Tag: spaceflight

Luna-25 takes first image of lunar surface

9:07 am

Luna-25's first lunar image
Click for interactive map. Zeeman is located on the lower left.

Russia’s state-run press today issued the first picture taken by Luna-25 after entering lunar orbit two days ago. That picture, to the right and cropped and reoriented to post here, shows part of Zeeman Crater at 75 degrees south latitude and 135 degrees west, on the far side of the Moon. From the TASS announcement:

“The Luna-25 spacecraft, flying in a circular orbit as the Moon’s artificial satellite, has taken pictures of the lunar surface with television cameras of the STS-L system. The image, taken today at 08:23 Moscow time, shows the southern polar crater Zeeman on the far side of the Moon. The coordinates of the crater center are 75 degrees south and 135 degrees west,” the state corporation said. Roscosmos said the Zeeman crater is of great interest to researchers. Its rim rises eight kilometers above its relatively flat floor.

The picture shows Zeeman’s southern rim to the left, with its pockmarked crater floor to the right. The crater the lander is targeting, Broguslawsky Crater, sits in the opposite hemisphere of Zeeman, slightly closer to the south pole but on the Moon’s near side.

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The inexplicable behavior of Martian dust devils

11:49 am

The inexpicable behavior of Martian dust devils
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates the puzzling inclination of Martian dust devils to strongly favor specific regions on the Martian surface, for reasons that at present no one can confidently explain.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a plethora of dust devil tracks, almost all of which have an east-west orientation. Moreover, the tracks seem uninfluenced by the surface topography, continuing on their path without deviation, even as they cross cliffs, craters, and mounds. The orientation tells us the direction of the prevailing winds, though I don’t know if those winds blow to the east or to the west.

What makes this image revealing is that a gathering of such dust devil tracks is seen so rarely in other MRO high resolution photographs. I look at a lot of MRO pictures, and though dust devil tracks are not rare, most images don’t show this many. Apparently, there are specific conditions on Mars that cause a lot of tracks to appear in specific locations, either because atmospheric conditions create a lot more dust devils, or the ground conditions allow the tracks to become more visible.
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Ball Aerospace purchased by BAE Systems

9:57 am

BAE Systems today announced it has purchased from Ball Corporation its aerospace division, Ball Aerospace, for $5.6 billion.

It appears that the Ball corporation wants to focus its business plan around its “circular aluminum packaging for global beverage and household brands,” rather than aerospace. This sale essentially concludes the company’s slow transition away from its long time space business, which began just prior to Sputnik in 1956. It is essentially out of that business now, and instead has returned entirely to its packaging roots from the late 1800s.

BAE meanwhile strengthens its focus on space, both in the commercial and defense markets, with the addition of the Ball Aerospace division, which has been in the space business for decades.

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The ups and downs of capitalism in space

9:44 am

Two stories today illustrate how allowing freedom and capitalism to rule in the development of America’s aerospace industry carries with it the potential for wonderful achievements as well as depressing failures.

First the potential failure. Despite having successfully flown several missions demonstrating its orbital tug and service module for cubesats, the company Momentus has been forced to lay off 30% of its staff because of dwindling cash reserves.

Momentus reported a record quarterly revenue of $1.7 million in the second quarter, the first time it reported revenues of more than $1 million in a quarter. However, the company reported a net loss of $18.8 million and ended the quarter with $21.6 million of cash and equivalents on hand.

The company is presently scrambling to find new sources of investment capital, as it does not expect its income to grow sufficiently in the next year to keep itself above water, even though it should successfully fly more flights of its Vigoride orbital tug as well as a new service module version.

Next we have the potential achievement: The financial status of the startup satellite company Terran Orbital appears healthy and strong, mostly because of a $2.6 billion contract to build 300 satellites for the wireless communications company Rivada Space Networks. The first $180 million payment under that contract is expected this year.

At the same time, there are storm clouds in the distance, as there remain unanswered questions about whether Rivada has the resources sufficient to fulfill the contract.

