Asteroid Autumn

 

NASA has named the next season in 2023 “Asteroid Autumn”. Here’s why.

• On September 26, we celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the DART impact of the 160-meter asteroid, Dimorphos, that orbits the larger 780-meter asteroid Didymos, changing its orbital period and proving that direct impact could be a means to avoid future Earth impacts from asteroids.
• On October 5. NASA plans to launch a probe to explore the metallic 253 km asteroid, Psyche. The asteroid is primarily iron and nickel but contains many other precious metals and would have a value on earth of $10 quintillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000).
• On November 1, the Lucy spacecraft will fly-by the 700-meter main-belt asteroid, Dinkinesh, on its way to exploring 6 Trojan asteroids that are ahead and behind the planet Jupiter in its orbit and one more main-belt asteroid for a total of 8 asteroids.

You have to admit, NASA has a lot of asteroid missions on its plate.

 It has been a while since I posted and Keith is experimenting with some Tik Toc videos, so I wrote a couple of short blurbs and thought they would also make good posts. Here is the first.

It was an exciting Sunday morning, September 24, 2023 with the landing of the sample return from the asteroid, Bennu, on the Osiris-Rex capsule. The probe was launched in 2016 and took a 2-year journey to the 500 meter or 1/3 mile wide asteroid. It orbited the asteroid for about 2 years setting the record for the smallest body ever orbited and then performed a touch-a-go sampling with the robotic arm penetrating over a foot into the asteroid’s surface, surprising scientists with fragility of its composition.

The probe then took 2 years to return to Earth, dropping off the sample capsule so it could scream into the atmosphere at 27,650 mph and decelerate at a maximum of 32 G’s and finally parachute down to the Utah desert at a sedate 11 mph.

Scientists hope that the capsule contains as much as 250 grams, a sample about one and a half times the size of a baseball, of pristine 4.5-billion-year-old rocks from the original formation of the Solar System.

The rest of the Osiris-Rex probe after dropping off the sample return capsule, fired its thrusters to avoid collision with Earth and will go on to orbit the 340-meter asteroid, Apophis, which will make an uncomfortably close fly-by of the Earth in 2029.

 

Blog for Monday, July 24, 2023

Summer seems to be starting to wind down but you wouldn’t think it was based on the high temperatures. The grass has recovered from the drought and is growing like a jungle. Thanks for the aerobic exercise opportunity each week, Nature.

In fact, grass cutting is the cause of the day late post this week, after cutting a neighbor’s grass on Sunday I couldn’t muster the energy to compose the post.

As a long term “heads-up”, I wanted to say that Joe DalSanto, astronomer at COD, is planning to give a talk titled, “The View From Earth, 400 Years of Astronomical Adventure” on Saturday, Oct 14 at 7:30 to 9 PM at the college. Reserve the date if the talk is of interest to you. It is free.

3 unmanned lunar landers will be heading for the moon – On July 20 we celebrated 54 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, now there soon will be 3 probes headed back for a soft landing. India successfully launched their Chandrayaan-3 probe on July 14 and it is scheduled to land at the moon’s south pole on August 23. Russia will soon be launching Luna25 on August 11. It has been over 45 years since their last moon mission. It will be headed for the Buguslavsky crater near the south pole and intends to search for signs of water ice. Finally, Japan’s SLIM Sniper probe is targeting an August 26 launch. The name, Sniper, comes from the spacecraft’s unique onboard camera’s ability to identify craters, measure positioning and pinpoint a landing. The primary goal is to demonstrate precise navigation and its shock absorbing landing legs. The US won’t be completely shut-out from lunar landings this year, we have 2 upcoming CLIPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) missions scheduled later this year. In the third quarter, Intuitive Machines will be launching its Nova-C lander on a Falcon 9 rocket and landing at Malapert A crater near the south pole and Astrobotic is planning a fourth quarter mission to land its Peregrine Lander. Peregrine is launching on the new Vulcan rocket and intends to land near the Gruithuisen Domes.

 

Blog for Sunday, July 16, 2023

I’m glad that our MASS meeting was scheduled a week earlier, otherwise we would have been hunkered down in my basement last Friday at 9PM waiting for the tornado sirens to cease. Hope everyone finds themselves ok from our recent rash of violent weather.

SpaceX sets new record for booster reuse – SpaceX started the week with the launch on July 9 of 22 StarLink satellites and setting a new record with the 16^th reuse of one of its booster rockets. Core 1058 set the record but many other cores are right behind with 15 and 14 reuses. The number of StarLink satellites launched is quickly approaching 4800. It was the 44^th launch of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2023 and the 47^th launch for SpaceX this year. They have a good chance of reaching their goal of 100 launches.

By the time I published this accomplishment, SpaceX tied the record of 16 launches with a booster on Saturday night, July 15. This time booster core 1060 launched 54 more Starlink satellites. With their booster landings on a barge at sea (now at 207 successful landings on both land and barge), SpaceX launches continues to amaze me.

