Tag: engineering

NASA to award small contracts to develop universal payload interfaces

8:49 am

NASA yesterday announced a competition to award up to three contracts to companies to develop a universal payload interface that can be used to more easily mount payloads prior to launch.

The NASA TechLeap Prize’s Universal Payload Interface Challenge invites applicants to propose an optimized “system of systems” to enable easy integration of diverse technology payloads onto various commercial suborbital vehicles, orbital platforms, and planetary landers. The proposed universal payload interfaces should seamlessly adapt a wide range of small space payloads – be they technologies, laboratory instruments, or scientific experiments – for flight testing.

A maximum of three winners will receive up to $650,000 each to build their system plus the opportunity to flight test it at no cost. The focus is on achieving a simplified and streamlined payload integration process that has the potential to accelerate future flight-testing timelines.

The idea is to have the same interface for mounting, either on flight testing on Earth (using high altitude balloons, aircraft, or suborbital spacecraft) or in space.

Applications are due by February 22, 2024.

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ISS Russians to do spacewalk on October 25 to investigate Nauka coolant leak

8:38 am

Due to the coolant leak that appeared in a back up outside radiator connected to Russia’s Nauka module, NASA and Russia have rearranged their upcoming spacewalk schedule, with two American spacewalks now delayed until after a Russian spacewalk on October 25 that will investigate the leak.

During that spacewalk, [Oleg] Kononenko and [Nikolai] Chub will install a synthetic radar communications system on the Russian segment of the orbiting laboratory and deploy a nanosatellite to test solar sail technology. In addition, they plan to inspect and photograph the backup radiator that leaked on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

The leak itself has stopped, though neither NASA nor Roscosmos have explained why. The leaked material is considered non-toxic, but there appears to be a concern it might get into some “internal systems” and cause problems.

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Astronomers detect nano-sized quartz crystals in atmosphere of exoplanet

9:33 am

Using both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes in space, astronomers have detected nano-sized quartz crystals in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-class exoplanet orbiting its star every 3.7 days.

Silicates (minerals rich in silicon and oxygen) make up the bulk of Earth and the Moon as well as other rocky objects in our solar system, and are extremely common across the galaxy. But the silicate grains previously detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets and brown dwarfs appear to be made of magnesium-rich silicates like olivine and pyroxene, not quartz alone – which is pure SiO2.

The result from this team, which also includes researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, puts a new spin on our understanding of how exoplanet clouds form and evolve. “We fully expected to see magnesium silicates,” said co-author Hannah Wakeford, also from the University of Bristol. “But what we’re seeing instead are likely the building blocks of those, the tiny ‘seed’ particles needed to form the larger silicate grains we detect in cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs.”

These tiny quartz crystals are condensing out in the clouds themselves, due to the high temperatures and pressures there. The exoplanet itself is unusual because though its mass is one half that of Jupiter, its volume is seven times larger. This gives it a very large and deep atmosphere, thus providing the environment for crystal formation.

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Update on Starship/Superheavy: Lots of work, no sign of FAA launch approval

9:20 am

Link here. The article provides a thorough review of the work SpaceX engineers have been doing in the past six weeks since the company announced on September 5th that it was ready to do a second test orbital launch of Starship (prototype #25) and Superheavy (prototype #9), but has been stymied by the refusal of the federal bureaucracy to grant a launch license.

For example, while waiting the company has done some tank tests with Starship prototype #26, which is not expected to fly but is being used for testing. The article outlines a lot of other details, but this is the key quote:

While Ship 26 started its engine testing campaign, SpaceX looks to be gearing up for a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for Booster 9 and Ship 25. Related notices have been posted for the coming week, marking the imminent return to a full stack for the next Starship to launch as soon as November, pending regulatory approval. [emphasis mine]

This source, NASASpaceflight.com, now admits that the FAA and Fish & Wildlife will not issue a launch license until November. Previous reports from it have tried to lay the blame for the delays on SpaceX. It now can no longer make that claim.

