SPACE - random thread about space stuff

[raydude]

One thing I found interesting was that the customer blamed themselves, not the software developer (Draper).

The lander used software developed by Draper, but Ujiie [Ryo Ujiie, chief technology officer of ispace] said ispace accepted blame for the failure, linking it to requirements ispace levied on the software. Besides their relationship on software for the lander, ispace’s U.S. subsidiary is designing a lander for a Draper-led lander mission for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

I did a quick check on that because APL is involved in a few CLPS missions. Thankfully not that one

[jztemple2]

I was very lucky to be working in the Space Shuttle program back during the Wild West era of software development. I was a hardware engineer who got to write a good deal of the software as well as the requirements for my system. And I also wrote, and ran, the verification documentation of my own software and wrote the procedure that I ran, using the software, to operate the ground equipment and flight vehicle to perform LH2 cryo-loading and terminal count.

Within a few years it be verboten to allow the same person to do all those tasks

Meanwhile, what's up at Boca Chica with SpaceX?

[raydude]

I was very lucky to be working in the Space Shuttle program back during the Wild West era of software development. I was a hardware engineer who got to write a good deal of the software as well as the requirements for my system. And I also wrote, and ran, the verification documentation of my own software and wrote the procedure that I ran, using the software, to operate the ground equipment and flight vehicle to perform LH2 cryo-loading and terminal count.

Within a few years it be verboten to allow the same person to do all those tasks

I remember writing software to process data for my first major planetary mission. After launch they tried to implement a system where one would have to submit a request for software changes, get it approved, then reviewed. Which is fine for a development team. I was a team of one, so I submitted a request to myself, which I approved, then reviewed.

[Hrdina]

Where I work we do preliminary and critical design reviews for all aspects of the mission, and these are attended by scientists and engineers. If a flight software lead presented that use-case where the software would switch to internal calculations in the event of an N-km difference you can bet a scientist would have raised their hand and said "you know our landing area has 3km cliffs right? What happens if the altimeter sees that?"

Yes, we go through the whole PDR/CDR cycle as well.

However, from what I read the original requirements involved landing somewhere that had flat surface all around, and the area with the cliffs was a late change (probably after CDR). A big change like that should have gotten a lot of attention but they probably missed the opportunity for a big crowd like at CDR.

That said, my first thought when I read the SW team's report was "who in their right mind thinks there is anywhere on the moon without deep craters nearby?"

The last time I had to go through a serious PDR, I ended up presenting the entire technical section about our flight software. I got hit with a nasty bout of allergies about a day before the PDR, so I was up at the podium, going through the majority of a box of tissues, getting grilled by our customer, their government customer (USAF at the time), and the government customer's various contractors (Aerospace, Mitre, etc). The biggest names had the "honor" of sitting the front row, closest to me.

This was several years pre-Covid.

I was very lucky to be working in the Space Shuttle program back during the Wild West era of software development. I was a hardware engineer who got to write a good deal of the software as well as the requirements for my system. And I also wrote, and ran, the verification documentation of my own software and wrote the procedure that I ran, using the software, to operate the ground equipment and flight vehicle to perform LH2 cryo-loading and terminal count.

Within a few years it be verboten to allow the same person to do all those tasks

I'm glad you wrote that last line because I was starting to get very twitchy reading that paragraph!

[jztemple2]

Boeing sued for allegedly stealing intellectual property related to NASA's Artemis moon rocket

A federal lawsuit has been brought against Boeing accusing the aerospace giant of intellectual property (IP) theft, conspiracy and misuse of critical components involved in assembling NASA's Artemis moon rocket.

The complaint was filed in a Seattle, Washington federal court on Wednesday (June 7) and attests that Boeing's attempted replication of Colorado-based Wilson Aerospace's technology was the cause of leaks aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and the source of last year's hydrogen leaks during repeated attempts to fuel and launch NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for its Artemis 1 mission. The full complaint can be read online here.

In a press statement, Wilson Aerospace president and founder David Wilson, Jr., added that "Boeing has not only stolen our intellectual property and damaged our company's reputation but has used the technology incorrectly and at the expense of astronauts' safety, which is beyond despicable."

Family-owned Wilson Aerospace has been manufacturing tools and components for NASA missions for almost three decades, and has provided services for other major projects including the Hubble Space Telescope, the ISS, a handful of space shuttle missions, Boeing's Dreamliner aircraft and Russia's Mir space station  —  not to mention NASA's SLS rocket for the agency's Artemis program.

