SANS ICS HyperEncabulator
An evening pause: Essentially, a detailed and accurate history of the important encabulating technology that has revolutionized all technology, both real and imagined.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Tag: engineering
FAA issues Starship launch license; SpaceX schedules launch for April 17th
Starship prototype #24 stacked on top of Superheavy prototype #7
FAA just sent out an email notice announcing that it has issued SpaceX the launch license for the first orbital test launch of Superheavy/Starship.
After completing an evaluation of all applicable Vehicle Operator License requirements, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a commercial Vehicle Operator License to SpaceX for launches of the Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program in Cameron County, TX.
The affected environment and environmental impacts of Starship/Super Heavy operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site had been analyzed in the 2022 Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas. Since the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA), SpaceX provided the FAA with additional information regarding Starship’s planned landing, Super Heavy’s planned soft water landing, and the Launch Pad Detonation Suppression System. In accordance with FAA Order 1050.1F, Environmental Impacts: Policies and Procedures, the FAA prepared the Written Re-evaluation of the 2022 Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas to describe and evaluate this additional information.
Based on the Written Re-Evaluation, the FAA concluded that the issuance of a vehicle operator license for Starship/Super Heavy operations conforms to the prior environmental documentation, that the data contained in the 2022 PEA remains substantially valid, that there are no significant environmental changes, and all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met in the current action. Therefore, preparation of a supplemental or new environmental document is not necessary to support the Proposed Action.
In plain English, the FAA (and other federal agencies) have finally agreed that this launch will do nothing to change the conclusions of the environmental reassessment report that was approved in June 2022. That these agencies decided apparently decided to rehash that approved environmental reassessment for a launch that was also approved in that reassessment suggests that there are individuals in these agencies salivating for an opportunity to squelch SpaceX.
SpaceX has now set April 17, 2023 as the launch date, with its live stream going live in two days. I will embed that live stream late on April 16, 2023, for those who wish to watch it here.
The very icy high northern latitudes of Mars
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image to me illustrates how the presence of near surface ice in the high latitudes of the northern lowland plains of Mars helps to produce a very strange and alien terrain.
The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical example of what the scientists have dubbed a “pedestal crater,” where the crater ends up higher than the surrounding terrain because the impact had packed the ground and made it more resistant to erosion.
This theory however does not explain entirely what we see here. That apron mesa surrounding the crater also resembles the kind of splash field that is created when an impact occurs in less dense ice-rich ground. Note too the soft stippled nature of the ground. Wind erosion is not the sole cause of change here.
» Read more
Ingenuity completes its 50th flight on Mars
Click for interactive map.
The Ingenuity team yesterday announced that the Mars helicopter has successfully completed its 50th flight on Mars on April 13, 2023, flying 1,057.09 feet (322.2 meters) in 145.7 seconds, while setting a new altitude record of 59 feet. The green dot marks its new location on the overview map to the right, with the blue dot marking Perseverance.
Built with many off-the-shelf components, such as smartphone processors and cameras, Ingenuity is now 23 Earth months and 45 flights beyond its expected lifetime. The rotorcraft has flown for over 89 minutes and more than 7.1 miles (11.6 kilometers). “When we first flew, we thought we would be incredibly lucky to eke out five flights,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at JPL. “We have exceeded our expected cumulative flight time since our technology demonstration wrapped by 1,250% and expected distance flown by 2,214%.”
The helicopter is beginning to show signs of age, with its engineering team recognizing that its life could end at any time, especially because it now has to fly more often to keep ahead of Perseverance, while also keeping within communications range.
The helicopter however is now giving us clues as to where the Perseverance science team wants to send the rover. Notice how its path has shifted north away from its planned route (along the red dotted line) to travel just below the rim of Belva Crater, following Ingenuity. The helicopter team is thus providing the rover team some specific additional information about the ground ahead, aiding in planning travel.
Lucy snaps its first pictures of four of the Trojan asteroids it will visit
Click for original movie.
Lucy’s route through the solar system
Though still many millions of miles away and really nothing more than tiny dots moving across the field of stars, the science team for the asteroid probe Lucy have used the probe to take its first pictures of four of the eight Trojan asteroids it will visit during its travels through the solar system, as shown on the map to the right. The dots along its path show where Lucy will fly past asteroids, some of which are binaries.
