Tag: spaceflight

Update on Starship/Superheavy preparations at Boca Chica

9:41 am

Link here. After two separate but aborted dress rehearsal countdowns, the rocket has been destacked with Superheavy rolled back to the assembly building.

After two Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) aborts, SpaceX opted to destack Ship 28 before removing Booster 10 from the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM). The Booster has since rolled back to the Production Site, while Ship 28 conducted standalone testing on Pad B, opening with a Spin Prime test on Monday.

A March launch of Flight 3 for Starship is still possible, pending the completion of full stack testing and approval from the FAA.

While the aborts suggest some technical issues occurred that need addressing, the destacking and additional work could also be for other reasons. The FAA has still not issued a launch license, and is demanding certain actions before doing so. It could be that the company is being forced to make certain upgrades on these prototypes it would have rather left to the next test launch with more advanced prototypes.

Either way, it now appears that a March launch is possibly threatened.

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Astra’s founders slash their offer price to buy the company

9:31 am

The two founders of the startup Astra have now slashed their offer price from $1.50 to $0.50 per share to buy the company and take it private.

Kemp and London cited several reasons for cutting the share price. They included continued cash burn by the company since they tendered the original offer and higher “non-operating expenses” as the company used multiple third-party advisers to assess options. They also said the special committee, as well as customers and investors, sought a plan that ensured a sufficient cash balance to support company operations once the deal closed.

It appears that they are willing to let the company go into bankrupty rather than pay their original offer. The new offer of $0.50 per share however remains significantly below the present trading price of about $1.76.

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ULA begins stacking Atlas-5 rocket for launching the first manned mission of Starliner

9:26 am

ULA has begun to assemble the Atlas-5 rocket that will hopefully launch Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission to ISS, presently targeting a late April lift-off.

The rocket’s main stage was transferred from the nearby Advanced Spaceflight Operations Center to the integration facility Wednesday, Feb. 21, where it will await integration with the rocket’s upper Centaur stage and Starliner. The spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the orbiting laboratory for a short stay of about one to two weeks before returning to a landing site in the southwest United States.

The late April date appears to be a slight delay from previous announcements.

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Major layoff expected at Northrop Grumman’s facility at Redondo Beach, California

9:20 am

On February 26, 2024 Northrop Grumman issued a required notice to its employees at its facility at Redondo Beach, California, that a major layoff of about a thousand employees, about 14% of its workforce at this location, is upcoming.

No reason was given for the cuts, nor did the notice indicate what divisions at the facility would be most affected. However, the cancellation only two weeks ago of a $733 million satellite contract with the Space Force — due to scheduling issues and budget overages — is likely a factor. In addition, the cost overruns in building the habitable module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station probably also contributed.

The company has also had problems with its Antares rocket, which relied on Russian engines and a Ukrainian-built first stage. It is presently grounded while Firefly designs and constructs a new American-built first stage. Northrop has had to also spend extra money to buy launch services from SpaceX to get its Cygnus cargo capsule to ISS.

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Odysseus’ tip-over likely caused because it landed without good elevation data

9:08 am

It appears that the improvised switch to a NASA range finder instrument just before landing only partly worked during Odysseus’s landing attempt on the Moon, causing the spacecraft to hit the ground at too great a speed with too much laterial motion, resulting in the snapping of one leg and the lander tipping over.

Apparently, Odysseus could no longer process altitude data from the NASA instrument once it was within 15 kilometers of the surface. It had to rely on its optical cameras, a poor substitute.

By comparing imagery data frame by frame, the flight computer could determine how fast it was moving relative to the lunar surface. Knowing its initial velocity and altitude prior to initiating powered descent and using data from the inertial measurement unit (IMU) on board Odysseus, it could get a rough idea of altitude. But that only went so far. “So we’re coming down to our landing site with no altimeter,” Altemus said.

