Tag: spaceflight

Perseverance looks ahead, beyond Jezero Crater

11:13 am

Perseverance looks ahead, beyond Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, enhanced and annotated to post here, was taken on October 21, 2023 by one of the navigation cameras on the Mars rover Perseverance. As shown on the overview map to the right, it looks to the west, at the gap in the rim of Jezero crater, dubbed Neretva Vallis, through which the delta in the crater had once poured.

The blue dot marks the location of Perseverance. The green dot marks the location of Ingenuity, which suggests it is visible within the panorama. I have indicated two features on the panorama that could be the helicopter, but the resolution of this navigation camera image is not good enough to determine with certainty if either is the helicopter or simply a rock.

Beyond the gap can be seen several small mountains, a hint at the generally rough terrain that sits to the west of Jezero that Perseverance will eventually enter and explore. This region is also an area where orbital images suggest a wide variety of minerals, making it a potentially valuable mining location for future Martian settlers.

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A dance of three galaxies

10:40 am

Three galaxies merging
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though it appears to show two galaxies interacting with each other, other spectroscopic data proves there are actually three large galaxies in the picture. From the caption:

The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different colour to the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed, but also considering direction) involved in the galaxy shows that this knot has a considerable additional redshift, meaning that it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733.

All three galaxies are quite close to each other, which means they are in the long process of merging together into one larger galaxy.

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SpaceX gets ESA contract to launch up to four of its Galileo GPS-type satellites

9:41 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) this week announced that it has awarded SpaceX a launch contract to put up to four of its Galileo GPS-type satellites into orbit. Though the deal is signed, approval must still be obtained by ESA’s members and executive commission.

This will be the first time SpaceX will launch any ESA satellites, and the first time in fifteen years that a Galileo satellite will launch outside of Arianespace operations. Previously the Russians had done a number of Galileo launches, using its Soyuz-2 rocket launching out of Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport, but that partnership ended with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

For the ESA the situation is even worse. It needs SpaceX to launch its satellites because at present it doesn’t have any of its own rockets to do it. The Ariane-5 is retired, and the new Ariane-6 (meant to replace it) is long delayed, and will not have its first test launch until next year, at the earliest. The Vega-C (too small for Galileo anyway) is also grounded due to design defects in the nozzle of its upper stage, while the Vega rocket it replaces has only one more launch before its own retirement.

Much like the Axiom-UK deal posted below, the American commercial space industry is once again making money from others, solely due to the capabilities developed in the past decade due to competition and freedom.

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Axiom signs deal with the United Kingdom to fly all British mission

9:30 am

The space agency of the United Kingdom today announced that it has signed a deal with Axiom to fly an manned mission in space, with four astronauts spending up to two weeks in space (likely in a SpaceX Dragon capsule).

The flight, estimated to cost around £200 million, is being organized in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), though all the astronauts will be British. The announced commander, Tim Peake, spent six months on ISS in 2015, and has come out of retirement to do the flight.

It is also unclear at this moment whether it will fly to ISS, or simply remain in orbit. In fact, few specific details have yet been released.

The bottom line however is that the new American space industry is going to make money from Britain’s desire to be a space power. Seems like a good deal to me.

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No Starship/Superheavy launch likely until January?

9:13 am

No Starship test launch until 2024
SpaceX is ready but the federal government says “No!”

We’re from the government and we’re here to help! In describing the effort of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to help SpaceX prod the federal bureaucracy into approving a new launch license for the company’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, space writer Mark Whittington included this significant but not previously mentioned tidbit that might help us predict when Fish & Wildlife (FWS) might finally give its okay for a launch:

The FWS has as long as 135 days to complete its review.

Let’s review the situation to understand what this tidbit means. At present it appears the FAA is ready to issue a launch licence, having closed its own investigation into the April Starship/Superheavy test flight on September 8, 2023.

At the time the FAA however was very clear: No launch license until Fish & Wildlife gave its environmental approval as well. Never before had this environmental agency had veto power over launches, but under the Biden administration it now has it.

Though Fish & Wildlife could have begun its own investigation in April, and met the 135-day deadline to give its approval for a launch the same time as the FAA, in September, it now appears that it did not start its clock ticking until after the FAA closed its work. If so, it appears Fish & Wildlife has until early January to complete its investigation.

