Tag: spaceflight

InSight status update: still alive!

9:45 pm

InSight's daily power levels through October 31, 2022

UPDATE: JPL has released a press release, outlining the steps the InSight team will take to shut the mission down. Key quote:

NASA will declare the mission over when InSight misses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars, part of the Mars Relay Network – but only if the cause of the missed communication is the lander itself, said network manager Roy Gladden of JPL. After that, NASA’s Deep Space Network will listen for a time, just in case.

There will be no heroic measures to re-establish contact with InSight. While a mission-saving event – a strong gust of wind, say, that cleans the panels off – isn’t out of the question, it is considered unlikely.

Original post:
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Another update on the power levels on the Mars lander InSight was released today, and is shown on the graph to the right.

As of October 31, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 280 and 290 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.33 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

Though the dust level in the atmosphere has dropped, it still is high. Moreover, there is no sign of any clearing of dust from InSight’s solar panels. During the press conference late last week announcing the discovery of impact craters using InSight’s seismometer, the science team gave the lander no more than six weeks of life. One of those weeks has now ticked off.

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Streaks on the Moon

12:48 pm

Streaks on the Moon
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, is an oblique view taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the rays that were created when four million years ago an object smashed into the Moon’s far side and produced the 13.75 mile-wide Giordano Bruno crater.

Rays are formed as material ejected from an impact event slams into the surface and churns up local material. Rays are bright because they expose fresh material from depth (both the incoming material and locally churned soil). What is fresh material? Over time the lunar surface is impacted by micrometeoroids and bombarded by radiation; both processes work to darken the surface. The dark “mature” layer at the surface is often only about 50 cm (20 inches) thick, so energetic impacts can easily bring up fresh material from the subsurface. Eventually, the bright rays darken and fade into the background as the surface matures.

In this image, you can see where the ejecta blocks from Giordano Bruno hit the surface, creating a secondary crater, which dug up local material and spread that bright material downstream (so to speak).

The image itself is 4.78 miles wide, at its center, and was snapped from an altitude of 66 miles.

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Japanese private lunar lander HAKUTO-R now scheduled for launch on November 22nd

9:45 am

The private lunar lander HAKUTO-R, built by the Japanese company Ispace, has now been scheduled for a November 22, 2022 launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch of the first commercial lunar lander mission to attempt a landing on the Moon was originally scheduled between November 9 -15. However, ispace stated that after consulting with SpaceX, the new tentative launch date would be moved to November 22 because it “allows for best preparation for the mission when considering the fuel-loading schedule for the lander and launch date availability.” SpaceX has a busy schedule at the Cape and NASA still has the Artemis 1 launch scheduled for November 14.

HAKUTO-R’s primary mission is to test the lander. However, it also includes several customer payloads, the most significant of which is the Rashid rover from the United Arab Emirates. Rashid, which is about the size of a Radio Flyer red wagon, will operate for one lunar day, about two weeks. While its main mission is to test the engineering and to train the engineers who built it, it will have two cameras for taking pictures. In addition, on its wheels are test adhesive patches of different materials, designed to see how each material interacts with the Moon’s abrasive dust.

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Astronomers discover a new large potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid

9:36 am

Using a variety of ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered three new near-Earth asteroids orbiting the Sun but inside Earth’s orbit, with one of these asteroids having the possibility of one day in the future impacting the Earth.

An international team using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, has discovered three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) hiding in the inner Solar System, the region interior to the orbits of Earth and Venus. This is a notoriously challenging region for observations because asteroid hunters have to contend with the glare of the Sun.

By taking advantage of the brief yet favorable observing conditions during twilight, however, the astronomers found an elusive trio of NEAs. One is a 1.5-kilometer-wide asteroid called 2022 AP7, which has an orbit that may someday place it in Earth’s path. The other asteroids, called 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, have orbits that safely remain completely interior to Earth’s orbit. Also of special interest to astronomers and astrophysicists, 2021 PH27 is the closest known asteroid to the Sun. As such, it has the largest general-relativity effects of any object in our Solar System and during its orbit its surface gets hot enough to melt lead.

You can read their paper here [pdf].