The image at the top is a screen capture from a very short movie created from all of the images Lucy took of each asteroid. If you click on the picture you will see that movie. As I say, at this distance, more than 330 million miles away, the asteroids are nothing more than dots. The short films of each were obtained by pictures taken over periods from two to 10 hours long, depending on the asteroid.
These asteriods are all in the L4 Trojans, the first that Lucy will visit from ’27 to ’28.
Curiosity gets a software update that will speed its travels and better protect its wheels
Click for full resolution panorama. The original images can be found here, here, here, here, and here.
Engineers this week completed a major software update on the Mars rover Curiosity that, among many other improvements, will allow it to travel more quickly across the rocky Martian surface but at the same time better protect its damaged wheels.
The team also wants to maintain the health of Curiosity’s aluminum wheels, which began showing signs of broken treads in 2013. When engineers realized that sharp rocks were chipping away at the treads, they came up with an algorithm to improve traction and reduce wheel wear by adjusting the rover’s speed depending on the rocks it’s rolling over.
The new software goes further by introducing two new mobility commands that reduce the amount of steering Curiosity needs to do while driving in an arc toward a specific waypoint. With less steering required, the team can reach the drive target quicker and decrease the wear that inherently comes with steering. “That ability was actually dreamed up during the Spirit and Opportunity days,” Denison said. “It was a ‘nice to have’ they decided not to implement.”
The software will also make it possible for Curiosity to travel more without the help of humans on Earth, which will also speed its travels up Mount Sharp, on ground that is getting increasingly rough, as shown in the mosaic above of navigation images from March 27th.
Arianespace launches JUICE mission to Jupiter
Arianespace early today used its Ariane-5 rocket, on its next-to-last launch, to send the European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUICE mission on its way to Jupiter to study its large moons.
It will take eight years for JUICE to get to Jupiter, using flybys of the Earth, Moon, and Venus along the way. This journey might also include a flyby of an asteroid, depending on orbital mechanics and the spacecraft’s condition.
Once at Jupiter it will, from ’31 to ’34, do thirty-five flybys of the Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, and then enter orbit around Ganymede for most of 2035, before being sent to crash onto the planet to end its mission.
Ariane-5 meanwhile has one more launch, in June. After this Arianespace will not at present have an active large rocket, as its Ariane-6 replacement is not yet flying, its maiden flight presently scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year.
This was also Europe’s first launch in 2023, so it does not get listed on the leader board. The leaders of the 2023 launch race are as follows:
23 SpaceX (with a launch scheduled for tonight)
15 China (with a launch scheduled for tomorrow)
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China 26 to 15, but is now tied with the entire world combined 26 all.
A pyramid on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “pyramidal mound”, which is I think understating the point somewhat.
This pyramid is almost perfectly square, with two perpendicular ridgelines rising from its corners to meet perfectly at the pyramid’s peak. A similar pyramid mound in the Cydonia region, where the so-called “Face on Mars” was found, caused endless absurd speculations in the 1990s of past Martian civilizations, all of which burst into nothingness when good high resolution images were finally obtained in the 2000s.
But what caused this very symmetrical natural feature?
» Read more
German students about to attempt launch of suborbital hybrid rocket
A student project at the University of Stuttgart in Germany is about to attempt the first suborbital launch of a hybrid rocket that has the possibility of setting a new altitude record for student-built rockets.
The hybrid rocket is 7.80 m long and weighs around 70 kg. It was built by around 60 students from the University Group HyEnD of the University of Stuttgart. “It’s one of the most powerful and advanced student-built hybrid rockets in the world,” says Max Öchsle, HyEnD project manager. With this, the students have big plans: They want to beat their own altitude record of 32 km for student-built hybrid rockets, which they set in 2016.
The students also hope to cross the boundary into space at an altitude of 100 km. In addition to the world record for hybrid rockets, this also makes the world record for student-built rockets in general possible. The previous record is 103.6 km and was set by the University of Southern California (USCRPL) team in 2019. “The world record is within our reach. We could indeed beat it,” says Öchsle. Öchsle is well aware that the record depends on other factors such as the weather.
