Tag: spaceflight

Intuitive Machines reveals details of lunar landing mission

9:28 am

Capitalism in space: Intuitive Machines (IM), one of a handful of private companies that NASA has awarded contracts to build lunar landers of the agency’s science instruments, yesterday revealed the landing site and launch date of its first mission to the Moon.

IM will launch the Nova-C lander in October 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The target landing site is Vallis Schröteri (Schröter’s Valley) in the Moon’s Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). The company said the site is “flat, free of craters and rocks, and has abundant sunlight” throughout the 14-day mission.

Five NASA payloads and others from commercial customers will be aboard, but IM did not specify what they are. Nova-C can take 100 kilograms to the lunar surface and provide 200 watts of power. Nova-C is based on NASA’s Project M lunar lander and Project Morpheus, which were designed, developed and tested by Johnson Space Center to demonstrate planetary landing technologies. The core team that developed Morpheus left government and founded IM.

Because the lander belongs to Intuitive Machines, not NASA, they have the right to sell their spare payload space to others, increasing their profits above what NASA will pay them. This shifts control of the mission from NASA to the private company, and in the long run will encourage the development of a private unmanned lunar landing industry.

Nor is IM alone in this. NASA has purchased landers from Astrobotics and Masten, with Astrobotics aiming for a 2021 landing and Masten in 2022. Both also have spare payload space, and are offering this to others.

I expect at a minimum some universities will make a deal. Rather than have their students build an orbiting cubesat for training and education, now they can have them build a science instrument that will land on the Moon.

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First manned Dragon mission slips to end of May

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: According to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, the first manned flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will now occur at the end of May, not mid-May, and will last two or three months.

“I think we’re really good shape,” Bridenstine said in an interview Thursday. “I’m fairly confident that we can launch at the end of May. If we do slip, it’ll probably be into June. It won’t be much.”

The article at the link also reveals that the two astronauts will spend between two to three months on board ISS, not two weeks as originally planned.

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OSIRIS-REx’s sample grab location on Bennu

12:55 pm

Nightingale site on Bennu
Click for full image.

On April 14th engineers for the probe OSIRIS-REx will do the first of two dress rehearsals of their planned touch-and-go sample grab from the asteroid Bennu, presently planned for August 25.

The image to the right was taken on March 3, 2020 from about 1,000 feet away during the spacecraft’s third reconnaissance phase, and is centered on that touch-and-go site, dubbed Nightingale by the science team. It illustrates why that sample grab carries risks that were unexpected. As they point out on the image’s release page, “the rock in the [upper right] of the image is 2 ft (70 cm) long, which is about the length of a small ice chest.” Moreover, across the entire touchdown site are numerous other rocks ranging in size from fists to laptops.

When they designed the mission, they had assumed there would be places on Bennu’s surface made up mostly of dust. areas where such dust would have gathered into ponds, as seen in other asteroids. The expectation also assumed these areas would be larger than any of the smooth areas found on Bennu. As they have noted:
» Read more

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Virgin Orbit completes capture-carry test of LauncherOne

8:47 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit yesterday completed the first capture-carry test of LauncherOne with it attached to the company’s 747 loaded with cryogenic materials.

In previous flight tests, the booster’s tanks were filled with water, which is much warmer than LOX.

For this cryogenic test, Virgin Orbit substituted liquid nitrogen for the LOX as a safety precaution. “So, for this end-to-end rehearsal, we’ll have liquid nitrogen — which is very similar in temperature to liquid oxygen, but which would pose less of a risk in case anything were to go wrong despite all of our planning — in our LOX tanks for both stages,” Virgin Orbit wrote in a mission update.

They say this was their last test prior to LauncherOne’s maiden flight. They have not yet set a date for that flight.

This maiden flight was first supposed to happen in 2018, but in that year development of this rocket slowed to a snail’s pace, probably because they had lost a major launch contract.

The contract award only two days ago from the Space Force will likely reinvigorate Virgin Orbit.

My 2016 prediction that Virgin Orbit would make its first operational flight before Virgin Galactic, even though Virgin Galactic had been started development of SpaceShipOne more than a decade earlier, is still holding. The race now appears to be neck-in-neck, as Virgin Galactic claims it will do operational flights this year. We shall see.