Rho Ophiuchi Star Forming Region

Webb Telescope celebrates 1 year of operation – On July 12, 2023, JWST dropped a new picture of the star forming region called Rho Ophiuchi 390 light-years from earth. Even at that distance, it is the closest star forming region to earth. There are about 50 stars breaking out of their dust cocoons (yellow in the image). Molecular hydrogen is colored red in the image. The Sun probably formed out of a similar cloud with 10’s of siblings about 4.5 billion years ago. Astronomers hope that JWST will give us 20 years of great pictures.

Indian launches Chandrayaan 3 to the moon – On July 14, Indian launched its second attempt at a moon landing. This time the probe will attempt a landing near the south pole of the moon and it carries a small rover. Landing is anticipated on August 23. The considerable time between launch and landing is due to the low energy trajectory that the probe will take, making numerous ever-increasing orbits around the earth and then making ever-decreasing orbits around the moon. The lander is expected to last only 1 lunar day of 14 earth days. If successful, India will be the 4^th country to soft land on the moon, joining the US, Russia and China.

 Blog for Sunday, July 9, 2023

Going to keep today’s blog short. I’m working on last Friday’s MASS Meeting notes on our website and hope to be done and have them posted by mid-week.

We had a great meeting. The discussion about UAP’s (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) went well. Dean shared his early morning mysterious experience from some years back and Don relayed a strange observation he had had. We took the full 3 hours to discuss various other topics.

I did want to add that Beth’s recent trip in May to Washington, DC, where she posted a picture of her in front of the Einstein statue on the Mall, reminded me of a similar photo opportunity Carol and I had a few years back.

Here is Beth in May 2023

Here I am in Nov 2010

Just goes to show that science-oriented minds migrate to the same statue. Although, I might have been a little more aggressive with my hand placement.

 

Blog for Sunday, July 2, 2023

It started out as a rough week with computer problems but fortunately my younger son supplied me with a newer computer and some infrastructure modifications and all seems to be working well except for my Uverse TV which is doing a lot of pixelating. But that will be a problem for the coming week.

Virgin Galactic first commercial flight – On June 29, Virgin Galactic flew 4 persons of the Italian Air Force and 2 Virgin Galactic employees. The Italians were all space rookies and they brought the total of people in space up to 659. The flight lasted only 14 minutes from the dropping of VSS Unity from the carrier plane, the powered flight up to 85.1 km (52.9 miles) and finally the landing on the New Mexico runway. So far in 2023, the number of sub-orbital people (12) outnumber the orbital ones (11) for a total of 23 this year.

Asteroid Day on June 30 – Celebrating the Tunguska event from June 30, 1908 where an asteroid flattened 2000 square kilometers of Siberian Forest. The Planetary Society did an event but otherwise it has been a relatively quiet celebration this year.

Euclid Telescope launches – The telescope launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on July 1. It will take 4 weeks to travel out to the L2 Lagrange Point 1.5 million km from earth like the JWST, but this European telescope is much different. It will be a survey telescope that will look at 1/3 of the sky detecting galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away and will use spectroscopy to determine the distance to those galaxies so that it can build a 3-D map of the universe. It will be limited to only 1/3 of the sky because dust in the plane of the Milky Way and ecliptic of the Solar System prevents observation of these faint objects. It will take Euclid 6 years to complete its survey but there will be a partial data release after 2 ½ years. The 3 major goals of the $1.8 billion telescope are: 1) how do galaxies change over time? 2) create a dark matter map by analyzing the distortion of galaxy shapes in its images; and 3) how does the expansion rate of the universe change over time? Those are all interested questions for me and I can’t wait until 2026 to start getting some answers.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 25, 2023

It’s been a relatively slow week of news, but here are a couple of items I learned about recently.

OSIRIS-REx Sample Return -- In the June Planetary Society publication, they had a feature article about the return of the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security- Regolith Explorer) probe with its sample of the asteroid Bennu. It’s been almost 7 years since it was launched on September 8, 2016 to the .5 km diameter carbonaceous asteroid. Scientists think the ancient surface of Bennu might have formed only 10 million years after the Sun making it about 4.5 billion years ago.

The rubble-pile asteroid surprised scientists with its rocky surface and the probe circled Bennu for 505 days before deciding where to take its sample. During the sampling process, people were stunned that the sample arm plunged 2 feet into the surface and created a flurry of dust, rocks and pebbles. Dante Lauretta, chief scientist, feels they might have gotten a 250-gram (a baseball’s mass) sample, far exceeding the 59.5-gram goal.

On Sunday, September 24, 2023, the sample return capsule will detach from the main probe, 4 hours and 60,000 miles away from Earth and then plunge into the atmosphere at a blistering 7.7 miles per second. Protected with a heat shield, the capsule will slow for 2 minutes before deploying its parachute and descending from 3200 ft to a 12 by 50-mile target ellipse in the Utah Test Range. With this heat shield protection, scientists will be able to analyze the material of the asteroid without it undergoing the heat and pressure that a meteor sample would endure.

