Tag: spaceflight

The new invasion of Mars begins next week!

10:13 am

In the next two weeks three spacecraft will arrive at Mars, including two orbiters and two rovers. This post is simply a heads up so that my readers will know what to expect and when to expect it.

First, we have the arrival in Mars orbit of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope orbiter on February 9th at 10:30 am (Eastern). The spacecraft was built in a partnership with U.S. universities and the UAE. Once in orbit it will focus on studying the Martian atmosphere.

Next will arrive China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter on February 10th. The exact time it will do its engine burn to enter orbit has not been announced, as far as I can tell. Once in orbit it will begin a four month reconnaissance of the landing site for its presently unnamed rover, which will descend to the surface in May.

Finally, on February 18th at 12:55 am (Pacific) the American rover Perseverance will land in Jezero Crater on Mars. Essentially an upgraded copy of the Curiosity rover, it will land in the same way, lowered by cables from its re-entry sky crane rocket above it. It will then spend years studying the geology of Mars, while also storing samples that a later mission can recover and return to Earth.

All in all February is going to be an exciting month for the exploration of Mars. Stay tuned for some cool stuff!

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Starlink now has over 10,000 users

9:46 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX revealed yesterday that its Starlink internet constellation now has over 10,000 users in both the U.S. and elsewhere.

The update on Starlink’s customer base came in a petition to the FCC, with SpaceX asking that Starlink be designated an “Eligible Telecommunications Carrier” or ETC. The company noted that receiving this designation is necessary for Starlink to provide service to regions in “Alabama, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.”

SpaceX was awarded access to those regions under the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunities Fund, an auction to bring broadband services to rural areas. The FCC in December awarded SpaceX with nearly $900 million in federal subsidies in the first phase of the auction.

“Designating Starlink Services as an ETC is in the public interest because it will enable the company to receive support that will facilitate rapid deployment of broadband and voice service to the Service Areas at speeds and latency comparable to terrestrial systems in urban locations,” SpaceX wrote in the filing on Thursday.

One of my readers, Steve Golson, emailed me yesterday to tell me he is one of those rural customers, as he is located in Maine.

We are at latitude 43.2°N which was too far south for their early beta program, but they’ve just opened it up to us. I signed up back in June 2020, when the Starlink beta signup first went live. Yesterday I received this email:

“Starlink is now available in limited supply in your service area. … Availability is limited so orders must be completed within 15 minutes of landing on the order page. If you are not able to order at this time, the Starlink team will continue to send updates as more capacity becomes available.”

I ordered right away, and I was notified that the dish shipped today, with delivery late next week by FedEx Ground. Cost is $500 for the dish, WiFi router, power supply, cables, mounting tripod. Monthy cost is $99. That’s the beta cost, but I suspect their final costs will be similar.

Now I’m getting a roof mount ready. You *really* need an unobstructed view of the whole sky. The very cool Starlink app (iOS and Android) shows you how much of your sky needs to be unobstructed.

He promises to give further updates as his service rolls out.

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NASA awards Firefly lunar contract

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded the new smallsat rocket company Firefly a $93 million contract to build a lunar lander for delivering scientific payloads to the Moon’s surface.

This is the first delivery awarded to Firefly Aerospace, which will provide the lunar delivery service using its Blue Ghost lander, which the company designed and developed at its Cedar Park facility. This facility also will house the integration of NASA and any non-NASA payloads, and also will serve as the company’s mission operations center for the 2023 delivery.

The lander is based on the design of Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander that failed in its landing attempt in 2019. After that failure a group of Israeli engineers from that project formed their own company, and partnered with Firefly to build a new lander, which is now dubbed Blue Ghost.

The NASA contract itself replaces OrbitBeyond, which had won a lunar landing contract initially but had backed out in 2019.

Finally, the timing of this announcement immediately after Firefly had revamped its board of directors to remove its main Ukrainian backer from an obvious management position is most telling. Suggests to me that they did that revamping in direct response to NASA’s concerns, and once done NASA could then move forward with the contract award.

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Biden administration endorses Artemis program

9:14 am

During a press conference yesterday Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki stated that the Biden administration plans to continue the Artemis manned lunar program that was initiated by the Trump administration.