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Failure on Apollo 13

7:00 am

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the moment during the Apollo 13 mission to the Moon when there was an explosion that badly damaged the service module of the Apollo spacecraft, forcing the crew to use its Lunar Module (LM) as a lifeboat in order to get back to Earth.

Below is CBS’s coverage of that moment.

Because this video was recorded off of an analog television, the visuals are poor, to say the least, including several moments when the television loses vertical hold (a problem typical of early televisions).

However, it is very instructive to watch it, mostly to see the differences from today. Notice how calm everyone is, both at NASA and at CBS. Notice also how positive they are. Rather than hyping the possibility of death and failure, Cronkite is focused on explaining what the engineers are trying to do to save the astronauts.

And notice the detail and accuracy of his reporting. Cronkite has not only made it a point to educate himself on what is involved, he is making a concerted effort to provide this information to his audience. No speculations and opinions, only detailed reporting.

O if only we could see one tenth of such reporting on television today. The country’s mood would instantly improve a million percent.

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Boeing’s fall from grace at NASA

9:26 am

Eric Berger at Ars Technica yesterday uncovered a NASA report that outlined its selection process for awarding a contract for providing cargo to the agency’s proposed Lunar Gateway space station — eventually won by SpaceX — that gave Boeing’s proposal a terrible ranking.

Of the four contenders, [Boeing] had the lowest overall technical and mission suitability scores. In addition, Boeing’s proposal was characterized as “inaccurate” and possessing no “significant strengths.” Boeing also was cited with a “significant weakness” in its proposal for pushing back on providing its software source code.

Due to its high price and ill-suited proposal for the lunar cargo contract, NASA didn’t even consider the proposal among the final bidders. In his assessment late last year, NASA’s acting chief of human spaceflight, Ken Bowersox, wrote, “Since Boeing’s proposal was the highest priced and the lowest rated under the Mission Suitability factor, while additionally providing a conditional fixed price, I have decided to eliminate Boeing from further award consideration.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words could possibly be a death sentence for Boeing. The company has numerous other serious problems, including its commercial 737-Max airplane, its KC-46 Pegasus tanker for the Air Force, and of course its SLS rocket for NASA. For NASA to say that it will no longer consider Boeing in future contract bidding, especially since NASA has been one of Boeing’s biggest customers for decades, cannot be good for the company’s already badly suffering bottom line.

Berger also notes how much NASA’s attitude toward Boeing has changed since the agency removed Bill Gerstenmaier as head of its manned space operations. Gerstenmaier had apparently given Boeing the highest marks routinely, and appeared to have lost his ability to look at the company objectively. Moreover, his (and NASA’s) kid-glove treatment of Boeing for decades probably contributed to that company’s sloppy bid on the Lunar Gateway cargo contract. They were likely not used to tough questioning, and didn’t put the proper effort into writing their bid.

For the taxpayer and the American space effort, however, this report is wonderful news. It appears that NASA is breaking its tight and blind partnership with the big space contractors that has for decades handicapped the nation’s ability to get things built in space. These contractors have not been able to deliver, but because of their powerful allies on Congress, NASA has for years kowtowed to them in contract awards.

Now however it appears NASA’s management has become quite willing to reject these powerful companies, despite Congressional backing, in order to get the best deal and the best product, for the nation.

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Russians find serious problems with three Proton rockets

8:49 am

As a result of a new quality control inspection system, the Russians have discovered that three Proton rockets delivered for launch had serious issues, and have sent them back to the manufacturer.

Three Proton-M heavy-lift launch vehicles designated for launching satellites from the Baikonur Cosmodrome will be returned to the Khrunichev rocket manufacturer in Moscow so that low-quality parts can be replaced, a source in the space and rocket industry has told Sputnik.

The defective parts, believed to have been manufactured between 2015 and 2016, were said to have been discovered last month due to checks under a new quality control system introduced by Roscosmos. “Having analyzed the situation, experts came to the conclusion that the replacement of the [faulty] components on the three Proton-M rockets located at Baikonur could only be done at the factory,” the source said.

