Tag: spaceflight

Rocket Lab completes Photon transport spacecraft for Varda’s private returnable space capsule

9:20 am

The private rocket company Rocket Lab has now completed construction on the Photon transport spacecraft that the private company Varda has purchased to maneuver and then de-orbit its private returnable space capsule in which it plans to manufacture pharmaceuticals while in orbit and then return to Earth for sale.

Rocket Lab made the spacecraft at its Long Beach manufacturing site to provide power, communications, propulsion and attitude control to a capsule that will produce pharmaceutical products in microgravity. In addition to providing support during the in-space phase of Varda’s mission, the Photon will put Varda’s capsule carrying finished pharmaceuticals on a return trajectory to Earth.

This is the first of four Photon spacecraft that Varda has purchased from Rocket Lab. Varda appears to be attempting to continue the pharmaceutical work that McDonnell-Douglas did on the space shuttle, and was on the verge of flying a full-scale production mission for profit, when the Challenger accident occurred in 1986 and ended all further commercial work on the shuttle.

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Private company developing concept for resurrecting Spitzer Space Telescope

9:11 am

Using a $250K development contract from the Space Force, the small startup Rhea Space Activity hopes to develop a mission for resurrecting Spitzer Space Telescope, now several hundred million miles from Earth and out of operation for three years.

The “Spitzer Resurrector” mission would be a small spacecraft that could fit into a 1-meter-by-1-meter box and be ready to launch as soon as 2026, Usman said. It would then take about three years to cruise to the telescope, during which time the spacecraft will make observations of solar flaring. “We plan to be busy right from the start of the mission,” said Howard Smith, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, which is operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian, who is involved in the proposed rescue flight.

Once the resurrector spacecraft reaches the telescope, it would fly around at a distance of 50 to 100 km to characterize Spitzer’s health. Then it would attempt to establish communications with the telescope and begin to relay information back and forth between the ground and telescope. This would allow scientists to restart observations.

Essentially, the servicing satellite would act as a relay communications satellite, allowing Spitzer to resume doing the limited infrared observations it had been doing in the last eleven years of its life, after its coolant ran out.

The actual mission of course has not yet been funded, nor is Rhea much more than a startup, with only ten employees. The concept however illustrates the growing practicality of flying such missions. The number of servicing missions to defunct satellites is growing in leaps and bounds, and Rhea, as well as its other partners at the Smithsonian and the Applied Physics Laboratory, are simply using that knowledge for their own benefit.

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Italy awards $256 million contract for testing in-orbit robotic satellite servicing

8:59 am

The new colonial movement: The Italian Space Agency yesterday issued a $256 million contract to a partnership of several private European companies — most of which are Italian — to fly a mission testing a variety of in-orbit robotic satellite servicing capabilities.

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales of France and Leonardo of Italy, said the group is contracted to design, develop, and qualify a spacecraft capable of performing a range of autonomous robotic operations on satellites in low Earth orbit.

The company did not disclose details about these satellites or specifics about the mission, but said the servicer would have a dexterous robotic arm and test capabilities that include refueling, component repair or replacement, orbital transfer, and atmospheric reentry. The servicer will be launched with a target satellite, Thales Alenia Space spokesperson Cinzia Marcanio said, and both will be fitted with an interface for a refueling mission.

The partnership also includes the Italian companies Telespazio, Avio, and D-Orbit.

The significance of this deal is that Italy has gone outside the European Space Agency (ESA) to do it. For decades all European projects would be developed and flown through ESA. Italy appears to be have finally realized that it does not need that partnership, that in fact that partnership acts to hinder its own companies by requiring any mission to use companies from other nations. This deal instead keeps almost everything inside Italy.

We have seen a similar pattern in both Germany and the United Kingdom. The former has been working to encourage private German rocket companies, independent of ESA. The latter is doing the same in the UK, while also encouraging private British spaceports to launch those rockets.

These efforts strongly suggest that ESA’s monumental failure with the Ariane-6 — which is years late and will cost too much to fly — has been causing its member nations to rethink that partnership, and increasingly go it alone. ESA failed to provide them a competitive alternative for getting their payloads into orbit. They are now looking for ways to do it themselves.

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Glacial sinkhole in the Martian southern cratered highlands?

1:14 pm

Overview map

Glacial sinkhole in the Martian southern cratered highlands?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This is a terrain sample image, which means it was snapped not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. As usual, the camera team tried to pick something of interest, and I think they succeeded.