In April, after noting at great length the lack of harm done to wildlife by the first test launch (as admitted by Fish & Wildlife itself, the agency that is presently delaying things), I predicted the following:

[I]t appears that both the FAA and Fish and Wildlife are now teaming up to block any future launches at Boca Chica until SpaceX guarantees that the rocket and its launchpad will work perfectly. But since SpaceX must conduct launches to determine how to build and further refine the design of that rocket and launchpad, it can’t make that guarantee if it is banned from making launches.

We must therefore conclude that these federal agencies are more interested in exerting their power than doing their real job. They are therefore conspiring to shut Starship and Superheavy development entirely, or at a minimum, they are allowing their partisan hatred of Elon Musk and capitalism itself to delay this work as much as possible. As Lord Acton said in 1887, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

At that time I thought it very possible no further launches from Boca Chica would ever be approved. In May I refined that prediction, stating that come August the “…launch license will still not be approved, and we will still have no clear idea of when that approval will come. Nor should we be surprised if approval does not come before the end of this year.”

At the time that prediction was poo-pooed, with claims that I did not understand the regulatory process and that the government certainly did not want to stand in the way. It now appears my prediction was right on the money, and worse, my first prediction might be closer to the truth, that while the federal government doesn’t want to come right out and say, “No more launches from Boca Chica!”, it is imposing so many delays and requirements there that it makes the location impractical for SpaceX to use it as a launch test site.

The company desperately needs to get its second Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral operational. Otherwise it is unlikely it will ever be able to complete the development of this rocket.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches military satellite

9:17 am

China yesterday used its Long March 2D rocket to place what is believed to be a military weather satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed within China.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

73 SpaceX
46 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 85 to 46, and the entire world combined 85 to 74. SpaceX by itself now trails with the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 73 to 74.

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Telecommunications company sues Commerce and Defense Departments $39 billion for theft

12:27 pm

The telecommunications company Ligado yesterday filed a $39 billion suit against the Commerce and Defense Departments for stealing use of the communications spectrum granted to it by the FCC for the establishment of a 5G cell phone network.

Ligado’s suit filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims [PDF] makes a number of allegations, including that the Pentagon has “taken Ligado’s spectrum for the agency’s own purposes, operating previously undisclosed systems that use or depend on Ligado’s spectrum without compensating Ligado.”

Those systems, a source close to the case said, are certain classified radars rather than GPS systems.

The suit cites a high-level DoD “whistleblower” who “revealed internal emails and discussions” that the company claims show DoD and Commerce “fabricated arguments, misled Congress in testimony supporting anti-Ligado legislation, and orchestrated a public smear campaign, which included repeating those false claims to the public and threatening Ligado’s business partners with canceling their own government contracts if they worked with Ligado.”

There had been some disagreement about whether Ligado’s use of this spectrem might interfere with GPS as well as other communications services. Nonetheless, the spectrum was legally Ligado’s. If the lawsuit is correct and these government agencies arbitrarilly took possession and used the spectrum illegally, thus preventing Ligado from establishing its business, it would appear to be another example of the arrogant administrative state ignoring the law to grab power.

Once I would have considered a suit like this to simply be a failed company’s effort to recover its losses by blaming the government. I no longer assume such things. Instead, my first thought is that the allegations are true, that bureaucrats in Defense and Commerce conspirated to steal the spectrum for their own uses, and didn’t care that they were violating the law.

The truth could be a combination of all these things, but if so that still tells us some very ugly things about the people who now work in these federal agencies.

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SpaceX completes second launch today, placing another 21 Starlink satellite into orbit

7:15 pm

SpaceX this afternoon completed its second launch today, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral and placing another 21 Starlink satellite into orbit.

The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This launch followed the Falcon Heavy launch in the early morning hours from Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

73 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 85 to 45, and the entire world combined 85 to 73. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 73 to 73.

