Tag: spaceflight

ISRO aborts first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine

8:51 am

According to India’s space agency ISRO, on July 1st engineers were forced to abort the first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine, planned to last 4.5 seconds but stopped after 1.9 seconds.

The test proceeded as predicted till 1.9 s validating the ignition and subsequent performance of PHTA [Power Head Test Article]. At 2.0 s, an unanticipated spike in the turbine pressure and subsequent loss of turbine-speed was observed. As a precautionary step, the test was terminated. Analysis under progress would offer further understanding before proceeding with further hot-tests for longer duration.

This was not a test of a real rocket engine, but an engineering test prototype, designed “to validate the integrated performance of the critical subsystems such as the gas generator, turbo pumps, pre-burner and control components.” That the test showed issues without exploding is actually very good news. Engineers still have the prototype to quickly figure out what went wrong and fix it.

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Ingenuity responds after 63 days of silence

12:02 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

For the past two months the science and engineering teams for the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter in Jezero Crater have been very silent as to the status of Ingenuity. On April 25, 2023 the Ingenuity team had posted their flight plan for the helicopter’s 52nd flight, with an expected flight date the next day.

Until today, however, no information about the results of that flight had been released. Except for one update in late May describing earlier issues with communications after flight 49, the science and engineering teams maintained radio silence about that 52nd flight in April.

Today’s update finally explained that silence:

The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.

The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. The rover acts as a radio relay between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL. In anticipation of this loss of communications, the Ingenuity team had already developed re-contact plans for when the rover would drive back within range. Contact was re-established June 28 when Perseverance crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.

The flight plan for the 52nd flight in April had been to fly 1,191 feet to the west. Though the Ingenuity team has not yet released the actual flight details, I have indicated with the green line on the overview map above the estimated distance and direction planned. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position before the flight, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s present location. The red dotted line indicates the planned route for Perseverance.

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Galaxies at the dawn of time

10:40 am

Link here. The article takes a quick look at six galaxies found by Webb’s infrared view that all less than 650 million years after the Big Bang is thought to have occurred.

None disprove the Big Bang. All however raise serious questions about the cosmological theories that posit that event and the subsequent evolution of the universe. Take a look. It is worthwhile reading.

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SpaceX launches Europe’s Euclid space telescope

9:26 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched Europe’s Euclid space telescope, designed to map the spatial distribution of several billion galaxies across one third of the sky.

The first stage successfully completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their first flight.

This ESA science mission would have normally been launched on an Arianespace rocket, but Europe’s ability to launch anything now is nil, as it is about to retire its Ariane-5 rocket (with one launch left) and has so failed to get its replacement, Ariane-6, operational. As such, SpaceX got the business, since it is the cheapest and most reliable alternative.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

44 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 50 to 24, and the entire world combined 50 to 41, with SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, excluding other American companies, 44 to 41.

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Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars

12:16 pm

Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 22, 2023, and shows a 100-foot-high many-layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars.

The shadows in this picture are deceptive. The mesa’s high point is not the narrow ridge-line, but at the green dot just beyond that ridge’s northern terminus. In fact, if you were walking south from that dot and then along the crest of that ridge you would be walking downhill the entire length.

Cydonia is in the Martian northern lowland plains, in the mid-latitudes. Thus, there are many features in this picture suggesting near surface ice, such as the mounds with craters at their peak. All could be mud volcanoes as seen in many places in the northern lowland plains.
» Read more

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Curiosity tops a ridge to see its rough path forward

10:12 am

Curiosity's view ahead on June 29, 2023
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map

After more than a month of struggle to get Curiosity to maneuver uphill through a very rocky and steep terrain, the science team today finally announced that the rover had topped the ridge and could once again see its way forward into Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon it plans to use as its route up Mount Sharp.

The panorama above, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on June 29, 2023 following Curiosity’s last move forward. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right indicate the approximate area covered by this panorama. The red dotted line on both images indicates Curiosity’s planned route, with the white dotted line its actual course.

The white ridge to either side of the central peak dubbed Kukenan is actually the higher flanks of Mount Sharp. The peak of Kukenan is about a half mile away and about 400 feet higher, with those white flanks about 2.5 miles beyond. The actual peak of Mount Sharp is about 25 miles farther south and about 17,000 feet higher.

