Tag: spaceflight

Layered mesa on Mars

12:57 pm

Layered mesa on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 26, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a mesa about three quarters of a mile in length that appears to be many-layered, from top to bottom.

The brightness of the mesa, compared to the surrounding plains, also emphasizes the different layers, though in this case it suggests two major epochs where the material being laid down in each was fundamentally different.

Or the difference could simply mean that the surrounding terrain is covered with dust, hiding its true color.

There is no question that winds in the thin Martian atmosphere have contributed to the erosion that formed this mesa, much like the buttes in the American southwest are shaped by winds. Whether water was a factor for this Martian butte is far less certain.

The overview map below provides context.
» Read more

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Saudi Arabia signs Artemis Accords

10:31 am

According to an announcement yesterday by NASA administrator Bill Nelson, Saudi Arabia has now become the twenty-first nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the growing American alliance to explore the solar system.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

The accords were introduced by the Trump administration and are bi-lateral agreements between each nation and the United States. Their language is designed to protect property rights in space, and thus get around the limitations of the Outer Space Treaty. By signing up as many nations as possible, the accords are also creating this new American space alliance, which will be competing against the Chinese-Russian axis that opposes the accords.

Right now Germany and India remain the only major players in space who have not aligned themselves with either side. I expect Germany to eventually sign. India however appears to want to remain non-aligned.

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Virgin Galactic leases facility in Arizona to build up to six of its reusable suborbital space planes

9:13 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced on July 14, 2022 that it has leased a new facility in Mesa, Arizona where it will build up to six of its reusable suborbital space planes, with the goal of beginning commercial flights by late 2025.

The Delta class spaceship is Virgin Galactic’s production vehicle that is designed to fly weekly, supporting the Company’s target of 400 flights per year from Spaceport America. Based on current schedules, the first of these ships is expected to commence revenue-generating payload flights in late 2025, progressing to private astronaut flights in 2026.

The Company is currently selecting various suppliers to build the spaceship’s major subassemblies, which will be delivered to the new Mesa facility for final assembly. Virgin Galactic motherships will ferry completed spaceships to Spaceport America, New Mexico for flight test and commercial operation.

Combined with its recent contract award to Aurora to build two new motherships, it appears the management that replaced Richard Branson at Virgin Galactic has found that it can’t really proceed with commercial operations with the ships Branson left behind. Apparently the company is working to replace everything, and will likely delay commercial operations another few years in the process.

These decisions might be smart, but considering the company’s long history of endless delays, the buying public and the investment community might not be willing to tolerate more delays. It also remains very questionable there is enough business to justify its prediction of 400 flights per year, even if the company loses no customers.

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Masten lays off staff, apparently shuts down

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: The small lunar lander company Masten Space Systems, which for years has worked to develop vertical rocket landing technology and has a $75.9 million contract with NASA to put a rover on the Moon, has apparently furloughed its staff and shut down operations.

The XL-1 lander was originally scheduled to launch in December 2022 bound for a landing at the moon’s south pole. In June 2021, Masten announced an 11-month launch delay to November 2023. The company said the delay was caused by industry-wide supply chain disruptions and the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

CLPS partners are expected to supplement NASA mission funding by carrying payloads for other parties. The source who requested anonymity said that is where Masten’s mission ran into problems. “We ran out of money after grossly underbidding. The estimate was $105 million but I was told that we had found a 30 million dollar private customer who wanted to fly with us,” the source said.

However, that customer later pulled out the venture. Subsequent attempts to fill the gap failed, the source added.

Masten is one of four companies with similar NASA lunar lander contracts. The others, Astrobotic, Firefly, and Intuitive Machines, all have scheduled missions planned, all of which however have been delayed for a variety of reasons.

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Rogozin removed as Roscosmos’ head

8:52 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space corporation which controls the country’s entire aerospace industry, was fired yesterday and replaced by another former deputy prime minister, Yuri Borisov.

Don’t think Rogozin is out of favor with Putin however. Instead, it appears Putin wants his bull-headedness for running one of the regions Russia has conquered in the eastern Ukraine.

Following its tumultuous tenure as the head of Roskosmos, Rogozin was expected to move to the presidential administration and, possibly, lead it or “curate” the Russian occupation of the Eastern Ukraine, the independent Meduza publication reported.

I wonder if Rogozin’s removal is connected in any way with the ongoing negotiations between NASA and Russia’s foreign ministry for the barter agreement to allow the two to fly each other’s astronauts on each other’s capsules.

That agreement has been in negotiations and reviews for months by the two agencies as well as the U.S. State Department and Russian Foreign Ministry. NASA has long advocated for the agreement to enable what it calls “mixed crews” or “integrated crews” on spacecraft. That would ensure at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut would be on the station should either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles be unavailable for an extended period.

Rogozin’s bellicose manner has I think made those negotiations difficult. Putin might have decided, especially with the break up of its space partnership with Europe, to tone things down. Moreover, he might have realized that Rogozin’s contentious manner might be better put trying to take control of occupied Ukrainian territory.

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Falcon 9 launches cargo Dragon to ISS

5:56 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch a Dragon freighter to ISS, with docking expected on July 16 at 11:20 am (Eastern).

The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its fifth flight. The cargo Dragon is flying its third flight to the station.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

30 SpaceX
22 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 43 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 43 to 38.

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Webb infrared image of Jupiter & Europa

3:36 pm

Jupiter and Europa as seen by Webb
Click for full image.

