Tag: spaceflight

Musk: Starlink “has achieved breakeven cash flow”

9:45 am

In a tweet yesterday, Elon Musk revealed that Starlink “has achieved breakeven cash flow,” adding that “Starlink is also now a majority of all active satellites and will have launched a a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by next year.”

This means that SpaceX achieved this goal using only its Falcon 9 rocket. Originally the company thought it had to have Starship to get enough satellites into orbit to operate the constellation. Because of delays in developing Starship (right now mostly caused by red tape in the federal government), the company ramped up the launch pace using just Falcon 9, and apparently got the job done.

The profits from Starlink can now be used to further develop Starship and Superheavy, assuming the federal government ever gets out of the way.

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Norway inaugurates its Andoya spaceport

9:39 am

Map of Norway showing Andoya

Norway yesterday announced the opening its new Andoya spaceport in the far north of the country, where it hopes will become a hub for the emerging new commercial launch industry.

The location is indicated by the map to the right, in the Arctic and farther north than any other planned spaceport, making it excellent for satellites going into polar orbit.

The launch base, which eventually will have several launch pads, was built by Norwegian public company Andoya Space, on a site which until now has only been used for firing suborbital scientific experiment rockets.

Spectrum, a two-stage craft capable of carrying up to one tonne and developed by the German start-up Isar Aerospace, is scheduled to be the first rocket to be launched from island which is located near the idyllic Lofoten archipelago.

If Norway’s government works better than Great Britain’s in issuing launch permits, this spaceport will steal all business from the UK’s own two spaceports being built in Scotland.

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Iceland signs Artemis Accords

9:29 am

Though no press announcement was ever released, it appears that Iceland signed the Artemis Accords sometime in October, according to small mention in the the press release announcing the signing of the Netherlands.

The mention was so small I missed it. In fact, so apparently did NASA, as Iceland did not issue its own press release. The U.S. likely found out about the signing through private diplomatic communications.

This brings the total number of nations now part of this American space alliance to thirty-one, as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

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Lucy discovers second small asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh

9:15 am

Dinkinesh as seen by Lucy

During its November 1, 2023 fly-by of the asteroid Dinkinesh the asteroid probe Lucy surprisingly discovered that the asteroid was actually a binary, with a second smaller asteroid orbiting it.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by Lucy’s camera within a minute of the probe’s closest approach of 270 miles. The second asteroid is partly blocked by Dinkinesh.

In the weeks prior to the spacecraft’s encounter with Dinkinesh, the Lucy team had wondered if Dinkinesh might be a binary system, given how Lucy’s instruments were seeing the asteroid’s brightness changing with time. The first images from the encounter removed all doubt. Dinkinesh is a close binary. From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the larger body is approximately 0.5 miles (790 m) at its widest, while the smaller is about 0.15 miles (220 m) in size.

The nature of both asteroids appears to lie between a rubble pile (like Bennu) or a solid smooth rock (like Eros), suggesting we are now beginning to see aspects of the overall evolution of asteroids over time.

So far only a few images from this fly-by have been released. It will take a week for the rest of the data from the fly-by to beamed back to Earth. However, these images prove that the prime purpose of this fly-by was successful, proving that Lucy is operating as planned, able to point, manuever, and obtain its data during such a fly-by. When it arrives in the Trojan asteroids in 2027 it will be able to do its prime mission.

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During landing Shenzhou’s single parachute appeared damaged

10:01 am

A closer look at imagery during the descent by parachute of China’s manned Shenzhou capsule, bringing three astronauts back from Tiangong-3 after a five month mission on October 31, 2023, shows that the capsule’s single parachute had a ripped hole.

In some of the footage, a patch of blue sky can be seen through the red-and-white-banded parachute. Inside the capsule were Shenzhou 16 mission commander Jing Haipeng and crewmates Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao — the latter pair returning to Earth after their first mission to space.

Such a sizable hole, which was visible before a white cloud of vented propellant left the Shenzhou capsule, has not been reported during earlier missions. It did not, however, seem to affect operations.

The landing however was very rough, with the capsule tumbling several times after hitting the ground.

Considering that China presently as three astronauts on Tiangong-3 that have to come home in their own Shenzhou capsule, using this same parachute system, finding out what happened seems imperative. Developing its next generation larger capsule, which will return using three parachutes, also appears essential.

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Senate passes bill that gives NASA and Commerce responsibility for removing space junk

9:27 am

The Senate on October 31, 2023 passed a bill that requires NASA to develop several space junk removal projects while giving the Commerce department the responsibility of identifying what space junk needs to be removed.

