Tag: engineering

SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites; China launches Tianhe station module

10:16 pm

Twas a busy evening. SpaceX successfully put 60 more Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket, with the first stage successfully completing its seventh flight, landing safely on the drone ship in the Atlantic.

China in turn successfully used its Long March 5B rocket to place in orbit the core module, dubbed Tianhe, of its planned space station. This is the first of eleven launches in the next two years to assemble the station’s initial configuration, including cargo and manned missions along the way.

The SpaceX live stream is at the link. I have embedded China’s English language live stream of the Tianhe launch below the fold. The launch is about 52 minutes in.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

12 SpaceX
10 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 10 in the national rankings.
» Read more

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Twisted taffy in the basement of Mars

2:53 pm

Taffy on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, taken on March 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and cropped and reduced to post here, shows us an example of one of Mars’ strangest and most puzzling geological features, dubbed banded or “taffy-pull” terrain by scientists.

Taffy-pull terrain has so far only been found within Hellas Basin, Mars’ deepest impact basin and what I like to call the basement of Mars. Because of the lower crater count in this terrain scientists consider it relatively young, no more than 3 billion years old, according to this 2014 paper, which also notes

The apparent sensitivity to local topography and preference for concentrating in localized depressions is compatible with deformation as a viscous fluid.

At the moment what that viscous fluid was remains a matter of debate. Many theories propose that ice and water acting in conjunction with salt caused their formation, similar to salt domes seen on Earth. Other propose that the terrain formed from some kind of volcanic or impact melt process.

Almost all of the taffy terrain on Mars has been found in the deepest parts of Hellas Basin in a curved trough along its western interior, as shown by the light blue areas in the overview map below.
» Read more

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Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has passed away at 90

10:51 am

R.I.P. Michael Collins, the astronaut on Apollo 11 who stayed in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, passed away today at the age of 90.

Collins was one of the most friendly and personable astronauts I ever met. He was always available and willing to answer questions, sometimes even willing to go an extra mile to provide you more than you asked for.

In many ways his later work as head of the Air & Space Museum was more important than his time as an astronaut. He helped make that museum and the history it documents one of the most popular in the world.

As long as humanity exists, on Earth and in space, Michael Collins will never be forgotten.

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Perseverance as seen by Ingenuity

8:51 am

Perserverance as seen by Ingenuity
Click for full image.

Cool image time! JPL today released the photo to the right, cropped to post here. It was taken by the helicopter Ingenuity during its third flight on April 25th and shows the rover Perseverance at its left edge.

The horizon is tilted because the camera lens is very wide angle to capture as much terrain as possible and thus produces a fisheye curved distortion to the image’s periphery.

This image was taken as Ingenuity flew north about 160 feet away from Perseverance, probably in the first part of its flight as seen by photos taken by Perseverance of Ingenuity during its flight.

The mountains in the distance are the rim of Jezero Crater.

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Dynetics has joined Blue Origin in protesting Starship contract by NASA

5:06 pm

Capitalism in space? Dynetics today joined Blue Origin in protesting NASA’s decision to award SpaceX the sole contract for building a manned lunar lander, using its Starship spacecraft.

Though the company’s protest did not going into specifics, it appears that Dynetics main complaint is the decision to not award two companies a contract, as originally planned. Even so, these factors make Dynetics bid quite problematic:

Of the three bidders, Dynetics was the lowest ranked. It had a technical rating of “Marginal,” one step below the “Acceptable” that Blue Origin and SpaceX received. Its Management rating of “Very Good” was the same as Blue Origin but one step below SpaceX’s “Outstanding.”

In the source selection statement, Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said the Dynetics lander “suffered from a number of serious drawbacks” that increased risk. The lander was overweight, which at this early stage of development “calls into question the feasibility of Dynetics’ mission architecture and its ability to successfully close its mission as proposed,” she wrote. The evaluation also questioned the maturity of the technology for performing in-space cryogenic fluid transfer required to refuel the lander, as the company planned.