During Terran Orbital’s Aug. 15 earnings call, H.C. Wainwright & Co analyst Scott Buck said Rivada’s vagueness about its plans for financing the constellation has caused “investor hesitation around the contract.”

Terran Orbital has already a number of successes building satellites for others, with its most significant achievement the CAPSTONE lunar orbiter it built for NASA. If the Rivada contract falls through I suspect the company will still be able to garner plenty of customers to survive.

For Momentus the situation is more dire, especially because it already faces strong competition from a number of other orbital tug companies.

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Scientists: Neptune’s clouds appear to ebb and grow in conjunction with sunspot cycle

9:24 am

Graph showing correlation between Neptune's clouds and the sunspot cycle

Scientists have now discovered what appears to be a link between the coming and going of clouds on Neptune to the Sun’s 11-year-long sunspot cycle, despite Neptune receiving only 1/900th the sunlight of the Earth.

To monitor the evolution of Neptune’s appearance, Chavez and her team analyzed images taken from 1994 to 2022 using Keck Observatory’s second generation Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC2) paired with its adaptive optics system (since 2002), as well as observations from Lick Observatory (2018-2019) and the Hubble Space Telescope (since 1994). In recent years the Keck Observatory observations have been complemented by images taken as part of Keck Observatory’s Twilight Observing Program and by Hubble Space Telescope images taken as part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program.

The data revealed an intriguing pattern between changes in Neptune’s cloud cover and the solar cycle – the period when the Sun’s magnetic field flips every 11 years, causing levels of solar radiation to fluctuate. When the Sun emits more intense ultraviolet (UV) light, specifically the strong hydrogen Lyman-alpha emission, more clouds appear on Neptune about two years later. The team further found a positive correlation between the number of clouds and the ice giant’s brightness from the sunlight reflecting off it.

“These remarkable data give us the strongest evidence yet that Neptune’s cloud cover correlates with the Sun’s cycle,” said de Pater. “Our findings support the theory that the Sun’s UV rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.”

The graph to the right shows the correlation between the clouds and the sunspot cycle. The paper is available here.

This conclusion remains uncertain because of the overall sparseness of the data. Yet, it is intriguing, and also underlines the importance of the Sun on the Earth’s climate. If the solar cycle can impact Neptune’s climate so significantly from 2.8 billion miles away, it certainly must have a major impact on the Earth’s climate at only 100 million miles distance.

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Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander separates from its propulsion module; Luna-25 in lunar orbit

9:08 am


Click for interactive map.

The two probes aiming to land in the high southern latitudes of the Moon in the next week are now both in lunar orbit and preparing for their planned landings.

First India’s Chandrayaan-3: With its propulsion module having completed the job of getting Chandrayaan-3 from Earth to lunar orbit, the Vikram lander today separated from that module in preparation for firing its own engines on August 23, 2023 and landing on the Moon.

Vikram needs to make several orbital adjustments before that landing attempt.

Second, Russia’s Luna-25 probe entered lunar orbit yesterday, where it will spend the next few days making its own orbital adjustments before attempting its landing on August 21st.

Vikram carries a small rover, Pragyan. Luna-25 is only a lander, though it has a scoop and will do analysis of the lunar soil below it. Neither is landing “near the south pole”, as most news sources are saying. They are landing at latitudes comparable to landing in the Arctic on Earth, on the northern coast of Alaska. As such, neither will find out anything about the question of remnant ice in south pole’s permanently shadowed regions.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral

8:59 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit. its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 11:36 pm Eastern.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 10th and 11th flights, respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet deployed.

SpaceX has another launch scheduled only hours hence, at midnight (Pacific) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, aiming to put another 22 Starlink satellites in orbit using a first stage flying for its fifteenth time.

Until that second launch, the leaders at this moment in the 2023 launch race are as follows:

56 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

In successful launches, American private enterprise now leads China 64 to 35 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 64 to 57. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 56 to 57, but this will become a tie if the second launch occurs as planned.