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Ancient flood lava on the upper slopes of the solar system’s largest volcano

12:40 pm

Ancient flood lava
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

In this one picture can be seen a glimpse of the entire history of the numerous lava eruptions that once dominated Mars when its giant volcanoes were active one to three billion years ago. The three aligned craterlike depressions likely signal the existence of a large lava tube below ground, placed there during an early large eruption, when the volcano was spewing out so much flood lava that such large tubes could form. The smaller meandering surface rills signal later eruptions that carried less flood lava and thus produced a smaller drainage features.

And finally, the rough and cracked appearance of the surface indicates the ancient age of those last eruptions, probably laid down about a billion years ago. Since then, the volcano has been dormant, and the frozen lava here has had time to erode, become roughened, and show signs of slowly wearing away.
» Read more

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SpaceX to offer Starlink for cell phones

9:06 am

SpaceX has now announced that its Starlink internet service will soon be available for cell phones that are already in use, allowing them access to service even in places where no cell towers exist.

Direct to Cell works with existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky. No changes to hardware, firmware, or special apps are required, providing seamless access to text, voice, and data.

First Starlink will only provide text service in 2024, and then expand to voice and data in 2025.

This capability means that SpaceX will not only be in direct competition with AST SpaceMobile, which recently launched a satellite to test similar capabilities, it will be far ahead of it in that competition. In fact, SpaceX is setting Starlink up as the go-to company for all smartphones and home internet services. By 2025 you will not need any other provider to have phone and internet service globally.

No wonder private investment firms have been willing to invest almost $11 billion in the company. They see big profits on the horizon.

That our federal government dislikes this fact, and is doing everything it can to crush Elon Musk and the company, tells us much about government itself. It isn’t interested in promoting human success. Instead, its instinct is to squelch it.

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NASA delays two ISS spacewalks as Russian engineers assess now stopped leak on Nauka module

8:54 am

NASA yesterday confirmed it is delaying by at least one week two ISS spacewalks in order to allow more time for Russian engineers to analyze the causes of the coolant leak on Nauka module and assess its short and long term consequences for the station.

The spacewalks were deferred from their original target dates to allow engineers additional time to complete their analysis of the coolant leak, which occurred on Oct. 9 and has now stopped. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are the most important takeaway. The leak has stopped leaking, though we have not been told why. The Russians might have closed off the leaking radiator from the system, or maybe the leak stopped on its own for unknown reasons. More information is clearly required.

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First manned Starliner mission now delayed to April 2024

8:45 am

In a press release yesterday that outlined the updates to NASA’s scheduled manned missions to ISS, the agency confirmed that the first manned Starliner mission has now been delayed one more month, from March until April 2024.

The first crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft, named NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), is planned for no earlier than mid-April. CFT will send NASA astronauts and test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a demonstration flight to prove the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner system. Starliner will launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, spend approximately eight days docked to the space station, and return to Earth with a parachute and airbag-assisted ground landing in the desert of the western United States. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words underline the fact that this date is merely a target, and has been announced as part of the entire schedule for all the manned missions to ISS next year, fitting it in between two SpaceX crewed Dragon flights. It assumes Boeing will have the spacecraft ready by then, but based on that company’s track record, that assumption remains dangerous. Boeing has a lot of work to do, including parachute drop tests to fix the parachute cords as well as replacing the flammable electric tape installed throughout the capsule.

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Falcon Heavy successfully launches Psyche asteroid mission

8:25 am

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket this morning successfully launched the Psyche mission to the metal asteroid Psyche, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The two side boosters successfully landed at their landing zones at the cape, each completing their fourth flight.

Psyche will now spend the next six years traveling to the asteroid Psyche, first flying by Mars in 2026 to gain some speed to get there. It will then go into orbit around the asteroid for almost two years.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

72 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 84 to 45, and the entire world combined 84 to 73. SpaceX by itself only trails the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 72 to 73.

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Martian pseudo-frost terrain

12:20 pm

Martian pseudo-frost terrain
Click for original image.

