Tag: spaceflight

Endeavour Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts safely splashes down

8:53 am

SpaceX’s Endeavour Dragon capsule safely splashed down shorty after midnight last night in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida, completing a six month mission for two Americans, one Russian, and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The UAE astronaut, Sultan Al Neyadi, flew as a paying passenger, obtaining his flight through the private space station company Axiom, which in turn purchased the ferrying services to and from ISS from SpaceX. The Russian flew as part of the barter deal that NASA presently has with Russia, with each flying astronauts on the other nation’s capsules at no cost in order to make sure everyone knows how to use them in case of emergency.

Several additional details: First, in the post-splashdown press conference SpaceX officials revealed they are presently building a fifth manned Dragon capsule to add to its fleet, and are also aiming to fly each as much as fifteen times. This suggests they are anticipating a lot of business hauling both NASA and commercial passengers into space.

Meanwhile, the Russian-launched crew on ISS that launched last September and includes American Frank Rubio is targeting a return-to-Earth on September 27, 2023. If so, they will have completed a 371 day flight, or almost thirteen months. This I think is the second longest human flight so far in space, exceeded only by Valeri Polykov’s fourteen-and-half month mission in the 1990s.

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Engineers had Vikram do short flight hop prior to shutting down

8:36 am

Indian engineers revealed today that prior to putting the Vikram lander to sleep for the long lunar night, they had the lander use its rocket engines to do a short up and down flight. From the first link:

“On command it (Vikram lander) fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30 to 40 cm away,” ISRO said in an update on ‘X’.

Before doing the hop engineers stored Vikram’s instruments and rover ramp, then redeployed them afterward to gather a tiny bit of new data before putting everything into hibernation.

The hop test proved that Vikram’s engines could be restarted even after being on the Moon for almost two weeks, and thus could potentially be used on a future sample return mission. It also suggested a future mission could choose to change its landing site periodically by use of its landing engines.

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SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites

8:11 pm

Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

This was SpaceX’s 62nd launch in 2023, a new annual record for the company, as well as any private company anywhere ever. It was also the 71st American launch in 2023, which beats the launch record of 1966 which had lasted until only last year.

It appears SpaceX is moving its live stream off of Youtube and onto X. At least, this live stream was only on X. If so, that is a shame as it lowers its visibility. It is also understandable. Why should SpaceX send business to X’s competitor?

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

62 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 71 to 38. It also leads the entire world combined, 71 to 62, while SpaceX by itself now tied the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 62 to 62.

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Engineers place Pragyan into sleep mode

9:26 am

With lunar sunset looming, engineers have completed all work on both the lander Vikram and the rover Pragyan and have prepared Pragyan as best as possible to survive the long 14-Earth-day long lunar night.

Currently, the battery is fully charged. The solar panel is oriented to receive the light at the next sunrise expected on September 22, 2023. The receiver is kept on.

All data from Vikram’s instruments has been transmitted back to Earth, through the rover. It appears that the mission has been using the rover has the main communications relay, not the lander. It also appears there is no expectation of the lander surviving the lunar night.

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The sunspot count in August demonstrates fully the utter uncertainty of science

1:46 pm

In doing these sunspot updates every month since I started Behind the Black thirteen years ago, one of the repeated common themes has been noting how little we really know about the basic fundamental processes within the Sun. We know the process involves nuclear fusion combined with fission, and that process also creates a powerful magnetic field that every eleven years flips in its polarity. We also know that this eleven year cycle corresponds to an eleven year cycle of rising and then falling sunspot activity.

The devil however is in the details, and we know very little about those details. How those larger processes link to the specific changing features on the Sun remains little understood, if at all. The sudden and entirely unexpected steep drop in sunspot activity in August, as noted in the release yesterday of NOAA’s monthly update of its graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, demonstrates this level of ignorance quite starkly.
» Read more

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ESA successfully test fires upper stage engines of new Ariane-6 rocket

12:02 pm

Despite delays in test firing the first stage engines on ESA’s new Ariane-6 rocket, it has successfully tested fired the rocket’s upper stage engines in Germany.

