Archive for November, 2022
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November 6th, 2022
Possible design of China’s space plane?
Source: Homem do Espaco/Twitter
China’s puzzling space plane, catalogued as 53357/2022-093A, has been circuiting the Earth after being lofted into orbit on August 4th.
Space tracker Robert Christy of the informative website, Orbital Focus at https://www.orbitalfocus.uk, notes that China’s in-orbit craft recently acquired a companion.
On October 23 at about 07:30 UTC, the space plane raised its orbit from 351 x 591 kilometers to 597 x 608 kilometers. A new object separated from the main vehicle between October 24 and October 30, Christy reported. The two objects are very close to each other, perhaps station keeping, he said.
Tengfei-1 reusable aerospace vehicle.
Credit: Credit: China Central Television (CCTV)/Inside Outer Space screengrab
On October 31, U.S. military space trackers released orbital data about the new space plane-released object in a near-identical orbit, showing them less than 656 feet (200 meters) apart.
Separation distance
“They could have separated from each other any time in the week since the orbit change, but the new satellite would not have been detected until it moved far enough away to be resolved as a separate item by U.S. tracking sensors,” Christy tells Inside Outer Space.
November 2, the separation between the two began to increase steadily at about two kilometers per day. Around midnight UTC November 5/6 they were 6.5 kilometers apart.
Runway ready for space plane arrival on the edge of China’s former nuclear weapons test range at Lop Nur?
Credit: Planet
Continued monitoring
“For them to stay so close,” Christy adds, “they must either both be experiencing the same degree of drag from the Earth’s atmosphere, or one of them is using thrusters to control the separation distance. Alternatively, they may be connected by a long tether that is being reeled out slowly,” he explains.
Christy speculates that that the new object is carrying a still/video imaging system to return images of the space plane, or it is a space technology experiment of some kind? “Continued monitoring of the pair may provide more answers,” he said.
Credit: Paul Maley
Caught on video
“Whatever the object is, its nearness to the space plane is acceptable to mission controllers. An un-wanted piece of equipment would likely have been pushed away at higher velocity or the space plane would have changed orbit slightly to avoid the danger of an inadvertent collision,” said Christy.
As for an end-of-mission, return to Earth of the Chinese space plane, Christy said that in the low orbit, repeat ground tracks for landing opportunities on the Lop Nur runway were coming round every 12 days. In the high orbit, the repeat time is three days, he concluded.
Meanwhile, Arizona-based sky sleuth, Paul Maley, captured a video of the craft slipping by overhead.
Go to Maley’s video at:
Posted in 
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s freshly-docked and transitioned Mengtian lab module has kick-started the country’s Tiangong space station into a final stage of completion.
However, China’s space station could further expand and upgrade from inside to outside, said Tang Yi, head designer of the China Space Station System of China Academy of Space Technology.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Mengtian, Tiangong’s second lab that docked with China’s Tiangong space station complex is the last “building block.” Tiangong now forms a T-shape structure, the planned layout of the space station.
Station complete is set for year’s end.
Credit: CNAS/CCTV Video News Agency/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Extend and upgrade
“For astronauts, the three-module space station means ample room to roam for three, even six astronauts on board without feeling cramped,” Tang told China Central Television (CCTV). “We’ve also anticipated the space station’s future on the outset: we’ve designed so it can extend and upgrade, including what’s inside the modules. The space station’s equipment can change and upgrade,” Tang said.
With the upcoming launch and arrival of the Shenzhou-15 three-person crew, the Tiangong will increase to six for a short period.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Ins and outs of airlock cabin
To facilitate the ins and outs of larger cargo and payloads, the airlock cabin of Mengtian is equipped with two square hatches, an internal one and an external one. In addition, the external hatch is electrically driven. This auto door reduces the astronaut’s labor and increases efficiency when transporting cargo out of the cabin, said Bai Hemin, a designer for the space station system at the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
With a larger door, Mengtian is capable of releasing miniaturized satellites into space. Astronauts can install small satellites on a payload transfer device, depressurize the airlock cabin, and then take them out of the cabin, said Meng Yao, a designer of Mengtian.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Pre-launch testing
When the space station is completed, it’s expected to run for at least a decade, or possibly even longer, according to CCTV.
