Tag: spaceflight

Eroding glacial ice on Mars, dipping in the wrong direction

1:00 pm

Dipping wrongway ice terraces
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is a variation of a similar phenomenon shown in a cool image I posted in July, dipping terraced layers stepping downhill toward a cliff face, rather than away from the cliff as you would expect. That previous example was located in chaos region in the northern mid-latitudes that I dub glacier country.

This example is instead found a completely different region of Mars, halfway across the planet. The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on March 1, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The arrows indicate the downward trend of those dipping layers, toward the cliff face.

The overview map below provides the context.
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How SLS reveals the difference between state-run propaganda and real journalism

10:10 am

The cost of SLS

On August 29, 2022, NASA will attempt the first launch of a government-built, government-owned, and government-designed rocket in more than a decade. The rocket’s development took more than eighteen years, moved in fits and starts due to political interference and mandates, cost more than $50 billion, and has been both behind schedule and overbudget almost from day one. Along the way NASA management screwed up the construction of one multi-million dollar test stand, built another it will never use, mismanaged that test program, dropped a rocket oxygen tank, and found structural cracks in an early Orion capsule.

This dubious achievement, even if the launch and month-plus-long mission of the Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back is a complete success, is hardly something to tout. NASA claims it and this rocket will make it possible for America to explore the solar system, but any honest appraisal of SLS’s cost and cumbersome design immediately reveals that claim to be absurd. SLS can launch at best once per year, and in truth will likely lift off at a much slower rate. It will also eat up resources in the American aerospace industry from technology better designed, more efficient, and more capable of doing the job.

Worse, the generally sloppy management of this program, with numerous major errors in design and construction, raises serious questions about the safety of any future manned flight.

And yet, as this launch day approaches, the American established press is going ga-ga over SLS. Below are just a small sampling:
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Webb detects carbon dioxide in atmosphere of exoplanet

8:42 am

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a hot gas giant exoplanet about 700 light years away.

WASP-39 b is a hot gas-giant with a mass roughly one-quarter that of Jupiter (about the same as Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter. Its extreme puffiness is partly related to its high temperature (about 900° Celsius or 1170 Kelvin). Unlike the cooler, more compact gas giants in our solar system, WASP-39 b orbits very close to its star – only about one-eighth the distance between the Sun and Mercury – completing one circuit in just over four Earth-days. The planet’s discovery, reported in 2011, was made based on ground-based detections of the subtle, periodic dimming of light from its host star as the planet transits or passes in front of the star.

Previous observations from other telescopes, including the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, revealed the presence of water vapour, sodium, and potassium in the planet’s atmosphere. Webb’s unmatched infrared sensitivity has now confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on this planet as well.

This is only the beginning. Astronomers have told me repeatedly that the most important area of research in astronomy in the next few decades will be the study of known exoplanets and their make-up. Webb is now a new tool in that effort. Combined with other telescopes looking at other wavelengths scientists will be able to identify a whole range of molecules in the atmospheres of these transiting exoplanets. We will begin to get our first glimpse into what other solar systems are like.

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August 24, 2022 Quick space links

4:15 pm

Links courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

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A pit in the dry-ice polar cap of Mars

3:48 pm

A pit in the dry-ice cap of Mars
Click for full image.

This cool image is possibly of some of the most alien terrain on Mars. The photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, shows a pit (not a peak) in the dry-ice cap that covers a small portion of the southern polar ice cap on Mars. North is up. It was taken on June 16, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In fact, at 88 degrees south latitude, the image is just about as far south as it is possible for MRO to take pictures. Beyond this the orbit does not reach.

If you look close, you can see that there are several distinct layers in the sunlight eastern interior slopes of the pit. The base of the pit itself appears to have ripples, as if their might be Martian dust trapped inside.

This is a very cold and alien place. The ground is made of dry ice. The temperatures are always cold, well below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you look at the full image, you will see that, except for the very tiny pit nearby to the east, this pit is all by itself. If the underlying terrain caused this sinkhole to form, why only here?

The overview map below shows the location, which might help explain things.
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Indian research project for China’s space station threatened by Chinese-India military conflict

11:21 am

A science instrument from India, slated to fly on a Chinese rocket to China’s Tiangong-3 space station, is now threatened by the military tensions between the two nations.

