Tag: engineering

Ingenuity has issues on sixth flight

9:00 am

On its sixth flight and first intended as an operational scouting mission for Perseverance, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity had problems, requiring an emergency landing.

The trouble cropped up about a minute into the helicopter’s sixth test flight last Saturday at an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters). One of the numerous pictures taken by an on-board camera did not register in the navigation system, throwing the entire timing sequence off and confusing the craft about its location.

Ingenuity began tilting back and forth as much as 20 degrees and suffered power consumption spikes, according to Havard Grip, the helicopter’s chief pilot.

A built-in system to provide extra margin for stability “came to the rescue,” he wrote in an online status update. The helicopter landed within 16 feet (5 meters) of its intended touchdown site.

Engineers are presently trouble-shooting the issue, which they suspect was a “navigation timing error.”

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The strange flows in Shalbatana Vallis on Mars

1:47 pm

Strange flows in Shalbaltana Vallis
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on March 31, 2021, and shows a series of very distinct arrowhead-shaped sloping ridges interspersed with hollows flowing down from the southern cliff face of Shalbatana Vallis, one of the larger long meandering drainages flowing into the northern lowlands of Chryse Planitia and north of Valles Marineris.

This location is at 5 degrees north latitude, so nothing we see in the picture is likely glacial or evidence of ice.

So what are we looking at? My guess is that the parallel ridges show us a hint of the original slope of alluvial fill. In the past canyon’s south rim or cliff either did not exist, or was much smaller. Instead the ground mostly sloped gently downhill from the plateau to the canyon floor.

Scientists believe that in the far past catastrophic floods of water flowed through Shalbatana. If a massive flood of water off that rim came down that slope of alluvial fill, it could have pushed into that fill and created the hollows, washing the fill down into the canyon floor and leaving behind the ridges in between.

The overview maps below provide the geographical context.
» Read more

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New Chandra mosaic of galactic center reveals spider-web of magnetism

10:19 am

Magnetic field line at the galactic center
Click for full image.

Scientists today released a spectacular panorama of the center of the Milky Way using X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio data from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. The panorama reveals a complex web of magnetic field lines emanating out from the supermassive black hole at the center, Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star).

Below the fold are reduced versions of the full panorama, unlabeled on the left and labeled on the right. The image to the right, reduced to post here, shows just one single example of those magnetic field lines, dubbed G0.17-0.41 and about 20 light years long. This particular filament is the subject of a paper just published in connection with the release of this panorama. From the press release.

A new study of the X-ray and radio properties of this thread by Q. Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests these features are bound together by thin strips of magnetic fields. This is similar to what was observed in a previously studied thread. (Both threads are labeled with red rectangles in the [full labeled panorama]. The newly studied one in the lower left, G0.17-0.41, is much farther away from the plane of the Galaxy.) Such strips may have formed when magnetic fields aligned in different directions, collided, and became twisted around each other in a process called magnetic reconnection. This is similar to the phenomenon that drives energetic particles away from the Sun and is responsible for the space weather that sometimes affects Earth.

The image below is fascinating to study because of the wealth of detail it includes, not only of magnetic filaments but of other nearby gas clouds and Sagittarius A* itself.
» Read more

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Starship will fuel a shift of spaceports to the Earth’s equator

9:42 am

Rand Simberg yesterday posted an intriguing essay speculating on how the arrival of Starship is going to vastly change how and where rockets launch from Earth, encouraging the increase in spaceports along the equator while changing the design of satellites launched from that point.

He describes the many advantages for launch from the equator, and suggests it is really the only location that will allow for regular, reliable, and frequent launches, the kind that SpaceX wants to happen using Starship. This is maybe the key point:

You get maximum advantage of earth’s rotation by launching due east at the equator. There are no launch windows to get there; you can launch any time of the day, every day, and you will be in the equatorial orbit plane. There is also little weather risk; hurricanes at the equator are almost unheard of (there’s too little coriolis there to spin things up).

Launching from the equator will make some high inclination orbits more difficult to reach, but he suggests the solution will be to rethink the satellites themselves, designing them differently so that they, not the rocket, get them to the orbit they want.

Read it all. He raises some interesting points that I think Elon Musk has already thought of, suggested by the company’s decision to purchase two oil rigs and refurbish them as launch and landing platforms for Starship.