Cool image time! It is always dangerous to come to any quick conclusions about what you see from pictures from another planet. The photograph to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what at first glance looks like a surface similar to frosting seen on window panes on Earth in the winter, where water condensation freezes to form crystalline patterns.

Your first glance would be wrong. This terrain is about 120 miles north of the Martian equator, placing inside the dry equatorial regions where no near-surface ice is known to exist. If this geological feature is formed by the same condensation processes that create ice frost, then it must involve the deposition of some other type of material.

The explanation would also have to account for the change in the terrain, from finely patterned on the right to more crystalline on the left.
» Read more

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Space Force puts a halt to the use of AI because of security issues

9:09 am

The Space Force has decided to stop using any artificial intelligence computer tools (AI) because of the security risks that presently risk in using them.

The Sept. 29 memorandum, addressed to the Guardian Workforce, the term for Space Force members, pauses the use of any government data on web-based generative AI tools, which can create text, images or other media from simple prompts. The memo says they “are not authorized” for use on government systems unless specifically approved.

Chatbots and tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have exploded in popularity. They make use of language models that are trained on vast amounts of data to predict and generate new text. Such LLMs have given birth to an entire generation of AI tools that can, for example, search through troves of documents, pull out key details and present them as coherent reports in a variety of linguistic styles.

Generative AI “will undoubtedly revolutionize our workforce and enhance Guardian’s ability to operate at speed,” Lisa Costa, Space Force’s chief technology and innovation officer, said in the memo. But Costa also cited concerns over cybersecurity, data handling and procurement requirements, saying that the adoption of AI and LLMs needs to be “responsible.”

This decision appears very wise. The insane fad in the last year to quickly adopt and even rely on AI has more than baffled me. Why are we in a such rush to let a robot do our for thinking and creative work for us? Have we become so lazy and dependent on computers that we’d rather let them do everything?

It is always dangerous to jump on a fad, without thought. That the Space Force has realized this is excellent news.

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Long delayed and overbudget NASA satellite refueling mission expects more delays and further budget overruns

8:59 am

According to a new inspector general report, a long delayed and significantly overbudget NASA satellite refueling mission, dubbed OSAM-1 and first proposed around 2010, will experience more delays and further budget overruns in order to get it off the ground by 2026, at the earliest.

A NASA plan to robotically repair and refuel satellites in orbit is way behind schedule and well over budget, says NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), with most of the blame falling on space tech contractor Maxar.

Maxar, one of the largest private businesses working on NASA’s On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing mission (OSAM-1), has been involved in the project since 2016, when the space agency’s idea was smaller in scope and known as Restore-L. According to the OIG, Maxar is two years behind schedule on delivering the the project’s spacecraft bus and its Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) robotic arm, and it’s unlikely OSAM-1 will come in under its $2.05 billion budget nor meet the December 2026 launch date NASA committed to in 2022. The bus is the main craft framework, and its attached SPIDER will hopefully repair and refuel satellites in orbit, once it all gets off the ground and works.

NASA isn’t without blame for the delays, the OIG said, but Goddard Space Flight Center’s (the NASA facility where the project is being managed) “struggle with development of several key components of the servicing payload” wasn’t the main issue. “We found that project cost increases and schedule delays were primarily due to the poor performance of Maxar … and its inability to provide the spacecraft bus and SPIDER in accordance with contract requirements,” inspectors concluded in their report.

The plan has always been to refuel the Landsat-7 spacecraft in order to demonstrate robotic in-space servicing of satellites. When first proposed, the idea was untested, and the project was intended to get this industry off the ground. Since then however Northrop Grumman’s MEV servicing robot satellite has leap-frogged NASA to twice reactivate two geosynchronous satellites. At the same time, at least a half dozen other private startups have now done robotic rendezvous and docking demos in orbit, and have actual contracts for their own servicing missions.