Unfortunately, as it neared the lunar surface, the lander believed it was about 100 meters higher relative to the Moon than it actually was. So instead of touching down with a vertical velocity of just 1 meter per second and no lateral movement, Odysseus was coming down three times faster and with a lateral speed of 2 meters per second.

Though the spacecraft landed upright, the high speed and sideways motion caused one leg to snap, and the spacecraft then fell over. In this sideways position Odysseus’ main solar panel could not get enough sunlight, forcing the mission to end prematurely.

A final press conference summing up the mission is scheduled for 2 pm (Eastern) today.

Was the mission a success? The failures and problems during touchdown illustrated engineering and management issues that must be addressed before the next flight. At the same time, the mission’s number one goal was to soft land on the Moon, and it did do so, even with those serious engineering problems.

More important, this flight’s first and foremost goal was an engineering test of that technology. In this sense that mission succeeded brilliantly, revealing those last technical issues.

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A recent volcanic eruption on Mars?

1:17 pm

A recent volcanic eruption on Mars?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labels the two darkened patches in the picture “plume-like features,” suggesting that the dark material was eruptive material thrown out from the depressions in a volcanic venting, that then settled on the nearby surrounding terrain.

Is that a correct interpretation? It is certainly strengthened by a different feature located about 550 miles to the northwest that looks almost the same. There, researchers theorize that the dark material surrounding a surface fissure was caused by a small volcanic event that occurred somewhere between 50,000 to 210,000 years ago. For that other location, scientists concluded as follows:

After careful comparison of this symmetrical dark feature with other dark wind-caused streaks in this region, the scientists concluded that it was not caused by wind, but is the remains of a relatively recent volcanic eruption that laid down a thin layer of material only about one foot thick.

» Read more

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FAA announces it has rubber-stamped SpaceX’s investigation of the November Starship/Superheavy test launch

9:56 am

The FAA yesterday announced that it has completed its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the November Starship/Superheavy test launch and has approved the company’s conclusions.

The Federal Aviation Administration has concluded its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the second Starship launch in November, with the regulator saying Monday that it accepted the “root causes and 17 corrective actions” identified by the company.

While this means the investigation is now closed, SpaceX must implement all the corrective actions and apply for a modified launch license before it can fly Starship again. “The FAA is evaluating SpaceX’s license modification request and expects SpaceX to submit additional required information before a final determination can be made,” the regulator said in a statement Monday.

You can read a SpaceX update of its investigation here. As previously reported, when Starship vented the extra oxygen carried to better simulate a payload it caused “a combustion event” and fires that cut off communications.

This resulted in a commanded shut down of all six engines prior to completion of the ascent burn, followed by the Autonomous Flight Safety System detecting a mission rule violation and activating the flight termination system, leading to vehicle breakup. The flight test’s conclusion came when the spacecraft was as at an altitude of ~150 km and a velocity of ~24,000 km/h, becoming the first Starship to reach outer space.

Despite SpaceX’s report, which states the company “has implemented hardware changes” to prevent a reoccurance, the FAA has still not yet issued a launch license. Based on these updates and Elon Musk’s own prediction, it appears a license will be forthcoming in the next two weeks, matching my December prediction of a March launch. Expect SpaceX to quickly launch, as it has “more Starships ready to fly,” and it wants to fly them fast in order to refine the engineering so as to move to operational flights.

It is also possible that the FAA will continue to slow-walk its approvals, and SpaceX might be left hanging for more than two weeks. Had the government not been involved, all signs suggested that SpaceX would have done its third test flight in January, and would have now been gearing up for its fourth flight. That was the kind of pace SpaceX set when it was doing its first Starship test flights during the Trump administration. The government under Joe Biden’s presidency however is not allowing that kind of launch pace.

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India names four astronauts, three of whom will fly on its first manned mission

9:38 am

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India today revealed the four astronauts training for its first manned mission, dubbed Gaganyaan and targeting a launch next year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced the names of four pilots who are undergoing training for the country’s maiden human space flight mission ‘Gaganyaan’. The pilots are – Group Captain P Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander S Shukla.

