Tag: spaceflight

A glacial lake on Mars?

12:40 pm

A glacial lake in a
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows what appears to be a glacial flow of ice, flowing downhill to the southwest and inside a wide canyon about three miles across. The canyon rims to the north and south are about 2,000 to 2,100 feet above the canyon’s lowest point, indicated by the string of “+” signs.

This close-up view immediately suggests a canyon whose glacier flows outward to the southwest into open lowland terrain, though the three craters, because they are undistorted, suggests that this flow is presently not active. That suggestion however would be wrong. It is always necessary to understand Martian geology to not only take close-in views at high resolution, but to zoom back and see the terrain in context.
» Read more

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New Hubble image of Saturn

10:04 am

Saturn and its rings, as seen by Hubble

The annotated image above was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on October 22, 2023, showing Saturn, its glorious rings, and several of its dozens of moons from a distance of about 850 million miles. For the unannotated version, go here. Of all the features, the spokes in the rings are the most intriguing.

Saturn’s spokes are transient features that rotate along with the rings. Their ghostly appearance only persists for two or three rotations around Saturn. During active periods, freshly-formed spokes continuously add to the pattern. In 1981, NASA’s Voyager 2 first photographed the ring spokes. Hubble continues observing Saturn annually as the spokes come and go. This cycle has been captured by Hubble’s Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program that began nearly a decade ago to annually monitor weather changes on all four gas-giant outer planets.

Hubble’s crisp images show that the frequency of spoke apparitions is seasonally driven, first appearing in OPAL data in 2021 but only on the morning (left) side of the rings. Long-term monitoring shows that both the number and contrast of the spokes vary with Saturn’s seasons. Saturn is tilted on its axis like Earth and has seasons lasting approximately seven years.

This year, these ephemeral structures appear on both sides of the planet simultaneously as they spin around the giant world. Although they look small compared with Saturn, their length and width can stretch longer than Earth’s diameter!

Though the origin of the spokes remains unsolved, the leading theory proposes they are caused by interactions between Saturn’s magnetic field and the seasonal changes in solar radiation.

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Ingenuity’s engineers explain what they have learned flying the helicopter on Mars

9:49 am

Link here. The essay details carefully the problems they have faced, and how they have not only overcome them but used them to refine operations to squeeze far more capabilities out of the helicopter, beyond its initial design.

Saving flight time saves energy, reduces heating, and provides more freedom to use slower speeds to tiptoe around disruptive terrain that might otherwise endanger or significantly degrade the landing accuracy of the helicopter. Higher speeds and higher accelerations reduce the time needed to execute a given flight path. Higher altitudes permit higher speeds, as the wider field of view helps to keep ground features in view of Ingenuity’s navigation camera longer, counteracting the effect of increased speed. Expanding Ingenuity’s flight envelope had the potential to relax flight planning constraints and allow Ingenuity to operate more effectively alongside Perseverance.

As a result, beginning with flight 45 the team has made changes to increase flight speeds and acceleration at every point of every flight, thus allowing the helicopter to fly higher and farther with less strain.

This report however does not provide any information on Ingenuity’s last two flights, especially its 68th, which did not go as planned. The helicopter appears to be in good shape (the team has already planned the 69th flight, which was supposed to happen two days ago), but a more detailed update would be appreciated.

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ULA’s Vulcan rocket fully stacked for the first time

9:39 am

Peregrine landing site
The landing site for Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander

In preparation for its targeted January 8, 2024 launch, ULA’s Vulcan rocket has now been fully stacked for first time in its assembly building at Cape Canaveral.

ULA’s new rocket has rolled between its vertical hangar and the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station several times for countdown rehearsals and fueling tests. But ULA only needed the Vulcan rocket’s first stage and upper stage to complete those tests. The addition of the payload shroud Wednesday marked the first time ULA has fully stacked a Vulcan rocket, standing some 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall, still surrounded by scaffolding and work platforms inside its assembly building.

