Remember the Psyche Mission? It's Ba-ack

In the spring of '22 and into June, when the mission was cancelled, the "next big mission" was NASA's mission to an Asteroid called 16 Psyche.  Big in the sense of being a standout among other missions as well as being so big it requires a Falcon Heavy to lift it up on its way.  The launch was cancelled for the year due to a handful of problems between hardware and software on the satellite - more details at that link above.

The satellite itself arrived in Florida this week and preparations are continuing for a launch currently listed as NET October 5 at 10:38 AM.   That's less than two months from today and it could even, possibly, be fall by then (Florida insider joke).  Bearing in mind the one year delay since summer of '22, it's looking at a launch more than a year late, but mission managers said today the probe is essentially ready for launch.  

The delay was a major impact to the mission, though.  For one thing, a launch in '22 would have gotten the satellite to Psyche by 2026.  That one year delay moves the arrival date out three years - to "before the end of the decade."  Then there's the cost.  In 2022, the Psyche mission was estimated to cost $985 million. That's now increased to $1.23 billion.

If the name doesn't bring details back to mind immediately, it's an interesting mission.  16 Psyche is an asteroid believed to be entirely (or almost so) made of metal.  As the mission web page at Arizona State University teases,  “For the first time ever, we are exploring a world made not of rock or ice, but of metal.” From time to time, I come across speculation of someone finding an asteroid made of gold or platinum and how rich they could get.  Chances are Psyche isn't gold-pressed latinum (Star Trek joke), but might be the heavier metals found in planetary cores like iron, and nickel.  (Disclaimer: only my interpretation.)  

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche's principal investigator at Arizona State University has this perspective:

Scientists aren't sure what awaits the Psyche spacecraft when it reaches its destination. Elkins-Tanton said modeling of the asteroid's appearance based on telescopic observations suggests it has an irregular potato-like shape.

"It's not spherical," she said. "I always say potato-shaped because potatoes come in many shapes, so I'm not wrong."
...
"We’re never going to get to our metal core (inside Earth)," Elkins-Tanton said. "The pressures are too high. The temperatures are too hot. The technology is impossible. ... But there's one way in our Solar System that we can look at a metal core, and that is by going to this asteroid.

“We’ve visited bodies that are made of rock," Elkins-Tanton said. "We've visited icy asteroids. We've looked at comets and the last ... category of objects that we've never visited as a species in our Solar System is bodies made of metal. So this is primary exploration, a new kind of object that humans have never seen before."

Artist's illustration of NASA's Psyche spacecraft, as it will appear with its solar arrays unfurled in space.  NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Fun fact: those solar arrays will generate 20 kW when they're unfolded here near Earth after launch; at 16 Psyche's orbit that will drop to 2 kW. 

All of the major components for the Falcon Heavy are in process and are looking to be ready in time.  The mission will re-use the side boosters from the most recent Falcon Heavy launch of the Jupiter 3 communications satellite, which featured return to launch site (RTLS) booster recoveries.  The Psyche flight will also return the two boosters to landing zones 1 & 2 on the Cape.  After this flight, they will be held for the Europa Clipper mission in October '24.  While the psyche mission, like the Jupiter 3 mission, will expend the center booster core, there are reports the Europa Clipper mission will expend all three Falcon 9 cores.

 

 

Ingenuity's 53rd Flight Was Unexpectedly Important

Last Friday, I posted a little addendum to another post about the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars having had its 53rd flight, with the 54th planned.  

It turns out that the 53rd didn't go as planned, but proved an important part of the helicopter's design.  The flight was aborted, executing a part of the software that has been there since the start but never yet executed in a flight.  Which is to say it was unverified in real world use, on Mars.

Despite its brevity, however, Ingenuity's most recent flight on August 3 was nonetheless an important one for the helicopter. That's because, on its 53rd flight in late July, the helicopter automatically aborted a planned flight of 136 seconds after just 76 seconds and made an emergency landing.

After the flight, the helicopter's operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined that the premature landing came after images from Ingenuity's navigation camera did not match data from the vehicle's inertial measurement unit. In short, its on-board computer expected to see one thing, and it saw another.

"Since the very first flight, we have included a program called ‘LAND_NOW’ that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered," Teddy Tzanetos, team lead emeritus for Ingenuity, said. "During Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing."

Mission 54 was intended to gather additional data about the conditions that prompted 53 to end early.  The JPL team feels comfortable looking at the views from flight 54 that they understand what prompted the ‘LAND_NOW’ response and feels confident that Ingenuity can get back to flying more rigorous missions soon.

This image of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, visible along the top edge, a bit right of center, was taken by the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 54th flight on Aug. 3, 2023.  At this point, Ingenuity was around 15 feet (officially '5 meters') above the planet.  Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Small Space News Story Roundup 16

Astra's Troubles Deepen 

Astra announced last Friday that they had laid off a quarter of their workforce and reassigned others from launch vehicle to satellite propulsion development as its cash reserves dwindle. 

In a series of statements, the company said it was making a “strategic reallocation of its workforce,” moving 50 engineers from development of its new Rocket 4 vehicle to production of its Astra Spacecraft Engine, while also laying off about 70 employees to reduce costs.

“We are intensely focused on delivering on our commitments to our customers, which includes ensuring we have sufficient resources and an adequate financial runway to execute on our near-term opportunities,” Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said in a statement announcing the moves.

They recognize this is likely to slow progress on Rocket 4 but won't project by how much.  They said in a May 15 investors' call that they were not abandoning the launch vehicle development but that they had...

...278 orders to date of the Astra Spacecraft Engine, an electric thruster based on technology it acquired from startup Apollo Fusion in 2021. Those orders have an overall value of $77 million, and the company said it expects a “substantial majority” of those engines will be delivered by the end of 2024.

One might conclude the orders on hand with the potential to bring in cash to keep them running have taken priority over Rocket 4.  

Their financial difficulties aren't really news.  The most recent mention I find I've made of them, from July 14, talked about them doing a "reverse stock split" to raise share prices as they issued new stock, and that there was "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue. Back in January when I did a re-stacking and re-writing of Ars Technica's piece on the US' Top 10 Launch Companies, it looked like they were in trouble.  

Is this a death spiral or will they make it out of this?  To use one of my favorite quotes, this one by Niels Bohr: "Prediction is very difficult.  Especially if it's about the future."  

Boeing's Next Starliner Test Flight is Off Until March '24

Boeing and NASA announced yesterday that the next flight of Boeing's Starliner, the crewed test flight has been pushed back to March of '24 as they continue troubleshooting the issues we've covered here several times.  

Boeing has delayed the first flight of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle with astronauts on board to no earlier than March 2024 as the company continues to work on issues with the spacecraft’s parachutes and wiring.

There will be a single drop test of a spacecraft with the modified parachute hardware, currently estimated to be November '23.  The potentially flammable tape issue will have a few different fixes available depending on how much has to be taken apart.  

