Tag: spaceflight

The future of astronomy, as seen by PBS News in 1991

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Today is the 75th anniversary of the moment astonomers took the lens cap off the Hale Telescope at Palomar, what astronomers call “first light.” In honor of this anniversary, tonight’s evening pause is a somewhat well-done news piece produced by PBS in 1991, describing the state of ground-based astronomy at that time, which was actually another key moment in the history of astronomy. After decades of no advancement following the Hale telescope, the field was about to burst out with a whole new set of telescopes exceeding it significantly, based on new technologies. We today have become accustomed to those new telescopes, but in 1991 they were still incomplete or on the drawing board.

This was also after the launch of Hubble but before it was fixed, so this moment was also a somewhat dark time for astronomy in general. Watching this news piece gives you a sense of history, as seen by those living at that time. It also lets you see some good examples of the standard tropes of reporters as well as some astronomers. They always say this new telescope (whatever and whenever it is) is going to allow us to discover the entire history of the universe, even though it never can, and never will.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs SLIM on the Moon

1:16 pm

LRO images showing before and after SLIM's landing
Click for blink animation.

Scientists using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) were able on January 24, 2024 to obtain a photograph of the SLIM landing site on the Moon, and produce a before and after blink animation showing the lander on the ground.

The two pictures to the right, before and after, were taken from that animation. The bright speck in the after image is SLIM, sitting upside down on the surface. The faint streak of light material going from right to left lower in the photo comes from the fresh ejecta material thrown out from the nearby 1,425-foot-wide Shioli Crater to the west.

This picture confirms once again that SLIM achieved its main goal, landing precisely within a tiny landing zone only 300 feet across.

The landing occurred in the morning on the Moon, so the Sun was in the east. Because SLIM got flipped upside down just before touchdown, its one solar panel ended up facing west, where no sunlight could touch it. Based on the shadows in this picture, east is to the left, and west to the right. The solar panel is sitting in the shadow on SLIM’s right side.

In about a week the Sun will begin setting to the west, illuminating that panel. Engineers in Japan hope that at that time the panel will begin to recharge the spacecraft’s batteries, and it will then begin to operate again, if only a short while before the Sun sets and the very cold and hostile lunar night begins. There is little expectation of SLIM surviving that long two-week lunar night, even if it gets its batteries fully charged.

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Ingenuity’s final resting site on Mars

1:00 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity's damaged propeller
Click for orignal image.

The photo to the right was downloaded from Ingenuity today, and looks downward at the ground below the helicopter, showing the shadow of one of its propellers, with the damage at its tip indicated by the arrow.

It is this damage that forced NASA management to retire the helicopter yesterday. With the tip of one of Ingenuity’s two propellers damaged, the helicopter simply can no longer fly reliably, or at all.

The green dot on the map above shows Ingenuity’s final resting spot. The blue dot shows Perseverance’s present position. Perseverance will surely at some point approach Ingenuity closely to get better pictures of the damage to help engineers better figure out what happened and why. For example, did the propellor simply break during flight? And if so, why?

I freely admit that my optimistic speculations last week were wrong, that Ingenuity was merely having communications issues with Perseverance. I also suspect the Ingenuity engineers were hoping the same thing, and were far more disappointed than I to discover otherwise.

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NASA’s useless safety panel once again sticks its nose where it isn’t qualified to go

11:13 am

For the third year in a row, the annual report of NASA’s generally useless and often corrupt safety panel, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), is once again focused not on technical safety issues related specifically to engineering — the reason the panel was first formed in 1968 following the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed three asteronauts — but NASA’s general management and long term strategies and plans, something that is entirely the responsibility of Congress and elected officials.

As the press release notes right at the top, “The report highlights 2023 activities and observations on NASA’s Strategic Vision and Guiding Principles, Agency Governance, and Moon to Mars Program Management.” On none of these issues does this panel have any expertise, or even qualifications. Most of its membership are former government bureaucrats, with only one panel member coming mostly from the private sector.

More important, while the panel is supposed to be review NASA’s engineering to make sure it is not getting sloppy, its panelists are all management types, not engineers.

To give the panel some credit, its report [pdf] does actually note the many risks NASA is taking on its various Artemis manned lunar flights, including more than a dozen engineering designs which will be flown for the first time on the first Artemis manned mission to land on the Moon. However, while this should be the panel’s number one concern, it buries it inside the report, and simply recommends that NASA redistribute these firsts across multiple missions. How NASA should do this is not addressed.

