Tag: spaceflight

Nova Scotia spaceport gets another launch contract

9:55 am

Maritime Launch Services, which is building a spaceport in Nova Scotia and hopes to offer its own rocket services to put satellites in orbit, has obtained what it claims could be a $1 billion contract with an unnamed European orbital tug company.

The only two European orbital tug companies that closely fit the description provided by Maritime officials are D-Orbit or Exolaunch. The latter had had a contract with Virgin Orbit to launch as many as 20 of its satellites. Coming less than one day after Virgin Orbit’s assets were sold off, this announcement suggests Exolaunch has replaced Virgin Orbit with this deal.

Unlike other spaceports, Maritime isn’t merely providing a launch site for rocket companies. Instead the company will also launch smallsats itself, using either Ukraine’s Cyclone-4M rocket or a British-made startup rocket dubbed Skyrora.

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Relativity and Impulse are now targeting ’26 launch window for 1st private mission to Mars

9:41 am

According to officials from the two companies, Relativity and Impulse have now delayed the launch date of their joint private unmanned lander to Mars from the ’24 launch window to the ’26 launch window.

The companies have also shared few technical details about the lander, but noted they plan to leverage designs and technologies developed for NASA’s InSight Mars lander, such as its heat shield. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” Brost said. “Doing a clean-sheet design of a lander is an insane, monumental engineering feat.”

Relativity is tasked with launching the probe, using its Terran-R rocket, which is under development and has its first launch scheduled in 2026. Impulse, which is building the lander, is at this point simply trying to develop its first small rocket engine. It appears therefore that this proposed Mars lander is designed mostly to make NASA willing to consider it when it starts hiring private companies to land probes on Mars. Its chances of launching in ’26 is quite small.

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SuperBIT high altitude astronomical balloon completes mission

9:32 am

SuperBIT image of Antennae Galaxy
The Antennae galaxy, one of four SuperBIT images released.
Click for original image.

After almost forty days circling Antarctica and taking high resolution images of galaxies and nebula, NASA SuperBIT high altitude astronomical balloon completed its mission today, landing in Argentina.

Having identified a safe landing area over southern Argentina, balloon operators from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, sent flight termination commands at 8:37 a.m. EDT, May 25. The 18.8-million-cubic-foot (532,000-cubic-meter) balloon then separated from the payload rapidly deflating, and the payload floated safely to the ground on a parachute touching down in an unpopulated area 66 nautical miles (122 kilometers) northeast of Gobernador Gregores, Argentina. NASA coordinated with Argentine officials prior to ending the balloon mission; recovery of the payload and balloon is in progress.

During its nearly 40-day journey, the balloon completed a record five full circuits about the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes, maintaining a float altitude around 108,000 feet. In the coming days, the predicted flight path would have taken the balloon more southerly with little exposure to sunlight, creating some risk in maintaining power to the balloon’s systems, which are charged via solar panels. The land-crossing created an opportunity to safely conclude the flight and recover the balloon and payload.

The picture above, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, has incredible resolution, illustrating the advantage of flying a telescope on a high altitude balloon.

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Knobs on the floor of a Martian caldera

12:01 pm

Knobs on the floor of a Martian caldera
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows what the scientists have dubbed as “enigmatic knobs” located on the caldera floor of a Martian shield volcano.

The knobs themselves, while puzzling, aren’t that interesting on their own. They are no more than 100 to 200 feet high, and are relatively featureless. Since most lack a pit at their peaks, they are probably not some form of small volcanic vent, though this conclusion is uncertain. The location, at about 30 degrees south latitude, suggests the faint possibility of near surface ice, which could make these mud volcanoes, or a very specific Arctic-type permafrost mound dubbed pingos, but once again the lack of any central pit at their peaks makes these origins also doubtful.

What the knobs however revealed to me was a giant Martian shield volcano I had never noticed before, even though it was hiding in plain sight.
» Read more

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Spaceport startup launches small amateur rockets from ship

9:56 am

A company dubbed The Spaceport Company on May 22, 2023 launched two small amateur rockets from a ship in the Gulf of Mexico in order to demonstrate the logistics of such launches in advance of developing a floating launchpad.