Virgin Galactic's Next Suborbital Flight Thursday

Virgin Galactic has set their next suborbital flight of their Spaceship 2/Galactic 02 for Thursday morning at 10AM Eastern from their Spaceport America in New Mexico.  

Galactic-02 is scheduled to fly a three-person crew, plus the Virgin Galactic astronaut instructor who trained them, plus two company pilots, on a flight to suborbital space on Thursday (Aug. 10).

A full rundown on the mission and the crews of both the suborbital Spaceship 2 and the aircraft that carries it to the required altitude can be found at the link just above. 

Spaceship 2 during its first test flight.  Photo Credit Virgin Galactic.

 

 

Amazon Moves their First Kuiper Mission to Atlas V

Amazon confirmed today that they're moving the launch of their first two Kuiper internet network satellites from ULA's Vulcan Centaur to their Atlas V.  United Launch Alliance's Vulcan was supposed to have its first launch in May of this year (last projected date), but the problems with the Centaur that caused it to explode during tests in March (most recent post here) have pushed that out into the fourth quarter of the year.  That first Cert-1 launch of a Vulcan Centaur was slated to carry the first two of Amazon's Kuiper satellites to begin testing their performance on orbit. 

Amazon had initially planned to deploy KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 by late last year with ABL Space Systems, before the rocket developer’s RS1 vehicle also suffered setbacks.

The Project Kuiper prototypes could launch as soon as Sept. 26 on a dedicated Atlas 5, according to a Reuters report citing Amazon spokesperson James Watkins.

The Atlas V is down to its last launches due to the prohibition of the Russian engines the Atlas uses and all of those vehicles are allocated to customers already.  Amazon has nine Atlas 5 and 38 Vulcan rockets on order from ULA, so I first thought that what happened was simply trading one mission for another.  "Let's swap one Vulcan launch for an Atlas V;" like giving up one place in line for another.  The launch slot in September apparently became open after another mission on ULA's launch schedule faced delays due to payload readiness.  It's possible, but not confirmed, that the payload with readiness issues was the Boeing Starliner crewed flight test, also pushed off closer to '24. 

The company plans to start launching commercial satellites next year amid impending regulatory deadlines for its proposed 3,236-strong low Earth orbit broadband constellation.

Half the constellation must be deployed by July 2026 under rules tied to its Federal Communications Commission license, and the rest three years later.

Amazon expects to open a 31,000-square-meter satellite processing facility in early 2025 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to help ramp up deployment.

 Vulcan with no Centaur upper stage upon arrival at SLC-41 on this past May 11. ULA photo.

 

Booster 9 at Starbase, TX Does a Static Fire

A little after 3PM today, ET, SpaceX fired up Starship Heavy Booster 9 for a static engine firing test.   This caps three days of tests, with a spin prime test on Friday and several tests of the newly-added water deluge system.   As usual with these tests, while it looked largely successful, there was minimal official word from the company, except for one thing: the test was intended to light all 33 engines and burn them for five seconds but lasted 2.74 seconds as four engines shut down early.  

This short video goes through several views of the test, but the water deluge does a pretty effective job of reducing the time you can see any evidence of the engines firing.  The concrete looked completely intact after the test and looking at the video showed no obvious chunks flying or damage to the area, but again, no official word. 

SpaceX began the process of fueling the rocket early this morning but encountered an issue when chilling the lines that run to the rocket, and a red team was sent back to the pad to perform repairs. After repairs were completed, the red team departed and SpaceX spooled up their fuel tank farm again.

After a couple of hours of chilling the fuel lines, filling of the liquid oxygen and liquid methane tanks aboard Booster 9 began at T-Minus 67 minutes.

If you look at the booster in the NSF video capture above you can see white frost on the booster from the bottom to around halfway up, then a gap followed by a much narrower band of frost.  The bottom section of frost is telling us the liquid oxygen tank is nearly full, while the narrow band at the top is showing the amount of liquid methane in the tank.  

An unusual aspect of this test is that SpaceX put up a notice on YouTube that they were counting down to a 2:08 Central time test and covered the test live, as if it were a regular mission.  Except for not having a script like they read while going through the mission. It was quiet when there was nothing to be said.  Video here.  

Having four engines shutdown within a couple of seconds of starting is unsettling to me, but with no information on what the engines were (all "latest and greatest" or just a hodgepodge?) or details on why they shut down, I'll reserve judgement.  Losing four Raptor 2 or 3 engines would knock around two million pounds of thrust off the available amount and might doom a full mission.  On the other hand, with their philosophy of test, fix, test again, there's really no such thing as failing one of these tests, as long as they learn enough to fix whatever happened.  At some point, they need to get 33 good engines on a booster and I think that time is approaching.

NASA/Lockheed Martin Roll Out X-59

It's almost five years to the day since I posted a piece saying that NASA had made a contract with Lockheed Martin for the next generation X-plane, the X-59 Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD).  Today it's called the X-59 QuessT (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) so I guess it seems like inflation is affecting acronyms, too.  The jet is the embodiment of experimental technologies intended to dramatically reduce the sound levels of supersonic air travel, in an effort to allow supersonic commercial flights over the continental US.  The goals for the X-59 are to "reduces the loudness of a sonic boom to a gentle thump to people on the ground," perhaps like a car door slamming within a few hundred feet and to "gather data on human responses to the sound generated during supersonic flight," according to NASA.

Lockheed Martin rolled the plane out in public 11 days ago, although word is apparently now just getting out.  That's going by the posted "since" field on the YouTube page for this video.  The audio for this is just some music.  No narration.  No content.  

The footage shows off the unique geometry of the X-59, which features a sharp, extended nose section measuring 38 feet (11.5 meters) in length. Because of the length of this nose section, however, pilots flying the X-59 won't be able to accurately see out of the front of the cockpit, which doesn't even feature a forward-facing windscreen.

The long nose is probably going to be a problem.  It was with the Concorde back when it went into service and its nose was shorter.  An article in Machine Design that was a reference for my August '18 article referred to that:

Flight rules when the Concorde flew demanded that pilots be able to see the runway when they were landing and taking off. That meant engineers had to devise a way for the nose to tilt downwards almost 13^o on takeoffs and landings then go back to its proper position while in flight. To improve visibility on the X-59, Lockheed is using a forward mounted camera. For taxiing and ground handling, a second camera under the nose looks downward when the landing gear is extended. The long nose will still present problems for taxiing and limit its turning radius. This will likely restrict the aircraft from operating out of smaller airfields.

While I'm not a pilot I've had the good fortune to sit in the right front seat of a small plane a couple of times, and I have to think that using a video system instead of just looking through a windshield is something that needs attention in design, so that if the primary system fails the pilot isn't completely blind.  Perhaps it's not that unusual compared to other planes in service today - or even not that different from simply flying on instruments - but reliability is always a major concern in aviation design.  

To remedy this, the experimental jet features what NASA calls an External Vision System, or XVS. XVS is essentially a closed-circuit video system consisting of a forward-facing camera and a cockpit-mounted display in front of the X-59's pilot. The system uses "custom image processing software and camera systems, to create an augmented reality view of the X-59 pilot’s forward line-of-sight along with graphical flight data overlays," according to a 2019 NASA statement.