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An avalanche in the West Virginia of Mars

11:53 am

An avalanche in the West Virginia of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I have cropped it to focus on this one hill, about 900 feet high (though the elevation data from MRO is somewhat uncertain at this resolution), because of that major landslide on its northern slopes. At some point in the past a major piece of the exposed bedrock at the top broke off and slide about halfway down the mountain, almost as a unit, settling on the alluvial fill that comprises the bottom half of the hill’s flanks.

The bedrock surrounding the peak is also of interest because of its gullies, all of which were created by downward flowing material. Was it ice? Water? Sand? Or maybe a combination of two or three? If water or ice was involved it was a very long time ago, as this location is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars. There is little known near-surface ice here.
» Read more

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SpaceX report on first Starship/Superheavy launch failure submitted to FAA

9:34 am

Though we don’t know exactly when this was done, SpaceX has submitted to the FAA its final report on its investigation into the launch failure during the first Starship/Superheavy test launch in April, and now awaits the FAA’s response.

Now comes the FAA’s review of SpaceX’s investigation, fulfilling the agency’s role as the regulator charged with ensuring public safety during commercial launch operations. “When a final mishap report is approved, it will identify the corrective actions SpaceX must make,” an FAA spokesperson told Ars. “Separately, SpaceX must modify its license to incorporate those actions before receiving authorization to launch again.

Do not expect that response to be fast, or accepting. I predict the FAA will demand a lot more investigation and changes from SpaceX, actions that will take time to implement and be approved. Furthermore, I fully expect the FAA to take at least two months to review the SpaceX report before it issues those demands. As I have been predicting since May, there will be no Superheavy/Starship launch this year.

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Astra scrambling to find investors as its cash reserves dwindle

9:27 am

Despite a major reorganization, including laying off a quarter of its workforce, Astra now appears to be scrambling to find new investors even as its available cash reserves shrink.

The company’s financial runway is diminishing even as the company finds new sources of capital, such as a loan announced Aug. 4 that will provide Astra with $10.8 million and plans announced in July to sell up to $65 million in Astra stock in an “at-the-market” transaction. The company forecasted an adjusted EBITDA loss of $25 million to $29 million in the third quarter, ending the quarter with $15 million to $20 million of cash and equivalents on hand.

One analyst on the call expressed frustration with those projections, asking Astra executives for the “upside” of the company’s plans. Kemp emphasized the backlog of orders for its thrusters, which Astra said Aug. 4 was valued at $77 million, as well as orders from the U.S. Space Force and the Defense Innovation Unit for the Rocket 4.

However, he suggested the company’s efforts to focus on thruster production were intended to buy time for Astra as the company looks for new investors. The company said Aug. 4 it was working with PJT Partners, an investment bank, to identify “potential strategic investments in the Astra Spacecraft Engine business” that would bolster its finances. “We are actively focused on finding investors in these two businesses,” he said, noting that the company’s launch and spacecraft propulsion business lines are distinct and “in different phases of their development.”

Essentially the company is approaching a make-or-break moment. What I think is likely to happen is it will either go bankrupt, or be purchased outright by a new big-money investor who will take over the company entirely, replacing its present management with new people.

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Russia considering flying Proton rockets after 2025

9:19 am

According to a story today in Russia’s state-run TASS news outlet, the Khrunichev design bureau that builds Russia’s Proton rocket is in negotiation with Kazahkstan to use all the remaining Proton rockets available, even if that requires additional launches after 2025, the date Roscosmos had previously announced as when all Proton launches will cease.

The Khrunichev Center (part of the state-run space corporation Roscosmos) is actively working on future cooperation with the Kazakh side, including with regard to the use of the Proton carrier rocket, the center’s CEO Alexey Varochko told TASS. “The Khrunichev Center is actively working on various scenarios of mutually beneficial cooperation with the Kazakh side, including those involving the Proton carrier rocket,” Varochko said.

