Tag: engineering

A centrifuge costing 20 cents based on a toy

9:22 am

Scientists at Stanford have developed a centrifuge costing 20 cents to make, based on a child’s toy, that can be used in the field to separate blood samples.

According to Stanford, Prakash and post-doctoral fellow Saad Bhamla came up with the “paperfuge” while looking at toys like tops and yo-yos for inspiration. Noticing how the disc of a whirligig spins when the cords on either side are pulled, they decided to make a slow motion video of one, only to discover that it rotated at 10,000 to 15,000 RPM.

The pair started developing prototypes using a blood capillary tube mounted on a paper disc, but they went beyond simple tinkering as they recruited three undergraduate engineering students from MIT and Stanford to create mathematical models of how the whirligig could change a pulling motion into a rotary motion. Looking at variables like disc size, string elasticity, and pulling force, they combined this with equations from the physics of supercoiling DNA to gain a better understanding of the whirligig’s mechanism.

The result was a centrifuge made of 20 cents of paper, twine, and plastic that could spin at 125,000 RPM, generate 3,000 G’s, and process samples in 1.5 minutes.

I have embedded a video explaining the paperfuge below the fold. I wonder if a variation of this on ISS could do low gravity experiments.
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SpaceX to land both Falcon Heavy first stages and Dragon at Cape Canaveral

6:37 pm

An environmental report, prepared by SpaceX, describes in detail their plans to build landing facilities for their Dragon capsule as well as two more landing pads to facilitate the vertical landing of all three Falcon Heavy first stages at Launch Complex 13 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

It is not clear when this work will go forward, though I suspect it will not be too far in the future.

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Russians complete investigation into Progress launch failure

5:50 pm

The news is not really good.

According to Roskosmos, the accident led to the unplanned separation between the third stage of the launch vehicle and the spacecraft. Members of the commission established that the most probable cause of the accident had been the disintegration of the oxidizer tank of the third stage as a result of the failure of the 11D55 engine, following the fire and disintegration of its oxidizer pump, Roskosmos said. The fire in the pump and its disintegration could be triggered by a possible injection of the foreign particles into the pump’s cavity or by violations during the assembly of the 11D55 engine, such as a wrong clearance between the pump’s shaft and its attachment sleeve, floating rings and impellers, leading to a possible loss of balance and vibration of the rotor.

The fault, which has a production nature, manifested itself during the flight, Roskosmos said. The State Corporation promised to prepare a plan of immediate action at enterprises of the the rocket industry to ensure the safe launch of the Progress MS-05 spacecraft, Roskosmos announced. [emphasis mine]

It appears that though they have not definitely established what went wrong (due to a lack of telemetry), they have determined that all of the possible causes are related to quality control issues.

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Launch industry trends, based on recent history

1:32 pm

The worldwide competition to launch the most rockets each year, first noted by Doug Messier about the 2016 race that was won by a squeak by the U.S., and then augmented by my own post about the various predictions by different nations and companies about what they hope to achieve in 2017, got me to thinking. How do these numbers compare with the past? What are the launch trends? Who has been moving up and who has been moving down? And most important, what would a close look at the trends for the past two decades tell us about the future?

In order to answer these questions, I decided to compile a table of all worldwide launches since 1998.

Worldwide Launches since 1998

This table reveals some very interesting trends and facts that I had not recognized previously.
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The X-37B flies on

8:55 pm

The Air Force’s X-37B reusable space vessel is now approaching 600 days in orbit on its second space mission, and is only two and a half months away from setting a new record.

There is as yet no word on when it will return to Earth, though there are rumors that when it does return it will do so at the Kennedy Space Flight Center and not at Vandenberg in California.

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Japanese SS-520 rocket launch scrubbed due to weather

8:51 pm

The launch of Japan’s new small rocket, SS-520, was scrubbed today due to bad weather.

Japanese officials announced a few minutes before the launch that the flight would be postponed due to bad weather at the space base. Authorities did not immediately set a new launch date.