If you saw Top Gun: Maverick last year, you may remember the scene at the opening of the movie where Tom Cruise is a test pilot in a supersonic plane and is pushing it to Mach 10.  The supersonic plane seen in that movie was based on input from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, the same group that built the X-59 and that's working on the SR-72 successor to their enormously successful SR-71 Blackbird.  What was seen in the movie wasn't the SR-72, but something based on it crossed with the X-59, which was in the process of being built when the movie was made.  The emphasis was on looking cool while not showing what either plane really looks like.

Those of you who live near Edwards Air Force Base will probably get to be the first to see and hear the X-59 QuessT fly.  Once data is taken that shows the design behaving as intended, flights will extend over other suburban and urban areas and they'll be looking for feedback from the communities on the acceptability of the sounds when the sonic boom/car door slamming reaches you.  

 

Voyager 2 Phones Home

How can you not love the headline that Ars Technica used today?  “Voyager 2 phones home and says everything is cool.”  I guess it didn't take until October, like we talked about last Friday.  

In an update to last Friday's message about having lost contact, JPL wrote:

The agency’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar “shout” more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.

All of this indicates the probe is healthy, on course, and operating normally.  To those who grew up with the Voyager "grand tour of the solar system" completed, and even to some of us who grew up before the two Voyagers launched a few weeks apart in 1977, it can be hard to internalize how much Voyager changed our mental images of the outer planets from before their missions.  

Prior to the launch of Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977 on two different rockets, humans had been gazing at fuzzy blobs in the outer Solar System for hundreds of years. Pioneer 10 and 11 provided some better views of Jupiter and Saturn, but still, very little was known about the planets or their moons. Next to nothing was known of Uranus and Neptune. The Voyagers uncovered complex planetary systems and incredible moons, such as volcano-covered Io, icy Europa, and Titan, with its methane seas.

I went looking for a photograph of Jupiter or Neptune from one of the big observatories from the 1960s.  No joy.  I think I'll have to go to a library and look in old books.  A look at something from one of the great observatories alongside a photo from one of Voyagers could be interesting. 

Voyager 2 with its launch fairing being installed, 1977.  NASA/JPL photo.

Let's make it a TwoFer

Word has been getting out that the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has taken its 53rd flight and is being prepared for its 54th.  Let me remind you the goals for the mission were first to be able to fly and then to take five test flights.  

The Ingenuity drone flew on July 22 on Mars, achieving Flight 53. According to the Ingenuity flight log, the helicopter fly [sic] horizontally and north across 468 feet (142 meters) of Martian terrain with air time of roughly 75 seconds. Ingenuity soared roughly 16 feet (5 meters) into the air and achieved a top speed of 5.6 mph (2.5 meters per second).

The current goal for Ingenuity is to act as a scout for the Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity to Mars.  Together, they're searching for interesting sites to collect samples from, to be loaded on a future mission to bring the samples to Earth.  

 

 

As Cygnus Launched Tuesday Closes Approaches ISS Docking

As Northrup Grumman's final Antares-launched Cygnus cargo resupply mission approaches rendezvous with the ISS, the company talked about planned improvements and upgrades to the Cygnus platform for the coming generation of private space stations being planned or actively developed.  

In presentations at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference Aug. 2, company representatives outlined efforts to enhance the capabilities of the decade-old spacecraft to enable it to serve NASA and others in the coming decade.

“We’re looking at what we have to do with the Cygnus spacecraft, what we have to do with the services that it provides,” said Rick Mastracchio, director of strategy and business development at Northrop Grumman Space Systems. “We’re trying to prepare and think way ahead on how do we start updating the vehicle, making sure we have a spacecraft that will be flying 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”

It almost goes without saying that the first thing they're mentioning is increasing the payload capacity.  That would almost certainly be in the list no matter what vehicle you're talking about - with the possible exception being if it was the size of the flying aircraft carriers in the Marvel movies (which DARPA apparently considered building). 

The current Cygnus has a payload of 3750 kg and they're talking about increasing that to 5000 kg.  This will be done by stretching the cargo container by 1.5 meters, which might even be hard to notice in an image scale like the one above.  Called the Mission B version, it's currently penciled in for its first launch in mid '25 on the NG-23 cargo mission.  That mission is also the first launch of the new Antares 330; the vehicle that's the result of collaboration of Northrup Grumman and Firefly.

Apparent in this photo is another big topic of interest, the robotic arm hanging down on the right.  The current Cygnus has to be grabbed by the station's robotic arm and pulled into place to dock, in contrast with SpaceX's crew dragon that autonomously docks with the station.  Northrup Grumman officials say, “Particularly for commercial space stations, a big focus right now is on docking,” because they might not have the arm, or they may not have the arm in place when the first visits to their station are needed.

Northrup is understandably emphasizing their advantage over Cargo Dragon: the ability to raise the orbit of the ISS.  They intend to demonstrate that capability again with the NG-19 mission launched this Tuesday (Aug. 1) to the station, and scheduled to arrive early on 8/3.  

“We like to be able to do a couple of these per mission,” Migliorini said of reboost maneuvers. Those reboosts are done using propellant not needed for the spacecraft’s arrival at the station.

Northrup is talking with companies around the world that are interested in space stations or actively developing them.  Part of that is sales, for sure, but another important part is market research, trying to find out just what the customers want.

Late Week Weekend Update Update

Almost two weeks ago I posted a story about problems with my car I'd been having and called it the Weekend Update.  This is an update to the update.  

As of Monday the Explorer is out of the shop and back in service.  It's working so far, although it worked for a few days two weeks ago.  The bad problem that had it get towed to first my small, local chain shop and then to the dealer was that it wouldn't start no matter what.  The small shop said it started for them once, and they thought it was the PCM (Powertrain Control Module) which they can't work on and the dealer said it wouldn't start for them.  They were still troubleshooting it that weekend, I tentatively concluded with this:

In my spare time, I've been contemplating if I really want to sink a lot of money into a 13 year old car, but it might not be my call.  If it's unfixable, that forces the decision.  If it's many thousands to fix it, it's worth having considered options.

I'll leave out the most agonizing waiting parts, but by the end of last week, they were saying the tech had found that what was keeping it from starting was that the other shop had gotten brake fluid into a connector at the PCM.  With it cleaned out, the car was starting reliably.  The problem as it presented itself was that the PCM couldn't communicate with the instrument cluster, and that meant taking apart the dashboard area to get to things.  

The other problem I mentioned was the check engine light coming on after about 15 minutes of driving, with the small shop showing that it was a sensor saying the fuel tank wasn't sealed properly.  The dealership gave an estimate to repair, in close numbers $600 for the work that had been done and $1600 with replacing the fuel tank (EVAP) sensor.  