According to the official, the possibility of using Protons after 2025 may be considered only if both Russia and Kazakhstan give their consent.

It sounds like Khrunichev has some spare Protons, and wants to make some money from them, even if Roscosmos has forbid it. It also appears that there is political infighting within Roscosmos about the retirement of Proton and resulting the loss of government jobs at Khrunichev.

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Chandrayaan-3 reaches final lunar orbit for landing

9:12 am


Click for interactive map.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft completed its final lunar orbital engine burn today, placing it in the correct orbit to release the lander Vikram, carrying the Pragyan rover.

The release is scheduled for tomorrow, with the landing targeting August 23, 2023. This will be India’s second attempt to softland an unmanned probe on the Moon. The Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2 failed in 2019 during its final engine burn above the surface, crashing thereafter. Engineers at India’s space agency ISRO spent several years upgrading that lander to better insure this new attempt would succeed.

The lander has been given more ability to manoeuvre during the descent, the mission allows for a bigger 4 km x 2.4 km area for landing, more sensors have been added, one of the thrusters has been removed, and the legs of the lander have been made sturdier to allow for landing even at slightly higher velocity. More solar panels have also been added to ensure that the mission can go on even if the lander does not face the sun. More tests to see the capability of the lander in different situations were carried out to make Chandrayaan-3 more resilient.

Both Vikram and Russia’s Luna-25 lander, scheduled for touchdown on August 21, will land in the high southern latitudes of the Moon, at about 70 degrees. They are not going to the Moon’s south pole, as many news reports claim.

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The impact that almost cracked Mars open

12:40 pm

An irregular pit chain 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 June 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label an “irregular pit chain,” made up of a series of depressions scattered along a line that extends more than sixty miles to the northeast and to the southwest, beyond the edges of this high resolution close-up.

The chain likely indicates the existence of a fault line, or crack that created a void underground in which surface material is sinking. What makes this crack or fault line significant is how it and other similar fissures or cracks map across the Martian surface, extending for thousands of miles far beyond this particular pit chain and covering almost half the planet. In aggregate they imply the occurrence of past geological events so stupendous they are difficult to comprehend.
» Read more

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Ingenuity’s 55th flight completed

9:57 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The Ingenuity engineering team today updated the helicopter’s flight log, showing that the 55th flight occurred on August 12, 2023, one day later than originally planned, and flew 881 feet for 143 seconds, 61 feet and 9 seconds longer than planned.

The overview map above shows the present locations of both Perseverance and Ingenuity. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s new position, while the blue dot marks where Perseverance presently sits in Jezero Crater. Based on this map, the main goal of the flight was apparently to fly Ingenuity over a route that Perseverance will likely use to return to its planned route, as indicated by the red dotted line.

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Webb confirms galaxy as one of the earliest known in the universe

9:27 am

The uncertainty of science: Using the spectroscopic instrument on the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have confirmed that one of the first galaxies found by Webb, dubbed Maisie’s Galaxy after the daughter of one scientist, is one of the earliest known in the universe, existing only 390 million years after when cosmologies say the Big Bang happened.

The data also showed that another one of these early galaxies spotted by Webb did not exist 250 million years after the Big Bang, but one billion years after, a date that better fits the theories about the early universe, based on the nature of this galaxy.

It turns out that hot gas in CEERS-93316 was emitting so much light in a few narrow frequency bands associated with oxygen and hydrogen that it made the galaxy appear much bluer than it really was. That blue cast mimicked the signature Finkelstein and others expected to see in very early galaxies. This is due to a quirk of the photometric method that happens only for objects with redshifts of about 4.9. Finkelstein says this was a case of bad luck. “This was a kind of weird case,” Finkelstein said. “Of the many tens of high redshift candidates that have been observed spectroscopically, this is the only instance of the true redshift being much less than our initial guess.”