The asteroid Bennu is known as a Potentially Hazardous Object (PHO) because its 1.2-year orbit brings it within 186,000 miles of Earth every 6 years. Astronomers calculate that it has a 1 in 1800 chance of colliding with Earth between 2178 and 2290. That’s a long shot, but the downside is it would take out an entire continent if it did hit us. The more we understand these objects, the better chance we have of doing something about it when there is a danger of collision.

Euclid Space Telescope to Launch – Euclid is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on Saturday, July 1. It will travel for 30 days to the L2 point beyond the moon just like the JWST. But Euclid will be a survey telescope meaning it won’t study individual objects. Over 6 years, it will survey 1/3 of the sky avoiding the plane of the Milky Way and the plane of the Solar System where dust would inhibit its observations. It will map galaxies out to 10 billion light-years away. Using spectroscopy, it will be able to estimate the distance to galaxies and create a 3-D map of the universe. It has 3 major goals: 1) how do galaxies change over time? 2) create a dark matter map by analyzing the distortion of galaxy shapes in its images; and 3) how does the expansion rate of the universe change over time? The first release of data will be 2.5 years after launch. All the mission’s questions are one of intense interest to me, so I can’t wait until 2026 for this first set of data.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 18, 2023

I’m a day late. It was a busy Father’s Day with setting up a new weather station and stopping in for some early Sunday donuts and mead at a local establishment. This is the 8th weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

Today, Monday June 19, US astronaut Frank Rubio will overtake US astronaut, Andrew Morgan, for the 13^th longest stay in space, 271.53 days. Of course, he is setting this record stay with his two fellow cosmonauts from the Soyuz 68S mission that launched on September 21, 2022. If he stays until September 27 of this year, he will set the US record for the longest stay in space at 371 days, breaking Mark Vande Hei’s record of 355 days set in 2022. Not bad for a rookie astronaut on his first mission. He will still be behind 5 other Russians and tied with his 2 fellow cosmonauts for the longest stay in space by any country. Valeri Polyakov has the record of 437.75 days set in 1994-1995 aboard the Russian Mir space station.

It slipped under my news radar but the show ‘Stars on Mars” started on June 5. You can catch the previous episodes on streaming or watch new ones at 7PM on Mondays on FOX TV. It is an analog Mars mission with William Shatner as the Earth based communicator, and 12 people including, 2 ex-football players, Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman, cyclist Lance Armstrong and various other TV personalities. I watched the first 2 shows on streaming and it is heavy on the reality-TV and light on the Mars science. I’m not sure if I would recommend it, but I might be hooked on the on-going person dynamics. My biggest question would be what our actual Mars simulation analog astronaut, Beth, thinks of the show?

UAP news is taking off– NASA recently had their first public presentation by their UAP Panel. UAP now stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, (recently the word, Aerial, was replaced with Anomalous so that events in space and under water could be included). Now on 6/12/23, we have a high security clearance official, David Grusch, claiming he heard that alien craft with bodies have been recovered and some American people have been murdered by them. These outrageous claims need evidence and so far, none has been produced. Grusch even admits he hasn’t seen evidence directly but only relaying second or third hand accounts. Mick West, a UFO video debunker, has done his best to be a rational mind analyzing the claims, but I’m worried that his level-headed responses will be dismissed by the radicals on the other side. NewsNation has done some broadcasts with Grusch, but they are far from being unbiased reporting. This type of coverage is undermining the report from NASA’s UAP panel which has studied the phenomena for the last 7 months and is trying to bring scientific analysis to the subject.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 11, 2023

This is the 7th weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

The week started out with a bang. I had joined Fraser Cain’s Universe Today as a patreon supporter and he scheduled me for a 15-minute Zoom interview on Monday, June 5. What an honor to talk to someone that I have seen for so many hours of video content with interviews and about astronomy and space issues. I zoomed from my upstairs lair and Fraser noticed my picture of the “Tesla in space” that Elon Musk launched on the first Falcon Heavy rocket. I was also surrounded by my models of the Space Shuttle and ISS and I think my “lava lamp” might have dated me. I told him about our MASS group and hoped he would check out our content. He seemed interested but I know he must be a very busy guy. I thanked him for letting me know about a phone app that identifies birds by their sounds, something that Carol and I are enjoying. Before I knew it, our time was up.