Pre-launch, the Mengtian lab module completed ground tests in the Tianjin base of the China Academy of Space Technology, a subordinate of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The testing base includes the world’s largest thrust electromagnetic vibration testing system. The Mengtian lab module had previously completed vibration tests in two directions with the help of two electromagnetic shaking tables, “primarily used to simulate the vibration environment generated during the rocket launch and to assess the integrity of module structure and equipment function,” said Qiu Hanping, deputy chief engineer of mechanical test in the General Assembly and Environmental Engineering Department under CAST.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Thermal testing
“The temperature of the spacecraft in orbit is always changing as the orbit varies,” reports Liu Zhiqiang, deputy chief engineer of vacuum thermal test system of the General Assembly and Environmental Engineering Department.
Credit: GLOBALink/Xinhua Global Service
“The KM8 Large Space Environment Simulator needs to simulate environmental tests in which the ambient temperature varies from negative 180 degrees Celsius to positive 100 degrees Celsius for checking whether each system works normally or not and ensuring the normal operation of the spacecraft in orbit and the safety of astronauts,” said Liu.
Go to these newly-issued videos at:
The threat of Near Earth Objects (NEOs).
Credit: NASA
The International Asteroid Warning Network is organizing a second “timing campaign,” one that makes use of space rock 2005 LW3.
That object of their affection is an easily observable object from most of our planet as a bright fast-moving source on the nights of November 23-24, 2022.
2005 LW3, the target of the campaign, will reach magnitude 13 during its upcoming fly-by.
Accuracy of observations
The goal of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) campaign is to provide an incentive to near Earth Object (NEO) observers to check the accuracy of the timing of the astrometric observations they report to the Minor Planet Center. That international organization is responsible for collecting observations of asteroids, comets, and other small bodies in the Solar System.
“The fast angular motion on the plane of the sky, together with the excellent knowledge we already have of this object’s trajectory, will allow the campaign team to carefully assess the accuracy of the timetags reported by each station,” explains the European Space Agency’s NEO Coordination Center – the operational center of ESA’s Planetary Defense Office.
“These checks are extremely important to detect possible subtle time biases that are often present even at telescopes that synchronize their system time with extreme accuracy,” the ESA NEO center adds.
The IAWN was established with the goal of assessing, strengthening, and coordinating the international response to a possible near-Earth object (NEO) impact threat.
Locations of the 70 ground-based observation sites that participated in the 2019 XS campaign.
Credit: Davide Farnocchia, et al.
Previous campaign
IAWN campaign coordinator Vishnu Reddy at Arizona State University in Tucson is the point of contact for this campaign.
“We have two flavors of the campaign,” said Reddy. “The first is a full-blown planetary defense exercise where we test every component of the system. The most recent Apophis campaign is a good example of that. We have also started doing shorter more focused timing campaign to improve the timing accuracy of observatories collecting asteroid observations,” he told Inside Outer Space.
Reddy said that a previous campaign was performed in November 2021 using 2019 XS, a small Apollo near-Earth asteroid. What was found was a systematic -0.5 second bias across the board, he said.
Chelyabinsk sky rendering is a reconstruction of the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia on Feb. 15, 2013. Scientific study of the airburst has provided information about the origin, trajectory and power of the explosion. This simulation of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion by Mark Boslough was rendered by Brad Carvey using the CTH code on Sandia National Laboratories’ Red Sky supercomputer. Andrea Carvey composited the wireframe tail. Photo by Olga Kruglova.
Credit: Sandia National Laboratories.
Good test
“So, the upcoming 2005 LW3 campaign is a follow-on to that to see how we are doing with keeping our clocks accurate. We gave suggestions to improve the clock timing and the campaign this month is a good test of that,” Reddy said.
Observers that are interested or routinely involved in NEO observations can join the exercise, reporting their intention to participate on a webpage dedicated to the campaign at:
https://iawn.net/obscamp/2005LW3/
Also, for detailed information about the earlier 2019 XS campaign, go to “International Asteroid Warning Network Timing Campaign: 2019 XS” in the Planetary Science Journal at:
These float rocks appear to have originated in the Marker Band, which can be seen running from lower left to upper right in the accompanying Navcam image. Marker Band is in the upper left of this image. Photo taken by Curiosity’s Left Navigation Camera on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3643 duties.