The test of the full upper stage – including the new Vinci engine and a smaller Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) – took place on a purpose-built test bench at German Aerospace Center DLR’s engine test centre in Lampoldshausen, Germany.

Vinci, the upper stage engine of Ariane 6 fed by liquid hydrogen and oxygen, can be stopped and restarted multiple times – to place satellites into different orbits and then de-orbit the upper stage, so it is not left behind as hazardous debris in space. The APU makes it possible for Vinci to restart in space, by maintaining adequate pressure in the fuel tanks and preventing bubbles in the fuel lines. The APU uses small amounts of liquid hydrogen and oxygen from the main tanks – replacing a system which relied on large quantities of tanked helium.

A last hot-fire test is scheduled before final qualification of the Ariane 6 upper stage, with the aim of testing its operation for different types of missions, as well as in degraded conditions.

Meanwhile, the next attempt to do the same with the first stage in French Guiana is scheduled to take place on September 5th.

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Pragyan rover moves more than 300 feet away from Vikram

11:01 am

Map of Pragyan's traverse
Click for original image.

India’s space agency ISRO today released a map, shown to the right, that shows the entire traverse so far completed by its Pragyan rover in the Moon’s high southern latitudes. It has so far traveled more than 100 meters, or 300 feet, and continues to operate as planned.

The part of the traverse just south of the Vikram lander is where the lander filmed the rover doing several quick maneuvers and a 360 degree spin as engineers tested its operation before heading out on a longer journey. The rover’s image of the crater that the rover avoided, though released first, was actually taken afterward, after the rover had moved to the west.

Lunar sunset is in two days. Though engineers are preparing both Vikram and Pragyan for hibernation during that long lunar night, neither was designed to survive that extreme environment.

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SpaceX launches 13 satellites for the Space Force

10:32 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully completed its second launch for the Space Force, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and placing another thirteen satellites of its Tranche-0 constellation into orbit.

The first stage completed its thirteenth mission, successfully landing back at Vandenberg.

This flight was SpaceX’s 61st in 2023, which matches the record it set last year, doing it in only eight months. With four months still left to go in the year the chances of SpaceX meeting its goal of 100 launches in the year still remains a possibility.

Furthermore, this was the 70th successful launch for the United States this year, which matches the record that the nation had set in 1966, and had been the record for the country until last year, when American companies (with help of one government launch) completed 85 launches. It seems last year’s record will be smashed without much problem.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

61 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 70 to 38. It also leads the entire world combined, 70 to 62, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) by only 61 to 62, with another Starlink launch is now scheduled for tomorrow.

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India successfully launches its first solar observation satellite

11:44 pm

India’s space agency ISRO tonight (September 2, 2023 in India) successfully used its PSLV rocket with six strap-on boosters to place in orbit its first solar observation satellite, Aditya-L1, lifting off from its coastal Sriharikota spaceport.

The spacecraft will eventually maneuver itself to the L1 point about one million miles closer to the Sun, where it will make continuous observations of the star’s visible hemisphere, using seven different instruments. Its observations will supplement those of the SOHO solar observatory (also located at the L1 point), which was launched in 1995 and is long overdue for replacement, or at least some redundancy.

For India, this was the seventh launch in 2023, which ties its previous annual launch high achieved in both 2016 and 2018. The country however has three more launches tentatively scheduled for this year, though none has as yet a specific launch date.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

60 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

In the national rankings, American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 69 to 38. It also leads the entire world combined, 69 to 62, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 60 to 62. SpaceX however has launches scheduled for September 2nd and 3rd, so these numbers are likely to change.

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Petrified dunes on Mars?

11:27 am

Petrified dunes on Mars?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I think the many parallel ridges are likely hardened and petrified dunes of sand because of their craggy nature. Dunes of sand would have a smoother, softer look, and in fact, if you look at some of the dunes inside the depression at the bottom-right of the picture you will see ridges with exactly that look, smooth and curved.

