Tag: engineering

SpaceX raises another $850 million in investment capital

8:10 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX last week successfully raised another $850 million in investment capital in order to fund both its Starlink and Starship projects.

The article does not detail how the company plans to use the money, though it does also indicate this was not all that was raised.

In addition to SpaceX further building a war chest for its ambitious plans, company insiders and existing investors were able to sell an additional $750 million in a secondary transaction, one of the people said.

If I understand this correctly (which I admit I might not), this means SpaceX now has an additional $1.6 billion on hand in addition to the $2 billion it has previously raised.

Even if it only raised $850 million, that gives it a war chest of almost three billion for both Starlink and Starship. With Starlink already bringing in some earnings, the company should have enough to get done what it aims to do.

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Strange corroding features on Mars

1:02 pm

Strange corroding features on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and enhanced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on October 4, 2020. It shows what appears to be features that are either corroding or eroding away, with the lower areas filled with rippling sand dunes.

The circular features might be ancient craters. The material that partly fills them might be a layer of dust or sand that the wind is slowly blowing away to dig out the depressions along the southern cliff wall.

According to the MRO science team’s interpretation of the colors produced by the high resolution camera [pdf], the dark blue colors here are likely “coarser-grained materials (sand and rocks)”, while the orange-red material on the higher terrain is likely dust.

Could this material be evidence of buried ice eroding away? At first I thought so, and then I took a look at the photo’s location, as shown in the overview image below.
» Read more

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Momentus signs deal to deliver two private cubesats to lunar orbit

11:55 am

Capitalism in space: Momentus has signed a deal with a Singapore startup to provide the transportation to lunar orbit of two cubesats using its next generation space tug.

Momentus Inc. (“Momentus” or the “Company”), a commercial space company offering in-space infrastructure services, and Qosmosys, a new space venture founded in Singapore last year, announced today a service agreement to deliver two cubesats to low lunar orbit as early as 2024 via Momentus’ inaugural lunar mission.

The new contract builds and expands on the agreement announced in January 2021 for delivery of up to four cubesats in low Earth orbit by Momentus’ Vigoride service vehicle, starting in 2022. Qosmosys will expand its novel business ideas to the Moon using a specific bus named Zeus-MS, a version of its Zeus platform it has been developing in cooperation with NuSpace from Singapore, and made specific for lunar missions. Zeus-MS is the precursor to a series of multi-mission platforms that will allow organizations and businesses to host their payloads, and will offer individuals a bespoke, unprecedented line of services to the Moon on regularly scheduled flights.

“We are excited to partner with Momentus again, now onboard Ardoride’s inaugural lunar mission in 2024,” said Francois Dubrulle, CEO of Qosmosys. “Our vision is to make space accessible to all, and Momentus will help us achieve this goal through their efficient orbital services.”

Ardoride, the next generation service vehicle after Vigoride, will extend the range and capabilities of Momentus’s services beginning in 2023.

It is unclear who Qosmosys’ customers are for their lunar Zeus-MS cubesat platform, but I have no doubt they have plenty, many from the university community. For example, universities fund student-built cubesats for educational purposes. Why not make this a project to the Moon, rather than just in Earth orbti? The cost difference would not be much using these new private companies.

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Axiom raises $130 million in investment capital

11:41 am

Capitalism in space: The private space station company Axiom announced today that it has obtained $130 million in investment capital during its most recent round of fund-raising.

The funding will allow the company to expand, including doubling its current workforce of about 110 people this year, Michael Suffredini, president and chief executive of Axiom, said in an interview. It will also support quarterly payments to Thales Alenia Space, which is building the pressurized elements of the first modules. The company recently moved into a two-story building in Houston and is buying a new test facility, with plans to establish a campus at Spaceport Houston, also known as Ellington Airport.

“This is a really the major step for us,” he said. “The B round is typically where you get your first large investment, but more importantly than the money is the community of investors that you put together, so that future rounds are largely from those investors.” That group of investors, he said, was “a perfect fit for us and puts us in a good position, however we want to go forward.”

Suffredini also admitted that while helps get those first modules built for launch to ISS in ’24, they will still need “probably between half a billion and a billion dollars” to build their full private space station.