“Through the Artemis program, the United States government will work with industry and international partners to send astronauts to the surface of the moon — another man and a woman to the moon,” Psaki told reporters in a White House press briefing Thursday. “Certainly, we support this effort and endeavor,” she added.

The Biden administration was under pressure to endorse Artemis, coming from its own party. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress want the pork it represents to them. This statement now aligns Biden with Congress. The American effort to return to the Moon, established by Trump, is now practically engraved in stone.

What the statement that Psaki read did not detail is whether that support will include the SLS rocket or the Orion capsule. Nor did her statement indicate any time schedule for a landing, which adds weight to the supposition that they are going to abandon the Trump’s effort to push for a 2024 manned landing on the Moon.

Moreover, the letter sent to the White House on February 3rd by eleven Democrats endorsing Artemis (available here [pdf]), also said nothing about SLS or Orion. Instead, it was more intent on encouraging the White House to award contracts to the private sector to build the manned lunar lander. NASA had announced on February 1st that it was delaying its decision on who should build it, and those Democrats did not want that delay to result in the contracts getting killed.

Both statements tell us is that SLS itself is presently on very thin ice. Congress wants Artemis, but Artemis is no longer synonymous with SLS. For the past two years the Trump administration had been awarding contracts to numerous private companies to design and build many components of Artemis, rather than have NASA do the designing and building (as it had with SLS). Those contracts have created a cohort of new vested interests that rely on Artemis, all of which I am sure are screaming at their representatives in Congress to keep their work funded.

Furthermore, SpaceX’s development of Starship is clearly showing everyone that an alternative to SLS does exist, and could be operational for much less and much sooner.

To my mind, all this evidence suggests that the Washington political world is getting itself ready for the possibility of abandoning SLS. They don’t want to, but if alternatives to its pork are available that are also more productive, they are steeling themselves for making the difficult political decision of switching.

This evidence also suggests that the Biden administration will continue the policies I outlined in my 2017 policy paper Capitalism in Space (available as a free download here [pdf]) and adopted by the Trump administration. I had recommended that all design and construction should be taken from NASA and given to many different private companies, with that private sector also owning what they build while competing for those government dollars. NASA would outline the project’s goals and concept, and then act merely as a customer which would find others to execute those goals and concepts, as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

If the Biden administration is embracing these recommendations, this is very good news. While the motives of these corrupt politicians might be bad, the result could be very good for the U.S. Allowing the private sector to do the job means it might actually get done, rapidly and for much less. It will also help fuel the growth of a very robust American space industry, which once established will soon no longer depend solely on the government for its business. The lower cost required by the competition to get NASA business will encourage others to buy the products, and soon thereafter the government will become irrelevant to this industry’s success.

This is the model used in the early 20th century to jump start the airline industry. It worked. It now looks like NASA and the govenment will do it in space.

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China’s Long March 3B rocket launches military satellite

8:24 am

China yesterday used its Long March 3B rocket to place a military communications satellite into orbit.

No word on whether this first stage or strap-on boosters lander near any residential communities.

The 2021 launch race:

4 SpaceX
3 China
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 6 to 3 in the national rankings. SpaceX’s had planned to do another Starlink launch this morning but has rescheduled it for the weekend.

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New theory to explain the Martian seasonal streaks

9:22 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have proposed a new explanation for explaining the Martian seasonal streaks called recurring slope lineae that appear each spring and then fade over time.

Lineae, while unique to Mars, are different than the other similar Martian feature called slope streaks, which are not seasonal and have a somewhat different appearance and morphology.

This new proposal refines some of the past ideas for the seasonal cause of lineae.

Previous ideas suggested that liquid debris flows or dry granular flows caused this movement. Neither model can completely account for the seasonal martian flow features known as Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL). The team alternatively hypothesizes that small-scale ice melting in the near-surface regolith is causing changes at the surface that make it vulnerable to dust storms and wind. As a result, the RSL features appear and/or expand on the surface of Mars today. Further, the team believes that the thin layers of melting ice result from interactions between underground water ice, chlorine salts, and sulfates, which create an unstable, liquid-like flowing slush instigating sinkholes, ground collapse, surface flows, and upheave.

