Tag: spaceflight

Japanese billionaire finally concedes his Starship Moon mission won’t happen in 2023

9:14 am

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa finally admitted publicly today that his manned Moon mission using SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket won’t happen in 2023 as first announced in 2018.

The most significant part of the announcement? “”We’re not sure when the flight will be,” Maezawa noted on X. Though SpaceX and several news sources claim that federal approval for the next test launch could occur as soon mid-November, Maezawa — as one of SpaceX’s most important customers — might have more detailed non-public information about that approval process.

Even if that second flight get approved and flies in November, it does not mean Maezawa’s manned mission will soon follow. SpaceX will certainly not be ready for manned Starship launches following this test. It will likely require at least a few more unmanned test launches, with each likely delayed months by the same federal bureaucracy that delayed the second test launch by months.

Unless something significant changes in how the federal government is regulating SpaceX at Boca Chica, the first manned flight of Starship is likely years away, no sooner than 2025, but more likely 2026 or 2027.

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Rocket Lab schedules next launch, plans 22 launches in 2024

9:03 am

Rocket Lab has completed its investigation into a September 2023 launch failure and has now scheduled its next Electron launch for the end of November.

More significant, it says it has 22 booked launches scheduled for 2024, a pace that would more than double its previous annual record of 9 launches in 2022.

In its third quarterly report it also revealed that it lost just over $40 million in that quarter, more than last year’s third quarter by 17%. The September launch failure impacted those numbers, though the company’s revenue in the third quarter still grew by 7% from the previous year.

To achieve 22 launches next year will require the company to launch twice a month. With three launchpads (two in New Zealand and one in the U.S.) this is possible, but challenging. Of those launches, nine will attempt to recover and reuse the first stage, and two will not be orbital but suborbital hypersonic tests for the military.

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Strange meandering ridge amidst Martian glaciers

12:21 pm

Overview map

Strange meandering ridge in glacier country

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissence Orbiter (MRO). Its focus is the meandering ridge in the center of the picture, which the scientists intentially describe vaguely as a “ridged flow-like feature”.

The elevation difference between the high and low points within the picture is about 500 feet, though most of that slope occurs in the lighter terrain on the right. The darker area where the ridge is located has no clear elevation trend, though there are hints of depressions and rises within it.

The yellow dot on the overview map above marks this location, deep within the chaos terrain dubbed Deuteronilus Mensae, on the western end of the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, because practially every image from there shows glacial features.

To underline this fact, the red and white dots mark previous cool images from 2020 and 2021, with the first showing an eroded glacier and the second glacial ice sheets.

The mesa to the east of this picture rises more than 6,000 feet to its peak, as indicated by the black dot. This is also the highest point for this entire grouping of mesas. All are surrounded by a single large apron of material, likely a mixture of alluvial fill and ice.

What however caused the narrow ridge in the picture above? Is it ice or bedrock? If ice why is it so different than the glacial material that seems to surround it? If bedrock, it suggests it is instead an ancient inverted channel created when that ridge was a canyon through which ice or water flowed, compacting the canyon floor. When the terrain around it eroded away it was more resistent and became a ridge instead.

I have no answer. The colors suggest the ridge is rock, not ice, but that is not conclusive.

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Virgin Galactic trims staff and spending

9:08 am

Despite having completed its fifth commercial suborbital flight on November 2, 2023, Virgin Galactic announced yesterday that it is laying off staff and cutting spending.

The number of people laid off was not revealed. Supposedly the company has done this as part of its effort to develop an upgraded version of SpaceShipTwo.

The company reported having $980 million of cash and equivalents on hand at the end of the second quarter this year, when it reported a net loss of $134.4 million. The company has not disclosed its estimated costs for development of the Delta vehicles, but said it expected those vehicles to enter service in 2026. The company expects only limited revenue from VSS Unity, which is able to fly monthly carrying up to four customers at a time.

I instead suspect that demand for suborbital flights is dwindling because of the competition from orbital operations. Had this company started flying a decade ago, as promised numerous times by Richard Branson, it would have been ahead of the curve. It didn’t and thus missed the boat.

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Lucy: Dinkinesh’s moon is actually a contact binary

8:42 am

Dinkinesh's contact binary moon
Click for original image.

