Tag: spaceflight

SpaceX successfully launches another 22 Starlink satellites

9:27 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The company has another Starlink launch scheduled for later today, taking off from Cape Canaveral. UPDATE: Aborted at T-30 seconds for a technical issue, and rescheduled for October 30, 2023.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

77 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 89 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 89 to 77. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 77 to 77.

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Intuitive Machines delays launch of its Nova-C lunar lander two months

10:04 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

Intuitive Machines yesterday announced that it has decided to delay the launch of its Nova-C lunar lander from in November launch window to a new window beginning on January 12, 2023.

The company did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay. However, executives warned at a media event Oct. 3 that “pad congestion” at LC-39A could delay their launch. The mission has to launch from that pad, rather than nearby Space Launch Complex 40, because only LC-39A is equipped to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants on the pad shortly before liftoff.

That pad is used for Falcon 9 crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station as well as Falcon Heavy launches. The pad is scheduled to host the Falcon 9 launch of the CRS-29 cargo mission Nov. 5 followed by a Falcon Heavy mission for the Space Force in late November. Converting the pad between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches can take up to three weeks.

The landing site is indicated by the green dot on the map of the south pole to the right. Note that this landing will be the closest to the south pole yet, though not at the south pole. It will also be the first to land next to a crater that has a permanently shadowed interior, though Nova-C will not be able to enter it because it carries no rover and is only designed to last through the first lunar day.

Based on the present launch schedule, Astrobotic now gets the first chance to successfully land a privately built lunar lander. It is scheduled to launch on December 24, 2023 on a Vulcan rocket. The Japanese company Ispace attempted and failed to land its Hakuto-R1 spacecraft in April.

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A new global map of the near-surface ice on Mars

1:51 pm

Global map of near-surface ice on Mars
Click for interactive map.

A project begun in 2019 to use all the presently available orbital data to compile a global map of the near-surface ice on Mars has now been released that global map, shown by the graphic above, taken from Figure 16.7 from the project’s science paper.

The various areas in blue show the evidence of ice down to about 5 meters, or about 15 feet, with darker blue areas indicated ice at greater depth. The study focused on latitudes below 60 degrees latitude, while also blocking out areas above one kilometer in elevation (as indicated in black on the map above). As the paper noted,
» Read more

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Is a recently discovered near Earth asteroid a piece from the Moon?

10:38 am

The uncertainty of science: Researchers now think they have enough information to claim that a recently discovered near Earth asteroid, dubbed Kamo`oalewa, could actually be a piece of the Moon, flung from it during a asteroid impact in the past few million years.

The 2021 study found that Kamo`oalewa’s spectrum was unlike that of other near-Earth asteroids but matched most closely that of the moon. Based on this, the team hypothesized that the asteroid could have been ejected from the lunar surface as a result of a meteoroidal impact.

In the new study, Malhotra and her team wanted to determine the feasibility for a knocked-off piece of the moon to get into this quasi-satellite orbit – a phenomenon that is quite unlikely, Malhotra said. Moon fragments that have enough kinetic energy to escape the Earth-moon system also have too much energy to land in the Earth-like orbits of quasi-satellites, she said.

With numerical simulations that accurately account for the gravitational forces of all the solar system’s planets, Malhotra’s group found that some lucky lunar fragments could actually find their way to such orbits. Kamo`oalewa could be one of those fragments created during an impact on the moon in the past few million years, according to the study.

The scientists add that the asteroid’s solar orbit, which keeps its flying in relative formation with the Earth for millions of years, strengthens this hypothesis.

It must be noted that this remains an unconfirmed hypothesis. A spacecraft would have to visit Kamo’oalewa and obtain samples to study to confirm it.

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UK awards German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg $4.3 million for first launch

10:32 am

The United Kingdom has given a $4.3 development grant to the German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) to pay for launch preparations at the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The real news from this article however is the continuing delays for anyone to launch from Great Britain. Previously the two Scottish spaceports, one in Shetland and the other in Sutherland, had anticipated the first launches in 2023, from the three companies RFA, Orbex, and ABL. Now it appears that those launches could be delayed into the middle of 2024.

RFA currently expects to launch its three-stage, 30-meter-tall RFA One rocket at some point during the three months to the end of June, recently delayed from the end of this year.

…ABL had planned to conduct its SaxaVord Spaceport launch in 2023, but has yet to announce a date for its next launch attempt anywhere after its inaugural mission from Alaska failed to reach orbit Jan. 10.

