Tag: spaceflight

Starlink experiences major outage lasting hours

9:32 am

For what appears to be the first time, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation yesterday experienced a major outage, covering users across the entire world and lasting hours.

Apparently, users in the U.S., New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Mexico reported issues.

The global outage lasted for a few hours for most users, but connectivity returned with a “Degraded Service” message that meant it wasn’t fully operational. Some users on Reddit also reported that their connection kept going from degraded to offline. “Our team is investigating and will resolve as soon as possible,” the Starlink service message read. However, the company hasn’t released a public message acknowledging the outage.

Based on how this system is designed, it seems that only a software issue could cause an outage that affected so many users in so many different places. Even then, such an issue would have to impact multiple independent orbiting satellites, or multiple independent terminals, and do so all at once, an event which seems difficult if not impossible.

This all suggests that someone hacked the system and sabotaged it. Recently a professional hacker demonstrated that it was possible to hack into a single Starlink terminal. From there, it may be possible to access the software on board the satellites and sabotage that.

If so, SpaceX has a very serious problem.

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SpaceX signs deal with Royal Caribbean to use Starlink on its cruise ships

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has won a contract with the Royal Caribbean cruise line to provide broadband internet service to its passengers using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.

Deployment of the Starlink technology across the fleet will begin immediately, leveraging the insights obtained from the trial onboard Freedom of the Seas, which has received tremendous positive feedback from guests and crew. The installation is slated to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2023.

The apparent success of Starlink on Royal Caribbean’s ships suggests it will quickly start appearing on other cruise lines shortly.

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Orbit Fab to offer orbital depot for refueling hydrazine fuel in satellites

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: Orbit Fab is now offering to launch for satellite customers an orbital hydrazine fuel depot, essentially a “gas station” in space, that can be used to refill that fuel on geosynchronous satellites.

Orbit Fab, a startup developing infrastructure for in-space refueling of spacecraft, will start offering hydrazine for satellites in geostationary orbit as soon as 2025 at a price of $20 million.

The company announced Aug. 30 its plans to start offering refueling services for GEO spacecraft using a depot and “fuel shuttle” spacecraft. That depot will also be able to support spacecraft such as servicing vehicles that can travel to the depot for “self-service” refueling.

At the $20 million price announced by Orbit Fab, the company would provide up to 100 kilograms of hydrazine. It’s the first time that the company has set a price for providing fuel, a move it says it made to help potential customers better understand the economics of refueling.

The depot would be placed in orbit slightly above that of geosynchronous satellites. A shuttle robot would dock with it, obtain the fuel, and then fly to a customer’s satellite, dock and refuel it. If that shuttle is built by Orbit Fab, the customer’s satellite will need the company’s standard refueling port. For geosynchronous satellites without that port, Orbit Fab is willing to partner with other orbital refueling and satellite servicing spacecraft, such as Northrop Grumman’s and Astroscale’s repair robot satellites.

This plan has several firsts. It is the first to offer a price for a specific amount of fuel. It also appears to be the first to refuel the hydrazine in satellites. Finally, it illustrates the on-going compartmentalization of the satellite servicing industry. Some companies are making tugs. Some are launching repair robots. Others are making robots to remove space junk. And Orbit Fab is going to build fuel stations where everyone else can get fuel.

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Engineers fix problem that caused data to arrive garbled from Voyager-1

9:00 am

By switching computers on Voyager-1 — now in interstellar space and having recently celebrated its 45th anniversary since launch — engineers were able to prevent data from coming back garbled from the spacecraft.

Earlier this year, the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1’s antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data.

The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information.

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager, said that when they suspected this was the issue, they opted to try a low-risk solution: commanding the AACS to resume sending the data to the right computer.

The switch worked. The mystery now is figuring out why the AACS started using that long-decommissioned computer, which could indicate another computer or software issue elsewhere in the spacecraft.

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SpaceX launches another 46 Starlink satellites into orbit

10:50 pm

Capitalism in space: Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully placed another 46 Starlink satellites into orbit, launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings also completed their third flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

39 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 54 to 33 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 54 to 51.

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InSight power levels continue to hold steady

2:35 pm

InSight power levels through August 27, 2022

According to a new update posted today by the InSight science team, the power being generated by the lander’s dust-covered solar panels once again did not decline last week, holding at 400 watt-hours generated per day for the fifth week in a row.

The graph to the right shows the trends since May. The dust in the atmosphere is indicated by the red line, marking what scientists call the tau level. A normal level outside of the winter dust season should be between 0.6 and 0.7 tau. Even though that dust season has been ending, that level has remained high, thus cutting off more of the sunlight that the Mars lander could use to generate the electricity needed by its seismometer.

That the power generated continues to hold steady however suggests that InSight’s seismometer might be able to continue working into September, detecting Martian earthquakes. The scientists had predicted the spacecraft would die sometime around now. Without doubt they are thrilled their prediction appears wrong.

That the lander might last longer also increases the chance that it might experience a wind event, such as a dust devil, that could blow the solar panels clear of dust and save the lander entirely. All it needs is one such event, which sadly has not occurred since InSight landed on Mars in 2018.

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Martian auroras as seen by UAE’s Al-Amal orbiter

10:42 am

Aurora types on Mars
Click for full image.

Using data gathered by the Al-Amal orbiter (“Hope” in English), scientists have identified three types of aurora on Mars. The image to the right, figure 1 from their paper, shows these types, crustal field aurora, patchy aurora, and sinuous aurora. From the abstract:

We categorize discrete auroral patterns into three types: those near strong vertical crustal magnetic field, patchy aurora near very weak crustal fields, and a new type we call “sinuous,” an elongated serpentine structure that stretches thousands of kilometers into the nightside from near midnight in the northern hemisphere.

