Tag: spaceflight

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.
» Read more

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Juno gets new close-up images of Jupiter’s moon Io

9:57 am

Io as seen by Juno in July 2023
Click for original image.

During its July close fly-by of Jupiter the orbiter Juno also flew past the moon Io, getting within 14,000 miles. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was one of the images taken during that fly-by and subsequently processed and color enhanced by citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos.

The picture was taken at about the spacecraft’s closest point. It shows the splotched and volcanic surface of Io, which because it orbits close to Jupiter tidal forces cause it to have an intensely active volcanic surface. All the black features are either volcanoes or lava flows. This set of all of Juno’s Io images taken during the fly-by, enhanced by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, also shows a volcanic plume in the shadowed portion of the planet, just beyond the terminator, which Eichstädt believes is a mountain dubbed Tohil Mons.

Even closer flybys are scheduled for December ’23 and February ’24, both getting within 1,000 miles of the surface.

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Astronomers: Binary system creates tidal waves on star’s surface 3x larger than our own Sun

9:32 am

Tidal waves on star's surface

Based on computer simulations, astronomers believe that the monthly light changes in a binary star system are partly caused by gigantic tidal waves on the surface of the system’s larger star, waves that are three times higher than the diameter of our own Sun.

The larger star in the system is nearly 35 times the mass of the Sun and, together with its smaller companion star, is officially designated MACHO 80.7443.1718 — not because of any stellar brawn, but because the system’s brightness changes were first recorded by the MACHO Project in the 1990s, which sought signs of dark matter in our galaxy.

Most heartbeat stars vary in brightness only by about 0.1%, but MACHO 80.7443.1718 jumped out to astronomers because of its unprecedentedly dramatic brightness swings, up and down by 20%. “We don’t know of any other heartbeat star that varies this wildly,” says MacLeod.

To unravel the mystery, MacLeod created a computer model of MACHO 80.7443.1718. His model captured how the interacting gravity of the two stars generates massive tides in the bigger star. The resulting tidal waves rise to about a fifth of the behemoth star’s radius, which equates to waves about as tall as three Suns stacked on top of each other, or roughly 2.7 million miles high.

The image on the right is a screen capture from the computer simulation. The bulges on the right side of the larger star are the hypothesized tidal waves.

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Update on the development of a new first stage for Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket

9:01 am

Link here. The first stage of the Antares rocket has previously relied on Russian engines in a Ukrainian-built body. The Ukraine War made getting both impossible, and thus Northrop Grumman hired Firefly to provide it a new first stage, presently targeting mid-2025 for its first flight. In the meantime in order to meet its contractual obligations with NASA, it has hired SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to fly the next three Cygnus freighters to ISS.

The report at the link gets some interesting details about Firefly’s engines and first stage. Both will raise the payload capabilities of Antares, which as yet has failed to garner any commercial payloads outside of Northrop’s own Cygnus capsule. That increase in capability might make it more appealing to commercial satellite companies.

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Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy launches seven satellites

8:52 am

China's spaceports
China’s spaceports

One of China’s pseudo-companies, Galactic Energy, yesterday successfully placed seven small satellites into orbit, using its Ceres-1 solid-fueled rocket that lifted off from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert.

Considering that a launch two days ago from the Taiyuan spaceport apparently dropped sections of its first stage near habitable areas, I though it worthwhile to post again the map to the right, showing which Chinese spaceports expose China’s inhabitants to risk.

It also appears that even the state-run press of China knows Galactic Energy really isn’t a privately owned commercial company, as it doesn’t even mention the company’s name in its news report at the link. While it gets investment capital and functions kind of like a private company, everything it does is supervised by the Chinese government, which can take full control of the company whenever it wants. Moreover, the technology of its solid-fueled rocket was derived entirely from military technology, which means the Chinese government supervised its development every step of the way.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

54 SpaceX
33 China
10 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 54, while SpaceX by itself is now tied the world (excluding American companies) 54 to 54.

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Martian craters or volcanoes?

11:52 am

Martian craters or volcanoes?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The scientists label these features “cones” because many of the depressions sit on top of a mound or hill, suggesting some form of volcanic feature, either from erupting lava, ice, or mud.

Yet, are they volcanoes? Some or even many could instead be impact craters, created when a asteroid broke up during infall, creating a spray of bolides. Erosion of surrounding terrain can create what scientists call pedestal craters, but if all these craters were from an impact than all would either be pedestal craters, or not. Instead, we have a mix of some craters above and others level with the terrain.
» Read more

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Ingenuity snaps picture of Perseverance during 54th flight

10:13 am

Perseverance as seen by Ingenuity on August 8th
Click for original image.