Moreover, all the private missions have concepts that are far simplier and cheaper than NASA’s. Rather pump fuel into the defunct satellite’s tanks, the MEV simply docks with the satellite using its now useless main engine nozzle, and once attached becomes a service module with its own fuel and engines to orient and move the satellite. The other servicing startups are doing similar things. No need to develop complex robot arms and fueling systems.

In other words, private industry can learn little from this NASA’s mission. By the time it launches the industry will likely be able to run rings around it. It has become a waste of money that should be shut down, now.

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India schedules Gaganyaan launch abort test for October 21st

8:40 am

India’s space agency ISRO has now scheduled the first unmanned launch abort test of its Gaganyaan manned capsule for October 21, 2023.

The test Crew Module (CM), according to the statement, will be akin to the pressurized module that’ll hold crew members during their ascent to space — this version, however, will be unpressurized. It will be launched via a single-stage liquid rocket specifically developed for this mission that will simulate an abort scenario; the true CM, by contrast, will ride atop a 143-foot-tall (43.5-meter) Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3) rocket with a solid stage, liquid stage and cryogenic stage. The latter recently received human safety certifications, R. Hutton, project director of the Gaganyaan mission, said during a conference last month.

At present ISRO is targeting 2024 for the first manned mission, but that target date remains very uncertain.

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Launch of Psyche asteroid mission delayed by weather

8:36 am

NASA and SpaceX today scrubbed the launch of the Psyche asteroid mission because of poor weather, rescheduling the Falcon Heavy launch to tomorrow, October 13, 2023 at 10:19 am (Eastern).

“For our first backup window, Friday morning, 50% chance for go conditions, with our concerns still being associated with storms in the area, where we have anvil clouds, some thick clouds, which are layered clouds, as well as cumulus clouds we get associated with storms,” Moses explained during the briefing.

“Looking at Saturday morning, a third backup window, there is still about the same probability, about 50% chance of go, and fairly similar conditions here, where there may be some storms around, but we expect most of any storms to be after our morning launch window,” she added.

The launch window for the mission closes on October 25, after which a major mission rescheduling will be required to get the probe to the asteroid Psyche, likely causing a year delay.

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Massive landslide in Martian canyon

1:12 pm

Massive landslide in Martian canyon
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 5, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The image shows a gigantic landslide collapse on the southern interior wall of a long meandering canyon on Mars dubbed Bahram Vallis. The collapse was what scientists call a mass wasting event, in which the entire section of cliff wall breaks off and moves downward as a large unit. In this case the falling section, a half mile wide and long, got squeezed near the bottom, piling up rather than flowing out into the canyon floor.

At this particular location the canyon is 2.4 miles wide, with cliff walls about 1,700 feet high. Imagine when this piece broke off: In one instance a giant section of mountain about a half mile long fell about a thousand feet. Even in Mars’ thin atmosphere the sound must have been thunderous.
» Read more

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Astrobotic resumes suborbital test flights of assets purchased from Masten bankruptcy

8:32 am

The startup lunar landing company Astrobotic has resumed flights and testing of the suborbital spacecraft built by the company Masten Space Systems and obtained when that company went bankrupt.

Astrobotic announced Oct. 10 that it completed the first campaign of test flights by Xodiac, a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle, since acquiring it and other Masten Space Systems assets last year. Xodiac conducted four flights from Mojave, California, hovering just off the ground to test plume-surface interactions ahead of future lunar landing missions, supporting research by the University of Central Florida.

Xodiac was built several years ago by Masten Space Systems, based in Mojave, and made more than 150 low-altitude flights for a variety of technology demonstration investigations. However, the company filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 and its assets acquired by Astrobotic that September for $4.5 million.

Xodiac is now part of Astobotic’s Propulsion and Test Department, which includes other assets from Masten Space Systems as well as many of its former employees, who say they have picked up where they left off before the bankruptcy.

Astrobotic has also resumed development work on a larger Masten suborbital spacecraft, Xogdor, also designed to launch and land vertically, but actually reach space.