2002 AP7 is the largest such potentially dangerous asteroid discovered in eight years. Its present orbit however never brings it closer to the Earth than 4.4 million miles, and it will be many thousands of years before that orbit might result in an impact. This of course doesn’t prevent foolish mainstream news outlets like the New York Times to label it a “planet-killer.”

The importance of this study however is that it underlines the possibility that there might be other such asteroids lurking close to the Sun that are difficult to spot. This is a blind spot in our asteroid surveys that needs to be eliminated.

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Lockheed Martin invests $100 million in startup satellite maker Terran Orbital

9:14 am

Lockheed Martin has now invested $100 million in the startup smallsat-maker Terran Orbital, which has already been building satellites of a wide variety for customers.

Under the deal, which runs through 2035, the smaller Florida-based firm will build SAR and other advanced payloads, as well as satellite sub-assemblies, for the aerospace behemoth, Terran said in a press release today. These include electro-optical, hyperspectral, infrared and secure communication payloads, as well as things like star trackers and flight computers.

With this deal, Terran has also decided that it will no longer launch its own radar constellation, as that constellation would have competed directly with its radar satellite customers. Instead, it will make its radar satellite for others, including Lockheed Martin.

As an example of the variety of smallsats Terran Orbital has been building, it manufactured the smallsat lunar orbiter CAPSTONE for NASA, now on its way to the Moon but being operated for NASA by a different private company, Advanced Space.

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Orbex signs 50-year lease at Sutherland spaceport

9:03 am

The British startup rocket company Orbex has signed a 50-year lease to operate its own launchpad at the Space Hub Sutherland spaceport in Scotland.

The company will lease Space Hub Sutherland from a local development agency for an initial period of 50 years with an option to extend for a further 25 years. Orbex will soon commence construction at the 10-acre launch site on the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland. The bulk of the construction work will be contracted out to technology solutions company Jacobs, which also does a lot of work for NASA.

The company hopes to launch its Prime rocket in ’23. At present it is testing launch operations of a prototype on its launchpad. All told, Orbex has raised a little over $100 million in private investment capital.

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Mengtian module docks with China’s Tiangong-3 space station

8:54 am

Tiangong-3 station, when completed

The new Mengtian module has docked with the main port of China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

The graphic to the right shows the planned design of the station. Mengtian however is not yet in its side port as shown, but in the main docking port in line with the core module where a Shenzhou crew capsule is shown docked. At some point soon the astronauts on board will use a small robot arm to move Mengtian from the main port to its side port. (This system is very similar to one the Russian’s used on Mir.)

Furthermore, the large vertically oriented solar panels have not yet been installed on the station. These will likely need to be delivered, and require spacewalks to deploy.

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Falcon Heavy launches successfully for 1st time since 2019

8:16 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully put a military reconnaissance satellite using its Falcon Heavy rocket, its first launch since 2019.

The two side boosters and core stage all made their first flight. The core stage was intentionally not recovered, as it needed to use all its fuel for getting the satellite to its orbit. The two side boosters successfully landed at SpaceX’s two landing sites at Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

50 SpaceX
47 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 70 to 47, though it still trails the rest of the world combined 74 to 70.

This year’s 70 successful launches ties the previous high for the United States in a single year, set in 1966. With two months still left in the year, it looks like that record will be broken, by a lot.

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The knobby floor of a Martian crater

5:21 pm

The knobby floor of a Martian crater

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small portion of the knobby floor of a 70-mile-wide ancient and eroded unnamed crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars.

Why knobby? Usually such terrain on Mars signifies an very ancient and well eroded region of chaos terrain, its knobs the leftover worn remains of ancient mesas cut by eons of glacier flow.

If this is so, the location as shown in the overview map below suggests if there were ever any glaciers — or any near surface ice — at this location, it had to be a very long time ago.
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CAPSTONE makes course correction, now on target for lunar orbital insertion on November 13th

1:39 pm

Engineers have successfully overcome the valve issue that had caused the CAPSTONE lunar probe to tumble, and have made a subsequent mid-course correction that has put the spacecraft on target for entering lunar orbit on November 13, 2022, as planned.

The CAPSTONE spacecraft successfully completed a trajectory correction maneuver on Thursday, Oct. 27, teeing up the spacecraft’s arrival to lunar orbit on Nov. 13.