It will next be rolled to the launchpad for some final checks prior to launch on January 8, 2023. Unlike most first launches, it carries a real payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, which hopes to softly place several NASA and commercial payloads near the Gruithuisen Domes in the northwest quadrant of the Moon’s visible hemisphere, as shown on the map above.

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White House issues “policy framework” to lobby for its space regulatory proposal

9:28 am

Faced with stiff opposition from industry and politicians from both parties in Congress to its regulatory proposal issued in mid-November, the White House yesterday released what it called a “policy framework” for implementing that proposal.

You can read this policy framework here [pdf]. It is filled with high-sounding claims about its goal is to encourage private development and reduce red tape, but in the end it only adds more government entities to the entire bureaucracy that regulates commercial space. From the framework itself:

The Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation will co-lead a Private Sector Space Activities Interagency Steering Group in consultation with the Chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), comprising representation from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, and State, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and any other Federal entities with expertise or equities pertaining to private sector novel space activities, including relevant stakeholders from the Executive Office of the President. The Steering Group serves as a coordinating body to ensure that the U.S. Government oversight system is prepared to meet U.S. priorities while taking into consideration the competitiveness of U.S. industry now and into the future.

One of the criticisms of the White House proposal from mid-November was that it would split regulation between Commerce and Transportation, thus increasing the complexity for commerical companies. This steering group is clearly an effort to answer those complaints, but based on this proposal, it simply adds one more bureaucratic layer to the mix, making things even more complicated.

The framework also calls for the expansion of the government’s regulatory footprint on several fronts, such as controlling orbital debris, and achieved through “expanding existing, or establish new, federal advisory committees to account for all expanded space authorities in furtherance of this Framework and related legislative proposals.”

From the viewpoint of freedom, this entire proposal reads like a zombie end-of-the-world horror film, with bureaucratic zombies appearing endlessly from all directions, aimed at consuming any independent private company as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

The original commercial space act proposal from Congress, that the Biden administration (and most Democrats) oppose but carries the endorsement of the private commercial space industry, was passed by its House committee, but still needs to be voted on by the full House, as well as the Senate. Because it remains in limbo, the White House has issued this framework, in the hope it can give its side the ammunition needed to defeat that bill and replace it with the White House’s.

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A movie of 14 years of gamma ray observations from space

8:49 am

Link here. I have also embedded the movie below. The movie was made from fourteen years of observations by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope in orbit around the Earth. From the press release:

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. The movie shows the intensity of gamma rays with energies above 200 million electron volts detected by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) between August 2008 and August 2022. For comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 electron volts. Brighter colors mark the locations of more intense gamma-ray sources.

“One of the first things to strike your eye in the movie is a source that steadily arcs across the screen. That’s our Sun, whose apparent movement reflects Earth’s yearly orbital motion around it,” said Fermi Deputy Project Scientist Judy Racusin, who narrates a tour of the movie, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Most of the time, the LAT detects the Sun faintly due to the impact of accelerated particles called cosmic rays – atomic nuclei traveling close to the speed of light. When they strike the Sun’s gas or even the light it emits, gamma rays result. At times, though, the Sun suddenly brightens with powerful eruptions called solar flares, which can briefly make our star one of the sky’s brightest gamma-ray sources.

The movie shows the sky in two different views. The rectangular view shows the entire sky with the center of our galaxy in the middle. This highlights the central plane of the Milky Way, which glows in gamma rays produced from cosmic rays striking interstellar gas and starlight. It’s also flecked with many other sources, including neutron stars and supernova remnants. Above and below this central band, we’re looking out of our galaxy and into the wider universe, peppered with bright, rapidly changing sources.

Most of these are actually distant galaxies, and they’re better seen in a different view centered on our galaxy’s north and south poles. Each of these galaxies, called blazars, hosts a central black hole with a mass of a million or more Suns.

Fermi is essentially mapping the high energy objects of the entire universe.
» Read more

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Russia launches military satellite

8:37 am

Russia early this morning successfully launched a classified military satellite, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.

No word on where the rocket’s strap-on boosters or first stage crashed within Russia.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

92 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 105 to 61, and the entire world combined 105 to 97. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 92 to 97.