Last year I simply noted ASAP’s annual report in a quick links post, adding that “It has been so wrong so many times in the past, clearly biased against private space while favoring NASA, its analysis is simply worthless.” That conclusion still applies.

The sooner Congress stops wasting any money on this panel, the better. It provides no real service except to slow down development. And it is now putting itself above Congress in its effort to influence strategic and programming.

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Lucy’s upcoming travels leading to its exploration of the Trojan asteroids

10:16 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Click for original image.

The Lucy engineering team today issued an update, outlining the spacecraft’s upcoming fly-bys in 2024 that will carry it to its next asteroid rendezvouses, first with an asteroid in the main belt, and then with four Trojan asteroids orbiting in Jupiter’s orbit but 60 degress ahead.

The map to the right shows this route. The solid red/white line indicates Lucy’s travels in 2024.

In late January, Lucy will begin the series of two deep space maneuvers. On January 31, the spacecraft will briefly operate its main engines for the first time in space. After analyzing the spacecraft’s performance during that brief burn, the team will command the spacecraft to carry out a larger maneuver, nominally on February 3. Combined, these two maneuvers are designed to change the velocity of the spacecraft by around 2,000 mph (approximately 900 meters per second) and will consume roughly half of the spacecraft’s onboard fuel.

That first brief burn will not only test the engines, it will also tell engineers whether one of Lucy’s solar panels — still not fully deployed and latched properly — will not be disturbed by it. If not, they will proceed with the second burn.

After this it will zip past the Earth, which will slingshot it out to Jupiter orbit, passing one main belt asteroid along the way.

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Northrop Grumman writes off $100 million on its fixed-price Lunar Gateway contract

10:00 am

Northrop Grumman announced on January 25, 2024 that it has written off another $42 million on its fixed-price contract with NASA to build the main habitable module for its Lunar Gateway space station, bringing the total losses so far to $100 million.

The company blamed the latest charge primarily on “cost growth stemming from evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges.” The company offered the same explanation when it reported the charge in the second quarter.

Northrop received a $935 million fixed-price contract from NASA in July 2021 to build the module, which is based on the company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft. HALO will provide initial living accommodations on the Gateway and includes several docking ports for visiting Orion spacecraft and lunar landers as well as additional modules provided by international partners. It will launch together with the Maxar-built Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) on a Falcon Heavy.

In a fixed price contract NASA is not suppose to issue change orders. What must be happening is that either the company or NASA are recognizing there are some issues with the initial and then revised designs, forcing Northrop Grumman to issue its own change orders, delaying development and adding costs.

That the company is having problems however is a bit baffling. First, space station module design is not new. There is a history going back decades on how to do this. Second, Northrop is basing this module design on its already launched Cygnus freighters. Though unmanned, these freighters still have to be habitable after docking with ISS. It should not be so difficult to upgrade them.

Regardless, the company has now become hostile to bidding on any future fixed price contracts, or if it does, it will bid much higher (a decision that caused it to lose in another recent bidding contest). Hopefully this decision on fixed price contracts, similar to Boeing’s own decision, will not cause NASA to abandon such contracts. Just because these big, old-space companies can’t work efficiently doesn’t mean others can’t. Fixed-price is how every business in the real world must function. For most NASA projects such a deal is realistic. If these old companies can’t function practically let new companies bid instead. This will be better for NASA and the entire American space industry.

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Lockheed Martin & Boeing get Space Force satellite development contracts

9:43 am

The Space Force has awarded Lockheed Martin and Boeing $66 million contracts each to design their own version of a new communications satellite for the military.

Over the next 15 months, the companies will create prototype satellites showing how they would meet the Space Force’s requirements for the MUOS satellites. DoD announced the contract awards Jan. 25.

The Space Force is expected to select one of the companies in 2025 to manufacture two flight-ready narrowband satellites to modernize the existing constellation of five MUOS satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Narrowband communications use relatively small amounts of data, but are critical for military operations.

A third unnamed company also bid but was not selected. The choice of Boeing for this competition is surprising, considering its numerous management and engineering problems across a wide range of products, from airplanes to space capsules. NASA itself has been so dissatisfied with Boeing’s work that in 2020 it decided at that time “to eliminate Boeing from future award consideration.” That decision appears to still stand. As far as I can remember Boeing not won any NASA contracts since.

