Tag: spaceflight

NASA delays lunar lander contract award

8:55 am

NASA, now under the control of the Biden administration, has quietly delayed by at least two months the contract award to two companies to build manned lunar landers for its Artemis program.

With short funding from Congress and a new administration focused on more pressing national issues, the move was expected.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a team of aerospace giants led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Leidos-owned Dynetics won a combined $967 million in seed funding from NASA last year to develop rivaling concepts for a human lunar landing system. It’s the space agency’s first effort to spend money on astronaut moon landers since the Apollo program in the 1970s.

Last Wednesday, NASA told the three contractors that an extension to their development contracts “will be required,” picking a new award date of April 30th. Under the Trump administration’s timeline, the agency had planned to pick two of the three bidders in late February, giving a stamp of approval for two systems that would inevitably carry humans to the moon.

This delay would likely have occurred under Trump as well, mainly because Congress only appropriated less than a third of the money needed for this Artemis program.

However, under Biden it was guaranteed. A major review is about to happen, designed not to kill Artemis but to slow it down appreciable. Congress likes the pork Artemis produces, but is wholly uninterested in it actually flying any dangerous missions. I suspect Biden will agree. The focus will once again shift back to Gateway, making any lunar landing require it so that it must be built first. Such a shift will guarantee that no American manned missions to the surface of the Moon will occur before ’30, but also allow the spending of gobs of money building a small lunar station that will only be occupied for short periods.

The big loser here, to my mind, is Jeff Bezos. His company, Blue Origin, was building the descent portion of the lunar lander, with all other portions built by his big space partners, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper. Not only is most of the other work by these partners more easily shifted to other uses related to Gateway, but those companies already have plenty of government contracts. As far as I can remember, Blue Origin has no other big government deals, with its New Glenn having been rejected by the military, and its lunar descent technology unneeded until there is a lunar landing, and I expect that to be significantly delayed.

For the past four years Bezos has clearly wanted to make Blue Origin a new big space contractor. Right now it appears that effort has failed wholly.

Dynetics will also lose out big, as they are a new company and can ill afford losing a contract here.

SpaceX will likely be hurt the least. Not getting any money for designing Starship to land on the Moon will do little to slow its development. Starship is almost completely privately funded, and does not need NASA money to get built.

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NASA to do another static fire test of SLS’s core stage

10:52 pm

NASA has now scheduled a second static fire test of the core stage of its SLS rocket, tentatively scheduled for the fourth week in February.

The first test, planned to last eight minutes, shut down after only one minute when the stage’s computers decided the parameters on engine #2 were outside their conservative margins. That burn also had a sensor issue with its fourth engine.

Conducting a second hot fire test will allow the team to repeat operations from the first hot fire test and obtain data on how the core stage and the engines perform over a longer period that simulates more activities during the rocket’s launch and ascent. To prepare for the second hot fire test, the team is continuing to analyze data from the first test, drying and refurbishing the engines, and making minor thermal protection system repairs. They are also updating conservative control logic parameters that resulted in the flight computer ending the first hot fire test earlier than planned. The team has already repaired the faulty electrical harness which resulted in a notification of a Major Component Failure on Engine 4. This instrumentation issue did not affect the engine’s performance and did not contribute to ending the first test early.

Assuming this test is successful, they will then need a month to get the stage ready for shipment by barge to Cape Canaveral, where it will take several more months to get it assembled with its two strap-on solid rocket boosters, its upper stage, and the Orion capsule on top.

Right now the unmanned test flight into orbit of this entire rocket and Orion is set for November ’21. While NASA has not announced a delay, this additional static fire test puts significant pressure on that schedule.

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On the edge of Mars’ giant volcanic flood plain

3:03 pm

Flows and pitted material on the edge of Mars' great volcanic flood plain
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on September 30, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Uncaptioned, it shows what the science team labels “Flows and pitted material in Terra Sirenum.”

Downhill is to the southeast, which means the pitted material forms some sort of filled terrain, with the surface eroded similarly everywhere. At a latitude of 32 degrees south, these flows could conceivably be glacial features. Are they?

A wider look might help answer that question. Below is a photo taken by MRO’s context camera, cropped and reduced to post here.
» Read more

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Commercial satellite launched only weeks ago fails

9:55 am

Capitalism in space: A new geosynchronous satellite intended to augment the SiriusXM radio service has failed only six weeks after launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Built by Maxar in Palo Alto, California, the SXM 7 satellite successfully launched Dec. 13 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station into an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit, then used its on-board engine to reach an orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator, where

SiriusXM announced the “failure of certain SXM 7 payload units” in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. “An evaluation of SXM 7 is underway,” the company said. “The full extent of the damage to SXM 7 is not yet known.”