…Previous studies have suggested RSL are related to chlorine salts and noted their occurrence in regions of high sulfate outcrops. The current study extends these observations with a near-surface cryosalt activity model based on field observations and lab experiments. However, the exact mechanism of RSL formation on Mars still remains a mystery. [emphasis mine]

The mainstream press will make a big deal about this, but it really does nothing but add some nuance to previous theories. We really still do not know what causes lineae, as the highlighted text above notes.

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Firefly shakes up board of directors

9:09 am

The smallsat rocket company Firefly, only a month or so from the first orbital test flight of its Alpha rocket, has drastically changed its board of directors, removing its main financial backer from the Ukraine and replacing him with Americans.

Among those no longer on the board is Firefly’s financial savior, Polyakov, who has dual Ukrainian-British citizenship and lives in Edinburgh. This is a substantial change, as it moves the company’s key financial backer from a role as a decision maker to that of a stockholder. Markusic said Polyakov has the rights of a stockholder but that Firefly’s board now directs the company. Polyakov remains Firefly’s largest shareholder.

“These changes are part of the logical growth and development of Firefly,” Polyakov told Ars. “I’m extremely proud of what we have accomplished to date. Moving forward, I have the utmost confidence in Tom, his team, and the new board members.”

Some concerns had previously been raised about Polyakov’s background. This move, however, is more due to having an all-American board of directors, which should bolster Firefly’s efforts to work with the defense community.

Essentially, the company and Polykov have moved Polykov out of a sensitive position so as to make the company seem more palatable to the federal government. His presence on the board would have likely made it difficult to win any government contracts. Making him in name just a stockholder will reduce that issue.

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SpaceX competitors lobbying to kill FCC subsidy for Starlink

9:00 am

A lobbying effort instigated by some of SpaceX competitors in the rural internet service business is now working to kill the $886 million subsidy the FCC had awarded the company for developing its Starlink internet constellation.

The losers in the awards process apparently are teaming up with the Democrats to challenge all the awards, with SpaceX their main target.

The [award to SpaceX was] made when Trump administration appointees still controlled the FCC and now the agency is led by Biden appointees who could cut off applicants it considers dubious. Last month, 160 House and Senate members urged the FCC to scrutinize recipients, in part because network construction takes time. “We fear that we will not know whether funds were improperly spent for years to come,” said the lawmakers.

There is a “a need for proper upfront assessment,” Representative Jim Clyburn, of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, said in an email. He said many applicants claim to be able to deliver faster service to new customers than they are delivering to current subscribers.

This is a fight for government hand-outs, period. The losers are now using political pressure to change the decision. And since the Democrats generally hate SpaceX (and Elon Musk) because it is so successful at actually achieving what it sets out to do, they are glad to help them. Not only will it bring these politicians campaign donations (called bribes if you are honest), it will destroy the one space company that is proving that capitalism and freedom works.

From my perspective, no one, including SpaceX, should get these funds. SpaceX is proving they aren’t necessary to get the job done (bringing fast internet service to rural communities). Moreover, the federal government really doesn’t have the cash, deep in debt as it is.

But then, my perspective is now considered quaint, even “raaaaaaacist”, in our modern corrupt Marxist society.

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SpaceX launches another 60 Starlink satellites

11:29 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. Both fairings were also used.

The 2021 launch race:

4 SpaceX
2 China
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 Russia

The U.S. now leads China 6 to 2 in the national rankings. SpaceX had planned another launch later this morning, but they have delayed that launch one day until tomorrow.

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Ten finalists in public Chinese contest to name Mars rover

3:15 pm

The new colonial movement: The Chinese public vote to pick the name of the Mars rover presently flying to Mars on its Tianwen-1 orbiter has now been narrowed to ten finalists.

The public can now vote for their favorites from a shortlist of 10 names for the Tianwen-1 mission rover.

The 10 names — Hongyi, Qilin, Nezha, Chitu, Zhurong, Qiusuo, Fenghuolun, Zhuimeng, Tianxing and Xinghuo — are taken from ideas including Chinese mythological figures, Confucian concepts and legendary animals.