Not only does this galaxy appear unnaturally blue, it also is much brighter than our current models predict for galaxies that formed so early in the universe. “It would have been really challenging to explain how the universe could create such a massive galaxy so soon,” Finkelstein said. “So, I think this was probably always the most likely outcome, because it was so extreme, so bright, at such an apparent high redshift.”

This science team is presently using Webb’s spectroscope to study ten early galaxies in order to better determine their age. Expect more results momentarily.

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Intuitive Machines sets mid-November launch date for its Nova-C lunar lander

9:16 am


Click for interactive map.

Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that the launch of its lunar lander, Nova-C, is now targeting a November 15-20, 2023 window, lifting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The yellow dot on the map to the right indicates the landing site, Malapert A, in the southern latitudes of the Moon. The white cross indicates the south pole.

The lander had originally planned to launch in 2021, but delays in construction pushed the launch back two years. A second company, Astrobotics, has its own lander, Peregrine, that though also delayed two years, has been ready to launch since early this year. It won’t launch until the end of this year at the earliest, however, due to delays in readying its rocket, ULA’s Vulcan on its first flight.

Both India’s Chandrayaan-3 and Russia’s Luna-3 are right now on their way to the Moon, with each planning a landing next week.

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Residual ice on the shaded north-facing slope of northern Martian crater

11:32 am

Residual ice 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 April 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In the headline I am speculating a bit when I call that pile of material bunched up against the interior slope of this unnamed 18-mile-wide crater residual ice. No data is available to me that proves that assumption, but the look, the location, and the general previous data from Mars all tell me that this is what it is.

First, the location within the crater. Everyone who has lived in the northern latitudes where snow falls knows that snow will remain in the shaded slopes that face north — where less direct sunlight falls — much longer than in places where there is more sunlight. You can sometimes even find this residual snow as late as June and July in some such spots.

This phenomenon will be no different on Mars. In those alcoves this material, which looks exactly like glacial features found in many other places in the mid-latitudes of Mars (such as inside the small half-mile-wide crater in the lower left), is well protected, so that even when the rest of the ice sublimated away within the crater it remained. The cliff wall rises five hundred feet to the south, blocking sunlight so that for most of the year little directly sunlight touches this surface.
» Read more

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China makes available to the international community Chang’e-5’s lunar samples

9:52 am

China on August 2, 2023 announced that it is now allowing scientists from all nations to apply for access to the lunar samples brought back to Earth by its 2020 Chang’e-5 mission to the Moon.

The announcement outlined very specific rules for the loan of the samples, including requirements that if any part of a sample needs to be destroyed to study it that action be videotaped in detail. Samples loaned for research are for one year periods only, though this can be extended.

The rules also allow two month loans for the use of samples in public display, such as at a museum.

In both cases China will closely supervise the research and retain the right to recall the samples at any time if it doesn’t approve of what the borrower is doing.

U.S. law forbids our government officials or agencies from working with China, so don’t expect NASA or its scientists to apply for these samples. However, the law doesn’t apply to independent scientists, though serious state department regulations would apply. I therefore doubt many American scientists will apply for any samples. It would carry too many risks to their other research.

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Scientist creates longest time-lapse movie of exoplanet circling its star

9:37 am

A scientist at Northwestern University has used seventeen years of data to create the longest time-lapse movie yet of an exoplanet circling its star, Beta Pictoris, which is located 63 light years away.

Constructed from real data, the footage shows Beta Pictoris b — a planet 12 times the mass of Jupiter — sailing around its star in a tilted orbit. The time-lapse video condenses 17 years of footage (collected between 2003 and 2020) into 10 seconds. Within those seconds, viewers can watch the planet make about 75% of one full orbit.

“We need another six years of data before we can see one whole orbit,” said Northwestern astrophysicist Jason Wang, who led the work. “We’re almost there. Patience is key.”

I have embedded the video below. Because the star in the center is so bright, its light is blocked out, so that this part of the planet’s orbit is represented by the “X” in the video.
» Read more

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Chandrayaan-3 completes next-to-last orbital maneuver before releasing Vikram lander

9:31 am


Click for interactive map.