Lueders concluded that “while Dynetics’ proposal does have some meritorious technical and management attributes, it is overall of limited merit and is only somewhat in alignment with the objectives as set forth in this solicitation.” The document only stated that Dynetics’ proposal had a price “significantly higher” than Blue Origin’s proposal, which in turn was significantly higher than SpaceX’s winning bid of $2.89 billion. Blue Origin disclosed in its protest that it bid $5.99 billion. [emphasis mine]

So, Dynetics proposed to build an overweight lander and do it at the highest price. If anything this protest enhances Blue Origin’s protest. It certainly doesn’t do much for Dynetics.

In fact, a good metaphor for the bidding here would be to imagine three vacuum cleaner salesman arriving at your door, all at the same time. One salesman, Mr. Newbie Dynetics, offers you a vacuum cleaner (as yet unbuilt in any form) that as presently designed will only be able to suck in about two-thirds of the dirt on your floor, and demands you pay $800 for it. The second salesman, Jeff “Blue” Origin, says his design (also unbuilt) is far better because they’ve done some successful tests of a tiny handheld prototype, and in addition he’ll only charge you $599 for it.

Neither Newbie or Jeff have any financing, so you will have to foot the entire bill.

The third salesman, Elon Starship, shows up with a full size prototype that while it has some problems, actually functions, and has been tested a number of times already. He also has more than two thirds of his development already financed by others, and only wants to charge you $289.

Who would you pick?

Since I know my readers are neither elected officials nor government officials in Washington and therefore know how to use their brains intelligently, I suspect I know.

We shall soon find out just how smart or dumb those elected officials or government officials in Washington really are.

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Martian pit on top of Martian dome

12:55 pm

Dome with pit
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on March 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was simply labeled “Pit on Top of Dome in Promethei Terra.”

The cropped section to the right shows one of two such pits visible on the entire image. Promethei Terra is a large 2,000 mile long cratered region due east from Hellas Basin, the deepest large region on Mars.

What caused these pits? The known facts provide clues, but do not really solve the mystery.

First, this image is located in the southern cratered highlands at 45 degrees south latitude. Thus, it is not surprising that it resembles similar terrain in the northern lowlands that suggests an ice layer very close to the surface.
» Read more

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Starship prototype #15 completes static fire test

9:20 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s fifteenth Starship prototype successfully completed a static fire test yesterday, and the company is now hoping to do its first test flight this week, possibly as early as tomorrow.

Meanwhile, preparations continue for the first test launch of a Superheavy prototype, as well construction at Boca Chica of the orbital launchpad.

The Orbital Launch Site is a hive of activity, with work ranging from the installation of large GSE (Ground Support Equipment) tanks to continued work on the launch mount and launch and integration tower.

The latter has now started to rise into the air next to the mount, which is yet to receive its launch table.

When finished, the tower will be the tallest structure in the region, at nearly 152 meters — towering over the 120 meter tall, fully integrated Starship/Super Heavy stack. The Tower will eventually host a crane and, as crazy as it initially sounded when Elon revealed it, arms designed to catch the returning booster.

It is not yet clear what the test schedule for Superheavy will be leading to that first orbital launch. They will likely fly a prototype on a hop first, then fly it with Starship stacked above. SpaceX however has not said exactly what its plans are, and even if it had, the company has been quite willing to revise those plans should it decide a change is advisable.

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The commercial history of Russia’s Proton rocket

9:10 am

Doug Messier at Parabolic Arc today published a detailed launch history of Russia’s Proton rocket, outlining its commercial rise beginning in the 1990s and its fall in the 2010s with the arrival of SpaceX.

The fading of Proton reflected strong competition from SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket, which captured an increasing percentage of commercial launches with significantly lower prices.

There was also a global shift away from Proton’s bread and butter, the geosynchronous communications satellite, toward large constellations deployed into low and medium Earth orbits.

Proton’s reputation was also damaged by serious quality control problems that affected the entire Russian launch industry. Proton suffered 9 launch failures and one partial failure in the 10 years between 2006 and 2015. The booster was left grounded for as long as a year at a time. Insurance rates for Proton flights soared.

Proton appears to still have six launches on its manifest, but the shift in Russia to its Angara rocket likely means the end of Proton’s long history, begun at the very beginnings of the space age in the 1960s, is in sight.

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SpaceX leases bigger space at LA port for processing Falcon 9 boosters after launch

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: According to the mayor of Los Angeles, SpaceX has signed a new lease for more space at the city’s port, taking over the facilities no longer used by Sea Launch’s floating launch platform that is now in Russia.

