Tag: spaceflight

The first cubesat launched using wood for its side panelling

9:29 am

One piece of cargo carried by the cargo Dragon to ISS earlier this week is the first cubesat ever to use wood for its side panelling.

Made by researchers in Japan, the tiny satellite weighing just 900g is heading for the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission. It will then be released into orbit above the Earth. Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue.

Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood. “Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there’s no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it,” Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency. “Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” Prof Murata said. “A wooden satellite should be feasible, too.”

The satellite’s frame is still metal, but by using wood for its side panelling the engineers hope to test the feasibility of wood as a in-space construction material.

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Meandering channels on Mars

1:57 pm

Meandering channels on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists describe this as “meandering channels,” which seems appropriate. The downhill grade here is to the southeast. In wider views these channels extend from the northwest to the southeast about 31 miles total (with this location near the center), with the total elevation loss about 3,000 feet.

Note the splash apron around the 4,500-foot-wide unnamed crater as well as how the largest channel seems to terminate suddenly at the crater. Though at first glance it appears this impact occurred after the channels, that some of the channels cut into that splash apron suggests otherwise.
» Read more

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Astronomers call for the FCC to halt all launches of satellite constellations

9:50 am

In a letter [pdf] sent to the FCC on October 24, more than one hundred astronomers demanded a complete halt of all launches of low-Earth satellite constellations until a complete environmental review can be done.

The environmental harms of launching and burning up so many satellites aren’t clear. That’s because the federal government hasn’t conducted an environmental review to understand the impacts. What we do know is that more satellites and more launches lead to more damaging gasses and metals in our atmosphere. We shouldn’t rush forward with launching satellites at this scale without making sure the benefits justify the potential consequences of these new mega-constellations being launched, and then re-entering our atmosphere to burn up and or create debris This is a new frontier, and we should save ourselves a lot of trouble by making sure we move forward in a way that doesn’t cause major problems for our future.

Under this premise, Americans would forever be forbidden from doing anything without first having detailed environmental reviews by federal government agencies. Ponder that thought for a bit.

The astronomers’ argument of course is intellectually dishonest and disingenuous, on multiple levels. It is more than evident that these launches and satellites will cause little serious harm to the atmosphere or the environment. What the astronomers really want is to block these constellations so that their ground-based telescopes will be able to continue to see the heavens unhindered.

To hell with everyone else! We need to gaze at the stars and we are more important!

What these Chicken Littles should really do is give up on ground-based astronomy entirely, and start building space-based telescopes of all kinds, and fast. They would not only bypass the satellite constellations, they would get far better data as they would also bypass the atmosphere to get sharp images of everything they look at.

Whether the FCC listens to this absurd demand depends entirely on who wins the election. A Harris administration might easily go along, shutting down not only SpaceX’s Starlink constellation (thus getting political revenge on Elon Musk for daring to campaign against Democrats) but Amazon’s Kuiper constellation as well. Such an action would likely exceed the FCC’s statutory authority, but that won’t matter to these power-hungry thugs.

Trump in turn would almost certainly shut down much of the administrative state’s mission creep into areas of regulation it has no legal business.

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Parker to make its last fly-by of Venus

9:33 am

The Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to complete its last fly-by of Venus on November 6, 2024, passing only 233 miles above the planet’s surface.

The flyby will adjust Parker’s trajectory into its final orbital configuration, bringing the spacecraft to within an unprecedented 3.86 million miles of the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024. It will be the closest any human made object has been to the Sun.

That close solar approach will occur on December 24, 2024. Whether the spacecraft can survive is the main question, and we won’t find out until three days later, when it sends a signal to confirm its survival. If successful, it will then attempt to repeat that close fly-by at least two more times.

As for the Venus fly-by, the spacecraft will use one instrument to attempt to peer into Venus’s clouds.

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WISE/NEOWISE burns up in the atmosphere

9:22 am

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, later renamed NEOWISE) has ended its fifteen years in orbit, burning up in the atmosphere on November 1, 2024.

In its initial mission it did an infrared survey of the sky, discovering millions of black holes, many of the most luminous galaxies, and numerous brown dwarfs. It was then repurposed to survey the sky for near Earth objects, asteroids that have the potential to impact the Earth, discovering more than two hundred new asteroids while tracking more precisely another 3,000. It did this by repeating its survey over and over so that moving objects could be spotted.

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Three launches last night

9:10 am

Last night three different rockets took off from three continents.

First, Russia launched two space weather satellites and 53 cubesats, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Vostochny spaceport in the far east. The main payload were the two Ionosfera-M satellites, designed to study the Earth’s ionosphere in tandem.

The rocket flew north, over Russia, where its lower stages were dropped into planned drop zones. No word if they crashed near habitable ares.

Next, SpaceX launched an unmanned cargo Dragon to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing safefly back at Cape Canaveral. The capsule is on its fifth flight, and successfully docked with ISS this morning.