Sounds like a lot, eh? ISS cost about $100 billion, but that is not including the contributions of the U.S.’s international partners. It is also likely a conservative estimate, as it likely does not include any of NASA’s overhead in connection with the station. Construction officially began in 1994, but actually started a decade earlier when President Reagan first proposed its predecessor, the Freedom station, and those costs are not included as well.

So Axiom will build its private station for about a billion, and get it done in about five years. NASA spent anywhere from $100 to $200 billion, and took more than three decades to get it launched and built.

Which product would you buy?

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Watching Perseverance’s landing on Mars

9:51 am

Because it will take eleven minutes for radio communications from Mars to reach Earth, no one on Earth will have any direct contact with the American rover Perseverance as comes in to land in Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18th. When NASA broadcasts the landing here on Earth it will already have happened.

Nonetheless, if you want see as soon as possible if the landing was successful, you can go to NASA public channel here at NASA or here at Youtube. I have also embedded the live stream telecast below the fold in this post.

The landing itself is set for about 3:55 pm (Eastern) on Thursday, February 18th. NASA’s coverage is scheduled to begin at 2:15 pm (Eastern). Expect almost everything you watch to be seeped in NASA propaganda, though of course their overview of the rover, its landing, and its landing site will be informative.

One important note: NASA has been selling the false notion that the primary goal of Perseverance is to search for life on Mars, and sadly much of the mainstream press has been repeating this notion blindly. It is simply not true. The rover’s primary goal, first, last, and always, is to gain more knowledge of the geology of Mars and its past history. If along the way the rover detects evidence of life, all for the better, but that is not what it will be focused on doing during its journey in Jezero Crater.
» Read more

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SpaceX in Starlink negotiations with the Philippines

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX and a major internet company based in the Philippines have been in negotiations about offering Starlink to its citizens.

US tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) is in talks to bring broadband satellite services to the Philippines through a partnership with fibre internet tycoon Dennis Anthony H Uy of Pampanga.

Representatives from SpaceX and Uy’s Converge ICT Solutions Inc met on multiple occasions to discuss a potential venture, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Philippine Daily Inquirer.

SpaceX apparently can’t just set up business to compete with this company, probably because it has deep ties in the government that can block it. Converge probably wants a cut, along with I suspect a number of Philippine politicians.

No deal has so far been made, but Starlink would be ideal in the more rural locations of the Philippines.

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SpaceX launches sixty more Starlink satellites; plus an installation report from one customer

10:06 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage on its sixth flight however failed to land successfully. It is amazing that we now expect these landings to succeed, proving how reliable we now expect SpaceX’s rocket to be.

The 2021 launch race:

5 SpaceX
3 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit

The U.S. now leads China 7 to 3 in the national rankings. Another SpaceX launch is scheduled for tomorrow, followed by a Rocket Lab launch a little more than 24 hours later.

A report from one Starlink customer on his installation experience

The sixty new Starlink satellites bring the constellation to more than 1,100 satellites, allowing SpaceX to continue expanding regions where it is offering the service. Below the fold is an update from reader Steve Golson on his experience installing his own Starlink dish and service in Maine, now running for several days. Rather than cut and past sections, I think it best to quote his email to me in its entirety, including some of the images he sent. The opinions expressed are Steve’s alone, but they are coming from a customer who appears very satisfied with the product, up to now.
» Read more

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New paper: Underlying ice layer seen in Martian gullies at LOW mid-latitudes

2:18 pm

Snow on Mars?
Click to see full image.

In a paper just published, scientists are proposing that bright areas seen in the low mid-latitude gullies on Mars are the underground ice table newly exposed as surface dust is removed.

This paper is a reiteration in more detail of a previous presentation [pdf] by these same scientists at the 2019 the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas and reported here in March 2019.

The image to the right, from the paper, was taken by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2009, and has been cropped to post here. The white streaks are what the scientists propose is that exposed underground ice table. At 32.9 south latitude, this particular gully would be the closest to the equator that such an ice layer has been identified. All the previous ice layer discoveries have been in the ice scarps found at latitudes above 50 degrees. As the paper’s lead author, Aditya Khuller at Arizona State University, explained in to me in an email, “We believe we are seeing exposures of dusty ice that likely originated as dusty snow.” From their paper:

We suggest … that the light-toned materials are exposed H2O ice. … [T]he appearance, and then subsequent disappearance of these light-toned materials, suggests that they are some form of volatile, such as dusty ice, rather than dust alone. … [The appearance] of these light-toned materials is similar to the >100m thick, light-toned ice deposits exposed on steep mid-latitude scarps, indicating that these materials are probably also ice, with some amount of dust on, and within the ice.

