Tag: engineering

Curiosity looks forward and back

11:34 am

Panorama looking north
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map

The images above and below are small sections from 360 degree panorama created on May 13, 2024 from 31 photos taken by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The red dotted line indicates Curiosity’s planned route, while the white dotted line its actual route. The rover’s present position is marked by the blue dot. The yellow lines indicate the area covered by the picture above, while the green lines indicate the area covered by the picture below.

The image above looks north, back down Gediz Vallis and across to the north rim of Gale Crater, about 20-25 miles away. The red dotted line marks the rover’s path to get up to this point. All told, Curiosity has climbed about 2,500 feet in elevation since it left the floor of Gale Crater about nine years ago.

The image below looks south, up Gediz Vallis and towards the peak of Mount Sharp (not visible), about 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher up. Curiosity might move forward about 500 feet to the small hill on the left (indicated by the red dot), or it might turn west from this point, as indicated by the red dotted line on the overview map.

Panorama looking south
Click for original image.

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A planet with the density of cotton candy?

10:32 am

The uncertainty of science: According to data obtained from ground-based telescopes of a newly discovered transiting exoplanet, that planet has the density of cotton candy.

This new planet, located 1,200 light-years from Earth, is 50% larger than Jupiter but seven times less massive, giving it an extremely low density comparable to that of cotton candy. “WASP-193b is the second least dense planet discovered to date, after Kepler-51d, which is much smaller,” explains Khalid Barkaoui, a Postdcotral Researcher at ULiège’s EXOTIC Laboratory and first author of the article published in Nature Astronomy. Its extremely low density makes it a real anomaly among the more than five thousand exoplanets discovered to date. This extremely-low-density cannot be reproduced by standard models of irradiated gas giants, even under the unrealistic assumption of a coreless structure.”

Such a gas giant is not impossible. For example, Saturn’s density is so low that if you could find an ocean large enough it would float. The scientists theorize that this exoplanet is likly comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Nonetheless, there are phenomenon here that we certainly do not understand.

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Air Force sends letter of concern about Vulcan to ULA

10:21 am

According to a report yesterday [behind a paywall], the Air Force has sent a letter of concern to ULA and its joint owners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, about the long delays getting its new Vulcan rocket operational.

When the military chose in 2021 ULA and SpaceX to be its two launch providers for the first half of the 2020s, it expected ULA to complete 60% of the launches and SpaceX 40%. It also expected Vulcan to being launching within a year or two, at the latest.

Instead, the first launch of Vulcan did not occur until 2024, and its second launch — required by the military before it will allow Vulcan to launch its payloads — won’t occur until late this year. Worse, the military has a large backlog of launches it has assigned to Vulcan that need to launch quickly.

“I am growing concerned with ULA’s ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rocket and scale its launch cadence to meet our needs,” [Air Force Assistant Secretary Frank] Calvelli wrote. “Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays. ULA has a backlog of 25 National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Vulcan launches on contract.”

These 25 launches, Calvelli notes, are due to be completed by the end of 2027. He asked Boeing and Lockheed to complete an “independent review” of United Launch Alliance’s ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rockets and meet its commitments to the military. Calvelli also noted that Vulcan has made commitments to launch dozens of satellites for others over that period, a reference to a contract between United Launch Alliance and Amazon for Project Kuiper satellites.

ULA says that once operations ramp up, it plans to launch Vulcan twice a month. The Air Force doubts about whether that will be possible however are well founded. To meet that schedule ULA will need delivery per month of at least four BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, and so far there is no indication the Bezos company can meet that demand. Delays at Blue Origin in developing that engine are the main reason Vulcan is so far behind schedule in the first place.

In order to get Vulcan operational, ULA needs to fly a second time successfully. The second launch of Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle is booked for that flight, and was originally supposed to launch this spring. Tenacity however was not ready, as it is still undergoing final ground testing. The launch is now set for the fall, but both ULA and the Pentagon are discussing replacing it with a dummy payload should Tenacity experience any more delays.

The source of all of these problems points to Blue Origin. Not only has it been unable to deliver its BE-4 rocket engine on schedule — thus blocking Vulcan — the long delays in developing its own New Glenn orbital rocket (which uses seven BE-4 engines) has given the military fewer launch options. As a result the military has been left with only one rocket company, SpaceX, capable of launching its large payloads.

To put Blue Origin’s problems in perspective, for Blue Origin to finally achieve its many promises and get both Vulcan and New Glenn flying regularly, it will need to begin producing a minimum of 50 to 150 BE-4 engines per year, with two-thirds for its own New Glenn rocket. Right now all evidence suggests the company is having problems building two per year.