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Lockheed Martin and General Motors partner to design manned lunar rover

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: Lockheed Martin and General Motors announced yesterday that they are partnering to design a manned lunar rover, intended for sale to NASA’s Artemis program as well as any other manned lunar missions anyone else should decide to fly.

Lockheed and GM don’t have a NASA contract to build the LTV [Lunar Terrain Vehicle]; the agency hasn’t awarded any such deals yet. But the companies are positioning themselves to be in the driver’s seat when such decisions are made — and when other customers may come along as well.

Obviously the first customer for this moon buggy would be NASA for Artemis. Nor is this the only manned rover being planned. Toyota and Japan’s space agency JAXA are also partnering to build one.

The decision by NASA to use Starship as its lunar lander however has made such a project much more viable. Unlike the lunar landers proposed by Blue Origin and Dynectics, Starship has the payload capacity to carry such things to the Moon, right off the bat. Thus it makes sense now to start designing them and offering them for sale. We should not be surprised if other car manufacturers start proposing their own manned rovers.

Moreover, Starship’s potential also means these rovers could be purchased by others for work on the Moon. If anyone besides NASA decides to hire SpaceX and Starship for their own lunar missions, the Lockheed Martin/GM LTV can also be sold to them. So can the Toyota rover. So could one built by Ford or Mazarati.

Isn’t freedom and capitalism wonderful? Instead of a half century of the nothing that international cooperation and government control brought us in space, private enterprise is suddenly in a burst opening the entire solar system to the world. And don’t expect the pace to slow.

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China creates company to build mega-satellite constellation

9:12 am

The new colonial movement: Late last month China officially created a company to build its own mega-satellite constellation, consisting of 13,000 satellites to provide internet access globally, to compete with the commercial constellations being built by SpaceX, OneWeb, and (someday) Amazon.

Spectrum allocation filings submitted to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) by China in September last year revealed plans to construct two similarly named “GW” [Guowang] low Earth orbit constellations totaling 12,992 satellites. The filings indicate plans for GW to consist of sub-constellations ranging from 500-1,145 kilometers in altitude with inclinations between 30-85 degrees. The satellites would operate across a range of frequency bands.

Currently no details have been released on the contractors to be involved in the constellation. Notably the China Satellite Network Group will exist independent from and parallel to China’s main space contractors, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), and the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC).

The apparent independence of China Satellite Network Group from CASC and CASIC indicates that other actors, such as other state-owned enterprises and commercial sector space companies could be involved in the construction of the constellation.

Not only does the creation of this company suggest a power-struggle within China’s government, it illustrates the intensifying competition internationally over space. While commercial satellite constellations like SpaceX and OneWeb will be able to provide their services to China, they will also be outside the control of that nation’s dictatorship. If their citizens use them they will have free access to information, something that China’s leaders refuse to allow.

Thus, the political decision in China to build their own constellation. It will also give China the ability to exert its influence worldwide by offering an alternative to the commercial western constellations, one that other dictators can control as well.

Expect more whining from astronomers about how this constellation of satellites will add to their woes. Instead of whining, might they finally decide to at last consider building in-space telescopes, where there is no atmosphere to fog their view and no satellites blocking their vision?

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Starship prototype #15 removed from launchpad; likely not to fly again

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX engineers have removed Starship prototype #15, the first to successfully land after a test flight, from the launchpad and rolled back towards their assembly building.

They had already removed its three Raptor engines and landing legs for inspection, but taking the ship off the launchpad strongly suggests the company has decided to not fly it again.

The immediate assumption is that they will now fly prototype #16, built and ready for launch. The article however speculates something far more intriguing:

There’s a limited possibility that Starship SN16 – all but finished – could be sent to the launch site instead of heading straight to the scrapyard, but any testing would necessarily delay orbital pad construction and any flight activity would likely have to expend SN16 in the ocean rather than risk a land landing.

Ultimately, it’s looking more and more likely that SpaceX would rather go all-in on Starship’s inaugural orbital launch attempt, even if that means little to no ground or flight test availability for a few months.