Though neither SiriusXM nor Maxar have released any details on the failure, they have also said the failure is unrelated to the launch. Their use of the word “damage” however is intriguing, as it suggests a kind of catastrophic failure, such as an impact from a piece of space junk.

We don’t know yet however and can only wait for more information. Losing a satellite like this only weeks after launch however is a big deal, as these satellites are now built to last one to two decades, at a minimum. Insurance will pay for a replacement, but it could take at least one to two years to launch it.

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New radar technology now available for radio astronomy

9:47 am

GreenBank radar image of Apollo 15 landing region

Astronomers have now demonstrated a spectacular new radar technology using radio telescopes and capable of producing high resolution images of all solar system bodies, as far away as Neptune.

[S]cientists built a miniature transmitter, powered at less than a kilowatt and about the size of a refrigerator, Beasley said, and in November hauled it up for a brief stint at the prime focus of Green Bank Telescope, suspended over the large dish.

Then, the team took advantage of the telescope’s superlative: It’s the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world, able to study objects across 85% of the sky. So the team pointed the telescope and fired the radar system at the moon — more specifically, at the Apollo 15 mission’s landing site in the Hadley-Apennine region [the white dot in the image to the right]. The team used antennas of the NRAO’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to catch the signal that bounced back.

The image, with its sloping hills, stark crater and slinking rille, offers a hint of what could come. But the moon is our old companion. Scientists would much rather use a shiny new planetary radar system to study more mysterious objects, like the asteroids zipping through our neighborhood of the solar system, most of which are blurs and blobs, or the strange moons of the outer planets that have received few spacecraft visitors.

Without question this technology would be a major breakthrough for the observation of asteroids, especially those that are considered a threat of impacting the Earth for which we have little concrete information.

The article however notes that the technology had been developed with the assumption that the Arecibo radio telescope would be available. That telescope however is now dead, having been destroyed when its instrument platform fell in early December. With a limited number of radio telescopes available, all of which are oversubscribed for other work, it will be difficult to find time for the use of this technology on any of them.

But don’t worry. The Chinese will definitely want to steal it and put it on their giant FAST radio telescope, and I am sure the Biden administration will be agreeable to letting them.

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Roscosmos’ commercial division to market tourist seats on Soyuz

9:29 am

The new colonial movement: Glavkosmos, the commercial division of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, has announced that it is now making available for sale to passengers up to four seats on the Soyuz capsule.

Roscosmos has previously sold such seats through a long-standing relationship with American company Space Adventures. In December, Glavkosmos tweeted its plans to start selling seats, which a company spokesperson has since confirmed. “We assume that each crewed Soyuz MS spacecraft intended solely for commercial spaceflight will have two seats for space tourists” with a professional astronaut occupying the third seat, Glavkosmos spokesman Evgenii Kolomeets told SpaceNews. “In 2022-2023, with a favorable combination of circumstances, we can count on four seats aboard the commercial spacecraft for space tourists.”

The first dedicated Glavkosmos flight should be Soyuz MS-23 in the fall of 2022 to the ISS, with a second flight expected some time in 2023. “Commercial spacecraft and launch vehicles for the 2022-2023 launch campaigns are being manufactured, and specific mission numbers are assigned to spacecraft only after they are included in the flight program,” Kolomeets said.

If this happens, it will mean that at least three different entities — Axiom, Space Adventures, and Roscosmos — will be selling tourists flights into space. And that doesn’t even count possible flights on Boeing’s Starliner, once it becomes operational.

This competition is certain to force a drop in price, which in turn should increase the customer base, making more such flights possible.

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Biden Justice Dept investigating SpaceX over hiring of non-citizens

9:21 am

They’re coming for you next: The Biden Justice Dept is now investigating SpaceX for discriminating against non-American citizens in its hiring practices.

The DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section received a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S. citizen claiming that the company discriminated against him based on his citizenship status.

“The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party’s interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident,” DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval wrote in a court document filed Thursday. The document was a request for a judge to order SpaceX to comply with an administrative subpoena for documents related to how the company hires.

It also appears that SpaceX refused to comply with a subpoena from this Justice Dept section, claiming that it exceeded that section’s authority. The Biden administration is now asking the court to enforce that subpoena.

This is not just absurd, it smacks of government overreach designed to destroy the company. SpaceX is a rocket company that must follow very strict ITAR rules designed to prevent the release of military technology to foreign powers. By its very nature the company cannot hire foreign nationals for almost any position. If SpaceX were to hire a non-citizen the State Department would have grounds to shut them down.

Now the Biden administration is demanding that SpaceX do exactly that, essentially placing the company between a rock and a hard place.