The two large depressions in the center of the picture do not resemble impact craters. They have no rim of ejected material and their shape is very distorted. Instead, both appear to be places where a top layer of ice/debris has sublimated away into gas, exposing a lower layer of glacial material that itself is sublimating away to form the bumpy mounds that fill the floor of the depressions.

The white dot inside the inset box on the overview map above marks this location, just south of the northern wall of a large 30-mile-wide canyon, with its northern floor even more depressed, as if the material in that raised middle a flat pile of glacial debris flowing to the southwest after leaving the gap in the crater to the northeast. An MRO context camera picture taken on January 6, 2016 gives a wider view, showing that there are a lot of these type depressions on the surface of this wide middle upraised floor, as well as some obvious impact craters.

This location is in the mid-latitude band where many glacial features are found. In this part of the southern cratered highlands there is also a lot of evidence of top layers sublimating away, as if the glacial material is a large buried ice sheet that is beginning to disappear at places where it has been exposed by impacts or shifting motion. The depression in the picture above appears to be an example.

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NASA’s second super pressure balloon develops leak, forcing termination of mission

9:24 am

After only a day and a half after launch NASA’s second super pressure balloon, this time carrying a detector for studying cosmic rays, developed a leak that forced its controllers to terminate the mission.

The scientific balloon launched from Wānaka Airport, New Zealand, May 13, 12:02 p.m. NZST (May 12, 8:02 p.m EDT). The balloon was in flight for 1 day, 12 hours, and 53 minutes before termination over the Pacific Ocean May 14 at 12:54 UTC (8:54 a.m. EDT). The launch was the second and final for NASA’s 2023 New Zealand balloon launch campaign.

During flight, the SPB began experiencing a leak and teams attempted to troubleshot by dropping ballast to maintain the balloon’s altitude. The determination was made to safely terminate over the Pacific Ocean. NASA will investigate the cause of the anomaly.

Meanwhile, the first balloon, dubbed SuperBIT, continues to fly, presently on its fourth circumnavigation of Antarctic while its telescope takes high resolution images of celestial objects.

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Stratolaunch’s giant airplane Roc successfully completes first drop test of payload

9:16 am

On May 13, 2023 Stratolaunch’s giant airplane Roc took off with a Talon-0 engineering test vehicle attached to its fuselage and successfully released that test vehicle, completing the plane’s first drop test.

Saturday’s outing was the 11th flight test for Stratolaunch’s flying launch pad — a twin-fuselage, six-engine airplane with a record-setting 385-foot wingspan. The plane is nicknamed Roc in honor of a giant bird in Middle East mythology.

Roc carried the Talon-A separation test vehicle, known as TA-0, during three previous test flights. But this was the first time TA-0 was released from Roc’s center-wing pylon to fly free. The release took place during a four-hour, eight-minute flight that involved operations in Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Western Range, off California’s central coast.

With this success the company appears ready to fulfill its military contract to use its Talon-1 payloads to fly hypersonic flight tests.

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SpaceX launches another 56 Starlink satellites into orbit

10:57 pm

Using its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 7th and 8th flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

31 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 35 to 17 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 35 to 29. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including other American companies, only 31 to 33 in launches this year.

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Another study suggests Saturn’s rings are young, much younger than the planet

5:59 pm

Scientists using data from Cassini, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, have confirmed earlier research that said Saturn’s rings are much younger than the planet, only about 400 million years old.

From 2004 to 2017, the team used an instrument called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer aboard NASA’s late Cassini spacecraft to analyze specks of dust flying around Saturn. Over those 13 years, the researchers collected just 163 grains that had originated from beyond the planet’s close neighborhood. But it was enough. Based on their calculations, Saturn’s rings have likely been gathering dust for only a few hundred million years.

Though I cannot cite the earlier research, I distinctly remember a study from about a decade ago that posited the rings being young, only a few hundred million years old. This research confirms this conclusion, and likely firms up the theory considerably.

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Intuitive Machines’ first mission to land on Moon delayed

5:52 pm

Intuitive Machines officials revealed during their quarterly report that the first mission of its Nova-C lunar lander has been delayed from June to late August or September.

The company announced in February plans for a June landing at Malapert A, a crater near the south pole of the moon. That date was a slip from a previously scheduled March launch, which the company said was linked to NASA’s decision to move the landing site to Malapert A.

