Tag: engineering

Perseverance scientists: First volcanics then water in Jezero Crater

9:45 am

On December 15th the Perseverance science team presented a summary of the rover’s first nine months exploring the floor of Jezero Crater, finding evidence first of volcanic lava activity followed by several periods where water covered the these same rocks.

“These rocks that we originally thought might be sedimentary rocks, these are in fact igneous [volcanic] rocks,” said Kelsey Moore at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “And even more excitingly, they’re not just igneous rocks – there’s more history to the story.”

The analysis of the rocks’ compositions revealed minerals that are generally produced by interactions between water and rock, as well as traces of two different salts that were probably left behind as salty water flowed through the cracks and pores in the volcanic rock.

The variety of minerals indicates that these rocks were probably underwater at least twice. “Two different types of liquid with two different types of chemistries points towards two different episodes of liquid water interaction,” said Eva Scheller, also at Caltech.

It seems strange that the scientists were surprised that Jezero Crater has a history of volcanic activity. Most craters when formed have what is called impact melt in their crater interior. The impact not only carves out the crater, the heat of impact melts the rock. Possibly the scientists expected such impact melt to be well buried and not accessible to Perseverance.

Regardless, this data will be used as the baseline for documenting the geological history of this region on Mars as Perseverance continues its journey across the floor of the crater, up onto the delta, and then out of the crater into the uplands beyond.

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Cracking glaciers on Mars

11:47 am

Cracking glaciers on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today as the picture of the day for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Located in the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip that I dub Mars’ glacier country, it shows many of the numerous glacial features that are routinely found in images taken in this region. According to Dan Berman, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, who wrote the caption,

This observation shows a lobe-shaped debris apron emanating from a massif (shown in the upper left of the image) in the Protonilus Mensae region in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars. These aprons are composed of nearly pure water ice with a layer of debris on the surface protecting the ice from sublimation (going directly from a solid to gaseous state). This image shows different terrain types on the apron that indicate the presence and flow of ice, from smoother polygonal terrain closer to the massif, to rougher, patterned ground commonly called “brain terrain.” Also visible on the apron are a series of linear pits.

Protonilus Mensae is the central mensae region in that mid-latitude strip of glaciers.The overview map below shows the location of this photo in that region. Also below is a close-up of the linear pits and cracked terrain surrounding that oblong mound, as indicated by the white rectangle.
» Read more

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Scientists discover underground reservoir of hydrogen, likely ice, near Martian equator

8:58 am

Detection of underground hydrogen in Valles Marineris
Click for full image.

In what could be a very significant discovery, scientists using Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have discovered a surprisingly large underground reservoir of hydrogen, likely ice, near Martian equator and inside the solar system’s largest known canyon, Valles Marineris.

The map to the right, reduced to post here, provides all the important data. From its caption:

The coloured scale at the bottom of the frame shows the amount of ‘water-equivalent hydrogen’ (WEH) by weight (wt%). As reflected on these scales, the purple contours in the centre of this figure show the most water-rich region. In the area marked with a ‘C’, up to 40% of the near-surface material appears to be composed of water (by weight). The area marked ‘C’ is about the size of the Netherlands and overlaps with the deep valleys of Candor Chaos, part of the canyon system considered promising in our hunt for water on Mars.

What the caption does not note is the latitude of this hydrogen, about 3 to 10 degrees south latitude. Assuming the hydrogen represents underground ice, this would be the first detection on Mars below 30 degrees latitude, and the very first in the equatorial regions. Data from orbit has suggested that Mars has a lot of water ice, found near the surface more and more as you move into higher latitudes above 30 degrees and making Mars much like Antarctica. Almost no ice however had until now been detected below 30 degrees latitude. As the European Space Agency’s press release noted,
» Read more

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket fails during launch

8:33 am

China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket experienced its second launch failure on December 14th, though few details about what went wrong have been released.

The Kuaizhou-1A rocket is built by one of China’s pseudo-private companies, Expace.

Expace had been encouraged by three successful Kuaizhou-1A launches across September, October and November, which followed the Kuaizhou-1A being grounded for one year as a result of a failure in September 2020.