During the commissioning phase after deployment, the James Webb Space Telescope took images of Jupiter and several asteroids in order test the telescope’s instruments. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows both Jupiter and its moon Europa to the left.

Fans of Jupiter will recognize some familiar features of our solar system’s enormous planet in these images seen through Webb’s infrared gaze. A view from the NIRCam instrument’s short-wavelength filter shows distinct bands that encircle the planet as well as the Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow the Earth. The iconic spot appears white in this image because of the way Webb’s infrared image was processed.

…Clearly visible at left is Europa, a moon with a probable ocean below its thick icy crust, and the target of NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper mission. What’s more, Europa’s shadow can be seen to the left of the Great Red Spot. Other visible moons in these images include Thebe and Metis.

The false color differences indicated differences in heat but it is not explained whether brighter is colder or warmer in this photo.. As one of my readers below correctly notes, Europa’s shadow tells us that darker is cooler. This one image shows that the Red Spot and Jupiter’s equatorial regions and poles are generally warm.

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Comet K2: big and doing unexpected things

9:19 am

Link here. The article provides a nice overview of the observations so far of this very distant but very large comet making its suspected first close approach to the Sun this week, though still beyond the orbit of Mars and barely visible to amateurs.

K2 was first sighted in May 2017 at a much farther distance from the Sun than most comet discoveries. It had developed a coma much earlier than expected, which scientists now think came from from carbon monoxide.

“Carbon monoxide has been detected in other comets closer to the sun, although in much lower quantities than water. Carbon monoxide is very volatile and hard to freeze into a solid.” Jewitt and his colleagues theorized that as the comet slightly warmed while moving toward the planetary region of the solar system, the carbon monoxide ice near its surface turned into a gas that streamed into the vacuum of interplanetary space like constant wind. This wind stirred up dust particles from the comet’s surface, creating the round puffball-like coma.

But it took several failed attempts to measure the chemical composition of the comet to confirm the theory, Jewitt said. The team finally succeeded last year when the comet reached the orbit of Jupiter, and the scientists finally spotted carbon monoxide in the heart of the comet.

Comet K2 also did not develop a comet tail as expected. This appears to be because the particles in its coma are much larger than expected, something that at present is a complete puzzle.

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No more Ingenuity flights until August

9:08 am

Because it is now winter on Mars, with lots of seasonal dust in the atmosphere, the engineering team operating the helicopter Ingenuity have decided to suspend further flights until August.

Dust levels are expected to subside later in July, so the team has decided to give the helicopter’s batteries a break for a few weeks and build their daily state of charge back up. Weather permitting, Ingenuity is expected to be back in the air around the start of August.

This decision is not a surprise. When the team announced in May the plans for the helicopter’s most recent flight, completed in June, they suggested flights would pause for awhile thereafter. They have now made it official.

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Icy scarps in the high southern latitudes of Mars

1:25 pm

Icy scallops in the high southern latitudes of Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “Patching Mantling Unit,” located at about 57 degrees south latitude in a region where scientists have found good evidence of near surface ice. The top layer, or mantle, is likely patchy because it has a high content of water ice and is sublimating away. That almost all the cliffs are south-facing, which in the southern hemisphere gets the least direct sunlight, supports this supposition. For example, in the crater at the bottom of the image the ice would have disappeared first from the north-facing interior rim slopes, with the sublimation slowly working its way northward. Thus we have that butte extending out from the north rim.

The global map below not only indicates the location of these scallops with the green dot, it illustrates the overall icy nature of most of the Mars.
» Read more

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Ariane-6 mock-up installed at launchpad for tests

9:28 am

The European Space Agency yesterday announced that it has installed an Ariane-6 full scale mock-up at its launchpad in French Guiana in preparation for tank and launch procedure tests.

The Ariane 6 combined tests model is highly representative of the flight model. It consists of the core stage and the upper stage, which make up the central core, as well as three pylons shaped like the rocket’s solid boosters and a fully representative but inert mockup of the fourth booster.

The Ariane 6 combined tests model central core was precisely mated in the purpose-built launcher assembly building, where this task is carried out horizontally. Automated guidance vehicles then brought the assembled core to the launch and, working with the crane at the mobile gantry, raised it to its vertical position.

The date of the actual first launch has not been announced, though ESA has officially admitted that it will not occur this year as hoped.

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Roscosmos forbids its astronauts from using Europe’s robot arm

9:19 am

In response to the final decision this week by the European Space Agency to officially end its cooperation with Russia on its ExoMars mission, Roscosmos today forbid its astronauts from using Europe’s new robot arm that was recently installed on the Russian Nauka module of ISS.

Russia’s crew onboard the International Space Station (ISS) will stop using the European ERA manipulator arm in response to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) refusal from cooperation on the ExoMars project, CEO of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday.

“In my turn, I instruct our ISS crew to stop using the European Robotic Arm (ERA). Let [ESA Director General Josef] Aschbacher along with his boss [EU foreign policy chief Josep] Borrell fly to space and do at least something useful in their entire lives,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

The arm was designed to work on the Russian part of ISS, so it appears this decision by Rogozin is an example of someone cutting off his nose to spite his face. It essentially reduces Russia’s capabilities on the station.

As for ExoMars, it is unclear what will happen to the lander that Russia built to put Europe’s Franklin rover on Mars. Roscosmos has said it might proceed with its own mission to Mars, using that lander, but it has not made the full commitment to do so.

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