260 feet. That data confirmed that the Martian equatorial regions below 30 degrees latitude are very dry, with any underground ice existing rarely if at all. The icy regions above 30 degrees latitude do not appear to extend much farther south than that latitude.

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Splashed lava from a Martian impact

12:21 pm

Splashed lava from a Martian impact
Click for original image.

Almost always it is impossible to understand a high resolution image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) unless you also take a wider view. Today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a perfect example.

Taken on January 6, 2023, it shows what the science team labeled as a “rocky deposit on crater floor.” To my eye however none of this appeared tremendously rocky. Instead, what I saw was a curved and layered flow feature whose ancient age was suggested by the many later craters scattered across its surface.

Still, its origin was unclear. It isn’t ice, not only because of its apparent resistance from disturbance from those later crater impacts but because it is located at about 20 degrees north latitude, in the dry equatorial regions of Mars. If lava, what is its source? As I noted, a wider look was necessary to answer that question.
» Read more

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For the 4th time Curiosity’s drill fails to penetrate marker layer

9:44 am

Failed drillhole by Curiosity in marker layer
Click for original image.

For the fourth time this past weekend Curiosity’s drill was unable to penetrate the hard rock of what scientists have labeled “the marker layer”, a distinct feature seen at approximately the same elevation at many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp on Mars.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows that the drill was once again only able to drill a eighth to a quarter inch, not enough to gather samples for testing.

This was our fourth attempt to drill this marker band, and we gave it our best shot from both a geology and engineering perspective. Unfortunately these rocks do not want to cooperate – they’re hard and they weather into resistant and recessive beds which make them very challenging to drill. So the team made the difficult decision to get back on the road, without a drill sample from this location

» Read more

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India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover passes radiation testing

8:59 am


Click for interactive map.

According to India’s space agency ISRO, its next lunar lander/rover, Chandrayaan-3, has successfully passed testing to make sure it can function without issues in the harsh electromagnetic environment of space.

Magnetic Interference/ Electro – Magnetic Compatibility) test is conducted for satellite missions to ensure the functionality of the satellite subsystems in the space environment and their compatibility with the expected electromagnetic levels.

The spacecraft, which will carry a rover to the Moon’s south pole regions (the red dot on the map to the right), is tentatively scheduled for launch anywhere from June to the end of ’23, depending on the news story you read.

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First orbital tug from the startup Launcher fails shortly after deployment

1:18 pm

The first orbital tug, dubbed Orbiter SN1, of the startup company Launcher failed shortly after deployment from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on January 3, 2023.

The vehicle communicated with a ground station on its first scheduled pass after deployment while on battery power. “We also communicated with the vehicle for the duration of expected battery life,” the company said.

However, the Hawthorne, California-based company said the spacecraft could not get into the proper attitude so that its solar cells could generate power, which it blamed on “an orientation control issue caused by a fault in our GPS antenna system.” That, in turn, kept Orbiter from deploying its satellite payloads.

The tug was carrying payloads from eight customers, four of which were satellites to be deployed while the others would remain on the tug, using it as the base of operations.

The company presently has plans to launch upgraded tugs on two different Falcon 9 launches, in June and October respectively.

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Inspection of leaking Progress after undocking detects no obvious damage

1:10 pm

After undocking the Progress freighter from ISS yesterday, Russian astronauts on the station rolled it so that all sides of its service module could be photographed and inspected in the hope of spotting the leak in its coolant system that sprung on February 11th.

No visual damage has been detected at the Progress MS-21 spacecraft after it undocked from the International Space Station. “After the Progress MS-21 cargo spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station’s Poisk mini-research module, footage was made of its exterior surface and no visual damage was detected,” the statement [from Roscosmos] reads.

Initially the Russians postponed its de-orbit as they considered the idea of redocking the freighter to another port on the Russian half of ISS in order to inspect it more closely, but eventually they decided to fore-go that plan and de-orbit it on February 19th, one day later.

In watching the live stream of the undocking and the roll maneuver, I thought I saw a partial reddish-orange stain, similar to the stain around the hole that occurred in the Soyuz capsule in December, but it was mostly hidden behind other equipment and the Russians seemed to not consider this significant.

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SpaceX launches an Inmarsat communications satellite

9:10 pm

SpaceX tonight used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch an Inmarsat communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This was SpaceX’s second launch today. The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its third flight. Both fairings were also previously flown.

The 2023 launch race:

12 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise now leads China 13 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 13 to 9. By itself SpaceX leads the world combined 12 to 9.