Vulcan rocket test fires its BE4 engines – On 6/7/23, the new rocket fired its engines for a 6-second test and it went according to plan. This is the last major hurdle for the Vulcan rocket to launch before the end of 2023. On its inaugural mission, possibly in July this year, it will send the Peregrine lunar lander from Astrobotic to a soft landing at the South Pole of the moon. The second Vulcan mission is to launch the first DreamChaser space plane to the ISS for a cargo delivery. The rocket uses methane-liquid oxygen burning BE-4 engines which are years late and coming from Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos. Vulcan is a critical rocket. It is needed due to the phase-out of the Atlas 5 which uses Russian based engines. Fortunately, we have a stockpile of Atlas 5 parts already in the US after Russia invaded Ukraine. The DoD has awarded its future military satellite contracts to be launched with 60% coming on Vulcan launches and 40% on SpaceX. The other US rocket, the Delta, is being de-commissioned because it is cost prohibitive. The Vulcan is capable of putting 27.2 mt (60,000 lb) into LEO which is more than a reusable Falcon 9 which maxes out at 22.8 mt (50,000 lb). Blue Origin also plans to use the BE-4 engines on its new rocket, the New Glenn. This rocket is critical because it will be launching the Blue Moon manned lunar lander for NASA.

 

Blog for Sunday, June 3, 2023

This is the sixth weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

The Meteor Plant, just above the "Love Blooms Here" plaque, is growing at over 1 inch per day and is now over 25 inches tall. Carol has a phenomenal "green thumb".

The Chinese Manned launch – On May 30, China launched ShenZhou-16 with 3 taikonauts. I’m amazed at the lack of transparency with China’s space program. The taikonauts weren’t announced until a day before launch and when they do a spacewalk it isn’t even announced until after it is performed. China says they want to land people on the moon by 2030. I think that is going to be the motivation behind the United States pursuing their lunar manned program. NASA says it is for science and Mankind, but I think the politicians look at the strategic military perspective. Look at this headline that Dean sent to me this week, NASA head worried China will stealAmerica’s God-given moon water.

It kind of snuck up on me but we set a couple of records for people in space with the Chinese launch and the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital mission on May 25. With the taikonauts, we broke the record for people in orbit with 17, 11 on the ISS and 6 going to or on the Tiangong-3 space station. For total people in space, if you consider the McDowell line (50 mi or 80 km), the record was set on May 25 at 20, you had the 6 Virgin Galactic sub-orbital people, 11 on ISS and 3 from China on Tiangong-3. We are taking baby steps, but slowing becoming a space-faring species.

Boeing’s Starliner Manned Mission Indefinitely Delayed – On June 1, Boeing announced that they are standing down from their launch of the CFT-1 mission with 2 astronauts on Starliner due to 2 issues, a lack of safely margin on their parachutes and flammable tape used to wrap wiring harnesses on the capsule. Boeing decided to get in Commercial Crew in September of 2009. C’mon, Boeing got more money ($4.2 billion) to develop Starliner than SpaceX got for Crewed Dragon, in September 2014. How long do we have to wait to have two independent methods for US astronauts to go into orbit? SpaceX has performed 10 manned missions on Dragon, 7 for NASA and 3 for private astronauts. I’m sure glad it is a fixed-price contract and Boeing has to pony up for the costs of the delay. So far, they have charged $900 million against their corporate earnings for the delayed program. Maybe we should get some more cost-plus contracts on the SLS rocket to prevent the cost overruns that are occurring there?

 

Blog for Sunday, May 28, 2023

This is the fifth weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

This week we took grandson Ian, who is graduating from grade school this summer, to our health club for a workout. To warm up, I started with a half mile walk, but he chose to run it and then did 19 flights of stairs on a step-machine while he waited for me to finish my walking. Then, I put him thru my weightlifting workout and finally Carol and I had him hit the racquetball around with us for a half hour. I consider the racquetball event an enormous success because no one got injured. When you get my 300 lbs moving, a racquetball wall could create enormous G-forces on a septuagenarian body.

On one of my daily walks this week, I was listening to Beth’s “Casual Space” podcast with Dr. Kirby Runyon who helps prepare people to identify Arizona geological landmarks while on their Virgin Galactic trips to space. He mentioned Arizona Meteor Crater and its $20 charge for admission. I remember, as a recent High School graduate back in 1967, a friend and I descending into the crater with no contact with anyone on the rim and then having some problems climbing back out. My friend was a better climber than me and I started to have a vision of my bones becoming part to the crater floor mystique. But eventually perseverance paid off and I made it out. Oh, the adventures of youth.