News of the port lease broke on April 26th with a tweet from the mayor of Long Beach, California after the Port of Long Beach (POLB) Commission voted to approve SpaceX’s 24-month sublease with an effective start date of May 1st, 2021. From 2014 to 2020, a massive floating rocket launch complex and associated service ships once used by SeaLaunch called POLB’s Pier 16 home while mothballed and the company left behind a decent amount of infrastructure when it vacated the facility last year.

That includes a ~5600 square meter (~65,000 sq ft) warehouse and office space formerly used to process SeaLaunch payloads and Ukrainian Zenit rockets, as well as a pier and dock space generally optimized for loading and unloading large rockets from rocket transport ships. In other words, Pier 16 is a perfect fit for SpaceX’s needs.

SpaceX has twice before signed similar leases and then canceled them. Now it appears the deal is more firm, as the company appears to be gearing up for regular Starlink satellite launches from Vandenberg, requiring a bigger need in LA for processing Falcon 9 first stage boosters after launch.

I wonder too if this deal might be in connection with Starship and the two used floating oil rigs that SpaceX now owns and is refitting as Superheavy/Starship launch and landing pads. This LA facility would be ideal for these ocean platforms before and after launch.

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China launches nine satellites using Long March 6 rocket

8:51 am

China today used its Long March 6 rocket, designed to launch small satellites, to place what the country’s state-run media describes as “nine commercial satellites.”

Two satellites apparently are aimed at Earth observation, while the others are testing various satellite designs.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

11 SpaceX
9 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 16 to 9 in the national rankings.

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German smallsat rocket startup wins launch contract

8:42 am

Capitalism in space: The German smallsat rocket startup company Isar Aerospace has won its first launch contract, to place an Airbus Earth observation satellite using its new Spectrum rocket.

Isar is one of three new German rocket companies competing for the smallsat market that all hope to launch for the first time next year.

Along with Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse Technologies, the three startups are competing as part of the German Space Agency DLR’s microlauncher competition.

The competition, which is being run in conjunction with ESA [European Space Agency], will award one of the three startups with 11 million euros ($13 million) in funding later this year. The funding is to be used to support a qualification flight that will carry a payload for a university or research institution for free. A second prize of 11 million euros in funding will then be awarded in 2022 as the final stage of the competition.

In evaluating the three startups, the DLR panel of judges will examine the technical aspects and commercial feasibility of each launcher. As a result, each startup’s success in securing funding and signing launch contracts will play a role in their chance of winning the competition.

Rocket Factory has also won a launch contract, with that commercial launch set for 2024.

Note how ESA is shifting its approach. Previously it focused its commercial effort entirely within the government-controlled Arianespace company. Now it is awarding competitive contracts to independent private companies. It appears that the ESA, like NASA, is adopting the recommendations put forth in my policy paper Capitalism in Space. It no longer wants to be the company but is instead acting as a customer looking for a product to buy.

Hopefully more than one of these three German companies will succeed, so that the competition will increase. That in turn will force prices down while encouraging greater innovation.

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Blue Origin protests Starship contract award for lunar lander

10:09 pm

Blue Origin today filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of NASA’s decision to award SpaceX’s Starship the sole contract for building a manned lunar lander, claiming the agency “moved the goalposts” during the award process.

Blue Origin says in the GAO protest that its “National Team,” which included Draper, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, bid $5.99 billion for the HLS [Human Landing System] award, slightly more than double SpaceX’s bid. However, it argues that it was not given the opportunity to revise that bid when NASA concluded that the funding available would not allow it to select two bidders, as originally anticipated. NASA requested $3.3 billion for HLS in its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal but received only $850 million in an omnibus appropriations bill passed in December 2020. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words kind of say it all. Blue Origin’s National Team put in a very high bid. Why should they have any expectation of winning?

Moreover, their track record, especially Blue Origin’s (the leader of the team), pales in comparison to SpaceX.
» Read more

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John Woodfield RC Gliders

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Seems appropriate with Ingenuity flying about on Mars. From the youtube webpage:

This was the maiden flight of my latest design. It was a bit of a mash-up, using existing wings and tail from old models. It weighs 1.5kg and was flying in about 7-10mph of wind. I feel it will be happier in about 5mph. The all-moving tail needs changing slightly as it developed some serious flutter if I picked up too much airspeed.