The launch window begins on April 14th, and extends until April 25th, will take place at the new Esrange commercial spaceport in Sweden, and will be live streamed by the spaceport. Updates on the project can be found at the project’s own website.
What makes this particular student project interesting to me is its location, in Germany. That nation presently has three startup rocket companies racing to be the first to reach orbit. These students are clearly aiming for jobs with this emerging German rocket industry, and if successful at this project will bring to that industry some very sophisticated abilities.
Museum offers $25k for recovery of meteorite that landed in Maine April 8th
Because a instrument operated by NOAA picked up radar data of an asteroid fall over Maine on April 8, 2023, it has been possible for NASA scientists to publish a track, shown to the right, of where any pieces of the meteorite might have landed.
As a result, the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum has offered a $25k reward to anyone who turns in the first piece weighing more than one kilogram.
The $25,000 reward is only for the first kilogram, but Pitt said that the museum will also buy other fireball pieces that are found. “Depending upon the type of meteorite this is, specimens could easily be worth their weight in gold,” he said.
The American Meteor Society received six witness reports of Saturday’s fireball, half of which were in northeast Maine. One of the witnesses described the meteorite as having a “long glowing tail (but no smoke).” Another said that it was “bright red” while the tail was “very white.”
The museum also emphasized that any meteorite hunters must get landowner permission before entering private land.
Hakuto-R1 now scheduled to land on Moon on April 25th
Hakuto-R1’s planned landing site is in Atlas Crater.
The private company Ispace yesterday announced that their Hakuto-R1 lunar lander, presently in orbit around the Moon, will attempt a landing on April 25, 2023, landing in Atlas Crater.
At approximately 15:40 on April 25, 2023, (UTC), the lander is scheduled to begin the landing sequence from the 100 km altitude orbit. During the sequence, the lander will perform a braking burn, firing its main propulsion system to decelerate from orbit. Utilizing a series of pre-set commands, the lander will adjust its attitude and reduce velocity in order to make a soft landing on the lunar surface. The process will take approximately one hour.
Should conditions change, there are three alternative landing sites and depending on the site, the landing date may change. Alternative landing dates, depending on the operational status, are April 26, May 1, and May 3, 2023.
The lander carries several commercial payloads, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Rashid rover. Ispace says the landing will be publicly live streamed, with more details to follow.
The company has from the beginning been treating this entire mission as an engineering test, with ten major goals, all related to proving out the lander’s systems. It has now completed eight of those goals, with a successful landing and successful operations on the surface the last challenges. If Hakuto-R1 succeeds, Ispace will become the first private company to complete a privately funded planetary mission to the Moon.
Furthermore, the company is already planning its second lunar landing mission, Hakuto-R2 in 2024, and a third more ambitious lunar mission for NASA, partnering with the American company Draper.
Triple crater on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists have labeled simply as a “triple crater,” a very apt description.
What caused this? The most obvious explanation is the arrival almost simultaneously of three pieces. As this asteroid or comet entered the thin Martian atmosphere as a single object, that atmosphere was thick enough to break it into three parts but not enough to destroy it entirely. When it hit the ground, the top piece hit first, with the center and bottom pieces following in sequence, thus partly obscuring the previous hits.
The smaller surrounding craters could either be additional pieces from the bolide, or secondary impacts from ejecta thrown out at impact.
» Read more
Relativity ends Terran-1, will move to developing more powerful Terran-R
According to Tim Ellis, the head of the rocket company Relativity, it has decided to end any further work on its small test rocket, Terran-1 following its first failed launch and shift all work to developing its more powerful Terran-R rocket.
The company feels good about the data collected from the flight, as Terran 1 made it further into space than the debut launches from a majority of small rocket companies. It also validated the company’s test and launch program, he said, and its approach to 3D printing large parts of a rocket. “Terran 1 was always meant to develop technologies that were pushing the bounds for what was needed for Terran R,” Ellis said.