The SS-520-4 will try to become the smallest rocket to ever put an object in orbit. Its sole payload is the six-pound (three-kilogram) TRICOM 1 spacecraft, a CubeSat from the University of Tokyo designed for communications and Earth observation experiments. Standing 31 feet (9.5 meters) tall and spanning around 20 inches (52 centimeters) in diameter, the SS-520-4 will blast off from a rail launch system and head east over the Pacific Ocean, dropping its lower two stages and payload enclosure into the sea in the first few minutes of the flight.

Primarily funded by a $3.5 million budget provided by the the Japanese government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the SS-520-4 program is a one-off demonstration by Japan’s space agency, which aims to validate low-cost technology and launch operations procedures for a future “nano-launcher” to deploy tiny satellites in orbit on dedicated rides.

The last paragraph is disappointing, but not surprising considering that this rocket is entirely owned and built by the government, which like NASA, routinely builds things and then abandons them, no matter how useful they are. I hope that some private company grabs the design here and runs with it.

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Private money to VLT to search for Earthlike planets at Alpha Centauri

9:42 am

The privately funded Breakthrough Initiatives project has committed funds to upgrade the Very Large Telescope in Chile in exchange for telescope time to look for Earthlike planets in orbit around Alpha Centauri.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking are hoping to find Earth-like planets in our neighbouring star system, Alpha Centauri. Together they will upgrade the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to look for potentially habitable worlds as part of the ‘Breakthrough’ initiatives.

These planets could be the targets for a launch of tiny space probes to track down aliens within our lifetimes, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said.

This is exactly how astronomy used to function. Rather than get money from the government in exchange for doing the research it wanted done, astronomers obtained funds from wealthy individuals or businesses to build and upgrade their telescopes in exchange for doing the research that interested these funding sources. The difference? The work was privately funded voluntarily, rather than coerced from the public through taxes.

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The status of telescopes the NSF is getting rid of

9:08 am

Back in 2012 the National Science Foundation (NSF) proposed that it cease funding a slew of older, smaller telescopes in order to use that money to fund the construction and operation of newer more advanced facilities. This article, focused on the fate of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, provides a nice table that shows the status of these telescopes.

The options were either to find new funding, be mothballed, or even demolished. It appears that most of the telescopes in question have found new funding and will remain in use in some manner. The one telescope that has apparently failed to obtain any additional funding from others is the McMath–Pierce Solar Telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona, which when built in 1962 was the world’s largest solar telescope, an honor for which it is still tied.

In 2015 I had written an article for Sky & Telescope about how these budget cuts were effecting the telescopes on Kitt Peak. At that time the people in charge of McMath-Pierce were hunting for new support but were coming up short. Almost two years later it appears that their hunt has been a failure, and the telescope will likely be shut down, and possibly demolished.

It will be a sad thing if McMath-Pierce is lost, but I am not arguing to save it. If its observational capabilities were truly valuable and needed by the scientific community than someone would have come forward to finance it. That no one has suggests that the money really can be spent more usefully in other ways.

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Pentagon test flies a swarm of 100 micro-drones

8:45 am

Sci-fi comes to life! The Pentagon in October test flew a swarm of 103 micro-drones, showing that they could work as a unit in a coordinated manner in targeting specific points.

“ Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals. They are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said SCO Director William Roper. “Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.”

Video of the test flight is embedded below the fold. I can imagine these drone swarms used in a number of very unpleasant ways, all of which have been portrayed in sci-fi movies and books.
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China’s Kuaizhou rocket launches first commercial payload

6:52 pm

The competition heats up: China’s Kuaizhou solid rocket, upgraded from a military mobile-launched ballistic missile, today placed its first three commercial satellites in orbit.

The rocket is designed to quickly launch smallsats into orbit for a reasonably low cost, and is built and marketed by China’s second commercial launch company, Expace.