Though all four are training for the mission, only three will fly. The mission itself will orbit the Earth for three days. More information about each man can be found here. All have already received astronaut training in Russia.

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First image from Odysseus on the lunar surface

9:31 am

Odysseus' view on the Moon
Click for original image.

Engineers have managed to finally download several images from Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander, lying on its side on the Moon several hundred miles from the south pole. Five pictures were taken as the lander approached the ground. A sixth, to the right and cropped and reduced to post here, was taken after landing using a fish-eye lens. You can see two of the lander’s legs, and I think the bright spot on the horizon is the Sun.

Odysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site. The camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase.

Unfortunately, the lander’s fallen position appears to be limiting the amount of sunlight its solar panels are receiving, and thus engineers expect to shut the spacecraft down sometime today in anticipation of the lunar night. It is very doubtful Odysseus will survive that night and resume operations during the next lunar day.

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Ingenuity broke off one blade entirely

9:17 am

Ingenuity with missing blade
Click for original image.

Images using a camera on Perseverance originally designed to look closely at rocks nearby but was found capable of doing distant photography (by engineers running the rover Curiosity), Perseverance has obtained the first good close-up picture of Ingenuity since its last flight, and found that one half of one propeller blade apparently broke off during or at the end of its last flight.

That image is to the right, cropped and sharpened to post here. It was taken on February 25, 2024 by Perseverance’s Supercam camera. A second Supercam image spotted the broken blade about fifty feet away, on the sand.

Why the blade broke off remains unknown. You can see from the tracks on the ground that Ingenuity jumped downhill and sideways after landing, but if the blade had hit the ground while spinning that jump would probably have been more violent. The pictures instead suggest it broke off not from contact with something else but because it broke on its own.

The Ingenuity engineers will of course do some very careful analysis of both pictures, and possibly determine better what happened.

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Have modern space engineers forgotten the importance of keeping things simple?

5:11 pm

SLIM on its side
The Japanese lander SLIM, on its side.
Click for original image.

In the past four years a number of different companies and nations have attempted eight times to soft land an unmanned lander on the Moon. Sadly, the track record of this new wave of lunar exploration, the first since the 1960s space race, has not been good, and might possibly suggest some basic fundamental design errors, based not so much on engineering but on our modern culture and management. To review:

  • April 11, 2019: Beresheet, built by an Israeli non-profit, failed just before touchdown when a command from the Earth caused its engines to shut down prematurely.
  • November 21, 2019: India’s government-built Vikram lander failed just before touchdown when it began to tumble and ground controllers could not regain control.
  • April 25, 2023: Hakuto-R1, built by the commercial Japanese company Ispace, failed just before touchdown when its attitude sensors mistakenly thought it had reached the surface when it was still three miles high and shut down the engines, causing it to crash.
  • August 20, 2023: Luna-25, built by Russia, crashed on the lunar surface when its engines fired for longer than planned when it began its descent, due to quality control errors during construction.
  • August 23, 2023: India’s succeeded on its second landing attempt, its Vikram lander touching down several hundred miles from the Moon’s south pole and successfully releasing its Pragyan rover. Both operated for about two weeks, until the onset of the harsh lunar night.
  • January 8, 2024: Peregrine, built by the private company Astrobotic, experienced a major fuel leak shortly after launch, making a landing attempt on the Moon impossible. It managed to operate in space for several days, reaching the distance of lunar orbit before coming back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere.
  • January 25, 2024: SLIM, built by Japan’s space agency JAXA, successfully touched down, though it landed on its side because the nozzle on one of its engines fell off during descent, causing an unbalanced thrust. The spacecraft still functioned, and has now even survived one lunar night, something no one expected.
  • February 23, 2024: Odysseus, built by the private company Intuitive Machines, touched down somewhat softly on the Moon near the south pole, but upon landing then fell over on its side, blocking some antennas so that full communications has so far not been possible (though the spacecraft is functionable and in touch with Earth). This issue has meant that no significant data or images from the lander have so far been transmitted to Earth.