The panorama makes clear that the path forward is not going to be any less rough for Curiosity and its damaged wheels. Expect progress to be slow for many months to come.

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Africa’s space agency wants to build an empire

9:13 am

Link here. The article is quite typical of the mainstream press, blindly in love with government-run bureaucracies. It outlines in excellent detail all the real advantages that a thriving space industry could bring to Africa, some of which are already being realized by some of the continent’s more prosperous nations. It then assumes without any justification that a large bureaucratic space agency funded by many African nations will make that possible.

In 2019, the African Union (AU) announced its space strategy. Last January the African Space Agency (AfSA) was launched, a flagship to coordinate efforts and generate synergies. It already has a physical headquarters in Cairo, but for the moment most of its rooms stand empty.

Tidiane Ouattara, an expert in space sciences at the AU, expects its 156 permanent posts to be filled next year. Outtara highlights the importance of progressing “step by step” toward the consolidation of an agency with highly qualified personnel. A solid institution capable of “defending Africa’s interests” in the international arena and of negotiating with other countries who, when exploring space, “set the rules that were best suited to them,” he says. Ouattara understands that this was the case simply because “they were first,” although he adds: “The world must understand that now Africa is also on board” and has a lot to say on controversial issues such as space debris and space traffic.

While it is certainly true that this agency, once fully staffed, could advocate for Africa’s interests on the world stage, don’t expect that from it. Instead, it is simply a place where African leaders — many of whom are very corrupt — can return favors to friends by giving them a cushy job.

For most African nations, a space program makes no sense. At best each nation should establish laws that would give its private industries as much freedom and latitude to enter this market.

As for the African Space Agency, if it really wished to promote an African space industry, it should convince a consortium of African nations to team up to finance a variety of smallsat weather, Earth resource, and surveillance satellites that nations routinely need. It should then use that money to do what the UAE has done, hire experienced universities in the west to build those satellites, under the proviso that those universities also train African engineering students and companies at the same time. These students and companies can then go back to their countries and eventually do the work themselves.

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Dragon cargo freighter safely splashes down in Atlantic

8:49 am

After three months docked to ISS, one of SpaceX’s reusable Dragon cargo freighters safely splashed down today off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic.

This was SpaceX’s 28th cargo mission to ISS, all successful except for one launch failure not caused by the capsule itself, which post-failure analysis suggested that if it had been equipped to release parachutes it might have landed in the ocean undamaged.

This capsule brought back 3,600 pounds from the station, including some experiments that had been on the station for six years.

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Webb takes infrared (heat) image of Saturn

8:41 am

Saturn in infrared
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, scientists on June 25, 2023 took the wonderful false color infrared (heat) image of Saturn above, cropped to post here, as part of a research project [pdf] to take a number of long exposures of the ringed planet in order to test Webb’s ability to see its small moons. From the press release:

Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the Webb image.

…This new image of Saturn clearly shows details within the planet’s ring system, along with several of the planet’s moons – Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys. Additional deeper exposures (not shown here) will allow the team to probe some of the planet’s fainter rings, not visible in this image, including the thin G ring and the diffuse E ring. Saturn’s rings are made up of an array of rocky and icy fragments – the particles range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to a few as large as mountains on Earth.

The picture also shows differences between Saturn’s northern and southern hemispheres, caused by the seasonal differences between the two.

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A new theory for making liquid water once possible on Mars

1:14 pm

In order to explain the many gullies on Mars, scientists at Brown University have now proposed a new model that says liquid water could exist periodically on the surface of Mars, caused by the cyclical changes in the planet’s rotational tilt, ranging from 11 to 60 degrees.

From editor’s summary of the paper:

Some steep slopes on Mars have gullies with morphologies suggesting that they were formed by a fluid. However, the planet’s current climate is not conducive to the melting of water ice at those locations, and mechanisms involving carbon dioxide ice do not explain the distribution of the gullies. [This paper] simulated how the climate of Mars differed when its axis tilted by different amounts over the past few million years. At a tilt of 35 degrees, the ice caps partially melted, raising the atmospheric pressure, and there were higher summer temperatures. Under these conditions, the atmospheric pressure at the gullies would be above the triple point of water, so it could melt to form a liquid.