Moreover, Lockheed Martin built the current MUOS satellites in orbit, while Boeing does not have a big reputation in recent years building satellites.

All told, it will therefore be extremely surprising if Boeing wins this competition. I suspect the Space Force issued this contract to help keep Boeing a viable company and to give it an opportunity to get its act together. Rewarding incompetence however is rarely successful.

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Ingenuity’s mission on Mars is over

3:55 pm

Ingenuity takes off!
Ingenuity takes off on its first flight, April 19, 2021.
For full images go here and here.

NASA today announced that Ingenuity’s mission on Mars has now ended due to damage sustained to one of its propellers during its 72nd flight.

While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight.

Ingenuity’s engineering mission was designed initially to simply prove that air-powered flight in Mars’ thin atmosphere was possible by a test program of four flights over 30 days. It worked so well that it just kept going and going. During its almost three years of operation on Mars, the helicopter completed 72 flights, for a total air time of about 128 minuntes. It flew a total of about eleven miles, reaching a maximum speed of over 22 miles per hour and a top altitude of about 79 feet. On its 69th flight it traveled a record 2,315 feet, almost a half mile.

All future Mars missions have been changed forever by the success of Ingenuity and its designers and engineers. For example, there are already hints of a helicopter mission to Mars’ giant canyon Valles Marineris. In addition, NASA redesigned its Mars Sample Return Mission to include helicopters based on what it learned from Ingenuity.

More important, Ingenuity suggests that when settlers finally colonize the red planet, it is very possible that air travel will start out more important than ground transport. In fact, long distance roads might never be built, for any number of reasons, because air travel will be available from the beginning.

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African lawfare to take control of space

12:57 pm

Modern academia: Marching with Lenin!
Modern African academia, proudly marching with Lenin!

It appears that a growing cadre of African lawyers are working within international organizations such as the UN and the International Astronautical Union (IAU) to use the Outer Space Treaty as a wedge to take control of space, wresting it from the hands of private commerical companies.

I make this assessment based upon a long article about this new lawfare published today in Wired, describing the training and political goals of a number of young African layers in the field of international space law.

[S]ome players in the global south are gearing up for the orbital future not just by scrambling to launch satellites, but by building up skills in outer space law—the evolving area of international jurisprudence that introduced the “province of all mankind” concept in the first place.

Though the Outer Space Treaty is still the cornerstone of space law, other international agreements have built up around it over the years—and more still are desperately needed to regulate today’s realities in space. “This is an area of rulemaking where they’re just setting up the rules for the future, so you need to have a perspective now,” explains Timiebi Aganaba, a British-Canadian-Nigerian professor at Arizona State University who has been instrumental in driving African interest in space law. “If the system gets built without you—if you come in later—people will start quoting laws to you.”

In 2011, Aganaba helped organize the first teams of African law students to enter something called the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. The global tournament, named after an architect of the Outer Space Treaty, uses fictional court cases to train young lawyers how to think through the plausible conflicts that could soon arise beyond the atmosphere—and it is far and away the most important professional conduit into the field of space law. Students who make it to the final round of the competition argue their cases before actual judges from the International Court of Justice—the world’s highest forum for legal disputes between countries. And since 2011, teams from Africa have become a force in the competition. In 2018, South Africa’s University of Pretoria won the international championship.

If Aganaba’s name rings a bell to my readers, it is no surprise. » Read more

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The shaky ground near the Moon’s south pole

10:54 am

Map of lunar south pole showing areas of instability
Click for original map.

According to a paper just published that reviewed and reanalyzed the seismic data gathered by the seismometers placed on the Moon by the various Apollo landings, scientists have determined that the south pole region where NASA wants its first manned Artemis lunar landing to take place happens also to be one of the Moon’s most active moonquake regions. From the paper’s conclusion:

We suggest that the lobate thrust fault scarps in the south polar region in and around the areas of the proposed Artemis III landing regions, particularly the de Gerlache Rim sites and Nobile Rim 1 regions, are potential sources for future seismic activity that could produce strong regional seismic shaking. If slip events on these young faults occur in the south polar region and elsewhere on the Moon, regolith landslides and potential boulder falls can be expected at distances of tens of kilometers from the source faults. Small amounts of water ice in the lunar regolith are expected to significantly increase the cohesion, stabilizing steep slopes against shallow landslides from seismic shaking. Based on our analysis of an N9-level event in the south polar region, we conclude that such an event poses a potential hazard to future robotic and human exploration in the region.