ABL is gearing up for its second launch attempt, hopefully before the end of this year, but it will do it from the Kodiak spaceport in Alaska.

One can’t help wondering if these delays are connected the red tape from UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which delayed issuing a launch licence to Virgin Orbit so long it literally helped bankrupt the company. For example, Orbex applied for its launch license from Sutherland in January 2022, and 22 months later it apparently has still not gotten an approval from the CAA.

This grant from the UK government might be that government’s effort to keep RFA — faced with CAA delays — from switching its launch site out of Great Britain.

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No launch of Starship/Superheavy until February?

10:15 am

Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q
Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q,
during April test launch

In an email statement released on October 19, 2023 by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and reported by Bloomberg news today, FWS decided to initiate a ” a formal review of the upgrades SpaceX has made to its Starship launch system”, beginning on October 5.

Most of the Bloomberg article is behind a paywall, but the second paragraph is really the key quote:

The FWS now has as long as 135 days to create an updated biological opinion about how Starship and its launches impact the local environment, however the agency does not “expect to take the full amount of time,” a representative said in the statement.

If FWS does take the full time period, no launch can occur before February. Nor should anyone naively believe its statement that it does not expect to take the full amount of time. For example, SpaceX completed installation of its upgraded Starship/Superheavy launch system, including the water deluge equipment at its base, in early August. Why did Fish and Wildlife wait till now, almost three months later, to begin its review?
» Read more

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Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket launches military satellite

9:40 am

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a classified military surveillance satellite, lifting off from its Plesetsk spacesport in northern Russia.

A graphic at the link shows the rocket’s flight path crossed over almost all of Russia as it flew east, with its lower stages and fairings crashing on land. Though the drop zones were inside Russia, there are very isolated regions in the high Arctic latitudes, with few inhabited areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 88 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 88 to 77. SpaceX by itself now trails with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 76 to 77.

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The icy terrain near one of Starship’s prime candidate landing spots on Mars

1:35 pm

The icy terrain near Starship's prime landing spot on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on August 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The camera team labeled the picture a “terrain sample,” which generally means it was not taken as part of any scientist’s specific research request, but to fill a gap in the schedule so as to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. When the team needs to do this, they try to pick a location in the gap that might have some interesting features. Sometimes such pictures show relatively boring features. Sometimes the results are fascinating.

In this case the location chosen was in the northern lowland plains of Mars, in a region called Amazonis Planitia. At 38 degrees north latitude it is not surprising that the photo shows ice features. All the depressions here appear to have an eroding glacier, while the surrounding plateau resembles an untouched snow field in the very early spring, the snow beginning to sublimate away to leave the top rough and stuccoed. Note too that these depressions are likely not impact craters (they have no upraised rims and many are distorted in shape), but were likely formed by that same sublimation process.
» Read more

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New data better maps the supernova remnant SN1006

10:50 am

SN1006, as seen in X-rays
Click for original image.

Using data from both the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), scientists have now better mapped the magnetic field and the remnant from the supernova that occurred in 1006 AD.

The false color image to the right shows this data. From the caption:

The red, green, and blue elements reflect low, medium, and high energy X-rays, respectively, as detected by Chandra. The IXPE data, which measure the polarization of the X-ray light, is show in purple in the upper left corner, with the addition of lines representing the outward movement of the remnant’s magnetic field.

From the press release:

Researchers say the results demonstrate a connection between the magnetic fields and the remnant’s high-energy particle outflow. The magnetic fields in SN 1006’s shell are somewhat disorganized, per IXPE’s findings, yet still have a preferred orientation. As the shock wave from the original explosion passes through the surrounding gas, the magnetic fields become aligned with the shock wave’s motion. Charged particles are trapped by the magnetic fields around the original point of the blast, where they quickly receive bursts of acceleration. Those speeding high-energy particles, in turn, transfer energy to keep the magnetic fields strong and turbulent.

At present scientists really do not understand the behavior of stellar-sized magnetic fields. It is very complex, involving three dimensional movements that are hard to measure, as well as electromagnetic processes that are not well understood. While this new data doesn’t provide an explanation, it does tell us better what is actually happening. The theories will follow.

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Australia and the U.S. agree to facilitate rocket launches in Australia

10:37 am

A technology agreement announced on October 25, 2023 between Australia and the U.S. included language that will allow for American rocket companies to launch from Australia, as well as Australian rocket companies to launch American satellites.