According to India’s ISRO space agency, its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has successfully completed the next-to-last orbital maneuver burn before releasing Vikram lander, lowering the spacecraft’s orbit around the Moon to 150 by 177 kilometers.

Today’s maneuver can be considered the second last vital maneuver. The one that takes place on August 16, will set the course for the Vikram lander.

Based on how today’s and August 16’s manoeuvres are executed, ISRO will get to decide where the Vikram lander touches down, among three predesignated spots on the Moon’s surface.

It had been my understanding that the landing zone was as indicated by the red dot on the map to the right. It might be instead that was only one of three potential landing sites. If so, I will update the map when more data is released.

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Axiom signs deal with Poland and ESA to send Polish astronaut to Axiom’s future space station

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom last week signed an agreement jointly with Poland and the European Space Agency (ESA) to send Polish astronaut to Axiom’s space station, expected to launch sometime in 2026.

This was the second European astronaut Axiom has signed a deal to fly to space, with the ESA in both cases providing support.

In April 2023, Axiom Space and the Swedish National Space Agency signed a letter of intent to send an ESA astronaut to the ISS. Through this agreement, the upcoming Axiom Space mission, Ax-3 now targeting launch in January 2024, will be the first commercial mission to the ISS to include an ESA project astronaut.

The date for the flight of the Polish astronaut was not announced. Nor is it clear whether this astronaut will fly to Axiom’s first module, attached to ISS, or wait until Axiom’s completes its station and separates from ISS entirely.

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China’s solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches five smallsats

9:14 am

China yesterday launched five smallsats using its solid fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket, lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the south of China.

It was the second launch from Xichang yesterday. Unlike the Long March 3B, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuels, the Kuaizhou-1A uses solid fuels in its lower three stages (the fourth in orbit is liquid-fueled), which are not as toxic but still somewhat unhealthy. As with the earlier launch, however, those lower stages crashed somewhere in China. No word whether they landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

55 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 63 to 35, and the entire world combined 63 to 57. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world (excluding American companies) 55 to 57.

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China’s Long March 3B launches radar satellite

9:03 am

China's spaceports
China’s spaceports

China early today used its Long March 3B two-stage rocket (plus four strap-on boosters) to put a radar satellite into geosynchronous orbit, lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southern interior China.

The orbit required the rocket to travel almost due east, which means the first stage and all four boosters crashed over China’s eastern heavily populated provinces, as shown on the map to the right. All use toxic hypergolic fuels. No word if the stages landed on any cities, as China’s communist government does without any qualms.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

55 SpaceX
34 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 63 to 34, and the entire world combined 63 to 56. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world (excluding American companies) 55 to 56.

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The flat and mostly featureless flood lava plains of Mars

2:39 pm

The flat and mostly featureless lava plains 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 July 3, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed a “terrain sample” by the camera team, it was likely taken not as part of any scientist’s specific research program but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When the camera team needs to do this they try to pick something of interest that is below during that gap.

In this case MRO was over the vast flood lava plains of Mars where for many hundreds of miles the only features are small variations produced from different overlapping lava flood events. The layers of lava in this region in fact appear so thick that there are relatively few places where the older topography still sticks up through the lava. In the case of this picture, the ridges might indicate such buried topography, but they also might simply be dikes of lava, pushed up through fissures from underground.
» Read more

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Scientists: Saturn has rainstorms of ammonia lasting hundreds of years

11:31 am

Using radio telescope data of Saturn scientists now believe that the big storm first detected in 2011 produced rainstorms of ammonia which are expected to last hundreds of years.

As reported in the new study, de Pater, Li and UC Berkeley graduate student Chris Moeckel found something surprising in the radio emissions from the planet: anomalies in the concentration of ammonia gas in the atmosphere, which they connected to the past occurrences of megastorms in the planet’s northern hemisphere.