Wilson Aerospace says it was contracted by Boeing in 2014 to provide tools for installing the engines to SLS, the backbone of the agency's Artemis program of planned moon missions. A press release issued by Wilson Aerospace's lawyers states that Boeing obtained proprietary information from the company before terminating Wilson's contracts and then producing their own versions of Wilson's tools that were "critically deficient in quality and performance."

Worse, the suit claims, because Boeing covertly stole Wilson's intellectual property without receiving the full instructions on how to properly build, install, and use it, several of the aerospace and aviation products built by Boeing are pockmarked with critical safety flaws that allegedly put lives at risk. This includes the astronauts, pilots, crewmembers and passengers who come aboard vehicles built by Boeing without knowledge of the unsafe equipment and vehicles manufactured by or at the direction of the aerospace giant.

[Defiant]

A NASA spacecraft spotted an eerie green light coming from Jupiter.

The light is believed to be the glow from a bolt of lightning near the planet's north pole.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 336757007/

Looks like a light from a Borg ship to me.

[jztemple2]

More SpaceX stuff, Ship 25 begins engine testing as Starship launch pad work continues

Two months after Starship’s first integrated test flight, engine testing is already underway for Ship 25, the ship that will fly on the second launch of Starship. At the same time, SpaceX is approaching the final stretch of completing the foundation work needed at the orbital launch mount (OLM) from where Super Heavy and Starship are set to lift off again no earlier than August. Ship 25 conducted a Spin Prime test on Wednesday.



Work is also at a good pace to upgrade and update Starship’s production facilities at Starbase. This has come at the expense of once more changing the company’s plans for Starship in Florida.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/sta ... testing%2F

An overhead look at the OLM area:


As someone who worked and lives near the Cape, I found this especially interesting:

While vehicle production continues strong at Starbase and new facilities are built, the same cannot be said of the Starship facilities in Florida.

Work on the second set of tower sections, chopsticks, carriage system, and QD arm at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility has come to a halt. Contractor equipment has visibly disappeared and other construction equipment has been removed.

The Florida Mega Bay parts have also made their way to Starbase, becoming the second Mega Bay at the Texas facility. The two big cranes that were previously at Roberts Road were also moved to Starbase to aid in the construction of that new Mega Bay.

On top of this, SpaceX has changed the use of the building previously thought to be the factory for Starship sections. This facility is now being used to process Starlink payload integration with Falcon 9’s fairings. The facility was first used to integrate satellites for the Starlink Group 6-4 mission earlier this month.

Despite this, work is still underway on the Starship launch pad at Launch Complex 39A where cranes and aerial work platforms continue construction on the site. Even though this work has slowed down, its continuation means SpaceX likely has no plans to retire all Starship efforts from Florida.

Without a production facility in Florida, vehicles set to fly from the Space Coast would need to arrive from Starbase, increasing the production demand at the Texas facility. This means that the vast expansion of the production buildings at Starbase could have been at the expense of removing production from Florida for the time being until Starship’s design is reliable and proven.

[jztemple2]

Musk outlines major upgrades for Starship rocket

SpaceX will need another six weeks or so to finish implementing hundreds of changes to its Super Heavy-Starship rocket and the gargantuan booster’s Texas launch pad before it will be ready for a second attempt to reach orbit, company founder Elon Musk said Saturday.

That’s assuming Federal Aviation Administration clearance to fly in the wake of the Super Heavy’s dramatic maiden launch April 20 in which the rocket blew itself up after multiple engine failures and the Starship upper stage’s failure to separate from the first stage booster.

In a Twitter Spaces discussion with author Ashlee Vance, Musk said SpaceX is implementing “well over a thousand” changes,” and “I think the probability of this next flight working, getting to orbit, is much higher than the last one. Maybe it’s like 60 percent. It depends on how well we do at stage separation.”

For its second flight, Musk said the stage separation system has been modified, a “late breaking change that’s really quite significant.”

The Starship’s engines will begin firing before all of the Super Heavy engines have shut down. This so-called “hot staging” technique has been used for years in Russian rockets. Musk said it would improve the performance of the Super Heavy-Starship by reducing the velocity lost between first stage engine shutdown and ignition of the upper stage engines.

“We shut down most of the engines on the booster, leaving just a few running and then at the same time, start the engines on the ship, or upper stage,” he said. “Obviously that results in kind of blasting the booster, so you’ve got to protect the top of the boost stage from getting incinerated by the upper stage engines.”

