Tag: spaceflight

More problems at Virgin Galactic?

10:02 am

The story outlines what appear to significant problems at Virgin Galactic:

  • Some sources say the company has shelved LauncherOne in favor of a bigger launcher that would be deployed from the bottom of a 747, not WhiteKnightTwo.
  • The company however says LauncherOne is still under development.
  • The company admits that they recently had a LauncherOne test rocket engine explode during testing.

It appears that they have discovered that LauncherOne is not cost effective for meeting their contract with OneWeb to launch 39 satellites. It would only be able put up one satellite at a time. A more powerful launcher however would be too heavy for WhiteKnightTwo.

Thus, after 10 years of development, nothing they have built to date is useful for a profitable operation, and they apparently have to start over.

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Russians confirm their commitment to ISS through 2024

9:36 am

Even as a new crew arrived at ISS, the head of Roscosmos confirmed that the Russians are now committed to sticking with ISS through 2024, as requested by the U.S.

I’ll make a prediction: The station’s life will be extended beyond 2024, but not necessarily under the control of its present international partnership. If the governments involved consider backing out at that time, there will be private companies then capable of taking it over, and will demand that the U.S. transfer ownership to them. This will in turn act to pressure the governments to continue the station’s operation.

Either way, ISS will continue.

Meanwhile, quality control issues continue to pop up with the Russians. One of the solar panels on the Soyuz capsule that delivered crew to ISS yesterday had failed to open when commanded, then decided to pop open unannounced during the docking. They had enough power to get to the station with only one panel, and the panel opening at the wrong time fortunately did not cause any problems, but for the panel to open as it did is without doubt worrisome.

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Robotic servicing demo resumes on ISS

9:26 am

After a two year hiatus, engineers have resumed experiments on ISS to demonstrate robotic servicing of satellites in space.

Known by its creative team as the “little ISS experiment that could,” RRM broke uncharted ground in 2011-2013 with a set of activities that debuted robotic tools and procedures to refuel the propellant tanks of existing satellites. Its second phase of operations, which took place in April and May and will resume again later in 2015, offers something entirely different and just as disruptive, says Reed. “We’ve outfitted the RRM module with new hardware so we can shift our focus to satellite inspection, instrument life extension, and even techniques for instrument swap-out,” says Reed. Such servicing technologies could open new possibilities for owners of spacecraft in low and geosynchronous Earth orbit, he says.

Many of the designs of this demo project are based on actual research satellites that need refueling or repair. Thus, if the robot can do the work on ISS, it is likely it can also do the work at the satellite itself.

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Haze spotted over Ceres’ double bright spot

9:15 am

Dawn, in orbit around Ceres, has detected a haze above the dwarf planet’s double bright spot, suggesting that the tiny asteroid/planet is still geologically active.

Haze on Ceres would be the first ever observed directly in the asteroid belt. In 2014, researchers using the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory reported seeing water vapour spraying off Ceres, which suggested that it was geologically active1. At least one-quarter of Ceres’s mass is water, a much greater proportion than seen in most asteroids.

Bright spots pepper Ceres’s surface, but the haze has so far been seen in only one location — a crater named Occator, which has a large bright area at its centre and several smaller spots nearby. Mission scientists have been trying to work out whether the bright spots are made of ice, evaporated salts or other minerals, or something else entirely.

Some team members had been leaning towards the salt explanation, but the discovery of haze suggests the presence of sublimating ice. “At noontime, if you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze,” Russell says. “It comes back in a regular pattern.” The haze covers about half of the crater and stops at the rim.

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Mountains and craters on Pluto?

9:09 am

The edge of Tombaugh Regio

Cool image time! Even as they download new images for a press conference on Friday, the New Horizons’ science team has released a new close-up of Tombaugh Regio, showing both a new mountain range within it as well as its sharply defined western contact with the dark whale feature, which now appears to be heavily cratered and old.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.” While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old — the darker region probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).

Make sure you click through to see the full resolution image. It is quite astonishing. They have also released a new image each of two of Pluto’s moons.

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SpaceX pinpoints likely cause of Falcon 9 failure

4:31 pm

The investigation into the failure of the Falcon 9 launch June 28 now thinks the cause was a failed strut in the upper stage.