Finally, Rocket Lab launched a “confidential commercial” payload under a contract designed to launch very fast after contract signing, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its launchpads in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

108 SpaceX
49 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 126 to 75, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 108 to 93. Note too that with these launches the world has exceeded 200 launches in 2024, the second time this has ever been done, with the record of 213 launches set last year. This record will almost certainly be broken sometime this month.

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Sunspot update: in October solar activity increased after September’s crash

3:35 pm

Time for this month’s sunspot update. As I have done every month since I started this website in 2010, I am posting NOAA’s most recent update of its monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, adding some additional details to provide context.

In October, following a crash in activity in September, the Sun showed a slight increase the number of sunspots. The increase did not match the drop from the month before, but it brought the activity back up to the level seen during the summer.
» Read more

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A 2017 supernova as spotted by Hubble

11:20 am

Before and after of galaxy with supernova
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The pictures to the right were both compiled from photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with the bottom annotated to indicate the location of a 2017 supernova that was not visible in the earlier 2005 picture.

In this collage two images of the spiral galaxy NGC 1672 are compared: one showing supernova SN 2017GAX as a small green dot, and the other without. The difference between the images is that both have been created by processing multiple individual Hubble images, each taken to capture a specific wavelength of visible light, and combining them to make a full-colour image. In one of those filtered frames, taken in 2017, the fading supernova is still visible

NGC 1672 is considered a barred spiral galaxy. Located an estimated 52 million light years away, the 2017 supernovae was not the last detected within it. In 2022 a second supernovae occurred. That’s two supernovae within five years. Meanwhile the Milky Way has not seen a supernova in more than four centuries.

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Polaris Spaceplanes begins test flights of its second Mira prototype

9:42 am

After losing its first Mira prototype test plane during a flight in May, the German startup Polaris Spaceplanes has now begun test flights of its replacement, dubbed Mira-2.

With this prototype the company hopes to test its aerospike engine in flight for the first time, leading to the construction of its full scale spaceplane Aurora.

This five-metre-long vehicle is equipped with jet engines for take-off and landing and one of the company’s in-house developed AS-1 aerospike engines for rocket-powered flight.

POLARIS conducted the first three test flights of the MIRA II demonstrator at the Peenemünde Airport on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Over the three flights, the vehicle accumulated a total of 20 minutes of flight time and covered more than 50 kilometres.

All three flights were unmanned, as Mira-2 is relatively small. The company will now install the aerospike engine, with the next flights testing that engine. If successful, it would be the first time ever an aerospike rocket engine has ever flown.

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Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

9:32 am

Three Chinese astronauts safely landed in Mongolia today after completing a six month mission on China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

Ye Guangfu, on his second flight, and two rookies, Li Cong and Li Guansu, lifted off on April 25, 2024 at 8:59 am EDT and docked about six-and-a-half hours later. They’ve been aboard the past six months conducting scientific experiments and performing maintenance activities including a space walk.

They landed today, November 3, at 12:24 pm EST at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. China is 13 hours ahead of EST, so it was a nighttime landing there at 1:34 am November 4. China’s CGTN television network provided live coverage. Descent and touchdown were captured by infrared cameras.

A new crew has taken over occupancy of Tiangong-3, and has now started its own six month mission.

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Australia issues licenses for two spaceports

9:27 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The Australian government has now issued permits for two different spaceports, making possibly orbital launches at both in the near future.

First the planning minister for the province of South Australia has issued final approval allowing launches at the Southern Launch facility on Australia’s southern coast, though that approval included serious restrictions, such as no rocket launched could be taller than 30 meters. He also placed limitations on the number of launches per year, 36, the amount of noise a launch could make, and added other rules “regarding cultural heritage and native vegetation management.”

The spaceport hopes to complete its first orbital launch by the end of next year. Not surprisingly, the leftists in Green Party opposed the spaceport.

Second, the Australian Space Agency issued a launch license to Gilmour Space at its Bowen spaceport on the eastern coast of Australia, seven months late. This quote from the company’s founder is instructive:

But Mr Gilmour said when he and his brother, James Gilmour, set out to be the first to build a rocket of its kind in Australia almost a decade ago, he never imagined that getting a [launch] permit would be the most difficult part. “In my wildest dreams, I didn’t think it’d take this long,” he said. “I honestly thought the environmental approval [to launch a rocket over the Great Barrier Reef] would take the longest, and we got that well over a year ago.”

The company had originally hoped to launch early this year. It still hopes to do so before the end of 2024.

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Japan launches military communications satellite

9:12 am

Japan today successfully launched a military communications satellite on the fourth launch of Mitsubishi’s new H3 rocket.

Liftoff occurred at Japan’s Tanegashima spaceport on the southern end of Japan’s island chain.

This was Japan’s fifth launch in 2024, the most launches it has accomplished in a single year since it completed six in 2018. As such the leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:

107 SpaceX
49 China
12 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 124 to 74, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 107 to 91.

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