The solution is to add shielding to the top of the Super Heavy stage, along with an extension featuring vents to direct the upper stage engine exhaust plumes away from the lower stage during their initial startup.

“There’s a meaningful payload-to-orbit advantage with hot staging, that is conservatively about a 10 percent improvement if you basically just never stop thrusting,” Musk said. “In order to do this, you actually have to have vents, the super hot plasma from the upper stage engines has got to go somewhere.

“So we’re adding an extension to booster that is almost all vents, essentially. So that allows the upper engine plume to go through the vented extension of the booster and not just blow itself up. So this is the most risky thing, I think, for the next flight.”

[jztemple2]

Virgin Galactic aces its 1st-ever commercial launch of suborbital space plane (video)

Virgin Galactic is up and running.

The company aced its first-ever commercial mission today (June 29), sending four passengers to suborbital space and back. It was a landmark moment for Virgin Galactic, which has big ambitions in the final frontier.

The flight lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:30 a.m. ET (1430 GMT) and reached suborbital space some 58 minutes later. After a few minutes floating at an apogee of 52.9 miles (85.1 kilometers), the space plane then returned to Spaceport America and landed at 11:42 a.m. ET (1542 GMT).

[Daehawk]

Seems its much easier to go where theres no pressure than a place with lots of it.

[Isgrimnur]

Euclid

SpaceX launched the European Space Agency's $1.5 billion Euclid space telescope Saturday, an ambitious, first-of-a-kind attempt to pin down the nature of dark matter — an unknown material pervading the cosmos — and dark energy, the mysterious repulsive force that is speeding up the expansion of the universe.
...
By studying subtle changes in the light from galaxies over the past 10 billion years, Euclid's cameras will help scientists find out if dark energy is consistent with an unchanging "cosmological constant" once predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity or whether the current understanding of gravity needs revision.
...
The 4,760-pound Euclid is equipped with a near-perfect 3-feet 11-inch-wide primary mirror and two instruments: a 600 megapixel visible light camera and a 64-megapixel infrared imaging spectrometer. The telescope's field of view is roughly twice the size of the full moon.

After a month-long checkout and calibration period, Euclid will begin mapping 15,000 square degrees of sky, which includes all the space outside the Milky Way galaxy, imaging galaxies and clusters of galaxies dating back 10 billion years.
...
"Euclid can, in one go, offer a field much larger than accessible by Hubble," said René Laureijs, ESA's Euclid project scientist. "During its entire lifetime, Hubble did not cover more than 100 square degrees, and this can be done by Euclid in 10 days. So in order to get our 15,000 square degrees, which is the size of our sky survey, we need these big images of the sky."

[The Meal]

That's super cool!

[jztemple2]

Road trip! Catch October's annular solar eclipse with 5 iconic routes through the US

To witness a solar eclipse often takes effort, and on October 14, 2023, anyone in the U.S. who wants to see a 'ring of fire' (rather than a partial solar eclipse) will need to be within a roughly 130 miles- (209 kilometers-) wide path stretching from Oregon to Texas.

So why not combine it with a road trip? Crossing some of the country's most iconic landscapes, National Parks and Dark Sky Parks, the path of the Oct. annular solar eclipse is something to behold for anyone who loves travel, adventure and exploring the night sky.

Covering most U.S. states within the path of annularity — Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — here are seven carefully crafted itineraries to take you on an extraordinary journey to see a 'ring of fire.' solar eclipse.

[jztemple2]

Good article about China's methalox rocket and it's upcoming second launch attempt, LandSpace tries to close the methane race in second ZhuQue-2 launch

As noted in the article, no methane powered rocket has yet achieved orbital flight, so this would be significant.

LandSpace plans to launch its methane-based ZhuQue-2 rocket on Wednesday. According to notice to airmen, the launch window will open at 00:53 AM UTC and stay open until 03:14 AM UTC. This will be the rocket’s second launch after its failed maiden flight in December 2022. Based on the first flight, the company will likely target liftoff around 01:00 AM UTC, just after the window’s opening.

The ZhuQue-2 rocket

ZhuQue-2 (Redbird 2 in English) is a rocket designed by the Chinese private company LandSpace. It stands 49.5 meters tall with a rocket body diameter of 3.35 meters. The medium-sized launch vehicle has a carrying capacity of up to six tons into a 200-kilometer low-Earth orbit and up to four tons into a 500-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).