Prototype #20 had been assigned that for that first near-orbital flight. Does this mean SpaceX has decided abandon #16 through #19 and to go straight to that orbital flight? To do this would also mean they have decided to forego any separate testing of Superheavy, and will instead fly it the first time with a Starship upper stage attached. It would also be the only possible way they could meet their July target date for that orbital flight.

If #16 does not move immediately to the launchpad and there are no Starship test flights for the next month or so, it will tell us that this is likely their plan.

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Yutu-2 data suggests Moon’s far side is “bombarded more frequently” than the near side

2:55 pm

The uncertainty of science: According to a new paper, based on ground-penetrating radar data obtained by China’s Yutu-2 rover on the far side of the Moon, scientists now think that the Moon’s more heavily cratered far side is that way because it actually gets bombarded more frequently than the near side.

From the paper’s abstract:

The Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) onboard Yutu-2 can transmit electromagnetic pulses to detect the lunar subsurface structure and properties of the regolith. The relative permittivity, loss tangent and TiO2+FeO content of lunar regolith materials at landing site are constrained with LPR data in this paper. The results indicate that the farside may be bombarded more frequently, leading to different regolith accumulation rates on the lunar nearside vs. farside. [emphasis mine]

The data was accumulated during the rover’s first five months on the surface, during those five lunar days. It found that the regolith at the landing site was about 39 feet thick, much thicker than found at the landing site for Yutu-1 on the Moon’s near side. The difference was partly expected because of the nature of the different locations, but combined with other factors the scientists concluded that a higher bombardment rate on the far side would also help explain the difference.

To put it mildly, this conclusion is uncertain. We only have one data point on the far side, and only a few more on the near side. At the same time, the conclusion is somewhat an example of science discovering the obvious. The very first images of the Moon’s far side, taken The Soviet Union’s Luna 3 lunar probe in 1959, showed the surface much more heavily cratered than the near side, with far less areas of smooth mare. Numerous mapping missions since have confirmed that impression.

And it is also intuitive to come to this conclusion. The near side always faces the Earth, which likely acts to intercept many of the type of meteorite hits that reach the Moon’s far side.

This conclusion however is still intuitive, and an honest scientist will not trust it. That this result from Yutu-2 appears to confirms it is therefore nice.

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Glacial flows covering a crater on Mars?

1:43 pm

Partially covered crater by glacial flows?

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on March 4, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an eroded mound that appears to have flows coming off its north and south slopes that fill the surrounding low spots, including half-covering a nearby crater.

The science team for MRO’s high resolution camera chose this picture as their April 28th picture of the day, noting the following:

The objective of this observation is to examine a crater which seems to be in the process of getting covered by flow from a mound. This image, in Protonilus Mensae, may show us characteristics of the covering material: could it be debris-covered glaciers?

Below is a global map of Mars, with this mound’s location in Protonilus Mensae in the northern mid-latitudes indicated by a black cross.
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully launches another 60 Starlink satellites

12:15 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to place another sixty Starlink satellites in orbit, bringing that constellation to over 1,700 in orbit.

The first stage was making its second flight, and landed successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. Both fairings were reused, with one making a record fifth flight. Though the rocket has not yet deployed the satellites as I write this, it is expected in about a half hour and based on past history, should proceed with no problems. If there is an issue I will report it immediately.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

16 SpaceX
13 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 22 to 13 in the national rankings.

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Viasat asks FCC to block further launches of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites

9:33 am

Capitalism in space? The geosynchronous communications satellite company Viasat has demanded the FCC freeze any further launches of SpaceX’s quickly growing constellation of Starlink satellites.

The company claims a recent modification of SpaceX’s FCC license should not have been granted without a new environmental review of the 4,000+ satellite constellation’s impact.

Viasat is asking the FCC to hit pause on further launches until federal courts can review the legality of the license modification.

Carlsbad, California-based Viasat, which provides broadband services from geostationary orbit (GEO), had petitioned the FCC to conduct an environmental review before granting the license modification as part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which currently categorically exempts satellite systems, but says this did not happen despite megaconstellations bringing new considerations for regulators.

Some astronomers had also requested an environmental assessment, worried about how the constellation’s reflectivity affects ground-based telescope observations.