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Starship prototype #28 completes full duration static fire test

8:49 pm

Gearing up for Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight #3: Starship prototype #28 today successfully completed a full duration static fire test, with all six engines firing for about five seconds.

The link goes to SpaceX’s X feed, and shows that test.

This is more evidence that SpaceX intends to be ready in all ways to do that third orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship by mid-January, at the latest. It also suggests the company is getting close to finishing its investigation into the previous test flight in mid-November.

Of course, none of this means it will launch in mid-January. I predict SpaceX will be stuck twiddling its thumbs waiting for a launch license from the FAA, which will also be waiting for an okay from Fish & Wildlife. Both will likely be forced to work as slowly as possible, likely because of interference from the White House.

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Glacial layers in Mars’ glacier country

2:40 pm

Glacial layers in Mars' glacier country
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 20, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It features a 250-foot-high north-south cliff that appears to have numerous horizontal layers within it.

Moreover, both on the plateau above the cliff as well as the floor below it, the entire surface seems to resemble a thick snow/ice field, made even more evident by the distortion of many craters and the apparent glacial material inside each crater.

The layers suggest that this ice was laid down in a series of cycles. During cold periods snow fell and accumulated as ice over time. When things became warmer some of that ice sublimated away, but not all. With the next cold cycle a new layer was put down.

The many layers suggest many climate cycles on Mars, none of which were caused by SUVs or coal-firing electrical power stations.
» Read more

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Ingenuity’s most recent flight, the 68th, a mystery

9:54 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

UPDATE: See this December 26, 2023 post for more accurate information.

Original post:
————————–
According to a recent update to the flight log of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, it finally completed its 68th flight on December 15, 2023, not on December 9, 2023 as announced in the flight plan on December 8th.

More significantly, the flight only traveled 1,289 feet (393 meters), not the 2,716 feet (828 meters) intended. The flight was supposed to travel out to the northeast and then return to its take-off point, indicated by the green dot on the map above, completing a “flight test” as well as scouting the ground below. It appears it did not do this, but where the 68th flight actually went and landed has as yet not been released. According to the flight plan, Ingenuity likely landed somewhere in Neretva Vallis to the northeast, as indicated by the green line.

What we do know is that the engineering team knows enough about Ingenuity’s condition to release today the flight plan for the 69th flight, which was actually scheduled to occur yesterday. That flight plan calls for Ingenuity to travel about 2,300 feet to the east-northeast and then return to its take-off point.

Meanwhile, Perseverance (the blue dot) is working its way west back to its planned route, the red dotted line.

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Congress passes short term extension of commercial space regulatory “learning period”

9:19 am

The Senate yesterday passed a short term extension of the regulatory “learning period” at the FAA that limits its ability to regulate commercial space.

[The Senate] quickly passed an extension of the FAA’s authorization, a final piece of “must pass” legislation before the end of the year. The bill (H.R. 6503) passed the House on December 11. Among other things, it extends the “learning period” for commercial human spaceflight until March 9, 2024 that otherwise would have expired on January 1. The learning period, or “moratorium,” prohibits the FAA from promulgating new regulations on commercial human spaceflight while the industry is in its infancy.

The president still needs to sign this bill, but that is expected.

Originally passed in 2004 as an eight-year period, this “learning period” has been extended several times since. The industry wants a longer extension, as it still considers itself quite rightly to be in an experimental test phase, not operational in the sense of airplane manufacture.

Not that this extension matters. It appears in the past two years that the regulators at the FAA have decided to ignore the law and make believe this learning period really doesn’t exist, based on how that agency has treated test launches by SpaceX and others. Rather than let their launches proceed quickly as tests, the FAA has begun to treat each test as an operational flight that requires a long investigation before further launch approvals are given.

Unless there is a major change in leadership in the White House, we should expect a major slow-down of the American launch industry in the coming years, regardless of whether this “learning period” is extended or not.

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A bubbly dwarf galaxy

9:09 am

A bubbly dwarf galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today by the science team of the Hubble Space Telescope, and shows an irregular dwarf galaxy that is about seven million light years away.

