Tag: engineering

Starship prototype #9 completes three static fire tests in one day

3:36 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX engineers today successfully completed three static fire tests of their Starship prototype #9, all within a space of just over three hours.

The three-engine SN9 vehicle performed its second, third and fourth “static fire” tests in quick succession today (Jan. 13) at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica. The engines lit up briefly at 1:28 p.m. EST (1828 GMT), again at 3:22 p.m. EST (2022 GMT) and then yet again at 4:36 p.m. EST (2136 GMT).

During static fires, engines blaze briefly while a vehicle remains tethered to the ground. SN9 already had one such test under its belt, having completed a short static fire on Jan. 6.

In each case they likely practiced their countdown and fueling procedures, followed by procedures allowing for a quick recycle should they have to abort a countdown but have time to still launch that day.

All this strengthens the reliability and overall design and operation of the rocket as they develop it.

The actual hop could occur, based on road closure announcements, on Friday. It is also possible the company will do additional static fire tests beforehand.

I think it also pertinent to once again compare SpaceX’s development approach to that of Boeing and NASA in their development of SLS. SpaceX is aggressively doing a lot of tests of hardware, continually. They then redesign and rebuild based on those tests. The pace is fast and compressed, and gets things built at a remarkable low cost, considering. It also forces them to design things in a way that makes redesign easy and fast.

Boeing and NASA have done no such tests in building SLS. Instead, they designed it by computer, giving themselves large safety margins in design. This might have reduced or eliminated the need for tests, but it raises the cost of the rocket while stretching out the development time enormously. And it carries great risk. In two days they will attempt their very first static fire test of SLS’s core stage, after almost a decade of development. The actual launch is planned for within a year.

If that static fire test has any issues, the whole SLS project will face serious problems that will, based on its design, be very difficult to fix.

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The target landing ellipse on Mars for Perseverance

2:59 pm

Perseverance's landing ellipse on Mars
Click for full image.

In just over a month, on February 18, 2021, the American rover Perseverance will come screaming through the thin atmosphere of Mars at a speed of over 12,000 miles per hour to hopefully land successfully in Jezero Crater.

The map to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released last week by the Perseverance science team and shows the landing ellipse in that crater. It also shows the much larger landing ellipses of previous landers/rovers. As they noted,
» Read more

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Blue Origin announces next New Shepard flight for January 14th

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin today announced that it will launch its fourteenth New Shepard flight tomorrow, at 9:45 am (Central).

This will be the eighth flight for this particular New Shepard capsule.

The link above takes you to their live stream, which will go live 30 minutes before launch. From the press release:

For this mission, the crew capsule will be outfitted with upgrades for the astronaut experience as the program nears human space flight. The upgrades include improvements to environmental features such as acoustics and temperature regulation inside the capsule, crew display panels, and speakers with a microphone and push-to-talk button at each seat. The mission will also test a number of astronaut communication and safety alert systems. The capsule will be outfitted with six seats, including one occupied by Mannequin Skywalker. Also inside the capsule, Blue Origin’s nonprofit Club for the Future will fly more than 50,000 postcards to space and back from students around the globe.

The last flight New Shepard flight was in October. The company had earlier promised manned flights would begin in 2020, but that did not happen. Today’s announcement makes no mention of later flights or future plans.

While I do expect Blue Origin will eventually fly humans on a New Shepard capsule, more and more it looks like it will be more a public relations operation for the company rather than a real profit center. They might make money on it, but the focus of space tourism is shifting to orbital flights. Doing a suborbital flight will still be cool, but it will no longer have the pizazz that it would have had, had the flight been two, three, five, or ten years ago. This shift I think is reflected in the slow pace of New Shepard launches in the past three years.

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U.S. and Japan formalize partnership on Gateway

8:53 am

NASA announced yesterday the signing of a formal agreement between the U.S. and Japan detailing exactly how the two countries will partner in the building of NASA’s lunar space station Gateway.