The struts are 2 feet long and about an inch thick at its thickest. SpaceX does not make the struts, a supplier does. From now on, each one will be individually checked, Musk said, and the design and material may be altered for added strength. The struts are designed to handle 10,000 pounds of force at liftoff; at the time of the accident, they would have been seeing only 2,000 pounds of force. A failure at such a low threshold is “pretty crazy,” Musk said. The strut most likely failed at its attachment point, he added.

Another change: Beginning with its next launch, each Dragon cargo carrier will be equipped with software for deploying its parachutes. The Dragon destroyed last month, along with an estimated $110 million worth of NASA equipment and supplies, would have survived if the parachutes normally used for descent at mission’s end could have been activated, Musk said.

The investigation is still not finalized, but is likely close to completion.

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Internet tycoon commits $100 million to alien life search

9:16 am

Russian internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner has given SETI $100 million for a ten year project to accelerate their effort to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Understanding why SETI needs private funding is important:

SETI has been going on since 1960, when radio telescopes became sensitive enough to detect signals from another planet if it was broadcasting signals similar to those which our civilization does. Researchers developed devices that could monitor millions of frequencies at once for any signal that looked at all different from that produced by astronomical objects or the natural background. At first funded by universities and NASA, public funding for SETI was axed by Congress in the early 1990s. Since then, the nonprofit SETI League has received funding of a few million dollars a year from private donors.

Congress correctly cut the funds because it isn’t really the business of the federal government to search for alien life. Some taxpayers really don’t want their money used for that purpose, and they should have the right to say no. Instead, Congress essentially told SETI to do it right: Get private funding from people who want the research done. The work will be done more efficiently for less, and no one will be required to contribute who doesn’t want to.

Milner’s contribution now is the biggest donation yet, and suggests that interest in this research is building culturally.

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Philae status update

9:01 am

Engineers on the Rosetta team are struggling to figure out why they cannot get a solid communications lock with their Philae lander, and have come up with several explanations.

One possible explanation being discussed at DLR’s Lander Control Center is that the position of Philae may have shifted slightly, perhaps by changing its orientation with respect to the surface in its current location. The lander is likely situated on uneven terrain, and even a slight change in its position – perhaps triggered by gas emission from the comet – could mean that its antenna position has also now changed with respect to its surroundings. This could have a knock-on effect as to the best position Rosetta needs to be in to establish a connection with the lander.

Another separate issue under analysis is that one of the two transmission units of the lander appears not to be working properly, in addition to the fact that one of the two receiving units is damaged. Philae is programmed to switch periodically back and forth between these two transmission units, and after tests on the ground reference model, the team has sent a command to the lander to make it work with just one transmitter. As Philae is able to receive and accept commands of this kind in the “blind”, it should execute it as soon as it is supplied with solar energy during the comet’s day.

They have heard from Philae since July 9. Because of comet activity they have had to pull Rosetta back away from the nucleus to protect it, and are now focusing its primary activity on observations, not communications with Philae. They will continue to try to bring Philae back to full functioning life, but the priority is now the comet.

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The Earth from a million miles away

8:54 am

Earth from a million miles away

Cool image time! NASA’s DISCOVR solar observation probe has released its first image of the Earth, taken from its station-keeping position a million miles from Earth.

This camera was originally designed for Al Gore’s proposed propaganda mission where a spacecraft would take daily pictures of the Earth to pound home his environmental agenda. Eventually NASA found a real use for the satellite’s overall structure and location, observing the Sun’s activity and give us advance warning of dangerous flares or coronal mass ejections.

They left the Earth-viewing camera on board, partly because it was built already (it would cost money to remove) and partly because daily images like this can be of some scientific value.

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Dawn resumes descent to Ceres

11:45 pm

After a several week pause while engineers analyzed the issue that caused the spacecraft to go into safe mode on June 30, they have now resumed their descent to a lower orbit to take higher resolution images of Ceres.

The spacecraft experienced a discrepancy in its expected orientation on June 30, triggering a safe mode. Engineers traced this anomaly to the mechanical gimbal system that swivels ion engine #3 to help control the spacecraft’s orientation during ion-thrusting. Dawn has three ion engines and uses only one at a time. Dawn’s engineering team switched to ion engine #2, which is mounted on a different gimbal, and conducted tests with it from July 14 to 16. They have confirmed that the spacecraft is ready to continue with the exploration of Ceres.

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Obamacare increases are only going to get worse

12:12 pm

Finding out what’s in it: After Obamacare`s government help for insurance companies ends and consumers have bear the full cost of this monstrous law, the costs will skyrocket again.