Altemus said the company made “significant progress” in testing of the lander in recent months, such as structural tests to confirm the vehicle could handle the stresses of launch and cryogenic tanking demonstrations. “We have some functional testing” still to do on the lander, he said, but did not elaborate on the nature of those tests or their schedule ahead of shipping to Cape Canaveral for its Falcon 9 launch.

Two private companies have so far attempted and failed to land on the Moon, Israel’s SpaceIL and Japan’s Ispace. Two American companies, Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic, are both racing to achieve this goal in the coming months. This delay now puts Astrobotic in the lead, with its launch now targeting the summer.

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Engineers free stuck radar antenna on Juice probe to Jupiter’s big moons

4:24 pm

Engineers have successfully freed the 52-foot wide radar antenna on the Juice probe to Jupiter, shaking it enough to release a pin that was blocking deployment.

The pin was freed by employing “back-to-back jolts”. Imagine when you roll your car back and forth to get it freed from mud or snow. It appears this is what they did with the pin.

Juice will arrive in Jupiter orbit in 2031, where it will make numerous fly-bys of Europa, Calisto, and Ganymede, and then settle into an orbit around Ganymede alone. The radar antenna was essential for probing the ice content of these worlds, below the surface.

Hat tip to reader Mike Nelson.

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Saturn now has 145 known moons

3:41 pm

Using ground-based images analyzed in a new way, astronomers have discovered an additional 62 small moons orbiting Saturn, giving the ringed gas giant a total of 145 known moons.

The data used by the team was collected between 2019 and 2021 in three-hour spans by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on top of Maunakea in Hawaii. It allowed the astronomers to detect moons around Saturn as small as 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers) in diameter. That’s about two-thirds the length of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Though some of the moons had been spotted as early as 2019, it takes more than sighting an object close to a planet to confirm it is a moon and not an asteroid making a brief close passage to that planet. To change these objects from “suspected moons” to “confirmed moons” of Saturn, the astronomers had to track them for several years to ensure each is actually orbiting the gas giant.

Performing a painstaking process of matching objects detected on different nights over the course of 24 months, the team tracked 63 objects that they ended up confirming as moons. One of these satellites was revealed back in 2021, with the remaining 62 moons gradually announced over the past few weeks.

To a certain extent, this declared number of moons around Saturn is utterly irrelevant. Think about it. Every single object in its rings should be defined as a moon, totaling hundreds of thousands. At some point the question of what defines a moon becomes the relevant question.

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Endless dunes amidst Mars’ giant volcanoes

1:57 pm

Endless dunes amidst Mars' giant volcanoes
Click for originial image.

Past cool images on Behind the Black showing endless dune fields on Mars have generally focused on two places, the giant Medusae Fossae Formation volcanic ash deposits in the dry equatorial regions of Mars and the Olympia Undae dune sea that surrounds the Martian north pole.

Today’s image to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, takes us to a completely different dune sea. Taken on February 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the picture also shows an endless dune sea, though there is faint evidence on those dune fields of buried features, such as the meandering east-west feature in the picture’s center.

This dune sea is also in the dry equatorial regions, like Medusae, but it is much farther east, and sits surrounded by Mars’ biggest volcanoes.
» Read more

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Scientists rediscover the advantages of nuclear power for moving probes through the solar system

10:21 am

Scientists appear to have once again discovered the advantages of nuclear powered thrusters for moving much heavier interplanetary missions more quickly and more efficiently to the farther reaches of the solar system.

A new paper published last month in the journal Acta Astronautica argues that a fusion-powered drive, capable of delivering propulsion while powering onboard electronics, could be a way to get more power and cargo to outer moons like Titan, and designed a scenario revealing what a DFD-powered [direct-fusion-drive] Titan mission would look like.

A 2021 study from an international research team revealed that a DFD could transport 2,220 lbs to Titan in 31 months. Right now, the Dragonfly mission [to Saturn’s moon Titan] weighs in at about 990 lbs. This new paper says that the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) concept developed at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is essential for powering the mission.

The irony of this story is that scientists and engineers knew these obvious facts and proposed many versions of nuclear-powered thrusters back in the 1960s. NASA even had a very successful project called NERVA in the late 1960s, with plans to begin using the technology by the 1980s.

All such research was canceled however in the 1970s, partly because of budget cutbacks but mostly because of the paranoia that began developing at that time against using nuclear power for anything. The idea of launching a rocket into space that carried a nuclear rocket engine was considered environmentally too risky.

