Tag: spaceflight

NASA awards $370 million to 14 companies to develop new space capabilities

9:27 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday issued fifteen development contracts to fourteen private space companies, totaling $370 million, to help them develop a variety of new space capabilities.

The funding is spread across 15 contracts to 14 different companies, including SpaceX, Astrobotic, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance and Intuitive Machines.

Nearly 70% of the money is earmarked for the management of cryogenic fluids such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. SpaceX, for example, will get $53 million for an in-space demonstration that will transfer 11 tons (10 metric tons) of liquid oxygen between tanks on one of its next-gen Starship vehicles.

What makes these contracts different from past NASA development contracts is fundamental. First, the design work comes from the companies, not NASA. Therefore products will be designed with the company’s needs in mind, not the government’s, and will also likely be designed faster and more efficiently.

Second, the companies will own what they build, and will be able to sell or use it however they wish. SpaceX for example wants this capability to give Starship the ability to leave Earth orbit, for its own commercial flights.

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Possible collision today of two big pieces of space junk

9:14 am

A space junk tracking company is predicting a “more than 10%” chance that two large pieces of space junk with a combined mass of more than 6,000 pounds might collide tonight over the south Atlantic just before 9 pm (eastern).

The two pieces, one a defunct Russian satellite and the other a Chinese upper rocket stage, will be moving at more than 32,000 miles per hour relative to each other at the moment when impact might occur.

If they do hit, the collision will break both pieces into many new smaller pieces of space junk. Not a good thing.

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Russia oxygen regeneration system on ISS fails

9:04 am

Russian new sources today reported that their oxygen regeneration system on the ISS module Zvezda has failed.

A Russian cosmonaut told a specialist from the Mission Control Centre in the Moscow Region that the Electron-VM OGS installed in the Russian Zvezda module had failed.

Essentially this information was overheard by Russian sources during communications between mission control and the Russians on-board ISS.

Whether this failure is related to the rise in temperature this week in Zvezda is unknown. Also, the failed unit itself might be one that came with the station when it was launched 20 years ago, or it might be an upgraded unit launched later.

This unit is designed to recycle oxygen on board so as to reduce the need to haul up new supplies. Its failure poses no immediate threat to the station or its crew, since there is plenty of oxygen store on board and the U.S. has its own regeneration unit. However, if it isn’t repairable and can’t be replaced quickly it likely means future cargo manifests will require larger stocks of oxygen. It also might mean a reduction in total crew on ISS, which only now is returning to more than three for long periods because of the initiation of American private ferrying serves.

Meanwhile the location of the leak on Zvezda remains unknown. It needs to be pinpointed and hopefully solved, because if it is a more serious age issue ISS managers need to know.

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First scientist chosen to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo

9:20 pm

Planetary scientist Alan Stern, who is also the principal scientist on the New Horizons mission, has been chosen to be the first scientist to fly on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital SpaceShipTwo, should it ever begin commercial flights.

One SwRI experiment on the just announced flight will involve Stern operating a former space shuttle and NASA F-18 low light level camera to determine how well space astronomical observations can be conducted. In addition, Stern will be fitted with instrumentation that continuously monitors human vital signs from just before the two-hour flight until after its landing as a biomedical experiment. The results of both experiments will be published.

I hope it happens, but personally I have great doubts. We now have more than fifteen years of similar big announcements about what Virgin Galactic will do with its suborbital spaceship, with nothing to show for it. Right now I see these stories as mere fodder by people like Richard Branson to push up the stock’s price so he can make more money selling it as he eases his way out of the company.

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NASA announces broadcast schedule for OSIRIS-REx’s sample grab at Bennu

6:32 pm

NASA today announced the broadcast schedule that will be available to the public of OSIRIS-REx’s sample grab at the asterod Bennu on October 20, 2020.

Much of the schedule is NASA’s public relations blather, filled with some good information intermixed with a lot of lobbying for the government agency. Much of it will also be the equivalent of watching paint dry, as nothing will be happening quickly.

However, if you wish to watch the important part, tune into NASA TV from 5 to 6:30 p.m on October 20th.