All three types generally occur during the Martian night, and evolve quickly over periods of less than 45 minutes. The first type, which is generally the brightest, forms over terrain where Mars’ residual magnetic field is strongest and vertically oriented, and was most often seen over the southern cratered highlands centered between the large impact basins Argyre and Hellas. The third type, sinuous aurora, was more unusual:

These we are calling “sinuous discrete aurora,” due to their thin, elongated, and sometimes serpentine shapes. They share several key traits: (a) they appear in the northern hemisphere away from strong crustal fields, (b) they usually connect to the dayside in the far north but also sometimes separately at lower latitudes, (c) they extend for thousands of kilometers into the night side, (d) they appear on both dusk and dawn sides, and (e) their shapes change moderately and brightnesses shift by factors of up to two over timescales of ∼20 min (i.e., the time between swaths, as shown in the differences between Figures 1j and 1k [in the figure above).

The existence of aurora on Mars has been known since the 2000s. These observations however are the first that show more details beyond a fuzzy patch.

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Changes on Mercury detected by Messenger over four year time period

9:43 am

Changes on Mercury seen by Messenger from 2011 to 2015

Using archival data collected from 2011 to 2015 while the orbiter Messenger circled Mercury, scientists have located twenty spots on the planet where something changed during that time period. The map to the right, adapted from the paper, indicates those locations. From the paper’s abstract:

We identified at least one change likely resulting from a newly formed impact crater with bright rays that extend away from the site. If all the changes result from impact events, then the present-day rate of impactors striking the innermost planet is 1,000 times higher than models predict. Therefore, we investigate other sources for these detected changes. We located several changes on steep slopes near tectonic landforms, consistent with ongoing tectonic activity. Additionally, we identified several changes in areas adjacent to hollow formations, consistent with present-day activity. These detected changes will be critical targets for the upcoming BepiColombo mission.

The data suggests several things. First, if the changes all come from impacts, than the number of asteroids in the inner part of the solar system where Mercury orbits the Sun is much higher than believed. Since it is very hard to observe asteroids there because of the Sun, this very well might be true.

Second, if the changes were not all caused by impacts, then they occurred either from earthquakes or the environmental extremes caused by daily and seasonal changes.

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Astra gets contract to provide engines to OneWeb satellites

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Astra, the startup rocket company that recently announced a cessation in launches, has won a contract to provide engines used by OneWeb satellites to maneuver in orbit.

he Astra Spacecraft Engine was designed by Apollo Fusion, which Astra acquired last year. It is an electric Hall engine and has been used by York Space Systems, Spaceflight’s Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) Sherpa-LTE, and a U.S. Air Force intelligence satellite. Astra signed a deal earlier this year to supply the engines to LeoStella.

In retrospect, the purchase by Astra of Apollo last year was a signal that the company might be shifting its gears away from rocketry, at least in the short term. This contract, along with the others won by Apollo before Astra bought it, provides Astra a survival profit stream even as it has leaves the rocket launch market while attempting to develop its proposed larger Rocket-4. Whether it can resume launches eventually remains somewhat doubtful, as a number of new rocket companies should become operational in the interim, making that smallsat launch market very crowded.

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August 29, 2022 Quick space links

2:19 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay:

As I’ve said numerous times, I’ll believe this engine is a flight engine when I see it in flight.

The link goes to the research paper from the Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Electricity, which is in Chinese except for the abstract. This tweet highlights the “leg deploying test and full-scale landing impact experiment” from that paper.

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Curiosity in the valley of Gediz Vallis

11:41 am

Curiosity's view on sol 3576 (August 28, 2022)
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The panorama above was created by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on August 28, 2022, and shows the strangely paved Martian terrain directly in front of the rover now that it is inside the valley of Gediz Vallis, scattered flat rocks interspersed with dust. The yellow lines in the overview map to the right indicates the area covered by this panorama. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s likely future route to circle around the small mesa Chenapua.

The paved rocks however may not be separate, but merely covered in their low spots by dust. What makes these light rocks significant is that they appear to be the first close examples of the sulfate-bearing layer that the rover has seen in the higher reaches of Mount Sharp since it landed in Gale Crater more than ten years ago. You can see this bright layer clearly in the distance in a panorama taken by Curiosity in June 2021. The rover has now finally reached it, and is about to delve into another layer in the geological history of Mars, a layer that appears easily weathered and carved by the thin Martian atmosphere.

Other details in this panorama are of important note. In the overview map, I have indicated that a recurring slope lineae is supposed to exist on the cliff face of the mesa dubbed Orinoco. These lineae, seen from orbit, appear to be streaks on slopes that come and go seasonally. No one has come up with a theory to explain them, though the most favored theory today says they are staining dust flows of some kind.

However, if you click on the panorama and zoom in on the cliff face of Orinoco, you will see an incredibly rough rocky terrain. It seems impossible for any streak of any kind to flow down this cliff anywhere, suggesting that the streaks might possibly be like the rays that radiate out from craters on the Moon, visible only from orbit and invisible on the surface.

The marker layer is another important geological target, now almost within reach. This flat layer is found in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp, all at about the same approximate elevation. It is distinctly flat and relatively smooth. Knowing why it stands out so differently from the layers above and below will help geologists better write the geological history of this Martian mountain and the crater in which it sits.

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