Two of the rockets have already been loaded up onto a train and sent back, with the remaining rocket to be sent back at a later date.

This is a follow-up on the March 11th story where they had discovered “mismatched” parts on a Proton. They have also had to replace an entire stage on a Soyuz due a malfunction detected prior to launch.

While it is excellent news that the Russians are now catching these issues before launch, that they continue to have such problems at the manufacturing level is not good.

Their problem is that in Russia they do not permit competition. The government works hand-in-glove with the established players to lock out new companies. Thus, no natural mechanism exists to weed out bad operations. They are trying to do it with tighter inspections, but in the end, that just adds cost and slows operations.

Meanwhile, in a related story, the manufacturer of Soyuz rockets has suspended operations because of fear of the Wuhan virus. The suspension probably makes some sense, as they have a lot of rockets (52) already built.

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The icy Phlegra Mountains: Mars’ future second city

1:35 pm

Icy glaciers in the Phlegra Mountains of Mars
Click for full image.

About a thousand miles to the west of the candidate landing site for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft rises a massive mountain wall dubbed the Phlegra Mountains, rising as much as 11,000 feet above the adjacent lowland northern plains.

Phlegra Montes (its official name) is of special interest because of its apparent icy nature. Here practically every photograph taken by any orbiter appears to show immense glacial flows of some kind, with some glaciers coming down canyons and hollows [#1], some filling craters [#2], some forming wide aprons [#3] at the base of mountains and even at the mountains’ highest peaks [#4], and some filling the flats [#5] beyond the mountain foothills.

And then there are the images that show almost all these types of glaciers, plus others [#6]. Today’s cool image above is an example of this. In this one photo we can see filled craters, aprons below peaks, and flows moving down canyons. It is as if a thick layer of ice has partly buried everything up the highest elevations.

None of this has gone unnoticed by scientists. For the past decade they have repeatedly published papers noting these features and their icy appearance, concluding that the Phlegra Mountains are home to ample buried ice. SpaceX even had one image taken here [#3] as a candidate landing site for Starship, though this is clearly not their primary choice at this time.

The map below gives an overview of the mountains, their relationship to the Starship landing site, and the location by number of the images listed above.
» Read more

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BepiColumbo successfully completes Earth flyby

9:28 am

The Earth seen from BepiColumbo

BepiColumbo, the joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury, has successfully completed its fly-by of Earth.

The image to the right is one of the images of Earth it took during the fly-by. The white streak in the upper right is part of the spacecraft.

Mission scientists switched on a number of the duo’s instruments for the Earth pass, to test and calibrate them. Unfortunately, the main camera on Europe’s MPO couldn’t operate because of its position in the stack. But small inspection cameras to the side of Bepi did manage to grab some black & white pictures of the Earth and Moon.

The quote call’s the spacecraft a “duo” because it really is two orbiters presently latched together, the European Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Japanese Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). When it gets to Mercury these will separate.

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OSIRIS-REx to do sample-grab rehearsal at Bennu

9:11 am

The OSIRIS-REx science team today released a step-by-step description of the first touch-and-go sample grab rehearsal, planned for April 14, 2020.

During the rehearsal, dubbed “Checkpoint,” they expect the spacecraft to get less than 250 feet from the surface of the asteroid Bennu before pulling away.

Checkpoint rehearsal, a four-hour event, begins with the spacecraft leaving its safe-home orbit, 0.6 miles (1 km) above the asteroid. The spacecraft then extends its robotic sampling arm – the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) – from its folded, parked position out to the sample collection configuration. Immediately following, the spacecraft slews, or rotates, into position to begin collecting navigation images for NFT guidance. NFT allows the spacecraft to autonomously guide itself to Bennu’s surface by comparing an onboard image catalog with the real-time navigation images taken during descent. As the spacecraft descends to the surface, the NFT system updates the spacecraft’s predicted point of contact depending on OSIRIS-REx’s position in relation to Bennu’s landmarks.

Before reaching the 410-ft (125-m) Checkpoint altitude, the spacecraft’s solar arrays move into a “Y-wing” configuration that safely positions them away from the asteroid’s surface. This configuration also places the spacecraft’s center of gravity directly over the TAGSAM collector head, which is the only part of the spacecraft that will contact Bennu’s surface during the sample collection event.