Since FWS admitted in April, right after the failed test launch of Starship/Superheavy, that it caused no harm to wildlife, there appears no reason for this long delay.

The delay therefore can only be for two reasons, neither good. Either the people at Fish & Wildlife are utterly incompetent, and need eight months to write up the paperwork (even though in April they already knew that there was no reason to delay), or they are vindictive, power-hungry, and wish to exercise an animus against SpaceX in order to hurt the company.

Mostly likely we are seeing a combination of both: The bureaucrats at Fish & Wildlife are incompetent and hate SpaceX, and are using their newly gained power over issuing launch licenses to hurt it.

Either way, if Fish & Wildlife uses its entire 135-day window to issue its launch approval to SpaceX, no launch can occur this year. SpaceX will be stymied, and the development of this new heavy-lift reuseable rocket, possibly the most important new technology in rocketry ever, will be badly crushed. Not only will NASA’s Artemis program be damaged (it wants Starship as its manned lunar lander), SpaceX might face huge financial loses, as it needs Starship to launch and maintain its Starlink communications constellation.

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ULA sets Christmas Eve as launch date for first Vulcan rocket launch

8:35 am

In an interview for CNBC, ULA’s CEO revealed that the company has now scheduled the first orbital launch of its new Vulcan rocket for December 24, 2023, Christmas Eve, with a backup launch window in January.

The rocket will carry Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, targeting the western edge of the lunar mare dubbed Mare Imbrium. It will also carry human ashes to be buried in space, from the private company Celestis.

Vulcan was also originally supposed to carry Amazon’s first two test Kuiper satellites, but the delays in developing Vulcan forced ULA to use an Atlas-5 rocket instead, that launched on October 6th.

If the launch is successful, the company will try to quickly ramp up its launch pace to 24 times per year, in order to meet the contract for 47 launches it has with Amazon to launch Kuiper satellites, as well as its contract obligations to the Pentagon to launch military satellites.

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More Io images by Juno, enhanced by citizen scientists

1:27 pm

Io in natural and enhance colors
Click here for original of top image,
here for bottom.

Since Juno completed its 55th close swing past Jupiter on October 15, 2023, including the closest fly by of its volcano-covered moon Io since the 1990s, citizen scientists have been grabbing the spacecraft’s raw images of the moon and enhancing them to bring out the details.

Immediately after the fly-by I posted on October 17, 2023 the top image to the right, processed by Ted Stryk. This version attempted to capture the view of Juno is natural color. As I noted then, “The dark patches are lava flows, with the dimensions of mountains along the terminator line between night and day clearly distinguishable.”

The bottom picture to the right was first processed by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, who like Stryk attempted to capture Io’s natural colors. Thomas Thomopoulos then took Eichstädt’s image and enhanced the colors as well as reduced the brightness, in order to bring out the details as much as possible.

I have rotated, cropped, and reduced this bottom image further to post it here.

In comparing this image with earlier pictures of Io, taken by both Juno and Galileo in the 1990s, there is evidence that some of the lava flows visible now have changed significantly in the intevening time. This is not a surprise, as volcanic eruptions take place on Io so frequently that it has not unusual to capture one in the rare times close up images are possible, going back to the discovery of volcanic activity by Voyager-1 in 1979.

It will take a bit of time for scientists, both professional and amateur, to pick out the specific changes. That work will be further aided by Juno’s next fly-by on December 30, 2023, where it will dip to less than 1,000 miles of the surface.

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India releases on-board camera views during its Gaganyaan launch abort test

9:46 am

India’s space agency ISRO today released the on-board camera views taken during its Gaganyaan launch abort test on October 21, 2023.

The test was a complete success, and the footage shows each step clearly, from launch to stage separation to deployment of parachutes.

ISRO is still targeting 2024 for the first manned Gaganyaan mission, which will carry two to three astronauts into orbit for three to seven days. To meet that target however will require a lot of fast work, as the agency intends to fly three separate unmanned orbital missions of the Gaganyaan capsule prior to putting humans in it. More likely the manned mission will happen in 2025.

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Belarus joins China’s lunar base project

9:33 am

The former province of the Soviet Union Belarus has now signed an agreement to partner in China’s lunar base project, joining another former part of the U.S.S.R., Azerbaijan, as well as Russia, Pakistan, Venezuela, and South Africa.