Since the rocket’s first three stages use solid rocket motors, it must have been derived from military missile technology. Thus, the company is not private, even if it has obtained Chinese private investment capital, but closely supervised by the Chinese government and its military.

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Visible clean water ice on Mars

11:57 am

Crater with ice scarp
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is today’s picture of the day for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Taken on September 13, 2021, it shows an exposed scarp on the southern inner wall of a small 800-foot-wide crater.

What makes that scarp intriguing is its blue color. As noted by Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona, who wrote the caption:

This north-facing cliff appears to expose icy material that’s similar to other pole-facing scarps showing buried ice elsewhere on the planet. These cliffs give us a cut-away view of the buried ice in that location and can help answer questions about what the Martian climate was like when this ice formed.

The crater itself sits inside a much larger crater, as shown in the wider picture below.
» Read more

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Scientists confirm Parker entered Sun’s corona in April 2021

9:40 am

Scientists yesterday announced that the Parker Solar Probe successfully entered the Sun’s corona for the first time during its April 2021 close fly-by.

More information here, including some excellent short movies made from images created by Parker’s instruments.

The top edge of the corona is dubbed the Alfvén surface, and Parker’s passage across that boundary three different times during the April ’21 fly-by revealed it to be a sharp boundary that also has a great deal of topography. From the second link:

The first time Parker passed the Alfvén surface was the longest; it flew through the atmosphere for about five hours. Even as it continued flying toward the Sun, though, it popped back out, only to submerge again more deeply when it was at its closest approach — but briefly, that time exiting after just half an hour. Then, on its way outward, the spacecraft once again skimmed beneath the surface for a few hours.

“[The Alfvén surface] has to be wrinkly,” Kasper says. “It’s not fuzzy — it’s well-defined while we’re under it — but the surface has some structure to it.” So while the probe sees a smooth change in conditions while crossing the boundary, where the boundary is can change. The reason for this wrinkly surface is still an open question, though the researchers suspect the crossing over a pseudostreamer lower in the corona pushed the boundary out to enable the first crossing.

What’s clear is that inside the Sun’s atmosphere, conditions are different than just outside. Parker saw plasma waves moving back and forth instead of flowing outward. That difference was visible not just to the SWEAP and FIELDS instruments, which measure particles and electric and magnetic fields, respectively, but also to the probe’s WISPR imager.

The Parker science team also indicated that the preliminary data from the probe’s next two fly-bys — the most recent in November that was the closest yet — suggest it passed through the corona then as well.

One of the biggest unsolved mysteries about the Sun’s corona is that it appears to have a temperature in the millions of degrees, far hotter than the Sun’s surface below, something that is counter-intuitive. The expectation was that the atmosphere would be cooler than the surface. Finding out why the corona is hotter is one of the main science goals of Parker. It appears the probe is finally gathering data that might help solve that mystery.

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Webb launch delayed two days because of ground equipment issue

9:42 pm

After engineers at Arianespace’s French Guiana launch facility found an intermittent issue with ground equipment related to the Ariane 5 rocket launching the James Webb Space Telescope, it was decided to delay the launch two days to make sure the problem was resolved.

n a brief statement, NASA wrote on its website late Tuesday that the Webb team is “working a communications issue between the observatory and the launch vehicle system.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said Tuesday that engineers found an “interface problem” in a system that communicates with Webb while it’s on top of the Ariane 5 rocket. “The way to think about it is it’s a ground support equipment thing,” Zurbuchen said Tuesday night in an interview with Spaceflight Now. “Basically, the data cables are dropping some frames.”

Technicians inside the Ariane 5 rocket’s final assembly building in Kourou have tried to diagnose the problem, but so far, haven’t been able to resolve it.

The December 24th target day date remains tentative, and could slip to December 25th, or even later, depending on how successful engineers are at fixing the issue.

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More delays for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: According to a report yesterday at Ars Technica, more delays are expected in the delivery of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine to ULA, possibly preventing the first launch of Vulcan from occurring in ’22.

Testing suggests the engine itself is functioning well. However:

Blue Origin is unlikely to deliver two flight-ready versions of the BE-4 rocket engine to United Launch Alliance (ULA) before at least the second quarter of 2022, two sources say. This increases the possibility that the debut flight of ULA’s much-anticipated new rocket, Vulcan, could slip into 2023.

