Tag: spaceflight

Cracking ice on Mars?

12:43 pm

Cracking ice on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the MRO science team dubs “erosion of scalloped terrain” in the northern lowland plains of Mars.

The cracks invoke the polygon cracks one sees in mud as it dries. The circular feature suggests a buried crater whose shape is merely suggested because the cracks are conforming to the underground topography.

Are we looking at dried mud? Maybe, but more likely we are seeing a sheet of ice now sublimating away and cracking as it does so. If you look at the full photo you will see the cracked material also appears to drape itself over several nearby low ridges, something that seems more likely from ice than mud.

The overview map below also suggests this is a buried layer of ice.
» Read more

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China tests lunar orbital maneuvers using last in-space component of Chang’e-5 sample return mission

9:48 am

China appears to be using the last in-space component of its Chang’e-5 sample return mission, left in lunar orbit after the samples came back to Earth and the sample ascent capsule was sent crashing to the lunar surface, to test a variety of lunar orbital maneuvers that could be used in future missions.

Chinese engineers have apparently moved it from a near-Moon orbit to what is called a distant retrograde orbit (DRO), shifting back and forth from the Lagrange points on each side of the Moon with respect to the Earth. Though some spacecraft in the Artemis program are planned to use this orbit, this is the first time anyone has done so.

[S]pacecraft activity tracker Jonathan McDowell, also an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, told SpaceNews that he believes China is probably using the Chang’e-5 spacecraft gaining experience with astrodynamics. “They are using it as a toy to play around with. It is clearly useful as a stable lunar orbit for future missions, I just don’t think it’s a specific precursor.”

This activity is also par for the course for China. They have previously used other leftover lunar spacecraft to test different orbital maneuvers. The activity also confirms China’s determination to continue its exploration and settlement of the Moon.

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OneWeb sued by businessman for not paying him

9:38 am

An American businessman with ties in Kazakhstan and who claims he used those ties to obtain permission for OneWeb to launch its satellites there has now sued OneWeb.

Giorgi Rtskhiladze, an American-Georgian businessman, claims that he was not paid for arranging space rocket-launch rights for OneWeb in Kazakhstan. The company received public funding in 2020 after filing for bankruptcy and winning the support of Dominic Cummings, then the Prime Minister’s most senior adviser.

The $30m claim, filed in New York, alleges that Mr Rtskhiladze successfully lobbied the Kazakh government to allow OneWeb to launch satellites from Kazakhstan and operate a ground station for its internet network but was not paid. Mr Rtskhiladze alleges that OneWeb defrauded him by keeping him engaged with Kazakh officials but then terminated his services only after he demanded payment. His work led to “hundreds of millions of dollars in value” for OneWeb, he claims.

OneWeb denies these claims entirely. The claims do appear suspicious because Russia was doing the launching, and it has a solid lease to do so with Kazakhstan. Moreover, it is very doubtful Kazakhstan would do anything to threaten those launches, considering Russia was making a lot of money from them and would not take kindly to such an action.

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China wants a formal hot line with U.S. and its companies to avoid space collisions

9:30 am

China last week proposed that a formal method of communications be established between it and the U.S. and its companies in order to avoid space collisions.

The proposal was made after Chinese officials once again claimed that several Starlink satellites had threatened its space station, something U.S. officials dispute.

At a Feb. 10 press conference, Zhao Lijian, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reiterated claims the country made to the United Nations in December that it had to maneuver its space station twice in 2021 to avoid close approaches by SpaceX Starlink satellites. “China was fulfilling the international obligation stipulated by Article V of the Outer Space Treaty by informing the U.N. of the Starlink satellites’ dangerous approach to the Chinese space station that threatened the safety of in-orbit Chinese astronauts,” he said according to a government transcript, adding that the “in-orbit Chinese astronauts were facing real and urgent safety threats.”

