Tag: spaceflight

September 12, 2022 Quick space links

1:17 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay.

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Blue Origin suborbital flight aborted during ascent

9:09 am

Capitalism in space: For what appeared to be an engine issue in the booster during the ascent phase, Blue Origin was forced to abort an unmanned New Shepard suborbital flight today.

I have embedded the live steam below, cued to just before the abort. It appears that something went seriously wrong with that first stage booster. The abort system immediately activated, separating the capsule and firing the capsule’s abort engines to take it safely away, with its parachutes bringing it down safely. That first stage booster was likely destroyed.

This particular suborbital flight fortunately was the first carrying no passengers since Blue Origin began commercial flights. Its payloads were a variety of experiments and commercial packages.

Regardless of the issue, Blue Origin will not be doing suborbital flights now for a considerable time, pending an investigation into this failure.

» Read more

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Firefly scrubs launch of Alpha rocket

7:37 am

UPDATE: September 12th launch scrubbed due to weather. No word on when the next launch attempt will be scheduled.

Original post about September 11th scrub:
————–
After making two attempts, engineers at Firefly yesterday finally scrubbed the launch of their Alpha rocket, rescheduling the next attempt for today with a four hour launch window opening at 3 pm (Pacific).

Firefly has yet to make orbit. Their first launch attempt last year of Alpha failed when one first stage engine shut down prematurely due to a loose connection.

If you wish to watch the launch, I will embed the live stream below, once it goes live later today.

UPDATE: I have embedded the live stream below, with it beginning at 1:30 pm (Pacific).
» Read more

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CAPSTONE in safe mode

1:07 pm

The lunar orbiter CAPSTONE, presently on its way to the Moon, went into safe mode on September 8th at the end of a mid-course correction engine burn.

The CAPSTONE mission team has good knowledge of the state and status of the spacecraft. The mission operations team is in contact with the spacecraft and working towards a solution with support from the Deep Space Network.

Under such conditions engineers almost always recover the spacecraft so that the mission proceeds as normal. No guarantees of course, but it is not unreasonable to expect the same with CAPSTONE.

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SpaceX launches 34 Starlink satellites plus commercial satellite for AST Mobile

6:30 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch 34 additional Starlink satellites into orbit. It also launched another customer’s communications satellite, AST Mobile’s BlueWalker-3.

The first stage successfully completed its record 14th flight, the most times a Falcon 9 first stage has been reused. It landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. In addition, the two fairing halves completed their 4th and 5th flights, respectively. As of this writing, the satellites have not yet deployed from the upper stage.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 56 to 36 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 56 to 55. That U.S. lead stands a good chance of increasing this weekend, as tomorrow SpaceX plans another Starlink launch, but more significantly, Firefly will make the second attempt to complete the first launch of its Alpha rocket, almost a year after the first failed attempt.

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Defense to help Commerce create its own ability to track orbital objects

12:40 pm

The Defense and Commerce departments yesterday signed an agreement where Defense will help Commerce create its own capability for tracking of all objects in orbit, from satellites to space junk.

The agreement, the Commerce Department said in a statement, defines how the two departments will work together to implement provisions of Space Policy Directive (SPD) 3 in 2018 that directed commerce to provide space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM) services, such as conjunction warnings, currently provided by the U.S. military.

The result of this is that the federal government is now creating a second bureaucracy to do what the military has been doing quite capably for more than a half century. Commerce intends to obtain its data by awarding contracts to private companies, who will do the actual tracking. The irony is that it is very possible the military will eventually sign similar contracts with the same companies, thus paying them twice for the same service. Meanwhile, Washington has an excuse for hiring more people.

Even more ironic, this policy directive was issued during the Trump administration. It might have intended for Commerce to replace the military, but under the Biden administration the federal bureaucracy is being allowed to interpret the policy more broadly, thus allowing both agencies to do the work.

I also guarantee that the Republicans will almost certainly do nothing to change this, should they take over Congress. For the past thirty years this so-called party of small government has done nothing to earn that title. Instead, it has simply engineered the growth of government, in a more subtle and deliberate manner.

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FAA and NTSB sign deal dividing turf for investigating space accidents

11:46 am

FAA & NTSB agreement

Turf war! The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday signed an agreement that divides up the responsibilities for investigating accidents that occur in or by space entities.

You can read that agreement here [pdf]. A screen capture of the key clauses is to the right. Essentially, the NTSB will lead any investigation that either causes death or injury, or involves damage to property not related to the space operation itself, while the FAA will lead all other investigations.