The paper estimates these conditions last existed on Mars about 630,000 years ago, though the process repeated itself many times over the past several million years, each time causing some water ice to melt and flow down to form gullies. As the planet’s inclination then changed, conditions changed as well, producing colder temperatures at these latitudes so the water froze once again.

Though this is only a model with many uncertainties, it suggests a more reasonable explanation for the past existence of liquid surface water on Mars, temporary, periodic, and rare, than most other models. Combined with the possibility that ice glaciers themselves could have contributed to the formation of many of Mars’ riverlike channels, it seems that scientists are beginning to form a rough concept explaining how Mars evolved to what it is today.

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The icy floor of one of Mars’ most ancient craters

12:44 pm

Overview map

The icy floor of one of Mars' most ancient craters
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 3, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It focuses on a small crater in the center of 265-mile-wide Greeley Crater, named in 2015 after the late Ron Greeley, who had been involved in almost every planetary mission from the 1960s until his passing in 2011.

Greeley Crater is intriguing because of its age, estimated to be about four billion years old, as indicated by crater counts and the crater’s heavily eroded condition.

This ancient crater, which has already been heavily eroded and filled with sediment, is difficult to make out against the Martian landscape due to its relatively shallow depth of only 1.5 kilometres – indeed, the crater rim has disappeared altogether in places.

Greeley is also intriguing by its location in the southern mid-latitudes. On the overview map above the red dot inside Greeley marks the location of today’s picture. This is a region with lots of evidence of ice and glacial features inside craters. The picture shows a small two-mile-wide crater about 500 feet deep inside Greeley. Both inside and outside the crater the surface suggests ice, either in glacial formations on the crater floor or as a soft flat plain that allows impacts to sink in without producing a rim or much ejecta.

While research has suggested a large number of glaciers in the outlined region on the western edge of the overview map, the evidence continues to build that near-surface ice exists everywhere throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars.

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King Charles III proposes his own vision for space, focused not on private enterprise but on achieving a globalist utopia

10:47 am

We’re here to help you! King Charles III yesterday announced a major space policy concept which he dubbed Astra Carta, aimed at making the leftist utopian vision the prime guidance for any future exploration or settlement of the solar system.

The statement from the Palace says the “Astra Carta aims to convene the private sector in creating and accelerating sustainable practices across the global space industry. It also recognises the unique role that space can play in creating a more sustainable future on Earth and the need for the space industry to consider environmental and sustainability impacts beyond our planet. Its ambition encourages a focus on placing sustainability at the core of space activity.”

You can read a detailed summary of Astra Carta’s goals here [pdf]. Its aims however make clear Charles’ globalist and Marxist goals, as previously outlined by his 2021 Terra Carta proposal for Earth:
» Read more

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Blue Origin negotiating with India to use its rockets and capsule for Orbital Reef space station

10:20 am

According to the head of India’s space agency ISRO, he has been in discussions with Blue Origin about using different versions of that nation’s largest rocket (dubbed LVM-3 or GSLV-Mk3 depending on configuration) and its manned capsule (still under development) for eventually ferrying crew and cargo to Blue Origin’s proposed Orbital Reef space station.

Somanath said: “We are exploring … In fact, we’ve already discussed it with Blue Origin and they are very keen to consider this option of LVM-3 becoming a crew capsule mission to service the Orbital Reef. It is a possibility and we are engaging through IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre).”

On the challenge of integrating a docking system that is compatible, he said standard docking systems are in the public domain. “…Whoever can design a docking system that matches with the US design and standard, can be used. However, we will still need to have agreements with agencies to try it out given that there are multiple interfaces — electrical, mechanical and so on. It is not just one document, we will need to work with them to develop it. We will do that.

It appears Somanath has also had discussions with NASA about also providing the same service to ISS.

An Orbital Reef deal however suggests something very disturbing about Blue Origin. The plan had been to use Blue Origin’s New Glenn orbital rocket (also still under development but years behind schedule) to launch crew and cargo capsules to the station. That in fact is supposed to be Blue Origin’s main technical contribution to the station. Why would the company then look to India for such capability, unless it recognizes that there are more problems with New Glenn that it has not revealed?