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SpaceX launches 51 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg

4:35 pm

At 11:12 (Pacific) SpaceX today successfully launched another 51 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage making its ninth flight.

The first stage successfully landed on its drone ship in the Pacific. The fairing halves completed their fifth and sixth flights.

The 2023 launch race:

11 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise now leads China 12 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 12 to 9. By itself SpaceX leads the world combined 11 to 9, and that lead will grow later today should the next Falcon 9 launch at 10:59 pm (Eastern) tonight from Cape Canaveral succeed.

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A galaxy’s structure of gas and dust, as seen in the infrared by Webb

10:04 am

NGC 1433 as seen in the infrared
NGC 1433 as seen in the infrared. Click for original image.

Scientists have now released 21 papers on the gas and dust structures in nearby galaxies, based on infrared images from the Webb Space Telescope, used in collaboration with other telescopes looking in other wavelengths.

The largest survey of nearby galaxies in Webb’s first year of science operations is being carried out by the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) collaboration, involving more than 100 researchers from around the globe. The Webb observations are led by Janice Lee, Gemini Observatory chief scientist at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and affiliate astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The team is studying a diverse sample of 19 spiral galaxies, and in Webb’s first few months of science operations, observations of five of those targets – M74, NGC 7496, IC 5332, NGC 1365, and NGC 1433 – have taken place.

The image to the right is Webb’s infrared image of NGC 1433, estimated to be 46 million light years away. The bright areas extending outward in the spiral arms are believed to be star-forming regions. From the caption:

At the center of the galaxy, a tight, bright core featuring a unique double ring structure shines in exquisite detail with Webb’s extreme resolution. In this case, that ‘double ring’ is actually tightly wrapped spiral arms that wind into an oval shape along the galaxy’s bar.

NGC 1433 is a Seyfert galaxy, which are typically relatively close to Earth and has a supermassive black hole at the center eating material at a high rate. The brightness and lack of dust in the MIRI image of NGC 1433 could hint at a recent collision with another galaxy.

When comparing Webb’s infrared view with Hubble’s optical view, taken in 2014 and found here, the differences are definitely striking. Webb sees the gas and dust that is dark in Hubble’s images, while Hubble sees things at much higher resolution and thus sees more fine detail.

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China releases data sets from Chang’e-4 lander

9:12 am

China today released another set of data from the instruments on the Chang’e-4 lander, which landed on the far side of the Moon on January 3, 2019, bringing with it China’s Yutu-2 rover.

The datasets include 3,991.1 MB of 803 data files obtained by the four scientific payloads on the Chang’e-4 lander and rover between December 26, 2021 and January 10, 2022.

The data was posted on the official website of the Lunar and Planetary Data Release System, though none of the press reports from multiple China’s state-run press sources include it. All are simply the same three paragraph story, word for word. That site however is here, though it is entirely in Chinese and the English pages fail to load.

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For only 7th time, searchers find meteorite immediately after fall

8:57 am

For only 7th time, searchers on February 15th found a fragment of a meteorite that had only fallen to Earth three days before, and was furthermore only discovered mere hours before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

From the tweet of the discoverers:

FRIPON/Vigie-Ciel finds a fragment of asteroid 2023CX1 in Seine Maritime!!! The discovery was made by Loïs Leblanc, an 18-year-old student, part of the field research team.

Vigie-Ciel (“Sky Watchers”) and FRIPON are a volunteer project that searches for meteorites. The asteroid itself was discovered by Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky while doing routine survey scan for near Earth asteroids.

The find was the second time Sárneczky has spotted an asteroid just hours before it broke apart in Earth’s atmosphere as a fireball, following an incredible find in March 2022.

By finding meteorites this quickly after arrival scientists get a more pristine sample, since the asteroid has not been exposed to the Earth’s environment for any extended length of time.

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First launch of Japan’s H3 rocket aborts at T-0

8:25 pm

In its first attempt to launch its new H3 rocket today the rocket’s main liquid-fueled engines ignited, but then the two strap-on solid rockets failed to ignite at T-0, causing that main engine to shut down to protect the rocket and payload.

I have embedded the live stream below, cued to about T-39. At the end of the broadcast the rocket appeared in good condition, though it was still unclear what the caused the problem.