Allow me to get philosophical for a minute.  At some point in the two years with the bad ABS module, I noticed the CEL was on - as was (to my knowledge) every fault the dashboard has ever shown me.  With no way of knowing that the CEL was caused by the EVAP sensor or the ABS module, the EVAP sensor could have been bad two years or it could have failed two weeks ago.  Since the conventional wisdom is that the sensor only rarely causes anything serious, I opted to drive around with the CEL on and go with the cheaper option.  I bought a OBD II code reader so I can check and see that this is the only fault or if new ones show up.  "Keep an eye on it," as the small shop said.

Because of spending a handful of years as a production technician in an electronics manufacturer (or two), I have experience with troubleshooting intermittent problems.  So when anyone tells me they've fixed an intermittent I wonder if they fixed it or merely made it more intermittent.  I'll feel comfortable that this "won't start" problem is gone after maybe a thousand successful starts.  That'll take years so I'm still at the point of deciding whether or not I'm looking for a car.  Divemedic's piece yesterday on how so many new cars are going to a subscription model for too many things has convinced me not to go look for a new car, although I really wasn't seriously thinking of it.  But charging me to put an air conditioner in my car and then $20/month to use it - on top of extra gas (if it really needs extra gas)?  YHGTBSM.  FYATHYRIO.

 

Small Space News Story Roundup 15

Tonight's Antares Launch Marked the End of an Era

On August 1, 2023, the last Northrup Grumman Antares rocket lifted off at 8:31 PM Eastern (0031 UTC on August 2).  This is the last launch of the Antares, carrying their Cygnus cargo vessel to the ISS.  The Cygnus will live on, under contract to NASA, but a new launch vehicle is being developed by Firefly, to be called the Antares 330.  Originally expected to fly toward the end of '24, it now looks to be No Earlier Than (NET) summer of '25.  Until that vehicle flies and is certified, Northrup Grumman has contracted with SpaceX for three launches starting later this year (at this point stated as NET November).  

Continuing their tradition of naming Cygnus vehicles for influential individuals in spaceflight, the NG-19 Cygnus was christened the SS Laurel Clark, for the fallen space shuttle Columbia astronaut. Once on orbit, the SS Laurel Clark will spend about 2.5 days catching up to the ISS.

Video Here - should start at about T-15 seconds.  There's a tribute to Laurel Clark about 15 minutes before that.  The whole video is around 51 minutes.  

Europe's Euclid Space Telescope Downloads First Test Images 

Much as the James Webb Space Telescope started downloading test images before starting its "real science" images, the European Space Agency's Euclid Telescope, launched a month ago on July 1, has reached its orbit at the L2 (Lagrange) point and started taking and downloading its first images this week. 

On Monday (July 31), the European Space Agency's Euclid telescope sent its first images back to Earth. And while these seminal portraits are certainly mesmerizing, they also confirm that the space observatory's instruments are working in tip-top shape.

Two images taken by Euclid's instruments. The left was taken by VIS and the right by NISP. (Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA) 

VIS is the visible light sensor, while NISP is the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer which (as the name says) is sensitive to light wavelengths invisible to the unaided (human) eye.  More images and much more information at Space.com. 

It should go without saying that these are test images and not yet usable for the telescope's intended scientific uses, but final words to the team:

"The outstanding first images obtained using Euclid's visible and near-infrared instruments open a new era to observational cosmology and statistical astronomy," Yannick Mellier, astronomer at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris and Euclid Consortium lead, said in a statement. "They mark the beginning of the quest for the very nature of dark energy."

The Strange Story of the Greatest Guitarist of All Time and Asteroid Bennu

In what may be the most unexpected story I've ever written, start with Brian May, guitarist most famous for his years with the world-famous group Queen and voted the greatest guitarist of all time by the readers of Total Guitar magazine earlier this year.  Then add NASA's asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx mission and their chief scientist Dante Lauretta.  Mix well, and the two have collaborated on a book about the target of the mission, collecting rock samples from asteroid Bennu, in October 2020.

If I mix in a fact that I'm sure some of you know: Brian May is Dr. Brian May, Ph. D. in astronomy, it's quite a bit less shocking but it's still the Story of the Day/Week/Month.  

May, who holds a PhD in astronomy, had previously collaborated with the science teams behind Europe's comet-chasing Rosetta probe and NASA's Pluto explorer New Horizons. He joined the OSIRIS-REx team in January 2019, a few months after the probe reached its destination, after striking up a friendship with Lauretta over shared interests. But Lauretta, although a lifelong Queen fan, said he wasn't interested in having a free-loading celebrity on board just for publicity and expected the rock star to earn his keep.

It turns out May was perfect choice for the mission because of his interest is stereoscopic imaging of things like asteroid Bennu.  Ordinarily, stereoscopic imaging is done with stereoscopic cameras; two cameras spaced apart so that their output could be combined into a single 3D image - when viewed with 3D glasses.  The problem was that OSIRIS-REx wasn't equipped with a stereoscopic camera.  This is where May comes in.  

May, however, knew a way around this limitation, as he had previously produced 3D images of Comet 67P, the target of the Rosetta mission, and of Pluto as seen by New Horizons, by carefully selecting and aligning images taken by a single camera from different angles. 

OSIRIS-REx, was the first probe designed to take samples of an asteroid and the predominant model for smallish asteroids like Bennu was that they were chunks of some bigger body broken apart by collisions over the vastness of time.  It didn't take long after the first images started coming back to realize this was very, very wrong, and not what the mission was designed for.  Instead of mostly smooth, beach-like plains of sand occasionally strewn with smatterings of bigger rocks, they found a body covered in boulders that sometimes rose against the asteroid's barely existent gravity in formations tens of feet tall.   

The van-sized spacecraft had been designed to land in a smooth area at least 25 m wide, but the images quickly revealed that there was no such open space on the spinning-top-shaped Bennu, and the team faced the very real possibility that the mission might not accomplish its main goal. May and his collaborator Claudia Manzoni sat down and went through photos of tens of shallow craters that pockmark the face of Bennu in an effort to find one large enough and boulder-free enough to allow the sampling.  

But the effort paid off. Two craters were eventually deemed good enough to host a landing attempt. The first of the two, called Osprey, was the site of choice of the spacecraft engineers, as there were fewer potentially dangerous rocks scattered around its rim, Lauretta said at Thursday's event. The other, Nightingale Crater, was the scientists' favorite, as its color indicated an abundance of ancient regolith, which, the researchers hoped, held a record of the space rock's past — and that of the entire solar system.

The immediate problem was that neither of the two sites was the 25m width the probe was designed for.  Osprey is 6 m wide, and Nightingale is 8 m.

Eventually, science won, and Nightingale was selected despite a massive boulder nicknamed Mount Doom looming at its edge. After careful preparations, in October 2020, engineers were finally confident enough to command OSIRIS-REx to perform the landing maneuver. And then Bennu delivered yet another surprise. 

"We expected the surface to be pretty rigid, kind of like if you touch down on a gravel pile: a little bit of dust flying away and a few particles jumping up," Lauretta told Space.com last year.