According to the team, the concentration of ammonia is lower at midaltitudes, just below the uppermost ammonia-ice cloud layer, but has become enriched at lower altitudes, 100 to 200 kilometers deeper in the atmosphere. They believe that the ammonia is being transported from the upper to the lower atmosphere via the processes of precipitation and reevaporation. What’s more, that effect can last for hundreds of years. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Saturn has an ammonia cycle similar to the water cycle on Earth.

Need I add that this study carries great uncertainties, and that the amount of data about Saturn’s interior and atmosphere is sparse, at best?

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Perseverance videotapes Ingenuity’s 54th flight, a short hop up and down

9:54 am

Ingenuity in flight on August 3, 2023

As I predicted last week, the Perseverance science team have successfully filmed the 54th flight of Ingenuity on August 3, 2023, using the high resolution cameras on masts on top of the Mars rover.

I have embedded that movie below. The image to the right is a screen capture from that movie, when the helicopter was hovering at sixteen feet elevation. Since Perseverance was about 200 feet away to the northeast, the horizon line in the background is the southwest rim of Jezero crater, about ten miles away, with the intervening hills about five miles closer.

The flight was a simple hop, up and down, to verify Ingenuity’s systems after its previous flight had ended prematurely.

The helicopter’s 55th flight was scheduled to occur yesterday, traveling 820 feet for 134 seconds, but so far there is no word on whether it happened as planned.
» Read more

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India approves new spaceport for private launches of SSLV rocket

9:29 am

map of India's two spaceports
India’s two spaceports

The Modi government in India has now approved the use of its new spaceport in Kulasekarapattinam by private operators, including the private operator who wins control of the SSLV rocket that was developed by ISRO, India’s space agency.

On the new launch pad that ISRO is building at Kulasekarapattinam in Thoothukudi district along the coast in Tamil Nadu, SIRO Chairman S Somanath said that nearly 99 per cent of the 2,000 acres has been transferred to ISRO by the Tamil Nadu government. “It takes at least two years to become fully functional after the commencement of the construction work. However, we will be able to conduct some sub-orbital launches there,” he added.

In December about 80% of that land had been purchased, so the government is now close to owning everything it needs.

Though the government is accepting bids from private companies to operate SSLV, it is not clear if that will be an exclusive right, or whether ISRO will continue to do its own launches. Either way, this new spaceport is being designed to enable private operators to launch from it.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites

10:27 pm

In what is turning into routine clockwork, SpaceX tonight completed its fourth launch in only the first ten days of August, placing 22 Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their tenth and eleventh flights respectively. At the time of posting the satellites themselves had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

55 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 63 to 33, and the entire world combined 63 to 55. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the entire world (excluding American companies) 55 to 55.

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Russia launches Luna-25 to the Moon

5:20 pm


Click for interactive map.

After almost two decades of development, Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch Luna-25, its first lander to the Moon since the 1970s.

The link is cued to the live stream, just prior to launch. It will take several days to get to the Moon and enter orbit, make some orbital adjustments, then land in Boguslawsky crater, as shown on the map to the right. It is likely its landing will occur before India’s Chandrayaan-3 lands on August 23rd but not certain, depending on the adjustments needed in lunar orbit. Both could even land on the same day.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

54 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 62 to 33, and the entire world combined 62 to 55, while SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world (excluding American companies) 54 to 55.

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The icy mountains close to where SpaceX hopes to land Starship on Mars

11:26 am

The icy mountains near Starship's landing site on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled as showing “flow features” by the scientists, it gives us a nice example of many of the different types of glacial and near-surface ice features seen routinely in the Martian latitudes above 30 degrees, especially in the northern hemisphere.

First there is the apron around the mound. Its layering suggests the many cycles that Mars’ climate has undergone as its rotational tilt swung back and forth from as low as 11 to as much as 60 degrees (it is presently at 25 degrees).

The mound, with those two depressions at its peak, suggests the possibility that it is some form of ice/mud volcano, similar to the suspected ice/mud volcanoes routinely seen in the northern lowland plains of Utopia Basin.
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