The Spaceport Company, based in northern Virginia, launched on Monday 4-inch and 6-inch diameter rockets from a vessel about 30 miles south of Gulfport, Miss. The one-year-old company wanted to demonstrate its operations and logistics, which included getting approval from federal regulators, before developing larger floating platforms that would send satellites into orbit.

These offshore launches, as small as they were, were the first such ocean launches in U.S. history.

It appears that the company wants to offer an alternative launch option that might avoid the problems created by regulators in the UK that destroyed Virgin Orbit.

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Launch of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser now scheduled for six month window opening in August

9:47 am

After years of delays, Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, is now scheduled for launch during the six month mission to ISS of a crew scheduled for launch in August.

Dream Chaser’s first flight on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is expected while Crew-7 is aboard and two of those crew members, NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli and JAXA’s Satoshi Furukawa, recently trained on it. JAXA and NASA formally announced Furukawa’s assignment to Crew-7 today. Furukawa, Moghbeli, ESA’s Andreas Mogensen and a Russian cosmonaut whose assignment has not been officially announced yet, are expected to launch in mid-August for a 6-month stay on the ISS.

The exact launch date within that mission has not yet been determined. It will largely depend scheduling, fitting it in with other launches to the station, assuming Tenacity’s construction is finished in time. That construction began in 2015, and has taken three to four years longer than first announced.

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Bankrupt Virgin Orbit is dead, its assets purchased by a variety of different companies

9:34 am

After failing to find a single buyer for the whole company, Virgin Orbit is now officially dead as a company, its assets broken up during bankruptcy proceedings and purchased by several different companies.

Rocket Lab paid $16.1 million for Virgin Orbit’s main manufacturing facility in California, which it intends to use for developing its larger Neutron rocket. Stratolaunch paid $17 million for the company’s 747 airplane and related equipment. Launcher, a former rocket startup that is now owned by the space station startup Vast, paid $2.7 for the company’s test site in Mojave, California, which it plans to use for static fire engine tests of a rocket engine it is developing for sale to others. A liquidation company purchased other assets, while the various LauncherOne rockets under construction remain unsold.

It is essential the reasons for this failure are made very clear. The destruction of this company occurred because regulators in the United Kingdom prevented it from launching from within the UK for almost half a year, during which it could not perform other launches elsewhere and therefore earn revenue. It then ran very low on cash, and when the UK launch failed in January, the company no longer had the resources to weather to time necessary to complete the investigation, fix the problem that caused the failure, and resume launches.

For other rocket startups, it is very important to consider this story before committing to launching in the UK. where you will face major bureaucratic obstacles from its government. Until there is evidence that something has changed, it might be better to consider other launch sites.

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Russia launches Progress with cargo to ISS

9:18 am

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a new Progress freighter to ISS, with its docking to the station to occur shortly.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

34 SpaceX
19 China
7 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 38 to 19 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 38 to 32. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including American companies, 34 to 36.

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Webb and Chandra take composite X-ray/infrared images of four famous objects

5:56 pm

Composite Chandra/Webb image of M16
Click for original image.

Astronomers have now used the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Webb Space Telescope (working in the infrared) to produce spectacular composite false-color X-ray/infrared images of four famous heavenly objects.

To the right is the composite taken of the Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16. It was also dubbed the Pillars of Creation when it was one of the first Hubble images taken after the telescope’s mirror focus was fixed in 1993. From the caption:

The Webb image shows the dark columns of gas and dust shrouding the few remaining fledgling stars just being formed. The Chandra sources, which look like dots, are young stars that give off copious amounts of X-rays. (X-ray: red, blue; infrared: red, green, blue)

The other images include star cluster NGC 346 in a nearby galaxy, the spiral galaxy NGC 1672, and the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 74.

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Frozen waves of Martian lava?

