Tag: spaceflight

The uncertainty of science as proven by the Webb Space Telescope

9:38 am

A long detailed article was released today at Space.com, describing the many contradictions in the data coming back from the Webb Space Telescope that seriously challenge all the theories of cosmologists about the nature of the universe as well as its beginning in a single Big Bang.

The article is definitely worth reading, but be warned that it treats science as a certainty that should never have such contradictions, as illustrated first by its very headline: “After 2 years in space, the James Webb Space Telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?”

“Science” isn’t broken in the slightest. All Webb has done is provide new data that does not fit the theories. As physicist Richard Feynman once stated bluntly in teaching students the scientific method,

“It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”

Cosmologists for decades have been guessing in proposing their theories about the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, based on only a tiny amount of data that had been obtained with enormous assumptions and uncertainties. It is therefore not surprising (nor was it ever surprising) that Webb has blown holes in their theories.

For example, the article spends a lot of time discussing the Hubble constant, describing how observations using different instruments (including Webb) have come up with two conflicting numbers for it — either 67 or 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec. No one can resolve this contradiction. No theory explains it.

To me the irony is that back in the 1990s, when Hubble made its first good measurements of the Hubble constant, these same scientists were certain then that the number Hubble came up with, around 90 kilometers per second per megaparsec, was now correct.

They didn’t really understand reality then, and they don’t yet understand it now.

What cosmologists must do is back away from their theories and recognize the vast areas of ignorance that exist. Once that is done, they might have a chance to resolve the conflict between the data obtained and the theories proposed, and come up with new theories that might work (with great emphasis on the word “might”). Complaining about the paradoxes will accomplish nothing.

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Japan’s space agency JAXA schedules next H3 rocket launch

9:11 am

JAXA, Japan’s space agency, announced today that it has now scheduled the next test launch of its new H3 rocket for February 15, 2024.

This rocket, built by Mitsubishi for JAXA, is supposed to replace the H2A rocket, which completed its last launch in September 2023. The H3 was supposed to be flying years ago, but has experienced numerous engineering problems throughout its development. It was initially supposed to launch in 2020, but was first delayed to 2021 because of “engine issues,” which were later described as cracks and holes in the engine’s combustion chamber.

That launch date was never met. When JAXA was gearing up to launch in 2022 news sources revealed another yearlong delay until 2023 because of new engine problems, which appeared to require a complete engine redesign.

Then in February 2023 the rocket’s first launch attempt was aborted at T-0 when the two strap-on solid rocket boosters failed to ignite. A second launch attempt a month later failed when the second stage failed during launch.

Even if the rocket successfully launches in February, it still leaves Japan far behind the rest of the space-faring industry. The H3 is entirely expendable, and is far more expensive to launch than the new reuseable rockets in use or being developed by numerous private American companies or other nations. JAXA says it hopes to launch it six times a year, but I can’t imagine it getting even a third that number of customers.

What Japan’s government really needs to do is to get the launch business away from JAXA completely. Let other companies besides Mitsubishi build their own rockets and have JAXA buy their services, rather than try to design its own rockets. This system is working marvelously in the U.S., so much so that India is now aggressively trying to copy it, while communist China has made its own pseudo attempt, somewhat successfully, to do the same for the past five years.

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China launches four more weather satellites

11:43 am

Continuing its annual rush of launches at year’s end, China today used its solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket to place four weather satellites into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China. This was the second launch of this rocket with four weather satellites in less than three days.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed in China, or whether they landed on anyone’s home, as did the core stage of yesterday’s Long March 3B rocket.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
65 China
19 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 65, and the entire world combined 108 to 102. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 102.

Hat tip to Jay, as I had missed this because I had mistakenly first thought it was the Kuaizhou-1A launch from two days ago, not a second launch.

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Isolated mesa on Mars

11:33 am

An Isolated mesa on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The central butte is about 100 feet high. Not only are its flanks terraced, suggesting sedimentary layers, note the many black dots on its northern slopes. Those dots appear to be many boulders that appear to have rolled down the slopes to settle mostly near the mesa’s base.

The boxwork ridges to the west and south suggest the ground was fractured in some event to produce cracks, which were later filled with material that was erosion resistent. As the terrain was worn away by wind it left these ridges behind.

The prevailing winds in this region are believed to blow mostly to the south, which might explain the parallel ridges south of the mesa. Or not. On this I am guessing entirely.
» Read more

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Update on Ingenuity

9:56 am

Overview mapClick for interactive map.

The overview map above shows the travels of both the rover Perseverance and the helicopter Ingenuity on Mars through today, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s present location and the green dot Ingenuity’s. Because of image downloads today from Perseverance — including a few more pictures taken by the helicopter during several of its recent flights — the helicopter’s engineering team has finally been able to add the flight paths for flights #68, #69, and #70 to this map, as well as provide more accurate information about what each accomplished..