Notably Hongyi, from the Confucian Analects, can be translated to “persistence” or perseverance, giving a similar meaning to the NASA Perseverance rover also heading for Mars. Others meanings include:

Zhurong: a god of fire
Qilin: a Chinese unicorn
Chitu: red rabbit
Qiusuo: to explore, referencing an ancient poem
Zhuimeng: to pursue a dream
Nezha: a mythological hero
Fenghuolun: Nezha’s weapons
Tianxing: referring to the motion of celestial bodies
Xinghuo: spark

Personally, I hope they pick Chitu (Red Rabbit), as that matches nicely with the name of China’s lunar rover, Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit).

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Russia & China negotiating increased cooperation on the Moon

10:21 am

The new colonial movement: According to the state-run Russian news source TASS, Russia and China are in negotiations to increase Russia’s participation in China’s program to establish a manned base on the Moon.

Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos is in talks with its Chinese colleagues to determine scientific tasks for a lunar base and to discuss technical aspects of the project’s implementation, Deputy Director General for International Cooperation at the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos Sergey Savelyev told TASS. “At present, work is under way to determine possible scientific tasks of mutual interest in the Moon research. Besides, possible technical implementation of the project is being analyzed,” he said.

The article is very vague about details. It does signal that Russia is strongly looking for alternatives to working with the U.S. on its Lunar Gateway project. If it teams up with China NASA will likely begin breaking off all cooperation with Russia because of the legal restrictions that prevent it from partnering in any way with China.

This article also illustrates Russia’s declining status as a space power. For years they have depending on the American program at ISS to have a place in space. Now they are looking to China. All in all, it appears they can’t get their own projects going, and need to attach themselves to others to have any part in the exploration of space.

As for China, that country wants to the good public relations that would come from making its space program international in scope. I expect therefore they want Russia to sign on. I also expect that China will dictate terms, as it doesn’t really need Russia in its effort.

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Hans Koenigsmann, 4th person hired by Musk at SpaceX, retiring

10:11 am

The fourth person Elon Musk ever hired when he was starting SpaceX, Hans Koenigsmann, has announced that he is retiring.

SpaceX vice president of build and flight reliability Hans Koenigsmann is retiring and has begun transitioning his role to former top NASA official William “Bill” Gerstenmaier, according to note to employees that was seen by CNBC.

Essentially, Koenigsmann and Gerstenmaier will be trading places. Gerstenmaier has been a consultant at SpaceX, will now move into Koenigsmann’s position, while Koenigsmann will become a technical advisor similar to what Gerstenmaier has been.

Without doubt Koenigsmann is one the the main reasons why SpaceX has become as successful as it has. I am sure Elon Musk will miss him.

While I have heard sources in the space community happy about the choice of Gersternmaier to replace him, I have reservations. Gersternmaier was in charge of NASA’s manned space program for almost the entire period it was trying to build SLS and Orion, and was the key planner behind its numerous delays and problems. While he started out well at NASA, those later years make me think of him as a typical Washington bureaucrat, spinning problems to defuse negative publicity rather than fixing them quickly. It was this spinning over the problems with SLS that I think finally got him fired by the Trump administration.

I hope I am wrong. I also know that if I am not, the odds are high that Gerstenmaier will not last long in this position. Musk does not tolerate spin.

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Russian launches military satellite

9:50 am

Russia this morning successfully launched a military intelligence satellite using its Soyuz-2 rocket.

This was Russia’s first launch in 2021. The 2021 launch race:

3 SpaceX
2 China
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 5-2 in the national rankings, a lead that should widen by tomorrow as SpaceX has two Starlink satellite launches planned from Cape Canaveral four hours apart in the wee hours of the morning. If both are successful, that single American company will have as many launches as the entire world combined.

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Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO

4:01 pm

Capitalism in space: Jeff Bezos announced today that he is stepping down as Amazon CEO to focus his efforts more on his other political and space-related activities.