5:26 pm

Frozen waves of Martian lava?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a terrain sample image, which implies it was taken not as part of any specific request, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.

What are we looking at? This stippled terrain with curved ridges actually extends quite a distance beyond this image. A MRO context camera picture taken on July 22, 2020 shows its full extent, about 10 miles wide but extending to the north and south about 30 miles total, butting up against a north-south mountain chain to its east that is about seventy miles long with its highest peak about 8,000 feet above this plain.
» Read more

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spots Hakuto-R1 impact debris on Moon

9:38 am

Hakuto-R1 impact site, before and after
Click for original blink image.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists have spotted what they think is the impact debris produced when Ispace’s private lunar lander Hakuto-R1 crashed on the Moon on April 25, 2023.

To the right are two LRO images, the first at the top taken prior to Hakuto-R1’s landing attempt. The second at the bottom was acquired by LRO on April 26, 2023, the day after that attempt. The lettered arrows indicate four spots where the scientists identified changes between the two pictures. From the caption:

Arrow A points to a prominent surface change with higher reflectance in the upper left and lower reflectance in the lower right (opposite of nearby surface rocks along the right side of the frame). Arrows B-D point to other changes around the impact site.

According to the LRO science team, these changes suggest different pieces of debris, though it will take more analysis and more images under different lighting conditions to determine more precisely what they have found.

The presence however of four pieces strongly suggests that Hakuto-R1 hit the ground hard enough to break apart. Based on the initial data received during landing, it was thought the spacecraft had touched down softly but then was damaged by some unforeseen obstacle on the ground, such as a large boulder. The LRO image suggests instead that it did not touch down softly at all.

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Air Force awards Ursa Major rocket engine development contact

9:13 am

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has awarded the rocket engine startup Ursa Major a contract to develop two different rocket engines.

Under the contract, the Colorado-based firm will build and test a prototype of its new Draper engine for hypersonics, and further develop its 200,000-pound thrust Arroway engine for space launch.

…Under the AFRL contract, for which neither the lab or company provided a value, Ursa Major will also build a dedicated test stand for Draper and plans to hotfire the engine within 12 months.

Arroway, on the other hand, is a reusable liquid oxygen and methane staged combustion engine for medium and heavy launch vehicles. Ursa Major first announced development the 200,000-pound thrust engine last August, explaining that when clustered together, Arroway engines could replace the Russian-made RD-180 and RD-181, which are no longer available to US launch firms.

According to Ursa Major’s press release, the AFRL contract will allow further development of Arroway with a hotfire expected in 2025.

Ursa Major already has several contracts for its smaller Hadley engine, from the rocket startups Phantom, Vector, Astra, and the Air Force, and has built more than a hundred so far. The Arroway meanwhile is being developed as an American replacement for the Russian engines used by Northrop Grumman in its Antares rocket.

All in all, it appears Ursa Major is becoming a major challenger to Aerojet Rocketdyne, which in recent years had a lock on most government contracts for rocket engines. That lock resulted in very expensive engines that took years to build. The government (and others) are now finding someone else to provide this service at a better cost and far more quickly. We shall see whether Aerojet Rocketdyne responds to this competition properly, or goes the way of the horse carriage.

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SpaceX files to join FAA as defendant in lawsuit trying to shut down Boca Chica

9:01 am

SpaceX on May 19, 2023 submitted a motion to become a defendant in the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and others that demands its Starship/Superheavy launchsite at Boca Chica be shut down.

“SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy launch program hinges on the FAA’s review and licensing decision challenged here. If the Court were to rule in Plaintiffs’ favor, the FAA’s decision could be set aside, and further licensing of the Starship/Super Heavy Program could be significantly delayed, causing severe injury to SpaceX’s business,” the company said in the motion, which was filed on May 19.

The full motion can be read here [pdf].

SpaceX’s motion notes that it has followed all government regulations in the decade since it established its Boca Chica launch site, and invested more than $3 billion in doing so. The motion points out that “the FAA does not adequately represent SpaceX’s interests” and that the company must participate because the lawsuit will have direct financial impact on its business.