In other words, the Pentagon might send a letter of concern to ULA, but it should instead be focusing its ire on Blue Origin.

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XRISM X-ray space telescope functioning despite closed “aperture door”

9:50 am

XRISM, a joint X-ray space telescope built by NASA and Japan’s space agency JAXA, is collecting data despite the failure on one instrument of an aperture door to open.

In January, project scientists said that XRISM was working well except for an aperture door, also called a gate valve, for the Dewar on its imaging instrument, Resolve, which failed to open. The instrument can still operate with the door closed, although the door, made of beryllium, does attenuate some X-rays at lower energies.

At the time, efforts were underway to try and open the gate valve. However, speaking at a May 7 meeting of the National Academies’ Board on Physics and Astronomy, Mark Clampin, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said those efforts were on hold for the next year and a half.

Instead, the science team decided to proceed with science operations, since the telescope has two other working instruments, and can get data even from this hindered third.

XRISM is a replacement of a previous JAXA X-ray telescope that launched in 2016 but failed immediately.

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A detailed look, using satellite imagery, of North Korea’s coastal spaceport

9:41 am

North Korea

Link here. The article, written by analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, describes in detail the work being done in the past few years at North Korea’s Sohae spaceport on that nation’s western coast, as shown on the map to the right.

This work allowed North Korea to complete its first successful orbital satellite launch of its Chollima-1 rocket in November, after two previous failures.

As North Korea releases almost no information, the analysis depended entirely on high resolution orbital data.

While construction of the coastal launch pad is largely complete and work on refurbishing the original launch pad is largely suspended, work is now concentrated on constructing a large new processing/assembly building and an associated underground facility. Several smaller construction projects are also being pursued.

Overall it appears that North Korea is very serious about developing a full spaceport for both satellite and missile launches.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

8:41 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

This was the 50th successful launch by SpaceX this year, in only a little more that five months. Reaching the company’s goal of 150 launches in 2024 (six of which were planned to be Starship/Superheavy test launches) remains a challenge, but if the company reaches even 80% of that goal (120) it will have set a record for launches greater than what the entire world achieved for every year of the space age until 2020.

This was also the 15th launch of the rocket’s first stage, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

50 SpaceX
21 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 57 to 33. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 50 to 40.

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China today launches “experimental” satellite

11:42 am

China today successfully launched what it called an “experimental” satellite designed to “monitor the space environment”, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

The state-run press provided no other information. Nor did it tell us where the rocket’s lower stages, which use toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

49 SpaceX
21 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 56 to 33. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 49 to 40.

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Serbia joins China’s lunar base project

12:21 pm

Serbia this week signed an agreement with China to become the eleventh nation to join its International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) lunar base project.

China’s project now has eleven partner nations (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela) and eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies.

Except for China and Russia, the other partners are very minor players in space, and will likely contribute relatively little to the lunar base other than providing China some shallow positive PR.

Nonetheless, the two competing alliances in settling the solar system are becoming clear. On one side you have the alliance led by the U.S. under the Artemis Accords, while on the other you have an alliance led by China, under its lunar base project. Both right now appear only interested in establishing government power in space.

In the middle will be ordinary people, dreaming of building new societies to live in on other worlds. Sadly it increasingly appears they will be crushed between these two big government alliances. Though the U.S. alliance was initially established to foster private property and ownership so that those settlers could have as free and as prosperous a life as the Americans who settled the United States, it no longer seems interested in that goal.

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FAA and Air Force initiate new environmental impact statements for Starship/Superheavy launchpads in Florida

12:08 pm

We’re here to help you! Really! Late yesterday, in a typical Friday story dump just before the weekend to reduce any notice, the FAA announced it has begun a new environmental impact statement (EIS) of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy launchpad infrastructure being built in Florida, working in parallel with a similar environmental impact statement now being conducted by the Air Force.

The EIS will be the second environmental review involving SpaceX’s plans to use LC-39A for Starship launches. NASA completed an environmental assessment (EA) in 2019 of the company’s plans at the time to build launch infrastructure at LC-39A for Starship, finding it would have no significant impact. At the time SpaceX was planning up to 24 Starship launches from that pad annually. A new EIS, the FAA concluded, is needed because of changes in the design of Starship and its operations since the 2019 assessment.

The FAA claims a new assessment is needed because SpaceX is now planning as many as 44 launches. The Air Force has not said why its new assessment is needed. That EIS, which began in March, covers a launchpad previously used by the Saturn-1B and Delta-4 rockets from 1964 to 2022, another pad use by the Air Force’s Titan rocket from 1965 to 2005, as well as a new pad, dubbed SLC-50.