According to the White House statement, the agreement…

…provides the legal and technical framework for U.S. commercial space launch vehicles to launch from Australia in a manner that: protects sensitive U.S. launch technology and data in Australia consistent with our shared nonproliferation goals; and creates the potential for new space-related commercial opportunities.

A private Australian spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), has been working to bring U.S. launches there. In addition, an Australian rocket startup, Gilmour Space, wants to launch American payloads. This new government agreement is supposed to facilitate both.

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Rocket Lab expects to resume Electron launches before end of year

10:26 am

Following September 2023 launch failure of its Electron rocket, Rocket Lab now says it has obtained a launch approval from the FAA, and expects to resume Electron launches before end of year.

In the company’s October 25, 2023 press release, it stated the following:

The FAA, the federal licensing body for U.S. launch vehicles, has now confirmed that Rocket Lab’s launch license remains active, which is the first step to enable launches to resume. Rocket Lab is now finalizing a meticulous review into the anomaly’s root cause, a process that involves working through an extensive fault tree to exhaust all potential causes for the anomaly, as well as completing a comprehensive test campaign to recreate the issue on the ground. The FAA is providing oversight of Rocket Lab’s mishap investigation to ensure Rocket Lab complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements. In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was granted official observer status to the investigation. The full review is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, with Rocket Lab currently anticipating a return to flight later this quarter with corrective measures in place.

Though the FAA is apparently not trying to slow things down, this release gives us a hint at how the new so-called streamlined regulations established this year are actually making things harder. These regulations force the FAA to get more involved in making sure the company has done all due diligence, something the FAA really isn’t qualified to do. To meet these demands, companies now apparently have to jump through many new hoops to satisfy the new regulations.

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ABL preparing for second launch attempt of its RS1 rocket

10:09 am

ABL's redesigned rocket launch mount
ABL’s redesigned rocket launch mount

Since its first test launch of its RS1 rocket failed in January 2023, ABL has spent the last ten months doing major revisions of the rocket’s launch mount as well as preparing an upgraded new rocket for a second test launch attempt, expected in the coming months.

This information comes from a long update posted by the company’s CEO, Harry O’Hanley on October 25, 2023.

It appears failure occurred because of a fire at the base of the rocket after liftoff, which in turn was caused by the small size of the rocket’s launch mount.

By analyzing video and data, we formulated a leading theory behind the source of the fire. Our hypothesis centered around the Launch Mount, which is the GS0 assembly that raises and lowers the vehicle. It was designed to fit fully assembled inside a shipping container. While this made transport simple, it resulted in the rocket being held close to the ground.

We believe the compact Launch Mount and proximity of RS1 to the ground restricted the flow of engine exhaust gas. This caused plume recirculation and drove pressures and temperatures beneath the rocket to exceed the RS1 base heat shield design capability. The hot combustion gases breached the aft heat shield and initiated the engine compartment fire. We corroborated this theory with a variety of tests and analyses, including multi-species CFD performed both in-house and by an independent partner.

The graphic to the right, rearranged and annotated to post here, shows the new larger mount. Because of the time it has taken to make that launch mount upgrade, the company also decided to fly its next version of RS1 on this second test launch, rather than the backup rocket from the first launch. This upgraded RS1 has 20% more thrust with a detachable engine section that makes access to it much easier.

O’Hanley made no mention of a specific target launch date from the Kodiak spaceport in Alaska, but his post implies the launch is coming very soon.

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Russian astronauts locate coolant leak on spacewalk

9:29 am

Coolant leak on Nauka radiator

In an almost eight hour spacewalk yesterday, two Russian astronauts were able to locate the source of the coolant leak on a radiator unit connected to the new Nauka module on the Russian half of ISS.

The image to the right, a screen capture from the live stream, shows the leak location, where a small white droplet sits on one of the coolant lines that connect two radiator panels. You can also see darkening on the tubes to either side, likely also caused by the leaking ammonia. To locate it ground controllers opened valves to let coolant into the line while the astronauts watched for changes, and were able to see the coolant come out of this spot.

One astronaut also noted the following during the inspection:

[B]efore noticing the growing deposit of liquid coolant, Kononenko reported seeing a myriad of small holes on the surface of the radiator’s panels. “The holes have very even edges, like they’ve been drilled through,” Kononenko radioed to the flight controllers working in Moscow Mission Control. “There are lots of them. They are spread in a chaotic manner.”

