India successfully completed its first launch in 2022 yesterday, using its mid-sized PSLV rocket to launch an Indian radar satellite plus two cubesats.
The 2022 launch race:
6 SpaceX
2 China
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
1 Russia
1 India
Astronomers have now concluded that the rocket stage that will impact the Moon on March 4th is not an abandoned the Falcon 9 upper stage that launched the DISCOVR satellite in 2015, but an upper stage from a Chinese rocket.
It was an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jon Giorgini, who realized this object was not in fact the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. He wrote to Gray on Saturday morning explaining that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory did not go particularly close to the Moon, and that it would therefore be a little strange if the second stage strayed close enough to strike it. This prompted Gray to dig back into his data, and identify other potential candidates.
He soon found one—the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket. This lunar mission sent a small spacecraft to the Moon as a precursor test for an eventual lunar sample return mission. The launch time and lunar trajectory are almost an exact match for the orbit of the object that will hit the Moon in March.
Regardless, it will be very useful to pindown the exact impact time and place so that astronomers can observe it.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today released several new images taken by its Al-Amal Mars orbiter, showing the changing atmospheric conditions on Mars between September ’21 and January ’22.
The photo to the right, cropped and annotated by me, is the January image, showing the dust storm conditions that presently exist in the equatorial regions of Mars. The lighter puffy cloud-like features in the center of the image are a 1,500 mile wide dust storm centered on the equator. The white dot indicates the approximate spot where Perseverance sits in Jezero Crater, within that storm.
The previous Al-Amal image from September (available at the link) shows the whole Martian hemisphere with generally clear skies.
Below is a recent photo taken by Perseverance illustrating these dusty conditions.
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The European Space Agency (ESA), ArianeGroup, and Arianespace today announced the payloads that will fly on the first launch of its new Ariane-6 rocket.
The payloads are a variety of cubesats and science experiments, none heavier than 175 pounds with a total payload weight less than one ton. These secondary payloads will either be deployed from or kept attached to a dummy mass that will simulate a large primary satellite payload.
The press release makes no mention of a launch date, as has been the pattern in the last few Ariane-6 press releases. The last release to mention a launch date was in October 2020, which then predicted a launch in the second quarter of ’22. That this date is no longer being mentioned suggests the date has been pushed back, though for how long remains a mystery.
It ain’t pretty, nor is it in optical wavelengths, but the first alignment image from the James Webb Space Telescope has been released by NASA.
That image, reduced slightly to post here, is to the right. It shows 18 different near-infrared images of the same star, each image taken by a different segment of Webb’s primary mirror. At the moment the mirrors are not perfectly aligned, so that each segment’s star image shows up at a slightly different place. The goal now will be to adjust those mirror segments so that future images will show only one star, all focused to the same spot.
This alignment process is expected to take about a month.
The image is significant however because it shows that each segment is producing a relatively sharp image, even though the telescope has not yet cooled to its operating temperature. It thus appears that, unlike Hubble, Webb’s mirror segments were ground correctly, and it will be able to take sharp images right off the bat.
Capitalism in space: A state judge has blocked Camden County in Georgia from purchasing any land for its proposed spaceport until after the county’s citizens vote on approving or rejecting the spaceport project on March 8, 2022.
Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett’s injunction delivered a new victory for the residents and environmentalists who’ve remained critical of the county’s ambitious plans to launch rockets off Georgia’s coast toward sensitive barrier islands.
This week, a probate court judge ordered a March 8 election after a petition circulated by opponents received enough signatures for a referendum asking if the county should repeal its land-acquisition agreement with Union Carbide Corp. for the former industrial site where an environmental covenant restricts use of the land.
Essentially, the project will live or die depending on how county residents vote.
Raptor-1 on the left, Raptor-2 on the right
The headline quote above encapsulates the main philosophical point of Elon Musk’s presentation tonight in Boca Chica, Texas. Musk’s presentation was focused mostly at outlining the status of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy reusable heavy-lift rocket, but he started his talk stating his philosophical reasons for doing what he is doing.
It is his strong belief that in order to guarantee the survival of all life on Earth, we must colonize as many planets as possible. Musk’s quote above indicated his sense that this effort must be done now. As he had noted,
The window of opportunity [to build human settlements on other worlds] may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it may also be open for a short time. And this is the first point in the four and half billion history of Earth that it is possible.
He added, “To be frank, civilization is feeling a little fragile these days,” which makes achieving his goal quickly even more urgent.
After making this point, Musk then proceeded to outline what they’ve accomplished so far in building Starship/Superheavy, and what they hope to do in the coming years. Much of what Musk said was largely known, such as the size and power of Starship and its design. He did underline these important details:
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Tonight at 8 pm (central) Elon Musk is going to give a presentation updating the world on the status of SpaceX’s Starship project, with the fully stacked Starship/Superheavy as his backdrop. The photo to the right is a screen capture showing that stacking.
I have embedded the live stream below. Or you can watch it on SpaceX’s website or on its youtube channel.
The biggest question is the regulatory situation for Boca Chica. Will Musk report progress in getting operations approved there by the federal government, or will he outline how the federal government is acting as a barrier to progress? Or will he sidestep the issue (for diplomatic reasons) and focus his talk entirely on technical issues?
We can only wait and see.
Capitalism in space: Astra’s first attempt to launch from Cape Canaveral and put commercial cubesats in orbit failed today when the upper stage started to tumble immediately after the first stage had separated.
Embedded below is video showing that tumbling. The full replay of the launch live stream can be viewed here.
The silver lining of this failure is that the first stage and all launch operations appeared to function perfectly, right up until after stage separation. Nonetheless, it is a failure, and the company will need to try again and succeed if it wants to survive in the aggressive new launch market.
» Read more
Capitalism in space: Arianespace today used a Soyuz-2 rocket to successfully complete its first launch in 2022, placing 34 OneWeb satellites into orbit.
The 2022 launch race:
6 SpaceX
2 China
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
1 Russia
1 Europe (Arianespace)
For more information about today’s OneWeb launch, go here.
Capitalism in space: In a February 8th letter to the FCC, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA expressed their concerns about the collision possibilities of SpaceX’s full 30,000 satellite Starlink constellation with other spacecraft.
The letter raised several issues about the proposed constellation, primarily because it would increase the number of tracked objects in low Earth orbit by more than a factor of five. “An increase of this magnitude into these confined altitude bands inherently brings additional risk of debris-generating collision events based on the number of objects alone,” the agency stated. “NASA anticipates current and planned science missions, as well as human space flight operations will see an increase in conjunctions.”
The letter did not oppose the constellation, but simply outlined issues that the agencies thought SpaceX needed to address before the constellation’s full deployment. It also noted that these concerns apply to other planned large satellite constellations.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX for the first time used the giant arms on the launch tower at its Boca Chica orbital launchpad to stack Starship on top of Superheavy, with the fully stacked giant rocket to act as a backdrop to Elon Musk’s update on the project scheduled for airing tonight at 8 pm (Central).
You can see a time lapse of the several hour process here.
The use of a launch tower to stack a rocket is apparently a first, and provides solid evidence that SpaceX’s plan to catch Superheavy with that tower and put it on the ground has a chance of success.
SpaceX has not yet announced how Musk’s presentation will be aired, but when this information is available I will embed it on Behind the Black.