Nor is it unreasonable to believe these ridges are petrified dunes, as orbital data over time has found that many of the dunes on Mars, even those that look active, are not and have likely been hardened for centuries.

As for the ridges running at right angles to each other in the picture’s middle left, I have no idea. Possible we are looking at ancient dykes of lava that pushed up through cracks and faults, but this is pure guess.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 56th flight on Mars

9:52 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet yesterday by the Ingenuity engineering team, the helicopter successfully completed its 56th flight on Mars on August 25, 2023, flying 1,345 feet to the northwest at a height of 39 feet for 141 seconds, or two minutes and twenty-one seconds. The distance traveled and the flight time were slightly longer than planned, but that likely was because the helicopter used that extra time to determine a safe landing site.

The green line on the map above shows the approximate new position of Ingenuity, positioned close to the planned route of Perseverance as indicated by the red dotted line. Perseverance’s present location is marked by the blue dot.

Neretva Vallis is the gap in the western rim of Jezero crater through which the delta had flowed eons before, and is the rover’s eventual target in order to begin exploring the terrain beyond, known to be very rich in mineral content.

Meanwhile, the Ingenuity engineering team has already released its flight plan for the 57th flight, heading north about 670 feet and targeting tomorrow for flight.

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Amazon investors sue company for not considering SpaceX as potential launch provider

8:56 am

In a lawsuit filed by Amazon investors, they claim that the company’s decision to give major and expensive launch contracts to Arianespace, ULA, and Blue Origin to put its planned 3,200 Kuiper satellite constellation into orbit but never even consider using SpaceX indicates a failure at due diligence for the shareholders as well as a possible conflict of interest.

The plaintiff’s biggest concern was the decision to give Blue Origin the contract.

The suit, filed by Amazon shareholders the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, alleges that the board spent less than 40 minutes approving the launch agreements for Amazon’s Project Kuiper mega-constellation, while not even considering leading launch company (and Blue Origin rival) SpaceX. “Amazon’s directors likely devoted barely an hour before blindly signing off on funneling […] Amazon’s money to Bezos’ unproven, struggling rocket company,” the suit says. The plaintiffs say the board failed to protect the negotiation process “from Bezos’ glaring conflict of interest.”

It appears these investors might have a point, as so far Amazon has paid these launch companies about $1.7 billion, with Blue Origin getting $585 million, though not one satellite has yet launched. Moreover, it appears from all counts that it will be very difficult for these companies — especially Blue Origin — to complete the required missions necessary to get into orbit half of Amazon’s constellation by 2026, as required by its FCC license.

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SpaceX successfully launches 22 more Starlink satellites

7:54 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Note too the speed in which SpaceX was able to resume launches after Hurricane Idalia plowed across Florida. ULA’s canceled a launch earlier in the week, but it can’t move as fast to resume launches.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

60 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 69 to 38. It also leads the entire world combined, 69 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) only 60 to 61 in successful launches.

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The splatter surrounding a mid-latitude Martian crater

12:26 pm

A channel in the splatter of a Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 12, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists simply label as “Northern Mid-latitude Terrain”.

I have focused in on that meandering channel and the landscape around it. On Earth we would assume that channel marks the drainage of a river or stream, possibly also shaped by a glacier at some point because of its U-shaped profile. This guess is strengthened by the elevation data from MRO, which shows the channel descending to the southwest about 440 feet along its 2.2 mile length.

The channel and the eroded look of the surrounding terrain suggests strongly the presence of near-surface ice at this location, which is not unreasonable based on its 32 degree north latitude. The wider look below only adds further strength to this hypothesis, but also adds a lot more details explaining the genesis of this strange landscape.
» Read more

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Webb takes infrared image of Supernova SN1987A

10:04 am

Annotated infrared image from Webb
Click for original image.