Has that fear now subsided? We shall see. There are plenty of environmental activist groups that we can expect to immediately oppose such technology. The question will be whether a large enough private industry will evolve capable of exerting its own political weight to resist that opposition.

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Perseverance data suggests a strong river rushed down the delta in Jezero Crater

10:07 am

Skrinkle Haven on Mars
Click for original image.

Based on the images and geology so far gathered by the Mars rover Perseverance as it has climbed up onto the delta that flowed into Jezero Crater sometime in the far past, scientists now think a roaring river once flowed down that delta.

Years ago, scientists noticed a series of curving bands of layered rock within Jezero Crater that they dubbed “the curvilinear unit.” They could see these layers from space but are finally able to see them up close, thanks to Perseverance.

One location within the curvilinear unit, nicknamed “Skrinkle Haven,” is captured in one of the new Mastcam-Z mosaics [a section of which is posted to the right]. Scientists are sure the curved layers here were formed by powerfully flowing water, but Mastcam-Z’s detailed shots have left them debating what kind: a river such as the Mississippi, which winds snakelike across the landscape, or a braided river like Nebraska’s Platte, which forms small islands of sediment called sandbars.

When viewed from the ground, the curved layers appear arranged in rows that ripple out across the landscape. They could be the remnants of a river’s banks that shifted over time – or the remnants of sandbars that formed in the river. The layers were likely much taller in the past. Scientists suspect that after these piles of sediment turned to rock, they were sandblasted by wind over the eons and carved down to their present size.

The press release say nothing about glacial activity here, but I am willing to bet the scientists have considered this. As it requires a greater leap into the unknown, involving geological processes not yet understood on an alien planet, it is makes sense that they have put it aside at this point. I also am willing to bet that it will pop up again, with time and additional data.

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Ariane-6’s first launch now likely delayed again, until 2024

9:49 am

According to officials from the German company OHB, which makes parts of Europe’s new Ariane-6 rocket, its first launch will not take place before the end of this year, as presently scheduled by Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency (ESA).

In a May 10 earnings call, executives with German aerospace company OHB predicted that the rocket will make its long-delayed debut within the first several months of 2024, the strongest indication yet by those involved with the rocket’s development that it will not be ready for launch before the end of this year.

“It’s not yet launched, but we hope that it will launch in the early part of next year,” said Marco Fuchs, chief executive of OHB, of Ariane 6 during a presentation about the company’s first quarter financial results. A subsidiary of OHB, MT Aerospace, produces tanks and structures for the rocket. Later in the call, he estimated the rocket was no more than a year away from that inaugural flight. “I am getting more and more confident we will see the first launch of Ariane 6 early next year,” he said. “I think we are within a year of the first launch and that is psychologically very important.”

These delays seriously impact many projects of ESA and other European companies. Ariane-6 was originally supposed to launch by 2020, overlapping the retirement of its Ariane-5 rocket by several years. Ariane-5 now has only one launch left, presently scheduled for June. Once that flies, Europe will have no large rocket available until Ariane-6 begins operations. This situation is worsened for Europe in that its other smaller rocket, the Vega-C, failed on its last launch and has not yet resumed operations.

It is not surprising therefore that many European projects have been shifting their launch contracts away from Ariane-6 to SpaceX and others. It is also not surprising that there is now an increasing move in Europe to develop new competing private rocket companies, rather than relying on a government-owned entity like Arianespace.

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Space Perspective buys ship to use for launching and recovering its passenger balloons

9:38 am

The high altitude balloon company Space Perspective has now purchased a 292-foot long ship to use as both a launch and recovery vessel for its planned flights of its Neptune capsule carrying tourists to 20-plus miles above the Earth.

Named in honor of the Voyager 1 space probe, the vessel was acquired to allow the company to launch and recover its spacecraft capsule Neptune from anywhere in the world, starting with pre-approved locations near Florida. The company completed its first test flight in June 2021, launching from land near Kennedy Space Center. The capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico roughly seven hours later. On that occasion, the capsule was recovered from the water using a chartered commercial vessel, GO America.

Building on that first recovery, Voyager will have the capability to both launch and recover the spacecraft in an integrated, flexible solution that can also relocate to avoid bad weather — a problem that often plagues traditional rocket launches and marine capsule recovery operations. Space Perspective has previously stated it expects Voyager to be the first in a fleet of marine spaceports globally.