CAPSTONE is no longer in safe mode following an issue in early September that caused the spacecraft to spin. The team identified the most likely cause as a valve-related issue in one of the spacecraft’s eight thrusters. The mission team will design future maneuvers to work around the affected valve, including the two remaining trajectory correction maneuvers scheduled before CAPSTONE’s arrival to orbit at the Moon.

Though it appears the CAPSTONE team has figured out how to deal with that malfuncting valve, it is unclear what the long-term ramifications of that valve will be. If it is still leaking it likely means the mission will be shortened because of loss of fuel, as well as the need to use more to compensate.

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Distant interacting galaxies

11:25 am

Interacting galaxies
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of known “weird and wonderful galaxies.” This particular pair is dubbed Arp 248, and is estimated to be about 200 million light years away.

Two spiral galaxies are viewed almost face-on; they are a mix of pale blue and yellow in colour, crossed by strands of dark red dust. They lie in the upper-left and lower-right corners. A long, faint streak of pale blue joins them, extending from an arm of one galaxy and crossing the field diagonally. A small spiral galaxy, orange in colour, is visible edge-on, left of the lower galaxy.

The connecting stream indicates that these galaxies are interacting with each other, gravity drawing stars and gas from the upper galaxy towards the lower.

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Al-Amal orbiter tracks unusual northern summer dust storm on Mars

10:04 am

Fig. 3 from Al-Amal paper
Click for full figure.

Scientists, using UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter, have documented the occurrence of a rare high northern latitude summer dust storm whose origin appears linked to both a major canyon in the northern ice cap as well as the giant sand dune seas that surround that ice cap.

The EMM [instrument on Al-Amal] observed a distinct dust cloud on 10 September 2021. That was outside of the classical Martian dust storm season. The observed dust cloud is an arc-shaped dust storm, typically observed at the northern polar cap edge. This type of non-season dust storm is a well-known phenomenon, but this particular case is interesting because the dust cloud has frontal structure. A large atmospheric front is unusual in this location and season.

EMM’s unique observational coverage adds value to this observation, by providing a sequence of four camera images of the frontal dust cloud, separated by 2–3 hr. The frontal dust cloud shows very little movement over 7–8 hr, that is, it is quasi-stationary. We estimated the wind speed and direction by tracking internal motion of the dust cloud. In one case, the estimated wind is consistent with near-surface easterly winds at the polar cap edge.

The two images to the right are adapted from the paper’s figure 3. The yellow line in the top image indicates the location of the dust storm’s front (about 1,200 miles long), aligned with the canyon Chasma Boreale, marked by the black line, that cuts a 300-mile-long and 4,600-foot-deep gash into the North Pole ice cap.

The storm’s wind speeds were estimated very roughly to be about 16 feet per second, about 10 mph. In Mars’ thin atmosphere these winds would be so gentle that they would be almost imperceptible.

The storm front’s alignment with Chasma Boreale is intriguing, but the overview map below suggests another intriguing alignment.
» Read more

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Watching the launch of the final large module to China’s Tiangong-3 space station

12:10 am

UPDATE: The Mengtian module has been deployed, and is now proceeding to a rendezvous and docking within the next day or so. The core stage is in orbit, and we can only wait over the next few days to find out where it will hit the Earth.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

49 SpaceX
47 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 69 to 47, though it now trails the rest of the world combined 74 to 69.

Original post:
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The launch of the final large module for China’s Tiangong-3 space station is scheduled to occur at 12:37 am (Pacific) tonight.

The module is called Mengtian, and once moved to its permanent port will complete the station in its t-shape. The rocket is the Long March 5B, the core stage of which will reach orbit, and then within a week crash uncontrolled somewhere on Earth.

I have embedded the English live stream below. A lot of Chinese propaganda (though not much different from a NASA broadcast). As I understand it, the launch window is instantaneous, so if there are any holds the launch will be scrubbed for the day.

» Read more

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Stratolaunch’s giant Roc airplane flies for 1st time with Talon engineering vehicle attached

10:04 am

Test engineering vehicle attached below Roc
Test engineering vehicle attached on Roc

Stratolaunch yesterday successfully flew its giant Roc airplane with a Talon hypersonic engineering vehicle attached for the first time to its central fuselage.