China filed its notice with the U.N., he said, after failing to hear U.S. officials. “After the incidents, China’s competent authorities tried multiple times to reach the U.S. side via e-mail, but received no reply,” he said.

The U.S. government, though, tells a different story. In its own note verbale filed with the U.N., dated Jan. 28 and published by the U.N.’s Office for Outer Space Affairs Feb. 3, the U.S. says it never heard from the Chinese government about the close approaches by satellites designated Starlink-1095 and Starlink-2305.

This cat-and-mouse game is not simply about avoiding collisions in space. China this year will launch two more modules to its space station, using its Long March 5B rocket. Unless it has completely redesigned the rocket (very unlikely), the core stage for both launches will come crashing uncontrolled to the ground, causing endless bad press for China. These claims by China appear to be a propaganda effort to improve its image prior to those launches.

Nonetheless, establishing a better lines of communications with China to avoid future collisions makes sense. Right now U.S. companies are forbidden by law from communicating directly with China, which makes resolving collision threats difficult if not impossible.

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A rebranded Virgin Galactic to reopen ticket sales

9:14 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic today announced both a major rebranding of the company — significantly deemphasizing its links to Richard Branson — as well as a resumption of ticket sales for its suborbital flights.

Virgin Galactic opened ticket sales to the general public and rebranded itself today a week ahead of what promises to be another dismal quarterly earnings report. The company most recently reported to having 700 reservations for suborbital spaceflights, with plans to reach 1,000 later this year. Space tourism flights are currently scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2022.

Virgin Galactic’s battered stock, which opened at $8.93, soared by more than 29 percent to $10.50 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is scheduled to report earnings (actually a loss) for the fourth quarter of 2021 on Feb. 22.

Tickets will cost $450K, with a $150K deposit required. It also appears that — in order to encourage sales — the company is capping present sales to the first 1,000 who provide the deposit. Since it has for years claimed it has 700 paying customers already, this suggests they are looking for only another 300 at this time.

Branson’s share in the company is now only about 11% — having successfully pumped and then dumped 80% of his shares — and it appears its management senses his name and the association with his Virgin Group now carries more negative than positive connotations. The new company logo for example shrinks the word “Virgin” so much that if you didn’t look close, you’d think the company was simply called “Galactic.”

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First image from IXPE

3:29 pm

Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A as seen by IXPE

NASA today released the first image produced from its new X-ray space telescope, the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).

The photo to the right is that image, showing the intensity of X-rays coming from the supernovae remnant Cassiopeia A. From the caption:

Colors ranging from cool purple and blue to red and hot white correspond with the increasing brightness of the X-rays. The image was created using X-ray data collected by IXPE between Jan. 11-18.

Though Chandra also detects objects in X-rays, IXPE will also detect their polarization, or the way the rays are oriented as they travel through space.

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Curiosity looks out across the mountains

12:20 pm

Curiosity panorama, Sol 3387, February 15, 2022
Click for high resolution. Original images found here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The mosaic above, created from two photos taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera and downloaded from the rover today, looks to the southeast across the small rocky valley the rover has been traversing for the past two months towards Mount Sharp.

The rover had entered this valley through the nearest gap on the left, then traveled uphill from the left to the right until it had passed behind the nearest dark ridge on the right. It then retreated and turned left, starting uphill through Gordon Notch, as shown in the overview map to the right.

On the overview, the white line marks Curiosity’s past travels, with red dotted line indicating its planned future route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate view in the panorama above.

For scale, Navarro Mountain is about 450 feet tall. The actual peak of Mount Sharp is blocked by the white front range to the left. The rover is presently still 12,600 feet below that peak, which sits to the southeast about 35 miles away.

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Orbex installs launchpad at test site

10:50 am

Capitalism in space: Orbex has now completed the installation of the first launchpad build in Great Britain in more than a half century, and will use it for static fire tests of its Prime rocket.