Of these eight attempts, only one mission has been entirely successful, India’s second. Of the seven others, five crashed or failed before even reaching the Moon, while two managed to soft land but with significant problems.
» Read more

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NASA high altitude science balloon sets new endurance record

9:57 am

GUSTO's flight path
Click for continuous tracking of GUSTO’s flight path

NASA’s GUSTO high altitude science balloon has now set a new endurance record for the most days of flight of a NASA balloon, flying more than 57 days over the continent of Antarctica at the south pole.

The map to the right shows GUSTO’s entire journey. The blue line was its first phrase of travel, the green its second phase, and the red its present stage.

GUSTO was launched at 1:30 a.m. EST Dec. 31 from the Long Duration Balloon Camp near McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The balloon mission not only broke the flight record but continues its path circumnavigating the South Pole. The stadium-sized zero-pressure scientific balloon and observatory are currently reaching altitudes above 125,000 feet. “The health of the balloon and the stratospheric winds are both contributing to the success of the mission so far,” said Hamilton. “The balloon and balloon systems have been performing beautifully, and we’re seeing no degradation in the performance of the balloon. The winds in the stratosphere have been very favorable and have provided stable conditions for extended flight.”

The previous NASA record was a balloon that it flew in 2012. GUSTO itself is being used to map the Milky Way’s carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen that is found between the stars in gas clouds.

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China to attempt 100 launches in 2024

9:47 am

China’s state-run press today announced that the country will attempt 100 launches in 2024, a number that includes launches from official government space agencies as well as a number of pseudo-companies that are supervised closely by that government.

This prediction now gives us a reasonably complete list of predictions from all the major players in the international launch market. Adding them all together, that market is predicting it will complete 366 launches in 2024, a number that would be 58% higher than the record set last year of 213 successful launches in a single year.

Will it happen? Not likely. Every one of those players routinely overstates its goals from year to year. For example, Russia’s numbers are always vastly high, with this year predicting 40 launches, a number that country hasn’t achieved in almost three decades.

At the same time, both China and SpaceX, the biggest players in this market, have been very good in recent years of predicting their output, only slightly missing their stated goals.

Based on these facts, it remains distinctly possible that the world’s global rocket industry will complete more than 300 successful launches in 2024, a number that is more three times higher than the average number of launches per year from the dawn of the space age in 1957 through 2021.

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SLIM survives lunar night!

9:33 am

SLIM's view after surviving lunar night
Click for original image.

Japan’s space agency JAXA yesterday announced in a tweet that its SLIM lunar lander had survived the harsh lunar night, and that engineers had resumed communications.

The picture to the right was taken after communications were resumed. It shows SLIM’s view of 885-foot-wide Shioli Crater, the opposite rim the bright ridge in the upper right about a thousand feet away. From this news report:

The mission team received telemetry from SLIM around 5:00 a.m. Eastern (1000 UTC). The temperature of the communication equipment was extremely high, according to JAXA, due to the sun being high over the landing area. Communication was terminated after only a short period of time, JAXA stated.

The SLIM team is however now preparing to conduct observations with SLIM’s multiband spectroscopic camera (MBC) later in the lunar day. MBC is designed to ascertain the composition of the lunar surface and could provide insights into the moon’s history. Sunset over Shioli crater, on the rim of which SLIM landed, will occur Feb. 29.

Surviving the long lunar night is a major achievement. It means Japan’s technology here is capable of doing long missions on the Moon.

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LRO locates and photographs Odysseus on lunar surface

9:21 am

Overview map
Click for original LRO image of Odysseus

Scientists using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) this weekend located and photographed Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus Nova-C lunar lander at a height of 56 miles during its first orbit over the site.

The inset in the map to the right shows the lander, with the white dot marking its landing site, several miles to the south of the planned landing site, as indicated by the yellow dot.