The flight lasted just over five hours, reached an altitude of 23,000 feet, and was “focused on measuring the aerodynamic loads on the Talon-A vehicle while mated to Roc. The loads captured in flight will validate aerodynamic predictions to ensure the release mechanism will function as designed.”

The company will complete a series of captive carry flights in the coming months, culminating in a separation test of the TA-0 vehicle out over the Pacific Ocean in late 2022.

Even as these flight tests proceed, the company is building the actual Talon flight vehicles, designed as testbeds for doing hypersonic flight tests quickly and relatively cheaply. The plan is to have these flight vehicles ready for both military and commercial customers to fly them by ’23.

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NASA & ESA pick site for Perseverance to deposit its samples for pickup

9:31 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Engineers at NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have now chosen the site in Jezero Crater where Perseverance will deposit its first set of core samples for later pickup by a mission to bring them back to Earth.

The location, at the base of the delta that flows into the crater and indicated by the white cross on the map to the right, will contain all the core samples collected from the floor of the crater. This area, in the middle of the flat region the science team has dubbed Three Forks, provides a good landing place for the sample return helicopter that will fly from point to point to pick these samples up. The blue dot on the map indicates Perseverance’s present position. The green dot where the helicopter Ingenuity presently sits.

Once the rover has finished collecting samples and doing its research at the base of the delta, it will deposit those samples at this point and then move up onto the delta, where it will collect more samples that will be placed at a different spot for pickup.

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NASA sets new launch date for Psyche asteroid mission

9:01 am

NASA yesterday announced that the delayed Psyche mission, to the asteroid Psyche, now has a new launch date of October 10, 2023, with a planned arrival in 2029.

The spacecraft missed its original launch date in 2022 because of the late delivery of its flight software combined with problems with the equipment needed to test that software.

The new launch date, though only one year later than planned, will cause the spacecraft to arrive two years late because of orbital mechanics.

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China launches classified technology test satellite

8:56 am

China today successfully launched a classified technology test satellite using its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

No word on where the expendable first stage crashed within China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

49 SpaceX
46 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 69 to 46 in the national rankings, though it trails the rest of the world combined 73 to 69.

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InSight detects and dates large impact on Mars

11:14 am

InSight's Christmas Eve impact
Click for full image.

Using the data from InSight’s seismometer of a 4 magnitude earthquake on Mars on December 24, 2021, scientists were able to use the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to find the meteorite impact that produced that quake, the largest detected since spacecraft have been visiting Mars. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here and unveiled at yesterday’s press conference, shows the new crater.

The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) – small enough that it would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is just 1% as dense as our planet’s. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.

With images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar system.

This is not the first such impact identified from InSight seismic data, but it is the largest. The white streaks surrounding the crater are thought to be near-surface ice ejected at impact.

The overview map below provides further context, as well as showing us the proximity of this impact to the proposed Starship landing sites on Mars.
» Read more

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ULA breaks ground on new facility in Alabama

9:29 am

ULA yesterday broke ground on the construction of a new facility in Alabama, where it will store its Vulcan rockets and build the fairings for that rocket.

The factory is scheduled to begin operations in 2024. According to ULA’S CEO, Tori Bruno, the facility will double the production rate for making Vulcan rockets, necessary to provide the launches that Amazon wants for its Kuiper internet constellation.

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SpaceX successfully launches another 53 Starlink satellites

6:24 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch another 53 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. As of this writing, the satellites have not yet deployed, though they are in their planned orbit.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

49 SpaceX
45 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 69 to 45 in the national rankings, though it trails the rest of the world combined 72 to 69. At 69 successful launches, the U.S. is now just one launch behind its national record of 70 set in 1966.

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A glacier sea on Mars

6:12 pm

A glacier sea on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, should at first glance be one of my “What the heck!?” images. However, a little detective work quickly provides us some understanding of the inexplicable geology seen at this particular location on Mars.

The picture was taken on August 29, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was labeled by the science team a “Lobate Debris Apron in Deuteronilus Mensae.” This mensae region is the western part of the 2,000-mile-long strip in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars that I label glacier country, since almost every high resolution picture taken in this strip shows extensive glacial features.

This picture is no different, showing what appears to be glaciers, but by itself it is still difficult to make sense of it. Glaciers flow downhill, like rivers. In this high resolution image the direction of flow is somewhat unclear.