The project, called Spectrographic Investigation of Nebular Gas (SING), also involves collaboration with the [India] Institute of Astronomy [IIA], Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been designed and developed by research students at the IIA. The plan is to have it ready by the year end so that it can be launched in the summer of 2023. Though the plan is on schedule, scientists at the IIA are now consulting with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as well as the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on whether they are in the clear to go ahead with the project.

Chinese and Indian troops have been engaged in a prolonged stand-off in eastern Ladakh. The two sides have so far held 16 rounds of Corps Commander-level talks to resolve the stand-off, which erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong lake area.

It appears the Indian government is having second thoughts about this cooperative project. After decades of naive trust in the communists from both Russia and China, it seems India has finally realized the communists really have little interest in helping India, being more focused on using it for good PR while it steals Indian technology. Moreover, India now realizes that China has become a dangerous neighbor, willing to use its newfound power violently at the border between the two countries.

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SpaceX remounts Superheavy prototype #7 on launchpad

11:05 am

Superheavy #7 lifted onto launchpad

Capitalism in space: Using its giant launch tower crane that Elon Musk has dubbed Mechazilla, SpaceX engineers yesterday remounted the seventh Superheavy prototype onto the orbital launchpad in preparation for more engine tests leading to its first flight.

Booster 7 has been atop this launch mount before. Earlier this month, SpaceX conducted two “static fire” tests with Booster 7, firing the vehicle up while it remained attached to the mount.

Both of those tests — which occurred on Aug. 9 and Aug. 11, respectively — lit up just a single Raptor engine (apparently, a different one each time). And Booster 7 wasn’t fully outfitted at the time, sporting just 20 of its 33 engines (opens in new tab) (the vast majority of which stayed dormant during the tests).

After the Aug. 11 test, SpaceX lifted the Super Heavy prototype off the mount and hauled it back to a processing bay at Starbase. Technicians installed the remaining 13 Raptors and got it ready for Tuesday’s move back to the pad.

The picture above was sent out by Musk on his Twitter feed. Note the number of engines at the base. The tower itself, acting as a crane, has also simplified and speeded up operations. SpaceX can now quickly move the rocket back and forth from the assembly building, without the need of separate cranes.

The company is still targeting early September for the first orbital launch, though it also still needs to stack Starship prototype #24 (seen in the background) on top of Superheavy, and then do more tests.

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Perseverance gets a glimpse into the history of Jezero crater

10:03 am

A glimpse into the history of Jezero Crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 17, 2022 by one of Perseverance’s high resolution camera. It shows the exposed layers of a nearby cliff face that comprises the end of the delta that once flowed into Jezero Crater in the distant Martian past.

My guess is that this cliff is about 20 feet high. The more massive, thicker and younger layers near the top, compared to the thinner and older layers below, suggest a major change in the cyclic events. The early cycles that lay down this delta were initially shorter and able to place less material with each cycle, while the last few cycles were longer, producing thicker layers.

The difference in layers also strongly suggests that all the blocks at the foot of the cliff fell from more massive layers at the top. Material that broke off from the lower thinner layers has likely long ago eroded away.

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Two Chinese pseudo-companies pursuing suborbital tourist market

9:35 am

Link here. One company is apparently copying Blue Origin’s New Shepard, though its capsule’s exterior looks more like a copy of SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The other company however is doing something very unusual for a Chinese space operation. It appears to be designing something original, not a copy of some American achievement.

Space Transportation’s goal is to develop a suborbital spaceplane capable of carrying tourists on suborbital flights. The winged system is very different from Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, which is currently in flight test.

A larger Space Transportation vehicle would be a high-speed transport that would fly between distant locations on Earth in less than two hours.

…The company released very little information about the six launches it conducted this year. It’s not even clear where the flights took place, although Wikipedia indicates they might have been conducted from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

If successful, Space Transportation will have have done something almost unprecedented for China, building something from an entirely original design.

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NASA describes Starship’s first unmanned test lunar landing

9:28 am

In a briefing focused on the science that could be placed on the mission, a NASA official yesterday provided a status update of SpaceX’s first unmanned test flight by Starship to the Moon.