Hosted by Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, and Michelle Thaller, science communicator at Goddard, the broadcast will cover milestones in the last 90 minutes leading up to TAG and spacecraft back-away. It will include perspectives from team members and science leaders about the mission’s challenges and accomplishments.

This will be on the public feed. If you find yourself choking on the NASA hype, you can then switch over to the media feed, which will be “A clean feed of the Mission Support Area during TAG [touch-and-go].”

Regardless, the actual attempt will be heart-stopping, because there is a real chance flying rocks from the asteroid’s surface will hit and damage the spacecraft.

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Pluto’s mountains are white-capped but with methane not ice

6:23 pm

Pluto's white-capped mountains
Pluto’s mountains, capped with methane snow.
Click for full figure.

Scientists now theorize that the white-capped mountains first photographed by New Horizons during its 2015 fly-by of Pluto are capped not with ice but with methane snow, as part of that planet’s methane gas-ice cycle.

The image to the right, from their paper, shows these white-capped mountains on Pluto.

The exact composition of this frost on Pluto was unclear. While researchers identified methane, it was unknown whether it is pure frozen methane, frozen methane diluted with frozen nitrogen or a mix of both. The uncertainty about the frost’s composition made it unclear how it might have formed.

To help solve these mysteries, scientists in this new study examined high-resolution data from New Horizons, focusing on the composition of the frost at high altitudes. This new analysis revealed that the snowcap frost “is almost pure methane ice, with traces of nitrogen ice,” Bertrand said.

The researchers also developed high-resolution computer simulations of Pluto’s climate. They focused on how methane circulates around the dwarf planet. [emphasis mine]

Though their simulations of the methane cycle that produces the caps are reasonable, I purposely highlight the fact that this is what they are, and as such must be treated with great skepticism. We might now know the composition of these snowcaps, but our overall knowledge of Pluto remains to limited to trust blindly any computer model.

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Seven countries join the U.S. in signing the Artemis Accords

6:06 pm

NASA announced yesterday that seven countries — the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and Italy — have now signed the Artemis Accords, the Trump administration’s effort to create a legal framework that will protect property rights in space and get around the legal limitations imposed by the Outer Space Treaty.

I suspect this announcement was in response to statements earlier this week by Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency, that they will not partner with the U.S. in its Lunar Gateway space station project. Though Rogozin cited other issues for the decision, such at the fact that they would not be treated as an equal partner in Gateway, I suspect the decision was also made because Russia’s government opposes the Artemis Accords and does not wish to sign it. China has said the same.

Since those accords are designed to shift power and control from governments to private enterprise, it is not surprising that Russia and China oppose them. Both are authoritarian top-down societies whose government reflects their culture. To sign an agreement that would take power from the state and give it to their citizens is unacceptable.

So be it. Of the countries that have signed, I expect in future years they will all prosper in space, and eventually force others to accept the ideas of freedom, private property, and capitalism that inspire the accords. Luxombourg is committed to pushing private enterprise and investment in commercial space. The UK, Australia, Canada, and Japan all follow the same principles, and all have robust space industries that should only get stronger.

And the UAE, the new baby on the block, wants to make commercial space a big part of its future. Signing these accords — along with their peace deal with Israel — indicates strongly that they mean business, and that they are trying heartily to separate themselves from the radical Islamic movements that have been poisoning the Arab Middle East for decades.

Moreover, the U.S. is requiring any nation that wishes to participate in its effort to return to the Moon to sign these accords. These nations, and their citizens, will therefore have a chance to contribute to that effort, and likely make a lot of money in the process.

Posting is late today because Diane and I went on an 8-mile hike. My gym now idiotically requires masks while you work out, and I am certainly not going to do that. Therefore, to maintain our cardiovascular systems while strengthening our immune systems (the best defense against all flulike diseases, including the Wuhan virus), we have been doing 6 to 10 mile hikes now twice a week. It means one day a week I need to schedule some posts early, and catch up when I get home. I hope my readers understand.

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Lava cones, fissures, and channels from Olympus Mons

9:11 am

A lava cone, fissure, and channel on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 29, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In this one spot we see three obvious volcanic features, all however formed by different processes.