As always, a wider view clarifies the picture.
» Read more

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Russian government okays ISS partnership through ’27

9:08 am

The Russian government yesterday approved an order allowing Roscosmos to continue to send its astronauts and spacecraft to ISS through 2027.

“The expected results are as follows: transport and technical support for the Russian segment of the International Space Station in 2023-2027, including the delivery to the station and return to Earth of Russian crews, as well as the delivery to the ISS of fuel and cargo crucial to maintaining the ISS in flight and the implementation of a long-term program for authorized works,” the instruction says.

Putin’s government is essentially admitting that it will not be able to launch its own space station by ’27, so it has to stay on ISS because that’s all it has. Whether ISS can last that long, considering the somewhat delicate state of some of the oldest Russian modules, remains unclear.

The American private stations should all be coming on line in the years from 2024 to 2030, so it appears the U.S. is covered. What Russia will do however remains unknown. I suspect it will be far more difficult politically for it to buy time on the American private stations, compared to Europe. But if it doesn’t get its own station launched, buying time might be its only option, assuming of course the U.S. government allows it to do so. And considering that other Russian officials are threatening America’s private space assets, the likelihood that Russia will be allowed on future American space stations seems remote indeed.

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European nations struggle with the new private commercial space station concept

8:59 am

The European partners that have been doing research and work on ISS are now struggling to figure out their future on the multiple new private commercial space stations American private enterprise is now building to replace ISS.

The ISS today relies extensively on barter arrangements among participating agencies, providing services to cover their share of operations of the station. Such arrangements are unlikely to work for commercial stations, however. “We need to find a new way of cooperating,” said Nicolas Maubert, space counselor at the French Embassy in the U.S. and representative of the French space agency CNES in the U.S., citing the challenges of extending current barter arrangements to commercial stations. “We need to put on the table every option.”

The simplest approach — direct payments from space agencies to the companies operating commercial stations — could face political obstacles. “The taxpayers in Europe don’t want to pay directly to private American companies,” he said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the fundamental problem. Europe on ISS has been for decades like a welfare queen. It has gotten access to space mostly free, since what it has offered in exchange for that access has never come close to matching what its work on ISS cost American taxpayers. Now that it will have to pay for that access in real dollars, some of its member nations are balking.

France for example still wants a free ride. Maubert suggested that Europe build its own space station, which means France wants its other ESA partners to help pay for the station that France wants to use.

I say, too bad. The costs on the private stations — built for profit and efficiency — will be far less that ISS. That cost will also be far far less than anything Europe might spend trying to build its own government station. Europe should bite the bullet and pay up. It won’t regret it.

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Boeing’s write-off due to Starliner delays goes up to nearly $900 million

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: In a SEC filing on October 26, 2022, Boeing revealed that it has been required to spend another $195 million to cover the additional costs due to the further delays in getting Starliner launched, bringing the company’s total expense now to $883 million.

Boeing acknowledged today that it is taking a further $195 million charge against earnings for the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew program. Developed through a fixed-price contract with NASA, Starliner has encoutered a number of delays and Boeing must cover those costs. Added to $688 million already taken, the company now is spending $883 million of its own money on the program.

Boeing’s original fixed-price contract was for $4.2 billion, and included the test flights as well as six operational flights to ISS. However, numerous problems caused repeated delays and the need to fly a second unmanned test flight. Originally planned for the spring of 2020, the first manned Starliner flight is now targeting February 2023, three years behind schedule. Due to that delay, SpaceX’s Dragon ended up getting new contracts that included many of the later operational flights that Boeing would have earned. Right now, even if the capsule begins flying in ’23, NASA’s already purchased six flights will cover its needs through around ’26.

After that, NASA will still need to buy manned flights, if only to get to the new commercial space stations being built, and Starliner will then be an option. This just means however that it will take Boeing a long time to recover its Starliner losses. And that assumes customers begin to line up to buy flights.

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Martian rectilinear ridges

1:16 pm

Martian rectilinear ridges
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is also a bafflement. The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 25, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The ridges in this picture are labeled by the scientists “Rectilinear Ridges,” but they really do not resemble any of the Martian rectilinear ridge types outlined in this paper [pdf], all of which appear to have a much more pronounced criss-cross pattern.