One focus of the development of ZhuQue-2 was green and economically viable methane. According to the LandSpace website, the price of propellant was reduced by 50-90%, comparable to similar Chinese launchers. Furthermore, methane allows for a non-toxic, less-polluting, and more modern approach to fuel the rocket, compared to the hypergolics of the early Chang Zheng family.

[jztemple2]

Good article about China's methalox rocket and it's upcoming second launch attempt, LandSpace tries to close the methane race in second ZhuQue-2 launch

Follow-up: China just launched a methane-fueled rocket into orbit, a world's 1st for spaceflight (video)

A methane-fueled rocket just reached Earth orbit for the first time ever.

The Zhuque-2 rocket, developed by Chinese company Landspace, successfully soared to orbit after launching from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Tuesday (July 11) at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT or 9 a.m. local time on July 12).

U.S. Space Force tracking confirmed Chinese reports that the methane-fueled rocket made it to orbit, tweeted astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

[Isgrimnur]

[Isgrimnur]

India blasts Chandrayaan-3 lander toward moon's south pole

In 2019, ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 mission successfully deployed an orbiter but its lander and rover were destroyed in a crash near where the Chandrayan-3 will attempt a touchdown.
...
The lunar landing is expected on Aug. 23, ISRO has said.

[Zaxxon]

First (seemingly) full test of the new water deluge system for Starship.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/sta ... 02016?s=20

[Isgrimnur]

ASTRONOMERS FIND MYSTERIOUS, SLOWLY PULSING STAR

Astronomers have found an ultra-slow, long-lasting source of radio-wave pulses, and they are perplexed as to its true nature. While “regular” radio pulsars have very short periods, from seconds down to just a few milliseconds, this source emits a brief pulse of radio waves about three times per hour. What’s more, it has been doing this for decades.
...
Known as GPM J1839-10, the tardy blinker is located at a distance of some 18,500 light-years away in the constellation Scutum. Archival data from the Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Indian Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope reveal that it has been pulsating at least since 1988, with a period of just under 22 minutes (1,318.1957 seconds, to be precise).
...
Very strongly magnetized neutron stars known as magnetars have slower spin periods and can sometimes produce long-period radio pulses for a while following energetic outbursts. For instance, the same team found another slow pulsator in archival data last year. Known as GLEAM-XJ162759.5-523504.3, it has an 18.18-minute period. However, it faded within three years, while the new discovery, GPM J1839-10, has been pulsating for decades on end.

The new one also exhibits some strange behavior, says team member Nanda Rea (Institute of Space Sciences, Spain). “Such a slow magnetar should be bright in X-rays, which we have not detected,” she notes. “Both the object’s [long-term] activity and its long periodicity are unseen in any known astrophysical sources.”

I nominate the name throbar hepcatticus.

[jztemple2]

If by chance you are just happening to be somewhere in East Central Florida tomorrow (Wednesday) night, there's a launch double header for you. At 10:04pm there is a planned Falcon 9 launch, followed an hour later by a Falcon Heavy launch. Cool stuff.

[Zaxxon]

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/16850 ... kdxmg&s=19

[jztemple2]

I imagine the next step for SpaceX is to put the Super Heavy booster on the launch mount and do an engine test.

I do wonder what all those doors/hatches are on the lower left of the video.

Meanwhile, there was a successful launch of a Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center tonight. Nice rumble from the launch and later the boom-boom of the returning side boosters.

[Blackhawk]

I wonder if they'll change their name to SpaceTwitter.

[Kraken]

Their immediate problem is convincing the gubmint that they won't blow up part of Texas again. They're ready to fail-fast again but the regulators want them to fail more deliberately.

[Isgrimnur]

I wonder if they'll change their name to SpaceTwitter.

[Isgrimnur]

Voyager 2: Nasa loses contact with probe after sending wrong command

Last month, the spacecraft - exploring the universe since 1977 - tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth after the mistake was made.
...
The space agency said on Monday its huge dish in Australia's capital, Canberra, was trying to detect any stray signals from Voyager 2. It takes more than 18 hours for a signal to reach Earth from so far away.

The antenna will also bombard Voyager 2's area with the correct command, in the hope it makes contact with the probe, said Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager missions.

Otherwise, Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth. The next reset is due on 15 October, which Nasa says "should enable communication to resume".

[Isgrimnur]

Euclid

SpaceX launched the European Space Agency's $1.5 billion Euclid space telescope Saturday, an ambitious, first-of-a-kind attempt to pin down the nature of dark matter — an unknown material pervading the cosmos — and dark energy, the mysterious repulsive force that is speeding up the expansion of the universe.