The central part of the bill would direct NASA to establish an active debris removal program. Tnat includes creating “a demonstration project to make competitive awards for the research, development, and demonstration of technologies leading to the remediation of selected orbital debris.” It would also require NASA to enter into a partnership to fly a demonstration mission to remove debris.

The debris that could be removed by those demonstrations would come from a list developed by the Department of Commerce to identify debris “to improve the safety and sustainability of orbiting satellites and on-orbit activities.” The Department would also lead work on best practices for space traffic coordination. The bill directs the National Space Council to lead an update of the federal government’s Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices.

Though unstated, this bill appears to be a direct slap at the FCC’s effort under the Biden administration to claim the power to regulate space junk, despite its lack of statutory authority to do so. In fact, the Senate underlined that slap in the face by also passing a bill that demanded the FCC streamline its regulatory overreach rather than expand it.

Neither bill is law yet, and it is unclear whether the House will agree to either. The Senate has sent the space junk bill to the House previously without passage.

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A seasonal map of the cloudy parts of Mars

9:10 am

Seasonal map of the cloudy parts of Mars
Click for original image.

Though Mars’ very thin atmosphere (1/thousandth that of Earth) is generally clear, it does have clouds that come and go. A project begun in 2022 using citizen scientists to identify these clouds and the seasons they appear the most, dubbed Cloudspotting on Mars, has now published its first paper, available here.

The graph to the left, Figure 9 in the paper, shows two seasonal Mars maps, one indicating the daytime seasonal frequency of clouds and the other their nightime frequency. From the paper:

The seasonal evolution of all clouds as a function of latitude for both daytime and nighttime are shown in Fig. 9. During the clear season until [mid-summer in the northern hemisphere] … there are several regions where clouds occur frequently: in the equatorial region (annotated as 1), at mid-latitudes (2), in the southern polar region (3), and to a lesser extent in the northern polar region [at the start of summer]. From [late fall to mid-autumn in the north], daytime clouds occur primarily at mid-latitudes, but are observed at nearly all latitudes between 70°S and 60°N (4). At night, there is one broad population from 30°S to 30°N (clouds are more frequent in the equatorial region at night), but [in autumn], clouds occur frequently between 30°N and 50°N as well. [In mid-spring] the number of observed nighttime clouds increases in the southern hemisphere, especially near 50°S. There is a strong decrease in the number of peaks just before [the late northern autumn and the late southern sping] at nearly all latitudes except around 50°S and 20°N at night. [Once northern winter arrives], clouds are observed between about 60°S and 60°N as well as both polar regions, although nighttime clouds between 0°N and 30°N occur relatively less frequently.

The low-latitude clouds during the clear season (1), which are observed more frequently at night, occur at high altitudes, 65–80 km during the day and 55–70 km at night; this is the aphelion equatorial mesospheric cloud population studied in depth by Slipski et al. (2022) and in which previous observations have spectrally confirmed CO2-ice.

Martian seasons

The bracketed words indicating seasons above replace the longitudal numbers the scientists use to indicate the seasons, and are used on these two graphs. The figure to the right shows what the longitude numbers represent in the graphs’ X-axis.

The project continues if any of my readers want to join in.

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Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA new launch contracts worth $2.5 billion

8:37 am

Space Force yesterday awarded both SpaceX and ULA new launch contracts worth $2.5 billion and totaling 21 launches over the next two to three years.

The final batch of assignments were split almost evenly, according to Col. Doug Pentecost, the deputy program executive officer of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. ULA received 11 missions, valued at $1.3 billion, and SpaceX received 10 missions, valued at $1.23 billion.

Space Systems Command said the missions are scheduled to launch over the next two to three years. ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will use its soon-to-debut Vulcan rocket for the 11 missions, while SpaceX will fly seven missions with its Falcon 9 rocket and three missions with its Falcon Heavy rocket.

For SpaceX this award is no surprise. The ULA contract is more puzzling. Supposedly the Space Force was not going to award any launch contracts for ULA’s new Vulcan rocket until it successfully launched twice and was certified by the military as operational. Yet, it has now awarded ULA this contract for Vulcan launches. Has the military awarded the contract on a contingency basis? What happens if Vulcan has a failure on one of its first two launches?

The Space Force’s present arrangement limits bidding for launches to just these two companies. If Vulcan fails will it open bidding to other companies, or will it transfer launches to SpaceX?

