Tag: policy

Japan’s lunar lander shuts down for long lunar night

9:15 am

SLIM's last image
Click for original image.

After two days of post landing operations, engineers for the Japanese lunar lander SLIM have shut it down now as the sun has set at its landing site on the Moon and its solar panel can no longer charge its batteries.

The picture to the right, reduced to post here, was the last image sent back by SLIM before shut down. It looks to the southeast across the width of 885-foot-wide Shioli Crater, the opposite rim the bright ridge in the upper right about a thousand feet away.

The engineers shut the spacecraft down prior to sunset in order to increase the chances that it will survive that very long harsh lunar night and reactivate when the Sun rises in two weeks. They recognized that the odds of this occurring are slim (no pun intended), because the lander was not designed to withstand the night’s cold temperatures, and more important, the solar panel will not get recharged until late in the lunar day, an additional week-plus past sunrise. That long period of inactivity will likely kill it.

No matter. The spacecraft’s main goal was to prove the ability of its landing system to land softly within a small target zone. It did so, even if it had an engine issue that caused it to land upside down. This new engineering will make it possible to send unmanned and manned landers to places on other planets that previously were impossible.

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Texas state court rules in favor of activist lawsuit against SpaceX

9:00 am

The activists who sued SpaceX and local authorities, claiming the beach closures required during tests and launches at Boca Chica violate the Texas constitution, have had their lawsuit reinstated by a higher state court after a lower court had dismissed it.

Texas’ 13th district court of appeals ruled in favor of SaveRGV, the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas in suits alleging that a 2013 state law allowing beach closures for space flight activities goes against the Open Beaches Amendment to the Texas Constitution.

In July 2022, Cameron County’s 445th District Court dismissed the coalition’s lawsuit, saying the organizations lacked standing in their complaint against Texas Land Commissioner Dr. Dawn Buckingham, the Texas Land Office, Cameron County and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The appeals court reversed that decision Thursday, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

The lawsuit still must be litigated, so these activists have not yet won their case. However, this decision might prevent further beach closures while the case plays out in the courts, which would essentially shut down any further tests or launches at Boca Chica. If so, it will not matter if the FAA finally finishes its paperwork and approves a third test launch of Starship/Superheavy later this month. The launch will not be possible.

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Japan and India team up for unmanned lunar lander mission

9:42 am

Japan and India are now partnering to put a lander/rover on the Moon in 2025, dubbed LUPEX.

Set tentatively for 2025, LUPEX will be launched on JAXA’s H3 launcher, with a 350-kg rover developed by the Japanese agency. ISRO is developing the lander. The instruments will be on the lander and the rover. Initial feasibility studies and the lander’s configuration have been completed. The rover will sample the soil with a driller and the samples will be analysed using equipment on the rover,

Unlike the previously successful lunar landers from both countries (India’s Chandrayaan-3 and Japan’s SLIM), LUPEX is being designed to survive the 14-day-long lunar night, with a mission that is aiming to last three to six months.

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Shoddy Harvard — home of plagiarism and bigotry — loses another big donor

12:52 pm

Harvard: where you get can get a shoddy education centered on hate and bigotry
Harvard: where you can spend a lot of money
getting a shoddy education teaching hate and bigotry

One of Harvard’s biggest donors, Ken Griffin, has announced that he is pausing all further donations to the university due to its now obviously shoddy educational standards combined with its advocacy of racial quotas under its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program.

Griffin announced his decision to stop donating to Harvard during a keynote talk at a conference hosted by the Managed Funds Association in Miami. Griffin, however, left open the possibility that the University could win back his support. “I’d like that to change and I have made that clear to members of the corporate board,” he said. “But until Harvard makes it very clear that they’re going to resume their role as educating young American men and women to be leaders, to be problem solvers, to take on difficult issues, I’m not interested in supporting the institution.”

He added that Harvard students were “whiny snowflakes” caught in a misguided ideology of oppressor and oppressed during his remarks.