"But as we were bringing back the images after the event, we were stunned. We saw a giant wall of debris flying away from the sample site. For spacecraft operators, it was really frightening."

In the wake of other missions to small asteroids like Bennu by Japan's Hayabusa missions to the asteroids Itokawa and Ryugu, along with last year's DART mission to asteroid Didymos and its "moon" Dimorphos, the view of these asteroids has shifted to being that they're piles of rubble; conglomerates of fragments from past collisions held together by the very weak gravity of all of the fragments for each other.  How weak?  In the images taken after OSIRIS-REx collected its sample, Brian May said, "You could see boulders rolling uphill on Bennu."

A stereoscopic image of asteroid Bennu that allows viewers to see the surface in three vivid dimensions when viewed through  3D glasses. Without 3D glasses, I can see this in 3D by crossing my eyes until the images fuse into one.  I concentrate on that big rock in the middle.  If you remember the brief fad for random dot stereograms in the late 1980s, I picked up that trick back then.

 

It's That Time of Year Again

It's the peak of summer, and for us the week that typically has the warmest day of the year.

This is a "statistical" map, which means it has been massaged in various ways and maybe multiple times.  Is it showing averages, median day or just what?  I don't know.  What it says is that here on the east coast of Florida, just south of the little bump about 2/3 of the way up the state (Cape Canaveral) our hottest week is July 26 to 31. Thousands of square miles along the northwestern states share the same days with us; the others tend to be in a few days, August 1-5.

I find it interesting that west Texas, southern New Mexico and Arizona are all warmest in June with the majority being June 16-30.  Northern Arizona and New Mexico push that out to July 20, and have seen their hottest week.  The parts of the country that are warmest in September or late August are all along the Pacific coast.  By far, the largest part of the country will have hit their highest temperatures by August 5th - next Saturday.  As some sort of average or other statistical massaging. 

While it isn't August by the calendar, it's August by the feel of the day.  

The first indicator it's peak summer is when the UV Index says 11 on a scale of 10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal."  We know that's aimed at visitors to the area who aren't used to it and don't pay much attention.  

There are many places where folks look forward to summer; it's time to go outside - maybe for the first time in months, enjoy warm, glorious days; garden, bike, picnic; maybe enjoy a book while lounging on the beach.  Songs like Nat King Cole's classic "Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" come to mind.

That's not here.  Here, summer is something to be a bit more reserved about.  Maybe when you're a teen or in your 20s, you can get away with it.  If you live here, you can keep up with your regular life.  If you were from a moderate place, not used to our heat and humidity, running or other outdoors activity could conceivably kill you.  August marks the Dog Days of Summer, named for when Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Big Dog) and called The Dog Star starts rising before sunrise.  Everything outdoors slows.  Fishing slows - sure the fish have to eat, but they become more active after dark.  Outdoor range trips are best over before noon.  Animals are more sluggish.  Ordinarily, it can be nasty here from about mid-July to almost the middle of September.  The worst of it is August.  

 

 

Is It a Hot Summer? Somewhat, In Places. Is it Climate Change? Doubtful

I've mentioned meteorologist Ryan Maue on these pages several times (earliest post? I think) starting when he was a graduate student at Florida State University, one of the major meteorology departments that study hurricanes.  Simply, in an era of insanity and blaming everything that happens on CO₂ concentrations - followed by perennially making up new things to blame on CO₂ - he has remained data-driven and therefore a voice of sanity.  

Last Sunday, a piece on "Watts Up With That" referenced him extensively. "Ryan Maue on Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Submarine Volcano."  Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai erupted on January 13 of '22 and within a week was being noted as one of the most violent eruptions ever seen, with this startling statement from a group that monitors nuclear explosions. 

Titled “A nuclear-test monitor calls Tonga volcano blast 'biggest thing that we've ever seen',” it reports that an international group that monitors for likely atomic detonations has reported that at every one of their sites around the world - 53 of them - the infrasonic wave from the Tongan volcano is the largest thing they've ever measured, even bigger than the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear detonation in history. 

Dr. Maue opens the referred WUWT article saying that the initial data was analyzed and showed that 50 million metric tons of water were injected into the upper atmosphere by the eruption.  Further analysis points to that figure being low by a factor of three. 

New research suggests 150-million metric tons or almost 40 Trillion gallons of water vapor was injected into the upper-atmosphere. A lot of it is still up there floating around.

That much water injected into the stratosphere has never been observed. We're in unknown territory.

So what?  Water vapor is a potent "greenhouse gas," far more than that eebil debil CO₂.  Volcanoes are more widely known as a source of sulfur dioxide, SO₂ which has the opposite effect of water vapor, cooling rather than warming. Hunga Tonga had about 2% of the amount of SO₂ as Mt. Pinatubo.

Volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo blast SO₂ into the stratosphere creating a cooling climate shroud for 1-2 years.

Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991.  Hunga Tonga had about 2% of the amount of SO₂ as Mt. Pinatubo but an unprecedented amount of water vapor. 

EOS, the online publication of the American Geophysical Union, says: 

The eruption of Hunga-Tonga increased the water vapor mass in the stratosphere by 13%, and it will remain there for many years to come.

“The unique nature and magnitude of the global stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the most remarkable climatic events in the modern observation era.”

Because of this, they say Hunga-Tonga may push the global temperature up by the dreaded 1.5 C (the AGU is fully onboard with the climate change hype) although still leaving us cooler than the Roman warming period and cooler still than other earlier warm periods.  The water it injected into the stratosphere could affect weather for 5 to 7 years.

It's pretty obvious from this plot, but I'll say it anyway.  The panic over warming is with respect to the coolest global temperatures in the last 10,000 years.  It had better be warming, we're comparing temperatures to the Little Ice Age. 

I've heard a lot about warm sea surface temperatures this hurricane season and it's possible this is an effect of the Hunga-Tonga eruption a year and a half ago.

NASA Has Lost Contact With Voyager 2

Nobody's panicking, yet, but NASA has lost contact with Voyager 2.  They expect it to be temporary. 

About a week ago, operators of the Voyager 2 spacecraft sent a series of commands that inadvertently caused the distant probe to point its antenna slightly away from Earth. As a result, NASA has lost contact with the spacecraft, which is nearly half a century old and presently 19.9 billion km away from the planet.

For the time being, NASA and the mission's scientists aren't panicking. In an update posted Friday, the space agency said Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation several times a year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth. It is scheduled to do so again on October 15, which should allow communication to resume. In the meantime, NASA said it does not anticipate the spacecraft veering off course.

The definition of "slightly away" is 2 degrees off Earth.  That 19.9 billion kilometers (12.4 billion miles) from Earth works out to 18.49 light-hours, the time it takes a radio transmission to go each way between us and Voyager. I could tell you how many miles off the antenna is pointed but two degrees means as much.  It tells you how precarious the link is if being two degrees off drops the communications link.  The sizes of the deep space network's dishes tell us those are very, very narrow beamwidth.  Back in '17, I did an article on Voyager looked at from radio frequency signal link perspective.  I pointed out the antennas on Voyager had 57 dB of gain.  Those antennas are tiny compared to the deep space network.  The DSN has much more gain, and gain is inversely proportional to beamwidth; the higher the gain, the smaller the beamwidth.