Odysseus came to rest at 80.13 degrees south latitude, 1.44 degrees east longitude, 8,461 feet (2,579 meters) elevation, within a degraded one-kilometer diameter crater where the local terrain is sloped at 12 degrees.

That slope could by itself explain why the lander tipped over and ended up on its side. First, it landed faster than planned. Second, Intuitive Machines designed this Nova-C lander with a relatively tall configuration, which gives it a high center of gravity. Hitting the ground fast and on such a slope could easily have been enough for momentum to tilt it over after touchdown.

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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites

10:13 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

18 SpaceX
9 China
2 Iran
2 India
2 Rocket Lab
2 Japan
2 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 21 to 17 in successful launches, while SpaceX by itself now leads the the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 18 to 17.

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Odysseus is on its side, some antennas blocked

11:30 pm

It appears the reason communications with Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander has been so difficult since its landing yesterdary is that something caused it to fall over so that it is now lying on its side, blocking some of its antennas.

Intuitive Machines initially believed its six-footed lander, Odysseus, was upright after Thursday’s touchdown. But CEO Steve Altemus said Friday the craft “caught a foot in the surface,” falling onto its side and, quite possibly, leaning against a rock. He said it was coming in too fast and may have snapped a leg. “So far, we have quite a bit of operational capability even though we’re tipped over,” he told reporters.

But some antennas were pointed toward the surface, limiting flight controllers’ ability to get data down, Altemus said. The antennas were stationed high on the 14-foot (4.3-meter) lander to facilitate communications at the hilly, cratered and shadowed south polar region.

Its exact location also appears to be several miles from its intended landing site next to the crater Malapart A. Scientists who operate Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) hope orbital images this weekend will identify the spacecraft’s precise location.

The company also revealed that the reason its own laser guidance system would not function — requiring a quick software patch allowing the spacecraft to use a different NASA system — was because “a switch was not flipped before flight.”

Because of this switch in navigation equipment it was decided to cancel the release of the student-built camera probe dubbed Eaglecam that was supposed to be released when Odysseus was about 100 feet above the surface and take images of the landing. Instead, it is now hoped it can be released post landing and get far enough away to look back and capture photos of the lander.

All these problems however do not make this mission a failure. Like Japan’s SLIM lander, the primary goal of this mission was to demonstrate the technology for softlanding an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon. Intuitive Machines has succeeded in this goal. Though obviously some changes must be made to improve this engineering, the success with Odysseus strongly suggests the next mission later this year will do far better.

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Mars’ flaky rocks

12:14 pm

Mars' flaky rocks
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 21, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It once again shows us a very typical many layered rock that the rover has seen routinely in Gale Crater and in the foothills of Mount Sharp.

The long flake tells us many things. First, Mars’ one-third Earth gravity, thin atmosphere, and lack of life allows such flakes to survive. On Earth not only would wind and rain break such delicate forms, plant life would eat away at it as well.

Second, the many thin layers tell us again that Mars’ geological history comprises many cycles and geological events, each of which placed another layer down. The many layers here could actually be evidence of year-by-year events, much like tree-rings detail the drought conditions yearly on Earth.

It will take study on Mars however to find out. These image only tantalize. They cannot give answers.

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Vast to compete with Axiom for NASA’s limited slots for commercial manned missions to ISS

9:40 am

The private space station company Vast, the only one presently building its own space station without a NASA contract, has now announced that it intends to to compete with Axiom for the limited docking slots NASA has made available for commercial manned tourist missions to ISS.

During a panel discussion at the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 21, Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, said his company would bid on the fifth and sixth private astronaut missions, or PAMs, that NASA offers to companies seeking to flying commercial missions to the ISS. “From our point of view, it will make us a better space station builder, a better partner of NASA, and it will help us practice a lot of the disciplines we are building” for its future commercial stations, he said of Vast’s plan to bid on the missions.