Vulcan’s first stage is powered by two BE-4 engines, which burn methane and are more powerful than the space shuttle’s main engines. The sources said there recently was a “relatively small” production issue with fabrication of the flight engines at Blue Origin’s factory in Kent, Washington. [emphasis mine]

Translation of the highlighted words: We have built the engine, it is working great, but we have suddenly discovered we haven’t figured out the mass production process for building it quickly and in large numbers so as to support numerous launches by both ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets.

ULA claims it can get Vulcan off the ground only a few months after getting those flightworthy BE-4 engines because it has done most of the design work using the dummy “pathfinder” BE-4 engines Blue Origin provided last year. Don’t believe it. The company is going to have to install working engines on Vulcan, and then do static fire tests to validate not only the rocket but its entire launch process. Such testing usually takes months, and is rarely completed in less than half a year, even by SpaceX.

These problems at Blue Origin means that both Vulcan and New Glenn will likely launch more three years behind schedule. Instead of 2020, both will fly no earlier than 2023, at best.

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Superheavy prototype #4 installed on orbital launchpad

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now installed its fourth Superheavy prototype on the orbital launchpad at Boca Chica, with the possibility of the first static fire test of Superheavy possibly occurring in the next week or so.

Around 10am CST (UTC-6), SpaceX began retracting more than a dozen clamps that hold the 69m (~225 ft) tall Super Heavy – the largest booster ever built – to its transport and work stand. By 11:30am, Booster 4 was safely extracted from the stand and hovering above it as the lift team crossed their Ts and dotted their Is before proceeding. SpaceX’s newest Starbase crane then spun around and crawled a short distance to the orbital launch mount, where it lifted Booster 4 above the mount.

In a process that this particular Super Heavy prototype is thoroughly familiar with, SpaceX then very carefully lowered B4 down into the center of the donut-shaped orbital launch mount, where 20 separate clamps – each capable of deploying and retracting – form a support ring and giant hold-down clamp.

The booster has 29 Raptor engines total, with 20 in the outer ring, 8 in the inner ring, and 1 in the center. It will be quite amazing to watch all these engines finally fire and lift the entire rocket, with Starshp, off the launchpad.

As for the upcoming static fire tests, road closures have been announced starting today through the end of this week.

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Boeing switches Starliner service modules for unmanned demo flight

8:57 am

According to a NASA press release today, Boeing has decided to swap Starliner service modules for the capsule’s first two missions, using the service module intended for the first manned flight on the unmanned demo flight, and assigning the service module for the unmanned demo flight — which had the valve issue — to the first manned flight.

The launch schedule for these two flights is now targeting May for the unmanned demo flight and August for the first manned Starliner demo mission.

Ongoing investigation efforts continue to validate the most probable cause to be related to oxidizer and moisture interactions. NASA and Boeing will continue the analysis and testing of the initial service module on which the issue was identified leading up to launch of the uncrewed OFT-2 mission in August 2021.

In other words, though they are claiming that they have figured out the sticky valve problem in that service module, it is also quite likely that it will not be used in August 2021. I suspect they will eventually put it aside and use another service module for the manned mission, and have only said now that they will use it on the manned mission for PR reasons. It appears they are confident the valve issue is solved for other service modules, but are not yet satisfied this troublesome service module is trustworthy.

The May-August schedule is tight, but doable, assuming the May unmanned flight goes well. If the August manned demo mission also goes well, Boeing will finally be able to begin selling seats on its Starliner capsule, though I would not be surprised if it makes no sales to anyone but NASA for the next few years. Considering its problem-filled development, private users are going to be reluctant to use this capsule until it establishes a successful track record.

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China launches second communications satellite for its manned space station missions

8:39 am

The new colonial movement: China today launched the second Tianlian communications satellite for its manned space station missions, using its Long March 3B rocket.

No word on whether the rocket’s first stage used parachutes or grid fins to control its crash landing in the interior of China.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

48 China
28 SpaceX
22 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

China now leads the U.S. 48 to 45 in the national rankings. This launch was the 124th in 2021, making the sixth most active year in rocketry since Sputnik in 1957.