Twelve camera filters were combined to produce this image, with light from the mid-ultraviolet through to the red end of the visible spectrum. The red patches are likely interstellar hydrogen molecules that are glowing because they have been excited by the light from hot, energetic stars. The other sparkles on show in this image are a mix of older stars. An array of distant, diverse galaxies appear in the background, captured by Hubble’s sharp view.

The data used in this image were taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys from 2006 to 2021.

The picture was taken as part of a study of dwarf galaxies, their make-up, and how their mergers eventually create the larger galaxies like the Milky Way.

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First segments of Extremely Large Telescope have shipped to Chile

8:58 am

After 20 years of development, the first eighteen segments of Europe’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) have now shipped to Chile, with another 780 more segments to go.

The assembly of the telescope’s massive mirrors will take place over the next 4 years. This week, the first segments of what will be the main mirror – called ‘M1’ – arrived in Chile.

Once complete in 2028, these segments will create a primary mirror 40 meters across, about 131 feet, four times larger than the 10.4 meter Gran Telescopio in the Canary Islands, presently the largest telescope in operation.

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Launch of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander delayed until February

8:45 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

Because of scheduling conflicts impacting other SpaceX launches now, SpaceX and Intuitive Machines have delayed the launch of the latter’s Nova-C lunar lander from a mid-January to a mid-February launch window.

The conflict involves the use of the launchpad, that the Falcon Heavy also uses. Technical issues had forced SpaceX to reschedule its next launch to December 28, 2023, leaving little time afterward to reconfigure the pad for the Falcon 9 Nova-C mid-January launch window. Any Falcon Heavy launch delays due to weather would likely make that mid-January window impossible, so the companies have decided better to reschedule now.

Nova-C is targeting a crater rim near the Moon’s south pole, as shown on the map to the right. The floor of that crater is thought to be permanently shadowed, but Nova-C does not have the capability to enter it. This mission is mostly an engineering test mission, to prove Intuitive Machine’s design. If it works, it will operate on the Moon surface for one lunar day, about two weeks. The company then has two more lunar missions contracted with NASA, with the next mission aiming to fly in 2024 as well.

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A land of buttes on Mars

11:14 am

A land of buttes on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 4, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled a “terrain sample” by the science team, it was likely shot not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule so as to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. When the camera team has to do this they try to pick targets that are of some interest. Usually they succeed, considering the enormous gaps we presently have of Mars’ geological history.

This picture is no different. It shows a land of buttes and mesas, all ranging from 20 to 200 feet high, surrounded by canyons filled with ripple dunes of Martian dust. If you look at the floor of those canyons closely, you will notice that where there are no ripple dunes the ground is slightly higher and smooth. It is as if that ground was a kind of sandstone that was eroded away by wind into sand, which then formed the dunes.
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Spain’s new space agency

9:32 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed description of the history leading up to the formation in March 2023 of Spain’s new space agency, Agencia Espacial Española (AEE) (the Spanish Space Agency in English).

It appears the goal was to consolidate Spain’s government space operations from eleven different agencies so as to better coordinate that government’s work with the nation’s burgeoning new commercial space sector.

By law, Spain has created the AEE without any increase in public spending. The new agency has been allocated an initial budget of 700 million euros per year, which was primarily drawn from funding for ESA [European Space Agency] participation, the CDTI, and INTA [two other Spanish agencies]. However, it is expected that the AEE will receive higher budgets in the future for the development of its own programs outside those directly linked to the ESA. The task of financing space activity public and private alike is of utmost importance, and one of the agency’s roles should be to create mechanisms for making investment attractive and effective, either directly or through public-private partnerships — a model that is producing excellent results in several countries around the world, like the United States. [emphasis mine]

It appears the goal is to emulate the policies followed by NASA in the past few years, buy services and products from the private sector rather than build these things within the government. If so, AEE will likely help jumpstart that new space industry. Whether it can stay focused on this goal, or shift into a typical government empire-building operation that sucks the life out of everything, will be its real fundamental test.