Under an arrangement with Northrop Grumman, Japan also will provide batteries for the Gateway’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the initial crew cabin for astronauts visiting the Gateway. Additionally, Japan is investigating enhancements to its HTV-X cargo resupply spacecraft, which could result in its use for Gateway logistics resupply.

…The agreement also marks NASA’s intent to provide crew opportunities for Japanese astronauts to the Gateway, which will be determined following additional discussions, and documented in a future arrangement.

Japan is one of the seven countries that has also signed the Artemis Accords, which covers the legal and international rights under the project. This new agreement is more technical in nature, outlining who will do what during construction.

Of course, much of this assumes that money will be forthcoming from Congress for Gateway. Right now that budget does not really exist, and its allocation remains quite uncertain.

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Starlink begins rollout in United Kingdom; blocked in Russia

8:43 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s Starlink internet service has now begun providing its service in the United Kingdom, following approval by the government there.

Because the British government is now also an owner of Starlink’s direct competitor, OneWeb, this creates an interesting conflict of interest that fortunately has so far not impeded SpaceX. We shall have to see whether this changes with time.

Meanwhile, in Russia a similar conflict of interest has resulted in some government action against Starlink.

Russia’s legislative body, the State Duma, is considering fines for individuals and companies in the country that use Western-based satellite Internet services. The proposed law seeks to prevent accessing the Internet by means of SpaceX’s Starlink service, OneWeb, or other non-Russian satellite constellations under development.

…In the Russian-language article, translated for Ars by Robinson Mitchell, members of the Duma assert that accessing the Internet independently would bypass the country’s System of Operational Search Measures, which monitors Internet use and mobile communications. As part of the country’s tight control on media and communications, all Russian Internet traffic must pass through a Russian communications provider.

It is not surprising that Russia would take steps to block Starlink service—the country’s space chief, Dmitry Rogozin, views SpaceX as a chief rival in spaceflight. Rogozin has been critical of both NASA and the US Department of Defense for subsidizing SpaceX through government contracts. (While it is true that SpaceX has received launch contracts from the US government worth several billion dollars, it has also provided launch services at a significant discount compared to other providers.) More recently Rogozin has said Starlink is little more than a scheme to provide US Special Forces with uninterrupted communications.

That the legislation is also aimed at blocking OneWeb however is strange, considering that OneWeb is quite literally Rogozin’s only remaining commercial customer for Roscosmos’s launch services.

In the end, such laws will only end up doing more damage to Russia than to SpaceX. When you don’t allow competition you basically don’t allow any achievements at all. Russia will sink into a second-class status, not because its people are second-class but because its government is.

Tragically it appears the U.S. federal government is now in a race with Russia to the bottom.

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Dream Chaser first flight delayed to ’22

3:44 pm

Officials from Sierra Nevada today revealed they have now delayed the first flight of their mini-reusable Dream Chaser shuttle Tenacity until ’22 rather than late this year.

They claim the cause of the delay is the Wuhan flu.

Sierra Nevada has not announced when in 2022 Dream Chaser will attempt to make its first flight, but Lindsey described how pandemic restrictions prevented engineers from being on site for structural testing of the cargo model. Instead, engineers remotely oversaw the tests from a mission control center in Colorado. While the workaround allowed testing to continue, it took three or four times as long as it should have, Lindsey said.

Other delays came from supplier shutdowns due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Technical challenges not related to the pandemic also caused problems, though Lindsey did not elaborate. “All of those things have conspired to move the date a little bit,” Lindsey said.

The first issue is a management decision by the company. I note that SpaceX does not create these kinds of restrictions, and has therefore not experienced any slowdown in its launches or Starship development. It also appears to be experiencing no significant issues with COVID-19 infections.

The second issue is also in a sense a management decision. Sierra Nevada is subcontracting a lot of its work, and thus is at the mercy of other companies. Once again, SpaceX made a decision years ago to do as much as possible in-house. Thus, they are at no one’s mercy, and can push forward even as others cower in fear.