The agreement also has a lot of clauses describing how the two agencies will work together in dividing up this turf before, during, and after investigations. Above all, the agreement now authorizes both agencies to “conduct its own analysis and determine its respective conclusions and recommendations in accordance with its authorities.”

The agreement stems from an effort by the NTSB to take over all space-related accident investigations it proposed in November 2021 that both the FAA and industry strongly opposed. This agreement however shows that the Biden administration ignored those objections in order to give the NTSB a wider range of power, while also giving bureaucrats in both agencies more power as well. Under this agreement, every space incident is now going to be investigated twice, with both the NTSB and FAA doing their own investigations.

Expect this agreement to be used by the Washington bureaucracy to slow or shut down innovation and new technology. The NTSB is designed to investigate incidents caused in the long established and robust airline industry, not developing cutting-edge experimental work. It will naturally act to discourage such experimental work.

Meanwhile, the FAA will chime in with its own investigation and analysis. The competing results will only cause confusion and disorder, thus further acting to discourage any new and risky innovations.

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A “what the heck?!” mesa in the southern polar regions of Mars

4:49 pm

A
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on July 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “Circular and Banded Landform.”

I put this mesa into a geological category I dub “What the heck?!” We are clearly looking at a mesa, probably no more than 200 feet high, if that. What makes it baffling are the parallel bands that not only cut across the mesa but extend in the same direction for many miles in all directions. Though at first glance these bands appear to be dunes, their rocky eroded look along the mesa’s northwest rim suggests instead the bands are the top edge of many vertically oriented parallel layers, which at this mesa’s flanks are eroding alternatively at different rates.

The overview map below shows us where this mesa is located, relative to the south pole.
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully test fires all six engines on Starship prototype #24

10:08 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX yesterday successfully completed for the first time an eight-second-long static fire test of all six engines on Starship prototype #24.

I have embedded video of the test below. The amount of power exhibited is quite impressive. In fact, it was so powerful it likely melted the concrete below the rocket, sending hot debris flying that caused a major brushfire.

Most likely, eight long seconds of blast-furnace conditions melted the top layer of surrounding concrete and shot a hailstorm of tiny superheated globules in almost every direction. Indeed, in almost every direction there was something readily able to burn, a fire started. In several locations to the south and west, brush caught fire and began to burn unusually aggressively, quickly growing into walls of flames that sped across the terrain. To the east, debris even made it into a SpaceX dumpster, the contents of which easily caught fire and burned for hours.

Eventually, around 9pm CDT, firefighters were able to approach the safed launch pad and rocket, but the main fire had already spread south, out of reach. Instead, they started controlled burns near SpaceX’s roadblock, hoping to clear brush and prevent the fire (however unlikely) from proceeding towards SpaceX’s Starbase factory and Boca Chica Village homes and residents.

The rocket itself came though the test unscathed, a major milestone on the path to its first orbital flight.

During a launch, the rocket would have quickly lifted off, and thus caused far less stress to the concrete on the ground. Nonetheless, this test suggests SpaceX needs to do more pad preparation for any tests of Superheavy prototype #7, which has 33 engines at its base.

» Read more

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FCC proposes new regulation requiring satellites to be de-orbited five years after mission end

9:53 am

The FCC yesterday announced it is considering a new regulation that would require companies to de-orbit defunct satellites in low Earth orbit no more than five years after the satellite’s shut down.

The order, if adopted by commissioners, would require spacecraft that end their missions in or passing through LEO — defined as altitudes below 2,000 kilometers — dispose of their spacecraft through reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere as soon as practicable and no more than five years after the end of the mission. The rule would apply to satellites launched two years after the order is adopted, and include both U.S.-licensed satellites as well as those licensed by other jurisdictions but seeking U.S. market access.

According to the FCC press release [pdf], this new regulation will be discussed at the next public meeting of the commission on September 29, 2022.

Though in general this rule appears a good idea, there are several legitimate objections to it. NASA’s orbital debris office noted that this rule would only reduce space junk by 10%. Others questioned the FCC’s regulatory authority to do this at all, since its main statutory function is not the regulation satellite operations but the use of the frequencies those satellites use.

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NASA wants to launch SLS in September; needs range safety office waiver to do it

9:39 am

In outlining the status of the repair work on the hydrogen leak on SLS on the launchpad yesterday, NASA officials indicated that they are targeting a September 23rd launch date that will require the Space Force range safety office to okay the use of a flight abort system with batteries that are significantly past their use-by date.