The location of this image is west of Olympus Mons. It sits on the vast lava plain that was laid down by that volcano, the largest in the solar system.

In order of likely occurrence, the cone probably came first. It likely indicates a past eruption coming up from below to create a small volcano.

The shallow meandering channel that sweeps around it to the north and east probably marks a later lava flow coming down from Olympus Mons.

The deeper straight fissure to the south probably came last. It is a graben, a crack caused by the uplift of the entire surface because of pressure from a magma chamber below, causing cracks to form as the surface is stretched.

Three different volcanic events, each probably taking thousands of years, with maybe thousands to millions of years between them. The context map below adds weight to the scale of time and size represented by this one Martian photo.
» Read more

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Juno science team proposes fly-bys of Jupiter’s moons

8:30 am

The Juno science team has proposed doing fly-bys of three of Jupiter’s moons, should NASA extend the mission beyond ’21.

Juno’s five-year primary mission phase ends in July 2021, and mission managers have proposed an extension that would continue operations until September 2025. The spacecraft’s additional orbits around Jupiter will bring Juno closer to the planet’s moons, allowing for a more diversified set of scientific targets.

…The moon flybys would begin in mid-2021 with an encounter with Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, at a distance of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers), according to Bolton.

After a series of distant passes, Juno would swoop just 200 miles (320 kilometers) above Europa in late 2022 for a high-speed flyby. Only NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which ended its mission in 2003, has come closer to Europa.

There are two encounters with Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io planned in 2024 at distances of about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers), according to the flight plan presented by Bolton last month.

The extended mission would also allow scientists to get a better look at Jupiter’s north pole.

NASA will decide on the extension by the end of the year. From a cost and scientific perspective, it makes perfect sense to extend this mission for as long as possible. Compared to launching a new mission, extending an active one is far cheaper. It is also already in place.

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A massive Martian glacier that looks just like a glacier on Earth

2:06 pm

Massive glacier on Mars
Click for full image.

If you ever had any doubt about the existence of glaciers on Mars, today’s cool image should ease those doubts. The photo to the right, taken on August 27, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows many features that are appear identical to features found on typical massive glaciers on Earth.

Downhill is to the northwest. The many parallel grooves or fractures running along the length of the glacier resemble what are seen in many similar Earth glaciers. Some of these fractures are caused by the glaciers slow drift downward, with different sections moving at slightly different rates, thus causing a separation along the flow. Hence the parallel fractures.

These fractures also show evidence of some erosion. Because these Martian glaciers are no longer getting more snowfall, they are no longer growing. However, if the thin layer of dust and debris that protects the ice gets blown off or removed by motion, the ice is exposed and can then sublimate into gas so that the glacier erodes.

On the flow’s edges the darker parallel lines also resemble features seen on Earth, showing the exposed layers of the glacier’s past levels. The same thing can be seen on either side of the canyon’s walls.

The wide smooth section near the center of the parallel lines could very well be an impact crater that landed on this glacier sometime in the far past, and has since been distorted in shape as the glacier flowed downward.

If you still have doubts, the context image below, taken by MRO’s wide angle context camera, should help further allay those doubts.
» Read more

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HBO to create six-part “scripted” series on Musk and SpaceX

10:36 am

Where NOT to get your facts about SpaceX’s history: HBO today announced that it is going to create a six-part “scripted” drama series describing the history of Elon Musk and SpaceX.

In terms of story, the small-screen narrative will follow Musk as he develops the first SpaceX rocket and launches it into orbit with a handpicked team of engineers on a remote island in the Pacific. His dream of humanity colonizing the universe takes one step closer to reality with the first (and successful) manned Falcon 9/Crew Dragon mission on May 30, 2020. The participating NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, have since returned to Earth from the International Space Station.

From my experience writing non-fiction screenplays for cable television when I was still in the movie business, I can guarantee that this drama will have very little connection to reality, and is more likely to get numerous basic facts wrong. It will thus accomplish nothing but to misinform anyone who watches it.

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Rogozin: Russia mostly bowing out of Gateway

10:14 am

The new colonial movement: The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, yesterday announced during a speech at a virtual international space conference that Russia is mostly bowing out of participation in the U.S. lunar Gateway space station project, and will instead seek cooperation with China’s lunar program.