One of the NASA Deep Space Network Dishes.  The wide angle lens ruins the perspective on this, making it look small.  All of the DSN dishes I know of are 70 meter (240 feet) diameter. 

I liked that line about NASA not expecting Voyager to veer off course.  That doesn't happen without a source of thrust to change its course.  Newton's first law is still a law.

NASA, DARPA Award Contract for Nuclear Powered Rocket

NASA and DARPA announced Wednesday that they had awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to build and develop a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engine.

Lockheed Martin and BWX technologies under DARPA’s DRACO (the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations) program and in partnership with NASA will build the nuclear thermal rocket. NASA and DARPA are committing up to $499 million towards this program.

Lockheed Martin (locally known as Lock-Mart) will serve as the primary contractor to assemble the eXperimental Nuclear Thermal Reactor vehicle (X-NTRV) and its engine. BWX Technologies will develop the nuclear reactor and fabricate the High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel to power the reactor.  The targeted date for the launch is four years from now, so NET 2027.  

While the overall size of this test bed was not revealed, during a press conference today, Dr. Tabitha Dodson of DARPA said it would not require a heavy lift vehicle and be able to fit in the fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 or United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur.

The need for faster transport around the solar system has come up before.  Currently, everything we launch gets there on chemical propulsion.  They're great for getting payloads into space, but they gulp large amounts of fuel and then they're done.  Everything that has visited or orbited around the planets now and the few that have left the solar system got their start that way, but for Mars, for example, the world waits for a short period every two years when our orbit is going to overtake Mars in its orbit.  We fling a payload in that direction and wait six months for it to get there.  Worse, if travelers to Mars need to evacuate it could take them over a year to get back to Earth depending on when they leave.  It has been concluded nuclear power is the only realistic way to do such missions.  It gets more convincing for the outer planets.

The promise of nuclear power is twofold.  First and foremost, the potential for cutting travel time by slow but steady acceleration from running the engine continually is there.  Second, the inertia from the acceleration of an engine could give some semblance of artificial gravity reducing the crew's physical deterioration from Zero-G.  Or, at least making it more manageable. 

Conceptual rendering of DARPA’s DRACO - Image credit to DARPA  With no sense of scale, it helps to know that they say the system you see there would fit in the payload fairing of a Falcon 9 or Vulcan Centaur. 

The concept behind a Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) is simple.  The nuclear fuel is simply a heater that heats a propellant.  There is a propellant, liquid hydrogen, but no oxidizer and no combustion.  The hydrogen is flashed into the hot area and a nozzle, where it's then heated from 20 Kelvin, 20° above absolute zero, to 2,700 Kelvin in less than a second.  The hydrogen expands dramatically from the heating.  No combustion means the thrust is from the momentum transfer of the hydrogen atoms being blown out the nozzle.  Dr. Dodson of DARPA points out that the NTR achieves a high thrust similar to chemical propulsion but is two to three times more efficient.

These engines have been theoretically understood and modeled since the 1960s NERVA programs (Nuclear Engines for Rocket Vehicle Application).  They have never been tested in space, though, which means there are plenty of other concerns, including regulatory.  The reactor has to be capable of being completely off from launch until it has achieved a designated safe orbit.  

This final orbit has yet to be determined, but it is likely to be 700 to 2,000 km above the surface of the Earth, such that the vehicle's reentry into the planet's atmosphere will take place hundreds of years after any nuclear reactions occur.

To be complete, this is a test program there are things about reactors in space (and microgravity) that have never been tested in space.  This is very experimental.

"It's important to keep in mind that this is a demonstration engine," Dodson said. "And just like any other test of a rocket engine, NASA may need to do a series of follow-on engine development work in order to get closer to their perfect operational engine."

A big unknown is the ability to keep liquid hydrogen cold for long periods.  20K is extremely cold and it has never been successfully stored in space for more than "days" at a time. 

Until now, liquid hydrogen has only been successfully stored in space for days since it boils above the extremely cold temperature of 20 Kelvin. Dodson said this mission would attempt to store liquid hydrogen in its ultra-cold state for a couple of months, allowing enough time for multiple tests of the nuclear thermal engine.

After the propellant runs out, the engine will no longer be able to operate, even though mission controllers on the ground will still retain communication with the spacecraft. The mission could be extended if it could be robotically refueled, and Dodson said the spacecraft designers are attempting to allow for this possibility.

I'd really like to see this thing work.  Decades ago, I read of using engines like this to allow constant acceleration to keep the explorers at 1g gravity while traveling.  That would eliminate the concerns with zero-G affects on bones and muscles as well as drastically decrease the time traveling. There are a lot of hurdles to be overcome before we could be a space-faring civilization; storage of the hydrogen (or another propellant), storage of food, and more, but this is an essential technology. 

 

 

Boeing Has Lost $1.1 B on Starliner

We've known for some time that Starliner is in trouble especially after the planned July 21 crewed test flight was cancelled back at the start of June.  Today, due to a Boeing quarterly earnings update call reported on by Ars Technica, we learned a bit more about just how bad things are.

On Wednesday, as a part of its quarterly earnings update, Boeing announced that the Starliner program had taken a loss of $257 million "primarily due to the impacts of the previously announced launch delay." This brings the company's total write-down of losses on the Starliner program to more than $1.1 billion. Partly because of this, Boeing's Defense, Space, & Security division reported a loss of $527 million during the second quarter of this year.

Starliner was funded by the same fixed-price contract approach as SpaceX's Crew Dragon.  As a result, the cost overruns are Boeing's responsibility and not NASA's. 

As a reminder/for new readers, after preparing for the crewed test flight since the start of the year, the flight was called off for the foreseeable future due to a couple of serious problems that were discovered before Memorial Day weekend and investigated over it.  First, Boeing discovered that so called "soft links" in the lines that run from the ship to its parachutes were not as strong as they previously believed.  Second, hundreds of feet of P-213 glass cloth tape that wrap wire bundles inside the spacecraft were found to be flammable.  

NASA's program manager for Commercial Crew, Steve Stich, said the agency has been working on the issues but more remains to be done.  In particular, it sounds like someone in NASA thought with two issues like these discovered in the final weeks of preparation for the mission, it was prudent to double or triple check the rest of the spacecraft.

The identification of two serious problems so close to the spaceflight prompted NASA to take a broader look at Starliner and determine whether there might be other problems lurking in the spacecraft. "On the NASA side, we really stepped back and looked at all aspects of flight preparation," Stich said.
...
Stich made his comments Tuesday during a media teleconference to discuss the forthcoming Crew-7 mission on SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle. Nine years ago, when NASA down-selected to Boeing and SpaceX to provide crew transportation services to the space station, Boeing was considered the prohibitive favorite to deliver first for NASA. However, SpaceX will launch its seventh operational mission and eighth overall crew mission for NASA next month.