Hat tip Cotour.

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ULA’s Delta-4 Heavy successfully launches NRO spy satellite

5:15 pm

ULA today successfully used its most powerful rocket, the Delta-4 Heavy, to place a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) surveillance satellite into orbit.

ULA now only has three Delta-4 Heavy’s in its inventory. After those launch the rocket will be retired, to be replaced by the most powerful versions of its new Vulcan rocket.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

11 SpaceX
8 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 16 to 8 in the national rankings.

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Study: increase in seasonal Martian streaks after 2018 global dust storm suggests dust not water is their cause

2:37 pm

Map of Mars showing location of new linneae after 2018 global dust storm
Click for full image.

The uncertainty of science: A just-published survey of Mars following the 2018 global dust storm found that there was a significant increase in the seasonal dark streaks that scientists call recurring slope lineae, providing more evidence that these streaks are not caused by some form of water seepage but instead are related to some dry process.

The map to the right is figure 2 from that paper. The white dots show the candidate lineae that appeared following the 2018 global dust storm. About half were new streaks, not seen previously.

From the paper’s conclusion:
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes third flight!

9:40 pm

Low resolution montage showing Ingenuity's third flight on Mars, April 25, 2021
Click for full resolution. Individual images can be found, in sequence, here, here, here, and here.

Early today Ingenuity successfully completed its third flight on Mars, traveling a considerable distance north from its taken-off point and then returning almost exactly to that point, as shown by the montage of four Perseverance navigation images above.

You will want to look at the high resolution montage, as the details are much clearer. The large mountains in the background are the rim of Jezero Crater. The smaller plateau in front of these mountains and much closer is the edge of the delta that Perseverance will explore.

According to this NASA press release:

The helicopter took off at 4:31 a.m. EDT (1:31 a.m. PDT), or 12:33 p.m. local Mars time, rising 16 feet (5 meters) – the same altitude as its second flight. Then it zipped downrange 164 feet (50 meters), just over half the length of a football field, reaching a top speed of 6.6 feet per second (2 meters per second).

I have embedded below the fold video of the helicopter’s take off, flight to the north, and then return and landing, created from Perseverance images. Because the camera did not pan the helicopter moves off frame for the middle part of its flight. In the coming days I expect they will assemble a video showing the entire flight.

The fourth flight is now only days away.
» Read more

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Soyuz-2 rocket launches 36 more OneWeb satellites

8:53 pm

Capitalism in space: Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket today successfully launched from its Vostochny spaceport another 36 more OneWeb satellites, raising that internet constellation to 182 satellites of a planned 650 satellites.

The constellation will take 20 Soyuz launches to finish, and like other competitor services such as Starlink, is designed to provide high speed, low latency broadband services to areas where such service is unavailable now. Whereas Starlink is being marketed to individuals, OneWeb’s services are designed for enterprise customers, including broadband providers. User terminals can enable 3G, LTE, 5G, and Wi-Fi service over land, sea, and air.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

11 SpaceX
8 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 15 to 8 in the national rankings. And these numbers will likely see some change as there are four launches scheduled in the next four days. First ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy will launch a spy satellite tomorrow, then the next day Arianespace will do its first launch this year, launching a commercial Airbus Earth observation satellite with a Vega rocket.

On April 28 SpaceX plans to launch another 60 Starlink satellites, followed on April 29th by the launch by China of the first module of its space station, using their Long March 5B rocket.

Things are heating up, and this is only the beginning.

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Curiosity’s mesa-top view of Gale Crater

11:30 am

The view of Gale Crater from on top of Mont Mercou
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo above, reduced slightly to post here, was taken on April 14, 2021 by one of the navigation cameras on Curiosity. The rover was then and is still sitting on top of the twenty foot high outcrop dubbed Mont Mercou.

Last week I had posted a panorama made from images at this viewpoint looking south towards Mount Sharp. Today’s image is from the same place, but now looks north across the floor of Gale Crater at the areas that Curiosity had previously traveled. I think the smallest mesas on the left of this image are the Murray Buttes which Curiosity was traveling through back in 2016, but am not certain.