Except for Russia, all the other partners in this project have little space capabilities, so don’t expect Belarus to contribute much. This deal is mainly for public relations purposes, to show that China has obtained some international partners.

In truth, the partnership more resembles the communist block run by the former Soviet Union — made up of failing communist states — except that communist China is now leads it.

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Lucy’s first asteroid fly-by coming on November 1st

9:25 am

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

The asteroid probe Lucy is about to do its first asteroid fly-by on November 1, 2023, the first of a planned ten asteroids it will see close-up during its twelve year mission.

The half-mile-wide asteroid, Dinkinesh, is indicated on the graphic to the right by the white dot in the lower left of the main asteroid belt. It was a late addition to the spacecraft’s plan in order to provide a perfect testbed for doing a dress rehearsal of the many later fly-bys.

As this encounter is intended as a test of Lucy’s systems, scientific observations will be simpler than for the mission’s main targets. The spacecraft and the platform that holds the instruments will move into position two hours before the closest approach to Dinkinesh. Once in place, the spacecraft will begin collecting data with its high-resolution camera (L’LORRI) and its thermal-infrared camera (L’TES). One hour before closest approach, the spacecraft will begin tracking the asteroid with the terminal-tracking system. Only in the last eight minutes will Lucy be able to collect data with MVIC and LEISA, the color imager and infrared spectrometer that comprise the L’Ralph instrument. Lucy’s closest approach is expected to occur at 12:54 p.m. EDT, when the spacecraft will be within 270 miles (430 kilometers) of the asteroid. Lucy will perform continuous imaging and tracking of Dinkinesh for almost another hour. After that time, the spacecraft will reorient itself to resume communications with Earth but will continue to periodically image Dinkinesh with L’LORRI for the next four days.

After this close encounter the spacecraft will return to 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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Varda signs deal with Australian private spaceport operator to land its capsules

9:13 am

Blocked from landing its American-built space capsules by the American government, the startup Varda has now completed negotiations and signed an agreement with Southern Launch, an Australian private spaceport operator, to land its capsules at the Koonibba Test Range northwest of Adelaide.

Varda’s business plan is to launch unmanned capsules in which pharmeceuticals and other products that can’t be made on Earth are manufactured, then return the capsule to earth where they are sold for a profit. This deal will allow Varda to land its next capsule there in 2024.

Meanwhile, Varda first capsule, presently in orbit after manufacturing pharmeceuticals for HIV, appears to be a total loss because the FAA and the Pentagon refused it permission to land in the U.S., for what appear to be purely bureaucratic reasons.

There was no single specific issue that held up the reentry, he said. “It was ultimately a coordination problem amongst three different groups that had not worked through this operation before.” He added that there were no safety concerns with Varda’s spacecraft or its ability to meet requirements for an FAA license. An additional challenge is that Varda is the first company to seek an FAA reentry license through a new set of regulations called Part 450. Those regulations are intended to streamline the process but, on the launch side, have been criticized by companies for being difficult.

The U.S. government is now the enemy of its citizens, so incompetent that it actually works to block them from achieving their goals.

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China launches classified satellite

8:59 am

China today successfully launched a classified reconnaissance satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the south of China.

No word on where the first stage, which uses toxic hypogolic fuel, crashed in the interior of China.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
47 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 88 to 47, and the entire world combined 88 to 75. SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 76 to 75.

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A low mid-latitude crater on Mars apparently filled to overflowing with ice

12:04 pm

ice filling a Martian crater to overflowing
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a steep 1,000-foot-high cliff with what appears to be extensive glacial material at its base.

The many layers all suggest past climate cycles, where snow was deposited and the glacier grew, followed by a period when no snow fell and the glacier either shrank or remained unchanged. The terraced nature of the layers near the base of the cliff suggest that with each active cycle less snow was deposited and the glacier grew less.

The latitude is 33 degrees south, which puts it just outside the dry equatorial regions of Mars and inside the mid-latitude region where many such glacial features are found. Its closeness to the tropics however is significant, because by this point we should be seeing a diminishment of such features. Instead, the wider view shows us that the near surface ice in this region is extensive and in fact appears to cover everything.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 63rd flight on Mars

10:07 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On October 19, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 63rd flight on Mars, traveling 1,901 feet (its third longest flight) for 142.6 seconds.