In the past year similar coolant leaks have occurred on both a Progress freighter and a Soyuz manned capsule, with the leak location in almost the exact same spot, suggesting an intentional cause, not a random micrometeorite hit. This coolant leak in Nauka is on equipment that was launched to ISS in 2010. If it was also drilled, whoever did it did so a long time ago, which implies Russia has a long standing saboteur within its operations.

This conclusion however remains wild speculation. In the dozen-plus years since launch, this radiator has been stored on the outside of ISS, where it could easily have been hit by micrometeorites that would cause those holes and this leak.

The plan is to consider some repair operation on future spacewalks. In the 1980s the Russians did something similar, with astronauts doing six spacewalks to replace a section of fuel line that was leaking on its Salyut-7 station. They cut open its hull and installed a second section of line so that the valves could remove leaking section from operations.

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China launches new three-man crew to its Tiangong-3 space station

9:02 am

The new colonial movement: China today successfully used its Long March 2F rocket to place a Shenzhou manned capsule into orbit, carrying a new three-man crew to its Tiangong-3 space station and lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

Though relatively little specific information about the crew’s mission has been revealed, it is expected they will do a six month mission, as have previous crews, and conduct spacewalks and maintenance on the station. Meanwhile, the present crew on board will spend about a week transferring duties to the new crew, and then return to Earth after completing its own six-month mission.

No word on where the Long March 2F first stage and its four side boosters crashed in the interior of China, all of which use toxic hypergolic fuels.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
48 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 88 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 88 to 76. SpaceX by itself is now tied at 76 with the rest of the world (excluding American companies).

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Swirling galactic-sized streams surrounding a pair of supermassive black holes

1:25 pm

Swirling galactic arms surrounding two supermassive black holes

Time for another galactic cool image! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today by the Gemini South ground-based telescope in Chile. It shows the streams of gas and stars that swirl around a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of this galaxy, located only 90 million light years away.

The image reveals vast swirling bands of interstellar dust and gas resembling freshly-spun cotton candy as they wrap around the merging cores of the progenitor galaxies. From the aftermath has emerged a scattered mix of active starburst regions and sedentary dust lanes encircling the system.

What is most noteworthy about NGC 7727 is undoubtedly its twin galactic nuclei, each of which houses a supermassive black hole, as confirmed by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Astronomers now surmise the galaxy originated as a pair of spiral galaxies that became embroiled in a celestial dance about one billion years ago. Stars and nebulae spilled out and were pulled back together at the mercy of the black holes’ gravitational tug-of-war until the irregular tangled knots we see here were created.

The black holes themselves are 154 and 6.3 million solar masses respectively, and are presently about 1,600 light years apart. Scientists calculate that they will merge in about 250 million years. Each once formed the center of its own galaxy. Now both galaxies have merged, creating this three-dimensional whirlpool of arms.

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Perseverance looks ahead, beyond Jezero Crater

11:13 am

Perseverance looks ahead, beyond Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, enhanced and annotated to post here, was taken on October 21, 2023 by one of the navigation cameras on the Mars rover Perseverance. As shown on the overview map to the right, it looks to the west, at the gap in the rim of Jezero crater, dubbed Neretva Vallis, through which the delta in the crater had once poured.

The blue dot marks the location of Perseverance. The green dot marks the location of Ingenuity, which suggests it is visible within the panorama. I have indicated two features on the panorama that could be the helicopter, but the resolution of this navigation camera image is not good enough to determine with certainty if either is the helicopter or simply a rock.

Beyond the gap can be seen several small mountains, a hint at the generally rough terrain that sits to the west of Jezero that Perseverance will eventually enter and explore. This region is also an area where orbital images suggest a wide variety of minerals, making it a potentially valuable mining location for future Martian settlers.

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A dance of three galaxies

10:40 am

Three galaxies merging
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though it appears to show two galaxies interacting with each other, other spectroscopic data proves there are actually three large galaxies in the picture. From the caption:

The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different colour to the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed, but also considering direction) involved in the galaxy shows that this knot has a considerable additional redshift, meaning that it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733.

All three galaxies are quite close to each other, which means they are in the long process of merging together into one larger galaxy.

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SpaceX gets ESA contract to launch up to four of its Galileo GPS-type satellites

9:41 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) this week announced that it has awarded SpaceX a launch contract to put up to four of its Galileo GPS-type satellites into orbit. Though the deal is signed, approval must still be obtained by ESA’s members and executive commission.