But now, it’s time to move on. Relativity Space is negotiating with NASA to move the one existing commercial launch on Terran 1—the Venture Class Launch Services Demonstration 2 mission—onto another rocket, possibly the Terran R. In other words, there will be no more Terran 1 launches.
Ellis also described some major changes in the design of Terran-R. The company will no longer attempt to make the second stage reusable, it will no longer 3D-print its entire structure, its first stage will be more powerful and will be flown and reusable like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and its first launch will be pushed back from 2024 to 2026.
This decision means that Relativity will not become an operational and competitive rocket company for another three years, at the soonest. However, should it succeed in achieving these new plans for Terran-R, it will have a rocket that can directly compete with SpaceX, while beating out anything either ULA or Blue Origin can at this time offer. For example, the rocket will be able to put from 23 to 33 tons into low Earth orbit, which is more than the Falcon 9 (20 tons) and not much less than the Falcon Heavy (50 tons), and generally better than Vulcan (27 tons). As noted at the link:
[T]he US government (as well as commercial satellite customers) would very much like a second company to step forward and challenge SpaceX on innovation, price, and reliability. Ellis correctly sees that this lane remains open with questions about Vulcan’s long-term future, Blue Origin’s slow movement on New Glenn, and Rocket Lab’s focus on a smaller medium-lift rocket, Neutron.
Whether this new strategy will work depends entirely on whether Relativity can deliver by 2026. If it does so, it will very likely beat Blue Origin into orbit, and be chosen by the military to replace it as one of the Pentagon’s launch providers. It will also make ULA’s position more vulnerable, because Vulcan will no longer be the only other option, and it will likely not be able to compete with the prices offered by SpaceX and Relativity.
SpaceX announces it will be providing a webcast for Starship’s first orbital flight
Click for original image.
SpaceX today revealed the details for its live stream of the first orbital launch of Superheavy/Starship, now targeting a launch date around April 21, 2023, depending on when the FAA issues the launch license.
A live webcast of the flight test will begin ~45 minutes before liftoff. As is the case with all developmental testing, this schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our social media channels for updates.
I will embed that live stream here on Behind the Black. Stay tuned for more information.
The flight plan is shown above. The website also provides a detailed timeline. If launch manages to pass through Max-Q and get to stage separation, Superheavy will do a flip to do a soft targeted landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will continue into orbit, and then fire its engines to return to Earth to do a soft targeted landing in the Pacific northeast of the Big Island of Hawaii.
That is the plan. Much can go wrong along the way, considering Superheavy has never flown once, no less with Starship stacked on top. Furthermore, Starship has never flown in its present iteration. Previous suborbital tests were using much earlier prototypes vastly different that this prototype, #24 in the series.
Regardless whether all goes perfectly or some things fail, the launch will be a success because it will provide SpaceX data for future test flights, which are waiting in the wings.
Weird surface cracking in the Martian northern lowland plains
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture was simply labeled “Channel-like feature”, which hardly describes this strange terrain.
Apparently a mantle of surface material has covered and filled an ancient east-west channel. That surface material however has since cracked along the edges of that channel as well along its length. The cracks suggest that the material in the channel is moving downhill slowly, cracking along the cliff walls while also being pulled apart to form the north-south cracks.
My regular readers will I think be able to guess what is going on here, but if you can’t, the overview map below will help explain this.
» Read more
Startup aims to provide Space Force a satellite that can study the satellites of other countries
True Anomaly, a Colorado-based startup, has proposed building satellites for the Space Force designed to maneuver close to other satellites and provide high resolution imagery and data about them.
The company has already raised $30 million, and used it to hire 57 employees and a facility for manufacturing these satellites.
The startup plans to use the funding to scale the production of its Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, which was designed to study space objects at close range. The spacecraft collects photos, videos and data about any space objects in orbit, and it’s operated by humans with the assistance of artificial intelligence pilots.
Both China and Russia have flown a handful of satellites testing this exact technology. The U.S. has not, at least nothing comparable in recent years.
The real story here however is the manner in which the Space Force will do this. Instead of designing and building the satellites itself, which has been the policy of the military for decades, the Space Force is following the recommendations in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space, and becoming merely a customer, letting private companies do the work and own it themselves.