Russia apparently does not like the fact that the U.S. is insisting on taking a lead role in Gateway, and have it designed to primarily meet U.S. goals. Russia has also previously expressed opposition to the Trump administration’s insistence that any partners in Gateway sign the Artemis Accords, designed to provide legal protection for any private investment in space.

Whether they can get the deal they want from China remains very uncertain. China has made it clear they are willing to work with other partners, but China has also made it clear that they — like the U.S. — have their own goals in space, and that anything they do must serve those goals.

In his response, Bridenstine focused on the areas of agreement with Russia (establishing technical standards), but reiterated the U.S.’s commitment to the Artemis Accords. It is clear the Trump administration is fine with Russia’s decision.

For the U.S. Russia’s decision is probably a good thing. It leaves the way open to do what we want, without having to negotiate every decision. (This puts aside the issue on whether Gateway itself is a good decision.)

For Russia this announcement means they are really on their own for the first time since the Soviet era. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 Russia has largely been incapable of developing any new space project, and has needed to link its effort to the U.S. and ISS in order to be able to accomplish much of anything. Breaking free might actually benefit them, as the competition will force them to focus on their own efforts and actually achieve something.

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Blue Origin successfully completes another unmanned suborbital test flight of New Shepard

9:50 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin today successfully completed the seventh unmanned suborbital test flight for this particular New Shepard spacecraft/booster, landing both with no issues.

After a ten-month lull in flights following the previous test of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard launch system, the company conducted a launch and landing of the fully reusable booster and capsule duo. Following weather-related and technical issues during a window late in September, the flight took place from the company’s West Texas facility — near Van Horn, Texas — on Tuesday morning at just after 8:35 AM CDT / 13:35 UTC.

This mission, also known as NS-13, saw 12 commercial payloads launched to the edge of space and back, including a NASA-developed sensor suite that could enable future lunar landing craft to perform safe and precise touchdowns on the surface of the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis exploration program. As in the name, the NS-13 mission was the 13th test flight of the New Shepard launch system, and the first such flight of 2020.

What happens next with New Shepard remains unclear. Blue Origin officials had previously said they would do three test flights this year, with the last manned. Now it appears that manned flight will slip into ’21, but will use a new spacecraft/booster, the fourth built during New Shepard’s development.

I have embedded the video of the flight below the fold, cued to begin just before launch.
» Read more

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NASA charging Estee Lauder $17,500 per hour for filming its perfume on ISS

11:00 am

Capitalism in space: It now appears that NASA is charging Estee Lauder $17,500 per hour for filming the perfume that was just brought to ISS on the most recent Cygnus freighter.

The cosmetics giant will pay $17,500 per hour for the astronauts to take photos of their serum in space. Coincidentally — or not — the Space Station orbits the earth at 17,500 miles per hour.

The International Space Station is an orbiting laboratory for scientific research, but it’s the photo ops and viral videos that capture the public’s imagination.

Estée Lauder will get video and photos of their out-of-this-world product in the most photographed spot on the space station — the Cupola. The photos are not to be used in print or television advertising, but instead on social media, according to NASA. The astronauts won’t be using the product or be featured in the pictures.

The article also notes that NASA is dedicating 5% of astronaut time to commercial activities. Sooner or later I think NASA is also going to have to start paying their astronauts for this work. They deserve their share of the proceeds.

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A lunar landslide

10:03 am

Landslide on the Moon
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The image to the right was posted by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team on October 9, 2020, and shows a spectacular landslide almost a mile and a half long that had occurred on the interior rim of a crater on the Moon.

The top of the rim is on the left, with the landslide breaking out onto the floor of the crater on the right.

The walls of Kepler crater (30 kilometer diameter) exhibit numerous landslides. In this example, a landslide of dark material begins about 100 meters below the rim from a narrow box canyon. The box canyon is about 50 meters wide and 300 meters long. Overall, the slide is extends some 2300 meters (from the end of the canyon to its base). The base of the slide is on a fault block that lies some 1800 meters below the rim. The wall slope is about 33 degrees.