The Webb Space Telescope has taken its first infrared image of Supernova SN1987A, the closest supernova to Earth in five centuries at a distance of 168,000 light years away in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud.

The annotated image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows that supernova remnant as Webb sees it. Most of the structures identified here have been observed now for decades as the material from the explosion has been expanding outward. However,

While these structures have been observed to varying degrees
by NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and Chandra X-ray Observatory, the unparalleled sensitivity and spatial resolution of Webb revealed a new feature in this supernova remnant – small crescent-like structures. These crescents are thought to be a part of the outer layers of gas shot out from the supernova explosion. Their brightness may be an indication of limb brightening, an optical phenomenon that results from viewing the expanding material in three dimensions. In other words, our viewing angle makes it appear that there is more material in these two crescents than there actually may be. [emphasis mine]

I highlight that one word because it is unnecessary, and is only inserted to punch up Webb’s abilities for public relations purposes. Moreover, the rest of the text of the full press release at the link is even worse. It provides little information about the evolution of this supernova since its discovery more than three decades ago, but instead waxes poetic again and again about how wonderful Webb is.

Though Webb certainly has much higher resolution than the earlier infrared space telescope Spitzer and can do far more, this tendency of NASA press releases to use these superlatives only devalues Webb. The images themselves sell the telescope. No need to oversell it in the text.

Meanwhile, the significance of SN 1987A is not explained. Since the development of the telescope by Galileo in the early 1600s, there has been no supernova inside the Milky Way. SN 1987A has been the closest, so it has been photographed repeatedly in multiple wavelengths to track the evolution of the explosion’s ejecta. Webb now gives us a better look in the infrared, though in truth the small amount of new details is actually somewhat disappointing.

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Firefly notifies Space Force that it is ready to launch military payload at a moment’s notice

9:39 am

As part of a military program to improve the speed of launching payloads, Firefly and its payload provider Millennium have now notified the Space Force that both are ready to launch a satellite any time in the next six months, and do so fast.

Although this mission has been promoted as a 24-hour call-up, it is being planned in multiple stages and the companies have spent months rehearsing and preparing. The intent of the demonstration is to help the Space Force and the space industry contractors figure out processes to accelerate the planning and execution of national security missions.

Firefly and Millennium are now officially in a six-month “hot standby phase.” At any point during that time the Space Force will give the companies an alert notification, kicking off a 60-hour window to transport the payload to Firefly’s launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. conduct fueling operations and integrate it with the Alpha rocket’s payload adapter.

Space Force officials will then issue Firefly a launch notice with the final orbit requirements. Firefly will then have 24 hours to update the trajectory and guidance software, encapsulate the payload, transport it to the pad, mate to Alpha, and stand ready to launch at the first available window.

It appears that SpaceX has already done a similar thing with a fast classified launch several years ago, announcing the contract award and launching a classified payload within weeks. This new test is likely to show Firefly’s ability to do the same.

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Vikram takes movie of Pragyan rover as it roves

9:30 am

Pragyan as seen by Vikram
Click for movie.

Using one of Vikram’s lander cameras, engineers have produced a short movie of India’s Pragyan rover as it rotated to avoid a small crater about ten feet ahead.

The picture to the right is from that 16-second movie, near its end. It appears that the engineers operating Pragyan were unhappy with almost any route ahead from its present position, as they rotated Pragyan almost 360 degrees, and even attempted forward motion at one point and then resumed rotation.

It is not clear if any of the craters visible in this picture are the crater that caused the detour. The movie however does provide a sense of scale. Pragyan is small, but it is able to maneuver easily using its six wheels.

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China’s Long March 2D launches 3 satellites

8:55 am

China today successfully placed three “remote sensing” satellites into orbit, using its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in south China.

The state-run press provided no other information, including whether the rocket’s lower stages crashed near habitable areas. According to the flight path, the crash zones were near major population centers, including one city with a population of nine million.