Griffin also stated that his companies will hire no students who signed a group letter that expressed support for Hamas’ rape, torture, and massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis on October 7, 2023.

Griffin has donated more than half a billion to Harvard in recent years, including a $300 million donation to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences last year.

He is also not the first billionaire to announce a boycott of Harvard. In November Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumni, released a long letter condemning the university’s former president Claudine Gay for allowing anti-Semitism to fester at the school. Like Griffin, he is apparently withholding further donations while refusing to hire students. Ackman has since repeatedly harangued Harvard in public for its refusal to take any serious reform actions.

Then in December billionaire Leonard Blavatnik stopped his own donations, also because he was appalled by the uinversity’s willingness to allow anti-Semitism to run rampant on campus.

These three men combined had previously donated almost a billion dollars total to the university. One would think their boycott would carry profound weight, and force some immediate changes at Harvard.

Don’t bet on it. » Read more

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Tank explosion in Shanghai injured three

9:38 am

The supposed test-to-tank failure of a rocket tank being tested by the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace on January 29, 2024 apparently injured three workers, though officials also claimed everything worked as planned.

Three workers were injured and nearby residents reported that “a huge boom” shook their windows during testing of a LandSpace rocket fuel tank in Shanghai on Monday evening. The Chinese start-up – which last year beat its rivals, including US-based SpaceX, to launch Zhuque-2, the world’s first methane-fuelled rocket, into orbit – said there were no abnormalities during the test.

A LandSpace representative told local media on Tuesday that the test “left some glass damaged and three production personnel with minor scratches”. The company and the district government said no explosion occurred.

This explosion was reported on X by nearby residents earlier this week (see the quick links here and here), with no confirmation from the pseudo-company. Even now it is being very coy about what it is telling us. An anonymous source at the link says the test filled the tank with nitrogen, and was intended “to establish the tank’s limits.”

No one however should have gotten injured during such a test, if everything took place as planned.

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Private company in India aims to build its own manned capsule and astronaut training facility

9:27 am

A private company in India, Astroborne Aerospace, is now developing its own commercial manned capsule as well as a commercial astronaut training facility, targeting as customers Earth-based tourists as well as those hoping to fly in space.

The capsule, dubbed Airawat, will seat six, and will be designed for suborbital flights, similar to Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule. The training facility will be on a four-acre site the company is presently negotiating either a lease or purchase from the local government.

The company says it has obtained investment capital, but also says that money will arrive next month.

Whether this deal is real or not is actually irrelevant. Its existence illustrates the underlying enthusiasm in India for private commercial space, now that the Modi government has ended the monopoly on all space activities by its space agency ISRO.

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China’s Chang’e-7 lunar mission will target the rim of Shackleton Crater

9:15 am

The Moon's south pole, with landers

China’s Chang’e-7 lunar mission, which will include an orbiter, lander, rover, and “mini-flying” probe, will land in 2026 on the rim of Shackleton Crater, one of the same candidate landing zones for NASA’s manned Artemis program.

The map to the right shows the lander’s approximate landing site, on the illuminated rim of thirteen-mile-wide Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s south pole. The candidate landing zone for NASA is also on this rim, but the location might not be precisely the same. From the abstract of the published paper [pdf] outlining the project’s science goals:

The lander will land on Shackleton crater’s illuminated rim near the lunar south pole, along with the rover and mini-flying probe. The relay satellite (named Queqiao-2) will be launched in February 2024 as an independent mission to support relay communication for ongoing scientific exploration of Chang’E-4 (CE-4), the upcoming Chang’E-6 (CE-6) in 2024, and subsequent lunar missions.

Though the abstract states the target is Shackleton’s rim, the paper is less specific, showing a map with a much wider “candidate landing region”. It is unclear if China as yet has the ability to land with the pinpoint accuracy necessary to hit the rim as stated. The paper is also devoid of any technical details about the lander, rover, or its mini-flyer. It lists the science instruments and their science goals, but describes nothing more specific. For example, will the flyer bounce or use small rockets to lift off? Or will it simply be released prior to landing with no capability of taking off again?