This slide is actually composed of a series of narrow landslides 20-30 meters wide. Along most of the slope, the individual slides overrun each other forming a band of debris up to about 180 meters wide. At the base of the slope, the individual slides can be recognized as they move apart forming a fan of material. A few individual isolated slides also occur adjacent to the main mass. The overlapping nature of these small slides indicate that the overall feature may have formed over a period of time, rather than all at once.

From above and at this resolution, the landslide looks almost like frozen flowing liquid. It allso looks like it began with a scattering of boulders breaking free at the top all at once that quickly consolidated into a single massive avalanche.

At the link you can zoom in or out to look at the entire image, at full resolution.

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SpaceX begins installing Raptor engines on Starship prototype #8

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: With Starship prototype having successfully passed its tank tests SpaceX has begun installing three Raptor engines in preparation for static fire tests followed by a 50,000 foot high hop.

Once the Raptors are installed, Starship SN8 is expected to undergo an extensive test program, opening with fueling tests, a spin prime test, and preburner tests, before the first Static Fire test.

That opening Static Fire test will be the first time three Raptors have been fired up simultaneously.

Once that opening Static Fire test has been completed, a data review will be conducted on engine performance and related systems – such as the Ground Support Equipment (GSE) – which will allow the nosecone to be installed on to SN8 at the launch site.

At that point the prototype will be ready for its hop. Based on the pace SpaceX is setting (and assuming all goes well), this flight should occur sometime in the next month, possibly at almost the same time as the next manned Dragon flight to ISS.

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Zvezda both leaking and heating up

9:23 am

A Russian news source today reported that the temperature in the ISS module Zvezda has been increasing even as air has been leaking slowly from it.

The article provides little additional detail, other than saying that “normal temperature should be restored” by today.

Why the module should be warming as it slowly leaks air is puzzling. Either way, as this is a module that has been in space for twenty years and is also a key component in the station’s operations, locating the leak is crucial. It might simply be caused by a micrometeorite hit, which can be easily patched. Or it could be caused by something more fundamental, caused by the module’s age, and thus more difficult, possibly even impossible, to fix. If so, the sooner engineers know the better.

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China’s Long March 3B launches another remote sensing satellite

11:47 pm

China today (October 11) successfully used its Long March 3B rocket to place another remote sensing satelle into orbit.

No word on whether the first stage and its strap-on boosters landed on any homes, or if they were equipped with fins to guide their re-entry.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

26 China
16 SpaceX
10 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

With this launch China moves back into a tie with the U.S., 26-26, in the national rankings.

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Next manned Dragon launch delayed

11:54 pm

Because of an engine issue that caused Falcon 9 launch of a military GPS satellite to abort at T-2 seconds on October 2nd, SpaceX and NASA have decided to delay the next manned Dragon launch from October 31st “to early-to-mid November.”

The one to two week delay will give the company time to analyze the issue involving an “unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator” that are used to drive the rocket’s Merlin engine turbopumps.

It seems unlikely that this problem is systemic to all Merlin engines, considering the number of rocket launches SpaceX has successfully completed in the last four years. Each launch has used ten engines, with no evidence of this problem appearing previously.

At the same time, no one wants a problem on a manned flight. Better to completely understand why it happened on the GPS launch first before launching four astronauts on the rocket.

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More Martian pits!

2:28 pm

Pit #1
Click for full image.

Pit #2
Click for full image.

Though the number of new pictures showing pits and possible caves from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has significantly tailed off in the past year, as I noted in my previous post on Martian pits in September, the pictures are still rolling in. This post will highlight five new photos and the pits therein.

The first two, on the right, are both located on the southern flanks of the giant volcano Arsia Mons, where many such pits are found. They were taken respectively on August 16, 2020 and August 27, 2020. The first was a captioned image from MRO’s science team:

In this image, the ceiling of the lava tube collapsed in one spot and made this pit crater. The pit is about 50 meters (150 feet) across, so it’s likely that the underground tube is also at least this big (much bigger than similar caves on the Earth). HiRISE can’t see inside these steep pits because it’s always late afternoon when we pass overhead and the inside is shadowed at that time of day.