In other words, the big guns are now being hauled out against this lawsuit, which on its face is somewhat weak. We shall see if it can withstand the much more aggressive fight that SpaceX is certain to put up.

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Ancient volcano vent in the Martian southern cratered highlands?

12:14 pm

Ancient volcano vent on Mars?
Click for original image.

The nature of today’s cool image suggests both ancient and more recent geological activity, each coming from entirely different sources but both helping to shape the alien Martian surface.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team has labeled an “elongated depression,” sitting in the middle of a relatively flat but very rough stippled circular plain about 60 miles in diameter. An MRO context camera picture, taken on February 19, 2012, covered the central strip of this plain, and shows that its surface is equally rough and stippled everywhere, with only a few craters and one or two slight changes in elevation.

So, how does this feature tell us both about the ancient and recent geological history of this spot on Mars?
» Read more

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Jellyfish galaxy plowing its way through the intercluster medium

10:01 am

Jellyfish galaxy plowing through the intercluster medium
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released another in a series of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope during the past two years of what astronomers call jellyfish galaxies, so named because such galaxies have tendrils that extend out beyond the galaxy like the tendrils of jellyfish. This new picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, and shows a galaxy about 900 million light years away.

[T]he space between galaxies in a cluster is … pervaded with a searingly hot plasma known as the intracluster medium. While this plasma is extremely tenuous, galaxies moving through it experience it almost like swimmers fighting against a current, and this interaction can strip galaxies of their star-forming gas. This interaction between the intracluster medium and the galaxies is called ram-pressure stripping, and is the process responsible for the trailing tendrils of this jellyfish galaxy.

The arrow in the image indicates the galaxy’s direction of travel through the intercluster medium, resulting in the outer parts of the leading arm to be pushed backward above the galaxy, while material at its rear trail behind. Note also the blue star-forming regions at the galaxy’s bow. The ram pressure is also apparently causing more star formation in this part of the galaxy compared to elsewhere.

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Three government agencies now investigating the safety of methane-fueled rockets

9:42 am

We’re here to help you! It appears that three different federal agencies have been tasked to investigate the safety of methane-fueled rockets, which SpaceX, Relativity, Blue Origin, and others are beginning to use for their rockets. It burns cleaner and with more power than kerosene and is easier to handle than hydrogen.

Yet, the federal government under Biden now seems worried a new innovation in rocketry is being developed. First, the FAA is studying the explosive potential of such rockets, according to Brian Rushforth, the manager of the innovation division.

The FAA has set up a test stand at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. A crane 43 meters tall will be used to drop stainless steel containers containing mixtures of LOX and methane. A series of tests is planned to start in June on three-week intervals to measure the explosive power of that propellant combination. A second phase, tentatively scheduled for next year, will conduct similar tests with varying velocities. He said the data from those tests will be shared with other government agencies, such as NASA and the U.S. Space Force, along with launch vehicle developers.

Meanwhile, NASA and the Space Force are jointly doing a separate study on how methane-fueled rockets threaten the launch range and other nearby launchpads.

In all three cases it can be argued that these studies make sense. It also can be argued that the Biden administration is putting pressure on these agencies to find ways to squelch this new technology, especially because it is central to the development of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship rocket, and there is real hostility in Democrat/leftist circles to Elon Musk. This latter argument is further strengthened when you consider the explosive possibilities of hydrogen fuel, used by the space shuttle for decades as well as NASA’s SLS rocket. I can’t imagine its danger is less than methane. If hydrogen has been determined to be okay why should methane now be considered a threat?

Either way, we can be sure of one thing: These studies will slow down development by SpaceX and others of these new methane-fueled rockets. They will also provide ammunition for outside environmental groups who want to file further lawsuits against these companies to stop their rockets from launching.

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Indian company joins the high altitude balloon tourist race

9:23 am

A new company from India, Space Aura, is proposing to fly tourists on a high altitude balloon by 2025, joining the global competition that already includes two American balloon companies as well as one Spanish company.