The big story here is the race to get to Shackleton first. NASA presently hopes its first Artemis manned mission to land on the Moon, Artemis-3, will arrive in September 2026, with its stated goal landing at or near the south pole. That schedule is certainly tentative, based on NASA’s recent track record. China is now targeting that same year, but its recent track record for its lunar program has been far more reliable.

The Outer Space Treaty forbids both countries from claiming any territory, but possession is always nine-tenths of reality. Expect China to touch down first, and hold what it touches.

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Today’s blacklisted American: U.S. Court rules against coach fired for simply stating a fact in a casual conversation

2:51 pm

Vermont: Where you are only allowed to say things that support the queer agenda
Vermont: Where the only speech allowed must
support the queer agenda

If you are depending on the federal courts to defend your fundamental rights, as outlined very bluntly in the Bill of Rights, you are being very naive. On December 28, 2024 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled against David Bloch, who had been fired in February 2023 without due process as the snowboarding coach at Woodstock Union High School in Vermont — a team that he had founded in 2011 — because he had simply mentioned in a casual and very civil conversation with two of his students that men and women are genetically different.

He was fired the next day, even though no investigation into the incident had been done, and no one involved in the conversation had complained. School officials made it clear that Bloch was being fired for daring to have an opinion they did not like.

The notice accused Bloch of violating Windsor Central Supervisory Union Board’s Harassment, Hazing, and Bullying policy and the Vermont Principals’ Association related policy for “ma[king] reference to [a] student in a manner that questioned the legitimacy and appropriateness of the student competing on the girls’ team to members of the WUHS snowboard team”—all outside the student’s presence.

» Read more

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Spain awards rocket startup PLD $43.8 million grant

12:53 pm

Capitalism in space: The Spanish rocket startup PLD has won a $43.8 million grant from the Spanish government to develop its Miura-5 orbital launch rocket.

The company won the funding after completing the preliminary design review (PDR) its Miura 5 small launch vehicle, a review that was then examined by an independent committee. The award is technically a loan, which will be paid off over 10 years once Miura 5 begins commercial operations, currently scheduled for 2026.

The rocket will compete directly with Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, with a bigger payload capacity. PLD also plans to recover and reuse its first stages after splashdown in the ocean, as Rocket Lab is now attempting to do with Electron.

The significance of this deal is multifold. It shows us that Spain is now a player in space, with its own rocket company, though still only a startup. It also provides further evidence that the nations of Europe are beginning to go their own way in space, rather than rely on their partnership in the European Space Agency and its rocket division, Arianespace. Arianespace has failed to do the job, so Spain like Germany is now looking to the private sector to get its satellite payloads in orbit.

Finally and most important, this deal illustrates the shift in Europe from being the designer and owner of rockets to being a mere customer. Rather than depend on a governnment-built and owned Arianespace rocket, Spain is buying the service from a private company, PLD. That company owns it entirely and can sell its services to others as well.

This trend away from government-owned rockets bodes well for the future of space exploration in Europe. It will produce a vibrant competitive industry with many different companies coming up with different ideas that will increase innovation while reducing cost.

It also signals the coming death of Arianespace, ESA’s commercial division which despite dominating the commercial launch market for almost two decades, was never able to make a profit ever. Instead, it produced rockets that were too expensive and required subsidies on a yearly basis. The nations of Europe are no longer willing to tolerate that bad performance, and have basically told Arianespace it either must compete with these new private companies, or die. I expect it to die. If it does survive, it will only do so if it changes radically.

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India and France sign deal to partner selling flights on their rockets

9:21 am

India and France have apparently signed a deal to not compete in selling flights on their biggest rockets, but instead work together to keep prices under their control.

Under the terms of the MoU [memorandum of understanding], NSIL’s [the commercial space division of India’s government] heavy-lift launch vehicle, LVM-3, and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 will be at the forefront of this joint endeavor.