In the China Daily report, he added that Expace is in talks with satellite manufacturers in Asia, Europe and Latin America, and has bid for contracts to launch their spacecraft. Guo Yong, president of the CASIC Fourth Academy, told China Daily that the organization intends to capture 20 percent of the global small satellite launch market by 2020. The Kuaizhou 1A rocket can deliver satellites of up to 300 kilograms — about 660 pounds — into low-altitude orbits, according to China Daily.

Expace is China’s second commercial launch services provider after China Great Wall Industry Corp., which sells Long March rocket missions, with an emphasis on launches of large communications satellites heading for geostationary orbit.

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Herschel Crater on Mimas

10:00 am

Herschel Crater on Mimas

Cool image time! The photo on the right was taken by Cassini on October 22, 2016 when the spacecraft was about 115,000 miles away and has a resolution of about 3,300 feet per pixel. It highlights well Mimas’ most distinctive feature, its single gigantic crater, which also makes the tiny moon of Saturn one of the more distinctive planetary bodies in the entire solar system.

Named after the icy moon’s discoverer, astronomer William Herschel, the crater stretches 86 miles (139 kilometers) wide — almost one-third of the diameter of Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers) itself.

Large impact craters often have peaks in their center — see Tethys’ large crater Odysseus in The Crown of Tethys. Herschel’s peak stands nearly as tall as Mount Everest on Earth.

The mystery here is how did Mimas survive such an impact. One would think that the moon would be been split apart by the collision, and that it didn’t suggests the material involved was soft enough to absorb the dynamic forces, and that the speed of the impact was slow enough to reduce those forces overall.

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FAA okays SpaceX launch on Monday

6:13 pm

As I expected, after several days of hemming and hawing, the FAA has granted SpaceX a launch license for its planned Monday launch.

The FAA license approved Friday covers all seven Falcon 9 launches planned for the Iridium Next constellation, along with landings of the Falcon 9 first stage on a barge positioned downrange in the Pacific Ocean. The $3 billion Iridium Next program aims to replace all of the company’s existing satellites, which were launched in the late 1990s and early 2000s and are now operating well beyond their design lives.

What SpaceX clearly did here was to move ahead, daring the FAA to challenge their desire to launch quickly. Government bureaucrats don’t like that, but to call SpaceX’s bluff and block the launch would have caused these bureaucrats even more problems. SpaceX knew this, and gambled that the FAA would back down. It did, and thus the launch license was issued.

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The Earth and Moon, as seen from Mars

1:00 pm

The Earth and Moon as seen from Mars

Cool image time! The image above, a composite of four separate Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pictures, was taken on November 20, 2016.

Each was separately processed prior to combining them so that the moon is bright enough to see. The moon is much darker than Earth and would barely be visible at the same brightness scale as Earth. The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other.

The reddish region on Earth is Australia, with Antarctica the bright white area below that.

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Could Venus’ atmospheric dark streaks be life? Mission proposes to find out

10:00 am

A clever mission concept, proposed as a joint Russian/U.S. unmanned probe to Venus, would use a solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to fly through the atmosphere for at least a year in order to try to find out the nature of the planet’s atmospheric mysterious dark streaks.

Descending hypersonically into the atmosphere after detaching from the orbiter, the UAV would be filled with hydrogen or helium gas, keeping it buoyant at a nominal floating altitude of 50 kilometers, allowing it to glide through the clouds while moving through the night-time hemisphere. Upon daylight, the solar-powered propellors would kick in and raise the craft’s altitude to around 60 kilometers.

Over the course of three to four days, the craft could move around the planet along the upper atmosphere’s ‘super-rotation,’ the strange phenomenon where the atmosphere seems to be uncoupled from the solid planet and rotates much faster. The UAV would therefore be able to explore the clouds at different altitudes, moving from air mass to air mass, from regions with UV absorbers to regions devoid of them, sampling and measuring the composition of the atmosphere.

The dark streaks, first photographed when Mariner 10 flew past on February 5, 1974 and took more than four thousand pictures, are made of a still unknown material in the upper clouds that absorbs ultraviolet light. The scientists of this mission concept propose that these dark streaks could even be Venusian life.