This action, combined with the refusal yesterday by the FAA to issue a launch permit to SpaceX so it could do a test flight of its Starship prototype #9, gives us another clear picture of what to expect from Democratic Party rule for the next four years. They have always been out to squelch any independent operations in any way they can, and they now have the power to do it.

Musk better get ready to pay that bribe to the Democratic Party. Otherwise they will shut him down.

As for Starship, according to SpaceX’s website they will make their next launch attempt in February 1. This could be because the FAA has finally relented, or the company is scheduling it to apply more pressure to the agency to get that permit approved. We shall have to wait until then to see.

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FAA bureaucrats block SpaceX Starship test flight

2:39 pm

Capitalism in space? It is now confirmed that the test flight of SpaceX’s ninth prototype of its Starship rocket was scrubbed because of the FAA’s refusal to approve the license. To quote the FAA:

We will continue working with SpaceX to resolve outstanding safety issues before we approve the next test flight.

Typically vague bureaucratic language. There is no word on why the government did this. The flight of Starship prototype #8 proved SpaceX has full control over its vehicle, to the point they could put it down right on target. Why the FAA should now suddenly get cold feet is inexplicable.

There is one difference between now and the December 9th flight of Starship prototype #8. Then the president was Republican Donald Trump, and the Senate was controlled by the Republicans. Now the president is Democrat Joe Biden, and both houses of Congress are in Democratic Party control. It would not surprise me in the least if some Biden officials called the FAA and demanded they impose stricter safety restrictions on SpaceX, and that they did so at the very last minute.

Or to put it another way, someone in the Biden administration essentially wanted to tell SpaceX, “Nice rocket company you got here. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

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Watching Starship #9’s flight

1:33 pm

LabPadre's Starship 24/7 live feed, at 8:12 am (Central), January 28, 2021
LabPadre’s Starship 24/7 live feed, at 8:12 am (Central), January 28, 2021.
Click to go to it.

BUMPED AND UPDATED: It is now confirmed that the launch was scrubbed by the FAA’s refusal to approve the license. Though SpaceX seemed to go through a fueling and countdown procedure, they have since detanked the ship.

UPDATE: It appears from several live feeds that they have scrubbed today’s launch because of high winds, and will try again tomorrow. There are also rumors, not yet confirmed, that the launch was scrubbed because the FAA denied the launch license at the last minute.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today will make an attempt to fly the ninth prototype of its Starship to a height of approximately 33,000 feet. As the company’s Starship website notes,

Similar to the high-altitude flight test of Starship serial number 8 (SN8), SN9 will be powered through ascent by three Raptor engines, each shutting down in sequence prior to the vehicle reaching apogee – approximately 10 km in altitude. SN9 will perform a propellant transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant, before reorienting itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent.

The Starship prototype will descend under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps are actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location. SN9’s Raptor engines will then reignite as the vehicle attempts a landing flip maneuver immediately before touching down on the landing pad adjacent to the launch mount.

SpaceX will be providing a live stream, which I shall embed here at Behind the Black once it becomes available. In addition, there are these live streams available:

Without question the SpaceX live feed will provide the best visuals, but that will not go live until just before launch. Right now I think the Labpadre live feed is my preferred choice because it provides a quick checklist on the screen telling you the countdown status, which in turn gives you an idea how soon the launch might be. For example, when the sirens sound, it means they are approximately 10 minutes to launch.

Stay tuned. This flight, which will likely be as epic as the flight of prototype #8, could make today a fun day in the history of spaceflight.

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Scientists: Gale Crater never had flowing surface water and was always cold

11:04 pm

The uncertainty of science: According to a new analysis of the data from Curiosity and Martian orbiters, scientists now propose that the climate in Gale Crater was never warm, but ranged from Icelandic conditions to far colder.

More importantly, the data suggests that none of chemistry there that required the presence of water was formed by fluvial processes, or flowing water. From the abstract:

We show that the geochemistry and mineralogy of most of the fine‐grained sedimentary rocks in Gale crater display first order similarities with sediments generated in climates that resemble those of present‐day Iceland, while other parts of the stratigraphy indicate even colder baseline climate conditions. None of the lithologies examined at Gale crater resemble fluvial sediments or weathering profiles from warm (temperate to tropical) terrestrial climates. [emphasis mine]

As must be repeated, the mineralogy found by Curiosity points to the presence of water once in Gale Crater, now gone. The initial assumption has always been that this water must have been liquid, as found on Earth. This new research is noting that the conditions show little evidence that liquid water ever existed, but was instead held in frozen lakes and glaciers.

In the coming years I think we are going to learn a lot about the glaciers and ice on Mars, both past and present, and how they reshaped Mars in ways that are alien to processes found on Earth.

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New analysis: It wasn’t even phosphine detected at Venus

4:09 pm

The uncertainty of science: A new analysis of the data used by scientists who claimed in September that they had detected phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus has concluded that it wasn’t phosphine at all but sulfur dioxide, a chemical compound long known to be prevalent there.