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The Netherlands signs Artemis Accords

8:26 am

Confirming what it announced in early October, the Netherlands yesterday officially signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the thirtieth nations to join.

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

We now have the rough outline of the national alliances that will compete with each other in space. On one hand are the nations above, generally from the west with a larger focus on private enterprise and ownership. On the other hand are the authoritarian nations, led by China and Russia with a few failed communist nations like Venezuela.

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Sunspot update: October activity drops almost to predicted levels

3:55 pm

NOAA today posted its updated monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I do every month, I have posted this graph below, with several additional details to provide some larger context.

In October the sunspot count dropped so much from the activity in September that the total count was for the first time since the middle of 2021 actually very close to the predicted numbers first put forth by NOAA’s solar science panel in April 2020.

» Read more

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Lucy completes fly-by of main belt asteroid Dinkinesh

3:11 pm

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

The Lucy science team has confirmed that the spacecraft has successfully completed its fly-by of the asteroid Dinkinesh (the white dot in the lower left of the main asteroid belt in the graphic to the right) and is in good health.

Based on the information received, the team has determined that the spacecraft is in good health and the team has commanded the spacecraft to start downlinking the data collected during the encounter. It will take up to a week for all the data collected during the encounter to be downlinked to Earth.

Though the images and data of Dinkinesh obtained during this fly-by have science value, the real purpose of the fly-by was to test the operations of Lucy for when it reaches the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit, as shown by the graphic. The spacecraft will now do a flyby of Earth in 2025 to slingshot it to the orbit of Jupiter, where it will do its main work exploring the Trojan asteroids there. On the way it will fly past a second main belt asteroid, dubbed Donaldjohanson.

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A Martian splash crater in the northern lowland plains

10:12 am

A Martian splash crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time (necessary when there is no real space news to report)! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “steep crater walls.”

And the interior slopes of this 5-mile-wide unnamed crater are steep, about 600 feet high and descending at a grade of 10 to 13 degrees, getting steeper as you go down. In fact, the floor of the crater itself continues that slope downward to the west until it reaches the base of its western interior wall. For some reason the glacial material within it is piled up higher on its eastern end.

The dark streaks on the crater interior walls are either slope streaks or recurring slope lineae, with the former appearing somewhat randomly and the latter seasonal in nature. Both remain unexplained unique phenomenons of Mars. This new picture was likely a follow-up of a January 2014 MRO picture to see if anything had changed in the past decade.

To my eye it is difficult to detect any changes, but I am not looking at the highest resolution version of the picture. The lack of changes suggests the streaks are seasonal lineae, as both images were taken in the northern spring and the streaks in both appear much the same.
» Read more

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China successfully launches classified satellite

10:27 pm

China tonight (November 1, 2023 in China) successfully launched a classified satellite, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the north part of the country.

No video of the launch was released. Nor were any pictures. In addition, no information was released describing where the rocket’s first and second stages crashed. Both use kerosene and oxygen, so neither is as toxic as China’s other older rockets using hypergolic fuels, but China also does not make any apparent effort to control these crash landings.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

78 SpaceX
49 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 90 to 49 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 90 to 78. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 78 to 78.

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Scour pits of volcanic Martian ash

3:12 pm

Scour pits in volcanic ash
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team describes this as “clusters of scour pits,” which means the pits here were formed by the prevailing winds, which according to a global analysis of dunes on Mars, is probably blowing from the west to the east at this location.

This image only covers a small section of these scour pits. The full field extends about 20 by 18 miles across, and appears to be the southeastern flank of a mile-high dome. The scour marks could therefore also be evidence of some sagging of this material downhill along that flank.

It is also possible that the flow of the prevailing winds across this southeastern downhill slope is causing the pit formation. Unlike this flank, the rest of this dome is relatively smooth.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 64th flight on Mars

9:49 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity's view just before landing
Click for original image.

In a pattern that is beginning to be almost routine, on October 27, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity completed its 64th flight on Mars, flying 1,348 feet at a speed of 13 mph for 139 seconds at an altitude of 39 feet.

As with most of its recent flights, the distance and time was slightly longer than the flight plan, likely because the helicopter took extra time finding a good landing spot.

On the overview map above, the green line marks the flight path, and the green dot the helicopter’s present position. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the area covered by the color image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here. This image was taken by Ingenuity just a few seconds before landing, and looks across the floor of Neretva Vallis, where Perseverance will soon be traveling.