It is also possible that Jeff Bezos is simply expressing his leftwing globalist agenda with these negotiations. Or it could mean some combination of both. This situation bears watching.

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MOXIE instrument on Perseverance sets new record for oxygen production

9:54 am

The MOXIE instrument on Perseverance this month doubled its last record for producing oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere of carbon dioxide.

“This was the riskiest run we’ve done,” [Michael Hecht, MOXIE’s principal investigator] told Space.com in an exclusive interview. “This could have gone wrong,” he said, and could have led to minor damage to the instrument, but it didn’t. The milestone setting Mars run took place on June 6, operating during the Martian night, and lasted 58 minutes, Hecht said.

The requirements for MOXIE were to produce 6 grams of oxygen an hour, a rate that was eventually doubled. “We rolled the dice a little bit. It was ‘hold your breath and see what happens,'” Hecht said.

Informally dubbed by Hecht and his team as “the last hurrah,” MOXIE delivered the goods on its 15th run on Mars since first gulping up Martian atmosphere within Jezero Crater on April 20, 2021.

Producing twelve grams of oxygen per hours is a very big deal. A person requires about 20 grams per hour, so this demonstration instrument has shown it can produce more than half that. Build a larger version designed to work continuously, and you easily will create enough oxygen on Mars to sustain a colony.

This means the first humans to arrive on Mars will not need to bring oxygen, only enough Moxies. More important, the oxygen supply will be infinite, putting no limit to their stay.

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Redwire gets new contract to build two more replacement solar panels for ISS

9:44 am

Redwire has gotten a new contract from NASA, through its main contractor Boeing, to build two more Roll-Out Solar Arrays (IROSA) for ISS that are being installed to replace the stations aging original solar panels.

Since 2021, a total of six Redwire-built arrays have been developed, delivered, and deployed on the ISS, augmenting its critical power supply. Each wing provides an additional 20+ kW of power once deployed, and all eight IROSA wings combined will provide more than 160 kW for over 10 years.

These roll out arrays are installed during a space walk, and then roll out on top of the old panels. They are small but more power efficient.

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Perseverance spots a doughnut-shaped rock

1:03 pm

Doughnut-shaped rock in Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

The Mars rover has spent the last few months exploring just beyond the western rim of half-mile-wide Belva crater, which sits on top of the delta that eons ago flowed into 30-mile-wide Jezero Crater. During that time the science team has been using its various cameras to study the surrounding terrain.

One of those cameras is the SuperCam Remote Micro Imager. This camera is a variation of Curiosity’s ChemCam, designed initially to look very closely at nearby objects. The Curiosity team however discovered they could also use ChemCam to look at distant objects, and in this case the Perseverance team was doing the same with SuperCam, gazing outward at more remote features.

The result was the picture to the right, cropped, reduced, brightened, and sharpened to post here. It was taken on June 23, 2023, and shows what appears to be a several-foot-wide rock with a hole in its center. According to the SETI Institute’s tweet that publicized the picture, the rock might be “a large meteorite alongside smaller pieces.”

If this was Curiosity I would be certain the science team would take the rover close to the rock. The Perseverance team however seems to have different goals, mostly centered on finding drill spots for obtaining its core samples for later return to Earth. It has not therefore been as exploratory as Curiosity. It seems to have rarely diverged from its planned route, and when it has it has not done so to look at singular features like this. We shall see what they finally decide.

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Sierra Space says first Dream Chaser will be ready for launch by December

12:41 pm

In a presentation at an investor conference on June 27, 2023, a Sierra Space official provided an update on the status of its first Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, stating that they expect it to be ready for launch by December, with the main question whether its ULA Vulcan launch rocket will also be ready.

The launch is supposed to be the second for Vulcan, but the first launch was just delayed for an undetermined amount of time so ULA can make modifications to the rocket’s Centaur upper stage. Once Tenacity is flying Sierra has a contract with NASA for seven cargo flights to ISS, with plans beyond.

The company is also working on a second version that can carry both crew and cargo. Vice said that version will have 40% greater cargo capacity than the first version and can support a six-person crew.

The ability of Dream Chaser to glide back to Earth in a runway landing, rather than splash down in the ocean, is a key selling point to customers, he argued. “We just think that landing at runways around the world is a huge differentiator: low-g landing back on a runway for both time-critical cargo and science, but also just the way people are going to want to fly back and land.”