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Firefly schedules second launch in 2023

9:19 am

Firefly has now scheduled the second launch of its Alpha rocket in 2023, with a launch window of about 20 minutes on the morning of Decmeber 20, 2023.

The payload is a smallsat from Lockheed Martin testing new antenna technology, but the launch is for the Space Force. Like the previous September 15, 2023 launch, it is designed to test the ability of Firefly to get a payload into orbit quickly, from assembly to launch.

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Laser communication tests with Psyche have now included a cat video

9:06 am

Following up on the first tests in mid-November, engineers on December 11, 2023 downloaded a 15-second cat video from the asteroid probe Psyche at a distance of 19 million miles, demonstrating fast download speeds 10 to 100 times faster than the best radio transmissions.

The demo transmitted the 15-second test video via a cutting-edge instrument called a flight laser transceiver. The video signal took 101 seconds to reach Earth, sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second (Mbps). Capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals, the instrument beamed an encoded near-infrared laser to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, where it was downloaded. Each frame from the looping video was then sent “live” to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the video was played in real time.

I have embedded that video below. More details about the information in that video can be found here.
» Read more

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China’s X-37B copy deploys six independent satellites

8:56 am

Four days after it was launched last week, China’s unnamed reuseable mini-shuttle, essentially a copy of the Space Force’s X-37B, deployed six independent small satellites that appear to be emitting a variety of signals.

The objects have been given letter names, A through F. Because their deployment occurred at different times they are in different orbits than the mini-shuttle, though all orbits cross at some point. The radio signals appear to be either simple beacons or signals of an as-yet undetermined nature.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

9:10 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

92 SpaceX
61 China
17 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 105 to 61, and the entire world combined 105 to 96. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 92 to 96.

This was the 201st launch this year, the first time ever that the global launch industry has exceeded 200 launches. Before 2021, annual global launch totals were generally less than 100. It now looks like there is a good chance they will never again be as low as that. (I should have noted this at the 200th launch, but missed it.)

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The nearest star-forming region, as seen in infrared by Webb

10:05 am

The nearest star-forming region, as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image on this somewhat quiet Monday. The false-color infrared image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Webb Space Telescope, and shows the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region, the nearest to our solar system at a distance of about 460 light years.

It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disc, the makings of future planetary systems.

The young stars at the centre of many of these discs are similar in mass to the Sun or smaller. The heftiest in this image is the star S1, which appears amid a glowing cave it is carving out with its stellar winds in the lower half of the image. The lighter-coloured gas surrounding S1 consists of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a family of carbon-based molecules that are among the most common compounds found in space.

There are two features that are most compelling to me in this image. First, the red hydrogen jet that cuts across the entire right half of the image from top to bottom. At the top you can see how that jet is pushing material before it. Second, we have the cave-like structure surround S1, the central star. The yellowish cloud is almost like a hand cupped around that star.

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A galaxy of violence

9:53 am

A galaxy of violence
Click for original image.

Time for another cool image! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and shows a well defined spiral galaxy face-on in optical wavelengths.

This whirling image features a bright spiral galaxy known as MCG-01-24-014, which is located about 275 million light-years from Earth. In addition to being a well-defined spiral galaxy, MCG-01-24-014 has an extremely energetic core, known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN), so it is referred to as an active galaxy. Even more specifically, it is categorised as a Type-2 Seyfert galaxy. Seyfert galaxies host one of the most common subclasses of AGN, alongside quasars. Whilst the precise categorisation of AGNs is nuanced, Seyfert galaxies tend to be relatively nearby ones where the host galaxy remains plainly detectable alongside its central AGN, while quasars are invariably very distant AGNs whose incredible luminosities outshine their host galaxies.

In contrast, the core of our own Milky Way galaxy is very quiet, which is likely a factor in why it was possible for life to form on Earth.

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Webb takes another infrared image of Uranus

9:32 am

Uranus as seen in infrared by Webb
Click for original image. Go here for Uranus close-up

Astronomers have used the Webb Space Telescope to take another infrared image of Uranus, following up on earlier observations with Webb in April.

