Tag: spaceflight

China launches three classified satellites into orbit

10:31 pm

China today successfully launched three classified satellites into orbit, its Long March 11 rocket lifting off from a barge off the coast of China in the South China Sea.

No information at all was released about the three satellites, other than they were “experimental.”

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
63 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 63, and the entire world combined 108 to 99. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 99.

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Japan & NASA negotiating plan to put Japanese astronaut on later Moon landing mission

3:15 pm

According to the Japanese press, Japanese and American government officials are negotiating a plan to include a Japanese astronaut on one of the later Artemis Moon landing missions, presently hoping to fly in the late 2020s.

Japan has been negotiating with the United States, aiming for its first landing on the moon in the late 2020s. Tokyo and Washington will establish and sign an agreement on the activities of Japanese astronauts on the moon as early as next month, according to several government sources.

These stories are likely linked to the blather from Vice President Harris last week saying the U.S. will fly an international astronaut to the Moon before the end of the decade. At the time NASA officials would not confirm her statement, other than to say that NASA had agreed to fly European, Canadian, and Japanese astronauts to its Lunar Gateway station as part of its Artemis lunar program.

Several important details must be noted. First, the schedule for Artemis, as designed by NASA using SLS, Orion, Lunar Gateway, and Starship, is incredibly optimistic. The first manned mission is presently scheduled for 2025, but no one believes that date, including many at NASA. It will likely slip to 2026 or even 2027.

Second, the program is very fluid, and could undergo major changes with a new administration, especially because of the high cost of SLS. Once Starship/Superheavy is flying, at a cost expected to less than 1% of SLS, with an ability to fly frequently instead of once every two or three years, a new government might scrap the entire Artemis program as designed. A shift from SLS to Starship entirely might actually increase the number of astronauts going to the Moon, both from the U.S. and the entire Artemis Accords alliance.

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Japan’s SLIM lunar lander enters orbit around Moon

3:01 pm

SLIM's landing zone
Map showing SLIM landing zone on the Moon.
Click for interactive map.

After almost four months of orbital maneuvers since its launch on September 7, 2023, Japan’s SLIM lunar lander entered lunar orbit today, with a targeted landing date of January 20, 2024.

The landing site is indicated by the map to the right near Shioli Crater. SLIM is mostly an engineering test mission, with its primary goal to test an autonomous unmanned landing system capable of putting a lander down within a small target zone of less than 300 feet across. It has some science instruments on board, but any data obtained from them will be an added bonus, since the lander is only designed to operate for about two weeks, during the first lunar day. It is not expected to survive the two-week long lunar night to follow.

Because of launch delays for both of the American landers, Intuitive Machine’s Nova-C and Astrobotic’s Peregrine, SLIM will make its attempt first.

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China launches four weather satellites

12:08 am

China late today used its Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket to place four weather satellites into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed within China. This launch is the first of four Chinese launches known to be scheduled in the next few days, part of China’s typical rush of launches that seems to happen at the end of every year.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
62 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 62, and the entire world combined 108 to 98. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 98.

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Repost: The real meaning of the Apollo 8 Earthrise image

11:19 am

I wrote this essay in 2018, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. I think it worth reposting again, especially because stories about Apollo 8 still refuse to show the Earthrise image as Bill Anders took it.
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Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer
Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the moment when the three astronauts on Apollo 8 witnessed their first Earthrise while in orbit around the Moon, and Bill Anders snapped the picture of that Earthrise that has been been called “the most influential environmental picture ever taken.”

The last few days have seen numerous articles celebrating this iconic image. While all have captured in varying degrees the significance and influence of that picture on human society on Earth, all have failed to depict this image as Bill Anders, the photographer, took it. He did not frame the shot, in his mind, with the horizon on the bottom of the frame, as it has been depicted repeatedly in practically every article about this image, since the day it was published back in 1968.

Instead, Anders saw himself as an spaceman in a capsule orbiting the waist of the Moon. He also saw the Earth as merely another space object, now appearing from behind the waist of that Moon. As a result, he framed the shot with the horizon to the right, with the Earth moving from right to left as it moved out from behind the Moon, as shown on the right.