NASA has already announced that SpaceX will fly its Crew-8 mission for NASA in February or March of next year. Given the ongoing delays, it is now possible that Crew-9 flies next fall, before Boeing's first operational mission, Starliner-1. NASA has not named a full four-person crew for Starliner-1 but has said that astronauts Scott Tingle and Mike Fincke will serve as commander and pilot.

Back on June 1st when I relayed the news that the crewed flight test was scrubbed for July 21, it seemed prudent to suggest it might be off the books in '23 and end up in '24.  NASA's Launch Manifest was last updated in April, so it's outdated already, but the mention of an operational Starliner flight is that Starliner-1 mission a year from now. 

NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test: NET July 21, 2023
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7: NET mid-August 2023
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8: NET February 2024
NASA’s Boeing Starliner-1: NET Summer 2024

It seems to me that if the first line, the Boeing Crew Flight Test, gets delayed six months to January 2024, that Starliner-1 crew rotation flight will get delayed until December of '24 at the soonest. 

The Orbital Flight Test, OFT-2, Starliner after arrival at the launch complex yesterday, May 18, 2022.  Trevor Mahlmann photo. 

 

 

Small Space News Story Roundup 14

Starbase Boca Chica Tested Boosters 9 and 10 

Last Friday, 7/21, I covered that Booster 9 had been rolled back to the launch facility and then lifted onto the Orbital Launch Mount. Since Cameron County was listing a road closure for Sunday July 23 from 8AM to 8PM along with backup dates, it seemed like we might see testing resume at Starbase aiming for the next Starship flight test.  Perhaps even as soon as Sunday.

Indeed we did.  On Sunday, we saw the first fueling tests on Booster 9 atop the OLM.  Everything appeared to go nominally.  Both the LOX (bottom) and methane tanks (top) were filled.  It appeared that no other tests were attempted.

Booster 9 on Sunday, seeming to be fully fueled. In the background, Ship 25 awaits its turn for more tests.

Of course, this is the first time the OLM has been used as intended since the flight test on April 20 and the massive rebuilding that has been going on since the dust settled on that flight.  There were many questions about how soon they'd reach this level.  At 13 weeks and three days since April 20, they certainly accomplished a great deal; it's just not the two months Elon was expecting.  

Also within the last week, SpaceX moved Booster 10 to Massey’s Test Facility for its own cryogenic proof test, partially filling the tanks. Once the test was completed the booster was moved back to the shipyard.  At the shipyard, Ship 28 was attached to a thrust simulator and then moved to Massey’s.  This pairing seems to imply that once Flight Test 2 with B7 and S25 is completed, Flight Test 3 could be B10 with S28.  

Space Coast prepares for Falcon Heavy launch

The next Falcon Heavy mission is scheduled for Wednesday night, July 26, at 11:04 PM EDT.  This will be the launch of the Jupiter 3/Echostar XXIV communications satellite and will be from the historic pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center (as all Falcon Heavy launches have been). 

This satellite will be the heaviest payload ever launched to geostationary transfer orbit. The satellite, built by Maxar, weighs in at 9,200 kg (20,282 lbs) and features 14 solar arrays that, once deployed, will span 127 feet. The satellite will be able to handle 500+ gigabytes of capacity and provide speeds up to 100 megabytes per second. The satellite’s final orbit will be at 95 degrees west latitude and 22,300 miles above the equator over the Americas.  [The source really said "west latitude", but that's longitude.  The latitude is 0 degrees, the equator.  - SiG]

For the heaviest payload ever to be launched to the geosynchronous orbit, it seems to call for the heaviest lift rocket in the world.  While SLS may have a greater payload capacity, it's not exactly in production with one flight to its name and with the entire production capability of SLS rockets allocated until about 2030, that seals the requirement to use the Falcon Heavy.  

The Not-Space Story of the Day. Maybe of the Year

It's good news, for once, coming out of the colleges.   A team of researchers from Oregon State University sent surveys meant to assess the representation of "transgender and gender nonconforming" of undergraduate STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) majors.  The proportion of sarcastic answers they received (which frankly wasn't terribly high) was high enough to trigger some of the researchers and cause them to whine about the rise of fascism in STEM programs; proving once again they don't understand what the word fascism actually means.  Of 723 responses, only 299 were considered valid, and 50 of the 299, 15%, were classified as "malicious."  It even led to one of their data analysts being so triggered they (it? I don't know their pronouns) had to be given weeks off from looking at the responses.

This story has hit the headlines over the weekend, but the best and deepest coverage I've found is on ZeroHedge, so I'll be quoting from there the most. 

The 28-page paper is titled "Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences." It was rejected by multiple engineering-education journals before finding a home at "Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies,"  which Northwestern University alumni can proudly claim as their alma mater's contribution to society.  

“Online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements were present throughout the data, alongside memes and content referencing gaming and ‘nerd’ culture,” wrote the authors, who call for academia to face STEM's surging fascist menace head-on, as the survey results demonstrate "social justice STEM education must include perspectives on online hate radicalization and center anti-colonial, intersectional solidarity organizing as its opposition."

What sort of dressing would you like on that word salad?  

The questionnaire first asked students the gender they identify as:

• I identify as a gift card
• Apache Attack Helicopter
• F-16 Fighter Jet
• Pansexual attack helicopter
  
• Cis gender lizard king
• A human being
• F**king white male
• V22 Osprey
• DID YOU JUST F**KING ASK FOR MY GENDER
• Non-cookie-cutter cis-furry dragonkin. Don't judge. 
• Quasi-Demi-poney; bankai-released state queercopter with a hint of faggotdrag lesbian and homosexual upside-down Frappuccino cake
• I'm just here for the gift card

A total of 24% of respondents used the second through fourth answers: an "Apache Attack Helicopter," a "pansexual attack helicopter," and an "F-16 Fighter Jet."  So many chose the Apache that the paper's authors singled it out for criticism. 

"It is notable that the specific descriptor of an Apache Attack Helicopter is referenced by several different participants—itself a synthesis and reflection of U.S. military force and the appropriation of Indigenous language by colonizers." 

They asked about Race/Ethnic Identity:

• I'm an ethnic gift card.
• My skin color is not important 
• Afro/Klingon-Asicatic Galapogayation
• AH-64 Apache
• Republican
• Come on man, these questions are stupid. Everyone is a grab bag of genetics from all over the world
• I'm a Swedish Muslim
• Native American (Elizabeth Warren)
• Pansexual attack helicopter
• Cracker
• Colored Native Mix w/oppressed ancestors
• Born white but I spend a lot of time in the sun so I identify as a light skin black male
• My skin is blue, I think I might be a smurf

If they had a Disability: 

• I don't have enough gift cards
• My country is run by communists
• Being 2.86% white
• Pedophilia
• Gender dysphoria
• Thinking I'm not a man
• Being trans
• That I'm a tranny
• I'm mentally retarded
• I have hands where my feet are and feet where my hands are 
• Like all transgenders, my disability is the inability to come to terms with biological reality. Madness, essentially.  