Overall, the pace of development at Sierra Nevada has not been impressive, but then, much of their work is being done by others, such as Lockheed Martin.

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The colorful and bright knobs of Ariadnes Colles on Mars

1:50 pm

Colorful and bright knob in Ariadnes Colles
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image gives us a sample of the strange colorful hills in an even stranger knobby depression on Mars called Ariadnes Colles. The photo to the right, cropped and color enhanced to post here, was taken on September 10, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It focuses on just one of those colorful hills. The color strip only covers the western half, which is why that is the only part of the hill in color.

Ariadnes Colles is a patch of chaotic terrain 110 by 100 miles in size, located in the southern cratered highlands due south of Mars’s volcano country, at latitude 34 degrees south. What makes this particular patch of chaos distinct from the many others on Mars is that the hills, knobs, and mesas within it are routinely bright and colorful, compared to the darker surrounding terrain. Moreover, as noted in this Mars Express press release for images of Ariadnes Colles from that orbiter,

In contrast to other chaotic terrains … Adrianes Colles is not a water-source region. It is still debated, therefore, whether Ariadnes Colles was formed by the action of water or wind.

The darker material in the southern areas is most likely sand or volcanic ash; some slopes of the flat-topped features have been covered by this dark material that was blown up on the slopes.

The sand or volcanic ash most likely come from the Medusae Fossae Formation several hundred miles to the north, the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars. The colors on the hill likely come from a variety of minerals.

The overview map below shows the entire patch, with the location of the hill above indicated by the white dot in the red rectangle that shows the full image location.
» Read more

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Update of Starship prototype #9: Flight delayed until January 15

8:19 am

Link here. It appears that because the engine static fire test ended prematurely, SpaceX engineers want to do another before attempting the ninth prototype’s first the 50,000 foot flight.

[Yesterday] SpaceX delivered notices confirming that the next SN9 static fire attempt was now scheduled no earlier than (NET) 8 am to 5 pm CST (UTC-6) on Tuesday, January 12th. Whether SN9 actually pulls off a full-duration static fire, weather forecasts remain unfavorable for a low-velocity, high-altitude launch. Cancelled FAA Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) more or less confirmed SpaceX’s agreement with those forecasts, leaving Starship SN9’s 12.5 km (~7.8 mi) launch debut scheduled no earlier than Friday, January 15th or Saturday, January 16th.

As far as I know, the company has not said whether it will live stream the flight, though I expect they will. I will embed that live stream here when the schedule firms up.

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NASA extends mission of Juno and InSight probes

8:08 am

NASA has decided to extend the missions of Juno and InSight probes, giving both several more years to gather data.

InSight main goal for the two-year extension will be to gather more seismic data of Mars. They will also continue their efforts to get the heat sensor into the ground, but that will have a lower priority.

Juno will be able to slowly adjust its orbit to better study Jupiter’s north polar regions, thus developing a more complete first rough map of the gas giant’s internal structure and atmosphere. The changing orbit will also allow the first close fly-bys of some of Jupiter’s moons, the first in more than twenty years.

The moon flybys could begin in mid-2021 with an encounter with Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, at a distance of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers), Bolton said last year.

After a series of distant passes, Juno will swoop just 200 miles (320 kilometers) above Europa in late 2022 for a high-speed flyby. Only NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which ended its mission in 2003, has come closer to Europa.

There are two encounters with Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io planned in 2024 at distances of about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers), according to the flight plan presented by Bolton last year. Juno will be able to look for changes on the surfaces of Jupiter’s moons since they were last seen up close by NASA’s Voyager and Galileo probes.

While it will take images, Juno’s camera is not particularly high resolution. The main effort will be to use its instruments to study the surface make-up of the moons.

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NASA moves up static fire test of SLS core stage

10:50 pm

NASA today announced that it has rescheduled the full duration static fire engine test of the core stage of SLS’s first stage, moving it up one day to this coming Saturday, January 16th.