First, the official revealed that NASA is only requiring SpaceX to demonstrate a successful landing. Take-off will not be required. Also,

Starship is not designed to fly directly to the Moon like NASA’s Space Launch System, however. Instead, the first stage puts it only in Earth orbit. To go further, it must fill up with propellant at a yet-to-be-built orbiting fuel depot. Other Starships are needed to deliver propellant to the depot.

Watson-Morgan described the Concept of Operations for Starship’s Artemis III mission, starting with launch of the fuel depot, then a number of “propellant aggregation” launches to fill up the depot, then launch of the Starship that will go to Moon.

Previously SpaceX suggested that the ship would be directly refueled by subsequent Starships, with no middle-man fueling depot. It could be either engineering had made the depot necessary, or NASA politics have insisted upon it.

Finally, the talk outlined the elevator SpaceX is developing to lower the astronauts and equipment to the ground from Starship’s top.

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China launches hi-res Earth observation satellite

9:14 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to place a new version of a smallsat Earth observation satellite into orbit. Dubbed the Beijing-3B, it appears to be an upgrade of a design first launched last year.

The launch site was in the interior of China, and for certain dumped its first stage onto that interior.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 33 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 51.

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InSight power levels remain steady on Mars

4:54 pm

InSight's status through August 21, 2022

The InSight science team today released its weekly update on the lander’s ability to generate power from its dust-covered solar panels, I have charted the new numbers, through August 21, 2022, on the graph to the right. From the update:

InSight was generating an average of 400 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .88 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

For the fourth straight week the daily power level remained steady, not dropping as predicted by engineers to a point in August that the mission would end. As it appears the seismometer can function when the panels produce 400 watt-hours per day, the lander is thus holding its own instead of shutting down.

That the amount of dust in the atmosphere increased slightly is both good and bad news. The good news: Even with slightly more dust, InSight’s power levels did not drop. The bad news: There is still plenty of dust in the air that can settle on the solar panels and further degrade their ability to generate electricity.

InSight’s future is thus a day-to-day thing, though it appears at this moment that it can likely continue to gather earthquake data for another week.

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Ingenuity completes 30th flight

3:57 pm

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity sometime during the August 20-21 weekend successfully completed its 30th flight, a short hop designed to check out its systems after a two-month pause during the dusty Martian winter.

The tweet mentions the flight was also an effort to clear off any dust that settled on the helicoper’s solar panels. In addition, the flight tested precision landings in anticipation of the present plans to use a helicopter on a future mission to recover Perseverance’s Martian samples.

The tweet provides no information about the flight, but this update from August 19, 2022 describes the flight plan:

When things get underway, the helicopter will climb to a max altitude of 16.5 feet (5 meters), translate sideways about 6.5 feet (2 meters), and then land. Total time aloft will be around 33 seconds.

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August 23, 2022 Quick space links

1:47 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay:

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Storm fronts on Jupiter

10:27 am

Storm front on Jupiter
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was processed by citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos from a raw image taken by the Jupiter orbiter Juno on August 17, 2022.

The orbiter was 18,354 miles above the cloud tops when the image was snapped. It shows a stormy cloud band in the southern hemisphere.

You can get a sense of the processing that Thomospoulos did by comparing this image with the raw photo. The original has almost no contrast, either in color or in contrast. By enhancing both Thomospoulos makes the violent nature of these large storms, thousands of miles in size, quite visible.

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A global map of Mars’ future mining regions

9:38 am

A global map of Mars' future mining regions
Click for labeled image.

Using data accumulated in the past decade from orbiters, scientists have now published a global map of Mars, showing the regions on the red planet where there are high concentrations of hydrated minerals, minerals formed in the past in conjunction with the presence of water.

The maps to the right show those regions in various colors, indicating different types of minerals.

On Earth, clays form when water interacts with rocks, with different conditions giving rise to different types of clays. For example, clay minerals such as smectite and vermiculite form when relatively small amounts of water interact with the rock and so retain mostly the same chemical elements as the original volcanic rocks. In the case of smectite and vermiculite those elements are iron and magnesium. When the amount of water is relatively high, the rocks can be altered more. Soluble elements tend to be carried away leaving behind aluminium-rich clays such as kaolin.

