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.

December Update

December has been an active month. We started out with 40 people in space and Dean in the lead since November 10 with his guess of 40. That changed to 43 when Soyuz launched on December 8, putting Keith in the lead with his guess of 42. Then after a 2 day delay due to high winds in West Texas, Blue Origin launched 6 people in their New Shepard capsule today, December 11, bringing the year's count to 49. Carol, with her guess of 50, is now in the "driver's seat" for the 2021 MASS Prize. Twenty days to go in the year and no more launches anticipated. Carol says that if she wins, there will be a Dilly-Bar for every MASS meeting attendee. Availability will be determined by the opening of the Villa Park DQ store in the Spring.

It was fun tracking the people in space this year. The two new sub-orbital launch companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, made the count go up considerably. Blue Origin put more people in space than anyone else with their total of 14 on 3 launches. Virgin Galactic contributed 8 on their 2 launches. That makes 22 of the 49 people in space this year sub-orbital rides. Orbital people rode on the SpaceX Dragon (12), Russia's Soyuz (9) and China's Shenzhou (6).

Now we have to get some people flying on Boeing's Starliner capsule and NASA's Orion capsule for the United States and some Indian astronauts on the Gaganyaan capsule. All three of those first manned flights probably won't occur until 2023.

According to the SuperCluster.com website, there has been 612 people who have flown in space. During the brief 10 minute Blue Origin mission on December 11, we set a record of 19 people simultaneously in space. The ISS had 10, the Chinese Tiangong had 3 and the New Shepard capsule had 6.

Thanks to all that participated in the MASS Prize. We'll have to put our heads together to figure what the next Prize will be. Feel free to contact me with your ideas.

October-November Update

 The busy month of October has come and gone. The Russians launched their Soyuz on October 5 with 3 people including an actress for a 12 day movie making stay on the ISS. The Chinese launched their crew of 3 up the Tiangong space station on October 15. Blue Origin slipped in another sub-orbital flight with 4 people including William Shatner on October 13. The US Dragon flight, CREW3, slipped from October 31 to November 10 due to bad weather and a minor medical issue with one of the crew. But Dragon finally launched with 4 people to the ISS.

These 14 additional people (10 in October and 4 in November) bring the current yearly count to 40. That is right on Dean's guess for the year.

Virgin Galactic has shut down their sub-orbital operation, SpaceShip, for maintenance and will not fly their next mission with the Italian Air Force personnel until well into 2022.

My crystal ball for the rest of 2021 is getting clearer. The only published launch remaining is the Russian launch of another Soyuz on December 8. It will carry 3 people, including 1 cosmonaut and 2 Japanese tourists. One of the tourists is helping Elon Musk fund the development of the new StarShip vehicle and has purchased a trip around the moon in it. I guess he can't wait the few years for that trip, so he has also purchased a ride on Soyuz for a 12 day stay on the ISS in the short term.

The Soyuz launch will push the count to 43 for the year. That would be only 1 greater than Keith's guess of 42, making him the winner of the MASS Prize.

The only "dark horse" is that Blue Origin has said they plan one more sub-orbital flight in 2021 with New Shepard. They said this time the will have a crew of 6. If that flight occurs, it would bump the count to 49. That would make Carol's guess of 50 the winner. It is hard to use a promise from Blue Origin to make her the favorite, only time will tell. Good luck to all.

The final 2021 count will either be 43 or 49. Blue Origin is so tight-lipped with their launches, we'll never know until a week before it will occurs. The tension is palpable. 

September Update

 With the Inspiration 4 mission from SpaceX launching on September 15 , the number of people who have flown into space during 2021 is up to 26.

Upcoming flights include:

• on October 5 - the Russian Soyuz MS-19 with 3 people
• on October 16 - the Chinese Shenzhou 13 mission with 3 people
• on October 31 - the US CREW3 Dragon with 4 people
• on December 8 - the Russian Soyuz MS-20 with 3 people 

Virgin Galactic has also said that they plan a suborbital flight with members of the Italian Air Force no-earlier than mid-October, once they resolve a potential manufacturing issue with a part in their flight control system of the SpaceShip vehicle. The number of people on the flight is unspecified but SpaceShip can accommodate 6 passengers with 2 pilots.

My guess for future people going into space during 2021 is a firm 13 and possibly 6 more from Virgin Galactic. That makes a total of 19 more added to the 26 already going into space for a yearly total of 45.

That guess of 45 is 2 higher than my last estimate. The increase is due to dropping Blue Origin flying anyone (-4) but Virgin Galactic still planning a flight in 2021 (+6).

End of August Update

Number of people who have flown into space during 2021 is holding at 22.

Chronological list of upcoming manned flights with announced dates is:

9/15/21    US - Crew Dragon Inspiration4 with 4 people

10/5/21    Russia - Soyuz MS-19 with 3 people

10/31/21   US - Crew Dragon CREW3 with 4 people

12/8/21    Russia - Soyuz MS-20 with 3 people

For the 5 spacecraft from the United States:

Crew Dragon - No change. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on Dragon is 12. 4 have already gone into space.

Starliner - With the failed launch attempt on August 16, there definitely will not be a crewed mission in 2021. During the count down 13 of Starliner's attitude control valves were stuck closed. Investigation found that they were corroded. The un-crewed mission is on hold until the root cause is determined. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on Starliner is 0.

Orion - no change. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on Orion is 0.

SpaceShip - The FAA is investigating why the first flight varied from its anticipated path. Virgin Galactic cannot fly again until the investigation is closed. Maybe VG is done for the year. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on SpaceShip is 8. 8 have already gone into space.

New Shepard - It was a surprise that Blue Origin flew again on August 25, but with no people. I'm reducing future people to just 4 on 1 flight in 2021. Blue Origin continues to underwhelm me. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on New Shepard is 8, a reduction of 6. 4 have already gone into space.

For Russia - no change. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on Soyuz is 9. 3 have already gone into space.

For China - no change. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on Shenzhou is 6. 3 have already gone into space.

For India - no change. Anticipated people to fly to space in 2021 on Gaganyaan is 0.

My current estimate for 2021 is now down 6 to 43 since the last estimate. The reduction is due to only 1 possible future flight from Blue Origin on the New Shepard.

22 have flown into space and 21 more are still anticipated, 8 from SpaceX, 4 from Blue Origin, 6 from Russia and 3 from China.