Flight #68, which took place on December 15, 2023, a few days later than originally planned, as I reported on December 20, 2023 when the first preliminary data arrived. At the time it appeared the flight had ended prematurely by almost 1,500 feet. We now know the flight did end early, but by not that much. Instead of flying, as per its flightplan, to the northeast 2,716 feet for 147 seconds and then returning to its take-off point, it flew out and back 2,304 feet for 131 seconds. The engineering team has not explained why it turned around prematurely by about 200 feet.

Flight #69 on December 20, 2023 was supposed fly 2,304 feet total over 131 seconds, also going out and back, traveling to the east-northeast. It ended up flying 2,315 feet over 135 seconds on a flight path that was almost identical to flight #68. Like most previous flights, it appears it hovered over its landing spot for a few extra seconds before descending in order to make sure it would land safely.

The final numbers for flight #70 have not yet been added to the flight log, but the engineering team has apparently been able to figure out the path the helicopter took and where it landed from the images that have been downloaded in the past few days. The flight plan had called for a relatively short flight, 849 feet long, but taking almost as long as the previous two, 129 seconds, thus allowing Ingenuity to get better and more detailed scouting pictures of the terrain below it for scientists to review.

One more detail: It appears that the Perseverance science team has decided to use Ingenuity data to guide its route. Rather than follow the planned course, as indicated by the red dotted line, the rover has been following the ground scouted by Ingenuity on its 63rd flight on October 19, 2023. This has taken Perseverance deeper into the rough fractured terrain to the south, where it likely can obtain better geological data.

It also suggests that Ingenuity’s more recent flight paths are giving us a hint as to Perseverance’s future travels.

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Russia launches military satellite

8:49 am

Russia today successfully placed a classified military satellite into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in the north of Russia.

No other information was released, including where the rocket’s strap-on boosters and core stage crashed inside Russia.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
64 China
19 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 64, and the entire world combined 108 to 101. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 101.

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Record-setting Falcon 9 1st stage booster lost after landing

3:27 pm

The SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster that launched on December 23, 2023 for a record-setting nineteenth time was damaged beyond repair when, after landing on its drone ship successfully, experienced rough seas that caused it to fall over.

The picture at the link shows the crushed booster on its side on the drone ship. SpaceX noted the spectacular history of this booster in a separate tweet:

This one reusable rocket booster alone launched to orbit 2 astronauts and more than 860 satellites — totaling 260+ metric tons — in ~3.5 years.

In a sense, it actually put more mass into orbit that a Saturn 5 rocket, for significant less money though over a much longer period of time.

For SpaceX the loss of this booster is hardly a set back, because it has several other boosters with only a few less total launches in its fleet. Expect one to exceed twenty launches in the near future.

Hat tip to out stringer Jay as well as several readers.

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Galaxies galore, near and far

9:08 am

Galaxies galore, and near and far

Cool image for the day after Christmas! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and shows a cluster of galaxies that all seem near each other. However, as the caption notes,

[W]hilst NGC 1356 [the largest spiral] and LEDA 95415 [close by its left] appear to be so close that they must surely be interacting, the former is about 550 million light-years from Earth and the latter is roughly 840 million light-years away, so there is nearly a whopping 300 million light-year separation between them. That also means that LEDA 95415 is likely nowhere near as [small] as it appears to be.

On the other hand, whilst NGC 1356 and IC 1947 [farthest to the left] seem to be separated by a relative gulf in this image, IC 1947 is only about 500 million light-years from Earth. The angular distance apparent between them in this image only works out to less than four hundred thousand light-years, so they are actually much much closer neighbours in three-dimensional space than NGC 1356 and LEDA 95415!

The two galaxies farthest apart in this image are actually close enough together to interact significantly. Though this picture doesn’t have the resolution to see it, there is likely a stream of stars between the two.

Note also the numerous tiny other galaxies scatterered throughout the picture. In fact, except for three stars (the objects with the north-south-east-west spikes), every object is a galaxy holding stars too numerous to count.

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China launches two GPS-type satellites

8:39 am

China today successfully placed two more of its BeiDou GPS-type satellites into orbit, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

This footage shows that the rocket’s core stage crashed near homes in China. No word on where the four strap-on boosters and second stage crashed. All use very toxic hypergolic fuels.

This launch continues China’s annual rush of launches at the end of the year. Since everything is owned and run by the Chinese government, one wonders if this pattern is because of the typical government mentality that requires agencies to rush to spend a lot at the end of each year so as to make sure their budgets are not cut.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
64 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 108 to 64, and the entire world combined 108 to 100. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 100.

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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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