Euclid “Dark Universe” Explorer: First Test Images Tease of Riches To Come

Euclid’s VISible instrument (VIS) will take super sharp images of billions of galaxies to measure their shapes. Looking closely at this first image, we already get a glimpse of the bounty that VIS will bring; whilst a few galaxies are very easy to spot, many more are fuzzy blobs hidden amongst the stars, waiting to be unveiled by Euclid in the future. Though the image is full of detail, the area of sky that it covers is actually only about a quarter of the width and height of the full Moon.
...
The image is even more special considering that the Euclid team was given a scare when they first switched the instrument on: they picked up an unexpected pattern of light contaminating the images. Follow-up investigations indicated that some sunlight was creeping into the spacecraft, probably through a tiny gap; by turning Euclid the team realized that this light is only detected at specific orientations, so by avoiding certain angles VIS will be able to fulfill its mission.

Euclid’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) instrument has a double role: imaging galaxies in infrared light and measuring the amount of light that galaxies emit at various wavelengths. This second role lets us directly work out how far away each galaxy is.

[jztemple2]

How long could you survive in space without a spacesuit?

Many of us have dreamed of going into space. Perhaps you've imagined what it would be like to visit the International Space Station or even explore new worlds. But traveling in space brings a whole set of challenges and hostile environments, so it's vital to recreate the conditions on Earth that have allowed life to evolve and flourish.

Spacesuits allow astronauts to venture outside their spacecraft for short periods, by providing the air, water, pressure and physical protection needed for a human to survive. But what would happen without one of these advanced suits?

Sci-fi movies and shows, including "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Expanse," have portrayed astronauts suffering — and surviving — short exposures to outer space without a spacesuit, while others have depicted a range of grizzly deaths.

But here in the real world, how long could a person survive if thrust into the harsh vacuum of outer space? The short answer is, not very long.

[Kraken]

When your so-called "science" contradicts The Expanse, I know what I'll believe.

[Isgrimnur]

NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2.

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.

[Daehawk]

18.5 hours at the speed of light to get to where Voyager is. Wow. Launched in this month in 1977. 46 years ago.

[Kraken]

We need faster radio waves.

[Punisher]

We need faster radio waves.

They obviously need to use subspace radios.

[jztemple2]

Visualizing the World’s Space Debris by Country Responsible

Earlier in July, a suspicious object washed up on a remote beach in Western Australia. This chunk of golden metal was reported to be a piece of space debris that found its way back to Earth.

And it is not the only one. Today, thousands of defunct satellites, spent rocket stages, metal shards from collisions, and other remnants of human space exploration are orbiting the Earth at breakneck speeds.

In this graphic, Preyash Shah uses tracking data from the Space-Track.org, maintained by the U.S. Space Force, to help visualize just how much debris is currently orbiting the Earth, while identifying the biggest contributors of this celestial clutter.

There is a lot more in the article than the below image:

[jztemple2]

And in related news, SpaceX's private control of satellite internet concerns military leaders: report

A number of military leaders around the world have expressed concerns to US officials over the dominance and control of SpaceX founder Elon Musk over satellite internet, according to a new report.

Over the past decade Musk's SpaceX has changed the launch industry with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The company has pressed this advantage to establish itself as the leading player in satellite internet through Starlink.

There are currently more than 4,500 Starlink satellites in orbit, accounting for more than half of all active satellites. The constellation may grow to as many as 42,000 satellites in orbit. The significance and potential of SpaceX's Starlink, a low Earth orbit satellite internet constellation, gained widespread attention in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the system playing a role to provide vital communications to Ukraine in the wake of damaged infrastructure and jammed geostationary satellite signals.

However, the leader of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, has raised the topic of Starlink with the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to a New York Times report. Little regulation and oversight exists over the operation of Starlink, generating concerns over how Musk will exercise his authority over the system, which includes the power to cut off access.

[jztemple2]

India's Chandrayaan-3 rover mission reaches moon, beams photos home to Earth (video)

India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander has returned its first images from the moon after entering orbit around our nearest neighbor.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released the images on Sunday (Aug. 6), showing that the spacecraft had reached its destination ahead of a lunar landing attempt expected on Aug. 23.

Chandrayaan-3 launched on July 14, heading into an initial highly elliptical Earth orbit. It then gradually raised its orbit before making a burn on July 31 that set it on course for the moon. The spacecraft successfully entered orbit around our natural satellite on Saturday (Aug. 5), according to ISRO.