On the overview map above the two dots and the green line mark the flight path, to the southwest and landing about 2,000 feet to the west of where the rover Perseverance presently sits (indicated by the blue dot).

Both the flight time and distance were slightly longer than the flight plan, likely caused by the helicopter making sure it had a safe landing spot before lowering itself to the ground.

Ingenuity is no longer simply an engineering test of whether flight is possible on Mars. It is now serving wholly as a scout for Perseverance, either moving ahead of its planned route (the red dotted line) in order to provide pictures of the ground so that the rover’s science team can better plan their future travels, or going into territory that the rover is not intended to travel in order to gather data that would previously been unavailable.

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Near collision of Australian satellite with Chinese military satellite

9:31 am

According to one Australian military official, a Chinese military satellite earlier this month came within a kilometer of a Australian satellite.

Analysis conducted after the event by the company LeoLabs shows both satellites were predicted to have an “miss” distance of just 100 metres 24 hours before the anticipated “conjunction”.

According to the data, the Yaogan 37 satellite manoeuvred 16 hours prior to the conjunction, increasing the miss distance to 978 metres at the closest approach.

The official’s presentation emphasized the increasing threat of collisions from the high number of satellites being launched, but this incident instead suggests to me that the problem is actually under some control by satellite operators. It continues the pattern seen repeatedly, whereby satellite operators detect a potential collision before it happens, and take preventive measures to avoid it.

The real problem has to do with defunct equipment in orbit that no one is in contact with or can control. Such objects pose are a bigger threat, because they cannot be maneuvered.

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Space Perspective unveils restroom for its high altitude tourist balloon

9:14 am

Neptune's restroom
Click for original image.

The Florida company Space Perspective yesterday unveiled the restroom for its high altitude tourist balloon, Neptune, that intends to take passengers on six to eight hour flights to nineteen miles elevation.

The goal was to provide an environment closer to a spa than to a typical aircraft setting, said Dan Window, who oversees all aspects of design at Space Perspective alongside Isabella Trani. “Overall, we embraced softness and optimistic color tones in the Space Spa, which play nicely with the contrasting colors you will see through its two windows,” Window said in the same statement. “We’re also using light washes, for example, to create ambience and allow for customization of the environment as well as discourage reflections in the windows. Soothing soundscapes will be unique to what you experience in the Space Lounge, and we brought in plants as a callback to the experience that Space Perspective’s founders had in Biosphere 2.

Based on the artist’s renderning to the right, the restroom is still a very small space, smaller than the smallest bathroom in most homes.

Space Perspective says it has received deposits for more than 1,600 flight tickets at 125K each, representing $200 million in potential income. It hopes to complete its first test flight next year.

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SpaceX successfully completes two Starlink satellite launches today

8:29 pm

SpaceX today successfully completed two Starlink satellite launches, first putting 21 satellites in orbit from Vandenberg in the early morning hours and then launching another 23 satellites from Cape Canaveral in the evening.

Both first stages successfully landed on their drone ships, respectively in the Pacific and Atlantic. The first completed its sixteenth flight, the second its fourth flight.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
46 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 88 to 46, and the entire world combined 88 to 74. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 76 to 74.

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First Bennu asteroid samples recovered from OSIRIS-REx return capsule

10:26 am

Scientists have successfully removed the asteroid samples from the OSIRIS-REx return capsule that the spacecraft obtained from the asteroid Bennu in 2020.

What is more exciting is that though they now have slightly more material than the mission hoped to bring back, they haven’t even opened the capsule’s sample compartment.

The curation team processing NASA’s asteroid Bennu sample has removed and collected 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of rocks and dust from the sampler hardware – surpassing the agency’s goal of bringing at least 60 grams to Earth.

And the good news is, there’s still more of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) sample to collect.

The sample processed so far includes the rocks and dust found on the outside of the sampler head, as well as a portion of the bulk sample from inside the head, which was accessed through the head’s mylar flap. Additional material remaining inside the sampler head, called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM, is set for removal later, adding to the mass total.

The large amount of material means there will be plenty to distribute to many scientists for study.

The reason the recovery process is going so slowly is to ensure the samples do not get contaminated by the Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule is inside a glovebox filled with nitrogen. The only way any work can be done is by inserting hands inside gloves that extend into the box. This keeps the samples protected but prevents any direct contact, which makes work slow and difficult.