The big surprise is the prevalence of these minerals. Ten years ago, planetary scientists knew of around 1000 outcrops on Mars. This made them interesting as geological oddities. However, the new map has reversed the situation, revealing hundreds of thousands of such areas in the oldest parts of the planet.

Though this data once again suggests that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars, for future colonists it is more important in that it identifies the regions where the most valuable resources will likely be found. For example, most of the colored regions on the map are located in the dry equatorial parts of Mars. However, south of the giant canyon Valles Marineris is a mineral region at about 30 to 40 degrees south latitude, to the northwest of Argyre Basin. This is also a region with a high concentration of glacial features. The two combined will likely make this region very valuable real estate.

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SpaceX to use both Falcon 9 and Starship to launch 2nd gen Starlink satellites

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: In a letter sent to the FCC, SpaceX has revealed that it has revised its plans for launching the second generation of Starlink satellites, and has decided to launch them with both Falcon 9 and Starship rockets.

SpaceX has decided to use a mix of Falcon 9 and Starship rockets to launch the 30,000 satellites in its proposed second-generation Starlink broadband constellation. Launching some of the satellites with SpaceX’s “tested and dependable Falcon 9” will accelerate the constellation’s deployment to improve Starlink services. SpaceX director of satellite policy David Goldman wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to the Federal Communications Commission. Goldman did not say when SpaceX could start launching the second-generation constellation, which remains subject to FCC approval.

Previously the company’s plan had been to use Starship only, essentially retiring Falcon 9 once Starship was flying. This change could be for two fundamental reasons. First, the company has been launching Starlinks on Falcon 9 like clockwork this year, at a pace that could launch as many as 2,500 Starlink satellites in 2022 alone. With about 70% of that rocket reusable, it might now seem cost effective to continue to use it, even after Starship is flying.

The second reason is more worrisome, and has to do with Starship itself. SpaceX officials might now realize that the delays being imposed by the federal regulatory leviathan on Starship development might be significant enough that it won’t be ready when they need it for the full deployment of Starlink’s second generation constellation. If the FCC approves that deployment (an approval that is presently pending), SpaceX will have to launch at least half the full constellation of 30,000 satellites by around 2024 (thought that date might have been revised slightly).

It now might be necessary to use Falcon 9, because the federal government under Biden is standing in the way of Starship development.

Of course, it is possible that the engineering challenge of building Starship might be another reason. SpaceX might have realized that the rocket will be delayed anyway, and thus needs Falcon 9 to meet its timetable as promised to the FCC.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches satellite

8:47 am

China today successfully used its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket to launch what appears to be a technology test satellite for the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As the launch was from an interior spaceport in China, the rocket’s first stages crashed somewhere inland.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
32 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 32 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 50.

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August 22, 2022 Quick space links

11:03 am

From BtB’s stringer Jay:

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NASA again approves design concept for Orbital Reef commercial space station

10:53 am

Proposed Orbital Reef space station

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space announced today that NASA has completed, apparently for the second time, the design review for the Orbital Reef space station that the company wants to build in partnership with Blue Origin and others, thus allowing the actual design of the station to begin.

This press release announcement, on August 22, 2022, is a bit puzzling, as Sierra Space made almost the exact same announcement in April 2022. What, did NASA have to do this twice? Did issues come up after the first approval? Was the agency reviewing different things?

Regardless, NASA as usual is slowing things down considerably. Sierra Space and Blue Origin, the primary partners in this private space station project, first announced it in October 2021. It took the government almost a year to simply approve the basic concept so that the design phase could finally begin. At this pace it will be 2090 before the station is launched.

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Another Webb infrared image of Jupiter released

8:53 am

Jupiter as seen in the infrared by Webb
Click for original image.

The science team for the James Webb Space Telescope today released another infrared false-color image of Jupiter, this time processed for science instead of calibration of the telescope after launch.

That image is to the right, reduced to post here. From the caption:

Several exposures in three different filters were assembled to create this mosaic, after being corrected for the rotation of the planet. The combination of filters yields an image whose colors denote the height of the clouds and the intensity of auroral emissions.