Finding life at high altitude in the atmosphere of a planet would make sense. After all, microbes have been found at similar heights in Earth’s atmosphere. The challenge for life on Venus is the planet’s extreme temperature. The surface, at 462º C (864º F), is hot enough to melt lead, and the surface pressure of 92 bar is the equivalent of being almost a kilometer under water.

However, in a region beginning around 50 kilometers in altitude and extending a dozen kilometers outward is a sweet spot where the temperature ranges between 30ºC and 70ºC (86ºF to 158ºF) and the pressure is similar to Earth’s surface. Life could potentially survive in this zone where the dark-streaking UV absorber is found.

Intriguingly, the sulfuric acid droplets within the clouds aren’t necessarily a show-stopper to life. Earlier Venera missions detected elongated particles in the lower cloud layer that are about a micron long, about the width of a small bacterium. These particles could be coated in ring-shaped polymers of eight sulphur atoms, called S8 molecules, which are known to exist in Venus’ clouds and which are impervious to the corrosive effects of sulfuric acid. Furthermore, S8 absorbs ultraviolet light, re-radiating it in visible wavelengths. If the particles are microbes, they could have coated themselves in S8, making them resistant to the corrosive effects of sulfuric acid. It has even been postulated that the S8 exists as a result of microbial activity.

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India considers going to Jupiter and Venus

9:39 am

The competition heats up: India’s space agency ISRO is considering unmanned missions to both Jupiter and Venus, while also delaying their first manned test flight four years until 2024.

More significant, the second link had this quote:

Mr Somnath said during the current fiscal, Isro planned eight PSLV flights, up from six in 2016. “Our aim is to steadily increase the launches between 12 and 20 in phases with creation of necessary infrastructure.

Like everyone else, they are getting enough business to up their launch rate. 2017 is going to be an active year in the launch market.

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Arianespace wins two contracts, aims for a dozen launches in 2017

9:34 am

The competition heats up: Arianespace announced yesterday that it has won two new commercial launch contracts, and will aim in 2017 to tie its own record for yearly launches at 12.

Arianespace will also seek to tie its record number of launches with 12 missions planned this year. The company first reached this cadence in 2015, and was on track to tie it again last year were it not for a shipping issue that delayed the launch of DSN-1, a Japanese X-band military communications satellite damaged en route Europe’s Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.

I suspect that one reason Arianespace is getting these contracts, despite charging significantly more than SpaceX, is that they are successfully getting their customer’s payloads into orbit. SpaceX has a gigantic backlog of launches, so it makes no sense to give them more work as the launches will certainly not occur when these satellite companies need them to occur. This fact only ups the pressure and the competition. SpaceX has got to start getting that backlog into orbit, or else its business model will suffer significantly.

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SpaceX launch delayed until Monday

9:27 am

One local news source now reports that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch has been delayed one day until Monday.

While officials announced at the start of week their plans to aim for a 10:28 a.m. Sunday departure, notices warning boaters and pilots of an upcoming launch now say the mission is targeting Monday, Jan. 9. The one-day delay means the launch time is expected to be a few minutes earlier to ensure the satellites are placed where needed in space.

This news has not yet been confirmed. The delay is now official.

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Launch of joint NOAA/NASA weather satellite delayed again

7:48 pm

Bad timing for NASA’s climate program: The launch of the first Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1), a project of both NOAA and NASA, has been delayed from March 2017 to at least July because of problems with one instrument as well as delays in completing the satellite’s ground systems.

“The main factors delaying the JPSS-1 launch are technical issues discovered during environmental testing of the satellite and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) instrument,” Leslie said in a statement. ATMS issues were also one of the reasons for the previous delay. In addition, he cited “challenges in the completion of the common ground system” that will be used for JPSS and other NOAA polar-orbiting weather satellites.

The latest decays prompted NOAA to seek financial relief for the program. A provision in the continuing resolution (CR) passed Dec. 9, which funds the federal government through late April at 2016 levels, gives NOAA the authority to spend at higher levels for the JPSS program.