Space Aura’s capsule, christened prototype SKAP1, will be tethered to a high performance ‘space balloon system’, complete with an enormous parachute. The capsule will accommodate six tourists and one pilot with ample leg room and comfortable walking space. It will be pressurised during flight and will have environmental control and life support systems that maintain oxygen, pressure, and temperature levels.

Even though passengers will not experience microgravity, they would still need to prepare before flying. Prior to the launch, which will be from Karnataka, Maharashtra, or Madhya Pradesh, the group of space tourists will undergo a week of basic physical training. The duration of the entire flight is expected to be about 5.5 to 6 hours. Tourists will ascend for about 90 minutes, spend an hour gazing out at the earth below, and begin their 90-minute descent with the balloon and parachute.

The two American companies, Space Perspective and World View, claim they will be flying tourists by 2024, while the Spanish company, Halo Space, is targeting 2025.

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China launches two satellites yesterday, one for Macau

9:16 am

China yesterday used its Long March 2C rocket to launch two satellites into orbit, with one the first science satellite by Macau, designed to study the Earth’s magnetic field in conjunction with other satellites already in orbit.

No information that I could find was released about the second satellite. The launch, from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport, dropped the rocket’s first stage somewhere in China. No word on whether it landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

34 SpaceX
19 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab (with a launch scheduled for tomorrow)

American private enterprise still leads China 38 to 19 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 38 to 31. SpaceX by itself now tied trails in total launches with the rest of the world, including American companies, 34 to 35.

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SpaceX launches Axiom’s second commercial manned mission to ISS

2:47 pm

SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch its Freedom manned capsule on its second flight, carrying four passengers on Axiom’s second commercial manned mission to ISS.

The Axiom crew included three paying passengers, one from the U.S. and two from Saudi Arabia, with the fourth crew member former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, now acting as Axiom’s commander. They plan to spend eight days docked to ISS. Making this commercial flight even more interesting is that the station already has a Middle Eastern commercial astronaut, from the United Arab Emirates. The Arab space race is clearing heating up.

The first stage was making its first flight, and successfully landed back at Cape Canaveral.

Were you aware this was happening? With my readers I expect so, but I am willing to bet that we are a very small minority. SpaceX has now made American manned spaceflight so routine almost no one pays attention.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

34 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 38 to 18 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 38 to 30. SpaceX by itself is now tied in total launches with the rest of the world, including American companies.

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SpaceX launches 5 Iridium and 16 OneWeb satellites

11:05 am

SpaceX early today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to put five Iridium and sixteen OneWeb satellites into orbit, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The first stage successfully completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings completed their third and sixth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

33 SpaceX (with a launch scheduled for tomorrow)
18 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab (with a launch scheduled for tomorrow)

American private enterprise now leads China 37 to 18 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 37 to 30. SpaceX now trails the entire world combined, including American companies, by only 33 to 34.

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Buried dying glacier in the Martian dry equatorial regions?

1:40 pm

Buried glacial ice in dry equatorial regions?
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image from Mars is not so much unique visually as it is unique in terms of its location. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northern rim of a small crater, with its floor filled with an intriguing mound of material.

The picture was labeled a “terrain sample”, which suggests it wasn’t taken as part of any specific research project by instead to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule. To maintain the camera’s proper temperature, it is necessary to take pictures regularly, and when the camera team finds a gap that is too long, they fill it by choosing some almost random target in that gap that might be interesting. Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

In this case I strongly suspect this target was hardly random. The picture title also mentions MRO’s now retired radar CRISM instrument, which was used to detect evidence of underground ice. My guess is that the camera team thus likely decided to image this crater in high resolution because that radar data suggested the presence of underground ice.

This guess is strongly confirmed by a context camera picture taken of this crater on September 1, 2008. The crater appears surrounded by the typical splash apron one routinely sees around impact craters in the mid- and high-latitude northern lowland plains, where there is a lot of near surface ice.