It is now expected that Voyager will begin operations late this year, when Space Perspective begins test flights of Neptune.

The article also notes near the end the growing congestion at Port Canaveral due to the numbers of space-related ships, either already operating or anticipated. It appears a marina for these ships will soon become necessary, as the port does not want them taking up docking space when not in use.

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Astronomers find largest explosion yet discovered

9:26 am

Using a large variety of telescopes, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the largest and longest explosion ever discovered, dubbed AT2021lwx and more than eight billion light years away yet ten times brighter than any supernovae previously recorded while lasting years rather than months.

The researchers believe that the explosion is a result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than our sun, that has been violently disrupted by a supermassive black hole. Fragments of the cloud would have been swallowed up, sending shockwaves through its remnants, as well as into a large dusty doughnut-shaped formation surrounding the black hole. Such events are very rare and nothing on this scale has been witnessed before.

Last year, astronomers witnessed the brightest explosion on record – a gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A. While this was brighter than AT2021lwx, it lasted for just a fraction of the time, meaning the overall energy released by the AT2021lwx explosion is far greater. The physical size of the explosion is about 100 times larger than the entire solar system, and at its brightest, it was about 2 trillion times brighter than the Sun.

The only things in the universe that are as bright as AT2021lwx are quasars – supermassive black holes with a constant flow of gas falling onto them at high velocity.

Any theories at this moment about the cause of this explosion are very tentative, pending acquisition of more data. What is certain is that the tools of astronomers are far more sophisticated today, allowing for such discoveries that were once impossible. And it also appears that the existence of thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit did nothing to hinder this research.

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China’s X-37B copy appears to have tested docking and rendezvous while in orbit

12:41 pm

Tracking data during the 276-day flight of China’s copy of Boeing’S X-37B reusable mini-shuttle suggests that it tested docking and rendezvous operations with an object it released while in orbit.

U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron tracking data revealed an object in a closely-matching orbit to the spaceplane Oct. 31, 2022 (NORAD ID 54218 (2022-093J COSPAR ID)).

This companion subsatellite was then used in a series of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) with the spacecraft, according to Leolabs. “Analyzing data from our global radar network, we’ve determined that the Test Spacecraft2 has propulsive capability and engaged in proximity operations with Object J, including what appeared to be at least two and possibly three capture/docking operations,” a Leolabs statement said.

None of this is a surprise. Such reusable shuttles allow for a great deal of testing and experimentation in orbit, that can then be returned to Earth for analysis.

Hat tip Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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Is this ice or lava in the death valley of Mars?

12:21 pm

Ice or lava 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 February 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

To put it mildly this is strange terrain. The curving east-west feature resembles a glacial flow, but it also has features that say otherwise. For example, what could cause that gap in the middle of the picture? Such things are not usually seen in an ice flow. Then there is that filled crater on the center left edge of the picture, inside the flow. Though filled with material, the flow itself does not flow around the crater, suggesting the impact occurred after the flow. Moreover the crater is a pedestal crater, whereby the surrounding terrain has eroded away so that the crater ends up standing above it.

These facts suggest that this flow is very old, and has not flowed for a very very very long time. This in turn suggests it isn’t ice but solidified lava, though for a lava flow it also has features that are anomalous when compared to typical flood lava on Mars.
» Read more

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Scientists: Stars orbiting close to Milky Way’s supermassive black hole do it alone

10:07 am

The stars orbiting Sag A*
The stars orbiting Sag A*. Click for original image.

Based on a ten year study of the motions of nine stars orbiting close to Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, scientists have concluded that they are single stars, not binaries as would be expected.

Using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, Devin Chu of Hilo, an astronomer with the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative, led a 10-year survey that found these ‘S-stars,’ where ‘S’ stands for Sagittarius A*, the name of the monster black hole at our galaxy’s core, are all single.

The result is surprising given the S-stars Chu’s team observed included young, massive main-sequence stars that are only about six million years old. Normally, stars at this age that are 10 times more massive than our Sun spend their childhood years paired with a twin in a binary system, or sometimes even as triplets.

This finding suggests that the black hole’s massive gravitational field causes the binaries to be pulled apart, or somehow to merge during their formation.

This data point and the questions it raises pales before the more fundamental question that astronomers have been asking since these stars were first discovered in the 1990s: How is it possible for any stars to form so close to such a disruptive gravitational field?