The goal with the JPSS program was to combine NOAA weather satellites with NASA’s climate research satellites. The program however has had technical and budgetary problems, as this is not the first launch delay or cost overrun.. Moreover, the origins of the JPSS program came from a failed effort in the 1990s and 2000s [pdf] to combine NOAA, Defense Department, and NASA weather satellites under what was then called the NPOESS program. When that program was restructured in 2010 to become JPSS the Defense Department pulled out.

Considering the strong rumors now suggesting that the Trump administration plans to slash NASA’s climate budget while shifting the remains of the program to NOAA, this delay of JPSS-1 is an especially good example of bad timing. It provides the new administration strong ammunition for such proposed changes.

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NASA approves two new asteroid missions

3:05 pm

NASA has approved two new unmanned missions aimed at studying the asteroids.

Lucy will take a close look at six Trojan asteroids orbiting near Jupiter, after first visiting a main belt asteroid.

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, is scheduled to launch in October 2021. It’s slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

Psyche will visit 16 Psyche, an unusual metal-rich asteroid made up mostly of iron and nickel.

While Psyche will use an ion engine, allowing it great freedom and even the potential to go elsewhere, like Dawn, when its primary mission is complete, I have not been able to determine whether Lucy will use conventional chemical altitude thrusters or an ion-type engine.

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The competition heats up

9:18 am

According to this story, China plans 30 launches for 2017, which would smash the record of launches, 22, the country set in 2016.

This website lists the known scheduled launches worldwide. As far as I can see, only 15 Chinese launches are listed. However, China’s space program is modeled after the Soviet Union’s, which means they are somewhat secretive. The first link above has been reporting on China quite reliably during the past year, so I have some faith that the goal of 30 launches seems reasonable.

In 2017 China however is not the only country, or company, that will be attempting smash records. Russia hopes to complete 29 launches, which would not be a record for that country but would be a significant recovery from the 17 they completed in 2016. India set a record of 9 launches in 2016, and hopes to top it in 2017, starting with a single launch in January that will place a record 103 satellites in orbit in one shot. Europe meanwhile shows 21 launches on its 2017 manifest, while Japan has 9, according to the second link above.

The list gets even more interesting when you look at the 2017 launches planned for each American company. SpaceX has 31 launches all by itself,. ULA has 14, while Orbital ATK plans 4.

Obviously, these predicted numbers are not what is really going to happen. SpaceX is not going to launch 31 rockets in 2017. Not a chance. However, if they can get through the year with no launch failures, they will likely complete more than half that number, since that was the pace they were aiming for in 2016 and were getting close to achieving until the September 1 launchpad explosion. Meanwhile, ULA’s prediction of 14 launches for 2017 seems wholly reasonable since ULA completed 12 launches in 2016.

What this data suggests overall is that the total number of launches in 2017 will go up, significantly. Moreover, the increase in pace will be linked to an revived commercial satellite market, as well as a newly competitive launch industry aimed at reducing costs while making its increased launch pace more routine. These factors suggest that the increases will not be a one time thing, but will instead be heralding a new standard that signals a new age in space travel.

Hold onto your hats. The next few years in space should be quite exciting.

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NASA awards more operational manned missions to SpaceX and Boeing

7:17 pm

NASA today awarded four more operational manned missions to SpaceX and Boeing, bringing their total planned flights now to six each, not counting their first demonstration mission.

The additional flights will allow the commercial partners to plan for all aspects of these missions while fulfilling space station transportation needs. The awards do not include payments at this time. “Awarding these missions now will provide greater stability for the future space station crew rotation schedule, as well as reduce schedule and financial uncertainty for our providers,” said Phil McAlister, director, NASA’s Commercial Spaceflight Development Division.

NASA essentially has no choice. These spacecraft will be the only way to get astronauts to ISS after 2018, when our contract with the Russians expires.

Moreover, by awarding these contracts now, before the end of the Obama administration, NASA essentially locks them down before the new Trump administration can take power and kill them.