This will be the first time SpaceX will launch any ESA satellites, and the first time in fifteen years that a Galileo satellite will launch outside of Arianespace operations. Previously the Russians had done a number of Galileo launches, using its Soyuz-2 rocket launching out of Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport, but that partnership ended with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

For the ESA the situation is even worse. It needs SpaceX to launch its satellites because at present it doesn’t have any of its own rockets to do it. The Ariane-5 is retired, and the new Ariane-6 (meant to replace it) is long delayed, and will not have its first test launch until next year, at the earliest. The Vega-C (too small for Galileo anyway) is also grounded due to design defects in the nozzle of its upper stage, while the Vega rocket it replaces has only one more launch before its own retirement.

Much like the Axiom-UK deal posted below, the American commercial space industry is once again making money from others, solely due to the capabilities developed in the past decade due to competition and freedom.

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Axiom signs deal with the United Kingdom to fly all British mission

9:30 am

The space agency of the United Kingdom today announced that it has signed a deal with Axiom to fly an manned mission in space, with four astronauts spending up to two weeks in space (likely in a SpaceX Dragon capsule).

The flight, estimated to cost around £200 million, is being organized in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), though all the astronauts will be British. The announced commander, Tim Peake, spent six months on ISS in 2015, and has come out of retirement to do the flight.

It is also unclear at this moment whether it will fly to ISS, or simply remain in orbit. In fact, few specific details have yet been released.

The bottom line however is that the new American space industry is going to make money from Britain’s desire to be a space power. Seems like a good deal to me.

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No Starship/Superheavy launch likely until January?

9:13 am

No Starship test launch until 2024
SpaceX is ready but the federal government says “No!”

We’re from the government and we’re here to help! In describing the effort of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to help SpaceX prod the federal bureaucracy into approving a new launch license for the company’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, space writer Mark Whittington included this significant but not previously mentioned tidbit that might help us predict when Fish & Wildlife (FWS) might finally give its okay for a launch:

The FWS has as long as 135 days to complete its review.

Let’s review the situation to understand what this tidbit means. At present it appears the FAA is ready to issue a launch licence, having closed its own investigation into the April Starship/Superheavy test flight on September 8, 2023.

At the time the FAA however was very clear: No launch license until Fish & Wildlife gave its environmental approval as well. Never before had this environmental agency had veto power over launches, but under the Biden administration it now has it.

Though Fish & Wildlife could have begun its own investigation in April, and met the 135-day deadline to give its approval for a launch the same time as the FAA, in September, it now appears that it did not start its clock ticking until after the FAA closed its work. If so, it appears Fish & Wildlife has until early January to complete its investigation.

Since FWS admitted in April, right after the failed test launch of Starship/Superheavy, that it caused no harm to wildlife, there appears no reason for this long delay.

The delay therefore can only be for two reasons, neither good. Either the people at Fish & Wildlife are utterly incompetent, and need eight months to write up the paperwork (even though in April they already knew that there was no reason to delay), or they are vindictive, power-hungry, and wish to exercise an animus against SpaceX in order to hurt the company.

Mostly likely we are seeing a combination of both: The bureaucrats at Fish & Wildlife are incompetent and hate SpaceX, and are using their newly gained power over issuing launch licenses to hurt it.

Either way, if Fish & Wildlife uses its entire 135-day window to issue its launch approval to SpaceX, no launch can occur this year. SpaceX will be stymied, and the development of this new heavy-lift reuseable rocket, possibly the most important new technology in rocketry ever, will be badly crushed. Not only will NASA’s Artemis program be damaged (it wants Starship as its manned lunar lander), SpaceX might face huge financial loses, as it needs Starship to launch and maintain its Starlink communications constellation.

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ULA sets Christmas Eve as launch date for first Vulcan rocket launch

8:35 am

In an interview for CNBC, ULA’s CEO revealed that the company has now scheduled the first orbital launch of its new Vulcan rocket for December 24, 2023, Christmas Eve, with a backup launch window in January.

The rocket will carry Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, targeting the western edge of the lunar mare dubbed Mare Imbrium. It will also carry human ashes to be buried in space, from the private company Celestis.

Vulcan was also originally supposed to carry Amazon’s first two test Kuiper satellites, but the delays in developing Vulcan forced ULA to use an Atlas-5 rocket instead, that launched on October 6th.