The F360M filter (mapped to the red-orange colors) is sensitive to light reflected from the lower clouds and upper hazes. The red features in the polar regions are auroral emissions, caused by ions excited through collisions with charged particles at altitudes up to 1000 km above the cloud level. Auroral emission in red is evident in the northern and southern polar regions and reaches high above the limb of the planet. In the F212N filter (mapped to yellow-green colors), the gaseous methane in Jupiter’s atmosphere absorbs light; the greenish areas around the polar regions come from stratospheric hazes 100-200 km above the cloud level. The stratospheric haze that appears green in this composite is also concentrated in the polar regions, but extends down to equatorial latitudes and can also be seen along the limbs (edges) of the planet. The cyan channel holds the F150W2 filter, which is primarily sensitive to reflected light from the Jupiter’s deeper main cloud level at about one bar.

The Great Red Spot, the hazy equatorial region and myriad small storm systems appear white (or reddish-white) in this false-color image. Regions with little cloud cover appear as dark ribbons north of the equatorial region. Some dark regions — for example, those next to the Great Red Spot and in cyclonic features in the southern hemisphere — are also dark-colored when observed in visible wavelengths.

This image is part of the telescope’s early release science program.

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NASA lists 13 candidate landing sites for Artemis-3 manned mission

11:09 am

Candidate landing sites for Artemis-3
Click for original image.

NASA yesterday revealed its first preliminary list of thirteen candidate landing sites for the Artemis-3 manned mission, the first manned mission the agency wants to send to the Moon in 2026.

The image to the right, reduced, enhanced, and annotated by me to post here, shows these thirteen zones in blue. I have added the red dot to mark what I understand to be the planned landing zone of Viper, an unmanned rover that NASA hopes to launch by ’23 at the latest. From the press release:

The team identified regions that can fulfill the moonwalk objective by ensuring proximity to permanently shadowed regions, and also factored in other lighting conditions. All 13 regions contain sites that provide continuous access to sunlight throughout a 6.5-day period – the planned duration of the Artemis III surface mission. Access to sunlight is critical for a long-term stay at the Moon because it provides a power source and minimizes temperature variations.

Note that this mission will land a Starship with crew at this South Pole region. That spacecraft’s large payload capacity likely means that it could conceivably leave behind supplementary supplies for a follow-up next mission, and thus speed up development of the first lunar base.

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Ingenuity gearing up for 30th flight

10:33 am

The engineering team for the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars announced yesterday that they have successfully completed two some spin-up tests and are preparing for the first short hop following the pause in flights during the height of the Martian winter dust season.

To confirm that she is still flightworthy, we performed a 50-rpm spin on Aug. 6, and on Aug. 15 we performed a high-speed spin, which spun up the rotor system to flight-like speeds of 2,573 rpm for several seconds. Telemetry downlinked after both tests indicates Ingenuity is a go for flight.

Our 30th flight will be similar to our second flight. On April 22, 2021, Flight 2 was the first to include sideways movement: We “translated” 13 feet (4 meters) and then returned before landing. Flight 30 will be shorter, translating sideways only 7 feet (2 meters) and then landing, but with the specific goal of providing a data point on Ingenuity’s ability to accurately approach a landing target. Our navigation system’s performance will be of value to the Sample Recovery Helicopter team (part of the Mars Sample Return Program) in their early design work for a next-generation Mars Helicopter navigation system.

The last sentence references the recent decision to use a helicopter on the future sample return mission to land near the cached Perseverance samples and grab them.

The 30th flight is supposed to occur sometime in the next few days.

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SpaceX and China complete launches

12:51 pm

Two launches have just occurred in the 2022 launch race. First, SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage successfully landed on its drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its ninth flight.

China in turn used its Long March 2D rocket to launch three military reconnaissance satellites, at what was the early morning hours of August 20, 2022, China time. The launch path took the rocket over China’s interior as well as Taiwan, with the first stage crashing somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
31 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 31 in the national rankings, and the entire world 52 to 49. The 52 launches so far this year is now the fifth best total for the U.S. since the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

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Strings in Perseverance’s drill?

12:01 pm

String in Perseverance's drill
Click for full image.

Since August 5th, the Perseverance science team has been trying to figure out the origin as well as the consequences of “two string-like pieces” of foreign object debris (FOD as used by today’s acronym-happy scientists) that they have spotted next to one of the rover’s coring drill bits.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, looks directly down at that core drill bit and shows one of those strings both to the side of the bit as well in full resolution in the inset. From today’s update:

Since first identified Aug. 5 in imagery of the rover’s sample collection system after a 12th rock core sample was taken, the FOD has been the focus of several methodical diagnostic activities in an attempt to better understand the nature of the debris.