“We are perched just below the ‘Marker Band,’ a thin dark band whose origin is unclear,” reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars researchers have found some amazing textured float rocks in the rover’s workspace but were not in a good position to do contact science here, so Curiosity moved back a little in order to obtain science data, O’Connell-Cooper adds.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left photo taken on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Float rocks
“These float rocks appear to have originated in the Marker Band…there are several different textures here – the most noticeable are the ropey elongated ridge features, or “sausages” as one of our colleagues Juergen described them,” O’Connell-Cooper explains. “Underlying the sausages features is smoother bedrock. There are also rougher areas on top of the sausages, which look like they might have been altered (by later fluid movement for example). Finally we have the underlying non-Marker Band bedrock, the smooth rock the floats themselves are sitting on.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
O’Connell-Cooper notes it was hard to narrow down research choices with so many interesting targets; “we wanted to do a little bit of everything.”
Brushed targets
The rover planners were game to get as much in as possible, so the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) were to get a rare triple whammy of targets: unbrushed on the sausages at “Iracema,” brushed underlying smooth float rock at “Mel” and then brushed in-place non-Marker Band bedrock at “Mamupi.”
Curiosity Mast Camera Right photo taken on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Curiosity’s Mastcam was to obtain multispectral imagery on both brushed targets and the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) was slated to use Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to also analyze the bedrock at Mel.
Curiosity Front Hazard Avoidance Camera Left B image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ropey textures
ChemCam is then slated to turn its focus onto the in-place Marker Band above the robot, using the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) to picture the ropey textures at “Pintada” and LIBS to analyze “Soco,” a bright rock where the Marker Band is in contact with the local bedrock.
RMI will also capture images of layering within that in-place Marker Band at “Buena Vista.”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3642, November 4, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Document stratigraphy
The robot’s Mastcam continues to document stratigraphy in this area, taking a very large mosaic (83 images) along the Marker Band itself and a slightly smaller (46 images) mosaic on “Canta,” a butte in the distance but above the Marker Band, O’Connell-Cooper reports.
“Once all of this has been completed, we drive a short distance, scooching closer to the in-place Marker Band,” O’Connell-Cooper adds, as part of the now-in-motion weekend plan.
Credit: Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU)
I was delighted to take part in This Week In Space podcast: Episode 36 —NASA is finally tackling UFOS.
This topic and others were addressed by space journalists Rod Pyle, Tariq Malik and myself, offering a number of opinions about UFOs and today’s sky-high extraterrestrial expression: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP).
NASA study
One subject area tackled: how and why is NASA looking into UFO phenomenon with a new $100,000 study that will run into mid-2023?
GIMBAL/“Tic Tac”
Credit: DOD/U.S. Navy/Inside Outer Space screengrab
With a panel of experts, including scientists, astronauts (and yes, at least one space reporter), NASA has been charged with using its considerable expertise in the quest to understand what exactly UFOs (now called UAPs) might be all about.
Wait a Minute!
Deep dive
Are they extraterrestrial visitors?
Time travelers?
Earthly foreign agents?
Swamp gas (no, we don’t buy that one either)?
Give a listen to the podcast and join us as we deep dive into the possibility of extraterrestrial emissaries.
Go to: https://www.space.com/this-week-in-space-podcast-twit
Photo illustration by Thomas Gaulkin for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ January 2022 issue (used with permission)
A new partnership is underway, one that calls for amateur astronomers and satellite watchers to create the largest optical space sensor network to accurately track thousands of human-made objects in Earth orbit.
Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak kick-started Privateer Space, the group now publicizing its partnership with Celestron, a leading telescope maker.
The collaborative venture allows Celestron telescope owners to participate in improving the collective understanding of where objects are located at any given time – in low Earth orbit and beyond.
Credit: Privateer Space
According to a Privateer Space statement, “by crowdsourcing the transparency and predictability of space, Privateer will be able to provide more accurate locations of objects in space and share those critical data through the Wayfinder platform, while Celestron users will be able to participate firsthand in keeping space safe and accessible for all humankind.”
Credit: Privateer Space
Space environmentalism
Moriba Jah, co-founder and chief scientist of Privateer, said that by combining Celestron telescopes with the recently launched Wayfinder 2.0, “anyone can easily become an active steward of the space environment.”