Full ‘dress rehearsals’ of launch procedures for the Orbex ‘Prime’ rocket can now take place at the test site. Orbex Prime is a micro-launcher designed to transport small satellites weighing around 150kg to low Earth orbit. It will eventually launch from its ‘home’ spaceport at Sutherland in the North of Scotland.

Actual launches will occur on a different launchpad at Sutherland. Whether it will be this launchpad, moved to Sutherland, or a second new pad built at Sutherland, has not yet been decided by the company. Either way, according to earlier releases, the company is targeting that first launch before the end of the year. Since it took about two months to build this first launchpad and deliver it, the decision to build a second pad will not impact that schedule.

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SpaceX begins filling methane tanks at Starship launchsite in Texas

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has begun the slow process of filling the storage tanks at its launchpad in Boca Chica with the methane that will be used by its Starship and Superheavy rocket once launched.

To fill the two existing tanks, which may store enough methane to fuel a stacked Starship and Super Heavy about 4/5ths of the way, SpaceX will need around 40-50 more tanker deliveries. Since last November, SpaceX has completed more than 320 liquid nitrogen and 200 liquid oxygen deliveries – equivalent to about 6700 tons (~14.8M lb) of LN2 [liquid nitrogen] and 4200 tons (~9.3M lb) of LOx [liquid oxygen]. If SpaceX maintains that average and focuses entirely on LCH4 [methane], the two horizontal tanks could be filled to the brim before the end of February.

Having a substantial amount of [methane] stored at the orbital tank farm will finally allow SpaceX to attempt the first major wet dress rehearsals (WDRs) and, more importantly, the first full static fires with flightworthy Super Heavy booster prototypes. Of course, a tank farm with full supplies of LOx, LCH4, LN2, and their gaseous equivalents is also a necessity for the first orbital Starship launch attempt, which has most recently slipped from a target of mid-2021 to no earlier than (NET) Q2 2022, pending regulatory approval.

The article also notes that the way SpaceX built two vertical methane tanks at the launchpad appears in violation of Texas regulations, and might either need a waiver from the state or be rebuilt in order to be used. Subsequently the company has added two horizontal tanks that conform to regulations, and it is these tanks it is now filling. More tanks however will have to be added to give it the fuel needed for launch.

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Astronomers form lobbying group to block development on Moon’s far side

9:14 am

Lunar zone reserved solely for astronomers
Lunar zone reserved exclusively for radio astronomers

In order to allow them to someday in the future maybe consider the idea of possibly building space-based radio telescopes on the Moon, astronomers have now formed a new lobbying group to advocate the creation of a zone more than a thousand miles wide on the Moon’s far side where all future development will be forbidden.

The new committee is chaired by Claudio Maccone, an Italian SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) astronomer, space scientist and mathematician. Maccone supports creation of a Protected Antipode Circle or PAC, a large circular piece of lunar landscape about 1,130 miles (1,820 kilometers) wide that would become the most shielded area of the moon’s far side.

“PAC does not overlap with other areas of interest to human activity,” he said. “PAC is the only area of the far side that will never be reached by the radiation emitted by future space bases located at the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth-moon system.”

In view of these unique features, Maccone believes the PAC should be officially recognized by the United Nations as an international protected area, where radio contamination by humans is curbed, now and into the future.

In other words, these astronomers want to be given, for free, full ownership of the region in the center circle on the graphic above for future radio telescopes, even though at present they have no plans or projects to build such things.

Though the idea of creating a region protected from radio signals so that good radio astronomy can be conducted has merit, no one should have the slightest sympathy for this request by astronomers. Why should anyone give them this vast amount of real estate when astronomers have shown so little interest in building any telescopes in space, anywhere?

Only after the astronomical community finally proposes an actual radio telescope for installation at this site should this request be given the slightest attention. Before that, it is merely a stupid power grab by elitists who deserve nothing from nobody.