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Time magazine names Elon Musk as its “Person of the Year” for 2021

11:50 am

In a perfect demonstration that a broken clock gets to be right, by accident, ever so often, Time magazine yesterday named Elon Musk its 2021 “Person of the Year.”

Time’s choices for the past several decades have been consistently cringeworthy, most often because its choices have either repeatedly hawked politicians and activists who deserve no credit at all because they had not actually done anything, such as Greta Thunberg and just-elected George Bush Jr (2000), Barack Obama (2008), Joe Biden/Kamala Harris (2020), or because the picks have been meaningless, such as the choice of “You” in 2006 and “The Protester” in 2011.

Not surprisingly, Time picked Musk apparently for all the wrong reasons, focusing on the modern leftist and Marxist agenda that despises success and now dominates the culture of most mainstream media outlets :

“In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society,” [Time’s chief executive Edward] Felsenthal wrote in the announcement. “From Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Facebook turned Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, the year brought home the extent to which, at a time of rising protest over ever deepening inequality, our lives and many of the basic structures around them are now shaped by the pursuits, products and priorities of the world’s wealthiest people.” [emphasis mine]

Thus, Felsenthal reveals that Time picked Musk not because he has achieved magnificent things that are fundamentally changing the world, but because he represents “the world’s wealthiest people” who illustrate society’s “deepening inequality.” Nor am I exaggerating. Read Felsenthal’s entire statement, which reeks with leftist and Marxist envy of the wealthy.

Musk deserves this kind of recognition, but not because he is wealthy, but because of how he became so, by actually creating businesses that fulfill needs and thus have customers pounding at the door to buy the product (Paypal, SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla). And along the way his creations have brought jobs and wealth to tens of thousands of people, and acted to rejuvenate whole industries.

We need more people like Musk. The more the merrier. Only by eagerly embracing their original and creative ideas can we hope to recover the civilization we once had.

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Curiosity looks back at its entire journey

10:03 am

Curiosity looking back across Gale Crater
Click for high resolution mosaic. Original images here, here, here, and here.

Wide overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The mosaic above was created from four photos taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera on December 12, 2021, just after the rover had moved into Maria Gordon Notch. The view is to the north, looking back at the rover’s journey climbing up the floor of Gale Crater into the foothills of Mount Sharp. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen about 25 to 30 miles away.

The cliff in shadow on the left is about 40 feet high. The cliff in sunlight on the right is between 30 to 60 feet high, depending on where you measure.

The overview map to the right shows Curiosity’s entire journey, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area covered by the mosaic above. All told the rover has climbed about 1,700 feet since it landed. While much of the rover’s route is blocked from our view by the cliffs on left, the nearest sand dune sea in the center of the mosaic is the one that the rover circled around from January 2021 to June 2021.
» Read more

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Russia’s Proton rocket launches two communications satellites

8:35 am

Russia early today successfully launched two Russian civilian communications satellites using its Proton rocket on its second launch in 2021.

This was Russia’s 22nd successful launch in 2021, matching its total from 2019 and the highest since 2015. In that year its launch totals dropped as its international commercial market share switched to SpaceX, partly because of the lower prices that American company offered and partly because of the many quality control problems in the Russian aerospace industry that were causing numerous launch failures.

With two more launches still on its manifest, ’21 looks like it will be a good year for Russia.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

47 China
28 SpaceX
22 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

China still leads the U.S. 47 to 45 in the national rankings. With 123 launches this year, ’21 is now tied as the sixth most active year in the history of rocketry.

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New Shepard completes another suborbital passenger flight

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft today completed its third commercial suborbital passenger flight, this time carrying six people, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in space.

Churchley, as well as former football player Michael Strahan, were not a paying passengers. What the other passengers paid for their flights has not been revealed. Nor has Blue Origin listed a ticket price anywhere.

It is good news that Blue Origin is now doing these suborbital commercial flights regularly. It would be much better news if the company started manufacturing its BE-4 engine as regularly so that its orbital New Glenn rocket could do the same.