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Scientists detect salts and carbon-based molecules on Ganymede

8:47 am

Ganymede as seen by Juno
A close-up image taken during the June 7, 2021
Juno fly-by of Ganymede Click for original image.

Using data obtained during a close fly-by of Ganymede by Juno in June 2021, scientists have detected evidence of salts and organic carbon-based molecules.

On June 7, 2021, Juno flew over Ganymede at a minimum altitude of 650 miles (1,046 kilometers). Shortly after the time of closest approach, the JIRAM instrument acquired infrared images and infrared spectra (essentially the chemical fingerprints of materials, based on how they reflect light) of the moon’s surface. Built by the Italian Space Agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, JIRAM was designed to capture the infrared light (invisible to the naked eye) that emerges from deep inside Jupiter, probing the weather layer down to 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below the gas giant’s cloud tops. But the instrument has also been used to offer insights into the terrain of moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (known collectively as the Galilean moons for their discoverer, Galileo).

The JIRAM data of Ganymede obtained during the flyby achieved an unprecedented spatial resolution for infrared spectroscopy – better than 0.62 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel. With it, Juno scientists were able to detect and analyze the unique spectral features of non-water-ice materials, including hydrated sodium chloride, ammonium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, and possibly aliphatic aldehydes.

The data indicated that the salts and organics were most concentrated in Ganymede’s equatorial regions, which are less impacted by Jupiter’s strong magnetic field. The scientists think these materials originally came from the brine of an underground ocean that somehow reached the surface, though this hypothesis remains unconfirmed.

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Chinese crew completes five-month mission on Tiangong-3 after return to Earth

8:32 am

The new colonial movement: A three-man Chinese crew successfully landed today in north China in their Shenzhou capsule, completing a five-month mission on the Tiangong-3 space station.

The full mission length was 154 days. China claims that one of the astronauts was a civilian, but that really means nothing considering the security required to participate in these missions.

The crew that has taken over on Tiangong-3 are expected to do a mission of comparable length, probably pushing the length to six-months.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

4:30 pm

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

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

78 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China 90 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 90 to 77. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 78 to 77.

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Chandra X-rays a giant hand in space

3:54 pm

A cosmic hand
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, with data from the orbiting IXPE producing the lines that indicate the orientation of the magnetic field lines.

The image was part of research studying what the scientists call Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe).

[E]arly-on when the new-born pulsar is still deep in its parent supernova remnant, or at late times after it has escaped to the relatively uniform interstellar medium, the pulsar wind is often uniform around the pulsar spin or velocity axis. In projection on the sky such structures have bilateral symmetry, that is, the two halves mirror each other. This makes them look (vaguely) like animals. This has led to many PWNe collecting animal monikers (‘The Mouse’, ‘The Dragonfly’, ‘The Rabbit’ – we are guilty of some of these…).

In between these early and late phases, the story is often more complex and the PWN interaction with the supernova shock wave leads to complicated morphologies. One of the prime examples is the PWN in the supernova remnant RCW 89 (also known as MSH 15-5(2)). Here the complex interactions form the PWN into the `Cosmic Hand’. Wanting to map the magnetic fields which structure this hand, the IXPE team took a long hard stare at MSH 15-5(2) and its central pulsar.

The scientists admit that the match between IXPE’s data and the structure of the hand is not really a surprise, but confirming the match was necessary if they are ever going to figure out the fundamental laws that govern magnetic fields, laws that presently are not well understood, at all.

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A spiral galaxy giving birth to a lot of stars

10:01 am

A spiral galaxy giving birth to a lot of stars
Click for original image.

Time for another cool galaxy image! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and shows what some informally refer to as the “‘Spanish Dancer Galaxy’ because the “vivid and dramatic swirling lines of its spiral arms … evoke the shapes and colours of a dancer’s moving form. ”

Though this galaxy’s two main arms cause it to resemble a barred galaxy, it lacks a central bar, suggesting it is young. The numerous reddish and pink regions in the arms, all of which are thought to be star-forming regions, also suggest the galaxy is young, still giving birth to many stars.

It is located about 60 million light years away, and is part of what scientists label the Doradus galaxy group, which contains less than a hundred galaxies. In comparison, a galaxy cluster is much larger, containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies.

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Two mouse embryos successfully grown on ISS

9:41 am

Mouse embryos from experiment
Taken from figure 2 of the paper

In a paper just published, scientists reveal that in 2021 they successfully grew two mouse embryos in weightlessness on ISS, suggesting that “perhaps mammalian space reproduction is possible, although it may be somewhat affected,” as they note in the conclusion of their paper [pdf].