Virgin Galactic launch – On May 25, Virgin Galactic, got back in the sub-orbital launch business with the launch of 6 employees, including 2 pilots and 4 passengers, 3 of whom were space rookies. The 13- minute flight on VSS Unity began with a drop from the VSM Eve carrier plane, continued with a powered ascent to 87.2km (54.2 mi) and ended with a landing in New Mexico. This height qualified them as astronauts because most people recognize the McDowell line at 80 km (50 mi) as the boundary of space, not the more stringent Von Karman line at 100km (62 mi). The recent flight raises the count of people who have gone into space up to 653. This was the first sub-orbital flight in 2023. Blue Origin (BO), the other sub-orbital company, has been grounded since their anomaly with an unmanned mission on New Shepard on September 12, 2022. BO says its nozzle on its booster suffered a “structural fatigue failure”, meaning the nozzle fell apart. The capsule blasted away from the booster and landed safely. But the booster was a total loss. There is no word when they will resume launching people on sub-orbital flights. People in space for 2023 is a low total of 14, with the only other manned launches being 2 Dragon capsules with 4 people on each, the CREW6 mission on March 2 and AX-2 mission on May 21. This low count harkens back to 2021, when Carol won the MASS Prize by being closest in guessing that 49 people would go into space including 22 on sub-orbital flights. Last year, 2021, there were 38 people launched. We’ve got a way to go to break the record of 63 people in the calendar year 1985. That high count was due to 58 people launching on the Space Shuttle and 5 on Soyuz. As a final comment, Virgin Galactic should not be confused with Virgin Orbit that recently went bankrupt and had its assets sold off to RocketLab. Virgin Orbit was trying to launch satellites into space by dropping a rocket slung below the wing of their 747 named “Cosmic Girl’. Airborne launches have a lot of flexibility for launch location around the world but the constraints of the limited rocket size and payload made it a losing business case.

LIGO coming back on line – After a 3-year hiatus, the 2 LIGO gravitational wave observatories are back online with improved sensitivity. They should be able to pick up a signal every 2-3 days now compared to once a week during the 2019-2020 run. The Virgo detector in Italy also was upgraded but technical issues are forcing its shutdown to extend until early Autumn. KAGRA in Japan is also restarting on May 24 but its sensitivity is lower than LIGO. LIGO’s first detection was in 2015 and so far, 90 events have been recorded of black hole mergers, neutron star mergers or one occurrence of a black hole-neutron star combination merger.

 

Blog for Sunday, May 21, 2023

Fourth weekly blog, starting to become a habit, hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

This week Carol and I went for our annual pilgrimage to Shady Hill Nursery, now Countryside Gardens, in Elburn, IL. We’ve been going there for quite a few years. Memories include sharing geranium prices with Silvio, picking up Meteor Shower plants because they look so cool and one-time event where we called the Mund’s when we stopped in at Wahlburger’s restaurant on the way home and surprise, surprise, they joined us for a burger!

Humans to Mars Summit for 2023 (H2M) -- I just finished watching the 27 hours of H2M on YouTube. Beth did a fabulous job as co-host with Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. She also moderated a few of the panel discussions. Very interesting seeing all the representatives from NASA and industry. I feel like I understand NASA’s new “Moon to Mars” strategy much better. One big question I have, is where was Robert Zubrin? He has always been so prominent at other Mars events.

My lead for today was going to be the Axiom 2 mission but then NASA announced the award for the second Human Landing System (HLS) on the moon. HLS leads the way.

Blue Moon Lander

NASA names second HLS team – On Friday, 5/19/23, NASA announced that the Blue Moon Lander from Blue Origin (BO) will be the second HLS lander. A little over 2 years ago NASA awarded SpaceX $2.9 billion for their Lunar Starship as the sole winner of the original HLS competition. Lunar Starship will take 2 astronauts down to the lunar surface as part of Artemis 3 in December of 2025. Blue Origin sued NASA over not being selected. NASA said that they could only afford one team. Subsequently, NASA awarded SpaceX another $1.15 billion for their upgraded “sustainable” version of the Lunar Starship to be used on Artemis 4. Congress said they wanted 2 landers, so there was one more contest. The winner, Blue Origin will get $3.4 billion for their “sustainable” lunar lander that will support the Artemis 5 landing in 2029. They will perform a test unmanned lunar landing in 2028. BO says they are funding over 50% of the effort on their part. The sustainable landers will be able to carry more cargo and up to a crew of 4 to the surface. Plus, they will integrate with the Lunar Gateway and support surface missions for up to 30 days. Hopefully, this isn’t a second choice like Starliner for Commercial Crew, where Boeing is twice as expensive as SpaceX and so late on delivery that the service is missing much of its “window of need”. BO left a bad taste in my mouth with their suit that delayed the startup of the HLS program. The Blue Moon Lander will support up to 20 mt of cargo to the lunar surface in its reusable mode and 30 mt in expendable mode. The 16m tall lander will weigh 16 mt dry and 45 mt loaded with LH2 and LOX. The CIS-lunar transporter/propellant loader is coming from Lockheed Martin. The lander has been redesigned so that the crew section is at the bottom and the fuel tanks are on the top. That removes one of the big criticisms of the original design where astronauts would have to navigate a 12m (40 ft) ladder to climb down to the lunar surface. BO will use the New Glenn rocket to get Blue Moon to lunar orbit. Dynetics was the only other bidder in the recent contest with their ALPACA lander. Not much was said of their bid except that it was more expensive than Blue Moon. I think I sense another MASS Prize contest where we will guess when the first HLS vehicle successfully lands on the moon.