The new false-color infrared picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here. Though the close-up of Uranus is in the left corner, the overall view is somewhat wider than the image I highlighted previously, showing many background galaxies and at least one star. The star is the spiked bright object on the left. In false color the galaxies all been given an orange tint, while the blue objects near Uranus are its moons. Because Uranus’s rotational tilt is so extreme, 98 degrees compared to Earth’s 23 degrees, its north pole is presently facing the Sun directly, and is in the center here.

One of the most striking of these is the planet’s seasonal north polar cloud cap. Compared to the Webb image from earlier this year, some details of the cap are easier to see in these newer images. These include the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap, toward the lower latitudes. Several bright storms can also be seen near and below the southern border of the polar cap. The number of these storms, and how frequently and where they appear in Uranus’s atmosphere, might be due to a combination of seasonal and meteorological effects.

The polar cap appears to become more prominent when the planet’s pole begins to point toward the Sun, as it approaches solstice and receives more sunlight. Uranus reaches its next solstice in 2028, and astronomers are eager to watch any possible changes in the structure of these features. Webb will help disentangle the seasonal and meteorological effects that influence Uranus’s storms, which is critical to help astronomers understand the planet’s complex atmosphere.

If you want to see what Uranus looks like to our eyes, check out the Hubble pictures taken in 2014 and 2022. Though fewer features are visible in optical wavelengths, those two images showed long term seasonal changes.

Webb has now revealed some shorter term changes.

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UK finally gives Saxavord spaceport a license

11:33 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the United Kingdom finally issued a spaceport license today to the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, thirteen months after the application was submitted.

This license however does not mean that launches will take place anytime soon. First, Saxavord will have to resume construction of its facilities, which ceased earlier this year because of the CAA hadn’t issued the permit. Moreover, this license does not allow launches. As noted by the CAA:

Spaceport licences allow a person or organisation to operate a spaceport, they are granted in the UK under the Space Industry Act 2018 (SIA). For a launch to happen an operator will need to have developed and proven their technology, be operationally ready, and have a launch licence from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted language is especially crushing, because it literally forbids the launch of any new untested rocket. Since every single rocket so far being developed for these two spaceports is new and untested, none will be allowed to launch unless they move operations elsewhere. This requirement explains for example why the startup ABL shifted its next launch from the Sutherland spaceport — it had hoped to launch this year — to Kodiak, Alaska. Orbex will have even more problems, as it has signed a fifty year lease to launch its new Prime rocket from Sutherland, with its rocket factory close by. If it can’t test fly Prime from Sutherland the company will be very badly hampered.

Even if these companies eventually get launch licenses for their untried rockets, expect such approvals to take a very long time, based on the CAA’s past and present history. It took the CAA almost a year to approve Virgin Orbit’s launch license, essentially bankrupting the company.

Nor are my conclusions here — which I have been stating now for more than a year — simply opinions. They have now been confirmed by a new report issued only a few days ago by the UK Space Agency, which admitted the following:
» Read more

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Chinese pseudo-company launches satellite

9:45 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Ispace today launched what is only described as a “prototype recoverable experiment spacecraft” by another Chinese pseudo-company, its Hyperbola-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

China’s state-run press now routinely makes no mention of these pseudo-companies. In the past China would tout them in an effort to make the rest of the world believe, falsely, that it had its own competitive and growing space industry. Now it appears the Xi government has decided it doesn’t like the growing and somewhat independent success of these companies, and is making it clear to all that, in the end, everything they do belongs to the government.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

91 SpaceX
61 China
17 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 61, and the entire world combined 104 to 96. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 96.

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Environmental groups file another complaint attempting to stop SpaceX launches at Boca Chica

3:45 pm

In what is now becoming a routine process of harassment, several environmental groups have filed another complaint against the FAA and Fish & Wildlife for eventually issuing a second launch license to SpaceX, permitting it to do its mid-November second orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket from Boca Chica, Texas.

In the supplemental complaint, the groups — Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc., Save RGV and Surfrider Foundation — allege the FAA failed to properly analyze the environmental impacts of the first Starship launch before issuing a revised license for the second launch that took place Nov. 18.