The UW-led team shows that sulfur dioxide, at levels plausible for Venus, can not only explain the observations but is also more consistent with what astronomers know of the planet’s atmosphere and its punishing chemical environment, which includes clouds of sulfuric acid. In addition, the researchers show that the initial signal originated not in the planet’s cloud layer, but far above it, in an upper layer of Venus’ atmosphere where phosphine molecules would be destroyed within seconds. This lends more support to the hypothesis that sulfur dioxide produced the signal.

When the first announcement was made, it was also noted as an aside that phosphine on Earth is only found in connection with life processes, thus suggesting wildly that it might signal the existence of life on Venus.

That claim was always unjustified, especially because we know so little about Venus’s atmosphere and its alien composition. Even if there was phosphine there, to assume it came from life is a leap well beyond reasonable scientific theorizing.

It now appears that the phosphine detection itself was questionable, which is not surprising since the detection was about 20 molecules out of a billion. And while this new analysis might be correct, but what it really does is illustrate how tentative our knowledge of Venus remains. It might be right, but it also could be wrong and the original results correct. There is simply too much uncertainty and gaps in our knowledge to come to any firm and confident conclusions.

None of that mattered with our modern press corps, which ran like mad to tout the discovery of life on Venus. As I wrote quite correctly in September in my original post about the first results,

The worst part of this is that we can expect our brainless media to run with these claims, without the slightest effort of incredulity.

We live in a world of make believe and made-up science. Data is no longer important, only the leaps of fantasy we can jump to based on the slimmest of facts. It was this desire to push theories rather than knowledge that locked humanity into a dark age for centuries during the Middle Ages. It is doing it again, now, and the proof is all around you, people like zombies and sheep, wearing masks based not on any proven science but on pure emotions.

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Blue Origin reveals full throttle long duration test of its BE-4 engine

3:54 pm

Capitalism in space: Jeff Bezos today revealed that Blue Origin has successfully completed a full throttle long duration test of its BE-4 engine to be used by both its New Glenn Rocket and ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

“Perfect night,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who created the Blue Origin space venture more than two decades ago, wrote in an Instagram post. “Sitting in the back of my pickup truck under the moon and stars, watching another long-duration, full-thrust hot-fire test of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine.”

The post featured a shot of Bezos and other spectators looking on at the rising rocket plume from afar, as well as a video with closer perspectives of the firing.

The company has delivered two engines to ULA designed for ground testing, and says it will deliver soon the flight ready engines for Vulcan’s first launch later this year. Blue Origin also needs to get flight ready engines finished this year for New Glenn, which is also supposed to make it inaugural flight in ’21.

Personally, I think both Blue Origin and ULA are cutting it close. I will not be surprised if this tight schedule means that the first launches of both rockets get delayed into ’22.

Nonetheless, it is great news that the BE-4 appears to finally working as planned after what appeared to be problems for the past few years.

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The freaky floor of Mars’ Hellas Basin

12:54 pm

The perplexing floor of Hellas Basin
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image takes us to the Death Valley of Mars, Hellas Basin, a place I like to call the basement of Mars. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on September 28, 2020, and gives us another example of the very strange and inexplicable geological formations that are often found on the floor of Hellas.

The picture was taken not as part of any particular research project, but somewhat randomly for engineering reasons. In order to maintain the proper temperature of MRO’s high resolution camera, it must take images in a regular cadence. When large gaps in time occur between requested images, the camera team then picks locations to fill those gaps, sometimes randomly, sometimes based on a quick review of earlier wide angle images.

Sometimes these “terrain sample” images are quite uninteresting. More often they hold baffling surprises.

I think the photo to the right falls into the latter category. Though the terrain covered by the full image is largely flat and lacking in large features, the surface is strewn with perplexing small details.

The light streaks might be dust devil tracks, but why are they light here when such tracks are routinely dark everywhere else on Mars? What formed the many parallel small ridges? What caused the smooth solid patch near the photo’s center top? And why do the ridgelines at the western edge of that patch run in almost a perpendicular direction to the other ridges?

All a mystery, but then the floor of Hellas Basin is filled with such mysteries. Below is a list of some other cool images of the floor of Hellas, all weird and mystifying. Also below is an overview elevation map of Hellas Basin, with darker blue indicating the lowest elevations. The white cross marks the location of today’s photo.
» Read more

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Antarctica data adds weight to hypothesis that glaciers shaped Mars

10:01 am

New data from an Antarctica ice core strengthens the hypothesis that the flow of glaciers, not liquid water, helped shape the meandering canyons on Mars.