The bumpy mound seen in high resolution on the floor of this crater could very well be buried glacial ice, as it mimics similar features in the many craters in the mid-latitudes of Mars. But is it buried ice? The location says otherwise.
» Read more

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Starship prototype #25 is rolled to launchpad for static fire engine tests

10:02 am

Starship prototype #25 on the way to launchpad
Click for original image.

SpaceX yesterday evening rolled its 25th prototype of its Starship spacecraft to its suborbital launchpad at Boca Chica, as shown on the image to the right, for a planned static fire engine test of its six Raptor engines.

If all goes well, the company hopes to stack this prototype on top of the ninth prototype of Superheavy and complete the second test orbital flight of the entire rocket as early as June 15, 2023, with a launch window as long as six months according to the company’s FCC communications license application.

The actual launch date however remains very uncertain, for several reasons. The FAA must issue a launch license, and it won’t do that until it is satisfied the investigation into the first launch failure is complete. That launch approval will also likely be delayed because of the lawsuit against that agency for issuing the previous launch license.

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Capstone does lunar fly-by, takes first lunar pictures, completes main mission

9:47 am

The Moon as seen by Capstone
Click for original image.

The smallsat engineering test lunar orbiter Capstone has now successfully ended its primary mission, completing six months of operation in the near-rectilinear halo orbit that NASA’s Lunar Gateway manned space station intends to fly.

To put a final touch on that main mission, in May mission managers at the private company Advanced Space also completed two additional experiments. On May 3, 2023 they performed a close-fly of the Moon, using the spacecraft’s camera for the first time to take the picture of the Moon to the right.

Then, on May 9 Capstone successfully tested navigation technology in conjunction with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), also in orbit around the Moon.

During the May 9 experiment, CAPSTONE sent a signal to LRO designed to measure the distance and relative velocity between the two spacecraft. LRO then returned the signal to CAPSTONE, where it was converted into a measurement. The test proved the ability to collect measurements that will be utilized by CAPS software to determine the positioning of both spacecraft. This capability could provide autonomous onboard navigation information for future lunar missions.

The mission now enters its extended mission, planned to last at least a year.

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Lucy makes course correction in preparation for 1st asteroid fly-by

9:36 am

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

The asteroid probe Lucy on May 9, 2023 fired its engines to successfully make a minor course correction in preparation for a fly by of the asteroid Dinkinesh, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Even though the spacecraft is currently travelling at approximately 43,000 mph (19.4 km/s), this small nudge is enough to move the spacecraft nearly 40,000 miles (65,000 km) closer to the asteroid during the planned encounter on Nov. 1, 2023. The spacecraft will fly a mere 265 miles (425 km) from the small, half-mile- (sub-km)-sized asteroid, while travelling at a relative speed of 10,000 mph (4.5 km/s).

Dinkinesh, the white dot inside the main asteroid belt in the lower left of the map to the right, is the first of eight asteroids Lucy will fly past.

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NASA picks Blue Origin’s partnership for building second manned lunar lander

9:25 am

Artist's concept of Blue Moon
An artist’s concept of Blue Moon

NASA today announced that it has chosen the partnership led by Blue Origin to build a second manned lunar lander for its Artemis program.

Blue Origin will design, develop, test, and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crew transfer in lunar orbit. In addition to design and development work, the contract includes one uncrewed demonstration mission to the lunar surface before a crewed demo on the Artemis V mission in 2029. The total award value of the firm-fixed price contract is $3.4 billion.

The other partners in the contract are Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.

This is NASA’s second contract for a lunar lander, with SpaceX’s Starship the first. The idea is to have two landers available from competing companies for both competition and redundancy, similar to the approach the agency has used for its manned ferry service to ISS, using SpaceX and Boeing. I wonder if NASA’s experience on the Moon will be similar to that ferry service, whereby only SpaceX so far has been able to deliver. The track record of Blue Origin suggests it will do about as poorly as Boeing has with Starliner.