Because Astrobotic is mostly focused on developing lunar landers, Masten’s technology is perfect for refining that capability for landing on the Moon. It is also ideal should Astrobotic decide to develop a reusable rocket for launch from Earth.

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October 12 Falcon Heavy launch of Psyche probe faces bad weather

10:09 am

At present there is only a 20% chance that the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe will occur on October 12, 2023 at 10:16 am (Eastern) as planned out of Cape Canaveral.

The launch window only extends until October 25, 2023, after which the entire project would have to be redesigned, requiring a significant delay.

SpaceX has become very adept at threading the needle when weather restricts its Starlink launch abilities, but it has less flexibility with Psyche. To increase its chances it has scrubbed a planned Starlink launch this week from Cape Canaveral in order to give the Falcon Heavy launch more launch opportunities.

Regardless, the live stream can be accessed here.

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Aerojet Rocketdyne satellite power units are chronically failing

9:53 am

According to space insurers, problems on power units built by Aerojet Rocketdyne on four different satellites are going to cost the industry about $50 million in claims this year.

According to multiple insurance sources, Yahsat’s Al Yah 3, Avanti Communications’ Hylas 4, and Northrop Grumman’s two Mission Extension Vehicles (MEV-1 and MEV-2) are operating with reduced power to their thrusters following a problem with onboard Power Processing Units (PPUs).

The PPUs from Aerojet Rocketdyne provide the electrical power their thrusters need for station-keeping in geostationary orbit (GEO). One of the sources said Al Yah 3, Hylas 4, and MEV-2 have each lost one of two onboard PPUs since the issue emerged in 2022. The youngest of these spacecraft, MEV-2, launched in 2020.

While the article at the link focuses on the impact to space insurers for these additional claims, what I see are serious quality control problems at Aerojet Rocketdyne, now part of the company L3Harris after a summer acquisition. The new management of L3Harris better aggressively address this, or else it will find its $4.7 billion acquisition a big waste of money.

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Software patch saves Europe’s Euclid space telescope

10:03 am

Engineeers have successfully saved Europe’s new recently launched Euclid space telescope by installing a software patch that fixed the telescope’s inability to orient itself properly for long periods.

Shortly after launching on 1 July, the European space observatory Euclid started performing tiny, unexpected pirouettes. The problem revealed itself during initial tests of the telescope’s automated pointing system. If left unfixed, it could have severely affected Euclid’s science mission and led to gaps in its map of the Universe.

Now the European Space Agency (ESA) says that it has resolved the issue by updating some of the telescope’s software. The problem occurred when the on board pointing system mistook cosmic noise for faint stars in dark patches of sky, and directed the spacecraft to reorient itself in the middle of a shot.

The new software essentially reduces the amount of light that enters the pointing system, so that the noise is no longer detected. This means that observations however will have to be longer to obtain the same data, extending the mission.

Euclid’s goal is a follow-up on Europe’s Gaia mission, to map 1.5 billion galaxies in three dimensions. Gaia did it with the stars in the Milky Way. Euclid is looking deeper, requiring far greater precision and accuracy in pointing.

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Spanish rocket startup successfully completes first suborbital test launch

10:05 pm

The Spanish rocket startup PLD today successfully completed its first suborbital test launch, a short flight of its Miura-1 prototype rocket, lifting off from its spaceport in Spain.

I have embedded video of the launch below, cued to just before launch. Though the plan had been to recover the first stage using parachutes, it is unclear if this occurred or was even attempted. The launch was at night, making recovery difficult or much slower, and because the broadcast was in Spanish there was no translation,

Regardless, the data from this launch will be used by the company to build its orbital rocket, Miura-5.