These ridges however are more meandering, and instead to my eye seem more like inverted channels, ancient channels whose beds became compacted and then became ridges when the less dense surrounding material eroded away. The problem with this conclusion however is the lack of any obvious tributary pattern. If these were once channels where either liquid water or glaciers once flowed, none of them seem to exhibit any drainage pattern. The ridges go in all directions.

The context map below only increases the mystery.
» Read more

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Orbit Fab, the company building gas stations in space, gets new investor

8:51 am

Though the amount invested has not been revealed, Orbit Fab announced yesterday that it has obtained a new investor to fuel its effort to build the first gas stations in space.

Orbit Fab said that 8090 Industries was a “new major investor” in the company, but did not disclose the size of the investment. The company had previously raised a total of $17 million, including more than $10 million in a September 2021 round that included Lockheed Martin Ventures and Northrop Grumman.

Orbit Fab’s goal is to provide satellite makers a way to more easily and cheaply refuel their satellites, thus allowing them to not only launch for less cost but to last longer once in orbit. In August it announced it is aiming to launch a hydrazine refueling depot for geosynchronous satellites by 2025.

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Lucy’s view of the Earth-Moon system during its October fly-by

8:35 am

The Earth and Moon system, as seen by Lucy
Click for original image.

Lucy's planned route
Lucy’s planned route to explore the Trojan asteroids

In the days prior to its October 16, 2022 fly-by of the Earth, the Lucy asteroid probe took several calibration images of the Earth and the Moon. The photo above, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, shows both the Earth and the Moon together. From the caption:

On October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 890,000 miles (1.4 million km). The image was taken as part of an instrument calibration sequence as the spacecraft approached Earth for its first of three Earth gravity assists. These Earth flybys provide Lucy with the speed required to reach the Trojan asteroids — small bodies that orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter.

In the original, the Moon is so dim, compared to the Earth, that it was hard to find in the picture. I therefore brightened it considerably more than the Earth to make it easily seen above.

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After 50 years Edward Stone retires as the project scientist for Voyagers 1 and 2

8:23 am

Edward Stone, the only project scientist the interstellar spacecraft Voyagers 1 and 2 have ever known, has now retired after 50 years service.

Stone accepted scientific leadership of the historic mission in 1972, five years before the launch of its two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Under his guidance, the Voyagers explored the four giant planets and became the first human-made objects to reach interstellar space, the region between the stars containing material generated by the death of nearby stars.

Until now, Stone was the only person to have served as project scientist for Voyager, maintaining his position even while serving as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 1991 to 2001. JPL manages the Voyager mission for NASA. Stone retired from JPL in 2001 but continued to serve as the mission’s project scientist.

The new Voyager project scientist however is not new to the project.

Linda Spilker will succeed Stone as Voyager’s project scientist as the twin probes continue to explore interstellar space. Spilker was a member of the Voyager science team during the mission’s flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. She later became project scientist for NASA’s now-retired Cassini mission to Saturn, and rejoined Voyager as deputy project scientist in 2021.

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InSight still hangs in, barely

11:43 pm

InSight's power status as of October 22, 2022

A new update on the status of the Mars lander InSight was released today, showing its power output daily through October 22, 2022. The graph to the right shows this update. From the report:

As of October 22, 2022, InSight’s seismometer is collecting data again after being switched off to conserve energy after a recent dust storm. The lander was generating an average of 280 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.45 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

These power levels are very low, so low I am surprised the science team thought it was able to start the seismometer again. It could be they expect the lander to fail any moment, and decided to maximize the data it can get in the little time it has left.

A press conference is planned for Thursday, October 27, 2022 to provide an update on InSight’s future, as well it appears to describe a recent discovery (likely the exact moment some recent impacts took place) based on data from InSight and images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This was already reported in mid-September, but more impacts might have been identified.

It is also possible the MRO images detected some other change on the surface (not an impact) that InSight’s seismometer picked up. If so, the briefing will be far more interesting.

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Russian Progress freighter successfully launches to ISS

11:20 pm

Using its Soyuz-2 rocket Russia tonight successfully launched a new Progress freighter to ISS.

The spacecraft will take two days to rendezvous and dock with ISS, thus delivering 2.5 tons of cargo.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

48 SpaceX
45 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 68 to 45 in the national rankings, though it now trails the rest of the world combined 72 to 68.

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