The mountains in the far distance are the rim of the crater, about 30 miles away.

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China names its Mars rover Zhurong, after traditional fire god

9:52 am

The new colonial movement: The Chinese state-run press today announced that it has chosen Zhurong, a traditional Chinese fire god, as the name of the rover that is presently orbiting Mars on its Tianwen-1 orbiter and is targeting a landing sometime in mid-May.

They note that this name matches well with the Chinese name for Mars, “Huo Xing,” or fire star.

The announcement provided little additional information, other than stating that the prime landing site is in the previously announced Utopia Planitia region, which suggests the high resolutions images being taken by Tianwen-1 (unreleased by China) continue to show no reason to change that target.

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Ingenuity’s third flight late tonight

9:40 am

First color image from Ingenuity
Click for full image.

According to Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s Mars Helicopter Chief, the helicopter’s team is now targeting very early Sunday morning for its third test flight.

For the third flight, we’re targeting the same altitude [as flight two], but we are going to open things up a bit too, increasing our max airspeed from 0.5 meters per second to 2 meters per second (about 4.5 mph) as we head 50 meters (164 feet) north and return to land at Wright Brothers Field. We’re planning for a total flight time of about 80 seconds and a total distance of 100 meters (330 feet).

While that number may not seem like a lot, consider that we never moved laterally more than about two-pencil lengths when we flight-tested in the vacuum chamber here on Earth. And while the 4 meters of lateral movement in Flight Two (2 meters out and then 2 meters back) was great, providing lots of terrific data, it was still only 4 meters. As such, Flight Three is a big step, one in which Ingenuity will begin to experience freedom in the sky.

The picture above was the first color image sent down by Ingenuity, taken during the second test flight when the helicopter was seventeen feet in the air and pitched slightly so that it could look east, toward Perseverance. From the caption:

The winding parallel discolorations in the surface reveal the tread of the six-wheeled rover. Perseverance itself is located top center, just out frame. “Wright Brothers Field” is in the vicinity of the helicopter’s shadow, bottom center, with the actual point of takeoff of the helicopter just below the image. A portion of the landing pads on two of the helicopter’s four landing legs can be seen in on the left and right sides of the image, and a small portion of the horizon can be seen at the upper right and left corners.

The data from tonight’s flight will arrive on Earth at around 7:16 am (Pacific) tomorrow.

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Polygons and an inexplicable depression in ancient Martian crater floor

2:23 pm

Polygons and an inexplicable depression in ancient Martian crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 26, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of a small section of the floor of 85-mile-wide Galilaei Crater.

The main focus of the image is the polygonal cracks that cover the flat low areas of the crater floor, interspersed randomly by small mesas and shallow irregular depressions. The depression in this particular image is especially intriguing. It to me falls into my “What the heck?!” category, for I can’t imagine why among this terrain of polygons and pointed mesas there should suddenly be an irregularly shaped flat depression with a completely smooth floor that has no cracks at all.

The polygons are less puzzling. Galilaei Crater is very old, its impact thought to have occurred about 4 billion years ago. Though it sits at 5 degrees north latitude, practically on the Martian equator and thus in what is now Mars’ most arid region, scientists believe that once there was a lot of liquid surface water here. The overview map below illustrates this.
» Read more

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Gale Crater’s small mesas were formed by wind, not liquid water

11:14 am

Route through Murray Buttes
The Murray Buttes. Click to see August 11, 2016 post.

The uncertainty of science: Though Curiosity has found apparent evidence of past liquid water during its early travels on the floor of Gale Crater, scientists have now concluded that the first small mesas and buttes it traveled past back in 2016, dubbed the Murray Buttes, were not formed by the flow of liquid water but by wind reshaping ancient sand dunes. From the press release:
» Read more

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Jupiter’s changing and unchanging Great Red Spot

9:40 am

The changing Great Red Spot of Jupiter
Click for full figure.

In a paper published in March in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, scientists (using images from amateurs, the Hubble Space Telescope, and Juno, scientists) have mapped out the interactions between Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the longest known storm on the gas giant, and the smaller storms that interact with it as they zip past.