The data was the discovery of the mineral jarosite deep within the south pole ice-cap. Jarosite needs water to form. Previously it was generally believed it formed in conjunction with liquid flowing water. On Mars, which appears to have lots of jarosite, scientists have struggled for decades to figure out how enough liquid water could have existed on the surface of Mars to produce it.

The discovery of jarosite deep inside the Antarctic ice cap now suggests that it can form buried in ice, not liquid water. According to the scientists,

the jarosite was born within massive ice deposits that might have blanketed [Mars] billions of years ago. As ice sheets grew over time, dust would have accumulated within the ice—and may have been transformed into jarosite within slushy pockets between ice crystals.

From the paper’s conclusions:

The occurrence of jarosite in TALDICE [in Antarctica] supports the ice-weathering model for the formation of Martian jarosite within large ice-dust deposits. The environment inside the Talos Dome ice [in Antarctica] is isolated from the Earth atmosphere and its conditions, including pressure, temperature, pH and chemistry, provides a suitable analogue for similar Martian settings. Dust deposited at Talos Dome is also similar to Martian atmospheric dust, being both mostly basaltic. Within thick ice deposits it is likely that the environment would be similar at Talos Dome and under Mars-like conditions since both settings would contain at cryogenic temperatures basaltic dust and volcanogenic and biogenic (for Antarctic only) sulfur-rich aerosols. … Considering this context, it is reasonable that the formation of jarosite on Mars involves the interaction between brines and mineral dust in deep ice, as observed in TALDICE. This mechanism for Martian jarosite precipitation is paradigm changing and strongly challenges assumptions that the mineral formed in playa settings.

Playa settings are places where there is standing liquid water, slowing drying away.

This result is another piece of evidence that ice and glaciers were the cause of the Martian terrain that to Earth eyes for decades was thought to have formed by flowing water. It also continues what appears to be a major shift on-going in the planetary science community, from the idea of liquid water on Mars to that of a planet dominated by glacial and ice processes.

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Space Force ends development contracts with Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman

9:33 am

The Space Force, having chosen SpaceX and ULA as its sole launch providers, officially ended on December 31, 2020, its rocket development contracts with Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman.

The Air Force awarded Launch Service Agreements to Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and United Launch Alliance. These were six-year public-private partnerships where both the government and the contractors agreed to invest in rocket development and infrastructure required to compete in the National Security Space Launch program.

The plan from day one was to discontinue the LSAs with companies that did not win a National Security Space Launch procurement contract. Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman lost to ULA and SpaceX, which were selected in August 2020. The Space and Missile Systems Center confirmed in a statement to SpaceNews that the LSAs with Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman ended in Dec. 31, 2020.

From October 2018 through December 2020, Blue Origin was paid $255.5 million. The original six-year agreement was worth $500 million. Northrop Grumman got $531.7 million over that same period, nearly two-thirds of the total value of the LSA which was $792 million.

This whole deal stinks to high heaven. First, it never made any sense for the military to restrict bidding on future launches to just two companies. Such a restrictions smells of a cartel deal designed to play favorites, something the government should not do. It also ends up costing the government more, as it limits competition.

Second, the money handed out sure looks like nice pay-offs to all these big companies, designed to pay company salaries rather than real design work. SpaceX chose not to take it, because it did not want to be beholden to the military’s bureaucracy in how it developed Starship/Super Heavy. That choice has proven wise, as the deal slowed development of both Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan rockets by at least a year, while SpaceX Starship development has moved forward far quicker.

Moreover, its seems very inappropriate for ULA to still be getting this government cash while SpaceX does not. In truth, neither should get a dime unless they actually sign a contract to launch something for the Space Force. Otherwise it is just a form of kickback and a misuse of the taxpayer’s money.

Not that my complaining here will change anything. The big aerospace industry has been addicted to these kind of government payoffs for decades, and apparently will continue to be so addicted for the foreseeable future.

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Axiom’s first passengers to ISS paying $55 million each

9:13 am

Capitalism in space: The three non-Axiom employees who will fly as part of the crew for the company’s first private manned mission to ISS are paying $55 million each for the privilege.

The first private space station crew was introduced Tuesday: Three men who are each paying $55 million to fly on a SpaceX rocket. They’ll be led by a former NASA astronaut now working for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the trip for next January.

“This is the first private flight to the International Space Station. It’s never been done before,” said Axiom’s chief executive and president Mike Suffredini, a former space station program manager for NASA. While mission commander Michael Lopez-Alegria is well known in space circles, “the other three guys are just people who want to be able to go to space, and we’re providing that opportunity,” Suffredini told The Associated Press.

The first crew will spend eight days at the space station, and will take one or two days to get there aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule following liftoff from Cape Canaveral.