[jztemple2]

Boeing delays 1st Starliner astronaut launch for NASA to March 2024 (at the earliest)

Boeing's new astronaut taxi for NASA won't carry people this year after all.

The company had been targeting July 21 for the first-ever crewed launch of its Starliner capsule on a mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), that will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a shakeout cruise to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

In early June, however, Boeing and NASA announced that CFT's liftoff had been delayed indefinitely due to newly discovered issues with Starliner's parachute system and its wiring. The company said those problems could potentially be resolved in time for a launch this fall, but that's not going to happen, Boeing and NASA officials said today (Aug. 7).

[jztemple2]

Amazon to launch first Kuiper satellites on ULA Atlas 5 rocket following Vulcan delays

The opening salvo in Amazon’s 3,236-satellite Project Kuiper venture is switching its ride to space. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Spaceflight Now on Monday that the first two demonstration satellites for the broadband constellation will launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket as soon as Sept. 26, 2023, instead of the inaugural Vulcan rocket.

The change follows news from ULA that its forthcoming Vulcan rocket won’t launch until late 2023 at the earliest.

During a beam-signing ceremony amid construction of a Kuiper processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Steven Metayer, the vice president of Kuiper Production Operations, stated that shifting the launch of the first two satellites was something that Amazon was considering.

“Our point of record right now is to have those satellites flying on the Vulcan and obviously, we’ll work with ULA, who are great partners of ours, to see if there’s other options too, but right now, the point of record is Vulcan,” Metayer said on July 21.

Amazon had booked nine Atlas 5 launches prior to purchasing 38 Vulcan flights for the deployment of its Kuiper satellite constellation. In a statement to Spaceflight now, a spokesperson said the fall Atlas launch is part of that original purchase.

According to a filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the prototype satellites will be launched on an Atlas in the 501 configuration, meaning it won’t be using any solid rocket boosters and will feature a 5-metre diameter payload fairing. The document states that the pair of prototype Kuiper satellites will be sent into a circular orbit at 500 km at a 30-degree inclination.

Amazon had previously said the prototype satellites would help test the Kuiper network and subsystems. Launches of operational satellites and the start of some initial trial services are due to begin in 2024.

[Kraken]

Trillions of rogue planets in the Milky Way outnumber those orbiting stars.

Astronomers had once calculated that billions of planets had gone rogue in the Milky Way. Now, scientists at NASA and Osaka University in Japan are upping the estimate to trillions. Detailed in two papers accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, the researchers have deduced that these planets are six times more abundant than worlds orbiting their own suns, and they identified the second Earth-size free floater ever detected.
...
There’s still some ambiguity about whether these planets are truly unleashed, or just cast out to wide enough orbits that scientists can’t link them to a host star. Dr. Mróz thinks the observed population probably includes a mix of both, but it’ll be difficult to deduce the relative numbers of each with microlensing measurements alone.
...
Could any of these planets be habitable? Possibly, Dr. Bennett surmised, explaining that they’d be dark without a host star, but not necessarily frigid. Hydrogen in a planet’s atmosphere could act like a greenhouse and trap heat emanating from its interior — which is what sustains microbial life in deep sea vents on Earth.

("Habitable" does not necessarily mean by humans.)

[jztemple2]

Originator of the 321 area code Ozzie Osband dies

The originator of the 321-area code for four Florida counties Robert “Ozzie” Osband died on Sunday at 72, confirmed the American Space Museum where he volunteered for more than two decades.

Osband was best known for being the originator of the 321-area code that is used for Orange, Brevard, Seminole and Osceola counties.

During the 20th anniversary of the now-famous area code in 2019, Osband shared with Spectrum News 13’s Greg Pallone how he came up with the idea.

The 407-area code could not quite hold the demand for new numbers and Osband noticed there was one area code that wasn’t being used.

"’3-2-1, haven't I heard that number before? Of course! Countdowns!’ And I live in the countdown capital. Now I know what area code I want," Osband said at the time.

He filed a petition for testimony before the Florida Public Service Commission and not only did the commissioners love the idea, but so did the audience at the meeting, he had said.

And on Nov. 1, 1999, the 321-area code came to life. In fact, then-Governor of Florida Jeb Bush made the very first call to the Kennedy Space Center as James Jennings answered with Osband sitting next to him. Jennings would later become NASA’s deputy director of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center six months later.