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SpaceX and Jared Isaacman announce another private Dragon flight

7:24 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX and Jared Isaacman, the man who organized and commanded the Inspiration4 private commercial manned Dragon flight last fall, today announced a second private commercial Dragon flight, scheduled for this coming fall.

SpaceX plans to launch a new private astronaut mission, Polaris Dawn, from Florida as early as Nov. 1 and will attempt to conduct the first private spacewalk in history, the company announced Monday.

Businessman Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of the payments company Shift4, will command the mission, having previously he led the first all-private orbital mission in September known as Inspiration4. Isaacman is an experienced jet pilot.

The crew will also include two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, as mission specialists and Isaacman’s business associate, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, as pilot.

The flight will attempt to achieve a higher orbit than even the highest flights during the U.S. space program’s Gemini missions that flew 853 miles above the Earth with astronauts Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon.

Isaacman has also tied this flight to more fundraising for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, suggesting that he was very happy with the charity received in connection with his Inspiration4 spaceflight. If this new flight comes off as planned, Isaacman will follow it up with two more SpaceX manned flights.

For the spacewalk, SpaceX will have to complete the development of its own EVA spacesuit, and have four suits available for the crew since Dragon capsules do not have an airlock.

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FAA delays Starship approval again

1:03 pm

Death by a thousand cuts: The FAA today announced that it is once again delaying the release of the final version of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility, the PEA, that will allow Starship orbital launches to occur there.

The FAA intended to release the Final PEA on February 28, 2022. The FAA now plans to release the Final PEA on March 28, 2022 to account for further comment review and ongoing interagency consultations.

Though the draft PEA had approved SpaceX future Starship operations at Boca Chica, all signs continue to point to heavy resistance to making that approval official both within the Biden administration as well as those other “interagency consultations.”

I predict that the FAA will delay again, and it will delay repeatedly month by month as agencies like Fish & Wildlife and NOAA refuse to go along. The only one who could break this deadlock would be President Biden, and the only chance he or any of the people running his administration will do so is if they decide to reject the FAA’s reassessment to instead demand a new and full environmental impact statement, which would likely take years to complete.

Texas politicians might want to wake up. If SpaceX fails to get this approval it will shift its Starship operations almost entirely to Florida. I must also add that politicians across the nation should wake up as well, because if the Biden administration blocks SpaceX, the many year delay for the launch of Starship will likely impact many many businesses nationwide. It will also negatively impact NASA’s effort to land humans on the Moon this decade.

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A floating Martian rock

9:21 am

Mosiac of top of butte
For original images, click here and here.

A floating Martian rock
Click for original photo.

Cool image time! As Curiosity begins the slow and careful journey up through the rocky Gordon Notch onto the even rockier Greenheugh Pedimont layer above, the science team is using its cameras to take pictures of the buttes that form the northern and southern walls of that notch.

The mosiac above and the photo to the right, both cropped and reduced to post here, is one beautiful example. Taken by Curiosity’s high resolution camera on February 11th, both images show the consequences on geology of Mars’ low gravity, one third that of Earth’s. The top image shows the entire top of the butte, with the picture to the right focusing on one boulder that almost seems to be floating in the air. Look close and you can see daylight under the rock’s entire left half.

I think this butte is the north wall of Gordon Notch, but am not sure. Either way, the photos once again demonstrate that it is very dangerous to assign our Earth-based assumptions to Martian geology. There may be similarities, but the differences must not be ignored, or else our conclusions about what we see will be wrong.

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SES and Jio Platforms form partnership to launch broadbrand satellite constellation

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: Luxembourg’s satellite company SES and India’s Jio Platforms have formed a partnership to launch a new satellite constellation designed to deliver broadband services to the Asian and Indian market.

This new satellite constellation, dubbed Jio Space Technology, aims to compete with both OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. Like OneWeb, which is half owned by an Indian company, Jio Space has direct links to India that will give it an advantage over SpaceX. In fact, it appears from the formation of this new company as well as the OneWeb UK/India partnership, that the powers-that-be in India are working together lock SpaceX from that market.