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Curiosity looks at Mount Sharp

9:06 am

Looking at Mount Sharp

Cool image time! During the ten day holiday period, during which the Curiosity science and engineering teams generally got a break, they programmed the rover to take a variety of observations over the entire period. Some of those observations included repeated snapshots of the view ahead, using the rover’s navigation camera. The image above, reduced slightly from the full resolution image to show here, is one example of that view.

You can see the dark sandy dune region in the foreground, and the increasing steepness of the slope in the background. What I find most interesting are what look like canyon washes flowing downhill on the right, in what appear to be diagonally parallel cuts. That they do not flow directly downhill suggest to me that they were not created by water flow but by wind erosion, though it is possible that the geology of different bedding plains could have forced the flows in a diagonal direction down the slope. If wind erosion is the cause, however, it suggests a process that took a very long time to occur, as the atmosphere of Mars is so thin.

The route the rover will take is through a much larger canyon slightly off camera to the right. While the slope up the mountain on the left of the image appears to be an easier route, the geology there is not as interesting. Note also that we are not looking at the peak of Mount Sharp, which is much farther south and far higher.

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Update into into Dec 1 Progress failure investigation

8:49 am

The Russian investigation into the December 1 launch failure of a Progress freighter has come up with two possible causes, both centered on the third stage of the Soyuz rocket.

According to one theory some unforeseen dynamic loads on the tank’s structure were exacerbated by low-quality welding of the tank and led to its rupture.

Another hypothesis presumed that an anomalous operation of the RD-011o engine, (as a result of higher-than-normal vibrations in its bearings or in its turbopump), could apply unforeseen loads onto the aft bulkhead of the oxidizer tank, which is located right above the engine.

Both scenarios were based on theoretical assumptions and could not be proven without doubt due to lack of telemetry.

It appears that they might be delaying any further manned launches while they evaluate the third stages of rockets intended for future flights.

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An igloo on Mars?

9:27 am

This igloo-like design is one of the concepts being considered at NASA for the first habitats on Mars.

Normally I don’t waste time promoting these NASA concept studies, since the odds of them getting built is less than zero. However, this idea is intriguing, and probably contains within it many concepts that will be used by the first Martian habitats.

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SpaceX plans Jan 8 launch

9:00 am

SpaceX today released its final investigation results on the September 1 Falcon 9 launchpad explosion, and announced that they have now scheduled their next launch for January 8 out of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

As expected, the cause is the accumulation of solid oxygen in the wrappings of the helium bottle tank (COPV) inside the oxygen tank of the first stage. The following is their announced solution:

The corrective actions address all credible causes and focus on changes which avoid the conditions that led to these credible causes. In the short term, this entails changing the COPV configuration to allow warmer temperature helium to be loaded, as well as returning helium loading operations to a prior flight proven configuration based on operations used in over 700 successful COPV loads. In the long term, SpaceX will implement design changes to the COPVs to prevent buckles altogether, which will allow for faster loading operations.​

Their vagueness in describing the “prior flight proven configuration” is likely to protect proprietary information, but the overall solution suggests that their fuel loading operations will take longer.

The January 8 launch date was simultaneously announced on twitter.

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U.S. wins launch scorecard for 2016

10:24 am

Doug Messier today has compiled a list showing the launch totals worldwide for 2016, showing that though the U.S. and China tied for first with the most launches, 22, the U.S. won the race with fewer launch failures. Russia fell to third, almost entirely because its Proton rocket has been grounded since June.

What I find interesting is that, very slowly, the competing American companies are beginning to compile launch numbers that match those of whole nations. ULA completed 12 launches, which beat everyone but the U.S., China, and Russia. SpaceX, despite no launches after its September 1 launchpad explosion, still beat India and Japan, long considered established space powers, and finished only one launch total behind Europe.

Eventually, I believe SpaceX is going to get its technical problems ironed out. When that happens, the competition between them and ULA could have both companies producing numbers that beat out the national programs of Russia and China. In fact, I expect this to happen within three years, but more likely sooner.

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