What I find most interesting about both images is that the skylights do not occur where you’d expect. In image #1, the meandering rill that suggests an underground lava tube is about 1,000 feet south of the pit. The pit itself seems unrelated to that rill. In image #2, the surface shows no obvious evidence of an underground tube matching the three aligned pits. There is the hint of a narrow depression along the alignment of the three pits, but this could just as easily be evidence of wind-blown dust along that alignment.

In the full image all three pits appear to sit inside a very wide and very shallow northwest-to-southwest depression, but this is hardly certain, and regardless the three pits align in a different direction.

The overview map below provides some context.
» Read more

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Flying over Jupiter

11:02 am

Cool movie time! Using images produced by Juno in orbit around Jupiter, citizen scientist Kevin Gill has produced a very nice movie of the spacecraft’s 27th fly-by on June 2, 2020.

During the closest approach of this pass, the Juno spacecraft came within approximately 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) of Jupiter’s cloud tops. At that point, Jupiter’s powerful gravity accelerated the spacecraft to tremendous speed — about 130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.

I have embedded the movie below the fold. The choice of a piece of music by Vangellis might seem hokey, but I think in this case it works very nicely. I also was impressed with the addition of some 3D depth near the movie’s beginning.
» Read more

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More results about Bennu from OSIRIS-REx

10:21 am

Scientists using the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft have now published a special collection of papers outlining some of their discoveries made during that spacecraft’s observations of the asteroid Bennu from February to October 2019.

These papers just make official much of what was revealed during a conference I attended in November 2019. To sum up the papers:

  • Bennu has a lot of carbonates across its surface.
  • Some of that material came from another object that had to have had water.
  • The asteroid’s boulders come in two types, dark-porous and bright-solid, with the latter likely from that water-bearing other asteroid
  • Bennu’s surface is fresh, only recently exposed to space, including the sample site Nightingale.
  • Bennu’s interior has large voids, and its equatorial region is less dense.

The discovery of carbonates, produced from the interaction of water and carbon dioxide, is a big deal. As Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, explained at that November conference, “To me this is one of the most exciting results from the conference.”

These findings have allowed scientists to theorize that Bennu’s parent asteroid likely had an extensive hydrothermal system, where water interacted with and altered the rock on Bennu’s parent body. Although the parent body was destroyed long ago, we’re seeing evidence of what that watery asteroid once looked like here – in its remaining fragments that make up Bennu. Some of these carbonate veins in Bennu’s boulders measure up to a few feet long and several inches thick, validating that an asteroid-scale hydrothermal system of water was present on Bennu’s parent body.

The material could not have been created on Bennu itself, which means it formed on a different object that was large enough and existed long enough to create the veins in these boulders. That material was then flung back into space to settle onto Bennu’s surface.

The freshness of Bennu’s surface is also a big deal, as it means that etither the asteroid is not that old, or that its surface somehow gets plowed over periodically. It also means that when OSIRIS-REx grabs samples at the Nightingale site on October 20th, they will be grabbing material that has not been altered much by the harsh environment of space.

Finally, the data about Bennu’s interior and density is maybe the neatest discovery. As the press release notes,

The reconstructed gravity field shows that the interior of Bennu is not uniform. Instead, there are pockets of higher and lower density material inside the asteroid. It’s as if there is a void at its center, within which you could fit a couple of football fields. In addition, the bulge at Bennu’s equator is under-dense, suggesting that Bennu’s rotation is lofting this material.

Bennu’s very weak gravity makes it a very alien and hard-to-comprehend place. It appears that the gravel in this floating gravel pile is barely held together, some interlocking in a way that leaves many open gaps, with other pieces pulled outward by the spin of the asteroid.

In reading these results, my first impression was an overwhelming sense of time and its inconceivable vastness. Much of Bennu’s most primitive material comes from the early solar system, about six billion years ago. Other material is newer, but required many many millions of years to get created elsewhere, and then somehow end up in space to be captured by this asteroid.

A million years is a very long time. A billion years is a thousand times longer. To conceive such time frames and all that can happen during that time is practically impossible. Bennu has shown us just a hint of how much can happen, some of which we would never have imagined otherwise.