In the midst of these activities, the spacecraft continues capturing images of Bennu’s surface for the NFT navigation system. The spacecraft will then perform the Checkpoint burn and descend toward Bennu’s surface for another nine minutes, placing the spacecraft around 243 ft (75 m) from the asteroid – the closest it has ever been.

They will do a second rehearsal on June 23, getting within 100 feet of the surface. The actual touch-and-go sample grab is now scheduled for August 25.

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SpaceX moves forward on Starlink launch April 16

9:55 am

Capitalism in space: Despite the recent postponement by customers of two other planned launches because of the Wuhan panic, SpaceX appears to be moving ahead with plans to launch another sixty of its own Starlink satellites on April 16.

According to one unconfirmed news report, six SpaceX employees have tested positive for coronavirus. The company has not commented, however, either on this report or on its own internal policies for dealing with the Wuhan panic.

The Space Force meanwhile has not shut down its range operations in Florida, thus allowing launches from anyone to go forward.

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Masten’s lunar lander wins NASA contract

9:46 am

Capitalism in space: Masten’s XL-1 lunar lander has won a NASA contract to bring a suite of science instruments to the Moon’s south polar regions, the launch targeted for December 2022.

The company also hopes to sell payload space on the lander to other customers.

Masten won a task order for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program valued at $75.9 million. Masten will deliver nine science and technology demonstration payloads to the lunar surface near the south pole by December 2022 on the company’s XL-1 lander.

The CLPS payloads, with a mass of about 80 kilograms, will serve as the initial, anchor customer for that mission, Sean Mahoney, chief executive of Masten, said in an interview. He said there are “hundreds” of kilograms of additional payload space available on the lander, and that the company is working to line up additional customers.

Masten is now the third private company with an active contract with NASA to land science payloads on the Moon. Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are the others, with their missions targeting 2021 for launch.

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A Long March 3B launch failure today

9:30 am

An attempt by China to launch an Indonesian communications satellite using its Long March 3B rocket failed today around the time the third stage was to do its engine burn.

Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said the Long March 3B launcher failed after lifting off from the Xichang space center in the country’s southwestern Sichuan province at 1146 GMT (7:46 a.m. EDT). The liquid-fueled launcher took off at 7:46 p.m. Beijing time with the Palapa-N1 communications satellite, also known as Nusantara Dua. The Palapa-N1 spacecraft was heading for a position in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

But the rocket malfunctioned minutes later some time during the planned burn of the Long March 3B’s third stage, Xinhua said. Wreckage from third stage and the Palapa-N1 spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere, according to the state-run media outlet.

Several videos shared on social media by people in Guam showed fiery debris moving across a moonlit night sky. The Offices of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defense said in a statement that the debris was likely connected with the failed Chinese rocket launch. Authorities in Guam said there was “no direct threat” to the islands.

This is the second launch failure from China in less than a month. On March 16 the first launch attempt of China’s new Long March 7A rocket failed, for reasons that remain unclear.

How this might effect the inaugural launch later this month of China’s biggest rocket, the Long March 5B, remains unknown.

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Rocket Lab tests 1st stage capture using helicopters

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: In early March, prior to the shutdown of New Zealand due to the Wuhan panic, Rocket Lab successfully completed a test whereby one helicopter dropped a dummy first stage over the ocean, the stage’s parachutes released to slow it down, and then a second helicopter captured it and gently transported and deposited it safely on land.

This test was part of the company’s effort to recovery its first stages so they can be reused. Because of their small size and the difficulty of developing the software, they have decided that a vertical landing is not economical. This test however shows that capturing the stage by parachute is possible. The real trick will be getting the first stage back through the atmosphere to an expected target spot and be able to release its parachutes. Proving that part of the effort will have to wait until the panic is over and New Zealand releases its citizens from house arrest.

I have embedded video of the test below the fold.
» Read more

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Soyuz successfully launches three astronauts to ISS

1:18 am

The Russians early today successfully launched three astronauts into orbit, using their Soyuz-2 rocket and Soyuz capsule.