At the moment there is no word when JAXA, Japan’s space agency, will attempt another launch. The H3 is years behind schedule, and was developed in the hope it would be more efficient and cost less to launch than the H2A rocket Japan presently uses.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 43rd flight on Mars, the longest in almost a year

5:20 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity today successfully completed its 43rd flight on Mars, traveling 1,280 feet for 2 minutes and 26 seconds.

The green dot on the map to the right marks Ingenuity’s position before the flight, with the green lines marking the approximate direction and distance flown. The Perseverance/Ingenuity team has not yet updated its interactive map, so the precise landing spot is not yet available.

This flight was the helicopter’s longest since April 2021, just before the onset of the long six-month-long Martian winter. At that time Ingenuity completed its 28th flight, traveling 1,371 feet. Since then engineers struggled to keep Ingenuity alive during the dark winter, a task made more difficult due to an unexpected higher winter dust storm season.

Winter however is over, the helicopter is now fully charging with no problem, and has new flight software that allows it to go higher and over rougher terrain. In fact, like the last flight, Ingenuity flew farther and longer than planned, as it had been programmed to go 1,235 feet for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. That extra 45 feet and 9 seconds were likely used by the helicopter to locate a safe landing spot.

For perspective, Ingenuity’s total mission was originally planned to last only 30 days, and complete about a half dozen test flights merely to prove the concept of flight on Mars was possible. It has now lasted two years, completed 43 flights, and traveled almost five and a half miles. An amazing engineering achievement by JPL’s engineering team.

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The endless volcanic ash of Mars’ Medusae Fossae Formation

11:52 am

The endless volcanic ash of Mars' Medusae Fossae Formation
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a small but typical area of the Medusae Fossae Formation, what is thought to be the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars.

The picture itself was a “terrain sample,” taken by the MRO science team not as part of any specific research but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its temperature. The terrain itself looks like a field of sand that someone had run a fine comb across. In this case, the comb was the winds of Mars, prevailing from the southeast to the northwest. The crescent-like divots in the picture’s lower right are probably caused by some hard underground feature that the winds cannot blow away. Instead, it blows around, like water in rapids flowing around a rock, and takes the ash with it as it does so.
» Read more

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NASA outlines its expected needs as a space station customer

9:10 am

NASA has now published an updated detailed specification of what it will want to do on the four private space stations being built to replace ISS.

NASA published two white papers Feb. 13 as part of a request for information (RFI) for its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations effort to support development of commercial stations. The documents provide new details about how NASA expects to work with companies operating those stations and the agency’s needs to conduct research there.

One white paper lists NASA’s anticipated resource needs for those stations, including crew time, power and volume, broken out for each of the major agency programs anticipated to use commercial stations. Companies had been seeking more details about NASA requirements to assist in the planning of their stations.

,,,The second white paper outlines the concept of operations NASA envisions for its use of commercial space stations. The 40-page document described in detail what it expects from such stations in terms of capabilities, resources and operations, as well as what oversight the agency anticipates having.

At the moment NASA has contracts with four different space station companies or partnerships, Axiom, Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman, each of which is building its own station. Because NASA will initially be the biggest customer for these stations its requirements will help shape those stations significantly, which is why this information is of critical importance for the private companies.

At the same time, NASA is not dictating specific designs. The agency remains the customer, buying time on private facilities that will be owned privately and be free to sell their product to others. Thus, the designs of these stations might not match exactly what NASA desires, since even now there are other customers interested in buying space station time and space.

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Roscosmos will launch unmanned Soyuz to ISS on February 21

5:15 pm

Roscosmos today announced that it will launch the unmanned Soyuz to ISS on February 21st, only a two-day delay after doing a quick inspection of its outer surface for possible damage following the coolant leak of a Progress freighter on February 11th.

BtB’s stringer Jay provided me this translation of the announcement at the link:

The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft has been checked and is beginning to be prepared for launch. The preparations suspended the day before at Baikonur will resume tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
The launch is scheduled for the 20th of February.

The ship was inspected. No maliciously drilled holes were found. We decided not to wait any longer. In any case, a refueled ship must either be launched or sent to a museum.

Update: removal of the launch vehicle to the launch pad on February 18, launch on February 21″ [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are truly intriguing. It appears Roscosmos is desperately trying to convince the world that the repeated recent leaks to Soyuz and Progress spacecraft are not related to sabotage on the ground. At the same, Roscosmos has never told us the results of its investigation into the 2018 hole in a Soyuz capsule that someone drilled and then patched before launch. It seems incredibly unlikely that the two recent leaks in the exterior coolant systems of two different spacecrafts were both caused by impact from a micrometeorite or tiny piece of space junk. Two such impacts could of course occur this frequently, but for both to happen to such similar locations on only Russian spacecraft seems beyond improbable.