NASA has submitted a request to the Eastern Range for an extension of the current testing requirement for the flight termination system. NASA is respecting the range’s processes for review of the request, and the agency continues to provide detailed information to support a range decision.

The range office had required that the batteries for that flight termination system be checked every 20 days, a process that requires the rocket to be rolled back to the assembly building. It had already given NASA a five day extension to 25 days, but even that was insufficient to get the rocket launched in its previous launch window, expiring on September 6th. Though NASA has not said how long an extension it is requesting, to do a September 23rd launch would require another extension of 17 days, making for a total 23-day waiver for those batteries. Thus, instead of limiting the life of those batteries to 20 days, NASA is requesting the range to allow the batteries to go unchecked for 43 days, at a minimum.

For the range to give that first waiver I think is somewhat unprecedented. To do it again, for that much time, seems foolish, especially as this will the rocket’s first launch, and a lot can go wrong.

NASA officials also hinted during yesterday’s press conference — in their bureaucrat way — that human error might have caused the hydrogen leak.

NASA has not confirmed if an “inadvertent” manual command that briefly overpressurized the hydrogen fuel line caused the leak, but the agency is investigating the incident. Bolger said new manual processes replaced automated ones during the second attempt and the launch team could have used more time to practice them. “So we didn’t, as a leadership team, put our our operators in the best place we could have,” Bolger said. During the Sept. 17 fueling test, NASA will try out a slower, “kinder and gentler” process that should avoid such events.

If the Space Force and the Biden administration demand the range officer allow this rocket, with this team, to be launched with a questionable flight termination system, we should expect public resignations from several range officers. Whether anyone in our present government however has the ethics to do such a thing appears very doubtful.

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September 8, 2022 Quick space links

3:30 pm

Courtesy of string Jay:

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Russia confirms Luna-25 delayed till next year

8:42 am

The landing area for Luna-25
The landing zone for Luna-25 at Boguslawsky Crater

The head of Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, confirmed yesterday that the launch of Russia’s first lunar science probe since the 1970s has been delayed until 2023.

The Doppler speed and distance sensor made by the Vega Concern owned by the Rostech State Corporation, that could guarantee a soft landing, underperformed in terms of measurement precision, a source in the space industry told TASS in July. The launch will likely be postponed until 2023, the source added.

Russian sources had indicated in July that this delay was likely. Yesterday’s announcement merely made it certain.

This project has been under development for almost a quarter of century, which appears to be the average development time for government-run projects, whether in Russia or in the U.S. Just long enough to provide an almost entire career for bureaucrats.

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Arianespace’s Ariane-5 rocket launches communications satellite

5:29 pm

Arianespace today used its Ariane-5 rocket, launching from French Guiana, to successfully place a Eutelsat communications satellite into orbit.

This was the fourth successful launch this year for Arianespace, so Europe still does not make the leader board. The company had predicted it would launch eleven times in 2022. At this moment it appears very questionable it will be able to match that prediction.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, but is now tied with the entire world combined 55 to 55.

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Axiom chosen by NASA to build first Artemis moonsuits

5:22 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA today awarded Axiom the contract to build the moonsuits the astronauts will use on the first lunar landing of its Artemis program, dubbed Artemis-3.

After reviewing proposals from its two eligible spacesuit vendors, NASA selected Axiom Space for the task order, which has a base value of $228.5 million. A future task order will be competed for recurring spacesuit services to support subsequent Artemis missions.

The contract award continues NASA shift from its failed spacesuit effort — taking fourteen years and a billion dollars to produce nothing — to hiring the private sector to do it.

Previously NASA had awarded contracts to both Axiom and Collins Aerospace to build spacesuits, either for spacewalks or on the Moon. Today’s award is specifically for moonsuits for that first lunar mission.

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Ingenuity completes 31st flight

3:06 pm

Perseverance's location on September 2, 2022
Click for interactive map

Though no details have yet been released, the engineering team for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has posted the numbers for the helicopter’s 31st flight, which took place yesterday.

Ingenuity flew 318 feet to a height of 33 feet for 56 seconds. The maximum ground speed was 10.6 mph. The white dot on the map to the right indicates the approximate landing spot. The blue dot Perseverance’s location as of September 3rd.

The flight plan had been to fly 319 feet, so Ingenuity landed one foot short of that plan.