During the test, engineers will power up all the core stage systems, load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic, or supercold, propellant into the tanks and fire all four engines at the same time.

If all goes right, that test will last about 8 minutes, the full time those engines are intended to fire during launch.

For SLS a lot rides on this test. Should anything go wrong, it will likely delay the launch, presently scheduled for November (though there are rumors this date is no longer likely). And since we now have a new administration taking power that is also linked politically with the previous Obama administration that was generally uninterested in SLS, a failure during this test could very well signal the death knell for this vastly over-budget and far behind schedule project.

For SLS to survive, this test must succeed, and fire for its full duration.

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Partly engulfed Martian craters

5:01 pm

An engulfed crater on Mars
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 October 31, 2020. It shows a crater that appears buried in a sea of material so that pretty much the only thing visible is top of its rim.

The full image shows a second larger crater to the northwest that looks the same. In both cases the material fills the craters also fills the surrounding terrain.

Yet, both craters appear to be surrounded by a faint skirt of uplifted material.

What caused this situation?
» Read more

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Congress frees Europa Clipper from SLS

9:10 am

It appears that Congress has at last removed its requirement that the unmanned probe Europa Clipper must be launched on the continually delayed and very expensive SLS rocket.

Almost unnoticed, tucked into the 2021 fiscal NASA funding section of the recently passed omnibus spending bill, is a provision that would seem to liberate the upcoming Europa Clipper mission from the Space Launch System (SLS).

According to Space News, the mandate that the Europa Clipper mission be launched on an SLS remains in place only if the behind-schedule and overpriced heavy lift rocket is available and if concerns about hardware compatibility between the probe and the launcher are resolved. Otherwise, NASA is free to search for commercial alternatives to get the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s ice-shrouded moon.

Not only will this secure Europa Clipper’s launch schedule, which had deadlines imposed by orbital mechanics that SLS was not going to meet, the more than $1 billion in savings by using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy will allow the probe to do more while giving NASA more money for other planetary missions.

This is excellent news. It signals that Congress’s long love affair with SLS because of the ample pork it sends to many districts might finally be waning. If so, there is a good chance it will finally be killed, freeing up its bloated budget.

Sadly, in a sane world some of those savings would be used to reduce the overall federal deficit even as some was also used to expand NASA’s space effort. We are not in a sane world, however, so expect no reduction in the federal budget, at all.

Still, this is a move by Congress towards some fiscal responsibility that will make NASA’s efforts more efficient. For that small improvement we should be grateful.

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Another new rocket startup, ABL Space, to launch its rocket in ’21

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: ABL Space, another one of the many startups attempting to enter the launch market using private investment capital, now predicts it will attempt its first orbital launch sometime before June of this year.

The company was formed by veterans of SpaceX and Wall Street, and uses that company’s philosophy of building as much of the rocket in-house as possible. That rocket is also more powerful than Rocket Lab’s, aiming for bigger payloads, and is designed with a very simple launchpad arrangement, so that it can launch from practically anywhere there is a concrete pad and do it quickly.

ABL now has about 105 employees, with about 90,000 square feet of space in several buildings in El Segundo, as well as testing facilities at Edwards Air Force Base and at Spaceport America in New Mexico. “We can build and ship a launch vehicle about every 30 days, based on infrastructure we have now,” Piemont said. “We’re tracking towards eight or nine [rockets] a year based on existing infrastructure.”

While ABL has significant contracts and relationships with the Pentagon, Piemont said the company’s customer pipeline is 60% private, or commercial, versus 40% government payloads. The company has customers lined up to launch payloads on its first few missions, although ABL may fly mass simulators, which are often a slab of concrete to represent a spacecraft’s weight, for the first RS1 launch.

By my count, this makes seven new rocket companies — Virgin Orbit, Firefly, Astra, Relativity Space, Aevum, ABL Space, and Blue Origin — all planning their inaugural launches in ’21. The competition for business thus should be very fierce, which is all to the good, as it will encourage these companies to all find ways to cut costs.