By 2023, I estimate that the average family plan could be 61% more expensive than it is in 2015, with individual plans only one or two percentage points behind. These increases are so high that direct taxpayer subsidies to consumers are unlikely to keep up. So the cost, both financially and politically, will become increasingly intolerable.

Thank you Obama and the Democratic Party for bringing us this present. We couldn`t have done it without you!

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More Pluto news!

10:36 am

Sputnik Planum on Pluto

At a press conference today Alan Stern led off by dubbing Pluto-Charon as a “double planet system”. Some new results:

  • Tombaugh Regio (the heart) has been identified as a region of carbon monoxide.
  • The atmosphere extends out to about 600 miles. It is comprised of hydrocarbosn, methane, and nitrogen, with nitrogen the main component. It is naturally escaping from the planet, ionized by the solar wind. The consequence is that a substantial amount of Pluto has evaporated away over time. The numbers are not yet quantified, but will be as more data arrives.
  • The images once again suggest significant activity over time, both of erosion and tectonic processes. One flat plain, dubbed Sputnik Planum, is what one scientist described as “difficult to explain terrain.” The image is to the right. Some of its features resemble icecap glaciers, which are formed by processes that do not exist on Pluto. There also appear to be wind streaks on this planum!
  • They have named a mile high mountain has been dubbed Norgay Montes after the man who accompanied Edmund Hillary to the summit of Mt. Everest.

As the scientists warned today, every conclusion right now is very speculative, and should be taken with a very big grain of salt.

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Russia considers building heavy-lift rocket like SLS

10:05 am

The competition heats up: Sources in Roscosmos, Russia’s government agency in charge of their entire aerospace industry, today revealed that the agency is considering building a heavy-lift rocket, as powerful as NASA’s SLS rocket but more similar to Energia, the heavy-lift rocket built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

The cost would be $12.2 billion, or 1 trillion rubles, and would take 7-8 years to complete. If approved, the work would also not begin until after 2025 so that the development of Angara’s full family of rockets is completed first.

Meanwhile, a GAO audit today noted that NASA has little margin for completing SLS on time and on budget.

Big, inefficient, and costly rockets: This is what governments do. Their goal? To provide jobs and pork. Even if the rocket never flies it matters not, as long as that pork keeps flowing.

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India engine test a success

9:55 am

The competition heats up: India has successfully completed a full duration engine test of its most powerful home-built rocket engine.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the much-awaited ‘full endurance test’ of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk III’s indigenous cryogenic CE-20 engine at ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC) in Mahendragiri in the district on Thursday. The CE-20 was ignited and tested for 800 seconds from 5 p.m. to study the performance of the engine though the actual required duration was only 635 seconds.

This success puts them ever closer to creating their own rocket comparable to the Falcon 9 and capable of competing for commercial business in the international launch market.

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Weird geology on Charon

12:57 pm

Charon's mountain in a moat

As they await the arrival of more data from New Horizons, the science team have highlighted this interesting and entirely puzzling feature revealed in their first global image from Charon, shown in the image on the right, a mountain inside a depression. Note also the nearby rill-like depressions running from one crater to the next.

My first thought is that the mountain, which in this relatively low resolution image looks almost like a really gigantic boulder, is made of material denser than the ground in which it sits, and some heating event caused the ground to soften and collapse, dropping the mountain-sized boulder down into the sinkhole.

I am guessing of course. What we have here is a very alien environment, with geological processes in temperatures and densities and gravities to which we are wholly unfamiliar. What we would normally expect to happen is not something we should expect to normally happen on either Charon or Pluto.

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First New Horizons fly-by images released

12:31 pm

Ice mountains on Pluto

Many cool images! I will only post one, on the right, of the ice mountains seen at the southernmost edge of Tombauh Regio. More can be seen here.