That difference does not indicate any problems. However, one of the present goals of the engineering team is to improve their landing accuracy in order to provide data for the future sample return helicopter that is now in development to come and get Perseverance’s sample cores. That future helicopter will need to be able to land very precisely, and they are using Ingenuity to refine the Martian flight software.

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An example of the youngest big lava flow on Mars

1:34 pm

An example of the youngest big lava flow on Mars
Click for full image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The photo above, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 13, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows two dramatic ancient flows of flood lava. The arrows indicate what I think is the direction of flow for each, though the direction of the flow to the north appears more certain. In a wider context camera image the bulk of the evidence suggests the southern flow is heading west (as indicated by the arrow), but there are scalloped mesas within it that suggest the opposite.

The overview map above marks the location of this picture by the white cross inside the Athabasca Valles flood lava, thought by some scientists [pdf] to be Mars’ youngest major lava event that erupted about 600 million years ago and in just a matter of a few weeks poured out enough lava to cover an area about the size of Great Britain.

The general trend of the Athabasca flow was to the south, splitting into a big western and southeastern flows. This picture captures the southern edge of that southeastern flow, which might help explain why the flow directions in the picture seem so different from the main Athabasca flow. On a large scale, the flow was to the southeast. On a small scale at the edges the flow could go in many directions as the lava looks to find its level.

The Medusa Fossae Formation is the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars, and is thought to be the source of most of the red planet’s dust. Though the origin of the ash is not yet known, it likely came from the eruptions that formed the planet’s giant volcanoes to the east and west.

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Research: Flies on ISS benefited greatly from simulated gravity

10:52 am

Scientists have found that providing fruitflies 1g of artificial gravity on ISS using a centrifuge acted to reduce the medical changes that weightlessness produces.

In this study, scientists sent flies to the space station on a month-long mission in a newly developed piece of hardware called the Multi-use Variable-gravity Platform (MVP), capable of housing flies at different gravity levels. The flies in this hardware had access to fresh food as they lived and reproduced. By using distinct compartments, the MVP allowed for different generations of flies to be separated. On the space station, one group of fruit flies experienced microgravity similar to their human counterparts. Another group was exposed to artificial gravity by simulating Earth’s gravity on the space station using a centrifuge – an instrument that spins to simulate gravity. While on the space station, cameras in the hardware recorded behavior of these “flyonauts”. At different points in time, some of the flies were frozen and returned to Earth to study their gene expression.

…More in-depth analysis on the ground immediately post-flight revealed neurological changes in flies exposed to microgravity. As the flies acclimated to being back on Earth after their journey, the flies that experienced artificial gravity in space aged differently. They faced similar but less severe challenges to the flies that were in microgravity.

You can read the paper here.

To some extent, this study tells us nothing. We already know from a half century of research that zero gravity causes negative physical changes in both fruit flies and humans. What we really need to know is the lowest level of artificial gravity that would be beneficial. It is much easier to engine a spacecraft to produce 0.1g of artificial gravity than 1g. Even 0.5g would ease the engineering problem. The problem is that we do not yet know the right number.

It is a shame the scientists didn’t subject some flies to 0.5g, just to find out if that level of artificial gravity worked to provide benefits.

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Rocket Lab gets contract with military to study point-to-point cargo transport

10:33 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday revealed that the U.S. military has given it a contract to study whether its rockets could eventually be used for point-to-point cargo transport.

This study contract is similar to the one the military gave SpaceX for its Starship/Superheavy rocket. Both are intended not to actual fly missions, but to look at the engineering of the rockets to see if it will be practical to use them for point-to-point cargo transport on Earth.

The deal suggests the military has been impressed with Rocket Lab’s efforts to make its smallsat Electron rocket resusable, as well as its development program for its newer and larger Neutron resusable rocket.

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Computer model: Glaciers move slower in Mars’ gravity

10:00 am

Using a computer model that compared glacier flows on Earth and Mars, scientists have concluded that past glaciers on Mars flowed more slowly than on Earth, and produced different types of erosion features that might explain the red planet’s many riverlike geological features.

The new study modeled how Mars’ low gravity would affect the feedback between how fast an ice sheet slides and how water drains below the ice, finding under-ice channels would be likely to form and persist. Fast water drainage would increase friction at the interface of rock and ice. This means ice sheets on Mars likely moved, and eroded the ground under them, at exceedingly slow rates, even when water accumulated under the ice, the authors said.