Rayyanah Barnawi, John Shoffner, Peggy Whitson & Ali AlQarni

Axiom 2 mission – Launched on Sunday, May 21, to the ISS with 4 astronauts including Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut that holds the US record for cumulative days in space, John Shoffner, a private astronaut on his first flight, and Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi, two Saudi Arabian astronauts, one male and one female. They will dock to the ISS and spend 8 days performing 14 science experiments and doing social outreach. They will be joined by the ISS crew of 7 including 3 Americans and 3 Russians plus 1 United Arab Emirates astronaut. The mission has been reduced by 2 days due to the conflict on the 2 ISS docking ports for Commercial vehicles. Boeing is to perform their CFT mission with the first manned Starliner capsule in July and SpaceX wants to send their CRS-28 supply capsule with new ISS solar arrays soon. NASA says they want to send 2 private missions to the ISS each year. Axiom is definitely a company with space involvement because they are developing spacesuits for NASA as well as sending a module in 2025 to dock with ISS to build out their own commercial space-station. SpaceX will return the Falcon 9 booster from the launch back to the Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX hires retired Kathy Lueders from NASA -- Lueders was the head of NASA’s Human Spaceflight division. She follows the former head of the division to SpaceX, Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the VP of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX. Ken Bowersox, who is also a former astronaut and worked for SpaceX before returning to NASA, is the current head of Manned Spaceflight. This relationship can’t help but solidify the attachment that NASA has to the SpaceX Lunar Starship for HLS.

 Blog for Sunday, May 14, 2023

Third weekly blog, starting to become a habit, hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

JUICE is loose! – The 16-meter RIME (Radar for Icy Moons Exploration) antenna finally escapes its mounting bracket. Flight controllers warmed JUICE with sunlight and then fired a non-explosive actuator that jostled the antenna helping it to unfold. The radar should now be able to penetrate down to a depth of 9 km below an icy moon’s surface when it arrives at Jupiter in July 2031.

Moons, moons, moons, they’re everywhere! – With the discovery of 62 more moons around Saturn, the planet is up to a total of 145. Ground based telescopes were used to detect objects as small as 1.6 miles (2.5km) in diameter. Astronomers had to track them for 2 years to confirm they were orbiting Saturn. 121 of Saturn’s moons are classified as “irregular”, meaning they orbit opposite or at a large angle from the planet’s rotational plane. All of these new discoveries are in this category and are probably captured objects. Jupiter was in the lead as of February this year when 12 new moons were discovered around it, giving that planet a solar system leading 92 moons. The current total count for the Solar System is 286 moons.

Vast partners with SpaceX to launch first commercial space station – It was announced this week that Vast, a privately held American aerospace company headquartered in Long Beach, California, will partner with SpaceX to launch the first commercial space station, known as Vast Haven-1. The station is based on SpaceX’s design for the lunar Dragon supply module called Dragon XL. Vast said its ultimate goal is to create a massive orbiting space station with artificial gravity. But the initial module will be able to house 4 astronauts for 30 days with the help of a crewed Dragon capsule. The first module would launch on a Falcon 9 rocket in August of 2025. NASA is interested in handling off the scientific work occurring on the ISS to a commercial entity before the ISS is deorbited in 2030. Four companies have received some NASA money to begin maturing their designs: 1) Orbital Reef from Blue Origin plans for a 2027 launch; 2) Axiom Space plans to launch its first module to attach to the ISS in 2024; 3) StarLab from Lockheed Martin plans to be operational by 2027; and 4) a station from Northrup Grumman would begin launching in 2028. If it sticks to its schedule, Vast will beat all the other competitors to a free-standing station because although Axiom would launch first in 2024, its early modules would stay attached to the ISS until 2028.

Dragonfly budget reduced by 18% -- Since we’ve been talking about this quad-copter to Saturn’s moon Titan, I thought I’d share this concerning headline. NASA has requested $327.7 million for the project in the upcoming FY 2024. This is an 18% reduction from the 2023 budget of $400 million. NASA says it should not jeopardize the June 2027 launch date but project scientists are not that sure. NASA’s reduced commitment might be due to the escalating cost of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. Its requested budget is $1.2 billion for 2024 which is a $300 million increase over the previous year. There is concern that these NASA requested budget amounts for 2024 will be cut by 22% if the Republican demands for reduced government spending are realized in the debt ceiling negotiations. Let’s hope the Congress looks at the long-term advantage for the US of funding science and technology development.

Virgin Galactic targets a late May return to sub-orbital spaceflight – On May 9, the company will target its 5^th suborbital spaceflight with a crew of 2 pilots and 3 employees to demonstrate the capability of VSS Unity to perform the mission. They will then move on to a flight with Italian Air Force personnel later this year. VG has a backlog of 1000 seats for spaceflights at $450,000 per seat.