From the papers abstract:

The embryos cultured under microgravity conditions developed into blastocysts with normal cell numbers, ICM, trophectoderm, and gene expression profiles similar to those cultured under artificial-1 g control on the International Space Station and ground-1 g control, which clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect on the blastocyst formation and initial differentiation of mammalian embryos.

The images to the right come from the paper’s second figure, and compare the blastocysts from a ground control (top), an 1g artificial sample on ISS (middle), and the weightless result (bottom).

The experiment has many uncertainties, with the low number of embryos tested the most important. Quoting the paper’s conclusion again, the possibilities of refining this experiment for better results are great:

Unfortunately, the number of blastocysts obtained from the ISS experiment was not abundant; and we have not been able to confirm the impact on offspring because we have not produced offspring from embryos developed in space. We believe that the ETC [the experiment itself] will allow blastocysts to be frozen on the ISS if a cryoprotectant is used in place of PFA [a solution of formaldehyde]. Then, the frozen blastocysts could be brought back to Earth for transfer to a female recipient, and the viability of the blastocysts could be evaluated. Moreover, we could design a device to launch frozen oocytes and spermatozoa to the ISS, where in vitro fertilization experiments could be performed in microgravity. The use of this approach would be cheaper. Furthermore, the study of mammalian reproduction in space is essential to start the space age, making it necessary to study and clarify the effect of space environment before the ISS is no longer operational.

Despite the uncertainties, these results are significant. They suggest that human reproduction in zero gravity is possible, which also suggests it will be even more possible in lower gravity environments like the Moon or Mars.

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An infrared view of the Crab Nebula by Webb

9:14 am

Webb's image of the Crabb compared to Hubble's
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope astronomers have taken the first detailed infrared image of the Crab Nebula, the remnant from a supernova that occurred in 1054 AD.

The two pictures on the right compare Webb’s false color infrared view with a natural light Hubble image in optical wavelengths, taken in 2005. From the press release:

The supernova remnant is comprised of several different components, including doubly ionized sulfur (represented in red-orange), ionized iron (blue), dust (yellow-white and green), and synchrotron emission (white). In this image, colors were assigned to different filters from Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI: blue (F162M), light blue (F480M), cyan (F560W), green (F1130W), orange (F1800W), and red (F2100W).

In comparing the images, it appears the scientists chose colors for the Webb image to more or less match those of Hubble’s natural color picture. However, as the press release notes:

Additional aspects of the inner workings of the Crab Nebula become more prominent and are seen in greater detail in the infrared light captured by Webb. In particular, Webb highlights what is known as synchrotron radiation: emission produced from charged particles, like electrons, moving around magnetic field lines at relativistic speeds. The radiation appears here as milky smoke-like material throughout the majority of the Crab Nebula’s interior.

This feature is a product of the nebula’s pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. The pulsar’s strong magnetic field accelerates particles to extremely high speeds and causes them to emit radiation as they wind around magnetic field lines. Though emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, the synchrotron radiation is seen in unprecedented detail with Webb’s NIRCam instrument.

The release also notes this remarkable but somewhat unfortunate fact:

Scientists will have newer Hubble data to review within the next year or so from the telescope’s reimaging of the supernova remnant. This will mark Hubble’s first look at emission lines from the Crab Nebula in over 20 years, and will enable astronomers to more accurately compare Webb and Hubble’s findings.

In 2005 repeated Hubble images of the Crab revealed that its filaments and radiation were stormy, with constant activity. The scientists actually produced a movie of those changes. It was expected that new images would be taken at regular intervals to track that activity. Apparently it was not, either because no scientist was interested or the committee that assigns time on Hubble decided this wasn’t important enough reseach.

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SpaceX successfully launches another 22 Starlink satellites

9:27 am

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

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

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

77 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

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

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

10:04 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

1:51 pm

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

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

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

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

10:38 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10:32 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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No launch of Starship/Superheavy until February?

10:15 am

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

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

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

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

If FWS does take the full time period, no launch can occur before February. Nor should anyone naively believe its statement that it does not expect to take the full amount of time. For example, SpaceX completed installation of its upgraded Starship/Superheavy launch system, including the water deluge equipment at its base, in early August. Why did Fish and Wildlife wait till now, almost three months later, to begin its review?
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Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket launches military satellite

9:40 am

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

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

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

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