From the paper [pdf]:

We show quantitatively that the lower surface gravity on Mars should alter the behavior of wet-based ice masses by modifying the subglacial drainage system, making efficient, channelized drainage beneath Martian ice both more likely to form and more resilient to closure. Using as an example the case of the ancient southern circumpolar ice sheet, we demonstrate that the expected finger-print of wet-based Martian ice sheets is networks of subglacial channels and eskers, consistent with the occur-rence of valley networks and inverted ridges found on the Martian highlands.

This paper confirms the sense I have gotten from the planetary community about glaciers on Mars, that it could be the flow of glaciers that formed its many meandering canyons, not liquid water. The case however is not yet proven, as this is only a computer model.

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China’s Long March 2D launches two military satellites

9:40 am

China yesterday successfully launched two military satellites using its Long March 2D rocket.

Launched from an interior spaceport, the rocket’s first stage crashed somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 54.

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September 6, 2022 Quick space links

5:16 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s intrepid stringer.

  • Sierra Space: Mission: Tenacity Part 1

    • This video is just an empty-of-content commercial for Sierra Space, filled with feel-good “woke” blather but little real information about the actual status of this long overdue spacecraft. It is worth watching however because it reveals this emptiness. Reminds me of the many similar videos from Blue Origin and NASA over the years, filled with big promises but little actual achievement.

  • How does Starlink Satellite Internet Work?

    • This video, almost 30 minutes long, is definitely worth watching if you have any interest in signing up for Starlink, or just have an interest in the coming low orbit satellite constellation boom.

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South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter successfully makes course correction

10:20 am

On September 2nd engineers for South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter successfully completed a major course correction, firing its engines to adjust its path towards the Moon.

The science ministry announced Sept. 4 that the maneuver was so successful that the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), which controls the spacecraft called Danuri, has decided to skip an additional correction maneuver planned for Sept. 16.

It will reach lunar orbit on December 16th, then make five more orbital adjustments before reaching its science orbit in January. While the spacecraft has instruments from both South Korea and the U.S. for studying the lunar surface, its main goal is to teach South Korea engineers and scientists how to do this.

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Inouye Solar Telescope begins science operations

10:07 am

The National Science Foundation yesterday announced the inauguration of science operations of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii.

The sample first images provided at the link are excellent, but rather than show this telescope’s abilities, they instead illustrate the absurdity of spending millions to build a ground-based telescope. None compare with the spectacular high resolution solar images being produced today from the myriad of solar telescopes in space.

Moreover, the history of this telescope tells us much about the bankrupt nature of all modern government projects:

Over 25 years ago, the NSF invested in creating a world-leading, ground-based solar observatory to confront the most pressing questions in solar physics and space weather events that impact Earth. This vision, executed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) through the NSF’s National Solar Observatory (NSO), was realized during the formal inauguration of the Inouye Solar Telescope. [emphasis mine]

It took our modern incompetent federal government a quarter century to build this single telescope. Compare that with the construction of the solar telescopes it is replacing. They were conceived, designed, and built in much less than a decade back in the early 1960s. And cost less too.

The press release at the link also spends a lot of space touting “diversity” and “Native Hawaiian” cultural needs, which really have nothing to do with the study of the Sun. That focus tells us how misguided our government has become, and how it is using its coercive power to drag us all along down that foolish path towards hell.

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Webb’s infrared view of the Tarantula Nebula

9:55 am

Two views of the Tarantula Nebula by Webb
Click for original image.

The two images to the right, reduced and annotated to post here, were released today by the science team of the James Webb Space Telescope, and show two different views of the Tarantula Nebula, located 161,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known. Astronomers focused three of Webb’s high-resolution infrared instruments on the Tarantula. Viewed with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) [top], the region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk. The nebula’s cavity centered in the NIRCam image has been hollowed out by blistering radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which sparkle pale blue in the image. Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion by these stars’ powerful stellar winds, forming pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster. These pillars contain forming protostars, which will eventually emerge from their dusty cocoons and take their turn shaping the nebula.

…The region takes on a different appearance when viewed in the longer infrared wavelengths detected by Webb’s Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI) [bottom]. The hot stars fade, and the cooler gas and dust glow. Within the stellar nursery clouds, points of light indicate embedded protostars, still gaining mass. While shorter wavelengths of light are absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula, and therefore never reach Webb to be detected, longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate that dust, ultimately revealing a previously unseen cosmic environment.

As with all images from Webb, these are false color, as the telescope views the infrared heat produced by stars and galaxies and interstellar clouds, not the optical light our eyes see. Thus, the scientists assign different colors to the range of wavelengths each instrument on Webb captures.