If the launch is successful, the company will try to quickly ramp up its launch pace to 24 times per year, in order to meet the contract for 47 launches it has with Amazon to launch Kuiper satellites, as well as its contract obligations to the Pentagon to launch military satellites.

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More Io images by Juno, enhanced by citizen scientists

1:27 pm

Io in natural and enhance colors
Click here for original of top image,
here for bottom.

Since Juno completed its 55th close swing past Jupiter on October 15, 2023, including the closest fly by of its volcano-covered moon Io since the 1990s, citizen scientists have been grabbing the spacecraft’s raw images of the moon and enhancing them to bring out the details.

Immediately after the fly-by I posted on October 17, 2023 the top image to the right, processed by Ted Stryk. This version attempted to capture the view of Juno is natural color. As I noted then, “The dark patches are lava flows, with the dimensions of mountains along the terminator line between night and day clearly distinguishable.”

The bottom picture to the right was first processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, who like Stryk attempted to capture Io’s natural colors. Thomas Thomopoulos then took Eichstädt’s image and enhanced the colors as well as reduced the brightness, in order to bring out the details as much as possible.

I have rotated, cropped, and reduced this bottom image further to post it here.

In comparing this image with earlier pictures of Io, taken by both Juno and Galileo in the 1990s, there is evidence that some of the lava flows visible now have changed significantly in the intevening time. This is not a surprise, as volcanic eruptions take place on Io so frequently that it has not unusual to capture one in the rare times close up images are possible, going back to the discovery of volcanic activity by Voyager-1 in 1979.

It will take a bit of time for scientists, both professional and amateur, to pick out the specific changes. That work will be further aided by Juno’s next fly-by on December 30, 2023, where it will dip to less than 1,000 miles of the surface.

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India releases on-board camera views during its Gaganyaan launch abort test

9:46 am

India’s space agency ISRO today released the on-board camera views taken during its Gaganyaan launch abort test on October 21, 2023.

The test was a complete success, and the footage shows each step clearly, from launch to stage separation to deployment of parachutes.

ISRO is still targeting 2024 for the first manned Gaganyaan mission, which will carry two to three astronauts into orbit for three to seven days. To meet that target however will require a lot of fast work, as the agency intends to fly three separate unmanned orbital missions of the Gaganyaan capsule prior to putting humans in it. More likely the manned mission will happen in 2025.

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Belarus joins China’s lunar base project

9:33 am

The former province of the Soviet Union Belarus has now signed an agreement to partner in China’s lunar base project, joining another former part of the U.S.S.R., Azerbaijan, as well as Russia, Pakistan, Venezuela, and South Africa.

Except for Russia, all the other partners in this project have little space capabilities, so don’t expect Belarus to contribute much. This deal is mainly for public relations purposes, to show that China has obtained some international partners.

In truth, the partnership more resembles the communist block run by the former Soviet Union — made up of failing communist states — except that communist China is now leads it.

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Lucy’s first asteroid fly-by coming on November 1st

9:25 am

Lucy's route through the solar system
Lucy’s route through the solar system

The asteroid probe Lucy is about to do its first asteroid fly-by on November 1, 2023, the first of a planned ten asteroids it will see close-up during its twelve year mission.

The half-mile-wide asteroid, Dinkinesh, is indicated on the graphic to the right by the white dot in the lower left of the main asteroid belt. It was a late addition to the spacecraft’s plan in order to provide a perfect testbed for doing a dress rehearsal of the many later fly-bys.

As this encounter is intended as a test of Lucy’s systems, scientific observations will be simpler than for the mission’s main targets. The spacecraft and the platform that holds the instruments will move into position two hours before the closest approach to Dinkinesh. Once in place, the spacecraft will begin collecting data with its high-resolution camera (L’LORRI) and its thermal-infrared camera (L’TES). One hour before closest approach, the spacecraft will begin tracking the asteroid with the terminal-tracking system. Only in the last eight minutes will Lucy be able to collect data with MVIC and LEISA, the color imager and infrared spectrometer that comprise the L’Ralph instrument. Lucy’s closest approach is expected to occur at 12:54 p.m. EDT, when the spacecraft will be within 270 miles (430 kilometers) of the asteroid. Lucy will perform continuous imaging and tracking of Dinkinesh for almost another hour. After that time, the spacecraft will reorient itself to resume communications with Earth but will continue to periodically image Dinkinesh with L’LORRI for the next four days.