The series of images to the right come from figure 5 of their paper, showing the Spot over a period of three days. The Spot in these images is about 9,000 miles across, less than half the size it had been back in the late 1800s.

The black arrows mark the shifting location and shape of one smaller vortice as it flowed past the Spot from east to west along its northern perimeter, ripping off portions of the Spot as it passed. From the paper’s absract:

During its history, the [Great Red Spot] has shrunk to half its size since 1879, and encountered many smaller anticyclones and other dynamical features that interacted in a complex way. In 2018–2020, while having a historically small size, its structure and even its survival appeared to be threatened when a series of anticyclones moving in from the east tore off large fragments of the red area and distorted its shape. In this work, we report observations of the dynamics of these interactions and show that as a result the [Spot] increased its internal rotation velocity, maintaining its vorticity but decreasing its visible area, and suffering a transient change in its otherwise steady 90‐day oscillation in longitude.

…From the analysis of the reflectivity of the [Spot] and flakes and model simulations of the dynamics of the interactions we find that these events are likely to have been superficial, not affecting the full depth of the [Spot]. The interactions are not necessarily destructive but can transfer energy to the [Spot], maintaining it in a steady state and guaranteeing its long lifetime.

In other words, the changes seen only involved the Spot’s cloud tops, even if those tops were many miles thick. The storm itself is much deeper, with its base embedded strongly inside Jupiter and largely unaffected by these passing smaller storms.

Why the Spot exists and remains so long-lived remains an unsolved mystery.

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Bumps and holes in the Martian mid-latitudes

1:58 pm

Bumps and holes in the Martian mid-latitudes
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, taken on January 6, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and cropped and reduced to post here, focuses on what appears to be a volcanic bulge on the southeastern edge of the great Tharsis Bulge, home to Mars’ biggest volcanoes.

The terrain gives the appearance of hard and rough lava field, ancient and significantly scoured with time. The bumps and mounds suggest nodules that remained as the surrounding softer material eroded away. The holes suggest impact craters, but their relatively few number suggest that this ground was laid down in more recent volcanic events after the late heavy bombardment that occurred in the early solar system about 4 billion years ago. Since it is thought that the big Martian volcanoes stopped being active about a billion years ago, this scenario seems to fit.

However, the terrain also has hints of possible glacial features, as seen in the large crater-like depression in the image’s center. Below is a zoom in to that crater to highlight the flowlike features in its southern interior.
» Read more

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China developing 13,000 satellite communications constellation

10:48 am

The new colonial movement: China appears to be merging several different large satellite communications constellation projects into a single mega-constellation employing possibly 13,000 satellites.

Recent comments by senior officials indicate that plans are moving ahead to alter earlier constellation plans by space sector state-owned enterprises and possibly make these part of a larger “Guowang” or “national network” satellite internet project.

Spectrum allocation filings submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) by China in September last year revealed plans to construct two similarly named “GW” low Earth orbit constellations totaling 12,992 satellites.

Two previously announced constellations, dubbed Hongyan and Hongyun, are being reshaped to join this single larger constellation.

Obviously, coordination will be required between these satellites and the other mega constellations begin built by companies such as OneWeb, SpaceX, and Amazon. In fact, the tiff between OneWeb and SpaceX this week over the close fly-by of two of their satellites illustrates well this need.

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SpaceX accuses OneWeb lobbyist of making false claims about a Starlink and OneWeb satellite close approach

10:47 am

Capitalism in space: In an FCC filing on April 20th, SpaceX accused a lobbyist for OneWeb to have made false claims against SpaceX in connection with a close approach between Starlink and OneWeb satellites.

In yesterday’s filing to the FCC, SpaceX said that “OneWeb’s head lobbyist recently made demonstrably inaccurate statements to the media about recent coordinations of physical operations. Specifically, Mr. McLaughlin of OneWeb told the Wall Street Journal that SpaceX switched off its AI-powered, autonomous collision avoidance system and ‘they couldn’t do anything to avoid a collision.’ Rather, SpaceX and OneWeb were working together in good faith at the technical level. As part of these discussions, OneWeb itself requested that SpaceX turn off the system temporarily to allow their maneuver, as agreed by the parties.”