The official also indicated that this human-rated version is being designed to work with the private Orbital Reef space station that Sierra Space is building in partnership with other companies. The company also said it is planning its own free flying version of its Orbital Reef LIFE module that the company hopes to launch by the end of 2026, ahead of Orbital Reef. If so, that would make this the sixth independent private space station planned by American companies.

Because much of this presentation was designed to impress potential investors, we should take it with a touch of skepticism. Nonetheless, that the company is considering launching its own station, independent of the Blue Origin-led Orbital Reef station, suggests it has its own doubts about whether that project will ever take off as planned, and has thus decided to make its own contingency plans.

Hat tip to Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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Another tourist site for future Starship passengers on Mars

12:16 pm

Another tourist site for future Starship passengers 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 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northwest quadrant of a 7-mile-wide crater whose western rim was smashed by the later impact that created a smaller 2.8-mile-wide crater.

What makes this location interesting is what fills both craters, and how that material appears to flow through a gap in the smaller crater. The color strip suggests the peaks of the rim and small knobs are dust-covered, while the flat materials below are either “coarser-grained materials” that might also have elements of frost or ice within them. The science team thinks ice is involved, having labeled this picture “Ice Flow Features between Craters.”
» Read more

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Host galaxies for two quasars in early universe detected for the first time

10:06 am

Quasar and host galaxy
One of the quasars, with its light subtracted on the right,
revealing the host galaxy. Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Using data from both the infrared Webb Space Telescope and the Subaru optical telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have observed for the first time the host galaxies of two quasars that formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

Just a few months after JWST started regular operations, the team observed two quasars, HSC J2236+0032 and HSC J2255+0251, at redshifts 6.40 and 6.34 when the universe was approximately 860 million years old, both of which were discovered using Subaru Telescope’s deep survey program. The relatively low luminosities of these quasars made them prime targets for measuring the properties of their host galaxies.

The images of the two quasars were taken at infrared wavelengths of 3.56 and 1.50 microns with JWST’s NIRCam instrument, and the host galaxies became apparent after carefully modeling and subtracting glare from the accreting black holes. The stellar signature of the host galaxy was also seen in a spectrum taken by JWST’s NIRSPEC for J2236+0032, further supporting the detection of the host galaxy.

Photometric analyses found that these two quasar host galaxies are massive, measuring 130 and 34 billion times the mass of the Sun, respectively. Measuring the speed of the turbulent gas in the vicinity of the quasars from the NIRSPEC spectra suggests the black holes that power them are also massive, measuring 1.4 and 0.2 billion times the mass of the Sun. The ratio of the black hole to host galaxy mass is similar to those of galaxies in the more recent past, suggesting that the relationship between black holes and their hosts was already in place 860 million years after the Big Bang. [emphasis mine]

Normally, quasars are so bright the host galaxy is obscured. Computer modeling that subtracted the quasar’s light produced the host galaxy image on the right.

The highlighted sentence raises intriguing questions again about the Big Bang. Webb is once again finding evidence that the early universe quickly became like today’s universe, much faster than expected by cosmologists.

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Las Vegas developer touts spaceport plan

9:47 am

A Las Vegas developer is publicizing his plan to build a spaceport for rockets and spaceplanes on his 240 acre lot, with launches taking place within five to seven years.

He is also building a hotel/casino at this location, and I suspect the spaceport proposal’s purpose has more to do with publicizing that casino than actually launching rockets. He claims he will have a spaceport permit in two years, but for him to get such a thing for this land-based site is questionable.

The developer is also proposing to include a space-focused engineering school at the site, as well as fly zero-gravity planes from there, both of which are far more feasible.

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Europe successfully tests rocket engine to be used in its first reusable rocket

9:31 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) on June 22, 2023 successfully completed a 12-second static fire test of the Prometheus rocket engine it plans to use in its first reusable rocket.

The engine, like SpaceX’s Raptor-2 engine for Starship/Superheavy, uses methane as its fuel. The plan is to use it in a future rocket to replace or upgrade the Ariane-6 rocket, still being developed, with the ability to vertically land and reuse the first stage. The plan after this first round of static fire tests is complete is to begin to do short vertical hop tests next year, similar to the Grasshopper tests SpaceX did as it developed the Falcon 9.