The map to the right is figure 10 from the paper, showing the south pole centered on Shackleton Crater. The colored dots mark areas of potential instability should a quake occur, with the blue boxes indicating all the NASA’s candidate landing sites for the manned Artemis 3 mission. Note the concentration of dots on the interior rim of Shackleton.

The planned landing site of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander, scheduled for launch in mere weeks, is beyond the top of this map, to the north.

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Starliner launch in mid-April continues on target

10:35 am

In an update today from NASA, it appears the first manned flight of Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule remains on target for a mid-April launch on a ULA Atlas-5 rocket.

Engineers continue to analyze the data from the recent parachute drop test that appeared to prove out the redesign of the capsule’s parachutes. Also, the work to replace or mitigate the flammable tape in the capsule has been completed.

Boeing completed removal of P213 tape that may have posed a flammability risk in certain environmental conditions. Boeing removed more than 17 pounds, or roughly 4,300 feet, of the material from the Starliner crew module. For areas in which removal of the tape carried an increased risk to Starliner hardware, Boeing applied tested remediation techniques such as overwrapping the P213 tape with another non-flammable, chafe-resistant tape, and installing fire breaks on wire harnesses.

No explanation as yet has been released as to how it was even possible for Boeing to have used this tape, considering it has been common practice since the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 to avoid the use of flammable materials in spacecraft. Nor has any explanation been issued on how the weak link in the main parachute connection to the capsule was not discovered until only weeks before the manned flight, last summer.

Nonetheless, both issues appear solved. After years of delays and innumerable problems, Boeing might finally be ready to fly Starliner with passengers. It desperately needs this flight to be successful, especially considering the company’s other ongoing problems with its 737 airplane. It also will not receive the rest of its contract payments from NASA until this flight is a success, and the delays and problems have cost the company more than $1.5 billion. The contract was fixed price, so Boeing has had to pay for all the additional costs from its own pocket.

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Combined effort by amateurs and JPL predicts small asteroid destruction over Germany

10:15 am

After amateur astronomers had identified a small three-foot-diameter asteroid heading for an impact of the Earth only three hours hence, an automatic system developed at JPL took the data and quickly predicted accurately the location and timing of the asteroid’s destruction in the atmosphere over Germany.

The asteroid 2024 BX1 was first observed less than three hours before its impact by Krisztián Sárneczky at Piszkéstető Mountain Station of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest, Hungary. These early observations were reported to the Minor Planet Center – the internationally recognized clearinghouse for the position measurements of small solar system bodies – and automatically posted on the center’s Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page so that other astronomers could make additional observations.

Scout, which was developed and is operated by the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, automatically fetched the new data from that page, deducing the object’s possible trajectory and chances of impacting Earth. …With three observations posted to the confirmation page over 27 minutes, Scout initially identified that an impact was possible and that additional observations were urgently needed. As astronomers across Europe reported new data to the Minor Planet Center, the asteroid’s trajectory became better known and the probability of its impacting Earth significantly increased.

Seventy minutes after 2024 BX1 was first spotted, Scout reported a 100% probability of Earth impact and began to narrow down the location and time. As tracking continued and more data became available over the next hour, Scout improved estimates of the time and location. Since the asteroid disintegrated over a relatively populated part of the world, many photos and videos of the fireball were posted online minutes after the event.

The asteroid burned up over Germany on January 21, 2024, with warning notices sent out by the Scout system ninety minutes beforehand. This is only the eighth time since 2008 that an asteroid has been discovered and tracked precisely to its crash site mere hours before impact. This technology increases the chances not only of immediately recovering larger asteroids after they hit the ground, it reduces the threat of harm to Earth inhabitants. If a larger more dangerous asteroid was discovered in the same manner, there is now some ability to warn people.

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Surprise! Activist objections force delay in land swap at Boca Chica

10:02 am

Due to objections by activist organizations opposed to SpaceX’s entire operation at Boca Chica, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has delayed the vote on the land swap with SpaceX where the company hands over 447 acres nearby and gets 47 acres of state parkland adjacent to the company’s Starship launch site.

Parks and wildlife commissioners were set to vote on the plan Thursday morning but the item was withdrawn from the agenda after they were hit with criticism from concerned residents, county officials and environmental groups including the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter and SaveRGV. Many called on the state to table the proposal to allow more time for public disclosure and discussion.