The initial press release made it appear that all four men were crew members and not passengers. And though Axiom and these passengers are both continuing to de-emphasize the tourist nature of their flight, claiming they will each be tasked with science research and that it “is 100% not a vacation for these guys,” the simple fact remains that they are paying customers, flying in space for the fun of it.

Why Axiom and these passengers feel obliged to misconstrue the tourist nature of their flight puzzles me. There is no reason for them to be ashamed of their desire to fly in space. Nor should they feel any guilt about having the money that allows them to pay for the privilege. This is what freedom is all about. They earned their wealth, and it now allows them the chance to do something grand. All power to them.

The actual ticket-price is also intriguing. At $55 million it is far more than the $35 million paid by the last tourist flown on a Russian Soyuz to ISS, though less than the $75 to $90 million the Russians were charging NASA. Overall it appears the price per ticket for an orbital flight has gone up, though the emerging competition is likely stabilizing the price at a lower plateau.

The announcement is also interesting in that so little is mentioned of SpaceX. Though the flight has been sold as an Axiom one, this particular tourist flight will depend entirely on SpaceX hardware to get to and from ISS. Axiom has merely acted as the broker for the flight.

Eventually Axiom will have its own in-space habitable space, first attached to ISS as new modules and later flying free as its own space station after ISS is retired. Right now however the real achievement is coming from SpaceX. This detail must be recognized.

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Back to Mars’ glacier country

1:11 pm

Tongue-shaped glacial flow on Mars
Click for full image.

The cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 3, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels a “Possible Tongue-Shaped Flow Feature in Protonilus Mensae.” There is no caption, so I will try to provide.

Protonilus Mensae is part of the long string of chaos terrain that runs about 2,000 miles along the transition zone between the southern cratered highlands and the northern lowland plains at about 30 to 40 degrees north latitude, and includes the other mensae regions dubbed Deuteronilus to the west and Nilosyrtis to the east. This region of Mars I like to call glacier country, because almost every high resolution photograph appears to show glacial features. To get an idea what I mean, take a gander at these past posts, their locations indicated by number in the overview map of Protonilus Mensae below:
» Read more

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Axiom names crew for its first private manned mission to ISS

11:09 am

Capitalism in space: The private company Axiom today revealed the names of the four-person crew that will fly a SpaceX Dragon capsule to ISS on the first wholly private manned spaceflight.

The four members of the Axiom Space Ax-1 crew: Michael Lopez-Alegria, former NASA astronaut, Axiom Space vice president and Ax-1 commander; Larry Connor, U.S. real estate entrepreneur and Ax-1 pilot; Mark Pathy, Canadian investor and philanthropist; and Eytan Stibbe, Israeli businessman and fighter pilot.

The crew of the first entirely-private orbital space mission will include the second oldest person to launch into space, the second Israeli in space, the 11th Canadian to fly into space and the first former NASA astronaut to return to the International Space Station, the company organizing the history-making flight has announced.

The launch date has also been delayed from the fall to early ’22.

It is unclear if these four men are the entire passenger list. Dragon can carry up to seven passagers, and earlier rumors had hinted that Tom Cruise and a movie director were buying two seats on this private mission in order to film scenes for a movie.

It is also unclear why the flight was delayed, other than a suggestion that it was due to scheduling conflicts with getting to ISS.

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OSIRIS-REx to make one last observation of Bennu before heading back to Earth

10:56 am

The OSIRIS-REx science team has figured out a way to make one last observation of Bennu and the Nightingale sample return site before heading back to Earth on May 10th.

This activity was not part of the original mission schedule, but the team is studying the feasibility of a final observation run of the asteroid to potentially learn how the spacecraft’s contact with Bennu’s surface altered the sample site. If feasible, the flyby will take place in early April and will observe the sample site, named Nightingale, from a distance of approximately 2 miles (3.2 kilometers). Bennu’s surface was considerably disturbed after the Touch-and-Go (TAG) sample collection event, with the collector head sinking 1.6 feet (48.8 centimeters) into the asteroid’s surface. The spacecraft’s thrusters also disturbed a substantial amount of surface material during the back-away burn.

The mission is planning a single flyby, mimicking one of the observation sequences conducted during the mission’s Detailed Survey phase in 2019. OSIRIS-REx would image Bennu for a full rotation to obtain high-resolution images of the asteroid’s northern and southern hemispheres and equatorial region. The team would then compare these new images with the previous high-resolution imagery of Bennu obtained during 2019.

Getting at look at Nightingale post-sample-grab is critical to better understanding the nature of the asteroid. Knowing how much changed from that contact will tell scientists a lot about the density, interior, and surface of this rubble-pile asteroid.

This last flyby will also give them the chance to assess the spacecraft’s equipment following the touch-and-go sample grab. They want to know if everything still works as designed in order to plan any post-Bennu missions, including the possibility that OSIRIS-REx will rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis in ’29, shortly after the asteroid makes its next close flyby of Earth.