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The reshuffling of Blue Origin’s management continues

10:20 am

With the announcement yesterday that another high level executive was leaving the company — the third in less than a month — Blue Origin does appear to be making major changes in its management as well as its entire organizational structure.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told employees in an email on Friday that Mike Eilola, the company’s senior vice president of operations since 2021, “is leaving the company for personal reasons” on Nov. 3 and will have his unit split into two new organizations.

Eilola’s departure follows plans announced last month by Bezos to replace Smith, who has been Blue Origin’s CEO since 2017, with longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp by the end of the year. And Brent Sherwood, the head of what had been the company’s research and development unit, will depart next month, Reuters has reported.

This is not the only management restructuring. It has also shifted its lunar lander project into its own division, as well as created a new separate division for developing in-space robotic servicing and orbital tug products.

It finally appears that Jeff Bezos is taking action to get his company working again, after more than a half decade of non-achievement since Bob Smith took over in 2017. Hopefully these changes finally will produce results.

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Gaganyaan abort test flight flies successfully after short delay

10:13 am

When I went to bed last night India’s Gaganyaan abort test flight had been cancelled due to a launch abort at T-0, with the live stream ending and an expectation that engineers would need at least another day to fly.

When I woke up it turned out that ISRO behaved more like SpaceX than a government agency. It quickly figured out what was wrong, recycled the countdown, and two hours later successfully flew the test of its launch abort rescue system for its manned Gaganyaan capsule.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully executed the Test Flight Abort Mission, for the Gaganyaan mission on Saturday after the first test flight was aborted at 8:45 am due to a problem in the engine ignition. ISRO Chief S Somanth said the planned lift off the TV-D1 rocket could not happen following an anomaly that will be analysed. He said that the engine ignition of the TV-D1 rocket did not happen over time.

The space agency then said that the errors have been identified and corrected and the second launch was scheduled for 10:00 Hrs today.

And at 10 am, ISRO successfully launched the test vehicle from Sriharikota today. Chairman Somanath expressed happiness and said, “I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of Gaganyaan TV-D1 mission”.

The test rocket launched, the abort system separated from the rocket as planned, the capsule was released from the abort system, its parachutes then opened, and the capsule then safely splashed down in the Bay of Bengal about ten miles off the coast, where it was recovered successfully.

ISRO plans a second launch abort test prior to flying the actual manned mission, but at this moment it appears very close to being ready for a manned mission in 2024, its present goal.

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India’s Gaganyaan launch abort test aborts at T-0

8:21 pm

India’s attempt today to test the launch abort system to be used to safely propel its manned Gaganyaan capsule away from a failing rocket aborted at T-0.

They need to take the spacecraft back to the assembly building in order to figure out what went wrong, so the next attempt will likely be delayed at mininum several weeks. UPDATE: That’s what the head of ISRO said at the end of this live stream, but that is not what happened. See new post above.

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The fractured floor of the south Utopia Basin

1:05 pm

The fracture floor of South Utopia Basin

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 5, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The central darker strip however comes from a September 27, 2008 image by MRO’s lower resolution context camera, inserted to fill in the blank section where one component on the high resolution camera has failed.

The picture focuses on what the scientists call a “pit interacting with a mound.” The 100-foot-deep pit is one of a very long meandering string of such pits, all of which suggest the existence of an buried river canyon into which debris is sinking. Altogether this particular string runs from several dozen miles, and its interaction with the triangular 300-foot-high mound suggests at first glance that the river that created the canyon did a turn to the left to avoid a large underground mountain, now mostly buried but revealed by its still exposed peak.

As is usual in planetary research, the first glance is often wrong. The overview map below provides a different answer, which says the formation of the aligned pits is related to the formation of the mound itself.
» Read more

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Astronomers detect what they think is the most distant known fast radio burst yet

9:50 am

The uncertainty of science: Using ground-based radio and optical telescopes, astronomers think they have detected the most distant known fast radio burst yet, coming from a galaxy thought to be eight billion light years away.

On 10 June 2022, CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country was used to detect a fast radio burst, created in a cosmic event that released, in milliseconds, the equivalent of our Sun’s total emission over 30 years.