Parks and Wildlife received 1,039 comments opposing the the proposal and 263 in support.

Both Save RGV and the Sierra Club have participated in lawsuits against SpaceX and the FAA, attempting to shut down all commercial space operations at Boca Chica. Officials from local Cameron County also had objections to the swap, apparently because it had plans to buy the land SpaceX was giving to the federal government as a wildlife refuge.

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Space Force issues contract to assess New Glenn rocket for military launches

9:49 am

The Space Force has awarded Blue Origin an $18 million contract to assess that company’s new New Glenn rocket in order to certify it eventually for military launches.

The Space Force awarded Blue Origin nearly $18 million for “National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 early integration studies to assess launch vehicle trajectory and mission design, coupled launch loads, and integrated thermal environments to inform compatibility between launch vehicles and space vehicles for missions planned in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.”

The NSSL Phase 3 procurement is divided into two lanes: Lane 1 caters to lower-risk missions to lower orbits, while Lane 2 focuses on demanding missions to higher orbits, requiring certified launch vehicles and full mission assurance. The latter is where Blue Origin, with its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, could aim to challenge incumbents SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

Bids for NSSL Phase 3 were submitted in December. Launch services contracts are expected to be awarded later this year for missions to be flown starting in late 2025 through 2029 or beyond.

The Pentagon wants to certify a third launch company for these higher-mass, higher-orbit missions, and New Glenn is powerful enough to provide that service, once it begins operational. This study puts Blue Origin on a path to get that certification.

After years of delays at both ULA and Blue Origin that left almost the entire launch market in the hands of SpaceX, it now looks like SpaceX is finally going to get some competition.

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SLIM landed on the Moon softly, but upside down!

9:41 am

SLIM upside down
Click for original image.

We now know why SLIM’s solar panel was not facing the Sun after the Japanese lunar lander touched down. When it was only 10 to 15 feet above the ground, preparing to land, one of its two descent engines failed, causing the spacecraft to tumble as it softly touched down. As a result, it landed softly, but upside down, thus putting the panel on its west side instead of its east side as planned.

The image to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by one of the two tiny rovers released by SLIM just prior to landing. It shows SLIM upside down, but essentially undamaged.

The lander however still apparently achieved its primary goal, landing within a small zone only 300 feet across, or 100 meters.

Analysis of the data acquired before shutting down the power confirmed that SLIM had reached the Moon’s surface approximately 55m east (180 feet) of the original target landing site. The positional accuracy before the commencement of the obstacle avoidance maneuver (at around a 50m altitude) which indicates the pinpoint landing performance, was evaluated to be at approximately 10m or less, possibly about 3 – 4m.

…Under these circumstances, the SLIM onboard software autonomously identifies the anomaly, and while controlling the horizontal position as much as possible, SLIM continued the descent with the other engine and moved gradually towards the east. The descent velocity at the time of contact with the ground was approximately 1.4 m/s or less, which was below the design range., but conditions such as the lateral velocity and attitude were outside the design range, and this is thought to have resulted in a different attitude than planned.

In other words, when that engine failed, SLIM was only about 10 to 30 feet from its pinpoint landing target, but then drifted eastward as its dropped those last few feet because of the unbalanced engine burn caused by only one engine.

That the spacecraft is still operating and can communicate with Earth, even though it is upside down, is remarkable. Moreover, SLIM did achieve its main goals quite successfully. It landed within its tight target zone, it released two mini-rovers which operated successfully, and has been able to send its own pictures back to Earth. It was not able however to test its crushable landing legs, as they remain in the air.

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Saw-toothed razor rocks on Mars

11:31 am

Saw-toothed razor rock on Mars
Click for original image.

Looking at the base of Kukenan
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture above, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 22, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The photo gives us a fine example of the many very strange and delicate formations seen on Martian rocks and boulders as it slowly weaves its way up Mount Sharp, inside the slot canyon Gediz Vallis. On Earth such thin flakes like these are generally only seen inside caves, where there is almost no life to disturb their development and the natural conditions are as benign as well. On Mars, the only thing that can disturb this rock is the wind, and though over time it can erode things the thin atmosphere allows such flakes to form, aided by the gravity about 39% that of Earth’s.

The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken the same day by the rover’s left navigation camera, and illustrates the overall rocky nature of all of the terrain surrounding Curiosity. It looks to the southeast, at the base of nearby 400-foot-high Kukenan.

