Tag: spaceflight

Hubble image shows several dozen boulders flung from Dimorphos

9:40 am

Boulders drifting from Dimorphos
Click for original image.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have photographed several dozen boulders that were flung off of the asteroid Dimorphos following the impact by the space probe DART. The picture to the right, reduced and brightened to more clearly show those boulders, was taken on December 19, 2022, four months after DART’s impact.

These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the Solar System. The ejected boulders range in size from 1 meter to 6.7 meters across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at around a kilometre per hour.

The blue streak is the dust tail that has streamed off of Dimorphos since the impact, pushed away from the sun by the solar wind.

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The possibility of more than one exoplanet sharing the same orbit

9:27 am

PDS 70, as seen by ALMA
The Trojan debris clouds around PDS 70, as seen by ALMA

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have detected evidence that suggests the possibility of more than one exoplanet sharing the same orbit around PDS 70, a star 400 light years away.

This young star is known to host two giant, Jupiter-like planets, PDS 70b and PDS 70c. By analysing archival ALMA observations of this system, the team spotted a cloud of debris at the location in PDS 70b’s orbit where Trojans are expected to exist.

Trojans occupy the so-called Lagrangian zones, two extended regions in a planet’s orbit where the combined gravitational pull of the star and the planet can trap material. Studying these two regions of PDS 70b’s orbit, astronomers detected a faint signal from one of them, indicating that a cloud of debris with a mass up to roughly two times that of our Moon might reside there.

The press release — as well as most news reports — touts the possibility that they have found a second planet in this orbit. They have not, and are likely not going to. As noted above, the data indicates the presence of “a cloud of debris”, which is most likely a clustering of Trojan asteroids, just as the more than 12,000 asteroids we see in the two Trojan points in Jupiter’s orbit.

Nonetheless, this is the first detection of what appears to be a Trojan clustering in the accretion disk of a young star.

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NOAA pays smallsat company PlanetiQ $60 million for its weather data

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: NOAA today awarded the smallsat company PlanetiQ a $60 million contract to provide the agency weather data from the company’s planned constellation of 20 satellites.

At present two satellites are in orbit, with more scheduled for launch in 2024. The satellites use data obtained in orbit from the different GPS-type satellite constellations to determine the atmosphere’s temperature, pressure, humidity and electron density.

In 2018 NOAA had awarded PlanetiQ and two other commercial companies, Spire and GeoOptics, small developmental contracts. This appears to be the first full contract, and continues NOAA’s very slow shift from building its own weather satellites to buying data from commercial satellites built by private companies. The agency has resisted this change, but since it can’t get its own satellites built and launched on budget or on time, it is increasingly being forced to do so.

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ISRO successfully tests propulsion system of Gaganyaan’s service module

8:56 am

India’s space agency ISRO revealed today that it has successfully completed the second phase of static fire engine tests of the complete propulsion system to be used by the service module of its Gaganyaan’s manned space capsule.

The first hot test of the Phase-2 test series demonstrated the integrated performance of the Gaganyaan Service Module Propulsion System. The test, conducted for a duration of 250 seconds, involved LAM engines firing in continuous mode, along with RCS thrusters, adhering to the test profile.

As part of the Phase-1 test series of SM SDM, ISRO had previously conducted five hot tests, totalling a duration of 2750 seconds. The earlier phase involved five 440 N LAM engines and eight 100 N RCS thrusters. For the Phase-2 test series, the current configuration includes the full configuration of five 440 N LAM engines and sixteen 100 N RCS thrusters.

ISRO had been hoping to launch the first manned mission in ’24, but that target date remains very uncertain.

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SpaceX launches 15 more Starlink satellites into orbit

9:20 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched fifteen more Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairings successfully completed their sixth flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

48 SpaceX
26 China (with a launch also planned for tonight)
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 55 to 26, and the entire world combined 55 to 45, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world combined (excluding other American companies) 48 to 45.

An additional note: This was the 100th successful orbital launch in 2023. In the history of space rocketry, reaching 100 launches in a year was generally considered an indication of an active launch year. Now the global rocket industry accomplishes it in just over half the year. Last year set a record with 179 launches. There is now an outside chance of breaking that, topping 200 launches in 2023.