Either way, the decision makes some sense. The available lifeboats on ISS right now are really insufficient. Better to get this launched. More important, they had already begun fueling it, and once that is done the clock was running. They have to launch by a certain time.

Meanwhile it would be wise for NASA to begin arranging new emergency lifeboat arrangements with SpaceX as well as Boeing (once it finally gets Starliner operational). Depending on the Russians for even part of this responsibility seems ill advised. If preplanned properly, SpaceX could certainly launch one of its Dragon manned capsules quickly in an emergency.

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“What the heck?!” swirls on Mars

1:33 pm


Click for original image.

Time for another “What the heck?!” image on Mars. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on January 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is what the science team calls a “terrain sample,” which means it wasn’t taken as part of any specific scientific investigation and requested by a scientist. Instead, it was taken to fill a gap in MRO’s schedule. In order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature it is necessary for it to take regular pictures, and sometimes if there is a gap between requested images the science team picks something almost at random to fill the gap.

Sometimes the picture results in something relatively uninteresting. More often they try to pick something intriguing but not yet of interest to any particular researcher. With today’s cool image they certainly found something intriguing, so much so that I haven’t the faintest idea what is going on here.

Clearly, the tan swirls lie on the higher topology, and could be dust covered. The darker hollows in between could be darker because they are so, or because they are in shadow.
» Read more

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India’s government plans to sell tourist tickets on its future manned flights

10:40 am

The new colonial movement: It appears that once it completes its first manned mission in space, dubbed Gaganyaan, India’s government space agency ISRO intends to sell tourist tickets on future manned flights.

[Union Minister Jitendra] Singh, who also holds the portfolios of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, informed the House that the objective of India’s maiden human spaceflight programme, ‘Gaganyaan’, is demonstration of human spaceflight capability to low earth orbit (LEO), which is a precursor to the future space tourism programme. “The ISRO has carried out a few feasibility studies for a sub-orbital space tourism mission,” the Union Minister revealed while announcing that after the accomplishment of the ‘Gaganyaan’ mission, activities towards space tourism would be firmed up.

Selling commercial tickets on its spacecraft would be completely in line with ISRO’s decades-long policy of trying to make money from its space capabilities. Whether this action however will help or hinder India’s independent space industry remains unclear. Like NASA a decade ago, there is a turf war in ISRO over whether to cede power to private enterprise, or hold it entirely in ISRO’s grip. If ISRO sells manned spaceflight tickets it will make it harder for private tourism companies to gain investment capital.

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Perseverance’s depot of core samples, ready for pickup

10:30 am

Mosaic of Perseverance's core sample depot
Click for original image.


Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The Perseverance science team yesterday released the annotated mosaic above, cropped to post here, showing the scattered depot of core samples the rover deposited on the floor of Jezero Crater for later pickup some time next decade for return to Earth.

The overview map to the right shows the context. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s position when it took the picture, on January 31, 2023. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s location at that time. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the mosaic. The green outline indicates the area of the depot.

Eight of those tubes are filled with rock and regolith (broken rock and dust), while one is an atmospheric sample and one is a “witness” tube. The rover photographed the depot using the Mastcam-Z camera on the top of its mast, or “head,” on Jan. 31, 2023. The color has been adjusted to show the Martian surface approximately as it would look to the human eye.

The location of each tube was carefully mapped because it is possible wind will cover them with dust in the decade-plus before pickup. This mosaic will also act as a guide for the future Mars helicopters that will arrive to grab the core samples and bring them to an ascent spacecraft that will bring them back to Earth.

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Imaging satellite builder Maxar signs contract with Umbra to use its radar satellites

10:02 am

Maxar, which operates a constellation of high resolution optical imaging satellites for commercial and military use, has now signed a contract with Umbra, which operates a constellation of high resolution radar satellites for commercial and military use.

The partnership will allow Maxar to directly task Umbra’s satellites and integrate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data into its portfolio of Earth intelligence products and services, Tony Frazier, head of Maxar’s public sector Earth intelligence, told SpaceNews.

SAR is a specialized form of remote sensing that has been in growing demand since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. SAR satellites can capture images at night, through cloud cover, smoke and rain — conditions that impair traditional optical satellites like those operated by Maxar.

The contract will give Maxar “assured access” to the soon-to-be launched six and seven satellites in Umbra’s constellation.