The article at the link provides no information at all about the specifics of this deal. I am simply guessing that is it designed to control prices, especially because France by itself does not own the Ariane-6 and thus can not award launch contracts for it. All it can do is convince India to not charge less for its comparable LVM rocket (a variation of its GSLV rocket). If so, it is a bad deal for India, which can easily undercut any price that Arianespace can charge for the expensive Ariane-6. It will drive business from India, since other companies (such as SpaceX, ULA, and hopefully Blue Origin in the near future) will be under no obligation to match Ariane-6’s high cost.

It is also possible that the deal is simply an empty political gesture, timed during the visit to India by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Its vague language suggests this. It gives Macron a photo op, but as an MOU it leaves India under no long term obligation.

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The Pentagon picks Northrop Grumman’s orbital refueling port as its standard

9:05 am

Having reviewed the designs of several orbital refueling ports, the Space Force has chosen Northrop Grumman’s port as the standard it wishes future military satellites to use.

In a move that could shape the in-orbit satellite servicing market, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command designated Northrop Grumman’s Passive Refueling Module (PRM) as a favored interface to enable future in-space refueling of military satellites. The PRM has a docking mechanism to allow a refueling vehicle in orbit to transfer propellant to another satellite to extend its useful life.

Northrop Grumman said the Space Systems Command, which oversees in-space logistics and services programs, also will support the company’s development of an orbital fuel tanker for geosynchronous orbit missions that would carry up to 1,000 kilograms of hydrazine fuel and deliver it to client satellites on demand.

Lauren Smith, program manager for in-space refueling at Northrop Grumman, said the selection of the PRM was based on the maturity and technical viability of the design, as well as the company’s experience servicing satellites in orbit. Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics subsidiary remains the only commercial firm to have successfully serviced satellites in geostationary orbit, having docked twice with client Intelsat satellites some 22,000 miles above Earth to extend spacecraft life.

Note that even though Northrop Grumman’s MEV spacecraft has twice docked with defunct Intelsat satellites to return them to service, the spacecraft did no refueling. Instead, it brought its own fuel and engine, and used that to control the satellite.

Other companies developing refueling services with ports they had hoped would become the standard include Astroscale and Orbit Fab. Both have launched demo missions, but neither has yet completed a refueling mission as well. Though this Space Force decision is not exclusive, and leaves open the possibility of further awards to these other commercial refueling port designs, it will likely force everyone to move towards the Northrop Grumman design.

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The FBI must be wiped clean, or wiped out, on Day One of the next Repubican administration

1:05 pm

Christopher Wray, the world's most powerful mobster

Should Donald Trump become president in 2024 and the acts to make major changes within the federal executive bureaucracy, cleaning house from top to bottom with major firings and layoffs (something he should have done in his first administration and failed to do), without question the first agency he must attack mercilessly is the FBI.

There are numerous documented examples in the past decade where the FBI has been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans, investigating, harassing, and even arresting people because they held beliefs that opposed the agenda of the Democratic Party. In some cases the individuals attacked were simply religious Christians who opposed abortion. In other cases the victims were ordinary Americans who simply made public their support of Trump.

Nor were just everyday Americans attacked. The FBI has arrested Republican candidates for office. Its officials have altered evidence to justify illegal seach warrants against Republicans. Its management also targeted and framed Trump officials it did not like. Officials there also abused the FISA court, submitting error-filled applications that were used to get warrants to spy on Americans. It redacted information to hide its misbehavior, claiming dishonestly that the redactions were for national security reasons.

This list is only a very small selection of the many such stories reported in the past decade. Any one of these corrupt actions would justify firing everyone at the FBI and zeroing out its budget as quickly as possible. Last week however the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals provided us another reason: It ruled that FBI agents literally committed theft in rummaging through hundreds of security deposit boxes at a bank in wealthy Beverly Hills, confiscating millions of dollars it had no right to grab, simply because the cash was there and the agents and the agency wanted that money for their own pockets.
» Read more

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