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Ancient lava vent high on a Martian volcano

2:39 pm

Ancient lava vent high on a Martian volcano
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates the once violent and active volcanic past of Mars, now long dormant. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “vent and channel” located high on the northeast flanks of the giant volcano Arsia Mons.

The rim around the vent suggests that lava had once bubbled up out of the vent and hardened around it, as most of the lava flowed downhill along the channel. And though this vent appears to be the source of this channel, it is not. The channel continues to the southwest uphill until it reaches the edge of Arsia Mons’ caldera, a region where there are many such vents, many much larger and deeper than this one.
» Read more

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Venezuela officially signs onto Chinese lunar base project

9:04 am

Venezuela on July 17, 2023 officially signed an agreement with China to participate in China’s lunar base project.

Venezuela is the first nation, after Russia, to sign on to the project.

Since Venezuela has no space industry and is a bankrupt socialist state that can barely feed its people, this at first glance appears to merely be an effort by China for some international PR. One detail from the article however tells us what the deal is really about: “Venezuela will make its satellite control ground station infrastructure available for lunar missions.” In exchange for providing Venezuela some minor educational aid, China gets use of the ground stations that presently exist in Venezuela, and likely the right to build its own there as well.

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Glacial evidence in the dry equatorial regions of Mars?

11:15 am

Is this evidence of glacial ice in the Martian dry equatorial regions?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, rotated, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 3, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eastern half of a six-mile-wide unnamed crater with a depth of about 1,500 to 2,000 feet from rim to floor.

What makes this picture significant is the patchy material in the center of that crater floor, some of which looks almost like very old peeling paint. It also resembles the kind of glacial features routinely seen in many craters poleward of 30 degrees latitude on Mars.

Is this another example of such glacial features? If so, its location is what makes it significant.
» Read more

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SpaceX to raise another $750 million in stock sale; earnings rise to $8 billion in ’23

8:49 am

According to anonymous sources, a new stock sale at SpaceX is likely to raise another $750 million because of enthusiasm on Wall Street for the stock due to the company’s growing earnings, which are expected to double to $8 billion this year.

Last week, CNBC reported that Elon Musk’s SpaceX valuation reached nearly $150B following an announcement of a stock sale by existing investors. According to a copy of the purchase offer sent by CFO Bret Johnsen, which CNBC obtained, the company has entered into an agreement with new and existing investors to sell up to $750 million in stock at a price of $81 per share. This represents a 5% increase from the previous secondary sale at $77 per share, which valued the company at approximately $140B. SpaceX has not provided any comments regarding the purchase offer.

Though the article does not say, that revenue comes from two sources, SpaceX’s rocket launches and its Starlink constellation. In the first case the company dominates the launch industry, because its launch price is so much cheaper than everyone else. In the second case, Starlink is producing so much revenue because Elon Musk forced the company to move fast and get its satellites in orbit quickly. Though both SpaceX and Amazon announced their internet constellations at about the same time, Amazon has still not launched any satellites, while SpaceX has more than 4,000 in orbit. This active and operating constellation has allowed SpaceX to grab market share that Amazon is now likely never to get, even when it begins launching.

All this makes SpaceX very appealing to investors, which is why its private stock price has gone up. It is also why it has been able to raise now almost $11 billion in private investment capital for building both Starlink and its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

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Rocket Lab launches seven satellites; recovers first stage from ocean

6:46 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place seven smallsats into orbit, lifting off from New Zealand.

The first stage used parachutes to softly splash down in the ocean, where it was recovered for refurbishment and relaunch. As this stage is the first in which this full reuse will be attempted, the ability to refurbish the stage after its salt water swim remains the critical factor. We will not know its state until a complete inspection plus static fire engine tests are completed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

47 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 54 to 26, and the entire world combined 54 to 45, while SpaceX alone still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 47 to 45.

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Flat-topped Martian mesa

3:58 pm

Flat-topped mesa on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on April 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows only one of many flat-topped mesas in a chaos terrain region dubbed Oxia Chaos.

The mesa top is about 540 feet above the floor of the canyon to the north, which in turn is about 840 feet below the flat terrain north of it. That flat terrain to the north is not part of the chaos terrain, however, but the northern rim of the plateau that surrounds the chaos. Moreover, this particular piece of rim is separating from the plateau, as shown near the top of this January 16, 2008 context camera image from MRO. At some point in the future it will break off and fall into that canyon and on top of this mesa.
» Read more

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