That new licensing process included an environmental review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regarding a pad deluge system that SpaceX installed on the pad to prevent damage like that the pad suffered during the first launch. The FWS concluded that the deluge system would produce no significant environmental changes.

The environmental groups argue that both FAA and FWS fell short of what was required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to review the environmental impacts of Starship launches. The FAA, it stated in the complaint, “once again failed to take the requisite ‘hard look’ at the impacts of the Starship/Superheavy launch program through a supplemental NEPA analysis.”

Let me translate what this complaint really says, and I can do it only a few words: “Your review didn’t come to the conclusions we want — which is to block all work by SpaceX — so that we can do what we want!” Both the American Bird Conservancy and the Surfrider Foundation simply want unlimited access to the region for their own recreation, while the Center of Biological Diversity is only interested in stopping all human development anywhere — until it can settle its frequent lawsuits against the government and pocket its payoff.

As for Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas and Save RGV, both are bogus organizations. The first is for a almost non-existent Indian tribe that never even lived in this area (they were based in Mexico), and the second claims it represents the people of the south Texas region who want SpaceX’s work stopped. Since almost everyone in Brownsville and throughout the region is celebrating the new prosperity brought to them by SpaceX, it is essentially a front group for the Marxist environmental movement that hates all prosperity. It doesn’t represent anyone really in south Texas.

As before, this complaint will have to be fought, wasting time and money.

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Russia launches weather satellite

3:29 pm

Russia early today successfully launched a new weather satellite, the second in a new constellation, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The flight path took the rocket north, with its lowers stages crashing in landing zones in Russia.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

91 SpaceX
60 China
17 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 60, and the entire world combined 104 to 95. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 95.

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Another minor canyon on Mars that would be a world wonder on Earth

11:48 am

Another minor canyon 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 August 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the steep north canyon wall of one small part of the Martian canyon complex dubbed Noctis Labyrinthus

The elevation drop in this picture is about 8,000 feet, but the canyon’s lowest point is several miles further south and another 7,000 feet lower down. What is most intriguing about the geology here is its age. If you look at the full resolution image, you will see that there are scattered small craters on the smooth slopes that resemble sand that gravity and wind is shaping into those long streaks heading downhill.

Those craters, however tell us that these smooth slopes are very old, and have not changed in a long time. Furthermore, though the material appears to look like soft sand, the craters also tell us it long ago hardened into a kind of rock. If wind is shaping this material, it must be a very slow process.

The light areas on the rim as well as the ridge peaks below the rim suggest the presence of geological variety, which fits with other data that says Noctis Labyrinthus has a wide variety of minerals.
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NASA: The flight plan for Dream Chaser Tenacity’s first demo mission to ISS

9:30 am

NASA today provided a detailed description of the flight plan for the first demo ISS mission of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reuseable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, now targeting some unspecified date in 2024.

It will carefully approach ISS, testing its maneuvering and rendezvous capibilities, and then be grabbed by the station’s robot arm to be berthed to the station.

On its first flight to the International Space Station, Dream Chaser is scheduled to deliver over 7,800 pounds of cargo. On future missions, Dream Chaser is being designed to stay attached to the station for up to 75 days and deliver as much as 11,500 pounds of cargo. Cargo can be loaded onto the spacecraft as late as 24 hours prior to launch. Dream Chaser can return over 3,500 pounds of cargo and experiment samples to Earth, while over 8,700 pounds of trash can be disposed of during reentry using its cargo module.

On this first demo flight it will remain docked for 45 days, and then land on the shuttle runway at Cape Canaveral.

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Rocket Lab returns to flight, successfully launching a Japanese commercial radar satellite

9:17 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully launched a Japanese commercial radar satellite, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two New Zealand launchpads.

This was the company’s first launch since September, when its Electron rocket experiened a failure in its upper stage.

No attempt was made to recover the first stage, likely because it was decided to keep this return to flight as simple as possible.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

91 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 104 to 59, and the entire world combined 104 to 93. SpaceX still trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 93.

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