What is really happening here is that Viasat, having discovered its market share is seriously threatened by a competitor, is trying to use the government to squelch that competition. Viasat doesn’t really give a twit about the environmental issues. It is launching its own new three-satellite geosynchronous constellation next year to provide broadband services globally, and Starlink’s success threatens to cut into its profits.

The article also reveals one interesting tidbit about former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. During his short three-year tenure heading NASA he aggressively moved to encourage provide competition and private enterprise by transferring the design, construction, and ownership of rockets and spaceships from NASA to the commercial sector.

Now that he is out of the government however he — like most Washington swamp creatures — has discovered his true calling: using his influence to squelch private competition:

In April, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine joined Viasat’s board of directors. Bridenstine told SpaceNews in an interview at the time that the threat of megaconstellations to space safety, and the overall space access environment, were among issues on his radar.

Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, Bridenstine upon leaving NASA immediately began mouthing the manufactured concerns of his new patrons at Viasat. To hell with allowing real competition and freedom. It is much more important to manipulate the power of the government to prevent Viasat’s competitors from succeeding. And earn a nice big salary at the same time.

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Roscosmos finally approves ISS module Nauka for launch

9:10 am

After successfully completing its last ground tests, Roscosmos announced today that it has finally approved the launch on July 15th of its next module for ISS, dubbed Nauka.

Nauka’s long road to space began more than a quarter of a century ago, in 1995, with this year’s launch about fourteen years behind schedule. An engineer who started working on Nauka after graduation at the age of 25 would now be a grizzled veteran of 51 and looking forward to retirement in only a few years.

The module will provide the Russian half of ISS a second restroom, greater oxygen and water recycling capacity, and room for a third resident, all necessary additions for the planned two commercial tourist launches Russia has scheduled for the fall.

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Axiom announces astronaut to command its second commercial manned flight

1:30 pm

Capitalism in space: Axiom has announced that retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will command its second commercial manned flight.

Whitson was the first woman to command the International Space Station and the oldest woman to fly in space (57, in 2017). She holds the U.S. record for most cumulative time in space (665 days) as well as the world record for most spacewalks by a woman (10).

Joining her will be 65-year-old John Shoffner, an airplane pilot and a champion car racer.

No word yet on when this flight will take place, but expect them to aim for next year, as soon as possible after Axiom’s first ISS commercial flight in January. Scheduling will also depend on NASA, which is presently working out an ISS scheduling policy to manage the increasing number of private missions being offered.

The flight will likely use a SpaceX Dragon capsule, which means there is room for two more passengers. It is possible that those seats will be filled with the winners of Discovery Channel’s proposed reality show, but they also might be filled by actor Tom Cruise and a movie director, both of whom have expressed interest in filming scenes of a movie on ISS.

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Ryugu’s most primitive boulders

1:18 pm

In a just published paper scientists reveal how they think they have identified the oldest rocks on the rubble pile asteroid Ryugu, and found them to be distributed across the entire face of the asteroid.

These boulders are light enough that they would float on water.

Ryugu is thought to have initially formed as a fluffy planetesimal that coalesced from accumulated dust in the early Solar System, and subsequently underwent processes such as thermal evolution and compression. This parent body was then later destroyed in a collision and fragments of this reaccumulated into the asteroid. However, planetesimals have never been seen, so whether they really existed or what they may have looked like is one of the biggest challenges in understanding the planet formation process. The boulders discovered in this research are thought to be a material that most strongly retains the appearance of the fluffy planetesimals that triggered the birth of the planets in the Solar System.

Additionally, the data from all the scientific instruments onboard Hayabusa2 that were used to examine the surface of Ryugu revealed that fragments of material similar to those of the ultra-high porosity boulders are globally distributed over the asteroid surface, and may have been collected in the sample taken by Hayabusa2. If highly primitive material with the ultra-high porosity discovered here is also found in the collected samples, it will both clarify the formation and evolutional history of Ryugu’s parent body, and also provide evidence of planetesimal formation in the early stage of the Solar System formation process.

There is no word yet from the scientists studying the Hayabusa-2 samples on what they have found. This paper gives them an idea of what could be the most important type of rock to look for.

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The big cliffs of Gediz Vallis on Mars

11:33 am

The Big Cliffs of Mt Sharp
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 21, 2021 by Curiosity’s chemistry camera (ChemCam), normally designed to look at high resolution close-up imagery of nearby objects.