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday. I was starting the preparations for a caver’s party today at my home, and needed to do stuff related to that. While most of the organized caving community has blacklisted me and several others because we don’t cower in our basement doing zoom meetings but go caving instead, a good number agree with us and are coming today. Partying sometimes comes ahead of work!

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China launches two satellites with Long March 4B

8:08 am

China today launched two satellites thought to be for military reconnaissance, using its Long March 4B rocket.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

47 China
27 SpaceX
21 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

China now leads the U.S. 47 to 45 in the national rankings. There have now been 122 successful launches in 2021, making it the seventh most active year in the history of space exploratoin.

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Curiosity takes a close look at a Martian cliff

11:15 am

A cliff of Mars
Click for full resolution. Original images here and here.

Curiosity has now moved up and into Maria Gordon Notch, a gap in the mountains of Gale Crater that is about forty feet wide, with a 40-foot-high cliff on its western side and a 30 to 60 foot cliff on its eastern side.

The mosaic above, created from two navigation camera images, looks up at the top half of that western cliff. Note the many many layers, each one of which records some climate or volcanic event in Mars’ geological history. The Mars we see today took a long time and many events to become what it is. Such layers however have not been seen everywhere by Curiosity. Compare for example this layered cliff with the massive outcrop dubbed Siccar Point and looked at closely by the rover in October. In that outcrop the layers were either non-existent, or merged together during some subsequent geological process.

Note also the pond of sand/dust at the center-bottom, nestled in a hollow but sitting almost vertical. That the dust can maintain itself at such an angle illustrates Mars’ lighter gravity, about 39% of Earth’s, which in turn allows for a much steeper angle of repose. That lighter gravity also allows for some sections of rock to stick out more precariously than possible on Earth.

As Curiosity moves through the notch in the next few days, more such cool pictures will become available, and I shall post them.

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India outlines new schedule for lunar and manned missions

10:07 am

According to press statements by India’s Minister for Science & Technology, Jitendra Singh, the schedule for that country’s next unmanned lunar lander/rover and its first manned missions have now been firmed up.

First, Singh announced that the lunar lander/rover, Chandrayaan-3, is now aiming for a launch to the Moon in the second quarter of ’22. The mission is essentially a rebuild of Chandrayaan-2, which got within a few hundred feet of the lunar surface before losing control and crashing in 2019. Chandrayaan-3 had initially been scheduled for launch in late 2020, but the COVID panic essentially shut down India’s entire space industry in both ’20 and ’21.

Second, Singh announced that India’s manned orbital Gaganyaan mission is now scheduled for launch in ’23.

Jitendra Singh said that the major missions like Test vehicle flight for the validation of Crew Escape System performance and the 1st uncrewed mission of Gaganyaan (G1) are scheduled during the beginning of the second half of 2022. This will be followed by a second uncrewed mission at the end of 2022 carrying “Vyommitra” a spacefaring human robot developed by ISRO and finally the first crewed Gaganyaan mission in 2023.

Like Chandrayaan-3, Gaganyaan was delayed significantly by the panic in India over COVID. It was originally scheduled for launch in December ’21, but the panic caused all work to stop for most of ’20 and ’21. During that time period India’s planned annual launch pace of 6 or more launches per year shrank to a mere three launches over two years, with little sign yet that ISRO is ready to resume launches.

Hopefully, these announcements are a signal that India will fully return to flight in ’22. Stay tuned.

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Orbex begins construction of launch platform

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: Orbex announced today that it has awarded a contract to a Scottish company to begin the construction of the launch platform it will use with its smallsat Prime rocket.

Orbex has commissioned Motive Offshore Group, a leading Scottish company specialising in the design and manufacture of marine and lifting equipment, to fabricate and install the Launch Platform at a dedicated test site near Kinloss, close to the Orbex headquarters in Forres, Scotland.

The Launch Platform, known as Orbex LP1, is expected to be fully operational by early 2022. … The new Launch Platform will support the testing of Orbex´s Prime rocket, a micro-launcher designed to transport small satellites weighing around 150kg to low Earth orbit. Although actual launches of the Orbex Prime rocket will not take place at the Kinloss site, the Launch Platform will be fully capable of launching an orbital rocket, allowing for full ‘dress rehearsals’ of launch procedures.