After this close encounter the spacecraft will return to do a flyby of Earth in 2025 to slingshot it to the orbit of Jupiter, where it will do its main work exploring the Trojan asteroids there. On the way it will fly past a second main belt asteroid, dubbed Donaldjohanson.

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Varda signs deal with Australian private spaceport operator to land its capsules

9:13 am

Blocked from landing its American-built space capsules by the American government, the startup Varda has now completed negotiations and signed an agreement with Southern Launch, an Australian private spaceport operator, to land its capsules at the Koonibba Test Range northwest of Adelaide.

Varda’s business plan is to launch unmanned capsules in which pharmeceuticals and other products that can’t be made on Earth are manufactured, then return the capsule to earth where they are sold for a profit. This deal will allow Varda to land its next capsule there in 2024.

Meanwhile, Varda first capsule, presently in orbit after manufacturing pharmeceuticals for HIV, appears to be a total loss because the FAA and the Pentagon refused it permission to land in the U.S., for what appear to be purely bureaucratic reasons.

There was no single specific issue that held up the reentry, he said. “It was ultimately a coordination problem amongst three different groups that had not worked through this operation before.” He added that there were no safety concerns with Varda’s spacecraft or its ability to meet requirements for an FAA license. An additional challenge is that Varda is the first company to seek an FAA reentry license through a new set of regulations called Part 450. Those regulations are intended to streamline the process but, on the launch side, have been criticized by companies for being difficult.

The U.S. government is now the enemy of its citizens, so incompetent that it actually works to block them from achieving their goals.

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China launches classified satellite

8:59 am

China today successfully launched a classified reconnaissance satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the south of China.

No word on where the first stage, which uses toxic hypogolic fuel, crashed in the interior of China.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
47 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 88 to 47, and the entire world combined 88 to 75. SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 76 to 75.

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A low mid-latitude crater on Mars apparently filled to overflowing with ice

12:04 pm

ice filling a Martian crater to overflowing
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a steep 1,000-foot-high cliff with what appears to be extensive glacial material at its base.

The many layers all suggest past climate cycles, where snow was deposited and the glacier grew, followed by a period when no snow fell and the glacier either shrank or remained unchanged. The terraced nature of the layers near the base of the cliff suggest that with each active cycle less snow was deposited and the glacier grew less.

The latitude is 33 degrees south, which puts it just outside the dry equatorial regions of Mars and inside the mid-latitude region where many such glacial features are found. Its closeness to the tropics however is significant, because by this point we should be seeing a diminishment of such features. Instead, the wider view shows us that the near surface ice in this region is extensive and in fact appears to cover everything.
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Ingenuity completes 63rd flight on Mars

10:07 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On October 19, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 63rd flight on Mars, traveling 1,901 feet (its third longest flight) for 142.6 seconds.

On the overview map above the two dots and the green line mark the flight path, to the southwest and landing about 2,000 feet to the west of where the rover Perseverance presently sits (indicated by the blue dot).

Both the flight time and distance were slightly longer than the flight plan, likely caused by the helicopter making sure it had a safe landing spot before lowering itself to the ground.

Ingenuity is no longer simply an engineering test of whether flight is possible on Mars. It is now serving wholly as a scout for Perseverance, either moving ahead of its planned route (the red dotted line) in order to provide pictures of the ground so that the rover’s science team can better plan their future travels, or going into territory that the rover is not intended to travel in order to gather data that would previously been unavailable.

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Near collision of Australian satellite with Chinese military satellite

9:31 am

According to one Australian military official, a Chinese military satellite earlier this month came within a kilometer of a Australian satellite.

Analysis conducted after the event by the company LeoLabs shows both satellites were predicted to have an “miss” distance of just 100 metres 24 hours before the anticipated “conjunction”.

According to the data, the Yaogan 37 satellite manoeuvred 16 hours prior to the conjunction, increasing the miss distance to 978 metres at the closest approach.

The official’s presentation emphasized the increasing threat of collisions from the high number of satellites being launched, but this incident instead suggests to me that the problem is actually under some control by satellite operators. It continues the pattern seen repeatedly, whereby satellite operators detect a potential collision before it happens, and take preventive measures to avoid it.

The real problem has to do with defunct equipment in orbit that no one is in contact with or can control. Such objects pose are a bigger threat, because they cannot be maneuvered.

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