From the email he sent to Amazon employees:

As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions,” Bezos wrote. “I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have

I think this quote from the story above however explains a great deal about Blue Origin in the past three years:

Bezos is said to devote one day a week to Blue Origin (reportedly, Wednesdays), plus at least $1 billion worth of the annual proceeds from his sales of Amazon shares. He’s presided over high-profile publicity events including the unveiling of the Blue Moon lunar lander. But when it comes to the day-to-day business, he handed that responsibility over to veteran aerospace executive Bob Smith, who became Blue Origin’s CEO in 2017.

It was around 2017 that the pace of Blue Origin’s effort seemed to slow to a crawl. It was also about that time that the company became dedicated to becoming a government contractor, doing whatever the government required even if it meant that development of their New Glenn rocket would slow (which it did).

Whether this action will increase Bezos’ participation with Blue Origin however is unclear. In the last year he has seemed more interested in leftist environmental causes and leftist politics. We shall have to wait and see.

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Smallsat rocket company Astra to go public

2:15 pm

Capitalism in space: A merger with a major investment capital company, bringing in $500 million, will result in the smallsat rocket company Astra going public.

Small launch vehicle developer Astra will go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), providing the company with nearly $500 million in cash and valuing it at more than $2 billion.

Astra announced Feb. 2 an agreement to merge with Holicity, a SPAC established last year by Craig McCaw. That merger, expected to close in the second quarter, will turn Astra into a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq exchange with the ticker symbol ASTR. McCaw, chairman and chief executive of Holicity, will join Astra’s board as part of the deal.

Astra expects to raise $489 million through the merger with Holicity, a total that includes a $200 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) led by BlackRock and $30 million from a concurrent Series C round, company executives said in an investor call. The deal will value Astra at $2.1 billion.

In the article Astra’s head claimed the company already has contracts for its first fifty flights, but did not provide any details. At this moment Astra has yet to complete a successful orbital launch, and has two attempted orbital tests which both failed.

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SpaceX live feed of Starship #9 flight

1:24 pm

Just before landing
Just before landing.

Just after landing.
Just after landing.

The test is over. All went perfectly until the landing, when the spacecraft once again crashed on the launchpad. They hit the target, but just too hard.

This time the problem occurred early in the landing maneuver. It appeared the spacecraft was unable to get completely vertical and hit the ground without firing its engines.

Right now we have no idea what the issue was, or what will be involved in fixing it. Starship #10 sits on its launchpad, ready to go. Assuming they do not have to make major changes or redesigns to correct the issue, I would expect it to launch within six weeks.

Of course, that assumes the Biden administration doesn’t ramp up its regulatory enforcement effort against SpaceX. And I have every expectation that will be the goal of the Democrats now in charge of the federal government.

Meanwhile, the FAA is now claiming the launch license approval delay last week was related to SpaceX violating it license approval during the December test flight of Starship prototype #8.

In a Feb. 2 statement, the FAA said that SpaceX had requested a waiver to its FAA license for suborbital test flights of its Starship vehicle before the Dec. 9 flight of the Starship SN8 vehicle. That waiver, the FAA said, would have allowed SpaceX to “exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal safety regulations.”

The FAA denied the request, but SpaceX went ahead with the launch. SpaceX considered the flight successful, although the vehicle exploded upon landing. No injuries or third-party damage was reported during the flight, but the FAA determined that SpaceX violated the conditions of its license by proceeding without the waiver.

“As a result of this non-compliance, the FAA required SpaceX to conduct an investigation of the incident,” the agency stated. “All testing that could affect public safety at the Boca Chica, Texas, launch site was suspended until the investigation was completed and the FAA approved the company’s corrective actions to protect public safety.”

This could be true but personally, I don’t buy it. To me this sounds like government spin to justify their own incompetence in blocking last week’s flight. It also sounds like the kind of spin used by government bureaucrats when they want to enlarge their power. Today’s landing crash of prototype #9 now gives the FAA and Biden administration wonderful ammunition to clamp down hard on SpaceX.

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Virgin Galactic almost lost its 2nd SpaceShipTwo in 2019 flight

9:45 am

Capitalism in space: According to a book to be published in May, Virgin Galactic had serious previously unrevealed problems during its 2019 manned flight of VSS Unity, ist 2nd SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceship, problems that could have killed all on board.