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New Democrat head of House subcommittee covering NASA says he supports Artemis

9:32 am

The new Democrat head of the House appropriations subcommittee that covers NASA funding, Matt Cartwright (D-Pennsylvania), appears to support the Artemis program established during the Trump administration, though he has also indicated that he does not favor the timeline imposed by Trump to land a manned mission on the Moon by ’24.

Cartwright’s embrace of Artemis during [a] July 2020 webinar was a change from 2019 when he was one of several members reacting skeptically to a supplemental budget request from the Trump Administration after it unexpectedly accelerated the timeline for putting people back on the Moon from 2028 to 2024. He complained NASA did not even have a cost estimate for the entire effort, yet expected Congress to embrace it.

In 2018, he expressed concern about proposed cuts by the Trump Administration to NASA’s earth and space science activities especially climate programs and WFIRST (now the Roman Space Telescope). He urged NASA to follow the Decadal Surveys produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

What his prior views presage now that he chairs the subcommittee remains to be seen. It is widely expected the 2024 deadline will be pushed back, perhaps to the 2028 date NASA originally planned, but Cartwright appears favorably disposed towards the agency overall.

Delaying the Moon landing by SLS forever is the real goal, so the jobs program can be extended without any risks. To actually fly might result in a failure, something that no politician wants.

In the end it will not be SLS anyway that gets Americans back to the Moon. It costs too much and is badly designed. It might fly once or twice, but after that Congress will drop it while keeping Artemis, albeit in a very different form. Instead of having NASA design and build things, the new Artemis will be built by the many companies who were awarded fixed priced contracts during the Trump administration to develop their own hardware as fast as possible and as inexpensively as possible.

The distinction is important, because the latter is more likely to succeed in a reasonable amount of time.

At the same time, with Congress on board and a Democrat in the White House, it is not surprising that the policy is immediately shifting to a slower timeline. Can’t get this done too fast! I must also add that 2028 was not NASA’s original date for its return to the Moon. Before the Trump administration took control of Artemis, NASA had wanted to complete Gateway first, which based on all of NASA’s previous schedules would have pushed a lunar landing into the 2030s. Do not be surprised if this sluggish schedule is reinstated.

In fact, with the present incompetents in charge in Washington, I fully expect China to own the Moon, while U.S. politicians brainlessly dither on how to spend pork.

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Starship update: Next test flight set for tomorrow

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: After scrubbing the flight yesterday due to high winds, it appears that SpaceX is now planning the 50,000 foot flight for Starship prototype #9 for sometime tomorrow.

Unlike the 7.7 mile flight of prototype #8, SpaceX does not appear to be providing a live stream for #9’s flight. Nor has the company clearly stated how high it will fly, suggesting it will go higher than #8.

Unless SpaceX provides a live stream, the only coverage will be from the two live streams provided by LabPadre and NASASpaceflight.

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The strange moated mesas of the Kasei Valley on Mars

1:37 pm

Overview map

In showing my readers today’s cool image, I want to present it as it is seen by scientists, first from a far distance that with time increasingly zooms in to reveal mysteries on a very human scale.

The overview map to the right essentially gives us the view of Mars as seen by scientists following the Mariner 9 orbiter mission that began mapping the Martian surface in late 1971 after the conclusion of a global dust storm that had hidden its surface initially. As the first high resolution map of Mars, the orbiter revealed numerous puzzling and surprising features, including the largest volcanoes and canyons in the solar system. The orbiter also found that the red planet’s surface was comprised of two very different regions, the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands.

The overview map, covering from about 13 degrees south latitude to about 34 degrees north latitude, shows us all but the southern cratered highlands. The white box in Kasei Valles is where today’s cool image is located. Both Kasai and Valles Marineris represent those giant canyons, all invoking to Earth eyes the possibility of catastrophic floods of liquid water sometime in the past.

Ascraeus Mons is the northernmost of the three giant volcanoes east of the biggest volcano of all, Olympus Mons. All sit on what scientists now call the Tharsis Bulge.

Chryse Planitia, where Viking-1 landed in 1976, is part of those northern lowlands that some scientists believe might have been once had an intermittent ocean sometime in the past. Today’s image is about 600 miles from the outlet into Chryse Planitia.

The geological mystery of all these features demands a closer look, something that scientists have been pursuing now for more than a half century.
» Read more

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Japan’s new H3 rocket is almost ready for launch in ’21

9:32 am

The H3 rocket, jointly made by Mitsubishi and Japan’s space agency JAXA, is almost ready for launch and will be shipped to is launch site shortly for a launch later this year.