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A rash on Mars

4:25 pm

A Martian rash
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a “Circular Outcrop of Bright Rock.

What I see is a Martian skin rash. Based on the ripple pattern below the ridge one might think we are looking at sand dunes, except that the rash above the cliff has no such pattern. Instead, the ground in this one particular area looks very roughened in a random sort of way.

The location at 27 degrees south latitude suggests there is little near surface ice at this location to cause this feature. The overview map below provides another but not very helpful possibility.
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully launches another 51 Starlink satellites

1:18 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 51 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage successfully completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairings completed their second flight in space.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

30 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 34 to 17 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 34 to 29. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including other American companies, only 30 to 33 in launches this year.

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SpaceX to launch Vast’s first space station module as well as two manned missions to it

12:11 pm

Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing

SpaceX and the private space station company Vast today revealed a deal whereby SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch VAST’s first space station module, dubbed Vast Haven-1, followed soon thereafter by two manned missions using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and lasting up to 30 days.

The announcements claim that first launch will occur by August 2025, which will make it the first privately-owned manned space station to reach orbit, well ahead of the plans by the three space station companies that NASA has issued contracts (by teams led by Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space, and Nanoracks). The only other private station hoping to beat this date, Axiom, won’t be flying independent, but will be attaching its first module to ISS in 2024.

In addition, Vast says that this module will be the incorporated into its proposed larger spinning-wheel station.

Vast is owned and financed by billionaire Jed McCaleb, who doesn’t need NASA seed money for development. In fact, it appears he and SpaceX want to remain as independent of the government as possible, considering the high fees NASA is charging to dock and stay at ISS as well as the stringent research rules it is demanding from private astronauts. This approach also appears to be the same one that Jared Isaacman is taking with his series of private missions on Dragon and Starship.

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Scientists: Real women are better to send to Mars than real men

11:10 am

Gee, I thought there was no difference: According to a study done for the European Space Agency (ESA), scientists have concluded that sending a four person all-female crew to Mars would have significant advantages over either a mixed sex crew or an all-male crew.

From the paper’s conclusion:

These estimated differences result from lower resting and exercising O2 requirements (based on available astronaut data) of theoretical female astronauts, who are lighter than theoretical male astronauts at equivalent statures and have lower relative VO2max values. These data, combined with the move towards smaller diameter space habitat modules, suggest that there may be a number of operational advantages to all-female crews during future human space exploration missions.

While there may be some minor operational advantages to only flying female astronauts on long missions, those advantages pale in comparison to the loss to humanity in the long run. You can’t settle a new world with one sex. Nor can you learn how to get there if you build your spacecraft capable of only meeting the minimum requirements.

If you go, everyone must go, or else the goal is not inclusive and diverse. Or as reader Milt noted to me when he sent me this story:

Of course, every research finding that is reported in this article flies in the face of the woke conventional wisdom that “there are no differences between men and women,” and — even better — male astronauts who wish to transition to being women must then be accepted as female in terms of mission planning, etc., lest NASA or the ESA be accused of transphobia.

In other words, this study and the entire “transgender” movement reveal the real leftist goal: Power and control. In the first case, the study says: “Give the job only to our favored oppressed sex!” In the second case the “transgender” movement says: “Obey our whims no matter what!”

Facts only matter when they help this leftist movement gain power and control. When the facts are inconvenient, the facts are tossed aside and it is the emotions that must rule.

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UAE asteroid mission will rendezvous with seven asteroids and will include lander

10:08 am

Though the mission was first announced in 2021, the UAE only recently revealed at a science conference the mission’s specific targets and plan.

From the conference poster [pdf]:

The mission will launch in 2028 and visit 7 main belt asteroids, including 6 high-speed flyby encounters en route to a rendezvous with the asteroid 269 Justitia. The mission is enabled by solar electric propulsion and gravity assist flybys of Venus, Earth, and Mars, bringing the total number of mission encounters to 10. The trajectory design presented will include the overall timeline of the mission, launch targets, launch period, overall duration of the encounters, design of the encounters, and trajectory modeling. Mission design analyses include designing the Deep space maneuvers (DSMs) prior to the rendezvous with Justitia and design Justitia’s orbits and maneuvers to accomplish the lander deployment.

As with the UAE’s Al-Amal Mars Orbiter, the country is relying on an American university, the University of Colorado, as well as the commercial company, Advanced Space, to design, build, and operate the spacecraft. In this sense the UAE is paying these American entities to fly the mission while requiring them to train its own engineers and scientists.