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Draping moraines on Mars

1:07 pm

Draping moraines on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo on the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 6, 2020. It shows the northern interior rim of 42-mile-wide Greg Crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars.

What makes it interesting is the curving ridge that appears to drape itself around several larger hilltops. That ridge is a moraine, the debris or glacial till that accumulates at the foot of glaciers as push their way down hill. As the glacier had flowed those hills became obstacles, so that the glacier (and its moraine) were forced to go around.

The overview map and wider view from the context camera on MRO below give the setting.
» Read more

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Momentus forced to delay its first mission due to FAA bureaucrats

9:34 am

Capitalism in space? Momentus, aiming to provide satellite makers a tug that can move satellites to their preferred orbit, has delayed its first mission because the many bureaucrats in the federal government need more time to review the paperwork.

In a Jan. 4 statement, Momentus said the flight of its first Vigoride tug, which was to be part of the payloads on a Falcon 9 dedicated rideshare mission launching as soon as Jan. 14, will be delayed to later in the year because it was unable to get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission. “This move will allow for the additional time necessary to secure FAA approval of Momentus’ payloads, including completion of a standard interagency review,” the company said in a statement.

The company did not elaborate on that review, but part of the FAA commercial launch licensing process is a review of the payload that the agency describes as intended “to determine whether its launch would jeopardize public health and safety, safety of property, U.S. national security or foreign policy interests, or international obligations of the United States.” That process can include consultation with other government agencies.

In a Jan. 5 document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the form of an interview, Fred Kennedy, president of Momentus, said there was no specific issue that was delaying that review. “The FAA did not express any specific concerns of its own, but rather indicated that more time was needed to complete its interagency review of Momentus’ payload,” he said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words reveal the truth. There is nothing wrong with the payload or its tasks. The problem is that several government agencies have not completed the paperwork, and so Momentus must wait. I imagine that there is a thick application sitting on some bureaucrat’s desk, requiring a signature, and that bureaucrat has been too busy collecting his or her paycheck at home because God forbid he or she might get the cororavirus by coming into work.

This is modern America. You don’t have the real freedom to do what you want. You must sit, twiddling your thumbs, while your betters in Washington decide whether they will allow you to do it. It doesn’t matter they know little or nothing about your goals. All that matters is that they are in charge, and can boss you around at their whim.

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Rover update: Curiosity on the shore of a sand sea

1:24 pm

Curiosity stops on the shore of a sand sea, while Yutu-2 continues its journey west away from Chang’e-2. On the way: Perseverance and China’s first Mars rover on Tianwen-1.

A sand sea on Mars
Click for full image.

Curiosity

The photo on the right, taken in late December, shows the large sand lake the science team has labeled “the Sands of Forvie” that the rover has been working its way uphill to reach since it left the Mary Anning drill site back in November.

Since they arrived there, they have used the rover to roll across the sand, cutting into a ripple to expose its interior, followed by high resolution close-up images. They have also used the rover to analyze the chemical composition of the sand’s grains, from that interior section, from the top of several ripples, and from the troughs in between.

Once finished here, the rover will be turned east again to continue its journey around this sand sea to the very base of Mount Sharp. The overview map below shows the planned route.
» Read more

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DARPA cubesats damaged in mishap at SpaceX facility

10:07 am

Though no details have been released, DARPA revealed yesterday that two experimental cubesats being prepared for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 were damaged when the payload separation system was accidently activated.

As these were military satellites not much information was revealed by DARPA, and SpaceX made no comment.

Such things do happen rarely, but for SpaceX it is still an embarrassment and a problem. They will certainly have to figure out how this could have happened by accident, and make sure it does not happen again.

Who pays the cost for repair or replacement (more likely) is a tangled question, and will be buried in the launch contracts between DARPA and SpaceX.