This platform is likely similar to the very transportable launch platform used by Astra. The present plan is to do launches from Orbex’s launch facilities at the Sutherland spaceport in Scotland, presently under construction and the first such launch facility being built in the United Kingdom in more than a half century. If designed to be portable, however, Orbex will also be able to ship the Prime rocket to other launch locations, depending on the orbital requirements of each launch.

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Stratolaunch wins military research contract

9:39 am

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch announced today [pdf] that it has won research contract with the Missile Defense Agency to provide a testing capability to that agency’s program to develop hypersonic flight technology.

The Stratolaunch team is eagerly preparing to complete its next set of Roc carrier aircraft test flights. The team also continues to make tremendous strides in building its first two Talon-A test vehicles: TA-0 and TA-1. TA-1 will start its power-on testing by the end of year, keeping the company on track to begin hypersonic flight testing in 2022 and to deliver services to government and commercial customers in 2023. Launched from Stratolaunch’s Roc carrier aircraft, the Talon-A vehicles are rocket-powered, autonomous, reusable testbeds carrying customized payloads at speeds above Mach 5.

From this release it appears that the company is planning more flight tests of its giant Roc airplane while it begins the first ground tests of the test vehicles that Roc will take into the air, followed in ’22 with flight tests, followed next with operational test flights in ’23.

The company’s shift from using Roc as a first stage for orbital satellites to using it instead as a hypersonic test bed seems to be paying off. For years the company was unable to find any design for second stage rocket that made both technical or economic sense. Using Roc instead as a vehicle for launching a hypersonic test bed — the Talon — seems more practical, while also providing the military a relatively cheap capability for hypersonic testing that it had previously lacked.

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NASA issues vague update on Lucy’s solar panel deployment issue.

9:29 am

Lucy solar panel graphic

NASA today released a very vague update describing the work of the Lucy engineering team in trying to work out a fix to the incomplete deployment of one of Lucy’s solar panels.

A project team completed an assessment Dec. 1 of the ongoing solar array issue, which did not appear to fully deploy as planned after launch in late October. Initial ground tests determined additional motor operations are required to increase the probability of the latching Lucy’s array in place as intended, and the team has recommended additional testing.

Spacecraft operations included discharging and charging the battery while pointed at Earth, moving the spacecraft to point to the Sun, operating the solar array motor with the launch day parameters, moving back to pointing at Earth, and then another battery discharge and recharge. The solar arrays charge the batteries, then the batteries are deliberately discharged, and the solar array circuits are used to recharge the batteries; performing these charging and discharging processes gives the team more information about the solar array circuits.

The team gathered information on two of the 10 gores – the individual solar array panel segments that make up the full array — that previously had no data. NASA now has data on all 10 gores confirming they are open, producing power as expected, and not stuck together. [emphasis mine]

Apparently they have been doing a variety of testing of the array to assess its precise condition. The highlighted words are the most important, as this data suggests that all ten fan sections, as shown in the graphic above, are partly open, and that an attempt to fully deploy the solar panel should work.

The Lucy team has apparently decided to approach this work very slowly and cautiously, that they have time to do so as Lucy continues its slow journey to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.

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SpaceX launches NASA X-ray telescope

9:17 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX early this morning successfully launched NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), a small X-ray telescope designed to black holes and neutron stars.

The first stage, making its fifth flight, successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

This launch, SpaceX’s 28th for 2021, extends once again the company’s all time record for the most launches in a year by a private company.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

46 China
28 SpaceX
21 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

China’s lead over the U.S, in the national rankings has now shrunk to 46 to 45. The launch was the 121st in 2021, making this year tied as the seventh most active year in the history of space, a ranking that is sure to go up before the end of the year.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches two more BlackSky Earth observation satellites

5:15 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully launched from its launchpad in New Zealand two more satellite for the Earth observation company BlackSky, completing the launch only 21 days after their previous launch, tying the company’s fastest turnaround.

This was Rocket Lab’s fifth launch in 2021, which the company states will be its last this year. At the start of the year it had predicted it would complete this number, so the company has at least matched its expectations for 2021, despite governmental hold-ups in both New Zealand and Wallops Island that slowed the launch pace.