Essentially, this deal enhances Maxar’s value. Its main customer is the U.S. military, and it can now offer that military a more enhanced observation capability. Umbra meanwhile gets a major customer quickly, rather than having to pitch its product to multiple potential buyers. Its radar product is also enhanced, because it will now come automatically partnered with optical imagery.

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Dislodged fuel filter identified as cause of Virgin Orbit launch failure

9:42 am

Virgin Orbit yesterday revealed that a dislodged fuel filter in LauncherOne’s upper stage caused the failure of the rocket to reach orbit during its January 9, 2023 launch from Cornwall, UK.

The data is indicating that from the beginning of the second stage first burn, a fuel filter within the fuel feedline had been dislodged from its normal position. Additional data shows that the fuel pump that is downstream of the filter operated at a degraded efficiency level, resulting in the Newton 4 engine being starved for fuel. Performing in this anomalous manner resulted in the engine operating at a significantly higher than rated engine temperature.

Components downstream and in the vicinity of the abnormally hot engine eventually malfunctioned, causing the second stage thrust to terminate prematurely.

The rocket thus did not have enough velocity to reach orbit, and fell in the ocean.

No word yet on when the company will next launch, though it has said that launch will be from Mojave, California.

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SpaceX abandons plan to convert floating oil platforms into Starship/Superheavy landing spots

4:18 pm

SpaceX has decided not to convert the two floating oil rigs it had purchased in 2020 into Starship/Superheavy landing platforms, and has sold both.

According to SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell,

Shotwell said the company needed to first start launching Starship and better understand that vehicle before building offshore launch platforms. “We really need to fly this vehicle to understand it, to get to know this machine, and then we’ll figure out how we’re going to launch it.”

She said she expected offshore platforms to eventually play a role to support an extraordinarily high launch cadence. “We have designed Starship to be as much like aircraft operations as we possibly can get it,” she said in the conference presentation. “We want to talk about dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day.”

This is a perfect example of this company’s intelligent ability to focus on the most important problems now, instead of getting distracted by future issues and challenges it knows exists but are not the priority at this time.

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A glacial river on Mars

2:01 pm

A glacial river on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 1, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a wonderful example of a glacier-filled canyon on Mars, the ice apparently flowing both along and around mesas as it carves its way downhill.

I think the downhill grade here is to the north, but this could be wrong for the two side canyons on the main canyon’s north side.

Not only is the material in the canyon likely ice, covered with a protective layer of trapped dust and ash that makes the glacier surface look so smooth, the mesa tops are likely impregnated with ice as well. The mesas however have little dust, so the plateaus have a mottled stippled look likely caused by sublimation of that underground ice.

The location of these canyons explains the presence of ice.
» Read more

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Winter finally ends for Ingenuity

9:47 am

According to a detailed update today by Travis Brown, Chief Engineer of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, the helicopter has now finally exited its difficult winter conditions that began in May 2022 and only ended at the end of January 2023.

One month to the day after the Dec. 24 flight attempt, Ingenuity did something it hadn’t done during the previous 260 sols – it slept “warmly” through the entire night. Data leading up to this event had suggested that such a survival was possible, but 8 long months of winter had tempered the team’s optimism. When Ingenuity’s team reviewed the downlinked data, they found that not only had it started living through the night, but had actually begun to bank power in its batteries. We’ve now seen end-of-sol states of charge in our batteries of more than 90% — an unbelievable number just days earlier. All the above means our sleepy friend has finally awoken from its long winter malaise, just in time to race up the Jezero Crater Delta and provide valuable advanced imaging for Perseverance.

Brown describes in detail their struggle for the past eight months to keep Ingenuity alive. That information is going to be crucial in designing future Mars helicopters, including the ones that will return to Jezero Crater sometime in the next decade to grab the core samples Perseverance has deposited for pick up and return to Earth.

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Canadian rocket startup dies because of opposition to noise produced by its engine tests

9:39 am

Though there were likely other issues, according the CEO of the now defunct rocket startup SpaceRyde the company died when the local government blocked engine tests on a piece of rural land it had purchased because of local protests.

The Trent Hills municipality of Ontario asked SpaceRyde to stop engine tests from a lot in the region Oct. 7 after their noise brought attention to how an industrial application was operating on rurally zoned land. When SpaceRyde bought the land, “the understanding at the time was it would be a temporary operation that focused on supporting the business of testing balloon technology to deliver satellites into orbit,” Trent Hills mayor Bob Crate said during a Sept. 13 council meeting.