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Lockheed Martin cancels merger with Aerojet Rocketdyne

8:52 am

Capitalism in space: Faced with a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opposing the merger, Lockheed Martin yesterday announced that it is terminating its effort to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Aerojet released a press release at the same time, insisting that the company remains viable and healthy, but there are doubts. While its rocket engines (its main business) remain technically reliable and well-built, they are relatively expensive. Moreover, the shift by rocket companies to build their own engines in the last decade has reduced its customer base significantly.

This loss of market is now compounded by a battle between two factions on the company’s board of directors.

While monopolies do not encourage competition, the merger with Lockheed Martin would have been mostly good for the rocket industry. It would have quickly given Lockheed Martin the skills to make rockets, and kept Aerojet Rocketdyne alive, albeit as part of another company. Now the latter faces extinction, and the former will need more time to develop the capabilities required in its recently-won NASA contract to launch a rocket from Mars to return samples.

And once again, the FTC lawsuit indicates that the Biden administration has decided to take a heavy-regulatory hand when it comes to business. The result however of this approach in this case has not produced more competition, but the likely bankruptcy of at least one company.

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Rocket stage to hit Moon is from Chinese rocket, not Falcon 9 upper stage

6:22 pm

Astronomers have now concluded that the rocket stage that will impact the Moon on March 4th is not an abandoned the Falcon 9 upper stage that launched the DISCOVR satellite in 2015, but an upper stage from a Chinese rocket.

It was an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jon Giorgini, who realized this object was not in fact the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. He wrote to Gray on Saturday morning explaining that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory did not go particularly close to the Moon, and that it would therefore be a little strange if the second stage strayed close enough to strike it. This prompted Gray to dig back into his data, and identify other potential candidates.

He soon found one—the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket. This lunar mission sent a small spacecraft to the Moon as a precursor test for an eventual lunar sample return mission. The launch time and lunar trajectory are almost an exact match for the orbit of the object that will hit the Moon in March.

Regardless, it will be very useful to pindown the exact impact time and place so that astronomers can observe it.

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Global image of Mars from UAE’s Al-Amal orbiter

10:23 am

Mars as seen by Al-Amal in January 2022
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today released several new images taken by its Al-Amal Mars orbiter, showing the changing atmospheric conditions on Mars between September ’21 and January ’22.

The photo to the right, cropped and annotated by me, is the January image, showing the dust storm conditions that presently exist in the equatorial regions of Mars. The lighter puffy cloud-like features in the center of the image are a 1,500 mile wide dust storm centered on the equator. The white dot indicates the approximate spot where Perseverance sits in Jezero Crater, within that storm.

The previous Al-Amal image from September (available at the link) shows the whole Martian hemisphere with generally clear skies.

Below is a recent photo taken by Perseverance illustrating these dusty conditions.
» Read more

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ESA selects Ariane-6’s first payloads

9:05 am

The European Space Agency (ESA), ArianeGroup, and Arianespace today announced the payloads that will fly on the first launch of its new Ariane-6 rocket.

The payloads are a variety of cubesats and science experiments, none heavier than 175 pounds with a total payload weight less than one ton. These secondary payloads will either be deployed from or kept attached to a dummy mass that will simulate a large primary satellite payload.

The press release makes no mention of a launch date, as has been the pattern in the last few Ariane-6 press releases. The last release to mention a launch date was in October 2020, which then predicted a launch in the second quarter of ’22. That this date is no longer being mentioned suggests the date has been pushed back, though for how long remains a mystery.

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First image from Webb released

8:52 am

Webb's first released alignment image

It ain’t pretty, nor is it in optical wavelengths, but the first alignment image from the James Webb Space Telescope has been released by NASA.