The layer would have likely been laid down as snow during a time period (a long time ago) when the rotational tilt of Mars, its obliquity, was much higher than today’s 25 degrees. At that time the mid-latitudes were colder than the poles, and water was sublimating from the polar ice caps to fall as snow in the mid-latitudes.

The overview map below reveals some additional intriguing possibilities.
» Read more

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Russia launches Progress freighter to ISS

11:40 pm

Russia today successfully launched a new Progress freighter to ISS using its Soyuz-2 rocket, bring almost three tons of supplies to the station..

The 2021 launch race:

4 SpaceX
3 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit

The U.S. still leads China 6 to 3 in the national rankings. That lead should widen this week with three American launches scheduled, two Starlink launches from SpaceX and one Cygnus freighter from Northrop Grumman.

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1st Vulcan test core stage arrives at Kennedy

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: ULA’s first complete Vulcan core stage, meant at this point only for testing launch procedures, has arrived at Cape Canaveral.

After connecting the launch platform and the rocket to gas and electrical systems at the pad, ULA engineers will run the Vulcan booster and the ground infrastructure through a series of exercises, culminating in loading of thousands of gallons of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen into the rocket.

Once these tests are complete, the stage will be returned to ULA’s facility in Alabama to be refitted with flight worthy BE-4 engines so it can fly on a later mission. The engines presently attached are test engines.

ULA expects the first flightworthy BE-4 engines to be delivered by Blue Origin by the summer. These will then be incorporated into the first Vulcan to fly (hopefully before the end of the year) and carrying Astrobotic’s unmanned Peregrine lunar lander.

That rocket, as will all Vulcan rockets for the foreseeable future, will be entirely expendable. Though ULA says it intends at some point to recover for reuse the engines of the core stage, they have not delineated a time schedule for when that will happen.

At this point the only customer ULA has for this rocket is the government — especially the military. Vulcan cannot compete in price with SpaceX’s rockets, so I doubt any commercial satellite company will be much interested in it. The military will pay the extra bucks, because it wants more than one launch company for redundancy, and it has already committed to buying Vulcans for the next five years.

Of course, that long term commitment to Vulcan by the military will likely change if other cheaper rockets enter the market. At the present the military is limiting bidding on future launches to just SpaceX and ULA. That cannot hold up in court if other viable rocket companies wish to bid. Expect those new companies to do what SpaceX did when the Air Force refused to let it bid on military launches about five years ago, sue, and win in court.

At that point ULA’s an entirely expendable Vulcan will be very vulnerable to losing its last customer. ULA must make this rocket reusable or it will die as a company.

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Rover update: The rovers are coming! The rovers are coming!

12:52 pm

With the imminent landing on Mars of both the American rover Perseverance only days away on February 18th followed by China’s rover in April, I think it time for a new rover update, not only providing my readers a review of the new landing sites but a look at the most recent travels of Curiosity on Mars and Yutu-2 on the Moon.

Curiosity

Curiosity's view of the base of Mount Sharp, February 12, 2021
Click for full resolution image.

Overview map of Curiosity's most recent and future travels

The panorama above, made from four images taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on February 12, 2021 (found here, here, here, and here), looks south to the base of Mount Sharp, now only a short distance away. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right show the area this panorama covers. The white line indicates Curiosity’s previous travels. The dotted red line in both images shows Curiosity’s planned route.

The two white dots on the overview map are the locations of the two recurring slope lineae along Curiosity’s route, with the plan to get reasonable close to the first and spend some time there studying it. These lineae are one of Mars’ most intriguing phenomenon, seasonal dark streaks that appear on slopes in the spring and fade by the fall. There are several theories attempting to explain their formation, most proposing the seepage of a brine from below ground, but none has been accepted yet with any enthusiasm.
» Read more

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Saudi government considering Moon and Mars missions

10:33 am

The new colonial movement: The Saudi government has established a commission for developing its own space program, with missions to either the Moon or/and Mars under consideration.