SpaceX’s “autonomous collision avoidance system was and remains fully functional at all times,” SpaceX also wrote.

SpaceX also claimed that OneWeb admitted that the claims of its lobbyist were false, but OneWeb subsequently denied this.

It appears overall that OneWeb and its lobbyist tried to use this event to not only attack SpaceX, but to hinder SpaceX’s development of Starlink. According to SpaceX’s filing,

OneWeb’s misleading public statements coincide with OneWeb’s intensified efforts to prevent SpaceX from completing a safety upgrade to its system. For instance, immediately after the first inaccurate quotes came out in media accounts, OneWeb met with Commission staff and Commissioners demanding unilateral conditions placed on SpaceX’s operations. Ironically, the conditions demanded by OneWeb would make it more difficult to successfully coordinate difficult operations going forward, demonstrating more of a concern with limiting competitors than with a genuine concern for space safety.

Based on SpaceX’s overall past history and the track record of its competitors, I tend to believe SpaceX here. While the company has a very aggressive development culture, it also reacts instantly to any circumstances where its actions conflict with others. This doesn’t mean it backs off completely, only that it has always been willing to work with others to address their concerns.

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First images of Ingenuity’s second flight

10:01 am

Ingenuity's second flight, April 22, 2021
For full images go here, here, and here.

According to Mimi Aung, the project manager for Ingenuity, they attempted their second flight of the Mars helicopter early this morning, with the following flight plan:

[W]e plan to trying climbing to 16 feet (5 meters) in this flight test. Then, after the helicopter hovers briefly, it will go into a slight tilt and move sideways for 7 feet (2 meters). Then Ingenuity will come to a stop, hover in place, and make turns to point its color camera in different directions before heading back to the center of the airfield to land. Of course, all of this is done autonomously, based on commands we sent to Perseverance to relay to Ingenuity the night before.

No live stream was provided this time. However, the three images above from Perseverance, just downloaded today and taken about nine minutes apart, show Ingenuity before, during, and after that flight. If you compare the first and third images you can see that the helicopter was able to successfully return to the same landing spot.

I expect an announcement of this successful flight to be posted shortly.

UPDATE: JPL has now released an image taken by Ingenuity during its flight.

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Perseverance technology experiment produces oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere

4:17 pm

An engineering test experiment dubbed MOXIE on the Perseverance rover has successfully produced oxygen from the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, a technology that will be essential for future human missions.

MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-situ Resource Utilization Experiment), a small, gold box-shaped instrument on the rover, successfully demonstrated a solid oxide electrolysis technology for converting the Martian atmosphere to oxygen. The atmosphere on Mars is about 95% carbon dioxide.

MOXIE’s first oxygen run produced 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour. The power supply limits potential production to 12 g/hr — about the same amount that a large tree would produce.

…The oxygen production process starts with carbon dioxide intake; inside MOXIE, the Martian CO2 is compressed and filtered to remove any contaminants. It is then heated, which causes separation into oxygen and carbon monoxide. The oxygen is further isolated by a hot, charged ceramic component; the oxygen ions merge into O2. Carbon monoxide is expelled harmlessly back into the atmosphere.

Human missions to Mars will not just need oxygen to breath. They will need it to provide the fuel for leaving the planet and returning to Earth, since it will be very impractical and expensive to bring everything they need with them. For colonization and planetary exploration to truly happen future space-farers must live off the land.

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Glacial layers in a northern crater on Mars

2:11 pm

Crater filled with many layered glacial features
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 6, 2021, and shows a mid-latitude crater in the northern lowland plains of Mars with what appear to be layered glacial features filling its interior.

The theory that scientists presently favor for explaining many of the features we see on Mars is based on many climate cycles caused by the wide swings the planet routinely experiences in its obliquity, or rotational tilt. When that tilt is high, more than 45 degrees, the mid-latitudes are colder than the poles, and water ice sublimates southward to those mid-latitudes to fall as snow and cause active glaciers to form. When that obliquity is low, less than 20 degrees, the mid-latitudes are warmer than the poles and that ice then migrates back north.

Such cycles, which are believed to have occurred many thousands of times in the last few million years, will place many layers on the ground in both the mid-latitudes and at the poles. The layers in this crater hint at this.

The overview map below gives some further context.
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