However, it can also be used as what the science team call “a long distance spyglass.” The image to the right is an example, looking at what I think are the distant but steadily approaching big cliffs on the western wall of the canyon Gediz Vallis. Make sure you look close at the shadowed cliff-face, probably several hundred feet high. It is filled with huge rock faces reminiscent of the most stark rock cliffs on the mountains of Earth.

The two images below provide the context, which makes the image even more quite breath-taking.
» Read more

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The arrival of routine flights of commercial space passengers to orbit now makes the meaning of the word “astronaut” very unclear

9:45 am

Link here. Up to now the word “astronaut” has generally been applied to anyone who has flown in space, though its use for the previous space tourists has generally seemed inappropriate.

The arrival this fall of regularly and frequent commercial flights carrying private passengers into space raises the question: What do we call these individuals? Some, such as the companies Axiom and Blue Origin, want to call them astronauts. Others, such as previous space tourists Richard Garriott and former senator and now NASA administrator Bill Nelson, think that word should be reserved for the professionals. Think for example of aviation. You don’t get wings by simply flying on a commercial jet. You have to fly a plane yourself, and do it solo to earn that designation.

In truth, the most likely thing that will happen in the future is that no future space traveler will be called an astronaut. As the article notes correctly,

It might be necessary to retire the term altogether once hundreds if not thousands reach space, noted Fordham University history professor Asif Siddiqi, the author of several space books. “Are we going to call each and every one of them astronauts?”

The term is going to become historical, referring not to those who have reached space, but to those early pioneers to made it possible for everyone else. It carries too much special meaning to assign it to every Tom, Dick, or Harry who simply bought a ticket. It signifies a person who did something special and at great risk, and deserves a special honor because of it.

Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin were astronauts. It seems wrong to call every commercial passenger who follows the same.

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Bernie Sanders throws a wrench into Senate bill forcing NASA to award two lunar lander contracts

9:18 am

Capitalism in space? Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist/Democrat-Vermont) has submitted a new amendment to the new NASA authorization bill, now being debated in the Senate, that eliminates the earlier changes added by senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) that required NASA to award a contract to a second company for building its manned lunar lander.

This earlier amendment, submitted by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), modified NASA’s Artemis Program. Cantwell’s amendment, in part, called for $10.03 billion in additional funding for NASA to carry out the Human Landing System program. This legislation was filed as Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos were urging Congress to add $10 billion to NASA’s budget—enough money to fully fund the development of a second Human Landing System. It was passed 11 days ago without any debate by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Sanders’ terse amendment seeks to excise the Cantwell language that provides additional funding for a Human Landing System.

While Sanders’ amendment probably makes more sense based on the money that Congress has actually appropriated for this task, he didn’t do it for that reason. More likely he did it as a petty attack on Jeff Bezos, whose company Blue Origin was likely expected to win that second contract.

Nothing is settled yet of course. The bill still has to pass the Senate and also be approved by the House, then signed by the president. Much will change before then.

Regardless, isn’t nice how NASA’s modern space effort is so well designed by our senators and congressmen? What would we do without them?

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A detailed review of Virgin Galactic

9:03 am

Link here. The article not only provides a thorough review of the company’s most recent test flight and what it did and did not accomplish, it takes a look backward to reevaluate Virgin Galactic’s history, including the many engineering problems in the past few years that have slowed development and risked lives.

The most shocking aspect of this story is this fact:

The fact that VSS Unity was broken was never disclosed to Social Capital shareholders who approved the merger, or to investors who bought the stock after the merged companies went public under Virgin Galactic’s name on the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 28, 2019.

The source who revealed the near-fatal February 2019 flight to Parabolic Arc questioned whether withholding that information from shareholders was legal under securities laws. A number of law firms have launched investigations into Virgin Galactic recently. Their primary focus seems to be the steep drop in the company’s stock price earlier this year. (It has rebounded sharply since the flight test.) But, perhaps they will carefully review the company’s public disclosures regarding the condition of VSS Unity.

In reviewing the building competition between Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin to fly the first commercial passengers, the article also confirms many of the same observations I have made about both companies.