According to the chairman, only a few weeks separate the Commission from launching an entire branch centered on boosting and encouraging investment in the space field.

…More so, Prince Sultan predicted that the Kingdom, in two years’ time, will finish assembling an integrated crew with international space agencies. The team is expected to mount space exploration missions to Mars and the Moon.

Their stated goal is to help diversify their economy as well as inspire their citizens. Their unstated goal is a need to compete with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which already has a successful Mars orbiter (built in partnership with the U.S.)

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Europa Clipper to fly on commercial rocket, not SLS

11:30 pm

NASA managers have now decided unequivocally to not use SLS to launch Europa Clipper, and will instead choose a commercial rocket in about a year.

During a Feb. 10 presentation at a meeting of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), leaders of the Europa Clipper project said the agency recently decided to consider only commercial launch vehicles for the mission, and no longer support a launch of the spacecraft on the SLS.

“We now have clarity on the launch vehicle path and launch date,” Robert Pappalardo, project scientist for Europa Clipper at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. That clarity came in the form of a Jan. 25 memo from NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office to “immediately cease efforts to maintain SLS compatibility” and move forward with a commercial launch vehicle, or CLV, he said.

Though this decision was expected following the approval of the most recent congressional budget for NASA, which contained language allowing NASA to abandon SLS if it thought it wise, this decision continues the string of recent stories that all point toward the eventually abandonment of SLS itself.

At the moment the rocket most likely to win the contract is the Falcon Heavy.

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Inexplicable ridges in Hellas Basin on Mars

2:07 pm

Sinuous ridge in Hellas Basin
Click for full image.

Time for some more cool but mysterious Martian images! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is the first of two images today, both of which show the ridges but of a completely different nature. Both are located in Hellas Basin in Mars southern hemisphere.

This first picture was taken on September 4, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a sinuous complex that resembles to a remarkable extent a set of river tributaries, but is instead a set of raised ridges rather than a canyon system.

Scientists have found more than 10,000 miles of such ridges in the northern hemisphere in Arabia Terra, the most extensive transition zone between the southern highlands and the northern lowlands, and have dubbed them fossilized rivers. From a 2016 press release:

The inverted channels are similar to those found elsewhere on Mars and Earth. They are made of sand and gravel deposited by a river and when the river becomes dry, the channels are left upstanding as the surrounding material erodes. On Earth, inverted channels often occur in dry, desert environments like Oman, Egypt, or Utah, where erosion rates are low – in most other environments, the channels are worn away before they can become inverted. “The networks of inverted channels in Arabia Terra are about 30m high and up to 1–2km wide, so we think they are probably the remains of giant rivers that flowed billions of years ago. Arabia Terra was essentially one massive flood plain bordering the highlands and lowlands of Mars. We think the rivers were active 3.9–3.7 billion years ago, but gradually dried up before being rapidly buried and protected for billions of years, potentially preserving any ancient biological material that might have been present,” added Joel Davis.

Nor are such features on Mars limited to Hellas and Arabia Terra. For a particularly spectacular feature in the cratered highlands see this 2019 post.

The origin of these sinuous ridges in Hellas might have a similar origin as these other fossilized rivers. At present the bottom of Hellas, the deepest basin on Mars, is a place with little signs of ice. In the past there is evidence that lakes once existed here, so we cannot rule out water as a cause.

At the same time, Hellas was formed by a gigantic impact. One cannot dismiss the possibility of a volcanic origin, impact melt left over from the heat of that crash.

Today’s second ridge complex in Hellas looks far different.
» Read more

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Jupiter’s southern jet streams

9:21 am

Jupiter's southern jet streams
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and reduced slightly to post here, shows the southern jet streams in Jupiter’s atmosphere. From the press release:

The storm known as the Great Red Spot is also visible on the horizon, nearly rotated out of view as Juno sped away from Jupiter at about 30 miles per second (48 kilometers per second), which is more than 100,000 mph (160,900 kilometers per hour).