For a map showing Curiosity’s location (as well as another weird Martian rock, see my prevous post on January 17, 2024, A rock tadpole on Mars.

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Europe signs up four rocket startups to provide it launch services

10:09 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission have jointly signed four rocket startups to contracts for eventually providing these government agencies a competitive commercial rocket industry capable of launching its payloads into space.

Each of the companies will receive a “frame” contract as part of the initiative, allowing them to compete for task orders for launching specific missions. Officials did not disclose the anticipated value of those contracts, or how many launch companies competed to participate in the program.

Four of the companies selected for the Flight Ticket Initiative are startups working on small launch vehicles: Isar Aerospace, Orbex, PLD Space and Rocket Factory Augsburg. None of them have yet conducted an orbital launch but expect to do so within the next two years.

Arianespace, ESA’s launch company that previously had a monopoly on launches, also received a frame contract, but it apparently must now compete for future contracts with these startups.

Europe had attempted to compete with SpaceX by once again using Arianespace and its big space contractors to build the Ariane-6 rocket. That project however is years behind schedule, and has resulted in an expendable rocket that is too expensive. Europe has thus been forced to buy launches from SpaceX.

This new arrangement essentialy means that Europe has adopted the recommendations I made in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space, available here [pdf]. Rather than design, build, and own its rockets, Europe will instead become a customer like anyone else, buying products developed and owned by private and competing European rocket companies.

Of the startup companies listed above, two (Isar and Rocket Factory) are German, one (Orbex) is British, and one is Spanish (PLD). Thus, this arrangement also spreads the wealth throughout Europe.

Unless outside events change things (such as war or economic collapse), this decision is likely to result in a renaissance in Europe’s launch industry comparable to what is happening now in the U.S. and India. If so, the future for the exploration and settlement of the solar system looks bright indeed.

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Florida legislature considering bills to expand territory of its commerical Florida spaceport

9:51 am

Four bills under consideration in Florida’s legislature are proposing to expand the territory controlled by Space Florida, the state agency that runs the state’s commerical spaceport.

HB 577 and SB 968 seek to expand Florida’s spaceport system territory to include Tyndall Air Force Base and Homestead Air Reserve Base. Space Florida says the land owners still have authority over what projects or improvements can be made.

CS/HM 143 and SB 370 seeks to add seaports as a qualified tax-exempt category of private activity bonds. Space Florida is urging Congress to take action, as receiving the tax exemption is not something the state alone can change.

The bills specifically refer to property that the state owns within these federal bases or recently given back to the state. Overall however these bases remain federal facilities. It thus appears the bills are mostly designed to pressure Congress to act to give Space Florida more control.

The supporters of the bills cite the need for this expansion due to the spectacular increase in commercial launches in Florida, which set a record last year and is expected to do the same each year for the foreseeable future. The irony is that when the space shuttle’s retirement was announced in 2004, Florida officials thought this would be an end to the state’s space operations. Instead, private enterprise since then has resulted in a growth far greater than anything NASA ever provided.

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First two stages of New Glenn assembled for the first time

9:35 am

After years of delays, Blue Origin announced yesterday that it has finally joined the first and second stages of its orbital New Glenn rocket, in preparation for its planned first launch later this year.

The stages remain horizontal inside Blue Origin’s assembly facility at Cape Canaveral, where engineers continue to check them out.

New Glenn’s launch was originally supposed to be in 2020. Problems with its first stage BE-4 engine put it (as well as ULA’s Vulcan rocket) four years behind schedule. The evidence now suggests that those problems were badly acerbated by the poor leadership of Bob Smith, Blue Origin’s CEO from 2017 to 2023, who apparently refused to spend money on test engines and the additional hardware necessary to test the engine to figure out what was wrong. Smith also appeared to slow all other work down in numerous ways as well as antagonize many at the company, causing a lot of high level engineers over time to flee.

Almost to the day Smith left last year Blue Origin has appeared to come to life. If so, this bodes well for both its future as well as that of the entire American rocket industry. New Glenn is a very powerful rocket, capable of lifting 50 tons to low Earth orbit, making it comparable to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. Its first stage is also designed to be reuseable, landing on a drone ship like the Falcon 9. If successful it will thus be a very capable competitor to SpaceX.

The company is aiming for an August launch. Keep your fingers crossed.

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Belgium signs the Artemis Accords

9:19 am

Belgium yesterday became the 34th nation to sign the American-led Artemis Accords, bi-laterial agreements initially conceived by the Trump administration as a way to get around the legal limitations on private property created by the Outer Space Treaty.