» Read more

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Gale Crater as seen by Curiosity from the heights of Mount Sharp

12:57 pm

Gale Crater as seen by Curiosity from the heights of Mount Sharp
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Though Curiosity still lies more than 13,000 feet below the peak of Mount Sharp, in its ten years on Mars it has climbed a considerable distance uphill since leaving the floor of 97-mile-wide Gale Crater, about 2,400 feet. The panorama above, taken today by one of Curiosity’s navigation cameras and rotated and cropped to post here, gives us a good sense of the elevation the rover has gained in that time.

The overview map to the right provides some perspective. Curiosity’s present location is indicated by the blue dot, with the yellow lines indicating the direction of this panorama. Though Curiosity climbed up from that valley on the lower left, none of its route is visible in this picture, as the weaved up from the left and the steepness of the ground hides the lower sections.

The mountain chain in the distance, about 20 to 25 miles away, is the north rim of Gale Crater. Beyond it can faintly be seen other mountains, which form the rim of another smaller crater to the north. The peak of Mount Sharp, about 23 miles to the south and in the opposite direction, forms the wide central peak of Gale Crater, unusual in that it fills much of the crater and rises higher than the crater’s rim, factors which were part of the reason this location was chosen as Curiosity’s landing site.

This picture also allows scientists to get a sense of the dust levels in the Martian atmosphere, which change seasonally depending on dust storm activity. Since it is now summer on Mars, when dust activity is low, the air is relatively clear.

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Astronomers detect baffling blue transient far outside any galaxy

11:32 am

Transient in intergalactic space
Click for original image.

Using a variety of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a baffling short-term object that brightens quickly in blue light and then fades.

What makes this discovery even more baffling is that though other such Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOT) have been discovered, all have been within galaxies, while this new discovery is in intergalactic space, as shown by the red bars in the picture to right, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. From the caption:

[An LFBOT] shines intensely in blue light and evolves rapidly, reaching peak brightness and fading again in a matter of days, unlike supernovae which take weeks or months to dim. Only a handful of previous LFBOTs have been discovered since 2018. The surprise is that this latest transient, seen in 2023, lies at a large offset from both the barred spiral galaxy at right and the dwarf galaxy to the upper left. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. And, the results are leaving astronomers even more confounded because all previous LFBOTs have been found in star-forming regions in the spiral arms of galaxies. It’s not clear what astronomical event would trigger such a blast far outside of a galaxy.

The frequent discovery of such short term transients in the past decade is because there are now many telescopes dedicated to making daily surveys of the entire sky. In the past such quick events were always missed.

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ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket launches first two Kuiper satellites

11:16 am

ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket today successfully launched the first two prototype satellites of Amazon’s proposed 3,200-satellite constellation to provide broadband globally in competition with Starlink and OneWeb.

As of posting, the satellites had not yet deployed, with the rocket’s upper stage still firing its engines to bring the rocket to its proper orbit. The live stream unfortunately ended early at this point.

Though the Atlas-5 is being retired, to be replaced by ULA’s still unlaunched Vulcan rocket, about seventeen rockets remain in the company’s launch manifest. All have payloads, so any additional ULA launch contracts must rely on Vulcan.

This was ULA’s third launch in 2023, so it does not change the leader board for the 2023 launch race. The company predicted it would complete ten launches in 2023, a prediction that with less than three months left in the year seems unlikely for it to achieve.

70 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 82 to 45, and leads the entire world combined 82 to 72. SpaceX by itself still trails the rest of the world, excluding American companies, 70 to 72.

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Stoke Space raises $100 million in private investment capital

9:12 am

The rocket startup Stoke Space, which is developing a radically new engine concept for its rockets, has now successfully raised $100 million in private investment capital.

This investment more than doubles the company’s total funding, which now sits at $175 million. The company also announced the official name of its first rocket: Nova.

The funding round was led by Industrious Ventures with participation from the University of Michigan, Sparta Group, Long Journey, and others. Existing investors Breakthrough Energy, YCombinator, Point72 Ventures, NFX, MaC Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and In-Q-Tel also participated. This latest funding round is evidence of strong demand for Stoke’s services, its growing success, and the confidence of investors in its future. As part of this round of fundraising Steve Angel, Chairman of the Board, Linde plc, will join Stoke’s Board of Directors. Angel is also the former CEO of Linde and a member of the Board of Directors of GE.