Citizen scientist Tanya Oleksuik created this color-enhanced image using data from the JunoCam camera. The original image was taken on Dec. 30, 2020 as the Juno spacecraft performed its 31st close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, the spacecraft was about 31,000 miles (about 50,000 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 50 degrees South.

According to data obtained by Juno, these bands of storms extend about 1,800 miles into Jupiter’s interior, much deeper than expected.

The Great Red Spot is at about 22 degrees south latitude, so this tells us that this picture covers Jupiter’s southern hemisphere from about the equator down to about 80 degrees.

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Turkey to do lunar mission, send astronaut into space

8:59 am

The new colonial movement: Turkey’s leader, Tayyip Erdogan, announced yesterday a new space exploration initiative that will include sending an unmanned probe to the Moon as well as flying an astronaut into space.

“The first rough landing will be made on the moon with our national and authentic hybrid rocket that shall be launched into orbit in the end of 2023 through international cooperation,” Erdogan said, detailing a two-phase mission. Erdogan did not elaborate further on the cooperation. Last month, Erdogan spoke to Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk on possible cooperation in space technologies with Turkish companies.

Speaking in an event in Ankara, Erdogan announced a programme with 10 strategic goals including sending a Turkish citizen to a scientific mission in space.

The manned mission will not be flown by Turkey, but will be purchased from someone else, either Russia or SpaceX or Boeing maybe even China.

The timing of this announcement, the same day the UAE’s Al-Amal probe entered Mars’ orbit, suggests it was prompted by that success, and is an example of keeping up with the Joneses. Whether there is any reality to these proposals however remains to be seen.

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China’s Tienwen-1 enters Mars orbit

8:42 am

The new colonial movement: China’s Tienwen-1, carrying an as-yet-unnamed lander/rover, successfully inserted itself into orbit around Mars early today.

With a successful Mars Orbit Insertion, the craft has entered a highly eccentric, equatorial capture orbit of the planet, and controllers will now spend two months undertaking initial activations and checkouts in Martian orbit for the primary science mission while altering the craft’s orbit from equatorial to polar.

In April 2021, the lander, with the rover inside, will detach from the orbiter and prepare for Entry, Descent, and Landing. Prior to launch, 23 April 2021 was given as the target landing date.

The landing location is within Utopia Planitia and will — if the orbit insertion burn is completed successfully — utilize a combination of aerobraking, parachute descent, retrorocket firing, and airbag deployments to achieve a soft touchdown on the Martian surface. After landing, the rover will be deployed — ideally on the same day — to begin a planned 90 Sol (Martian day) mission to categorize the local environment.

The suspected landing site in Utopia Planitia is at about 25 degrees north latitude. Though it is in the northern lowland plains, this latitude places it south of the latitudes (greater than 30) that scientists now believe ample ice likely exists underground but accessible. The lander/rover carries radar equipment capable of detecting evidence of underground ice, and will look nonetheless. If it finds any, this will be a significant discovery.

Two down, one to go. Next week, on February 18th, the American rover Perseverance will attempt its landing in Jezero crater.

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Falcon Heavy wins contract to launch 1st two Gateway modules

9:47 pm

NASA today awarded SpaceX a $331 million contract to launch the first two components of the Lunar Gateway space station, using its Falcon Heavy rocket.

The Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost will launch in tandem no earlier than May 2024 aboard the Falcon Heavy rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The $331.8 million launch services contract, awarded by NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy, includes the Falcon Heavy launch and “other mission-related costs,” the agency said in a statement. The $331 million contract value is nearly three times the price NASA is paying for a Falcon Heavy launch in July 2022 with the Psyche asteroid probe.

What is significant about this contract is what it does not mention: SLS. Gateway was originally conceived by NASA as a project that would give purpose to the SLS rocket, a rocket that Congress required NASA to build without giving it any mission. Now it appears NASA is looking to build Gateway without SLS, at least on this first launch.

I would throw this news item in the bin containing an number of recent stories, all of which signal that SLS is on increasingly thin ice.

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Another “What the heck?!” image on Mars

2:53 pm

A
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image, taken on September 2, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and cropped and reduced to post here, is one that I will make very little attempt to explain. It falls into a category I call “What the heck?!” The uncaptioned website labels this “Ringed Ridges in Kasei Valles”, which merely describes what we see.