[W]hen the ground crew wheeled the suborbital spacecraft back into the hangar, company officials discovered that a seal running along a stabilizer on the wing designed to keep the space plane flying straight had come undone — a potentially serious safety hazard. “The structural integrity of the entire stabilizer was compromised,” Todd Ericson, a test pilot who also served as a vice president for safety and test, said, according to a soon-to-be-published book. “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people.”

Much more at the link. It does appear that the company was not doing due diligence prior to the flight, signing off inspections without actually doing those inspections.

The issue caused the long delay since that flight. That it was kept secret as the company went public and offered its stock for sale likely breaks some SEC laws.

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Watching Starship #9’s flight, take 2

9:28 am

LabPadre's Starship 24/7 live feed, at 9:12 am (Central), February 2,, 2021
LabPadre’s Starship 24/7 live feed, 9:12 am (Central), February 2,, 2021.
Click to go to it.

Capitalism in space: It appears that SpaceX has finally gotten approval from our benevolent government to attempt today a flight of the ninth prototype of its Starship. to a height of approximately 33,000 feet. The screen capture to the right from this morning shows Starship’s #9 and #10, both on their own launchpads. I think #9 is the one on the right.

As the company’s Starship website still 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 about ten minutes before launch. In addition, there are these live streams available:

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.

While this flight will likely be as epic as the flight of Starship #8, there is no guarantee it will occur today. Until they actually lights the candle, much of the action today will be like watching paint dry.

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Rocket of Chinese pseudo-private company fails on 2nd launch

8:52 pm

The new colonial movement: Today’s second launch of the Chinese pseudo-private company iSpace’s Hyperbola-1 rocket ended in failure soon after launch.

No details yet on what went wrong.

The company had successfully completed its first orbital launch in July 2019. The smallsat rocket, using four solid-rocket stages, is almost certainly derived from China’s military technology, and thus the company could not exist without significant government supervision.

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Billionaire buys of entire SpaceX launch for tourist flight and charity

4:41 pm

Capitalism in space: An American billionaire has purchased an entire SpaceX Dragon flight and Falcon 9 launch, set for sometime in October ’21, with the goal of using the publicity of the flight to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Besides fulfilling his dream of flying in space, Jared Isaacman announced Monday that he aims to use the private trip to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, half coming from his own pockets.

A health care worker for St. Jude already has been selected for the mission. Anyone donating to St. Jude in February will be entered into a random drawing for seat No. 3. The fourth seat will go to a business owner who uses Shift4 Payments, Isaacman’s credit card processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania

This flight means that SpaceX is likely going to have at about five commercial manned flights in the next year, three by NASA, one by Axiom to ISS, and Isaacman’s above. Moreover, none include the flights by various entertainers and reality show producers who have been rumored as being interesting in buying tickets. Nor does this include the tourism flights the Russians are planning in the next year.

All told, these flights strongly suggest that there is a very healthy market for commercial manned spaceflight, a market that can only grow once Boeing finally enters the market with its Starliner capsule.

I must also add that we have been waiting for commercial space tourism flights for almost sixteen years, since Richard Branson began promising them on his suborbital SpaceShipTwo back in 2004. Never happened, and now seems very second class in comparison to the pending orbital flights. As the article at the link says disparagingly about Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin’s suborbital craft, they “will just briefly skim the surface of space.”

Both Branson and Bezos had a window to make suborbital space tourism pay off. Neither stepped through it.

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More weird features and changes on Mars

1:31 pm

Some strange stuff on Mars
Click for full 2020 photo.

Overview map

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 28, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Uncaptioned and labeled “Reticulate Bedform Change Detection on Arsia Mons West Flank,” it shows a whole bunch of strange features in addition to a change that occurred sometime in the past two years.

I think it also well illustrates in one image how alien Mars is.

The main features in this photo are what scientists have dubbed reticulate bedforms. These features, found mostly in the high elevations on the flanks of the giant volcanoes in the Tharsis Bulge to the west of Valles Marineris, are thought to be ancient dunes made of volcanic dust and debris that has solidified into an aggregate. These dunes are found with a variety of patterns.

