As we are winding down our 6th week of
quarantine, I really thought it would have ended by now. But Carol and I are
doing our civic duty and keeping our social distancing. I’ve experienced my
first public outing in a face mask in order to get of all things, a case of
bourbon. COVID19 has no idea how resolute these baby-boomer’s can be.
SpaceX launched another set of 60 StarLink satellites,
Starlink6, on Wednesday, 4/22. They increased their constellation to 420
satellites, landed their 51st first stage core on a barge,
established Falcon 9 as the most launched active US rocket with their 83rd
successful launch. The launch used a rocket for the 4th time and
reused the $6 million fairings. SpaceX recovered their fairings by plucking
them out of the ocean. Apparently catching them in the big boat nets is more
difficult than anticipated.
I’ve checked a couple of Starlink satellite observation
sites and they predict that at 8:56 PM on Saturday, 4/25, numerous satellites
should be visible from Chicago. They will appear 11 degrees in the NW, maximize
at 41 degree elevation, and then disappear at 37 degrees elevation in the NE. I
don’t think the clouds will cooperate, but I thought it was worth sharing. The
StarLink6 satellites are brightest and closest to each other just after launch.
It looks like NASA doesn’t want people to head to Florida to
watch the SpaceX DM-2 Commercial Crew launch. What a shame, after almost 9
years of waiting for astronauts to launch from US soil, we have to be social
distancing. If they successfully launch on May 27, it will be 3246 days since
the last shuttle launch on July 8, 2011. But who is counting? It’s hard to put
that in perspective. But think of 4 years of high school, plus 4 years of
college, plus another year, wow that’s a long time to wait.
The Martian Mole on Insight has performed another 25 strokes
and under ideal conditions it would have gone a couple of inches farther into
the soil but scientists said it only got another half inch of progress. They
will try with “arm pinning” to get the mole to go fully into the ground. And
then cover it up with dirt to see if it can penetrate on its own. That update
was from March 18 and I haven’t heard any updates yet. With only 15 inches of
progress, Dean you have the inside track with your pessimistic depth guess of
only 42 inches.
Intuitive Machines (a lunar X Prize company) announced the
date of their Falcon9 powered lunar launch as Oct 11, 2021. They will deliver
100 kg of payload for a 14 day mission to the moon’s surface. It is nice to see
US companies jumping in to NASA’s support of lunar payloads. Other lunar X
Prize companies from Israel and Indian have not been successful with landings.
I’m interested to see how they will fare. In a related news item, Masten Space
Systems is getting some money to research injecting aluminum into their rocket
exhaust to spray the lunar landing area to minimize dust. That’s the kind of
innovative I’m looking for from our space program. Let’s not spend it all on
SLS.
Ad Astra, Jim
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