Based on the wording of Belgium’s press release, it appear however that this goal is slowly being watered down by the many nations who have signed:

Belgium’s signature of the Artemis Accords is part of its proactive participation in the work of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS). As a party to the five United Nations treaties on outer space, Belgium, in close collaboration with other Member States, has launched several actions within the Committee over the past decade to promote the establishment of an international multilateral legal framework for equitable access to and benefits from space resources, as well as for the safe and sustainable use of these resources. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted word, “equitable”, is one of the key words in Critical Race Theory, and when translated into plain English means providing guaranteed benefits for those who feel oppressed, whether or not they deserve it. Note too Belgium’s effort here to get the United Nations involved. By outlawing any nation from claiming territory and establishing its legal framework, the Outer Space Treaty essentially gave that power to the UN. The accords were conceived as a political way of breaking that restriction, shifting power back to the nations who signed. By inserting the UN into the Artemis alliance Belgium is trying to shift power to the UN again. And it appears it is attempting to form its own alliance of the smaller nations within the accords for this purpose.

The full list of signatories to the Accords is as follows: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. That former deep Soviet bloc nations like Bulgaria and Romania, as well as previously very Marxist Angola, went with the west rather than China illustrates the international distrust of China and its authoritarian methods.

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An ancient Martian river system now meandering ridges

1:46 pm

Context camera mosaic of river system.

An ancient Martian river system
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was featured by MRO’s science team yesterday, in which Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona wrote the following:

River beds often get filled with gravel and the surrounding terrain is often built up of fine-grained mud from river overflows. The gravely river bottom and the fine-grained surroundings can lead to a strange phenomenon that geologists call inverted channels. After the river disappears, the fine-grained surroundings can be easily eroded away leaving the gravely river bed as a high-standing ridge.

These ridges show the location of the old river beds in Mars’ distant past. The angle at which the ridges join together indicate that these rivers flowed from top-right to bottom-left (i.e. southwest).

The picture above is a mosaic produced from the global survey taken by MRO’s lower resolution context camera. It gives us a fuller picture of this river system, with the rectangle showing the small area covered by the photo on the right. Overall this ancient and extinct river of ridges travels more than thirty miles downhill from the northeast to the southwest.
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Sierra Space confirms burst test of its fullscale inflatable module was successful

9:21 am

Sierra Space yesterday confirmed that the pressure test-to-failure of a fullscale inflatable space station module was successful in proving its safety and design.

The pressure shell for Sierra Space’s LIFE™ (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat is made of expandable “softgoods,” or woven fabrics that perform like a rigid structure once inflated. During an Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP) test, the teams inflate the test article until it fails, which helps determine how strong its softgoods materials would be under extreme stresses in the harsh environment of space. The full-scale unit in this test reached 77 psi before it burst, which well exceeds (+27%) NASA’s recommended level of 60.8 psi (maximum operating pressure of 15.2 psi multiplied by a safety factor of four).

A short video showing the moment the module bursts can be seen here.

The module is for the Orbital Reef commercial space station that Sierra Space is building in partnership with Blue Origin, which is supposed to be the lead company in the project. However, it is Sierra Space that appears to be building and testing hardware. What Blue Origin is doing remains unclear, as has been the case now for five-plus years.

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Ingenuity team confirms the helicopter is healthy

8:47 am

In a slightly more detailed status update today, the engineering team that operates the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has confirmed that the helicopter is healthy and apparently undamaged after its 72nd flight.

During that last flight, a vertical up-and-down hop to allow communications with the helicopter and thus obtain better information as to its status and location, contact was lost as Ingenuity descended to land.

On Saturday, Jan. 20, communications were reestablished between Ingenuity and NASA’s Perseverance rover. The Ingenuity team has determined the helicopter is power-positive and is sitting vertically on the surface. Next steps include running further diagnostic checks, commanding Ingenuity to take photos of its location on the surface, and performing a spin test.

It is still unclear if full communications have been restored. Ingenuity must be within line-of-sight of the rover Perseverance for this to happen, and it appears that still might not be so. During its 71st flight the helicopter landed prematurely in an unexpected spot, apparently limiting communications significantly. The 72nd flight was likely to locate it more precisely and gather data.

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Another apparent splat on Mars

5:44 pm

Another apparent splat on Mars
Click for original image.