As more images have arrived from Lucy’s fly-by of Dinkinesh scientists have discovered that its moon is actually a contact binary.

The Lucy picture to the right, cropped, reduced and sharpened to post here, shows that contact binary on the right.

This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. This image was taken at 1 p.m. EDT Nov. 1, 2023, about 6 minutes after closest approach, from a range of approximately 1,010 miles. From this perspective, the satellite is revealed to be a contact binary, the first time a contact binary has been seen orbiting another asteroid.

Data from the fly-by is still being downloaded.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

8:27 am

SpaceX last night successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

80 SpaceX
50 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 92 to 50 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 92 to 79. SpaceX by itself once again leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 80 to 79.

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The grand Valles Marineris of Mars

11:30 am

The grand canyon of Mars
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image of the grand canyon of Mars, Valles Marineris. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 24, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of the floor of this gigantic canyon, where orbital data has detected light-toned materials. From the caption:

Many of the Valles Marineris canyons, called chasmata, have kilometer-high, light-toned layered mounds made up of sulfate materials. Ius Chasma, near the western end of Valles Marineris, is an exception.

The light-toned deposits here are thinner and occur along both the floor and walls, as we see in this HiRISE image. Additionally, the sulfates are mixed with other minerals like clays and hydrated silica. Scientists are trying to use the combination of mineralogy, morphology, and stratigraphy to understand how the deposits formed in Ius Chasma and why they differ from those found elsewhere in Valles Marineris.

The picture however gives no sense of the monumental terrain that surrounds it.
» Read more

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ESA commits to a zero space junk policy

9:18 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced yesterday that it is now commited to a zero space junk policy, and has established its own standards for the end-of-life disposal of all orbiting spacecraft, to be included during the design and construction.

The policy also requires collision avoidance systems as well as engineering designed to reduce light pollution that harms ground-based astronomy.

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Three European nations sign deal with Arianegroup for use of Ariane-6

9:12 am

In a separate deal outside of the European Space Agency, Germany, France, and Italy have signed a deal with the private rocket company Arianegroup to use its still unlaunched Ariane-6, assuming the company can reduce costs.

The agreement will provide €340 million ($365 million) of financing a year for Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket in exchange for a commitment to an 11% cut in costs. The rocket will also be awarded at least four missions from public institutions a year, while the lighter Vega C launcher will get at least three.

Essentially the deal is intended to keep Ariane-6 afloat, as its high cost has made it difficult to attract customers. At the same time, the contract demands those costs be reduced, and adds pressure to that demand by noting that future and additional launches will be awarded on a purely competitive bidding process. It appears these three countries will open bidding not only to the new rocket startups being developed in Europe, but American rocket companies as well.

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Japan delays asteroid mission due to its rocket problems

9:02 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA has decided to delay its Destiny+ mission to the asteroid Phaethon until 2025 due to the continuing problems getting its Epsilon-S rocket off the ground.

Epsilon-S is intended as an upgrade to Japan’s Epsilon rocket, but its development has been plagued by failures. In October ’22 there was a launch failure of Epsilon, and in July ’23 the second-stage solid-fueled motor of Epsilon-S exploded during a test.

Phaethon is the parent asteroid of the Geminid meteor shower that occurs each year in December. According to the original plan Destiny+ would have done its fly-by of the asteroid in 2029. No new arrival date has been announced.

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Two Russian satellites — one thought defunct — have been tracked in rendezvous maneuvers

8:51 am

The American commercial satellite tracking company has over the past two years identified two Russian satellites — one thought defunct — that have rendezvoused and done proximity maneuvers.

Resurs-P3 — a Russian Earth observation satellite — performed a large maneuver in November 2022 after years of inactivity, and approached the Russian military satellite Cosmos-2562, according to a LeoLabs briefing.

The maneuver by Resurs-P3 “placed it in an entirely new orbit shared by Russian assets with non-publicly disclosed payloads,” said the briefing. “Based on the approaches observed by LeoLabs, it’s highly likely that Cosmos-2562 has an electro-optical payload and has collected high-resolution imagery of Resurs-P3.”

This new data further documents the long-term classified Russian effort to develop such satellite maneuvering capability, both to track and inspect its own satellites as well as do the same to the satellites of others. The unstated capability also includes the ability to destroy a satellite also, once rendezvous is achieved.

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