Up until now, Axiom has had no competition for those limited docking opportunities, has flown two missions, with a third planned for this fall. All it needed to do is negotiate the rental fees with NASA for using ISS. Now NASA will need to open up bidding for those slots. Its job is not to play favorites, but to instead make its taxpayer-funded facilities available to as many private companies as possible. Whether it will do so is at present unclear.

Vast’s own space station, a single module to be launched on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, dubbed Haven-1, is scheduled for launch next year according to Vast officials. If so (assuming SpaceX’s rocket is operational by then), Vast will be the first private space station in orbit, beating Axiom and the two consortiums building Orbital Reef and Starlab. And it will have done it without taxpayer money.

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Webb: Infrared data sees neutron star remaining after 1987 supernova, the nearest in more than 4 centuries

9:29 am

Webb's infrared view of Supernova 1987a
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have obtained infrared data that confirms the existence of a neutron star at the location of Supernova 1987a, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the nearest such supernova in more than four centuries and the only one visible to the naked eye since the invention of the telescope.

Indirect evidence for the presence of a neutron star at the center of the remnant has been found in the past few years, and observations of much older supernova remnants — such as the Crab Nebula — confirm that neutron stars are found in many supernova remnants. However, no direct evidence of a neutron star in the aftermath of SN 1987A (or any other such recent supernova explosion) had been observed, until now.

…Spectral analysis of the [Webb] results showed a strong signal due to ionized argon from the center of the ejected material that surrounds the original site of SN 1987A. Subsequent observations using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) IFU at shorter wavelengths found even more heavily ionized chemical elements, particularly five times ionized argon (meaning argon atoms that have lost five of their 18 electrons). Such ions require highly energetic photons to form, and those photons have to come from somewhere.

That “somewhere” has to be a neutron star, based on present theories. The image above shows three different Webb views of Supernova 1987a, with the one on the lower right suggesting the existence of a point source at the center of the supernova remnant. In the left image the circular ring of bright spots is an older ring of dust and material that has been lit up by the crash of the explosive material (as indicated in blue at the center) flung out from the star when it went supernova and collapsed into a neutron star. That wave of explosive material took several decades to reach the ring and enflame it.

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SpaceX and China complete launches

9:11 am

Both SpaceX and China today successfully completed launches.

First, SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage flew its 19th mission, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific, and tying the record for the most flights for a Falcon 9 booster.

Then, China launched a classified military satellite using its biggest rocket, the Long March 5, lifting off from its coastal spaceport in Wenchang. It remains unclear if China now has the ability to restart the engines on that rocket’s core stage, which reaches orbit, is large enough to survive re-entry, and has previously crashed uncontrolled, with one return barely missing the New York metropolitan area. If not, then this core stage carries a threat, as will the four or so other launches of the Long March 5 that China plans later this year.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

17 SpaceX
9 China
2 Iran
2 India
2 Rocket Lab
2 Japan
2 Russia

American private enterprise presently leads the entire world combined 20 to 17 in successful launches, while SpaceX by itself is tied 17-17 with the rest of the world (excluding other American companies).

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Odysseus appears to have landed successfully

4:57 pm

The privately built Odysseus lunar lander appears to have landed successfully near the south pole of the Moon, though ground controllers have not yet gotten full confirmation that all systems are functioning.

As stated by the mission director, after noting that they were getting a faint signal from the lander’s high gain antenna:

All stations, this is mission director on IM-1. We are evaluating how we can refine that signal and dial in the pointing for our dishes. What we can confirm without a doubt is that our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting. So congratulations IM team. We’ll see how much more we can get from that.

Shortly thereafter the company and NASA ended the live stream.

At this time they do not yet know exactly where the lander touched down, or whether it did so without damage. The signal from the high gain antenna suggests the communications system is intact as well as the antenna, but the lack of further confirmation suggests damage to other instruments, though it is also possible that the signal is not yet firm enough to obtain data from other instruments.