The many references to gift cards are because the group conducting the study used $5 Amazon gift cards to entice students to participate.

There were other great responses.  I've probably copied too much of this already, so let me just refer you again to ZeroHedge.  Another good source I found was a Fox News piece.  That piece included this nugget that's worth quoting:

The research team declared that the mockery they received "had a profound impact on morale and mental health," particularly for one transgender researcher who was "already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric." The paper claimed that "managing the study’s data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm" of having to read students' responses in the survey.

This quote is the very embodiment of where the idea comes from that you just shouldn't use resumes from people who list their pronouns.  Slip them under the papers on your desk, or somewhere even less accessible. "Are you sure you sent that to me?  I can't seem to find it."

I find this story the most encouraging news I've seen in quite a while.  Engineering undergrads are still being wise asses.  Instead of reflexively parroting the indoctrination they've been fighting for years, they're making fun of the indoctrinators to their faces.  It gives me hope for driving across bridges or flying in airplanes over the next 20 to 30 years.  Maybe everything isn't going to fail.  Those of us who have been talking about how new dark ages are being forced on the world by people who think math is racist have some inspiration.  The answer to "what's your race/ethnic identity?" that one person gave, "Come on man, these questions are stupid.  Everyone is a grab bag of genetics from all over the world" displays common sense in quantities rarely seen anymore.   

India's Moon Probe Raising Its Orbit

The Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander that India launched July 13th (local time) has been smoothly conducting its mission, raising the farthest point (apogee) of its orbit in discrete engine burns since then.  We learned today via Space.com that with July 20th as International Moon Day, the occasion was used to net a little publicity and attention for the mission by doing the next engine burn. The spacecraft moved into a 51,400 km x 228 km orbit, as planned.

That 2-3 PM IST window for the next firing is 0830-0930 GMT; 4:30-5:30 AM EDT.  A translunar injection (TLI) burn will take place on July 31. 

The Tweet also provided a graphic of the approach being used.  By now, this general approach will be familiar.

I should point out that the highest orbit around Earth connects to the highest orbit around the moon and the next several engine burns will be to lower and circularize the lunar orbit.

As posted in the July 14 article here, it's expected to reach lunar orbit on August 5, then lower its apolune (highest point above the moon) in several engine burns.  This could enable a landing attempt by the Vikram lander on August 23 or 24. 

If touchdown is successful, the mission lander and rover will collect science data on the surface for up to 14 Earth days (a single day on the moon). The spacecraft are not expected to survive the deep cold of the lunar night.

 

 

Weekend Update

There has been a background story of Technical Difficulties running in life since the start of the month, or slightly before, that has turned into a major situation.  

Let me start at the setup.  For the last 11 years, I've been driving a 2009 Ford Explorer, bought in January of '12.  It was a high mileage car; it was bought by the original owner in November of 2009, so really just over two years old when we bought it; 26 months if you prefer, and 45.6 thousand miles - that comes out to over 1700 miles per month.  It's a high MSRP version of the Explorer, the Eddie Bauer model with leather seats, and all sorts of comfort options added.

When I was working, I never put that kind of mileage on it; more like 75 miles/week, and it was becoming a low mileage car.  Now, at 13 years old, it has just gone over 90,000 and I've not quite doubled the mileage it had in the first 26 months.  These days, it's unusual if I put more than 30 miles on it in a week.

In September of '21, one of the important modules failed, the Anti-lock Brake System module, which is considered important because it can affect the car's safety.  Because of being safety-related, it sets off an alarm that sounds for 30 seconds, when I turn the car on, and then sounds for another 30 seconds every five minutes while driving.  After taking it to the garage I tend to use and then the dealer, I found that nobody can get the modules because of the legendary "supply chain issues," and I've been driving it with that alarm screaming at me every five minutes for 3 months shy of two years. 

Now that we're setup, it's time for the story.  

Back around the end of June, the car's computer threw a new warning at me: "Check LR Light" (Left Rear).  Sure enough the bulb was out and I bought a replacement.  It didn't work either.  Looking closer, it looked to me like the socket was corroded.  I sprayed it with DeOxIT, then plugged and unplugged the bulb a few times.  Presto, it worked.  For about five minutes.  To my way of thinking that means it's valid to ask if it's that top part of the socket, or the bottom side; the connection of the car's wiring to the socket.  I decided to bring it back to the small garage I mentioned above.  I brought it in on July 5th.  Since it was approaching three years (and under 3000 miles) since my last oil change, I had them do that and a tire rotation. 

To my surprise, later that day they called and said they could get the ABS module I've been living without for nearly two years.  It had gone up 20% from the price I thought I remembered from two years ago, from $1500 to $1800, but with two years of bidenflation, it makes sense.

I picked it up on Friday the 7th, and it was a different car.  We drove up to our local grocery store and both of us kind of reflexively cringed a little as we were getting to the light close to the store because that's where the ABS alarm always screamed.  

On Sunday the 9th on the way to church, the Check Engine Light came on.  Back to the shop on 7/10.  There was something I wanted adjusted at the shop and I pointed out the CEL being on.  They dismissed as being from the new module, and read the codes back with their computer.  It said the fuel system wasn't sealed properly, another of those EPA-related faults.  They said to "keep an eye on it" without saying just how I could know if it got worse.  Since the ABS module failure kept the CEL always on, those few days were the only times in two years it wasn't on. 

We only drove two places in the week, to the grocery store and to a pet supply store in the opposite direction.  The car acted completely normal with that CEL being the only oddity.  This was on Friday, 7/14.

Last Sunday, 7/16, we got into the car to go to church and it wouldn't start.  Sounded completely dead, too.  No clicking, no solenoid sounds, nothing.  I tried my jump starter and it wouldn't do anything, either.

Now it's Monday, 7/17.  I tried a charger designed for starting batteries; and then my jump starter again.  Still no joy.  I finally called a tow truck to bring it back up to the shop.  It took until 2:30 PM; I had called for the truck at about 9:30. 

I expected a call by the end of the day Monday, and called to ask about it Tuesday around 1PM.  The shop supervisor said they had reached the limits of what their test equipment could tell them, and tow it to the dealer.  He said he thought it was the PCM or Powertrain Control Module, which they can't supply or program.  The towing delay wasn't as bad as Monday, but they didn't pick up the car until about 3:45 and it was at the dealership a little after 4.

It's being worked on by a technician the service manager says is among their most senior and best.  They haven't determined what's wrong, after working on it since Wednesday. 

In my spare time, I've been contemplating if I really want to sink a lot of money into a 13 year old car, but it might not be my call.  If it's unfixable, that forces the decision.  If it's many thousands to fix it, it's worth having considered options. The most reliable cars I've ever owned were my 1990 Jeep Cherokee, which had over 150,000 miles when I switched to a Toyota Matrix, the other most reliable car.  A Matrix was a Corolla with a different body on it, and you know how they are.

From the Podcast Macabre.