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Starship prototype #9 completes first static fire test

10:00 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX engineers yesterday successfully completed the first static fire test of the ninth prototype of Starship, in preparation for its first 50,000 foot flight.

The SN9 vehicle’s three engines lit up for about one second today (Jan. 6) at 5:07 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) during a static-fire test at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica.

It is possible they will do additional static fire tests before that flight, as they did this with the eighth prototype. It is also possible that all went right in this first test, and they will proceed to launch, as soon as January 8th.

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A glacier filled canyon on Mars?

11:26 am

Large glacial flow exiting Mamers Valles
Click for full image.

The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on September 9, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northern half of a 15-mile wide canyon on Mars whose floor appears to be completely filled by a glacier. The full picture shows both the north and south rims, and captures the canyon’s outlet from the southern cratered highlands into the chaotic terrain of Deuteronilus Mensae, the region of Mars I like to call glacier country. This region of canyons and mesas forms the transition zone down to the northern lowland plains, and is a region where almost every MRO image shows glacial-type features.

The size and age of this glacial feature is what makes it stand out. First, note the craters on its surface. The glacier has to be quite old and inactive for a long time for those craters to still exist as they appear. Any movement would have distorted them, and they show little distortion.

The overview map below gives a sense of this glacier’s size.
» Read more

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NASA targets Jan 17th for full static fire test of SLS core stage

8:34 am

After analyzing the data from an aborted fueling dress rehearsal, NASA engineers have decided they understand and have fixed the issue that caused the abort and have now scheduled the full static fire test of SLS’s core stage for January 17th.

NASA conducted the seventh test of the SLS core stage Green Run test series – the wet dress rehearsal – on Dec. 20 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and marked the first time cryogenic, or super cold, liquid propellant was fully loaded into, and drained from, the SLS core stage’s two immense tanks. The wet dress rehearsal provided structural and environmental data, verified the stage’s cryogenic storage capabilities, demonstrated software with the stage’s flight computers and avionics, and conducted functional checks of all the stage’s systems. The end of the test was automatically stopped a few minutes early due to timing on a valve closure. Subsequent analysis of the data determined the valve’s predicted closure was off by a fraction of a second, and the hardware, software, and stage controller all performed properly to stop the test. The team has corrected the timing and is ready to proceed with the final test of the Green Run series.

…The upcoming hot fire test will fire all four of the stage’s RS-25 engines simultaneously for up to eight minutes to simulate the core stage’s performance during launch. After the firing at Stennis, the core stage for SLS will be refurbished and shipped on the agency’s Pegasus barge to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The stage will then be assembled with the other parts of the rocket and NASA’s Orion spacecraft in preparation for Artemis I, the first integrated flight of SLS and Orion and the first mission of the agency’s Artemis program.

The agency had been hoping to complete this test series before the end of 2020. Whether the delay will effect the planned launch date in November is unclear. I suspect they are already anticipating another postponement, in that this press release strangely makes no mention of that launch date.

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Tianwen-1 to arrive in Mars orbit February 10

4:03 pm

The new colonial movement: China’s space agency, CNSA, today announced that its first Mars orbiter/lander/rover, Tianwen-1, will arrive in Mars orbit on February 10th, with the lander/rover dropping to the surface in May.

After entering orbit, Tianwen-1 will begin to prepare for a landing attempt of the mission’s rover. The orbiter will begin imaging the main candidate landing site within the huge impact basin Utopia Planitia, to the south of NASA’s Viking 2 landing site.

Getting ready for the attempt will take time however, with CNSA stating that the landing won’t take place until May.

At the moment they say that all systems are working as planned, and that they have one more course correction, the fourth, to do before entering orbit.

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Updates on Starship development: next 50K foot flight this weekend?

11:22 am

Two different updates yesterday and today on the development of Starship by SpaceX suggest strongly that the company is aiming for its next test flight to about 50,000 feet as early as this coming weekend.