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Branson picks West Virginia to build test hyperloop underground train

9:35 am

Another Branson scam? Richard Branson’s new big venture to build a hyperloop magnetic underground train to transport cargo and people, dubbed Virgin Hyperloop, has chosen West Virginia as the location to build its first test prototype.

Virgin Hyperloop has picked the U.S. state of West Virginia to host a $500 million certification center and test track for billionaire Richard Branson’s super high-speed travel system, the company told Reuters. The center will be the first U.S. regulatory proving ground for a hyperloop system designed to whisk floating pods packed with passengers and cargo through vacuum tubes at 600 miles (966 kmph) an hour or faster.

Later, Branson announced the decision in a press conference on Thursday, joined virtually by U.S. Transportation Department Secretary Elaine Chao, the state’s Republican governor Jim Justice, and U.S. Senators from West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat.

…Construction is slated to begin in 2022 on the site of a former coal mine in Tucker and Grant Counties, West Virginia, with safety certification by 2025 and commercial operations by 2030, the company said.

Forgive me if I think is this nothing but a Branson con-job of the taxpayers and his investors. For example, though the company has raised $400 million of investment capital, much of that came from UAE investors. Considering that Branson took other Arab investors for half a billion on his Virgin Galactic scam, which after fifteen years has never flown an operational flight and will likely never make a dime of profit, I find this investment from the UAE astonishing.

Though the article doesn’t state where the remaining $100 million of cash came from, I suspect it is taxpayer money, from both federal and state coffers.

I am very dubious any of this will ever happen. A decade hence I expect the system will still be in development, with Branson calling for more tax dollars and new investors. Maybe by then he’ll do what he did with Virgin Galactic, go public and he sell his stock for a big profit, leaving others holding the bag.

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Starship prototype #8 passes tank tests; engine installation next

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s eighth Starship prototype has passed its tank, thruster, and even fin tests, setting it up for the installation of its three Raptor engines.

Once installed, they will perform several static fire tests, on the launchpad. If those tests are successful, the company will then proceed with a full 50,000 foot test flight. Based on the pace of operations, my guess is that this hop will occur in about two to four weeks.

I’ve embedded one of the videos at the link below the fold, showing a variety of activity at the site.

In other SpaceX news, the Tesla that was put in solar orbit on the first Falcon Heavy test launch has just made its first “fly-by” of Mars, getting to within 5 million miles of the red planet. At that distance the planet really isn’t very close, which is why I put the word fly-by in quotes. That Tesla’s future:

The Roadster will eventually barrel into either Venus or Earth, likely within the next few tens of millions of years, a 2018 orbit-modeling study determined . But the chances of an Earth or Venus impact in the next million years are just 6% and 2.5%, respectively.

» Read more

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Momentus to go public

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: Momentus, an company focused on providing tugboat services in orbit, will become a publicly traded stock in conjunction with its merger with another investment company.

In recent months, Momentus has expanded its staff and business line to include hosting payloads and capturing satellites already in orbit with a robotic arm the firm is developing with Made In Space Europe, a Redwire subsidiary.

Through the merger and public offering, Momentus hopes to obtain capital to speed up development of its family of space tugs. In addition to Vigoride, Momentus is developing Ardoride, a vehicle to move small and medium-size satellites to custom orbits, and Fevoride, a vehicle to move “dozens of tons of cargo anywhere in outer space,” according to the Momentus website.

With this deal I think there will be two new space companies traded publicly, Momentus and Virgin Galactic. Unlike Virgin Galactic, whose stock is based on smoke and mirrors, Momentus is actually providing a commercial product that fills a need in space, and sounds like a good investment.

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Starliner Commander steps down from first manned mission

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: Boeing’s company astronaut chosen to command the first manned mission of its Starliner capsule has stepped down because the flight would prevent him from attending his daughter’s wedding next year.

In a video posted to his Twitter account, Ferguson said it was a difficult decision, but “next year is very important for my family.” He said he has several commitments “which I simply cannot risk missing.” A Boeing spokeswoman confirmed one is his daughter’s wedding. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just not going into space next year,” Ferguson said. He stressed that he remains committed to the Starliner program and will continue to work for Boeing.