The leaders in the 2021 launch:

46 China
27 SpaceX
21 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

China’s lead over the U.S. in the national rankings is now 46 to 44. SpaceX has a scheduled launch later tonight, so the race between the two countries should continue to tighten.

This was also the 120th successful launch in 2021, the most in a single year since 1984, and making it the ninth most active year in the history of space exploration.

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Strange eroded glacial flows in unnamed crater on Mars

12:20 pm

Eroded glacial flows in unnamed crater on Mars
Click for full resolution image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a series of strange glacial-like flows coming off the western slopes of the central peak of a 40-mile-wide unnamed crater, located smack dab in what I call Mars’ glacier country, that 2,000 long mid-latitude strip where almost every image shows evidence of glaciers.

The cropped section to the right doesn’t really do these strange flows justice. Make sure you click on the image to see the full resolution version. There are numerous separate flows coming off that central peak. Each appears to show that as time passed, each flow traveled a shorter distance down the mountain, leaving a moraine behind at higher and higher points.

The overview map below provides the context.
» Read more

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NASA upgrades software for monitoring potentially dangerous asteroids

9:59 am

NASA has installed a major upgrade to the software it uses for monitoring, tracking, and predicting the future orbits of potentially dangerous asteroids.

Sentry [the original software used for the past 20 years] was very effective at calculating orbital paths based on how an asteroid is affected by the gravitational pull of the Sun and planets, but there were a few factors that it couldn’t account for. In the long run, these uncertainties can snowball into many possible orbits that may or may not impact Earth.

The Yarkovsky effect, for instance, is where the Sun unevenly heats the surface of an asteroid as it spins, creating thermal forces between the “day” and “night” sides of the rock that can produce thrust. Other times, asteroids that swing past Earth very closely could be nudged into different orbits by the planet’s gravity, changing the paths of their eventual return.

The first Sentry system couldn’t incorporate either of these two factors, meaning that for special case asteroids like Bennu or Apophis, astronomers would have to manually analyze their orbits, which is a complex and time-consuming process.

But Sentry-II is designed to account for things like these. This latest version uses a different algorithm that models thousands of random points within the uncertainty space of an asteroid’s orbit, then figures out which ones have a chance of striking Earth in future. This, the team says, could help find scenarios that have very low probability of impact.

What this upgrade means is that as new asteroids are discovered the software will be able to very quickly calculate with better accuracy any potential impacts in the coming centuries. The results won’t be perfect, but less manual work will be necessary, meaning fewer dangerous asteroids will fall through the cracks.

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Where Ingenuity and Perseverance presently sit in Jezero Crater

9:15 am

Perseverance and Ingenuity, December 8, 2021
Click for interactive map.

The map to the right, annotated to post here, shows the present location of the rover Perseverance (the red dot) in relation to the 17th flight of the helicopter Ingenuity (indicated by the green line and dot) that successfully occurred on December 5, 2021.

Perseverance has been very very very very slowly retreating south, following the same route it took to move into the rough sand dune region the scientists have dubbed Seitah. Based on their long term plans, the rover will retrace its path (the white dotted line) to its landing site, and then continue along the yellow dashed line to eventually reach the base of the delta, dubbed Three Forks, that in the distant past poured through a gap in the rim of Jezero Crater.

The helicopter meanwhile is also retracing its flights, heading north to the spot where Perseverance first placed it on the ground. Because of the seasonally thinner atmosphere, the helicopter’s flights during that return journey must be shorter, which is why the 17th flight only traveled halfway across Seitah. In crossing it the first time it had done so in one flight. Now it will take two.

During that 17th flight it appears that the topography between the rover and the helicopter’s landing site caused a loss of communications as the helicopter was landing.

The Ingenuity team believes the 13-foot (4-meter) height difference between the Perseverance rover and the top of Bras [an outcrop] contributed to the loss of communications when the helicopter descended toward the surface at the end of its flight.

That loss of communications apparently caused no problems, but it will likely mean that Ingenuity will do no more flights until Perseverance can get closer and better positioned.