The crew, heading to ISS, is two Russians and one American, with the American the last purchased seat bought by NASA on a Soyuz. Unless they sign a new deal with Russia, the next Americans to go to ISS must fly on American capsules.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

6 China
5 SpaceX
5 Russia
2 Europe
2 ULA

The U.S. continues to lead China 9 to 6 in the national rankings.

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A river canyon on Mars?

1:35 pm

Cool image time! In the most recent download of new images from the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) were two photos, found here and here, that struck me as very intriguing. Both were titled simply as a “Terrain Sample” image, which generally means the picture was taken not because of any specific request by another scientist doing specific research but because the camera team needs to take an image to maintain the camera’s proper temperature, and in doing so they try to time it so that they can do some random exploring as well.

As it turned out, the two images were more than simply random, as they both covered different parts of the same Martian feature, what looks like a branching dry dendritic river drainage. Below is a mosaic of those two images, fit together as one image, with a wider context image to the right, taken by Mars Odyssey, showing the entire drainage plus the surrounding landscape with the white arrow added to help indicate the drainage’s location.
» Read more

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Wuhan panic causes Space Force to delay launch

9:32 am

The Space Force yesterday announced that it is delaying the April launch by SpaceX of a GPS satellite until June, though they say in their announcement that they also still intend to get all three GPS launches off this year, as originally planned.

It seems they decided that since the in-orbit constellation is operating well, with lots of redundancy, they could afford to wait two months to launch this new upgraded GPS satellite.

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Weird flat plateau on Mars

10:43 am

Weird flat plateau on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on December 15, 2020, and was actually a follow-up observation from an earlier image taken by the camera on Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), according to Dr. Livio Tornabene of the University of Western Ontario. As he explained in an email:

The team is rather polarized with their verdict on what exactly the feature is… while at first glance it appears to be a lava flow, it very well could be that these deposits eroded to yield this flow/lobate like appearance and isn’t lava at all. So as someone that is both involved with [TGO] and [MRO], I noticed that the lobate feature causing quite the debate had no coverage from [MRO].

It appears that some scientists think that instead of lava, this is a mud flow. Research presented [pdf] during the 2019 Lunar & Planetary Conference in Texas found evidence that mud could flow like lava under the right conditions.

At this point neither Tornabene nor anyone working on the TGO team have yet analyzed this new MRO image to see if they can answer this question. That this feature is located in a region just to the southeast of Marineris Valles where there is evidence both of volcanic activity and sedimentary deposition, makes answering the question even more challenging.

The data from TGO indicated [pdf] that the plateau was about 30 to 65 feet thick. Based on crater counts the age is thought to be between 1.6 to 1.9 billion years old.

What struck me about the plateau is that though it really does look like a flow, it also appears remarkably flat and smooth. Even more puzzling is that, according to the TGO paper, the plateau slopes downhill very gently (a 1% grade) to the south, not to the north as suggested by the shape of the flow. Maybe later geological events tilted the entire feature after it solidified, thus changing the grade?

Meanwhile that channel near the bottom of the image crosses through the grade and the flow, as if it was cut after the flow was placed. In other words, the flow and channel were formed separately, at different times.

Ah, the mysteries of planetary geology. If only we could just go there with a geologist’s hammer. These questions would then be so much more simple to answer.

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The 50th anniversary of Apollo 13

10:00 am

Today NASA announced its plans to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13 on April 11, the only Apollo mission to fail in its goal of landing on the Moon while also proving that the engineering design of Apollo was brilliant, making possible under dire conditions the safe return to Earth of the astronauts.

While en route to the Moon on April 13, an oxygen tank in the Apollo service module ruptured. The lunar landing and moonwalks, which would have been executed by Lovell and Haise, were aborted as a dedicated team of flight controllers and engineering experts in the Apollo Mission Control Center devoted their efforts to developing a plan to shelter the crew in the lunar module as a “lifeboat” and retain sufficient resources to bring the spacecraft and its crew back home safely. Splashdown occurred in the Pacific Ocean at 1:07 p.m. April 17, after a flight that lasted five days, 22 hours and 54 minutes.

NASA is celebrating this anniversary in many virtual ways, though all public in-person events have been cancelled due to the Wuhan panic.