This isn’t an impact crater. The rings don’t fit any morphology I’ve ever seen for such features.

Could we be looking at some type of glacial feature? The latitude, 29 degrees north, makes this unlikely but possible. Even so, it sure doesn’t look like it. The ripples in the center and between the ridges are sand dunes, not glacial features.

Might this be a volcanic vent, with the concentric ridges marking multiple eruptions? Maybe, but if so I’ve never seen any volcanic vent or caldera that looked quite like this.

The overview map below gives some context, but hardly explains anything.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: January activity returns to expected levels

12:18 pm

Though I am a bit late this month, it is once again time provide my monthly update of the Sun’s on-going sunspot cycle. Below is NOAA’s February 1, 2021 monthly graph, showing the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity. I have, as I do each month, annotated it to show the previous solar cycle predictions.

After two months of relatively high activity, activity that was very high so early in the ramp up to solar maximum, the number of sunspots in January dropped down to closely match the predicted value. It was still higher, but not by much.

» Read more

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ESA contracts Airbus to build three more Orion service modules

11:38 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) late last week announced that it has awarded Airbus a contract to build three more service modules for NASA’s Orion capsule.

This new contract supplements the existing contract that already has Airbus building three service modules. With six service modules in the pipeline, the ESA is signaling that it is very confident the Artemis program will continue.

The key question remains: Will it continue with SLS as the rocket of choice? Right now there simply aren’t the funds to build six SLS rockets. Congress has only funded two. Moreover, the pace of construction for SLS means that, if funded, it will likely take a decade at least for it to launch these six capsule/service modules. Since SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy will likely be operational in about half that time, and will also be capable of much more for far less, I suspect that if these additional Orion capsules get launched, they will do so on something other than SLS.

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SLS-backer Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) to retire

11:27 am

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), long time firm supporter of the very expensive and long-delayed Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, has announced that he will not run for office again when his term expires in ’22.

The 86-year-old Shelby was first elected to the Senate in 1986 after eight years in the House. Shelby served in the House, and the first eight years in the Senate, as a Democrat, switching to the Republican party in 1994.

Shelby is best known in the space community for his role shaping NASA programs as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. That has included stints as chairman of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee, whose jurisdiction includes NASA, as well as of the full committee. With Democrats in control of the Senate, he is currently the ranking member of the full committee.

“I have worked to enhance Alabama’s role in space exploration and the security of our nation,” Shelby said in the statement announcing his decision not to run for reelection. That’s included support for programs based at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, such as the Space Launch System. “As chairman of the appropriations committee, I have more than a passing interest in what NASA does. And I have a little parochial interest, too, in what they do in Huntsville, Alabama,” he said at a March 2019 industry event

As the article makes clear, Shelby used his clout unceasingly to keep SLS funded. When NASA simply hinted in 2019 that it might switch to another rocket to launch Orion he made his displeasure known, and NASA immediately backed down.

His resignation now, at the same time that other members of Congress as well as the Biden administration appear to be separating the Artemis lunar program from SLS, is a strong signal that the political winds are blowing badly against SLS. Shelby has probably realized that he no longer has the same support for SLS in the rest of Congress that he once had, and knows there is a good chance it will go away, along with much of the pork he has been funneling to Alabama with it. When that happens, his chances of getting reelected drop precipitously. He probably doesn’t have to inclination to fight what might be a losing battle, especially at the age of 86.

The second static fire test of SLS’s core stage is presently scheduled for the fourth week in February. All had better go well, as time is running out in getting the rocket’s first launch off in ’21. Right now that schedule is very iffy. Further problems will make it impossible.

And any major failures would probably lead to the entire program’s cancellation. It would take years for SLS to recover the loss of the core stage, time the program does not have.

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Fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 14 lunar landing

9:22 am

Apollo 14 as seen by LRO
Click for full image.

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary today of the landing of Apollo 14 on the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team has used images from the spacecraft to map out what the astronauts did on the surface, as shown in the reduced image to the right. The orange and teal lines indicate the routes followed during the two EVAs, with the pink triangles indicating stopping points along the way.

Unlike Apollo 11 and 12, which focused on engineering goals such as landing precisely on the Moon, Apollo 14 focused on addressing science goals. Antares (lunar module) landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, the original destination of the failed Apollo 13 mission, essentially taking on that mission’s objectives. This was the first crewed landing in the lunar highlands and not in the mare.