This is the second crew change for this mission. Earlier NASA astronaut Eric Boe had had to back out due to medical reasons.

Assuming the second unmanned Starliner demo mission scheduled for the December-January timeframe succeeds, the first manned mission will happen in June ’21, and last anywhere from two weeks to six months.

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Military considering using Starship for point-to-point transportaion

9:13 am

Capitalism in space: The U.S. military has begun a study in partnership with SpaceX on whether it will be possible to use Starship as a cargo ship for moving large shipments from point-to-point on the Earth.

Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, announced the agreement Oct. 7 at a National Defense Transportation Association virtual conference. “Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” Lyons said. The C-17 is a very large military cargo plane capable of transporting a 70-ton main battle tank.

Makes sense. This decision also suggests the military is impressed with SpaceX’s progress on Starship, and has also largely abandoned its earlier skepticism of the company.

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A typical mid-latitude Martian crater with glacial features

2:22 pm

Typical mid-latitude Martian crater with glacial fill
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The crater on the right, the image cropped and reduced to post here, is a great example of many craters scientists have found in the mid-latitudes on Mars containing a variety of features that suggest buried glaciers. In this case we are looking at what they have dubbed a concentric crater fill, material that resembles glacial material that fills the crater’s interior and floor, and appears often to erode in a series of rings. You can see another example here.

The photo was taken on June 29, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The crater itself is located in a region of chaos terrain dubbed Nilosyrtis Mensae, located in the transition zone between the cratered southern highlands and the lowland northern plains.

Nilosyrtis Mensae is part of a region of Mars I call glacier country. When you include the mensae regions Protonilus and Deuteronilus to the west, this transition zone of random mesas, knobs, and criss-crossing canyons stretches about 2,000 miles. The context map below focuses in on Nilosyrtis Mensae, where this crater is located.
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Radio astronomers claim negative impact from satellite constellations

10:35 am

Put them on the Moon! Radio astronomers have released a paper claiming that the coming large communication satellite constellations, such as Starlink and OneWeb, will seriously impact observations with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) of radio telescopes being built in the remote western outback of Australia.

Saturation of the instruments: very strong interfering signals can saturate the receiver systems and thereby drown out all other signals seen by the Band 5b receivers. As a consequence, all data in that frequency band would be lost, rendering these receivers useless for a portion of the time. For the first phase of the constellation deployments (about 6,400 satellites in total), saturation is predicted to occur for a few percent of the time assuming there is no direct illumination of the dishes by the satellites. For significantly larger constellation sizes (up to more than 100,000 satellites), saturation would be essentially continuous without significant mitigation measures implemented by the satellite operators.

Based on this conclusion, the astronomers estimate that for observations in this particular band they will need to look about 70% longer to get the same data, thereby cutting the number of observations by about half.

The astronomers propose this solution:

One of these mitigation techniques is for the satellite transmitters not to point their beams near the SKAO dishes. SKAO would require operators to steer their satellites’ beams away from the telescope site, a measure which would require a simple software modification with no repercussion on the constellation’s deployment, positioning or hardware. While a cost-effective implementation of this solution does depend on the hardware and software deployed on the satellites, operators already use this technique to comply with international regulations when their satellites cross the path between geostationary satellites in higher orbit and their receiving ground stations, for example to avoid affecting telecommunications and TV transmissions.

This mitigation could reduce the impact on the SKA by a factor of 10 over that noted previously and result in a 7% increase of integration time for SKA observations within the satellite transmission range 4. While any loss of sensitivity is regrettable, SKAO recognises the need for compromise between the competing scientific and commercial drivers.

The solution seems reasonable, but in truth it is only a temporary one. The permanent and smart solution for the astronomical community is to move their telescopes, in all wavelengths, off the Earth. For radio astronomy the far side of the Moon would be ideal.

And with SpaceX now developing a reusable big rocket, Starship, to put such payloads in orbit at low cost, the astronomers need to start thinking about taking advantage of this engineering. The situation for ground-based astronomer will only get worse.

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