The second story notes how the company has apparently decided it was not worthwhile keeping much of the debris left over from the crash of the eighth Starship prototype after its successful test flight on December 9th. They have instead focused entirely on clearing the landing pad as quickly as possible, even if it meant destroying some of the prototype’s remains.

The first story outlines the ongoing pressure tests for the ninth prototype, now on the launchpad, and how those tests have so far proceeded very smoothly. All that remains is SpaceX’s standard dress rehearsal countdown ending in a static fire test of the prototype. This is presently scheduled for tomorrow. Once it is accomplished, the test flight can follow quickly, probably no more than a week later, depending on weather, the data from the static fire test, and the innumerable uncertainties that routinely occur in a robust test program such as this.

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China targets 40-plus launches in ’21

3:56 pm

The new colonial movement: China’s space agency announced today that it is aiming to complete at least 40 launches in 2021.

A terse summary of the report in a CASC press release (Chinese) stated that missions related to the Chinese Space Station complex would be among the planned 40-plus launches. Recent reports state that the space station core module will be launched in the coming months, followed by the Tianzhou-2 cargo vessel and Shenzhou-12 crewed missions. The missions will require Long March 5B and Long March 7 launches from Wenchang and a Long March 2F launch from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert.

Other major highlighted activities include the Tianwen-1 Mars spacecraft, which is due to enter Mars orbit around Feb. 10 with a rover landing attempt to follow in May. Development work will focus on the two experiment modules for the Chinese Space Station and, notably, crewed lunar exploration. No further details on the latter were provided but earlier indications are available.

Assuming they experience no major launch failures, 2021 should be a ground-breaking year for China.

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A Martian “glacier” made of volcanic ash

2:19 pm

A Martian
Click for full image.

Of the numerous cool images I’ve posted on Mars, many have documented the growing evidence that in the mid-latitudes of the Red Planet are many buried glaciers of ice.

Today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped and reduced to post here, shows something that at first might resemble the features one would expect from an ice glacier, but in reality is actually a flow of volcanic ash being blown almost like a river, with the prevailing winds blowing from the south to the north.

The photo was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on November 1, 2020. The location, very close to the equator and in the transition zone dubbed the Cerberus Plains, is also smack dab between Mars’s biggest volcanoes, a region I like to dub Mars’s volcano country. The overview map below gives the context.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: December sunspot activity once again higher than predicted

1:11 pm

The uncertainty of science: It is time to once again take a look at the state of the Sun’s on-going sunspot cycle. Below is NOAA’s January 1, 2021 monthly graph, documenting the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity and annotated by me to show previous solar cycle predictions.

The ramp up to solar maximum continued in December. Though there was a drop from the very high activity seen in November, the number of sunspots in December still far exceeded the prediction as indicated by the red curve.

» Read more

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The state of the global rocket industry in the 21st century

12:23 pm

With the year of 2020 coming to an end, it is time to look back to see how the world’s rocket industry fared in what was a truly difficult year for most. And with the 21st century now one fifth over, it is also time to take a wider view, to see what the trends have been for space exploration during this new century, and to see where those trends might lead.

Below is my annual updated table showing all successful orbital launches by every nation and company, beginning in 2000. While the table in my 2019 report last year had gone back to 1990, I decided to shorten the graph to just the 21st Century, in order to better focus on that century in particular.

» Read more

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Musk: Super Heavy will land on launchpad, caught by launch tower

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: In a series of tweets yesterday SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed that the company is considering landing Starship’s first stage, Super Heavy, on its launchpad but rather than use landing legs it will be caught by the launch tower.

Instead, Musk says that SpaceX might be able to quite literally catch Super Heavy in mid-air, grabbing the booster before it can touch the ground by somehow slotting an elaborate “launch tower arm” underneath its steel grid fins. Although such a solution sounds about as complex and risky as it gets, it would technically preclude the need for any and all booster recovery infrastructure – even including the legs Super Heavy would otherwise need.