Some quick facts revealed during today’s the press conference:

  • They have gotten good data on Pluto’s atmosphere. Earlier data just before fly-by suggested that there are specific regions on the surface that have a lot of methane, but with different properties depending on location.
  • They have found that the surface of Charon is active. It also looks like a weird Moon, cratered, with a dark mare region they have dubbed Mordor. Its cause however is not the same as the Moon. There are also a large sequence of troughs and cliffs that are unlike other planets. Some areas are very smooth, as they they have been repaved after cratering. And there is a canyon that is very very deep, 3 miles deep, that makes it relatively deeper than any other canyon in the solar system.
  • Pluto’s moon Hydra is not spherical, and in fact looks like an asteroid.
  • The white heart is now been named Tombaugh Regio after one of Pluto’s discoverers. In its southern extent there are mountains and strange pits. And this area has no impact craters, meaning this is a very young surface, less than 100 million years old. The mountains have to made of ice, which is essentially the only thing that can be bedrock at Pluto’s temperatures, based on what they think Pluto is composed of.
  • The data shows repeatedly that a tiny planet can still have geological activity after billions of years, even without a giant gas giant nearby to produce tidal heating.
  • They have named the giant whale-shaped dark region at the equator Cthulu Regio.

The data and images will be coming back from New Horizons for the next year, so the show is certainly not over.

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Pluto and Charon in false color

5:03 pm

Pluto and Charon in false color

While waiting for word about how New Horizons has fared during its close fly-by of Pluto, the science team today released the false color images on the right of both Pluto and Charon to illustrate the complicated surface geology of both planetary bodies.

The new color images reveal that the “heart” of Pluto actually consists of two remarkably different-colored regions. In the false-color image, the heart consists of a western lobe shaped like an ice cream cone that appears peach color in this image. A mottled area on the right (east) side looks bluish. A mid-latitude band appears in shades ranging from pale blue through red. Even within the northern polar cap, in the upper part of the image, various shades of yellow-orange indicate subtle compositional differences. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.

The surface of Charon is viewed using the same exaggerated color. The red on the dark northern polar cap of Charon is attributed to hydrocarbon and other molecules, a class of chemical compounds called tholins. The mottled colors at lower latitudes point to the diversity of terrains on Charon. This image was obtained using three of the color filters of the Ralph instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT and received on the ground on at 12:25 pm.

Word on the spacecraft’s status will arrive at around 9 pm (eastern) tonight. Images and data will then follow, assuming all is well.

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Court rules Obamacare requires nuns to buy contraceptives

11:54 am

You must comply! A federal appeals court has ruled that Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic chartable organization run entirely by celibate nuns, must provide contraceptives, under the Obamacare mandate, to their employees or face IRS fines.

The court’s ruling ends the temporary injunction that prevented the Little Sisters from being fined while awaiting a final court decision. They either must get that injunction reinstate by a higher court or abandon their work. As they stated today,

As Little Sisters of the Poor, we offer the neediest elderly of every race and religion a home where they will be welcomed as Christ, cared for as family and accompanied with dignity until God calls them to Himself.  We have done this for over 175 years because of our faith in God and our vocation as Little Sisters of the Poor.

But now the government demands we choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith.  We cannot do that and we should not have to.  It is a choice that violates our nation’s historic commitment to ensure that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives. But the government forces us to either violate our conscience or take millions of dollars that we raise by begging for the care of the elderly poor and instead pay fines to the IRS.

We are not seeking special privileges.  The government exempts huge corporations, small businesses, and other religious ministries from what they are imposing on us–we are simply asking to carry on our mission to serve the elderly poor as we have always done for 175 years.

Once again, the Obama administration, through its use of Obamacare, demonstrates its totalitarian nature. You must do as they demand, regardless of your religious beliefs.

Rather than abandon their work, the Little Sisters should continue doing it while also defying the law and the courts. Let the Obama administration and the IRS put some nuns in prison while bankrupting their organization. Only by doing that will there be any chance of continuing their work by getting this monstrous law changed, or repealed.

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Some speculations from scientists about Pluto data

10:28 am

Using the images and data so far received from New Horizons, planetary scientists outline some of their tentative conclusions as well as speculate about what it means.

[Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator] says Pluto’s surface appears to be much less heavily cratered than its large moon, Charon—which implies that the surface has been paved over in some way. That smoothing process could come from internal heat that keeps rock and ice soft, or by the frosts that snow down and blanket the surface in fresh ice. “Either [Pluto’s] internal engine continues to run, and there are active processes that are taking place,” Stern says, “or those atmospheric processes are themselves covering up the geology, and covering up the craters.”

Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell University, not on the New Horizons team, favors the latter explanation. His initial impression is that Pluto is far more cratered than Triton, the moon of Neptune that is about the same size as Pluto and is thought to be a captured Kuiper belt object. Triton has a famous “cantaloupe” terrain, thought to have formed as heat, driven by Saturn’s tidal pull, allowed molten blobs of ice to rise and overturn. Parts of Pluto’s rugged surface seem to be far more carved and cratered, Lunine says. “It’s telling me that [Pluto’s] crust was not heated and modified to the extent that it was on Triton.”

Above all, however, I like Lunine’s comment at the end of the article:

Lunine says the emerging diversity on Pluto—of both active atmospheric and geological processes—makes him disagree with the decision of International Astronomical Union to call Pluto a dwarf. “This really is a planet,” he says. He notes that electrons have a double definition as a particle and a wave. “Why can’t we call Pluto a planet and a Kuiper belt object?” he asks. “I think we have to think of it as both.”

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Pluto just before close encounter

9:39 am

Pluto just before close encounter

Today’s cool image, on the right, is the last one New Horizons sent back to Earth before its July 14th close encounter. Be sure you click here to see the full resolution version. It is quite spectacular. It was taken from about 476,000 miles, about twice the distance to the Moon.

The quality of this image strongly suggests that all will go well with the encounter today. However,

Per the plan, the spacecraft currently is in data-gathering mode and not in contact with flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physical Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Scientists are waiting to find out whether New Horizons “phones home,” transmitting to Earth a series of status updates that indicate the spacecraft survived the flyby and is in good health. The “call” is expected shortly after 9 p.m. tonight.

So, at 9 pm (Eastern) we will hear from New Horizons on its status. Images and data from the encounter itself however will arrive over time, beginning tonight and continuing throughout the coming months.

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The size of Pluto pinned down

12:59 pm

Data from New Horizons has allowed scientists to more firmly determine, for the first time, Pluto’s precise size.

Mission scientists have found Pluto to be 1,473 miles (2,370 kilometers) in diameter, somewhat larger than many prior estimates. Images acquired with the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were used to make this determination. This result confirms what was already suspected: Pluto is larger than all other known solar system objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. “The size of Pluto has been debated since its discovery in 1930. We are excited to finally lay this question to rest,” said mission scientist Bill McKinnon, Washington University, St. Louis.

Pluto’s newly estimated size means that its density is slightly lower than previously thought, and the fraction of ice in its interior is slightly higher. Also, the lowest layer of Pluto’s atmosphere, called the troposphere, is shallower than previously believed.

This means that Pluto is at this moment the largest Kuiper Belt object so far known, bigger than Eris, the Kuiper Belt planet discovered in 2005 that had been thought to be bigger than Pluto and whose existence was used by some to demote Pluto’s status as a planet.

I say, they are both planets, because they are both heavy enough for gravity to have forced them to become spherical.

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The approaching perihelion of Comet 67P/C-G

9:08 am

The Rosetta science team has prepared a FAQ outlining what we should expect next month as Comet 67P/C-G reaches and passes its closest point to the Sun, with Rosetta (and hopefully Philae) there to watch.

The most interesting detail they note is this:

Will the comet break apart during perihelion?

The comet has not broken apart during its many previous orbits, so it is not expected to do so this time, but it cannot be ruled out. Scientists are keen to watch the possible evolution of a 500 m-long fracture that runs along the surface of the neck on the comet during the peak activity.

You can see an image from Rosetta that shows this fracture here. As I wrote then,

The biggest fracture line appears to be a meandering line that is traveling from the image’s top center to its mid-right. There also appear to be parallel lines below it. As we are looking at the nucleus’s neck, these lines suggest that the connection between the two large lobes is somewhat strained, and that it is not unlikely that these two sections will break apart at some time in the future. Though there is no way to predict at this time when that will happen, it will be truly exciting if it happens when Rosetta is in the neighborhood.

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Pluto on July 11

8:55 am

Pluto on July 11

Another cool image for Monday morning: As the spacecraft zooms towards its Tuesday fly-by, it continues to take images of Pluto, even as the planet rotates. For example, compare today’s image on the right with the one I posted yesterday. You can see some of the same features (the donut-like, crater-like feature is the most obvious), but their positions are different because of the planet’s six-day rotation.

Note also that the row of black spots along the equator show more details. Not unexpectedly, they are not as simple as the early fuzzy images suggested. Unfortunately, we will not get to see even more details, as these features will not be in view during the fly-by.

Update: See this link for a new image of Charon.

More and more to come!

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