Scott Kelly inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame – Kelly, age 59, is a former astronaut who is currently studying Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) with NASA. Scott’s brother Mark is an Arizona Senator, who is married to, Gabby Giffords, a former Arizona Congresswoman. Scott weighed in on UAPs recently when he said, there are things that have been observed from some really sharp individuals, like Navy Pilots, that warrant further investigation. He’s not convinced they are extra-terrestrial, but maybe objects from a foreign adversary.

Axions the new dark matter candidate – I’m learning a little more about this theoretical particle every day. I watched a YouTube video that explained that dark matter candidates are broken into two major categories at the 1 electron volt (ev) mass dividing line. To show the range of particle masses you have an electron which weighs in at 500,000 ev, an axion which might weigh about 10^-6 ev (1 millionth ev), and a WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) which weighs about 10^11 (100 billion ev or about the mass of a xenon atom). WIMPs were the old darling of dark matter possibilities but the lack of detecting them over the last few decades are making them lose favor. The new candidate is the very light axion. Scientists are searching for it in tunable, extremely cold, electromagnetic cylinders. Because the mass of the axion is not known, the detectors need to be tunable, like a radio. The lightness of the axion makes it easier to detect with its wave-like duality. The lightness also means the universe needs a lot of them to account for all the missing mass. Theorists calculate there may be 10^13 (10 trillion) axions in a square centimeter in Earth’s vicinity. Axions are starting to make the <.8 ev neutrinos look like a heavy weight particle.

 

Blog for Sunday, May 7, 2023

I’m going to try blogging weekly to share recent events with you. Any feedback is appreciated.

Elon Musk speaks about April 20^th Starship launch – In an April 30, YouTube video, Musk said the launch was pretty much what he expected. Three of the 33 Super Heavy first stage Raptor engines failed to ignite and two more conked out shortly after. At T+85 seconds they lost thrust vector control and the flight termination command was sent when the rocket began to tumble. But it took a long 40 seconds to destroy the rocket. The next launch will have a more robust termination system. He felt it will only be 4-6 weeks before they try again with Booster 9 and a Starship to be named later. They hope to perform a repeat of the first launch where Starship lands in the ocean off Hawaii. Booster 9 uses electric thrust control rather than a hydraulic-system, this should improve reliability. To prevent the “rock tornado” and creation of a crater below the rocket, SpaceX plans a sandwich of steel plates with a water-cooling system below the rocket. Think of an enormous shower head pointing up toward the rocket. SpaceX thought after their static fire of the rocket that the concrete could absorb the engine exhausts but Starship rose very slowly. That slow ascent might have compressed the sand below the concrete, allowing the concrete to crack and be chiseled out by the exhaust. Musk said that if they had thrust vector control and could have throttled up the engines, Starship would have made it to staging. He hopes to perform 4-5 flights in 2023 and attain orbit. He will provide another update in 3 weeks. Musk plans to spend $2 billion in 2023 on Starship development and he hopes to fully develop the rocket with $5-10 billion. Starship is an integral part of SpaceX’s Starlink mega-constellation satellite system which will cost another $10 billion.

Grandson Ian got to meet astronaut Duane Carey – On May 1 8^th grader Ian got a picture with retired astronaut Duane Carey, who flew on STS-109, the mission that performed the 4^th Hubble Telescope servicing on March 1, 2002.  My granddaughter, Emily, a kindergartener, also got to meet him at her school on the same day. Emily was so cute as she excitedly exclaimed, “I met a man who was in space!” Carey was the 420^th person to go into space according to supercluster.com. Mankind is now up to 647 people. Yuri Gagarin was number one on April 12, 1961, when he spent 1 hour and 48 minutes in space.

NASA doesn’t have enough plutonium-238 – On May 4, NASA said a lack of plutonium will push back the nuclear-powered Uranus mission launch to the late 2030s. With the reduction of nuclear war heads, I thought we were swimming in extra plutonium, but maybe it’s the wrong isotope. If the Uranus mission makes the goal of launching in 2031-2032, it will be a 13-year trip to the planet. If it is delayed to later in the 2030s, the trip will take 15 years. Fortunately, the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan needs a smaller amount of plutonium for its power pack, so it is still on track for a June 2027 launch. Dragonfly will be an SUV sized, 450 kg (1000 lb), quad-copter that will use the 50% denser than Earth atmosphere (composed of 90% nitrogen 5% methane) to explore Titan’s methane lakes and other surface features for 3.3 years. I can’t wait to see those pictures, but we’ll have to wait until 2034.

Beth will be hosting at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, DC May 16-18 – Best wishes for a successful convention. I still see her scheduled on May 16 to be moderator, but on May 5 I heard she is traveling thru the desert on way to a convention at Biosphere 2 near Tucson. She had already done two analog astronaut experiences in Hawaii and Poland. She will have some analog astronaut  competition from the new Fox network program, “Stars on Mars”. The program will be a reality show with the contestants in a simulated Mars mission. William Shatner will be the ground communicator on Earth and 12 competitors including Lance Armstrong, not related to first man on the moon, but the bike rider from the Tour de France, and other celebrities and social disrupters. The only other competitors I recognize are a couple of ex-football players. It premieres on June 5. I’m not sure I would recommend it but I bet my curiosity might make me check out the first episode.