The Apollo 14 astronauts who landed on the Moon, Alan Shepard (Commander) and Edgar Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot), completed two extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) while on the surface. They spent a total of 9 hours and 22 minutes setting up equipment, taking photographs, collecting samples, and exploring.

This was the last mission where the astronauts had to walk. The next three Apollo missions brought a rover with them, so that they could drive to their research sites.

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Musk: Starlink to go public once operational

8:48 am

Capitalism in space: According to a tweet by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, once the Starlink internet satellite constellation is operational and has a “reasonable well” cash flow it will issue and IPO and become a publicly traded stock.

“SpaceX needs to pass through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable,” Musk wrote in another tweet. “Every new satellite constellation in history has gone bankrupt. We hope to be the first that does not.”

Based on the company’s pace of launching satellites and rolling out service, this moment could occur as early as late this year. More likely it will occur in mid-22.

I would also expect that stock to quickly rise in value, and based on the history of all of Musk’s companies, will continue to rise thereafter. Expect also that a significant portion of the investment capital that Starlink will raise will be used to finance the development of Starship and Super Heavy, because Starlink will need that larger rocket to maintain its satellite constellation.

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UAE’s Hope or Al-Amal Mars Orbiter orbital insertion

8:31 am

UPDATE: The probe has apparently achieved orbit.

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Mars orbiter, Hope, or Al-Amal in Arabic, is about to insert itself into orbit around the red planet, with that insertion to be confirmed by 11:08 (Eastern).

If you want to watch, I have embedded the live stream below the fold. A warning: The insertion is a relatively interesting event to watch, as the orbiter works autonomously and the signal confirming it happened arrives after the event. Most of the stream is propaganda for the UAE.
» Read more

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OSIRIS-REx has begun its return to Bennu

2:17 pm

On January 14th the OSIRIS-REx team fired the spacecraft’s engines to halt its drift away from the asteroid Bennu and begin its return for one last reconnaissance before heading to Earth with its samples.

OSIRIS-REx executed the first maneuver on Jan. 14, which acted as a braking burn and put the spacecraft on a trajectory to rendezvous with the asteroid one last time. Since October’s sample collection event, the spacecraft has been slowly drifting away from the asteroid, and ended up approximately 1,635 miles (2,200 km) from Bennu. After the braking burn, the spacecraft is now slowly approaching the asteroid and will perform a second approach maneuver on Mar. 6, when it is approximately 155 miles (250 km) from Bennu. OSIRIS-REx will then execute three subsequent maneuvers, which are required to place the spacecraft on a precise trajectory for the final flyby on Apr. 7.

OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to depart Bennu on May 10 and begin its two-year journey back to Earth. The spacecraft will deliver the samples of Bennu to the Utah Test and Training Range on Sep. 24, 2023.

While they will gather images of the whole asteroid, their number one goal will be to get high resolution photos of the sample-grab site Nightingale to see how it was changed by that sample grab. The spacecraft pushed into the asteroid’s rubble pile about 1.6 feet, and that act certainly disturbed both the interior and surface. By comparing the before and after pictures scientists can garner a lot of information about the asteroid’s make-up, density, and structure. It will also teach future engineers what to expect when next they try to touch another rubble-pile asteroid.

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The Icy Surface of Mars

1:04 pm

The extent of ice on Mars

Two newly published science papers in the past few days have once again reinforced the growing evidence that much of Mars from 30 degrees latitude to its poles is very icy, with much of that ice found close to the surface.

The map above, adapted and annotated by me from figures 4 and 12 of one of those papers (“Widespread Exposures of Extensive Clean Shallow Ice in the Mid‐Latitudes of Mars”), show the areas on Mars where the evidence suggests ample and easily accessible ice, underground but close to the surface.

The red dots and diamonds indicate recent impact craters that temporarily exposed the underground ice layer that would normally not be visible. The white dots and diamonds indicate ice scarps with visible ice layers in their cliff faces. The size of these locations is greatly exaggerated.