SpaceX meanwhile scrubbed a Falcon 9 launch this morning at Vandenberg due to an issue with one first stage engine, but it is still scheduled to launch 22 Starlink satellites this afternoon from Cape Canaveral. The live stream is here.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

59 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 68 to 38. It also leads the entire world combined, 68 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 59 to 61 in successful launches.

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Buried ridges at the bottom of a Martian abyss

11:03 am

Buried ridges in a Martian abyss
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image could be labeled a “What the heck?!” photo, as the origin of its most distinct feature is utterly baffling. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what look like a collection of meandering ridges peeking out from a terrain covered by thick dust.

The scientists label this dust-covered ground, as well as the ripple dunes to the south in the full image, “sand sheets.” Without question, the ground here seems to resemble a Sahara-like terrain. It is utterly featureless, other than the few bedrock features that poke up out of that sand. In the full image some peaks stick out, but it the meandering ridges in this section that are most intriguing. They are reminiscent of rimstone dams in caves, but what formed them remains baffling, since cave rimstone dams are formed by the interaction of limestone and water, and there is absolutely no evidence of any near surface ice at this location in the dry equatorial regions of Mars.

All the ridges signify is a buried terrain formed in some inexplicable way.
» Read more

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Starlink makes deal with Japanese cell phone company

8:33 am

SpaceX has now partnered with the Japanese cell phone company KDDI to provide satellite-to-cellular service in remote areas of Japan that do not have good cell tower service.

The companies plan to start with SMS text services as early as 2024 and will eventually provide voice and data services. Almost all existing smartphones on KDDI network will be compatible with this new service as it employs the device’s existing radio services.

Since Starlink now has more than 5,000 satellites in orbit, it can offer its services to a wider ranger of customers worldwide, and has been slowly signing them up, from country to country.

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Pragyan snaps first pictures of Vikram sitting on the Moon

8:28 am

Vikram as seen by Pragyan
Click for original image.

India’s space agency ISRO has released the first two pictures from the Pragyan rover showing the Vikram lander that bought both to the Moon safely.

The picture to the right is the close-up image, which shows two of Vikram’s science instruments. CHASTE is a probe that has been measuring the temperature of the Moon’s regolith at this spot, while ILSA is a seismometer for measuring the seismicity around the landing site.

Both spacecraft have been on the lunar surface now for one week, which means they are both halfway through their nominal two-week mission that lasts until lunar sunset, occurring on September 4th. Neither were designed to survive the 14-day-long lunar night, though engineers will attempt to kept both alive.

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The prevailing winds in Mars’ volcano country

12:35 pm

The prevailing winds in Mars' volcano country
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is actual one new picture and four past images, which taken together reveal something about the larger wind patterns on Mars. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows a tiny wind-swept section of the giant volcanic ash field dubbed the Medusae Fossae Formation, about the size of the subcontinent of India and thought to be source of most of the dust on Mars.

The innumerable parallel thin ridges here all suggest that the prevailing winds blow from the southeast to the northwest. As they blow, the scour the surface ash out, and sometimes reveal the underlying bedrock, which here shows up as those small peaks and a handful of northeast-to-southwest trending larger ridges. Note too that the picture shown is only a small section of the full image, which shows that this landscape continues for a considerable distance in all directions.
» Read more

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InSight team releases a global map of Mars’ seismic zones

10:03 am

Global map of quakes on Mars
Click for original image.

In a new paper that reviewed the entire archive of Mars quakes detected by the seismometer on InSight during its four years of operation on the Martian surface from 2018 to 2022, scientists have now released an updated global map showing the regions on Mars where seismic activity is most common. From the abstract:

Seismicity on Mars occurs mostly along or north of the boundary between the southern highlands and northern lowlands. Valles Marineris is seismically more active than previous catalogs of located events imply. Further, we show evidence that two events likely originate from the Olympus Mons region.

The map to the right is figure 6 from the paper, and shows clearly the sum total of InSight’s data. The yellow triangle marks InSight’s landing spot. The red line delineates the distant quakes from the nearby quakes detected by InSight. The green line is what the scientists identify as the border between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands. The data suggests that transition point could be linked geologically in some manner to the quakes themselves.