A black hole ripped a star apart – Spaghettification (I so wanted to see if the spell checker would flag that word), occurred for a star and formed an event 1000 times brighter than a supernova. It was labeled ZTF20abrbeie leading to the trendy name of “Scary Barbie”. Matter falling into a black hole is a much more efficient energy producer than any fusion process within a star, even a supernova.

The Czech Republic becomes the 24^th signatory of the Artemis Accords – On May 3, that nation joined Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Accords are a fairly benign set of rules that state that nations affirm their commitment to key principles, grounded in the Outer-Space Treaty of 1967, including: use of space for peaceful purposes, transparency, interoperability, emergency assistance, registration of space objects, release of scientific data, protection of space heritage, safe and sustainable use of space resources, deconfliction of activities, and mitigation of orbital debris, including disposal of spacecraft. Of course, Russia and China, feel that the Accords are too US centric and have their own, International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) coalition consisting only of themselves. China this month stated that they plan to have humans on the moon by 2030. NASA’s Artemis 3 mission is scheduled for late November 2024 and plans to land 2 astronauts on the South Pole of the Moon with Starship from SpaceX.

 

Blog for Sunday, April 30, 2023

I’m going to try blogging weekly to share recent events with you. Any feedback is appreciated.

Falcon Heavy launches for 6^th time -- Today, April 30, SpaceX, after much delay, launched a massive communication satellite to geostationary orbit. Part of the delay was that the rocket was hit by lightning as it sat on the pad a couple of days ago. The rest of the delay was due to bad weather. The mission needed so much rocket performance that all 3 cores of the rocket were expended with no landings attempted. SpaceX has still never successfully landed a center core from a Falcon Heavy launch.

Astronomy Day at Harper College – Don and I traveled to the college Saturday night, April 29, for an interesting set of talks and displays. First up, was Kevin Cole, the organizer of the event and astronomer at Harper, who talked about Mars quakes, the Mars rovers and the planet Venus. Next, was Dean talking about NASA’s Artemis program that intends to return humans to the lunar surface. He stated that the transporter-crawler that moves the rocket from the VAB to the launchpad has set the record for the heaviest self-powered vehicle at 6.65 million pounds. It also gets a whopping 150 gallons per mile in fuel efficiency. Lastly, we listened to Jim Kovac talk about extreme exoplanets. There are some really weird ones out there, including “hot Jupiters” and the most common exoplanet, “super Earths”. It was nice to bump into Keith at the event. He joined us for the first two lectures and documented the event with some great selfies. I also said “hi” to Joe DalSanto, astronomer from COD, who attended the event.

JUICE mission has problem with antenna deployment – The probe’s large antenna has deployed only 1/3 its intended length. Scientists think a small pin is protruding only a couple of millimeters and preventing the full extension. The antenna will be needed for the probe to gather information from its ice penetrating radar instrument. We still have time to use thermal expansion and jolts from its thrusters to solve the problem, because the probe will take 7 years and many gravity-assists from Earth and Venus before it arrives at Jupiter in April 2030.

NASA keeping Voyager 2 going until 2026 – Scientists shut down a voltage regulator on the probe freeing more power to keep all the science instruments operating. The Voyagers were launched in 1977. Voyager 2 is 12.3 billion miles from Earth and Voyager 1 is 14.7 billion miles distant.

The Hakuto-R private company lunar lander failed – The Japanese company iSpace said that telemetry from the probe indicated that it ran out of fuel and sped up as approached the lunar surface. That makes for the second private company that failed trying to land on the Moon. An Israeli company, SpaceIL, failed with their Beresheet lander April 11, 2019, spreading some tardigrades on the surface.

Damage from the Starship launch – Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, feels SpaceX could try again in just a couple of months. Others think that it will take to the end of 2023 to repair the launch pad. Elon Musk was on the Bill Maher Show Friday, April 28, talking about free speech and artificial intelligence. Maher is a big fan of Musk. Elon came across as more human than usual and a genuine thoughtful person. That’s much different than the recent coverage from his takeover of Twitter. SpaceX is said to be spending $2 billion of its money on Starship development in 2023.

Virgin Galactic performed a glide test of their VSS Unity Space Plane – On April 26, they dropped it from a height of 14 km for an unpowered landing in New Mexico. Next flight will be powered and have 2 pilots and 4 employees aboard. If that goes well, VG is prepared to commence commercial service in the second quarter of 2023 with Italian Air Force personnel and expects to fly once a month.

SpaceX getting 2^nd launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base – With this addition, SpaceX will have 2 launch pads in California to go with their 2 launch pads in Florida and 1 in Texas.