This cool image poses a mystery that might be important for future colonists. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 23, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team merely labels this vaguely as simply “landforms.” What it appears to be is an ancient flow of mudlike material or a delta that moved from the west to the east. Its nature is even more evident in the full picture. The top of the delta however appears corroded and old, with a number of craters on top suggesting it has been here for a long time.

Its mudlike appearances suggests water was involved, possibly as ice impregnated within the soil. However, the location says no, unless this occurred so long ago that the entire climate of Mars and this region was vastly different. And in fact, it might have been.
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Merging galaxies

10:02 am

Merging galaxies
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by Hubble to study “the overall physical characteristics of galaxies and their star formation.”

What the picture however reveals best is the ongoing merger of three galaxies.

Arp 300 consists of two interacting galaxies, UGC 05028 (the smaller face-on spiral galaxy) and UGC 05029 (the larger face-on spiral). Likely due to its gravitational dance with its larger partner, UGC 05028 has an asymmetric, irregular structure, which is not as visible from ground-based telescopes but is quite distinct in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The bright knot visible to the southeast of the center of UGC 05028 may be the remnant of another small galaxy that is in the process of merging with that galaxy.

As always with Hubble galaxy images, there are a plethora of other background galaxies scattered about, including what appears to be another merger in the center right of two elliptical galaxies. In fact, except for one star in the lower right (with the four spikes), every other object in this photo is a galaxy of many shapes and distances.

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Perseverance looks back at the floor of Jezero Crater

9:49 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Looking out across Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left high resolution camera on the Mars rover Perseverance.

Though I am guessing somewhat, I think this image looks east and down into the floor of Jezero Crater, as indicated by the yellow lines in the overview map above. The mountains in the distance are not the easter rim of Jezero, which is generally indistinct, but some peaks inside the crater itself. They appear higher because Perseverance is looking down at them from the delta, near the western rim.

The white line on the map shows the rover’s entire journey so far since landing in February 2021, about 14.77 miles. Since Perseverance’s recent travels should be within this picture, and I can see no rover tracks, it suggests my guess as to what the picture looks at could be very wrong. No matter. Up until now the landscape inside Jezero Crater has in general been less spectacular than seen by Curiosity in Gale Crater many miles away. This picture however shows us that Perseverance can provide us some good views also. It is also a precursor to the views we shall get once the rover exits Jezero and begins to explore the rough regions to the west.

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Engineers shut lunar lander SLIM down in hope sunlight can recharge its batteries

8:54 am

SLIM's landing zone
Map showing SLIM landing zone on the Moon.
Click for interactive map.

Once they were able to download sufficient data, engineers have intentionally shut down Japan’s lunar lander SLIM in order to increase the chances it will recover should sunlight hit its solar panels and recharge its batteries.

The shutdown occurred three hours after landing on January 19, 2024, when the batteries still has a charge of about 12%.

Before turning the lander off remotely, mission control was able to receive technical and image data from its descent, and from the lunar surface. “We’re relieved and beginning to get excited after confirming a lot of data has been obtained,” JAXA said Monday in a statement, adding that “according to the telemetry data, SLIM’s solar cells are facing west”.

“If sunlight hits the Moon from the west in the future, we believe there’s a possibility of power generation, and we’re currently preparing for restoration,” it said.

The landing took place in the morning on the Moon, so there is a chance that in about a week, when the Sun shifts to the western sky, the panels will get sunlight and begin to recharge the battery.

Meanwhile, engineers confirmed that the two experimental mini-rovers were successfully deployed (see the media kit [pdf] for more details). At the moment we do not know if they have operated as planned, one rolling and the other hopping.

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Iran launches another satellite

10:30 pm

Iran today claimed its second satellite launch in less than four months, placing a smallsat into an orbit its state-run press said was 466 miles high.

As yet this launch has not been confirmed by the U.S. military or any other sources. Like its previous launch in September, the information released is so slim it is unclear if the satellite is in orbit or not. This launch however used a new three-stage solid-fueled rocket dubbed Qaem-100, and from the image released, appears powerful enough to do the job.

Meanwhile, SpaceX once again scrubbed a Starlink launch, the third time in three days, due to weather, illustrating once again that despite the company’s almost clockwork ability to launch, its goal of reaching 150 launches in 2024 could be stymied simply by not having enough clear days where weather is not a problem.

The 2024 launch race:

6 SpaceX
5 China
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan
1 Iran

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