While true, catching Super Heavy by its grid fins would likely demand that control surfaces and the structures they attach to be substantially overbuilt – especially if Musk means that the crane arm mechanism would be able to catch anywhere along the deployed fins’ 7m (23 ft) length. Even more importantly, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that such a complex and unproven recovery method could be made to work reliably on the first one or several tries, implying that early boosters will still need some kind of rudimentary landing legs.

The idea is to save weight on the booster. It also would speed its reuse, as there would no longer be a need to transport it from a landing pad back to the launchpad.

Whether this will work will depend on the accuracy of SpaceX’s vertical landing software. That the company has repeatedly proven, from almost the first time it tried it, that it can bring its rockets down exactly where it intends suggests they will be able to be as accurate as necessary.

Nonetheless, expect more than a few launchpad crashes as they work out the kinks on another audacious engineering concept.

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The seasonal cloud over Arsia Mons on Mars

9:21 pm

Water-ice cloud over Arsia Mons
The cloud as seen in 2018.

Scientists have now documented the seasonal nature of the strangely elongated cloud that was first spotted in 2018 above the giant volcano Arsia Mons (the southernmost volcano of the three volcanoes east of Olympus Mons).

From their abstract:

We find that the AMEC [Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud] repeated regularly each morning for a number of months, and that it is an annually‐repeating phenomenon that takes place every Martian Year around the southern hemisphere spring and summer. The AMEC follows a rapid daily cycle: it starts to expand from Arsia Mons at dawn at an altitude of about ∼45 km, and for ∼2.5 hours it expands westward as fast as 170 m/s (around 600 km/h). The cloud then detaches from Arsia Mons and evaporates before noon. In previous Martian Years, few observations of this phenomenon are available because most cameras orbiting Mars are placed in orbits where they can only observe during the afternoon, whereas this cloud takes place in the early morning, when observational coverage is much lower.

They also state that they will outline their theories as to the cause of the cloud in a follow-up paper.

I can’t help wondering if it is related to other evidence that suggested past glacial activity on the western flanks of Arsia Mons. There are many pits surrounding this volcano, and many might contain residue ice. One wonders if, during the warm spring and summer months at dawn the arrival of the sun might cause this cloud to form, and then vanish as the day passes, just like the dew does on Earth.

That is my uneducated guess, and likely wrong. We shall have to wait for their theoretical paper for a more educated guess.

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Surprisingly low number of observation proposals from astronomers for Webb telescope

4:03 pm

In preparation for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in ’21, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) that will operate it has begun accepting observation proposals from astronomers, and has apparently discovered that the number of proposals, dubbed the subscription rate, is surprisingly low.

The stats of the James Webb space telescope cycle 1 proposal round came in the other day. In summary: an over subscription rate of 1:4. A little less even.

There was immediate spin how the stats were a good thing. Enthusiasm from around the globe! So many investigators! But that does not change that the 1:4 oversubscription is a disappointment. If I were part of the project, this would and should worry me.

If they got exactly the right number of proposals to precisely use all of the telescope’s observation time, the subscription rate would be 1. An oversubscription rate of 1.4 seems good, but in truth it is tiny compared to Hubble and other space telescopes, and horrible considering the cost of Webb (almost $10 billion, 20x what it was originally budgeted).

The author at the link provides some technical reasons for the low interest, some of which are the fault of the Webb management team (such as a very complicated proposal process) and some that are beyond their control (the Wuhan panic). He also provides suggestions that might help.

Either way, the relatively low interest I think is rooted in Webb’s initial genesis. It was pushed by the cosmological community and its design thus optimized for studying the early universe. Other astronomical fields were pushed aside or given a lower priority so that the telescope does not serve them as well.

The result is that a lot of astronomers have been finding other more appropriate and already functioning telescopes to do their work, bypassing Webb entirely. They are probably also bypassing Webb because it seems foolish to spend the inordinate amount of time putting together a proposal for a telescope a decade behind schedule that carries an enormous risk of failure once it is launched.

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