However, the following quote from the article indicates their are some limitations to the engine:

According to CNES, the new engine will be reusable up to five times and can deliver variable thrusts of up to 100 tonnes.

SpaceX builds its Merlin and Raptor engines with the goal of many more reuses than this. Possibly this number is simply a conservative estimate that will change once the engine is operational. If all goes as planned, ESA hopes to have this new reusable rocket flying by 2026, at the earliest.

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Spring near the Martian north pole

12:28 pm

Spring near the Martian north pole
Click for original image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The picture above, rotated, reduced, and brightened slightly to post here, was taken on April 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It cuts a swath across an eleven-mile-wide crater only about 500 miles from the edge of Mars’ north pole ice cap.

The overview map to the right marks its location, as indicated by the white dot on the right edge of the map. The inset shows the soft and likely icy nature of the surface in which this impact occurred. The crater resulted in a secondary outside ripple, that quickly hardened after impact.

The image was taken during spring, shortly after the sun’s light hit this crater. The cracks in the ice indicate long term sublimation that is slowly reducing the amount of water ice inside the crater. Like mud cracks in the desert after a puddle has evaporated, the ice here is cracking to produce polygon fractures.

It is also very likely that everything here is coated with a thin mantle of clear dry ice, deposited as snow from the atmosphere in the winter and then sublimating away with the coming of spring. That spring dry ice sublimation is likely ongoing, and this picture is probably an attempt by scientists to detect that process.

Why the surface colors shift from aquablue to orange might have to do with that sublimation process, or it might be revealing areas covered with dust (orange). That the northern parts of the strip is blue and the southern parts orange suggests the former. Or not. I don’t have enough information to answer this question with any confidence.

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Zhurong data shows very weak magnetic field at landing site

10:17 am

Using data accumulated by Zhurong while it was still rovering on Mars, Chinese scientists have determined that the weak Martian magnetic field at Utopia Basin where the rover landed was very weak, much weaker than expected.

Results from NASA’s Mars’ lander InSight, which landed about 2,000 km southeast of Zhurong, have revealed that the crustal magnetic field at InSight’s landing site was an order stronger than that inferred from orbital measurement. Measurements from Zhurong, however, revealed the opposite result, with the average intensity an order less than that inferred from orbit.

The weak field suggests that the crust under Utopia Basin was never magnetized, or was demagnetized by some large later impact.

Meanwhile, no word on Zhurong itself, which either remains in hibernation or has died due to lack of power caused by the dusty Martian winter.

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Surprise! The cost for the Mars Sample Return mission is ballooning!

10:11 am

According to NASA, the cost for the Mars Sample Return mission could possibly rise to as high as $8 to $9 billion, more than double the $3.8 billion to $4.4 billion estimated by a 2020 review.

NASA itself has recently become very silent about the project’s expected cost.

NASA officials have been careful not to give any estimates of costs for MSR in recent presentations, stating that it will wait until a formal confirmation review for the program, scheduled for the fall, before providing an official cost and schedule baseline. That will come after a series of preliminary design reviews and a review by a second independent board led by Orlando Figueroa, a former director of NASA’s Mars exploration program.

Those earlier numbers were never realistic, based on NASA’s recent track record. The cost of its big projects — Webb, SLS, Orion, Roman Telescope — always grows exponentially, once the project gets going.

This cost increase however is a serious political problem for NASA and this sample return mission, as the House is demanding major real cuts in the budgets of almost all federal agencies. While I expect NASA to survive these cuts without great harm, a program that shows out-of-control budget growth might become a target by the House, which is likely why NASA scheduled its review of the sample return mission to occur in the fall, after the House approves its next budget. Better to announce bad news as late as possible.

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The last Ariane-5 launch scheduled for July 4th

10:01 am

Arianespace has now scheduled the last Ariane-5 launch for July 4, 2023, after a delay caused by a problem with “the pyrotechnic transmission lines” on the rocket, requiring their replacement.

The replacement happened faster than originally expected. The launch will place a French military communications satellite into orbit as well as a German experimental communications satellite.