Read it all. It shines light beyond the pr blather that you will get from most modern media as they rewrite press releases.

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Sierra Space signs up its first customer for its commercial space station

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space, the newly created space division of Sierra Nevada, announced last week that it has signed an agreement with Redwire, formerly known as Made in Space, to establish manufacturing facilities on its LIFE private space station.

The press release is vague about details, being mostly a sales pitch for encouraging other in-space manufacturing companies to consider partnering with Sierra. This in turn suggests the agreement is nothing more that a statement by Redwire that should Sierra’s station launch, it will then be willing to launch its 3D printing technology to it.

Nonetheless, this agreement lends weight to Sierra’s station proposal, which while plausible still remains somewhat vague as there is no indication on when the company plans to launch it.

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Zhurong rolls onto Martian surface

10:39 am

Zhurong's view of lander after deployment onto Martian surface

The new colonial movement: According to China’s state-run press, the Zhurong rover has successfully rolled off its lander and reached the Martian surface.

The image to the right was taken by the rover’s rear hazard avoidance camera, and shows the lander and the deployment ramps behind Zhurong.

At this moment China has released no other images of the Martian surface, nor have they revealed if they have a precise idea of where the lander actually put down on Mars. This latter information is essential for them to plan the rover’s travels over its 90-day nominal mission.

Nonetheless, it appears Zhurong is functioning perfectly. If all goes right, it will not only complete that 90-day mission but continue on for considerably longer, as have other similar small rovers on both Mars and the Moon.

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Virgin Galactic finally makes manned flight from New Mexico

10:30 am

Capitalism in space: More than a decade later than initially promised, Virgin Galactic today finally made its first successful manned flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The flight apparently reached 55 miles altitude before returning to Earth.

This was the first flight of VSS Unity since December 12, 2020, when the flight was aborted just one second after separating from its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo, when a computer disconnected unexpectedly. Further delays followed:

The problems didn’t stop there, as in early May, a new issue crept up as a post-flight inspection of VMS Eve called for further engineering analysis to assess a known problem in the tail of the vehicle which was to be addressed during the next scheduled maintenance period. The company says that they have completed the analysis and determined that the structures are healthy and cleared Eve for flight.

Their plans are to do one more test flight, and then a “commercial” flight carrying company founder Richard Branson. Following that they will begin selling and flying tourists.

It appears however that they will have lost the race to fly the first suborbital tourist in space, as it appears that Blue Origin’s July 20th commercial flight will happen first.

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Curiosity climbing Mount Sharp

3:13 pm

Curiosity as seen by MRO from orbit
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image, to the right and cropped to post here, was taken on April 18, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Released today by MRO’s science team, it shows the rover Curiosity sitting on top of the 20-foot high rock outcrop the scientists have dubbed Mt. Mercou. The 16,400 foot high Mt. Sharp is to the south, with the rim of Gale Crater about 30 miles to the north.

I have annotated the image to show the rover’s route both before and after the moment when this picture was taken. As the caption at the link notes, the rover is currently working its way up Mt. Mercou, a route that was not initially in their plans, as shown by the wider MRO view below.
» Read more

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ESA proposes constellation of lunar communications and navigation satellites

11:15 am

The European Space Agency is proposing in this decade to build a constellation of communications and GPS-type satellites, dubbed Moonlight, to orbit the Moon.

ESA is asking two industrial consortia in Europe to define what an integrated sat-nav and telecoms system at the Moon would look like.

It’ll include a constellation of at least three, but probably more, positioning-and-relay satellites to give global coverage, and will likely include some surface beacons, too, to augment the accuracy of the navigation signals.

“The target we have at the moment is that the constellation would be able to allow for an accuracy of 100m and probably better. We think we are able to get to 30m in the first instance,” explained Paul Verhoef, the director of ESA’s navigation department.

The two consortiums are the UK’s Surrey Satellite and Italy’s Telespazio.

It also appears the ESA is proposing making this system available to all lunar exploration missions, whether they be part of the U.S.’s Artemis program or China’s lunar plans. If so, it is commercially smart, as they will have plenty of customers to buy their services.

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Delays force ULA to replace Vulcan rocket with Atlas 5 on military launch

11:08 am

Because the development of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket is behind schedule, the Space Force has agreed to allow the company to replace it with an Atlas 5 rocket on a ’22 launch.