According to the link, it will cut the cost of launch by half when compared with Japan’s H2A rocket. They hope this cost reduction will garner them international customers, though I wonder as the rocket is not reusable. To get those international customers they have done something interesting. Rather than putting “Nippon” on the side of the rocket, which is what the Japanese call their country, they have put “Japan” on it instead.

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Falcon 9 successfully places 143 satellites into orbit

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a record 143 smallsats into orbit.

As I write this they are in the process of deploying the satellites, which will take time as the upper stage circles the Earth. This launch of 143 satellites beats the former record of the most satellites deployed on a single launch, 104, set by India in 2017.

The first stage landed successfully, completing its fifth flight. They also recovered both fairing halves.

The standings in the 2021 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 China

The U.S. now leads China 5 to 1 in the national rankings.

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SpaceX enters business of drilling for natural gas

8:11 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has decided to enter the natural gas energy business to help fuel its rockets, and is presently in a legal dispute with another natural gas drilling company over rights to drill on a piece of property near its Boca Chica Starship facility.

SpaceX intends to drill wells close to the company’s Boca Chica launchpad, it was revealed during a Friday hearing before the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s energy regulator.

Production has yet to start because of a legal dispute between the SpaceX subsidiary Lone Star Mineral Development and another energy company. Tim George, an attorney representing Lone Star, said at the hearing that SpaceX plans to use the methane it extracts from the ground “in connection with their rocket facility operations.”

While it’s unclear what exactly the gas would be used for, SpaceX plans to utilize super-chilled liquid methane and liquid oxygen as fuel for its Raptor engines.

Since methane is the main component of natural gas, I suspect SpaceX hopes to utilize the gas it pumps out to fuel its Starship & Super Heavy rockets. By obtaining the gas from its own wells, SpaceX cuts out any middle men, and has the opportunity to reduce its costs as well.

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New leak located in Zvezda on ISS

5:57 pm

Russian astronauts have located the suspected new leak location in the Zvezda module on ISS, and also think there might be another, as yet unlocated.

The specialists have discovered one more crack at the International Space Station and suspect that yet another one exists, ISS Russian Segment head Vladimir Solovyov told Rossiya-24. “So far, we have found one place and suspect another, where as some kind of leak exists. We must bring a powerful microscope on a cargo spacecraft and use to examine this place. We are not totally certain so far,” Solovyov said.

These two leaks are in addition to the one inch crack that caused last year’s leak and has been sealed.

All are pointing strongly to stress fractures in this section of Zvezda, one of the station’s oldest modules at twenty-plus years. The leaks are apparently located in the aft section where ships dock to Zvezda, with over a 100 dockings there since launch.

If the cracks and leaks are caused by stress fractures, the life span of Zvezda is now quite limited. It might be possible to seal the cracks and protect the module from further breaks by ending dockings at its port, but I suspect that will not work. Moreover, if I remember correctly Zvezda has the engines that are used to periodically raise ISS’s orbits. If the stress of firing those engines is too risky than another way must be found to maintain the station’s orbit.

In a few years the private company Axiom will be launching its own modules to ISS, designed in the long run to separate from the station and function independently. If NASA and Axiom are smart, they will make sure this new module matches Zvezda’s capabilities, thus making the Russian module redundant and actually superfluous.

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“The solar system is open for business”

2:28 pm

Link here. The article gives an independent look at the surging capitalism that appears to be driving the resurgent rocket and space industry in the U.S. and elsewhere.

As the author notes in his conclusion:

There was a time when space enthusiasts waited on taxpayer-funded space programs to realize their dreams of routine spaceflight and humanity’s expansion into the cosmos. It’s been a very long wait. Now, privatized launch services are opening up access to space. A new wave of exploration missions is widening human knowledge of the solar system. It’s only a matter of time before entrepreneurs, particularly those with deep pockets, figure out how to make money out there.

I plug this article not because he quotes me extensively, but because he came to these conclusions independent of me, and only called me for comments because he thought I might add depth to his conclusions. That the ideas I have been pushing since the late 1990s are now percolating into the larger culture is a very very good sign.

While in those early days the reporters I spoke to were routinely horrified by the idea of a privately financed space mission and wondered if the government should even allow it (they really would say this), today the idea is now considered the right way to go.

This is progress, even in this time of blacklists and a government focused on crushing its citizens.

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The pit caves of Mars: Can humans someday live in them?

1:24 pm

Four more pits in the Tharsis Bulge on Mars

It has been more than four months since my last report on the pits of Mars. Time to do another.

The collage to the right shows the four different pits photographed by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) since October. The links to each image are:

Like almost all the cave pits so far found on Mars, all are in the Tharsis Bulge of giant volcanoes to west of Valles Marineris. The overview map below shows these pits in the context of every other pit in this region that I have featured on Behind the Black.
» Read more

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