After this launch, Europe will temporarily be without any method for launching its own payloads, for the first time this century. Its Vega-C rocket is presently grounded due to a launch failure in December 2022, and the Ariane-6 rocket that was to replace the Ariane-5 is years behind schedule, and not expected to fly until 2024. The original plan was for there to be an overlap between the two rockets, but the delays ended that plan.

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China conducts parachute tests for returning asteroid sample to Earth

9:53 am

China has successfully conducted tests of the parachute design that will be used by the sample return capsule of its Tianwen-2 mission to grab samples from the near Earth asteroid dubbed 469219 Kamoʻoalewa.

The mission will launch on a Long March 3B rocket in 2025, and rendezvous with the asteroid in 2025. After getting its samples and releasing the sample return capsule, the plan is to then send Tianwen-2 to Comet 311P/PANSTARRS, arriving in the 2030s.

The probe uses fanlike solar panels, apparently copied from those used by NASA’s Lucy asteroid probe. China also has copied the touch-and-go sample grab methods used by OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa-2, but it will also try its own original idea, to anchor to the asteroid and use drills in the probe’s landing legs.

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SpaceX completes six-engine static fire test of Starship prototype #25

9:43 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully completed a six-engine static fire test of Starship prototype #25, the prototype that will be stacked on top of Superheavy prototype #9 and flown on the next orbital test flight.

Musk said in an interview on Saturday that more than a thousand upgrades were planned before the next flight of the Starship/Super Heavy. Including a significant change to the stage separation system that will see the Starship ignite its engines while still attached to the Super Heavy. Improvements are also being made to the Raptor engines to prevent leaks of super-heated gas which resulted in multiple engine failures during the April launch.

Major repair work and modifications are also underway to the Starship launch pad, after extensive damage occurred during the April 20 test flight.

Musk has also said the company will be ready to launch by August. While it is certainly possible that engineering will cause a slight delay to that schedule, more likely SpaceX will be ready, and then have to sit and wait for the FAA and the Biden administration to issue a launch permit. I am predicting it will not be issued by then, and likely not for months afterward.

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South Korea recovers North Korea’s failed spy satellite

9:37 am

South Korea officials have revealed that their salvage operation has recovered the North Korean spy satellite that was lost when its rocket failed during launch on May 31, 2023.

The satellite, known as Malligyong-1, is reported to be designed to take high-resolution images of Earth to provide intelligence for the reclusive country’s military.

Pieces of debris believed to be the Chollima Type 1 rocket used for the mission were recovered just days after the attempted launch, Reuters reported on June 15. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency is now reporting that the South Korean military has salvaged “an object believed to be a military reconnaissance satellite,” offering a valuable opportunity to learn about the spacecraft and its planned capabilities.

We should not expect South Korea to tell us much of what it finds. I predict the satellite will be very unsophisticated, and to reveal that would not serve the purposes of the South Korean government, which benefits from overstating North Korean military capabilities. North Korea is certainly a threat to South Korea, but all governments always take advantage of such threats to expand their power.

All told South Korea had recovered about 180 pieces of debris, including parts of the failed rocket. The salvage operations are continuing.

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Russians launch weather satellite and 42 smallsats

9:29 am

Russians today successfully launched a Russian weather satellite plus 42 smallsats on a Soyuz-2 rocket, lifting off from Vostochny in Russia’s far east.

Almost all of the secondary payloads were Russian. The one exception known was a demo cubesat from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), apparently built by its own engineers and flown to test their growing capabilities. Previous UAE satellites and probes have previously been built by others and used to train UAE engineers.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

43 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 41, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 41.

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A northern lowland ice sheet on Mars?

9:39 am

A northern lowland ice sheet on Mars?
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed simply a “terrain sample,” this image was likely taken not as part of any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its temperature by taking regular images. When the camera team needs to do this, they try to find interesting locations not previously photographed. Sometimes the photos turn out somewhat boring. Most of the time however they capture something very intriguing.

In this case, the intriguing feature of this picture is its stippled surface that seems to overlay a relatively flat surface underneath, with some faint covered craters visible. On top are several more recent craters that suggest either the impact landed in very soft material, thus producing little ejecta and no crater rims or the craters are not craters but sinks, places where the ground is subsiding due to some underground process.
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