That mission, known as USSF-51, was awarded to ULA in August 2020 and is scheduled to launch in late 2022. The company had bid its newly developed Vulcan to fly that mission but the vehicle is not going to be ready on time. As a result, the Space Force agreed to allow ULA to launch USSF-51 on the company’s legacy vehicle the Atlas 5.

…Switching vehicles financially penalizes ULA. According to the company, the Atlas 5 is more expensive than Vulcan. Phase 2 provisions allow ULA to change vehicles but at no cost penalty to the government.

This story however is important because of what it tells us about the state of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine, required by both Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

At this moment ULA is saying that the first launch of Vulcan is still scheduled for late this year, launching Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander to the Moon. However, for that launch to happen the rocket requires working BE-4 rocket engines for its first stage. In January Blue Origin announced it had finally completed a full throttle test of that engine after problems lasting several years, and would soon be delivering flight-worthy engines to ULA.

It is now late May, and the article at the link revealed this very significant and somewhat shocking detail buried in the text:

Blue Origin in 2020 delivered pathfinder engines for ground tests but has yet to provide a flight-qualified engine for Vulcan’s first flight. A spokeswoman for Blue Origin said May 20 the company is “on track to deliver BE-4 engines this year.” [emphasis mine]

It seems completely impossible for ULA to launch that lunar lander on Vulcan this year if it does not yet have any flight-worthy engines on hand to incorporate and test in the rocket. Worse, it appears that Blue Origin might not deliver those engines for months yet.

This story thus suggests that we will not see launches of either ULA’s new Vulcan rocket or Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket for a considerable time.

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China scrubs launch of station cargo freighter again

10:43 am

For the second time in two days China has scrubbed the launch of the first unmanned Tianzhou cargo freighter to the core module of its space station,

As before, the Chinese only said that the scrub was due to unstated “technical issues.”

They will likely try again tomorrow, but that is pure speculation. Without a more detailed report from China, we really have no idea what is happening.

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SpaceX grabbing 90% of the launch contracts to the Moon

10:37 am

Capitalism in space: The announcement yesterday by Firefly that it has awarded SpaceX the launch contract for its Blue Ghost lunar lander mission (scheduled for launch in ’23) is significant because it continues a remarkable pattern of dominance by SpaceX of the lunar launch market.

Right now, of the seven scheduled robot missions to the Moon, SpaceX will launch all but one. The full list, in no particular order:

In addition, SpaceX launched Israel’s Beresheet lander in 2019 on a Falcon 9.

Furthermore, SpaceX has won the contract from NASA for the agency’s first manned lunar lander, using Starship. It has also won the contract to launch the initial components of NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station on a Falcon Heavy.

There are other lunar missions in the works (by Russia, China, and others), but these are all the launches awarded as commercial contracts to private rocket companies in recent years. Thus, of these ten lunar missions, SpaceX has launched or is launching nine. That’s a 90% market share!
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The steep sudden foothill of Olympus Mons

2:27 pm

Olympus Mons on Mars

Today’s cool image starts from afar and zooms inward. The elevation map to the right shows Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars and in fact the entire solar system. About 600 miles across, from the edge to its peak this volcano rises about 54,000 feet, with an actual height relative to Mars’ “sea level” of just under 70,000 feet, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth.

The cross-section of this volcano is so large it would cover almost all of France if placed on Earth. As a shield volcano, it was formed by many many volcano flows that laid down many layers of lava, with some in its northwest quadrant thought to be as recent as 2 to 115 million years ago.

Our cool image today is located at the white rectangle at the southeast edge of this volcano, and illustrates how those many lava flows could create such a large shield volcano with such a large cross section.
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China scrubs launch of Tianzhou freighter to its Tianhe station module

12:24 pm

The first launch of a Tianzhou freighter to China’s first module, dubbed Tianhe, of its planned Chinese Space Station (CSS), was scrubbed early this morning for unstated “technical reasons.”

Not only has China’s state-run press or its space agency not revealed what caused the scrub, they have said nothing about a new launch date. This cargo freighter however apparently needs to be in place before the arrival of the station’s first crew, now roughly scheduled for sometime in June.

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