Though the majority of the detected quakes were in the Cerberus Fossae region, the data also suggests two other seismic active regions, one under the giant canyon Valles Marineris and the other south of Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

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NASA reveals three year delay in its New Frontiers planetary mission program

9:21 am

NASA last week revealed that because of “budget uncertainty” it will not begin accepting project proposals in its New Frontiers planetary mission program this fall as planned, and will in fact not begin accepting new proposals until 2026.

At a NASA SMD town hall meeting July 27, Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, warned a potential extended delay in the release of the New Frontiers AO. “If the planetary science funding levels that are anticipated as a result of this tight budget environment are actually realized over the next two or so years,” she said, “it is unlikely we’ll be able to solicit New Frontiers perhaps not before 2026.” That delay was made official with the release of the community announcement.

The draft AO sought proposals for missions on six topics, as recommended by the planetary science decadal survey in 2011: a comet surface sample return, a mission to Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, a lunar geophysical network, a sample return mission to the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin, a mission to characterize the potential habitability of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and a probe of Saturn’s atmosphere.

The New Frontiers program previously funded the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission to Bennu.

The article at the first link above as well as the NASA officials quoted attempt falsely to blame the budget problems on the Republican House leadership, which insisted that the committee which reviews the NASA budget as well as the budgets of Justice and Commerce cut 28.8% from among those agencies in its 2024 budget review. That committee (as well as the Senate) however was very generous to NASA, essentially giving it the same budget as previously, with only a 1% cut, while slashing budgets for departments in Justice and Commerce to make up the difference.

The real blame for this delay in NASA’s planetary program almost certainly falls on the Mars Sample Return mission, which has seen gigantic budget overruns that are apparently swallowing the entire future planetary program. NASA’s planetary budget can’t pay for any other new planetary missions as long as it must pay for the cost overruns for the sample return mission.

This is no surprise, as we’ve seen this movie before. When Webb’s budget ballooned 20x, from its proposed $500 million to $10 billion, it essentially shut down the rest of NASA’s astrophysics program, delaying or cancelling all other space telescope projects for more than a decade. Now the planetary program is experiencing its own version of this same pain.

The problem is the Mars Sample Return mission itself. Its design has been haphazard and sloppy and constantly changing. It is also reliant on older technology ideas that will soon be made obsolete by Starship/Superheavy. NASA would be wiser to delay that project to await the development of the launch capabilities that will make it cost effective, and let a fleet of other missions happen instead.

I guarantee however that NASA won’t do that, because it will require some boldness. The philosophy in Washington remains the same: Do the same failed thing over and over again in the vain hope it might work next time.

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Residue ice in southern mid-latitude Martian crater?

11:16 am

Residue ice in the southern mid-latitudes of Mars?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an unnamed 1.2-mile-wide crater at about 35 degrees south latitude with what appears to be residual glacial ice hugging its north interior wall.

As this is in the southern hemisphere, the ground immediately below the south-facing interior wall of the crater is going to be in shadow the most, and thus it will also be the place where any surface or near-surface ice will survive the longest. In this case it appears that from the bumpy nature of that residual ice it has also been sublimating away. Within it however remains the faint hint of multiple layers, suggesting about a dozen past climate cycles with each new cycle producing a new but smaller layer with less ice.

The material in the southern half of the crater floor appears to be dust formed into ripple dunes.
» Read more

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Vikram finds temperatures of lunar soil varies significantly, depending on depth

9:17 am

Temperature range of soil at Vikram landing site

Based on data from one of the instruments on India’s lunar lander Vikram, scientists have found that the temperatures of the lunar soil at the landing site vary significantly, depending on depth. The temperature dropped from 55 degrees Celsuis to -10 degrees Celsuis when going from about 10 millimeters above the surface to about 82 millimeters below the surface, as shown in the graph to the right.