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SpaceX launches another 22 upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit

9:07 am

Using its Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX early today successfully launched another 22 upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

32 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 36 to 18 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 36 to 30. SpaceX by itself only trails the entire world combined, including American companies, 32 to 34.

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Chaos in the southern cratered highlands of Mars

12:50 pm

Chaos in the southern cratered highlands of Mars
Click for full image.vi

Today’s cool image takes us to a part of the cratered southern highlands of Mars that I have not featured much previously. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 7, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what appears to be a collection of rough hills and mesas surrounded by a sea of smooth ground that at the base of the cliffs seems to end abruptly.

The smooth ground is probably mantled by a layer of dust and debris. Since this location is at 36 degrees south latitude, there is also probably near surface ice under that layer. The abrupt edges likely indicate where the increasing slope next to the mesas and mounds caused that ice to be exposed and thus sublimate away.

As for the location, we must go to the overview map.
» Read more

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Astronomers discover Earth-sized planet 90 light years away

9:40 am

Using data from a variety of space- and ground-based telescopes astronomers have discovered Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star 90 light years away.

The exoplanet is dubbed LP 791-18 d, and is thought to be slightly bigger than the Earth. Its orbit, close to the star, causes it to be tidally-locked, with one hemisphere always facing the star. In addition, the presence of another much larger exoplanet in the system causes other tidal effects.

Astronomers already knew about two other worlds in the system before this discovery, called LP 791-18 b and c. The inner planet b is about 20% bigger than Earth. The outer planet c is about 2.5 times Earth’s size and more than seven times its mass.

During each orbit, planets d and c pass very close to each other. Each close pass by the more massive planet c produces a gravitational tug on planet d, making its orbit somewhat elliptical. On this elliptical path, planet d is slightly deformed every time it goes around the star. These deformations can create enough internal friction to substantially heat the planet’s interior and produce volcanic activity at its surface. Jupiter and some of its moons affect Io in a similar way.

The press release makes a big deal about the volcanism, even suggesting it could produce an atmosphere that, because the exoplanet sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone, could make the exoplanet habitable. These speculations are silly, considering the uncertainties, the exoplanet’s evolving orbit, and the star it orbits, and are being pushed mostly because the press office thinks this will be the only way the public will have any interest in the discovery.

While there is an infinitesimal chance there could be life here, a more likely scenario is that it is a lifeless volcano world like Jupiter’s moon Io. Even more probably however is that it is completely different than anything we have yet observed, in ways we can’t yet predict. To find out however we would need close-up observations that will likely not be possible without an interstellar mission.

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Final assembly of Chandrayaan-3 begins for launch still targeting mid-July

9:24 am


Click for interactive map.

Engineers at India’s space agency ISRO have begun the installation of the payloads onto its lunar lander/rover, Chandrayaan-3, which is still targeting a mid-July launch.

The map shows the landing location (red dot) near the Moon’s south pole (indicated by the cross). Nova-C is Intuitive Machines private lander, now aiming for a late summer launch at the earliest. Luna-25 is Russia’s first lunar lander since the 1970s, and is also targeting a launch in July.

India’s first attempt, Chandryaan-2, to land a rover at this spot on the Moon failed in 2019. This new mission is essentially a re-do, except that it does not include an orbiter, since the orbiter from Chandrayaan-2 is still operational and can do the job.

All in all, it increasingly looks like the next six months will see a lot of new landing attempts on the Moon.

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Student model rocket doubles altitude record

9:10 am

On April 16, 2023 students from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University launched a model rocket that more than doubled the altitude record for liquid-fueled model rockets.

The rocket reached an altitude of 47,732 feet, setting multiple records, including the highest undergraduate and collegiate amateur liquid rocket launch in the United States. It more than doubled the previous record of 22,000 feet.

Named Deneb after one of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere, the rocket had a total burn time of 26.1 seconds, reaching a velocity of 1,150 mph (Mach 1.5).

I have embedded the live stream below, set to begin just before launch.
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