Startup proposes capturing space junk with a satellite operating like a whale
Paladin, a new space junk removal startup based in Australia, has now proposed building a satellite that would literally swallow space junk and then send it over the ocean to burn up.
The image to the right shows the satellite as a piece of junk is about to be captured. The advantage it has on all other designs for capturing space junk is its simplicity. No nets, no harpoons, no grappling arms. The debris is captured inside a box inside the satellite, and then that box is released to burn up. This quote from the startup’s founder and CEO, Harrison Box, illustrates well his investment argument:
“The European Space Agency is currently paying 100 million euros to remove just one item of space junk. That’s the value they put on the job,” says Box. “Imagine the value of being able to remove hundreds.”
Paladin is one of 29 startups that have divided up $14 million in development money provided by a program of the Australian government. Thus, it is only at the very beginning of development, without a lot of cash to work with.
The idea however is smart, with great potential.
Starship orbital test flight delayed one more week due to FAA delays
According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, the first orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy has been delayed again.
Starship launch trending towards near the end of third week of April
Musk had made it clear in an April 8th tweet the cause of this delay or any other delays:
Starship is ready for launch. Awaiting regulatory approval
Musk needs to be somewhat diplomatic as it will not help him to make federal bureaucrats his enemies. What he is doing here is subtly letting everyone know the sole cause of the delay, in order to press the FAA to get a move on, without saying so directly. He leaves that to others, such as myself, to say it instead.
I fear that the FAA is now demanding that it must look at the data from any wet dress rehearsal countdown, including the short engine burst that Superheavy will likely do at T-0, before it will issue the permit. If so, we could see more than a week delay. The launch should easily slip to late May if not later.
The absurdity of this is that it is utterly pointless for FAA bureaucrats to look at any of this data. What do they know? Nothing. If something was significantly wrong SpaceX engineers would know far sooner, and delay the launch themselves.
The delays seen in issuing this one launch license however give us a nice picture of what it will be like for the launch industry once the moratorium on heavy regulations by the FAA and other federal agencies expires on October 1, 2023. Expect a substantial slowdown in development and launches, with many of the new companies about to become operational instead going bankrupt in a replay of the destruction of Virgin Orbit by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.
Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 4
Click for full image.
Today is the last part in our four part exploration of the cratered southern highlands of Mars, begun last week. (For the early parts, go here-Part #1, here-Part #2, and here-Part #3.) Though there is no need, new readers should read the first three parts first, in order to get the larger perspective of this final post.
The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eastern main gully descending down into a pit that sits in the north center of 52-mile-wide Asimov Crater, as shown in the inset on the overview map above. (For an MRO high resolution of the western gullies into this pit, see this January 2019 cool image post.)
» Read more
Report recommends Congress allow full regulation of commercial human spaceflight
The modern instruction manual for America
A new report by the RAND corporation has recommended that Congress allow the moratorium on full regulation of commercial human spaceflight, established by the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 and extended several times, to expire on October 1, 2023.
That recommendation came despite a lack of progress on voluntary standards and key industry metrics. While standards development organizations like ASTM International and ISO have published 20 standards related to commercial spaceflight, the RAND report noted that “companies have yet to clearly or consistently adopt them in a manner that can be confirmed or verified publicly.” A diversity of technical approaches also hinders the development and implementation of standards.
The report also found that while the FAA had developed key industry indicators to assess readiness for adopting safety regulations, there were no goals for those indicators to determine when it was time to implement regulations. “It is, therefore, difficult to assess whether there has been progress toward meeting key industry metrics when there are not clear targets that could be met,” the report concluded.
Despite that lack of progress on standards or metrics, the RAND report nonetheless concluded that allowing the learning period to expire this year was the best approach. Doing so, it argued, would allow FAA and industry to start the process of developing safety regulations in a gradual manner and avoid a rush to regulate imposed by Congress should a high-profile accident take place while the learning period is still in effect.
It also recommended additional resources for the FAA to support that regulatory process, but did not quantify an increase in the budget for or personnel assigned to its Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words illustrate the crushing fundamentals of all government regulation. » Read more