Below is a video showing the launch.as covered on CBS (Hat tip reader Mike Nelson).

The visuals are not great, partly because it was broadcast on an analog television, and partly because it appears to be a recording taken by a camera looking at that broadcast. At several points it appears the television loses vertical hold (a problem typical of early televisions). Still, it is worth watching simply to see how news organizations covered such events then, in comparison to today.

If you want to spend some time of your Wuhan house arrest watching more, the video automatically jumps to later videos of CBS’s coverage, including the moment the failure occurred as well as the splashdown. I will post these next week, on the fiftieth anniversary of each event.

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Russia hostile to Trump declaration to promote private enterprise in space

9:33 am

Russia today issued the first international response to the Trump executive order yesterday calling for private enterprise and property in space, and that response was decidedly negative.

Attempts to seize the territories of other planets are harmful to international cooperation, Deputy Director General of Roscosmos for International Cooperation Sergey Saveliev said on Tuesday. “Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set the countries for fruitful cooperation,” Saveliev said.

He recalled that there were examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interests. “Everyone remembers what came of it,” Saveliev added.

Part of the goal of Trump’s order was to try to garner international support for the idea of allowing private property in space. The Russian response today suggests that they will not go along, and instead will use the words of the Outer Space Treaty to block such rights.

As I have been saying for years, the real solution is to pull out of the treaty. It forbids us from establishing our laws anywhere in space, which means future space-farers will be second class citizens, with their only rights determined by the UN, not the Bill of Rights.

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Big sections break off of interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

9:23 am

The uncertainty of science: New observations of the interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov as it exits our solar system indicate that large fragments have recently broken from it, and that the comet might possibly be on the verge of breaking up.

Astronomers have seen evidence of two fragments, but the data suggests these are relatively small compared to the entire comet. On the other hand,

Before perihelion, Jewitt’s analysis of Hubble images showed that Comet Borisov is much smaller than had been thought. The comet’s nucleus is not directly visible, but in the January 10th Astrophysical Journal Letters, Jewitt put its diameter between 0.4 and 1 kilometer. That’s small enough that solar vaporization of surface ices on the side facing the Sun could spin up its rotation beyond gravity’s ability to hold it together.

However, the comet’s size is tricky to estimate, as its surface appears to be emitting so much gas and dust that it obscures the nucleus. The fragment that Jewitt observed is about as bright as the comet itself, but because its surface is so icy and active, he thinks the fragment’s mass is less than 1% of the whole comet. That would make the split more like a side mirror dropping off a car than a car falling apart. Why the fragment split from the comet is unclear, but possibilities include thermal vaporization after new material was exposed, as well as the force from the comet’s spin if it’s spinning as fast as Jewitt suggests.

Whether the comet is about to break up remains unknown. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone was racing to put a mission together to visit it?

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Boeing to do second unmanned test flight of Starliner

12:59 am

Capitalism in space: Boeing officials said yesterday that they now plan a second unmanned demo mission to ISS of their Starliner manned capsule in order to make sure they have cleared up all the issues that plagued the first unmanned flight in December.

The company on Monday confirmed a report in the Washington Post that it will fly a second uncrewed demonstration mission — which Boeing calls an Orbital Flight Test — before astronauts ride a Starliner into orbit.

“We have chosen to refly our Orbital Flight Test to demonstrate the quality of the Starliner system,” Boeing said in a statement Monay. “Flying another uncrewed flight will allow us to complete all flight test objectives and evaluate the performance of the second Starliner vehicle at no cost to the taxpayer. We will then proceed to the tremendous responsibility and privilege of flying astronauts to the International Space Station.”

Right now they are aiming for an October/November launch date.

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Changing Mars

1:12 pm

The maculae splotch dubbed Maui
For the full images click here (2019) and here (2020).

While Mars appears to be a dead planet, with no clear evidence of life so far discovered, the planet is hardly inactive. Things are changing there continuously, even if it happens at a slower pace than here on Earth.