“Using ASKAP’s array of dishes, we were able to determine precisely where [in the sky] the burst came from,” says Dr Ryder, the first author on the paper. “Then we used the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to search for the source galaxy, finding it to be older and further away than any other FRB source found to date, and likely within a small group of merging galaxies.”

Note that the scientists have not actually measured the distance of this burst. They assume it sits at the same distance of the group of merging galaxies that surround it. Only about fifty fast radio bursts have so far been detected. As yet there is no accepted explanation as to what causes them, though knowing their assumed distance helps narrow the possibilities significantly.

The scientists also think they can use the energy from this burst to measure the intervening matter between it and Earth, and thus get a better estimate of the mass of the universe.

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Webb detects high altitude jet stream above Jupiter’s equatorial band

9:40 am

Jupiter's newly discovered jet stream
Click for original false-color infrared image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope’s infrared capability, scientists have now detected a high altitude jet stream that flows above the equatorial band of Jupiter at speeds estimated to 320 miles per hour.

The false-color infrared image to the right shows evidence of this jetstream in three places by the brightest features seen there. From the caption:

In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Auroras, appearing in red in this image, extend to higher altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of the planet. By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. In Webb’s images of Jupiter from July 2022, researchers recently discovered a narrow jet stream traveling 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) sitting over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks.

These features sit about 25 miles higher than the planet’s previously detected cloudtops.

This discovery only proves what has always been evident, that Jupiter’s atmosphere is very complex with many features earlier optical observations could not see. It also only gives us a hint of that complexity. It will take numerous Jupiter orbiters observing in all wavebands, not just Webb in the infrared millions of miles away, to begin to untangle that complexity. And that untangling will take decades as well, since global weather unfolds over time. You can’t understand it simply by one snapshot. You have to watch the changes from season to season and from year to year. As Jupiter’s year is 12 Earth-years long, this research will take many lifetimes.

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Russia announces revised schedule for its lunar unmanned projects

9:04 am

NPO Lavochkin, the Roscosmos division that builds Russia’s lunar landers, has now announced a revised schedule for all of that country’s proposed lunar unmanned projects, following the failure of its Luna-25 lander in August.

The program calls for at least six missions, including orbiters, landers, and a rover, launching from 2027 through the 2030s. However, this quote from the article is the reality:

As often before, the latest strategy relied on the development time frames that had never been demonstrated by NPO Lavochkin in comparable projects in the past three decades.

What is worse is the 100% failure record of Lavochkin’s planetary probes once launched. It takes forever to build anything, and then what it builds and launches doesn’t work.

Not that this absimal record will cost Lavochkin anything. The Russian government and the bureaucracy that controls it does not allow any competition. Instead, like prohibition-era mobsters, divisions like Lavochkin carve up territories that they control, and allow no one else in. For example, Lavochkin owns planetary research while Energia, another division in Roscosmos, controls manned space flight as well as its launch industry. No one else is allowed it enter these markets, which means Lavochkin can fail repeatedly for the next century and nothing will change.

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Japan awards Ispace $80 million to develop larger lunar lander

8:49 am

The Japanese government, not its space agency JAXA, today announced it has awarded the commercial company Ispace an $80 million grant to develop a larger lunar lander, following its failed attempt earlier this year to land its first Hakuto-R1 lander on the Moon.

Japan will provide a subsidy of up to 12 billion yen ($80 million) to moon exploration startup ispace (9348.T) as part of a grant programme for innovative ventures, industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said on Friday.

The new lander is targeting a 2027 launch, and according to the company’s own statement [pdf] will replace the Hakuto-R lander being used on its first two lunar missions, as well as the Apex lander the American division of Ispace is now building for NASA. It also appears that the contract is fixed price, and will only be paid out when the company achieves actual milestones of development.

In other words, the Japanese government is doing what NASA is now doing, moving away from a government model, where its space agency JAXA builds and controls everything, to a capitalism model, where it buys what it needs from the private sector. That JAXA did not issue this award demonstrates this transition, in that until now all such space contracts were through that agency solely.

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At Senate hearings numerous launch companies complain of regulatory bottleneck

8:18 am

At a hearing in the Senate yesterday officials from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic all expressed strong concerns about how the regulatory bottleneck at the FAA is damaging the entire launch business.