His perspective was that of a spacefarer, an explorer of the universe that sees the planets around him as objects within that universe in which he floats.

When we here are on Earth frame the image with the horizon on the bottom, we immediately reveal our limited planet-bound perspective. We automatically see ourselves on a planet’s surface, watching another planet rise above the distant horizon line.

This difference in perspective is to me the real meaning of this picture. On one hand we see the perspective of the past. On the other we see the perspective the future, for as long humanity can remain alive.

I prefer the future perspective, which is why I framed this image on the cover of Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 the way Bill Anders took it. I prefer to align myself with that space-faring future.

And it was that space-faring future that spoke when they read from Genesis that evening. They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Yet, they were also still mostly Earth-bound in mind, which is why Frank Borman’s concluding words during that Christmas eve telecast were so heartfelt. He was a spaceman in a delicate vehicle talking to his home of Earth, 240,000 miles away. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” They longed deeply to return, a wish that at that moment, in that vehicle, was quite reasonable.

Someday that desire to return to Earth will be gone. People will live and work and grow up in space, and see the Earth as Bill Anders saw it in his photograph fifty years ago.

And it is for that time that I long. It will be a future of majesty we can only imagine.

Merry Christmas to all, all of us still pinned down here on “the good Earth.”

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SpaceX launches two German military radar satellites

10:39 am

SpaceX today successfully launched two German military radar surveillance satellites, completing a planned three-satellite constellation, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing back at Vandenberg.

This launch almost certainly in the past would have launched on a Arianespace rocket, but Arianespace presently has no operational rocket, its Ariane-5 rocket retired and its Ariane-6 rocket not yet operational. Furthermore, its Vega and Vega-C rockets are grounded due to launch failures, and its partnership with Russia ended with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Thus, SpaceX gets the business, being less expensive than ULA (which also has no rockets available right now to handle this launch) and there being no other company capable of launching such a payload.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 108 to 61, and the entire world combined 108 to 97. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 97.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

8:54 pm

Early on December 23, 2023 SpaceX successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its 19th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This reuse was new record. In fact, the reuse numbers of SpaceX’s fleet Falcon 9 first stages are beginning to resemble the reuse numbers of NASA’s shuttle fleet, and are doing so in a significantly shorter period of time and for a lot less money.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

93 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 107 to 61, and the entire world combined 107 to 97. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 93 to 97.

4 comments

Curiosity takes a close-up of distant cliffs

11:27 am

Panorama on December 20, 2023
Panorama on December 20, 2023. Click for full image.

Close-up of a distant cliff
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 21, 2023 by the chemistry camera (ChemCam) on the rover Curiosity. Originally designed to take close-ups of rocks very nearby the rover, the science team over time discovered that they could also use this camera to get close-ups of very distant objects, providing them another way to study the geology in Gale Crater and on Mount Sharp.

The picture to the right I think shows the horizon area indicated by the arrow on the panorama above, taken the day before. Note the many many layers, a geological feature that Curiosity has discovered is ubiquitous on Mars. Over eons the entire surface of the red planet has been layered repeatedly by cyclical geological events, producing layers within layers within layers. I guarantee that when Curiosity gets closer to this cliff it will see layers inside the smallest layers ChemCam can see now.

The red dotted line on the panorama above indicates the approximate planned route that Curiosity will eventually take, cutting across in front of that mountain and turning south somewhere near but to the west of where the cliff in this picture is located.
» Read more

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Firefly successfully launches for the second time in 2023

10:41 am

Alpha seven seconds after liftoff
Alpha seven seconds after liftoff

UPDATE #2: According to a Firefly tweet on X, the second stage failed to fire its second burn. The satellite however was deployed, communications established, and mission operations started. Though its orbit will decay prematurely, it appears the customer, the Space Force, will achieve most of its mission objectives. This should be considered a successful launch, albeit not one that Firefly will want to repeat in this manner.

UPDATE: It appears the upper stage might have had a problem in its final engine burn intended to circularize the orbit for deployment. Either the burn failed to occur, or did not fire correctly. See this tweet. (Hat tip Jay.) I have found other reports that indicate the same question.