LC-39A meanwhile has been used for launches since the 1960s. The Saturn-5, the space shuttle, and the Falcon 9 all launched from this pad.

The dishonest absurdity of these impact statements can not be overstated. There is zero reason to do new assessments. All the pads have been in use for decades, with all kinds of rockets, some comparable to Superheavy/Starship. The environment and the wildlife refuge at Cape Canaveral have both thrived.

Moreover, to force completely new impact statements because the design and plans for Superheavy/Starship have changed somewhat (but not fundamentally) is even more stupid. This is a new rocket, being developed day-by-day and launch-by-launch. Will the FAA and the Air Force require new EIS’s every time SpaceX changes anything? It seems so.

This is clearly lawfare against Elon Musk and SpaceX by the White House and the administration state. It doesn’t like Musk, and it is now searching at all times for ways to block or damage him.

I confidently predict that neither statement will be completed by the end of 2025. Based on the timeline of most EIS’s, which when politics are involved are almost always slowed by the legal action of activists, the earliest either will be approved will be mid-2026, though likely later.

What is not clear is whether the FAA and Air Force will stop all work while this red tape is being unwound. If so, then the first operational launches of Superheavy and Starship cannot happen out of Cape Canaveral until well into 2027, which means NASA entire Artemis program will be seriously delayed. My previous prediction that the first manned lunar landing can’t happen before 2030 is becoming increasingly too conservative.

And remember this: If Joe Biden and the Democrats remain in power after November, all bets are off. At that point they are certain to ramp up the lawfare against those they see as political enemies, even if their targets are doing great things for the nation and the American people.

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Perseverance looks ahead, out of Jezero Crater

12:25 pm

Panorama May 9, 2024, low resolution
Click for high resolution. Go here and here for original images.

Cool image time! The panorama above, recropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was created from two pictures taken by Perseverance’s right navigation camera on May 9, 2024 (here and here). It looks almost due west, out the gap in the rim of Jezero Crater to the mountains beyond.

The blue dot in the overview map below marks Perseverance’s location when these photos were taken. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dots indicate the rover’s planned route.

It is obvious this panorama was taken as part of the science team’s planning for Perseverance’s upcoming traverse across Neretva Vallis. The picture also gives us a nice view of the barren terrain found here in the dry tropics of Mars. There is no ice or water present anywhere, though the geology strongly suggests H2O in one form or another once shaped this landscape.

Nor is there any visible life. As much as NASA and many others devoutly wish to find some, I doubt any will be found. There is a very tiny chance the remains of long-gone microbiotic life might be found, but I wouldn’t bet much money on that either.
Overview map
Click for interactive map.

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The spiral dust streams within the Andromeda galaxy

10:15 am

Andromeda in infrared
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture above, cropped and reduced to post here, was released yesterday and uses archival infrared data from the now retired Spitzer Space telescope to highlight the dust found within the Andromeda galaxy, about two million light years away.

Spitzer’s infrared view was similar to Webb’s but at a far lower resolution. In the picture above the red indicates cool dust.

By separating these wavelengths and looking at the dust alone, astronomers can see the galaxy’s “skeleton” — places where gas has coalesced and cooled, sometimes forming dust, creating conditions for stars to form. This view of Andromeda revealed a few surprises. For instance, although it is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, Andromeda is dominated by a large dust ring rather than distinct arms circling its center. The images also revealed a secondary hole in one portion of the ring where a dwarf galaxy passed through.

The data also suggested that the dust is flowing at a very steady rate into Andromeda’s central black hole. According to computer simulations, this steady rate would explain why the supermassive black holes at the center of both Andromeda and the Milky Way are relative inactive. If the dust fell in clumps rather than a steady flow, both black holes would exhibit bursts of high activity, similar to active galactic centers.

A side note for anyone wishing to star-gaze: Andromeda is actually the largest visible galaxy in the night sky, about six times with width of the full Moon. If you can get to a very dark-sky location, get your eyes very dark-adapted, and you know where to look, you can actually see it with the naked eye. I did this once at a star party, helped by a bunch of amateur astronomers. The galaxy is very faint, and it helps to use binoculars to help locate it, but once identified its size in the sky truly is breath-taking.

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Update of the reusable cargo capsule by the French company, The Exploration Company

9:51 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed look at the development of the company’s second demonstrator capsule, dubbed Mission Possible, which it hopes to fly in an orbital test sometime in ’25.

Beforehand a smaller demonstrator capsule, dubbed Mission Bikini, will fly on the first launch of the Ariane-6, set for this summer.

Both demonstrators will lay the groundwork fo the launch of the company’s Nyx capsule, designed to provide freighter services to any one of the four private space stations presently being built.

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