More updates to follow, without doubt.

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Frozen lava rapids on Mars

11:38 am

Frozen lava rapids on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a spot on Mars where lava was squeezed between and around some small peaks as it flowed quickly south, flooding all the low areas in this landscape.

The science team describes the features in the full image as “streamlined”, a description that is literally accurate. As this “stream” of lava rushed past, it “lined” the higher terrain, carving it into tear-dropped shapes.

In the color strip, note the blueish spots at the northern base of the 400-foot-high hill. According to the science team’s explanation [pdf] of the colors in MRO images, “Frost and ice are also relatively blue, but bright, and often concentrated at the poles or on pole-facing slopes.” The picture was taken in summer, so if these bright spots are frost or ice, it suggests they are well shaded from sunlight in those north-facing alcoves. This location is only 9 degrees north of the equator, so finding any near surface ice here is highly unlikely. That frost might exist however is intriguing, to say the least.
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Ariane-6 arrives in French Guiana

9:33 am

Europe’s new rocket, Ariane-6, has arrived by specially-designed ship at the dock in French Guiana and is ready for off loading in advance of its presently scheduled inaugural launch this summer.

On this trip, Canopée brings the central core for Ariane 6’s first flight. Having collected the upper stage from Bremen, Germany, Canopée moved on to Le Havre, France, to load the main stage of Ariane 6. … Canopée’s structure is tailored to carry large, fragile loads as well as navigate the shallow Kourou river to Pariacabo harbour. From here the various Ariane 6 components are offloaded and transported by road to the new Ariane 6 launch vehicle assembly building just a few kilometres away.

Built for Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency (ESA). the rocket’s launch is four years behind schedule. It is also not reuseable, which has limited its marketability and explains why ESA as well as its member nations have shifted to encouraging new private rocket companies with competing and cheaper rockets. It has decided it is a mistake to rely solely on a government-owned rocket company.

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Varda’s space capsule lands successfully in Utah

9:21 am

Varda's space capsule, on the ground in Utah

Varda yesterday successfully returned its orbiting space capsule back to Earth after a six month delay caused by government red tape.

Varda Space Industries’ in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS. It marks a successful conclusion of Varda’s first experimental mission to grow pharmaceuticals on orbit, as well as the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever.

The capsule will now be sent back to Varda’s facilities in Los Angeles for analysis, and the vials of ritonavir will be shipped to a research company called Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization, Varda said in a statement. The company will also be sharing all the data collected through the mission with the Air Force and NASA, per existing agreements with those agencies.

The image to the right, released by Varda, shows the capsule on the ground after landing. With this success the company’s capsule is now available for commercial use, with three more launches already purchased through Rocket Lab. There is a very viable market for example for certain drugs that cannot be manufactured well on Earth, but in weightlessness can be produced very purely.

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Live stream of landing of Odysseus on Moon

8:59 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

UPDATE: The engineering team has decided to delay the landing attempt by one lunar orbit, pushing it back to 6:24 pm (Eastern). The live stream begins well before then, so that NASA can get in a lot of blather and propaganda, so feel safe waiting to tune in until 6 pm (Eastern).
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Capitalism in space: I have embedded below the NASA live stream for the presently scheduled 5:30 pm (Eastern) landing on the Moon of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander dubbed Odysseus.

The green dot on the map to the right marks the planned landing site, about 190 miles from the Moon’s south pole. This will be the closest attempted landing so far to that pole, and if successful it will land on the rim of a crater, Malapart A, that is believed to have a permanently shadowed interior.

Odysseus however has no instruments capable of seeing into that interior. Its main mission is engineering, to test the landing technology of Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft. As part of this effort, it will release a small camera probe, dubbed EagleCam, when it is about 100 feet above the surface, which will to take images of that landing. [Update: That probe is unprecedented for another reason: It will be first student-built probe to land on another world, as it was designed and built by a team of students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.]