That’s equivalent from going from a summer day in Death Valley of 131 degrees Fahrenheit to a winter day in Minnesota of 14 degrees Fahrenheit, in a distance of only about 3.5 inches. While it was expected that there would a temperature drop, it appears the quick temperature drop just below the surface was faster than expected.

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JAXA scrubs launch of X-Ray telescope & SLIM lunar lander due to high winds

8:57 am

SLIM's landing zone
Click for interactive map.

Because of high winds, Japan’s space agency JAXA yesterday scrubbed the last launch of its H2A rocket, carrying the XRISM X-Ray telescope and the SLIM lunar lander.

A nice description of both payloads can be found here. XRISM is a simplified reflight of the Hitomi X-Ray telescope that failed immediately after launch in 2016.

Though SLIM carries a camera and two secondary payloads, both designed to hop along on the surface and obtain some data, its main mission is engineering, testing whether a robotic spacecraft can achieve a precision landing with a target zone of 100 meters, or 310 feet. The map to the right shows SLIM’s landing site, with the white dot in the close-up inset a rough approximation of that entire target zone. If successful this technology will make it possible to put unmanned planetary probes in places previously thought too dangerous or rough.

All three craft are designed to operate for only about fourteen days, during the daylight hours of the 28-Earth-day-long lunar day.

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Update on ESA’s much delayed Space Rider X-37B copy

10:34 am

Link here. Space Rider is essentially aiming to be another re-usable mini-shuttle like the X-37B and the unnamed classified version from China. While all three are government-owned and government-run, the X-37B and China’s both were built expressly to do military classified missions. There has been no effort in either case to make them available for commercial flights.

The European Space Agency (ESA) however is developing Space Rider instead for commercial customers. It also appears the government-owned and government-run nature of Space Rider is one of the main reasons it will not fly its maiden mission this year, and won’t fly until late 2025, at the earliest.

“As an outcome of the previous ministerial council of 2019, the Space Rider received quite significant financial support to cope with Phase C and D activities. However, the participating states contributed in a way that was not possible — due to the need to comply with the Geo-return mechanism — to keep the industrial consortium as it was operating up to that moment [end-2019],” Galli said.

ESA’s Geo-return mechanism was established to boost fairness among member states, ensuring that the nations that invest in the agency will generate a “fair return.” In a nutshell, participating states in an optional development program should receive industrial contracts in a proportional way with respect to their contribution to that program to ensure that money invested benefits the countries that actually contributed to that program. That is to say for example, if you put 30% of the funds into the program, you are expected to receive as close as possible to industrial contracts accounting for 30% of the overall program.

As the program must abide by the Geo-return mechanism, Galli explained that the initial consortium involved was required to significantly be rebuilt “in compliance with the available funds and their member state relevant origin. … This caused first a not negligible delay in setting up the new industrial consortium… that was finally concluded only in late 2020 with the signature of the new contract with the prime contractors. And then, a so-called bridging design phase was needed on the subsystems affected by the change of industrial supplier, resulting in a longer-than-expected completion of the design phase.

In other words, Space Rider can’t just sell payload space to anyone. Only private businesses in those nations who help finance it can bid, and the customers don’t match well with the ESA’s nations that had been doling up the money. The consequence apparently has been a lot of complex negotiations and jury-rigging to make the two match, all of which has nothing to do with producing a viable product that makes money.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites

6:31 pm

In its second launch from Cape Canaveral in less than 24 hours, SpaceX today placed another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

59 SpaceX
37 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 68 to 37. It also leads the entire world combined, 68 to 60, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 59 to 60 in successful launches.

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SpaceX launches four astronauts to ISS

7:20 am

Using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX early this morning put four astronauts into orbit for a six month mission to ISS.

The Dragon capsule, Endurance, was making its third flight. The first stage, flying for the first time, landed successfully back at Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

58 SpaceX
37 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 67 to 37. It also leads the entire world combined, 67 to 60, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 58 to 60 in successful launches.

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