The question now is whether this is considered a successful launch. One of its main tasks was to demonstrate fast assembly and prelaunch procedures, for the Space Force. This was accomplished. If the satellite cannot function however is isn’t a full success. I will wait for more information before deciding whether to remove it from the launch stats.

Original post:
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Firefly today successfully completed its second launch in 2023, its third launch overall, its Alpha rocket lifting off from its launchpad at Vandenberg in California.

With this launch Firefly also met its launch prediction for 2023, two launches. The mission was its second for the Space Force this year, both designed to test quick launch procedures. As of posting the payload has not been deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

92 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 106 to 61, and the entire world combined 106 to 97. SpaceX still trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 92 to 97.

2 comments

Chinese astronauts do spacewalk to repair Tiangong-3 solar panel

9:27 am

Two Chinese astronauts yesterday completed a 7.5 hour spacewalk on that country’s Tiangong-3 space station to test a repair technique to what the state-run press said was minor damage on a solar panel from micrometeorites.

The EVA posed new challenges for the astronauts, according to Dong Nengli, deputy chief designer of China’s human spaceflight program. “For the previous extravehicular activities, the major tasks for astronauts were to install and check. This round of extravehicular activities on Thursday we call experimental servicing,” Dong told CCTV. “This time the astronauts operated on one of the solar wings. It is flexible, to a certain extent, and also very thin, which limits the space of operation to a certain degree,” Dong said.

Dong added that the successful EVA meant the teams had mastered the ability for some extravehicular repairs. Success was thus, “laying a solid foundation for us to guarantee the space station’s safety and reliability in the future.”

It must be noted that no specific details about what was done were provided, nor did the short video released by China showing highlights of the spacewalk show the specific repair work.

Nonetheless, there is an aspect of China’s space station that makes it a far more powerful national symbol than ISS: It is China’s alone, built, launched, occupied, and maintained by China alone. It fuels national pride in a way that ISS never has, because President Bill Clinton decided to use it in the 1990s for foreign policy concerns by giving the Russians an equal partnership. Neither the U.S. nor Russia have obtained the same kind of prestige at home and abroad because neither really built ISS on their own. It was a shared effort, which meant neither could claim it.

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A glacial lake on Mars?

12:40 pm

A glacial lake in a
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows what appears to be a glacial flow of ice, flowing downhill to the southwest and inside a wide canyon about three miles across. The canyon rims to the north and south are about 2,000 to 2,100 feet above the canyon’s lowest point, indicated by the string of “+” signs.

This close-up view immediately suggests a canyon whose glacier flows outward to the southwest into open lowland terrain, though the three craters, because they are undistorted, suggests that this flow is presently not active. That suggestion however would be wrong. It is always necessary to understand Martian geology to not only take close-in views at high resolution, but to zoom back and see the terrain in context.
» Read more

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New Hubble image of Saturn

10:04 am

Saturn and its rings, as seen by Hubble

The annotated image above was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on October 22, 2023, showing Saturn, its glorious rings, and several of its dozens of moons from a distance of about 850 million miles. For the unannotated version, go here. Of all the features, the spokes in the rings are the most intriguing.

Saturn’s spokes are transient features that rotate along with the rings. Their ghostly appearance only persists for two or three rotations around Saturn. During active periods, freshly-formed spokes continuously add to the pattern. In 1981, NASA’s Voyager 2 first photographed the ring spokes. Hubble continues observing Saturn annually as the spokes come and go. This cycle has been captured by Hubble’s Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program that began nearly a decade ago to annually monitor weather changes on all four gas-giant outer planets.

Hubble’s crisp images show that the frequency of spoke apparitions is seasonally driven, first appearing in OPAL data in 2021 but only on the morning (left) side of the rings. Long-term monitoring shows that both the number and contrast of the spokes vary with Saturn’s seasons. Saturn is tilted on its axis like Earth and has seasons lasting approximately seven years.

This year, these ephemeral structures appear on both sides of the planet simultaneously as they spin around the giant world. Although they look small compared with Saturn, their length and width can stretch longer than Earth’s diameter!

Though the origin of the spokes remains unsolved, the leading theory proposes they are caused by interactions between Saturn’s magnetic field and the seasonal changes in solar radiation.

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