That image, reduced slightly to post here, is to the right. It shows 18 different near-infrared images of the same star, each image taken by a different segment of Webb’s primary mirror. At the moment the mirrors are not perfectly aligned, so that each segment’s star image shows up at a slightly different place. The goal now will be to adjust those mirror segments so that future images will show only one star, all focused to the same spot.

This alignment process is expected to take about a month.

The image is significant however because it shows that each segment is producing a relatively sharp image, even though the telescope has not yet cooled to its operating temperature. It thus appears that, unlike Hubble, Webb’s mirror segments were ground correctly, and it will be able to take sharp images right off the bat.

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Judge blocks Camden spaceport land purchase pending March 8th vote

8:36 am

Capitalism in space: A state judge has blocked Camden County in Georgia from purchasing any land for its proposed spaceport until after the county’s citizens vote on approving or rejecting the spaceport project on March 8, 2022.

Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett’s injunction delivered a new victory for the residents and environmentalists who’ve remained critical of the county’s ambitious plans to launch rockets off Georgia’s coast toward sensitive barrier islands.

This week, a probate court judge ordered a March 8 election after a petition circulated by opponents received enough signatures for a referendum asking if the county should repeal its land-acquisition agreement with Union Carbide Corp. for the former industrial site where an environmental covenant restricts use of the land.

Essentially, the project will live or die depending on how county residents vote.

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Musk: “We need to seize the opportunity and do it as quickly as possible.”

9:54 pm

Raptor engine
Raptor-1 on the left, Raptor-2 on the right

The headline quote above encapsulates the main philosophical point of Elon Musk’s presentation tonight in Boca Chica, Texas. Musk’s presentation was focused mostly at outlining the status of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy reusable heavy-lift rocket, but he started his talk stating his philosophical reasons for doing what he is doing.

It is his strong belief that in order to guarantee the survival of all life on Earth, we must colonize as many planets as possible. Musk’s quote above indicated his sense that this effort must be done now. As he had noted,

The window of opportunity [to build human settlements on other worlds] may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it may also be open for a short time. And this is the first point in the four and half billion history of Earth that it is possible.

He added, “To be frank, civilization is feeling a little fragile these days,” which makes achieving his goal quickly even more urgent.

After making this point, Musk then proceeded to outline what they’ve accomplished so far in building Starship/Superheavy, and what they hope to do in the coming years. Much of what Musk said was largely known, such as the size and power of Starship and its design. He did underline these important details:
» Read more

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Watching Elon Musk’s update on Starship tonight

3:53 pm

Starship mounted by tower on Superheavy

Tonight at 8 pm (central) Elon Musk is going to give a presentation updating the world on the status of SpaceX’s Starship project, with the fully stacked Starship/Superheavy as his backdrop. The photo to the right is a screen capture showing that stacking.

I have embedded the live stream below. Or you can watch it on SpaceX’s website or on its youtube channel.

The biggest question is the regulatory situation for Boca Chica. Will Musk report progress in getting operations approved there by the federal government, or will he outline how the federal government is acting as a barrier to progress? Or will he sidestep the issue (for diplomatic reasons) and focus his talk entirely on technical issues?

We can only wait and see.

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Astra launch fails when upper stage starts tumbling after stage separation

2:02 pm

Capitalism in space: Astra’s first attempt to launch from Cape Canaveral and put commercial cubesats in orbit failed today when the upper stage started to tumble immediately after the first stage had separated.

Embedded below is video showing that tumbling. The full replay of the launch live stream can be viewed here.

The silver lining of this failure is that the first stage and all launch operations appeared to function perfectly, right up until after stage separation. Nonetheless, it is a failure, and the company will need to try again and succeed if it wants to survive in the aggressive new launch market.
» Read more

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NASA/NSF express collision concerns for SpaceX’s Starlink constellation

10:00 am

Capitalism in space: In a February 8th letter to the FCC, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA expressed their concerns about the collision possibilities of SpaceX’s full 30,000 satellite Starlink constellation with other spacecraft.