During Ingenuity’s 54th flight, a short vertical hop sixteen feet up and down that lasted only 25 seconds, the helicopter’s color camera managed to get a picture of the rover Perseverance, only about 200 feet away to the north.

That picture, cropped and enhanced to post here, is to the right. It shows Perseverance just inside the picture’s upper edge. Its graininess illustrates in a sense the engineering test nature of Ingenuity. It was never expected to last this long and to take actual scouting or science imagery. It was supposed to complete a 30 day program of a handful of test flights, proving it was possible to fly in Mars’ very thin atmosphere (1/1000th that of Earth). Instead, it has lasted years, and completed 54 flights, keeping ahead of Perseverance and providing the rover team scouting images of the ground they wish to travel.

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South Korea’s KARI space agency releases new images taken by its Danuri lunar orbiter

10:02 am

To celebrate the anniversary of its launch, South Korea’s KARI space agency today released new images taken by its Danuri lunar orbiter.

Images include views of Reiner Gamma, a so-called swirl, which features a localized magnetic field and marks a bright spot within the Oceanus Procellarum region. Another shows shadows inside Amundsen Crater, close to the lunar south pole and a potential landing site for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which is slated to put astronauts on the moon in late 2025.

Another southern feature captured by Danuri is Drygalski Crater, showing the central peak inside the impact crater.

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ESA official confirms first Ariane-6 launch will not occur until 2024

9:45 am

The head of ESA yesterday confirmed what had been known since May, that the first test flight of its Ariane-6 rocket will not take place this year but will be delayed until 2024.

In an update on the Ariane 6 program also posted Tuesday, the ESA said that it could not complete a short hot firing test — which mimics the environment in space to provide data to operators — of Ariane’s Vulcain 2.1 engine system in a July attempt, with plans to try again on August 29.

Aschbacher said the tentative plan is to carry out a long hot fire test of the assembled core stage and engine on September 26 at the agency’s spaceport in French Guiana. If those tests are successful, it should then be possible to set a more precise timeline for getting the rocket system ready for launch next year.

It seems the inability of engineers to complete that July engine test — which ESA officials claimed was because they simply ran out of time — added at least a six-week delay to the entire program.

There delays leave Europe without any large rocket to launch payloads, and has forced its various governments to hire SpaceX to get those payloads into space.

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First stage of Chinese rocket crashes in Chinese city

9:34 am

Remains of Long March 2C, in Chinese city

Locals in the city of Shangluo, population over two million located in central China, today released video images of the remains of the first stage of a Long March 2C rocket that launched yesterday and apparently crashed in the city.

The image to the right is a screen capture. Since this two-stage rocket uses extremely toxic hypergolic fuels in both of its stages, those citizens wandering around the rocket’s remains are in great health danger.

China has in recent years has appeared taken actions to block the release of such videos by its citizens, but apparently failed in this case.

The irony is that this rocket supposedly launched what China called “a disaster reduction” satellite. That maybe so, but in the process it also dumped toxic materials on its own citizens.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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NASA engineers still struggling to understand why Orion’s heat shield ablated so much

9:10 am

NASA engineers still do not understand why the heat shield on its Orion capsule ablated as it did during its return to Earth on the first unmanned Artemis-1 mission.

The agency is still running tests. It also expressed confidence that the issue will not delay the Artemis-2 mission, the first intended to carry humans on SLS and in Orion and still scheduled for late 2024.

At the same time, agency officials hinted that the third Artemis mission, which has always been planned as putting humans on the Moon for the first time since Apollo, might not achieve that goal. It is still not clear whether the mission’s lunar spacesuits as well as SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander will be ready on time. The latter is facing serious regulatory problems imposed by the Biden administration that is generally preventing it from flight testing the spacecraft.

That second Artemis mission, the first planned to carry humans, is one that actually at present carries the most risk. It will not only use a heat shield that at present engineers do not entirely understand, it will be the first Orion capsule to have the environmental systems necessary for its human cargo. NASA is putting humans on the first test flight of those systems.

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China’s Long March 2C rocket launches “disaster reduction” satellite

7:30 pm

China today used its Long March 2C rocket to place what it called a “disaster reduction” satellite into orbit, launching from its Taiyuan spaceport in the interior of China.

No other information was released, including whether the rocket’s lower stages landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

54 SpaceX
32 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 62 to 32, and the entire world combined 62 to 53, while SpaceX by itself still leads the world (excluding American companies) 54 to 53.

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