Gerstenmaier emphasized that the FAA’s commercial space office “needs at least twice the resources that they have today” for licensing rocket launches. While he acknowledged the FAA is “critical to enabling safe space transportation,” Gerstenmaier added that the industry is “at a breaking point.”

“The FAA has neither the resources nor the flexibility to implement its regulatory obligations,” Gerstenmaier said.

…The other four panelists’ testimonies largely echoed SpaceX’s viewpoint on the need to bolster the FAA’s ranks and speed up the process of approving rocket launches. Phil Joyce, Blue Origin senior vice president of New Shepard, said the FAA “is struggling to keep pace” with the industry “and needs more funding to deal with the increase in launches.”

Likewise, industry expert Caryn Schenewerk, a former leader at SpaceX and Relativity Space, said that the FAA’s recent changes have yet to “streamline licensing reviews” and instead have “proven more cumbersome and costly.”

Wayne Monteith — a retired Air Force brigadier general who also led the FAA’s space office — said that Congress should consider consolidating space regulations. “I believe a more efficient one stop shop approach to authorizing and licensing space activities is necessary,” Monteith said.

As always, the focus is on giving the government agency “more resources”. No one ever suggests that maybe its inability to meet the demand is because of mission creep, in which the government continually grabs more regulatory power than it is supposed to have, which then requires it to have additional resources, which then allows it to grab even more power, which then requires more resources, and on and on the merry-go-round goes.

To really solve this problem we need to trim the regulatory framework. The FAA’s responsibilities must be cut, not enhanced. It must be told it “will issue” launch licenses, rather than take the position it “might issue” them. It also must be told to cut back on the checklists it is demanding from companies. All that should concern it is scheduling and arranging air traffic and the launch range to prevent conflicts. Beyond that any regulation is simply overreach, and is something that was never under its control in the past.

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SpaceX to push for more than 140 launches in 2024

8:04 am

At a Senate hearing yesterday, a SpaceX official revealed the company is aiming to achieve 144 launches in 2024, an almost 50% increase from the record-setting pace it is maintaining this year.

“This year, we’re going to attempt to fly 100 flights,” Bill Gerstenmaier, the vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said on Wednesday (Oct. 18) during a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Space and Science. “As we look to next year, we want to increase that flight rate to about 12 flights per month, or 144 flights,” he added during the hearing.

Getting to 12 launches per month will be a challenge, but not an unreasonable one. So far this year the company has routinely launched more than six times per month, but it has been pushing that rate since the summer, with it many times trying to do launches almost daily for a stretch. Often its biggest problem isn’t the company or rocket, but the weather and scheduling at Cape Canaveral, as there are others that wish to launch there.

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Erosion revealing ridges on Mars?

12:16 pm

Erosion revealing lava dikes 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 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team calls the features here “narrow ridges”, but what makes these criss-crossing ridges interesting is their location within the picture.

They appear only inside the hollows and depressions, as if erosion had stripped out a top layer of softer material to reveal these ridges, made of a harder material. The almost random but straight orientations of the ridges also suggest they formed along faults or cracks, which also suggests we are seeing dikes where lava was pushed up from below.

Whether the eroded softer material is lava or volcanic ash is unclear, though it certainly resembles the ash layers seen in the giant Medusa Fossae Formation ash field on the opposite side of Mars.

As always, a wider look helps clarify things.
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Israel negotiating with SpaceX to use Starlink

10:23 am

Israel is now in negotiations with SpaceX to get use of its Starlink constellation for communications, especially in the region around Gaza where the present conflict is ongoing.

Starlink currently isn’t available in Israel, so this would be the first time the service is introduced in any capacity. As it seeks to bolster its own communications during wartime, it is also looking into halting cell and internet communications in Gaza, that same official said.

“The activity of coordinating the Israeli company Starlink is taking place, enabling the operation of communication terminals by the company SpaceX, which will allow a wide broadband internet connection in Israel,” Israel Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi said on X. “Additionally, under the guidance of the minister, the ministry promotes the purchase of these satellite devices for the benefit of regional councils and community leaders in conflict zone settlements.”

By having Starlink available, Israel could use it as it shut down the cell and internet capabilities being used by Hamas.

Whether a deal will be made remains unclear, as Musk has shown ambivalence about Starlink’s contribution in the Ukraine war.

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