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Meteorite crashes through roof of NJ home

9:53 am

On May 8, 2023 a family in New Jersey returned home to discover a 4×6 inch meteorite on the floor of one bedroom, having crashed through the roof of their home.

Suzy Kop, a resident of the home, told CBS Philadelphia that meteorite landed in her father’s bedroom, but no one was home. “I thank God that my father was not here, no one was here, we weren’t hurt or anything,” Kop told the station.

She found the object, she said, amid debris in the room after it came through the ceiling. At first, she said she believed it had been thrown. “I did touch the thing, because I thought it was a random rock, I don’t know, and it was warm,” she told CBS Philadelphia.

Though not unprecedented, there are only a few recorded examples of meteorites landing in populated areas like this.

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UK regulators give okay on Viasat’s purchase of Inmarsat

9:46 am

After months of delay, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulators has finally admitted that Viasat’s purchase of Inmarsat would not reduce competition in the communication satellite industry, and has approved the purchase unconditionally.

The evidence analysed by the panel shows that, while Viasat and Inmarsat compete closely– specifically in the supply of satellite connectivity for wifi on flights – the deal does not substantially reduce competition for services provided on flights used by UK customers.

The evidence also shows that the satellite sector is expanding rapidly – a trend that is set to continue for the foreseeable future. This is due to increased demand for satellite connectivity, driven largely by the ever-growing use of the internet by business and consumers.

The CMA press release is a classic of bureaucracy blather. Essentially, it tries to make it sound like this agency did lots of difficult hard work to discover what is patently obvious, that without this merger these two companies will almost certainly not be able to compete with the emerging new satellite communications companies coming on line.

The best thing that the UK could do to encourage competition and new industries in the UK would be to defund this agency, now. Its existence accomplishes nothing other than to stand in the way.

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China launches cargo freighter to its Tiangong-3 space station

9:29 am

Using its Long March 7 rocket launching from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, China today successfully placed into orbit a Tianzhou cargo freighter to resupply the Tiangong-3 space station.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

29 SpaceX (with a launch scheduled for later today)
17 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 33 to 17 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 33 to 29.

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Jupiter’s clouds in 3D

12:37 pm

Jupiter's clouds in 3D
Click for original image.

Another cool image! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was created by a team of citizen scientists from a raw Juno image during its 40th close fly-by of Jupiter. From the caption:

Visual interpretation of relief (exaggerated) on Jupiter based on depth estimation from a single image

2D process: Enhanced RGB, enlargement and crop of image taken on 2022-02-25 02:21 UT – perijove 40 – Junocam

Process on 3d image : not based on a DTM, but a visual interpretation of the surface by depth estimation from a single image

The white box on the global image on the upper left marks the approximate area coverd by the oblique 3D picture. Though the vertical relief is greatly exaggerated as well as simulated from a flat image, it provides us a nice sense of the turbulent nature of Jupiter’s more active bands. The larger structures in the colored band appear to act like giant waves in a river rapids. And for reasons not yet understood, the more active areas of that upper atmosphere is divided into bands determined by latitude.

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Momentus and Astroscale team up to propose Hubble servicing mission

11:29 am

Capitalism in space: The two orbital tug companies Momentus and Astroscale announced today that they have partnered to propose a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, designed to boost the telescope and extend its life.

The proposed mission concept, a commercial solution to extend the life of this important national asset without risk to humans, includes launching a Momentus Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV) to low-Earth orbit on a small launch vehicle. Once on orbit, Astroscale’s RPOD technology built into the OSV would be used to safely rendezvous, approach and then complete a robotic capture of the telescope. Once mated, the OSV would perform a series of maneuvers to raise the Hubble by 50 km. Removal of surrounding and threatening space debris in Hubble’s new orbit using the Vigoride and Astroscale’s RPOD capabilities will be prioritized after the completion of the primary reboost mission.

As I have written repeatedly, Hubble is a telescope that refuses to die. I predicted that come the 2030s, when its orbit had decayed to a point that it either had to be de-orbited (NASA’s preferred option in the past when it ran everything) or be lifted to a higher orbit to extend its life, people would find a way to lift it.

Now that private enterprise is running the show, NASA is taking advantage of that to ask for private solutions to save Hubble, and not surprisingly it is quickly getting them.

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