These photos once again illustrate Webb’s value. It will provide a new layer of data to supplement the basic visual information provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing scientists to better understand the puzzles we see in the optical.

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More static fire tests of Starship/Superheavy expected this week

9:35 am

SpaceX appears to be gearing up for more engine tests of both Superheavy prototype #7 and Starship prototype #24 this week, having called for road closures at Boca Chica today with additional options thoughout the week.

The article at the link mostly provides an overview of the changes in both stages that occurred because of the shift from the first version of the Raptor engine to the much more streamlined Raptor-2. The side-by-side image of both versions is quite revealing, showing once again how much SpaceX adheres to Musk’s adage that “the best part is no part.” Raptor-2 is astonishingly simpler and more compact, even though it produces about 25% more power.

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China launches two satellites with its Kuaizhou-1A rocket

9:18 am

China today successfully placed what it labeled as “two test satellites” into orbit using its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket.

No information at all was released about both satellites.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 55 to 35 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 53.

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Gullies and glaciers in a crater on Mars

4:46 pm

The gullies and glaciers in Avire Crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on July 10, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the floor of 4-mile-wide Avire Crater, located at about 41 degrees south latitude inside the much larger 185-mile wide Newton Crater.

This picture was taken as part of a long term monitoring program of the many gullies that flow down the slopes of the crater’s interior rim. In fact, the gullies of this crater have so interested scientists that one even proposed [pdf] this location as a potential future rover landing site.

Avire Crater, a small … gullied crater within Newton Crater, provides many aspects ideal to a future rover mission. It has been previously hypothesized to be the location of a former paleolake with multiple episodes of ponding and deposition. Gullies occur almost continuously on the southwest wall clockwise to the northeastern wall. Dark-toned dunes are present in the northern portion of the crater, in some places obscuring gullies while cut by gullies in others. No changes in the extent or appearance of the dunes have been observed since they were first imaged … in January of 2000. The dunes lack superimposed craters, indicating that the gullies that cut through them are geologically very youthful. Layered lobate features are present at the base of the gullies on the northern wall, seen in many other craters on Mars (not always in association with gullies), which have been suggested to have formed as terminal moraines of ice-rich flows; in Avire, these features have also been suggested to be paleolake deposits. The crater floor is obscured by mid-latitude “fill” material, hypothesized to be partially comprised of ice based on morphologic evidence that the material has been partially removed.

As gullies, dunes, and “fill” material occur in many places on Mars, a single rover mission to a site containing these features would provide valuable information applicable to thousands of other locations across the planet.

The curved ridgeline in the crater floor is thought to be a moraine. The “fill” material to the south is essentially glacial in nature. Both, as well as the gullies, appear to have been shaped either a paleolake that once existed in the crater or by cyclical glacier activity. By going to this one crater, scientists could study all these different geological features at one time.
» Read more

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September 5, 2022 Space quick links

11:11 am

All courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

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India’s space agency successfully tests prototype for controlling descent of spent 1st stages

9:38 am

IAD by ISRO

India’s space agency ISRO on September 3, 2022 successfully used a suborbital sounding rocket to test a prototype of an inflatable airbag, which it dubs an Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (IAD), that can inflate at the top of a 1st stage and slow and control its descent back to Earth after launch.

The graphic to the right was adapted from the mission brochure [pdf]. According to ISRO:

The IAD was initially folded and kept inside the payload bay of the rocket. At around 84 km altitude, the IAD was inflated and it descended through atmosphere with the payload part of sounding rocket. The pneumatic system for inflation was developed by LPSC. The IAD has systematically reduced the velocity of the payload through aerodynamic drag and followed the predicted trajectory. This is first time that an IAD is designed specifically for spent stage recovery. All the objectives of the mission were successfully demonstrated

ISRO claims this design can not only facilitate the reuse of first stages, it can also be used for science payloads to Mars and Venus.

I look at this and wonder, wouldn’t parachutes or parasails, already developed and used numerous times in similar applications, do the same job? In fact, Rocket Lab has already successfully used parachutes to control the re-entry of its Electron first stages. Meanwhile, SpaceX uses simple and lightweight grid fins to control the descent of its Falcon 9 first stages, and simply fires that stage’s engines twice to slow it down for landing.

While there may be engineer advantages to this airbag design, the whole thing smacks of many of NASA’S complex test programs that never made it past prototype tests. The ideas always looked good, but they never were practical or cost effective.

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