We’ve commanded the rover to move, rotate, or vibrate components we think could harbor FOD. And we’ve obtained multiple sets of images of the components from different angles and in different lighting conditions from rover cameras: Mastcam-Z, Navcam, Hazcam, Supercam, and even the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera located on the rover’s turret. Finally, a thorough review of recent coring and bit-exchange activities confirm that they all executed nominally with no indication of interference from the FOD.

Analysis of the latest round of imaging, downlinked earlier today, indicates that while the two small pieces remain visible in the upper part of the drill chuck, no new FOD has been observed. In addition, imagery taken of the ground beneath the robotic arm and turret, as well as the rover deck, also showed no new FOD.

Because these strings do not appear to interfere in any way with the drill’s operation, the science team has decided neither is a cause for concern, and will therefore command the rover to leave this just-completed drill site and move on to the southwest to a location at the base of the delta the rover visited about three months ago.

The strings themselves are likely pieces from the equipment released during the rover’s landing, and might even have come from the tangled string the rover imaged on the nearby ground in July, and that was gone just four days later. The wind had blown it away, and may have even at that time blown pieces into the drill.

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Indian company delivers Gaganyaan fairing and high altitude launch abort motor to ISRO

10:28 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian private company, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, yesterday delivered to India’s space agency ISRO the fairing and high altitude launch abort motor that will be used in Gaganyaan, that nation’s first manned spaceflight.

Though the article at the link does not say so, the fairings and abort motor will likely be used in one of two unmanned launch abort test flights ISRO intends to do before the actual manned mission, now set for sometime in ’24.

Hindustan Aeronautics is also a space company in India that will require watching. It not only built these major components for Gaganyaan, it also has built major components for India’s PSLV and GSLV rockets. It would not surprise me if the company eventually decides to build its own rocket, assuming the India government loosens the stranglehold it presently has over space and lets private companies compete against its government space operations. It was a similar stranglehold by NASA from the 1970s to the 2000s that squelched competition and innovation from the American private aerospace industry. When that ended, the renaissance in commercial space finally could begin.

UPDATE: It appears I was in error assuming Hindustan Aeronauts was a private company, as it is owned by the Indian government. I have edited the post above to reflect this. It appears the stranglehold the government has over India’s aerospace industry is no closer to loosening.

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Firefly completes a dress rehearsal countdown of Alpha rocket; schedules launch

10:14 am

Capitalism in space: Having successfully completed both a full dress rehearsal countdown and static fire test of its fully stacked Alpha rocket, Firefly Aerospace has now scheduled the rocket’s launch for September 11, 2022.

These details come from a tweet by the company, so details are very limited. Nonetheless, this will be the company’s second attempt to complete an orbital launch. The first attempt, in September 2021, failed when one of its first stage engines shut down prematurely.

The company had hoped to attempt this second launch ten months ago, but was forced to delay it when the federal government demanded its chief investor, Ukrainian billionaire Max Polykov, first sell off his share in the company.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Raytheon & Northrop Grumman successfully complete the second flight of a hypersonic missile prototype

10:04 am

Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, working in partnership, have successfully flown a hypersonic missile prototype for the second time in eleven months.

For the latest test, the HAWC prototype was carried under the wing of an aircraft and flown to high altitude, where it was released. A solid rocket booster then accelerated the vehicle to supersonic speed and a scramjet ignited. An engine without moving parts, a scramjet uses its forward motion to compress the incoming air into a shockwave that burns with fuel, producing enough thrust to propel the missile to over five times the speed of sound.

The latest prototype had only minor modifications from the previous flight and met all of its objectives. The data recovered by telemetry will be used to improve the digital models using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, which will increase the efficiency and performance as the weapon concept comes closer to practical deployment.

As this is a military project, not many details about the prototype were released, such as its size, speed, design.etc. One shouldn’t even trust the illustrations of the missile, provided by Northrop Grumman. Each shows the missile with a rounded lifting body shape on its bottom side, likely to protect and guide it on its re-entry, but there is no guarantee the illustrations’ shape matches that of the real missile.

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