Aggregates on the flanks are transported downslope by katabatic winds and form linear and “accordion” morphologies. Materials within the calderas and other depressions remain trapped and are subjected to multidirectional winds, forming an interlinked “honeycomb” texture. In many places on and near the volcanoes, light-toned, low thermal inertia yardangs and indurated surfaces are present.

The photo to the right appears to show all three patterns, even though it is located on the northwestern slopes of of Arsia Mons, the southernmost of the string of three giant volcanoes in the Tharsis Bulge. On the overview map to the right, this photo’s location is indicated by the white box. The black boxes indicate the location of all the pits caves that surround Arsia Mons which I have previously posted about on Behind the Black.

It is intriguing that, at least at this point, these particular reticulate bedforms on the slopes of Arsia Mons happen to be in a region where few cave pits have so far been identified. It could be that the conditions that form each are mutually exclusive. If you get pits on the slopes of Martian volcano you can’t have reticulate bedforms. Or maybe not all the pits have yet been located, or the flanks of the volcano has many more reticulate bedforms that I simply have not documented.

Either way, this particular cool image has two areas of interest, as noted by the white boxes above.
» Read more

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Environmentalists cheer FAA blocking of Starship test flight

9:28 am

Two Starship prototypes now on launchpads
Two Starships are better than one!

They’re coming for you next: It appears the environmentalist movement is thrilled that the FAA and the Biden administration blocked last week’s test flight of SpaceX’s ninth prototype of Starship.

It also appears they are gunning to end Starship entirely, and might now have the right people in charge to get it done.

Jim Chapman, president of the nonprofit Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, says it is unusual for a federal regulatory agency to allow a company to conduct tests prior to completion of an environmental review and licenses issued.

He and other environmentalists have repeatedly expressed concerns to Border Report of what they say is a lack of oversight by the FAA on this site. But Friday’s actions gave Chapman some hope. “The fact that the FAA is going by the book for a change is a good development,” Chapman said. “They’re following the law by doing that and they’re supposed to do the environmental evaluation before they issue new licenses and up until now they kind of haven’t been doing that.”

The irony here is that these environmentalists are claiming that SpaceX’s rocket facility at Boca Chica will threaten the local beach wildlife, when we have more than a half century of evidence from Cape Canaveral that a rocket launch facility does the exact opposite. When the federal government established its Florida spaceport it reserved vast tracts around it for safety, but also reserved that land as a wildlife preserve. The result has been that the beach wildlife at Cape Canaveral has thrived, and been protected.

What these environmentalist really want to do is prevent SpaceX from flying, merely because they hate the development of new technology and the advancement of human capabilities. The environmental movement is routinely against anything new, and has been for decades.

With the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House, their allies are now in power. I would not at all be surprised if the FAA’s action last week is also tied to this environmental review. If so, expect future test flights at Boca Chica to be further delayed and stretched out.

Meanwhile, this past weekend SpaceX rolled out its tenth Starship prototype, placing it on a second launchpad right next to prototype #9, as shown by the screen capture above from the LabPadre 24/7 live feed this morning. The company sure is making it clear that the only reason they have been stalled is the government.

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India is targeting ’21 for first unmanned test launch of manned system

9:07 am

The new colonial movement: According to Indian government officials, the first unmanned test flight of their Gaganyaan manned capsule will occur before the end of 2021.

The first unmanned launch is slated for December 2021. The Gaganyaan is a crewed orbital spacecraft expected to carry three astronauts into space for at least seven days. The spacecraft is likely to consist of an orbital module which will have a service and a crew module. The mission is estimated to cost around Rs 10,000 crore. The GSLV Mk-III, now called LVM-3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3), will be deployed for the launch.

The new name for the rocket helps distinguish it from the GSLV Mk-II, a smaller version aimed mostly at commercial customers.

India also hopes to launch a new smallsat rocket in ’21, as well as its next lunar lander/rover, Chandrayaan-3. The country’s space effort will also be attempting to recover from its shutdown in 2020 due to the Wuhan virus panic.

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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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