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Russia launches two tourists to ISS

8:25 am

Capitalism in space: Using its Soyuz-2 rocket and Soyuz capsule, Russia today successfully launched two tourists to ISS.

Onboard the Soyuz is Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire known for starting online businesses Start Today and Zozo. In addition to his Soyuz mission, he has a circumlunar flight aboard SpaceX’s Starship—called “dearMoon”—booked for no earlier than 2023. Maezawa purchased both available seats on this flight of Soyuz. He [is] joined by Yozo Hirano—a media producer from Zozo—who will document the MS-20 mission. This flight will mark the first time two Japanese astronauts fly together, as well as the first flight of any Japanese space tourist.

The mission is commanded by experienced Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, on what is his third spaceflight. During the mission, he will stand ready to pilot the Soyuz in case the automated guidance software fails.

The Russians claim that this is their first tourist flight to ISS since 2009, but that makes believe the two filmmakers launched to ISS in October were not paying passengers. They might have been working on ISS, and not merely tourists, but they were not professional astronauts but paying customers.

This flight however is the first organized with Russia by the American company Space Adventures since 2009, ending that long gap caused almost entirely because all Soyuz seats since then had been bought by NASA to replace the shuttle. With manned Dragon flights available, the Russians and Space Adventures can sell tickets again.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

46 China
27 SpaceX
21 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA

China still leads the U.S. 46 to 43 in the national rankings. With SpaceX and Rocket Lab launches set for later tonight, these numbers should rise again.

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Hubble resumes full science operations

2:35 pm

Engineers have now successfully reactivated the Hubble Space Telescope’s second spectrograph, so that the telescope is now fully operational for the first time since it went into safe mode on October 25th.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope team recovered the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on Monday, Dec. 6, and is now operating with all four active instruments collecting science. The team has still not detected any further synchronization message issues since monitoring began Nov. 1.

The team will continue work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations even if they encounter several lost synchronization messages in the future. The first of these changes is scheduled to be installed on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph in mid-December. The other instruments will receive similar updates in the coming months.

Essentially, they are modifying the telescope’s software so that it will not shut down should it “encounter several lost synchronization messages.” As the engineers have never fully explained this issue, I suspect this is a work-around to ignore an issue that in the past they would have taken more seriously. Now they are doing a cost-benefit analysis, and have decided that ignoring some of these messages is better than fixing them. It might even be impossible to do so.

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Curiosity moves into a mountain gap

10:51 am

Maria Gordon Notch
Click for full resolution version. Original images here and here.

Curiosity's location, December 6, 2021
Click for interactive map.

For the last three weeks the Curiosity science team has had the rover poking about at the base of the 40 foot cliff on the right of the panorama above. At that location many rocks and boulders had fallen from the top of the cliff, which gave them an opportunity to study the geology of the plateau above, even though it was literally beyond reach.

Beginning yesterday that work ended, and the science team finally made the commitment to move forward, into the gap above where the rover will turn right, climb up onto that plateau through a notch they have dubbed Maria Gordon Notch. The map to the right shows this coming route with the red dotted line.

Once in that notch Curiosity will truly be in the mountains of Gale Crater, even if those mountains are only the foothills to Mount Sharp.

It is interesting to contrast the roughness of the terrain that Curiosity is now routinely traveling, with the relatively benign ground that Perseverance is traversing on the floor of Jezero Crater. While Curiosity is pushing forward into steeper and rougher terrain, the Perseverance team is retreating from the somewhat mild sand dune ground of South Seitah, even though that ground is far less challenging than anything faced by Curiosity. You can see this retreat at the interactive map here. Zoom in and place your cursor over each waypoint. Rather than push forward, the Perseverance team seems willing to have the rover retreat and retrace its route around Seitah, even though to retrace those steps will likely take a few weeks, during which they will cover no new ground and will likely learn little new.

Why the Perseverance team seems so timid is puzzling. It could be they are still working out the kinks of their operation. It could be that they want to take no risks at all this early in their mission. And it could also be that the team culture at Perseverance is simply less daring than that of the Curiosity team.

Only time will answer this question. I suspect as the Perseverance mission unfolds its scientists will become more bold. We just need to give them time.

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