The company says it will use this money to develop the rocket’s first stage engines, which will follow the same ring nozzle design of its upper stage, a prototype of which it successfully test flew on a short hop last month. Under that design, the engine doesn’t have one central nozzle, but instead the thrust is funnelled out of a ring of tiny nozzles that circle the stage’s outer perimeter. The company believes this design will allow it to return its upper stage safely from orbit for re-use.

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Distorted Martian craters

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Overview map

Distorted Martian craters
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, on the west end of the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I label glacier country because almost every image suggests the presence of ice and glaciers.

Where this crater is located the terrain is shifting from mesas and criss-crossing canyons to the northern lowland plains. Thus, the features that suggest the presence of ice shift from glacial in nature (flowing down hollows and cliffsides or within canyons) to that of a near-surface ice sheet, which acts to distort impact craters and leave large splash aprons around them.

The straight depression cutting into the crater near the center top that is also aligned with craters to the southwest suggests that these craters are either sinkholes into a void created by a fault line, or the impacts all occurred at the same time, as the asteroid broke up while cutting through the Martian atmosphere.

Either could be true. The data is insufficient to determine which.

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Satellite data shows this year’s ozone hole one of the biggest on record

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The uncertainty of science: New data from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite has determined that the ozone hole this year over the south pole was one of the biggest on record.

The hole, which is what scientists call an ‘ozone depleting area,’ reached a size of 26 million sq km on 16 September 2023. This is roughly three times the size of Brazil.

The size of the ozone hole fluctuates on a regular basis. From August to October, the ozone hole increases in size – reaching a maximum between mid-September and mid-October. When temperatures high up in the stratosphere start to rise in the southern hemisphere, the ozone depletion slows, the polar vortex weakens and finally breaks down, and by the end of December ozone levels return to normal.

Despite the claims of scientists that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were creating the hole, requiring their ban in refrigerators, air conditioning, and aerosol sprays in 1987, the arrival of the ozone hole each year is actually a normal seasonal occurance caused by the interaction of the Earth’s tilt and the impact of solar radiation on the upper atmosphere. More interaction, and oxygen molecules break-up into ozone. Less interaction, and there is less ozone.

Thus, despite the ban of these products now for almost forty years, the size of the ozone hole continues to fluctuate significantly from year to year, for reasons that are not yet understood entirely. Some scientists attribute this year’s large size to a volcanic eruption in 2022, but this is merely a theory, not yet proved.

It also must be noted that when the ban was imposed in 1987, we only had data of the ozone hole going back a decade or so. Environmentalists posited then that the hole hadn’t existed before CFCs, but they really hadn’t known that. It will likely take a century of research to really get a good idea of the hole’s normal behavior from year to year. We might find that there was no reason to ban CFCs, that the hole is a natural seasonal occurance like snow in winter and heat in summer.

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A nearby active galaxy, viewed head on by Hubble

9:39 am

Active galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and is the third of a seven-day celebration of galaxies by the Hubble science team. Previous images in the series can be found here. From the caption for this particular image:

At the center of NGC 6951 lies a supermassive black hole surrounded by a ring of stars, gas, and dust about 3,700 light-years across. This “circumnuclear ring” is between 1 and 1.5 billion years old and has been forming stars for most of that time. Scientists hypothesize that interstellar gas flows through the dense, starry bar of the galaxy to the circumnuclear ring, which supplies new material for star formation. Up to 40 percent of the mass in the ring comes from relatively new stars that are less than 100 million years old. Spiral lanes of dust, shown in dark orange, connect the center of the galaxy to its outer regions, contributing more material for future star formation.

This galaxy, located about 78 million light years away, has also seen six different supernovae in the past quarter century. Compare that with the Milky Way, which has not seen a supernova now in more than four hundred years.

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