The letter raised several issues about the proposed constellation, primarily because it would increase the number of tracked objects in low Earth orbit by more than a factor of five. “An increase of this magnitude into these confined altitude bands inherently brings additional risk of debris-generating collision events based on the number of objects alone,” the agency stated. “NASA anticipates current and planned science missions, as well as human space flight operations will see an increase in conjunctions.”

The letter did not oppose the constellation, but simply outlined issues that the agencies thought SpaceX needed to address before the constellation’s full deployment. It also noted that these concerns apply to other planned large satellite constellations.

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SpaceX stacks Starship on Superheavy on orbital launchpad

9:37 am

Starship mounted by tower on Superheavy

Capitalism in space: SpaceX for the first time used the giant arms on the launch tower at its Boca Chica orbital launchpad to stack Starship on top of Superheavy, with the fully stacked giant rocket to act as a backdrop to Elon Musk’s update on the project scheduled for airing tonight at 8 pm (Central).

You can see a time lapse of the several hour process here.

The use of a launch tower to stack a rocket is apparently a first, and provides solid evidence that SpaceX’s plan to catch Superheavy with that tower and put it on the ground has a chance of success.

SpaceX has not yet announced how Musk’s presentation will be aired, but when this information is available I will embed it on Behind the Black.

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Earthlike exoplanet in habitable zone detected orbiting nearest star

9:21 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers think they have detected an Earthlike exoplanet, in habitable zone, orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system.

Astronomer João Faria and his collaborators detected Proxima Centauri d by measuring tiny shifts in the spectrum of the star’s light as the planet’s gravity pulled it during orbit. The team used a state-of-the art spectrograph called ESPRESSO at the Very Large Telescope, a system of four 8.2-metre telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile. The results were published on 10 February in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This ‘wobble’ technique looks for changes in the star’s motion along the line of sight from Earth, and ESPRESSO can detect variations of just 10 centimeters per second. The total effect of the planet’s orbit, which lasts only five days, is about 40 cm/s, says Faria. “I knew that ESPRESSO could do this, but it was still surprised to see it showing up,” says Faria, who is at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Porto, Portugal.

Though the scientists are very confident about their results, the detection is at present only a candidate planet, as its existence has not been confirmed by an second independent method. Also, the method of detection cannot pin down the exoplanet’s mass very precisely, though it suggests the exoplanet has rocky planet mass, not too different than Earth’s.

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China plans more than 50 launches in 2022

9:14 am

China today released what it calls a blue paper outlining its space plans for 2022, predicting it will launch more than fifty times while completing assembly of its Tiangong space station.

The Shenzhou-14 astronauts will be aboard Tianhe core module for the arrival of the 20-metric-ton-plus Wentian and Mengtian modules, both now expected to launch in the second half of the year, later than earlier tentative times of June and August respectively. The module launches will complete the T-shaped orbital outpost. Tianzhou-5 will launch ahead of Shenzhou-15, both scheduled for late in the year.

Work on the Long March 2F, Long March 5B and Long March 7 rockets for launching Shenzhou, space station module and cargo missions respectively continued during the recent Lunar New Year holiday, according to CASC [China’s space agency]. The module launches will be followed closely, partly due to the significance of the missions, but also because of the use of the Long March 5B, the two previous launches of which saw the large first stages make high-profile uncontrolled reentries which sparked acrimony.

The rocket maker, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), says it has further optimized the two new Long March 5B rockets to ensure mission success without providing details. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words, as well as the delay in launch of these two modules, suggests China might have done some work on its Long March 5B to control the de-orbit of its core stage.

China also says the year will also include the first six month long mission on Tiangong, as well as the first arrival of two crews to the station.

My present count of all proposed launches for 2022 is just under 200, more than double the average number of launches (89) completed annually since the launch of Sputnik. U.S. companies alone right now are predicting 100 launches. While all of these numbers are uncertain, it looks like ’22 will be a banner year for space exploration.

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