The two hatched lines at 30 degrees latitude, north and south, indicate the closest to the equator that scientists have detected evidence of glacial ice. It is also the closest to the equator that the second new paper, “Water Ice Resources Identified in Martian Northern Hemisphere “, has found evidence of underground ice in the north. From the abstract of this second paper:
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Lockheed Martin picks ABL’s rocket to make its first UK launch

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: Lockheed Martin has chosen the smallsat rocket company ABL Space Systems to launch its first UK satellite payload from Shetland.

Lockheed said Feb. 7 that ABL will perform a launch of its RS1 rocket from the Shetland Space Centre, a spaceport to be developed on the island of Unst in the Shetlands, in 2022. The rocket, on a mission called the UK Pathfinder launch, will place into orbit a tug developed by Moog in the UK that will then deploy six 6U cubesats.

The launch will fulfill an award made by the British government in 2018 to support development of a domestic launch capability. The $31 million contract to Lockheed Martin covered a launch, then planned for a spaceport at Sutherland in northern Scotland, as well as Moog’s orbital maneuvering vehicle.

Lockheed did not disclose at the time, though, which vehicle it would use for the launch. The company does not have a small launch vehicle of its own compatible with the spaceport, but has invested in companies working on such vehicles, including ABL Space Systems and Rocket Lab.

It appears Lockheed choose ABL over Rocket Lab because of its mobile launch capability. As designed, its RS1 rocket needs no permanent infrastructure at the launch site. All they need is a concrete pad.

This decision also heightens the competition between the two presently proposed UK spaceports in Sutherland, Scotland, and Unst, Shetland. While planning at Sutherland started earlier, local opposition appears to be slowing it down.

ABL is one of six smallsat rocket companies planning a first orbital launch in 2021. While it is unlikely all will do so, the likelihood is increasing that several will, which will make things very busy in the rocket industry.

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Starship update: Prototype #10 being readied for launch

9:08 am

Link here. Not only have the engines been installed on the tenth Starship prototype, the static fire test is set for this week, maybe as early as today. It appears they are trying to launch the next test flight before the end of February.

At landing they will now fire all three engines, in case one or more fail to light (as happened with prototype #9), and then shut down all but one immediately and let that do the landing burn. This adds redundancy and increases the odds of a successful landing.

The article also provides a detailed update on the status of future Starship and Super Heavy test articles. While #11 is being readied for launch, it appears that, based on what has been learned from #8 and #9, they are dismantling prototypes #12-14 and incorporating changes to #15, which will likely fly after #11.

One aspect of this development program struck me today. These prototypes are essentially expendable rockets. Like it did with its early expendable Falcon 9, SpaceX is using these throw-away prototypes to test ways to make them more reusable and reliable. Unlike the Falcon 9s, however, the company isn’t using these prototypes to launch payloads, at least not at this stage. It isn’t good enough that these prototypes can successfully launch. They must be able to land as well.

I suspect that once during this test program the full rocket begins to reach orbit SpaceX will add payloads, even as they continue to test re-entry and landing. The early flights might produce rockets that successfully bring satellites into space but end up getting destroyed upon return. Those loses will then be used to make later ships better and more likely to return intact.

Eventually, we will have a rocket entirely reusable and flying multiple times, just like the Falcon 9 first stage.

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Tianwen-1 takes first picture of Mars

12:48 pm

Mars as seen by Tianwen-1 for the first time
Click for full image.

The new colonial movement: China’s Tianwen-1Mars spacecraft has taken its first picture of Mars, cropped and reduced to post here to the right.

The photo shows Valles Marineris as the darker splotch in the center-right of the hemisphere, with the northern lowland plain that this canyon feeds into, Chryse Planitia, the triangular dark area to the north east. Both Viking-1 and Mars Pathfinder landed in this region. The whitish border area on the triangle’s eastern flank is the area that Europe’s Rosalind Franklin rover will hopefully land in ’23.

The whitish area that caps the north pole is likely the annual mantle of dry ice that covers the planet’s polar regions down to about 60 degrees latitude each winter. Right now it is early spring in the northern hemisphere, and that mantle has only begun to sublimate away. In another few months that mantle will disappear entirely, exposing the terrain below it.

Finally, the very bright edge on the planet’s eastern limb is either caused by a cloud layer, or is simply an over-exposure. Hard to say which.

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