A petition started last year to stop SpaceRyde rocket engine tests it says can be “heard for many miles” has received more than 800 signatures.

We are clearly entering a dark age when the general public cannot tolerate the noise produced during short static fire engine tests lasting generally no more than one or two minutes.

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China aiming to complete 80 launches in 2023

9:30 am

According to this Space.com article, China’s many pseudo-company rocket startups are hoping to complete a total of approximately 19 to 21 launches in 2023, which when combined with the 60-plus launches the government hopes to complete, will give China a total of approximately 80 launches in 2023, a new record.

The article provides a good review of all of the pseudo-companies hoping to launch in the next few years. This list includes the following:

  • Galactic Energy: 8 to 10 launches in ’23 with its Ceres-1 solid fueled rocket
  • Space Pioneer: The first launch of its liquid-fueled Tainlong-2 rocket
  • Exspace: 7 launches with its Kuaizhou-1A and larger Kuaizhou-11, both solid-fueled
  • Landspace: A second launch attempt of its liquid-fueled Zhuque-2 rocket after a launch failure in ’22
  • Orienspace: The first launch of its Gravity-1 solid fueled rocket
  • Rocket Pi: The first launch of its Darwin-1 liquid fueled rocket
  • Ispace: Unknown after three consecutive launch failures of its Hyperbola-1 solid-fueled rocket

The article also adds launches from two government “private” spinoffs, CAS Space, planning 3 launches of its PR-1solid fueled rocket, and China Rocket, planning at least one launch of its Jielong-3 solid fueled rocket. Though both are touted as private, they are both really separate divisions created by China’s space agency CASC, with their launch counts likely included in the government’s hope-for 60 launches.

The pseudo private companies are somewhat more independent as they were founded by private individuals. All appear to have obtained private Chinese capital — in addition to government funding — to fund their development. All however are also entirely supervised in all actions by the government. None could build anything without government approval, and all are depending on government rocket technology that can be withdrawn at any time. These pseudo companies don’t really own their rockets. Furthermore, while they are able to sell their products to other private entities, their market appears almost entirely confined to China.

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Intuitive Machines completes merger with SPAC as it goes public

9:02 am

Intuitive Machines, one of a handful of American companies building lunar landers for NASA and others, has completed its merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), thus becoming a publicly traded stock but raising less money than expected in the process.

Intuitive Machines said Feb. 13 it had closed its merger with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp., a SPAC that trades on the Nasdaq. The merged company, retaining the Intuitive Machines name, will trade on the Nasdaq starting Feb. 14 under the ticker symbol LUNR.

The companies announced the merger in September 2022, long after the mania surrounding SPACs has cooled both in the space industry and the overall market. Inflection Point had $301 million of cash in trust, and the companies said they had arranged an additional $55 million in investment from the SPAC’s sponsors and a founder of Intuitive Machines, along with $50 million CF Principal Investments LLC, an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald & Company. In an investor presentation linked to the merger announcement, the companies anticipated having more than $330 million in cash after transaction expenses.

However, in the Feb. 13 announcement that the merger had closed, the companies announced only $55 million of “committed capital from an affiliate of its sponsor and company founders.”

It appears that many investors in Inflection Point itself (30% of whom had voted against this merger) had pulled their money from the fund, depleting the $301 million that was originally promised. In addition, yesterday’s announcement made no mention of the $50 million that CF had also committed.

Essentially, the company’s future hinges on the success of its first lunar mission, presently scheduled for June. Should it succeed, the company should be able to replace from other investors the funds that it failed to raise in this merger. Should it fail, it is very possible it will go belly up, as it is likely it will find it difficult if not impossible to find further investment capital.

There is of course the possibility that NASA will keep the company afloat with additional funding, but if so it might be a case of throwing good money after bad, something our government is very good at doing.

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Cracked ash-filled Martian terrain

1:31 pm

Cracked ash-filled fissures on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 26, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this “Possible Pit,” but other than a small dark stain on the rim of a crater north of the section cropped to the right, I could find nothing that even closely resembled a pit. More likely the scientists were referring to the large circular depression in the top center of this picture. It does not at first glance look like a crater, as it has no obvious rim. In fact, almost none of the circular depressions in this image look like craters, as almost none have uplifted rims.

However, it is not clear what caused these dust-filled fractures as well as the image’s many circular depressions. The location, as indicated by the overview map below, does not really help.
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