To the right are two images, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, taken by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The first was on January 19, 2019, shortly after the end of the global dust storm that engulfed Mars during that Martian year. The second was taken on February 14, 2020, half a Martian year later. Both show one of a string of dark splotches located on the western flanks of the giant volcano Olympus Mons. Scientists call these splotches maculae, and because of their superficial resemblance to the islands of Hawaii, have given them names matching those islands. This particular patch is dubbed Maui. Below is a map showing all the splotches and their position relative to Olympus Mons, taken from a 2019 presentation [pdf].
» Read more

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Astra furloughs and lays off a fifth of its workforce

9:08 am

The smallsat rocket company Astra Space recently reduced its workforce from 150 to 120, with most of those let go furloughed for three months during the Wuhan flu panic with some laid off entirely.

This reduction appears due mostly because of the panic, as it has killed their efforts to raise more investment capital. However, the “anomaly” that caused the complete loss of a rocket during countdown a few weeks ago might also have contributed. According to this article, which gives some more details of that “anomaly,” which apparently was a fire that destroyed the rocket, caused by “an unfortunate mistake.”

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China tests parachutes to control 1st stage

9:00 am

During China’s Long March 3B launch on March 9, engineers tested the use of parachutes and “control devices” on the rocket’s first stage in order to better position the stage’s crash.

After the booster separated from the rocket, the parachutes opened in a sequence to control its attitude and direction, and data of the fall trajectory and landing site were sent to ground control in Xichang, southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

…It took just 25 minutes for staff to find the debris, compared to hours or up to a fortnight previously, [according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT)].

The article from China’s state-run press at the link also bragged that they have been working on this new technology for a decade. That I think is a lie. The Long March 3B was developed in the 1990s and, until SpaceX successfully proved it possible to land a first stage in 2015, there was no hint they were doing anything to protect their citizens from crashing first stages.

Only in the past years have they performed any tests of such technology, including grid fins that appeared clearly stolen from SpaceX’s design. It is good that they are finally doing this, but their lack of interest in protecting their own citizens beforehand tells us quite a lot of both Chinese culture and the communist/socialist/fascist dictatorship that leads it.

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Russia confirms launch delay to 2021 of Nauka module to ISS

9:04 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscomos, confirmed yesterday that the launch of its Nauka module for ISS will not occur in 2020.

In January they had hinted that the mission would be delayed to early 2021.

Construction of Nauka had begun in 1995, twenty-five years ago, which in a sense puts it in the lead for the most dismal government space project, beating out the James Webb Space Telescope (about 21 years since first proposed) and the Space Launch System (16 years since Bush proposed it). All three now say they will launch in 2021 but no one should be criticized if they doubt this.

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Third Starship prototype collapses during tank pressure test

8:44 am

During the final part of a tank pressure test the third SpaceX Starship prototype apparently collapsed, its outer welded hull failing.

Video below the fold. The prototype is on the right, and it appears it fall inward along its hull welds.

The SN3 (Serial Number 3) vehicle incorporated lessons learned from previous vehicles and test articles, and took advantage of improved manufacturing techniques and expanded facilities at SpaceX’s South Texas launch facility.

The next round of testing began this week with cryogenic proof testing. These tests saw the vehicle filled with liquid nitrogen at cryogenic temperatures and flight pressures. Proof testing began in Thursday and continued through to Friday morning when SN3 failed during what appeared to be the end of the test.

With Elon Musk noting “we will see what data review says in the morning, but this may have been a test configuration mistake,” on Twitter and the first-look observations, the fault may have been related to detanking, rather than another failure under pressure.

I’m no engineer, so I wonder how detanking could cause such a failure.
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Skiing dry ice boulders on Mars

2:47 pm

Dune slope, with grooves, in Russell Crater
Click for full image.

Cool image and video time! The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows something that when I spotted it in reviewing the newest image download from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), I found it very baffling. The photo was taken on March 3, 2020, and shows an incredible number of linear groves on the slope of a large dune inside Russell Crater, located in the Martian southern highlands at about 54 degrees south latitude.

If these were created by boulders we should see them at the bottom of each groove. Instead, the grooves generally seem to peter out as if the boulder rolling down the slope had vanished. Making this even more unlikely is that the top of the slope simply does not have sufficient boulders to make all these groves.

The image was requested by Dr. Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who when I emailed her in bafflement she responded like so:
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