If the landing is successful, Odysseus is designed to last until sunset on the Moon, about another two weeks. It carries a variety of NASA and commercial payloads, including a private small optical telescope. More important, it will allow the company to follow through with its manifest of future missions, including a second lunar landing later this year.
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Complete New Glenn test prototype now vertical on launchpad

7:47 pm

New Glenn test vehicle on launchpad

For the first time, after more than a decade of development, a complete two-stage New Glenn test vehicle is now vertical on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral, ready for launchpad tests in preparation for what Blue Origin hopes will be a first launch later this year.

The journey to the pad began in December when New Glenn’s first-stage modules were transported from our factory to the Integration Facility nine miles away. The tests will conclude in the coming weeks following several demonstrations of cryogenic fluid loading, pressure control, and the vehicle’s venting systems. Our launch pad and ground systems are complete and will be activated for the first time during the test campaign.

If successful, New Glenn would be somewhat competitive with Falcon Heavy, and would give the U.S. a third company, after ULA, capable of competing directly with SpaceX. This of course assumes Blue Origin doesn’t buy ULA, which has been rumored.

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Curiosity’s view of Gale Crater from its new heights on Mount Sharp

10:18 am

Low resolution version of panorama
Click for full resolution version of panorama. For the original images, go here, here, and here.

Overview map

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three pictures taken on Februay 13, 2024 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity (available here, here, and here). It looks to the north, across Gale Crater and its nearest rim, about twenty miles away. The red dotted line indicates the approximate route Curiosity took to get to this point. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right show the approximate area covered by the panorama.

The images were part of the routine mosaics created by both the left and right navigation cameras for helping engineers plot the rover’s future travels. The pictures that look back at the far rim however also provide important atmospheric data. In this case, the haze tells the scientists how much dust is in the atmosphere. It is presently winter in Gale Crater, which also corresponds to the dust storm season. Thus, the view is very hazy.

Curiosity will likely remain at this location for several more weeks, as the science team is about to begin another drilling campaign. Note the large dark area on the cliff face on the right that is also level with the terrace where Curiosity presently sits. The scientists want to get core data of this layer, and they think they are at a good spot to do so.

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Tomorrow’s landing of Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lunar lander

9:26 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites
Nova-C is Odysseus’s landing spot

NASA has now announced its planned live stream coverage of tomorrow’s landing attempt of Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lunar lander near the south pole of the Moon.

Intuitive Machines is targeting no earlier than 5:49 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 22, to land their Odysseus lunar lander near Malapert A in the South Pole region of the Moon.

Live landing coverage will air on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. NASA TV can be streamed on a variety of platforms, including social media. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates beginning 4:15 p.m., as the landing milestones occur. Upon successful landing, Intuitive Machines and NASA will host a news conference to discuss the mission and science opportunities that lie ahead as the company begins lunar surface operations.

No live stream is of course active yet. When it goes live tomorrow afternoon I will embed the youtube broadcast here on Behind the Black.

If successful, Odysseus will be the first American landing on the Moon since the manned Apollo missions more than a half century ago. It will also mark the first successful lunar landing achieved by a privately-built spacecraft. Companies from Israel, Japan, and the U.S. have already tried and failed.

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Space Perspective unveils test balloon capsule for unmanned test flights

9:13 am

Space Perspective's Neptune Capsule

The high altitude balloon company Space Perspective yesterday unveiled the test balloon capsule, dubbed Excelsior, which it plans to use for a program of ten flights beginning this year, prior to beginning manned flights on its Neptune manned capsule, shown in the graphic to the right.

Neptune is designed to take eight passengers to altitudes of twenty miles for several hours, not quite space but high enough to see the curvature of the Earth. The company had said in 2022 it would begin commercial flights by the end of 2024, but it now says it is targeting 2025.

Florida-based Space Perspective is one of two American companies attempting to fly high altitude balloon flights for tourists, with Tucson-based World View the other. There is presently no word when World View will begin its first manned flights.

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