While many radars and telescopes can detect objects in space, Privateer adds that they are often not capable to track those objects long enough to precisely determine their orbits. That leaves much to guess.
Left to right: Moriba Jah, Chief Scientist; Steve Wozniak, President; Alex Fielding, CEO, Chairman.
Credit: Privateer Space
Celestron CEO, Corey Lee, said in a statement that the partnership with Privateer, will make “space environmentalism accessible to everyone” by participating in the largest optical space sensor network.
More details forthcoming as Privateer and Celestron develop and roll out this capability.
For more information, go to:
Credit: CNSA/CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) Operations Centers are monitoring the uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere of China’s large space object CZ-5B (2022-143B). That’s the core stage of the rocket that launched on October 31st Mengtian – the third module of the Chinese large modular space station.
The EU SST network of sensors is observing the object closely, and its radars have narrowed down its re-entry window to November 4th.
Initial measurements from EU SST contributing sensors confirmed that the core stage is tumbling.
China’s Long March 5 Core Stage – Predicted Reentry Time now November 4, 2022 at 11:20 UTC ± 3 hours – from The Aerospace Corporation.
Yellow Icon – location of object at midpoint of reentry window
Blue Line – ground track uncertainty prior to middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Yellow Line – ground track uncertainty after middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Pink Icon (if applicable) – vicinity of eyewitness sighting or recovered debris
Note: Possible reentry locations lie anywhere along the blue and yellow ground track. Areas not under the line are not exposed to the debris.
Level of risk
“The uncertainty of where the large debris will ultimately land presents a level of risk to human safety and property damage that is well above commonly accepted thresholds,” explains The Aerospace Corporation and its Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS).
CORDS — as is the U.S. military and a global network of satellite watchers — are actively tracking the CZ-5B rocket body.
And for good reason.
The core booster weighs an estimated 22.5-metric tons. That’s about the size of a 10-story building.
Notes The Aerospace Corporation, similar uncontrolled reentries of Long March rockets occurred in 2020, 2021 and most recently in July 2022 – of which, two resulted in large debris landing near populated areas.
Precautionary preparation
“Over 88 percent of the world’s population lives under the reentry’s potential debris footprint. Factors such as the rocket core’s uncontrolled manner of descent and its size, which is too large to entirely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, collectively present risks high enough that require additional precautionary preparation around the world,” adds The Aerospace Corporation.
Credit: European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST)
Air Force X-37B space plane.
Credit: Boeing
The X-37B military space drone has whisked by 900 days in Earth orbit – or two years, five months, seventeen days.
No word on how long this current 6th mission — The U.S. Space Force X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6) – will remain in orbit. It was launched on May 17, 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
This mission underway is the first X-37B vehicle to use a service module to host experiments. The service module is an attachment to the aft of the vehicle that allows additional experimental payload capability to be carried to orbit.
The mission did deploy the FalconSat-8, a small satellite developed by the U.S. Air Force Academy and sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory to conduct several experiments on orbit.
Encapsulated X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle for U.S. Space Force-7 mission, now in Earth orbit.
Credit: Boeing
In addition, two NASA experiments are onboard the space plane to study the results of radiation and other space effects on a materials sample plate and seeds used to grow food.
Technology testing
A U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) experiment is also onboard the space plane, evaluating technology to transform solar power into radio frequency microwave energy. That experiment continues to crank out data, said Paul Jaffe, electronics engineer and researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has pioneered “sandwich” modules that are far more efficient for space solar power.
Credit: NRL/Jamie Hartman
“It’s still chugging along,” Jaffe told Inside Outer Space. “The longer we’re up there, the more we learn.”
The NRL experiment itself is called the Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module, PRAM for short.
Technologies being tested in the X-37B program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, reentry and landing.
X-37B hangar at Kennedy Space Center.
Credit: Michael Martin/SAF
Flight roster
Here’s a listing of previous flights of the Boeing-built space plane:
OTV-1: launched on April 22, 2010 and landed on December 3, 2010, spending over 224 days on orbit.
OTV-2: launched on March 5, 2011 and landed on June 16, 2012, spending over 468 days on orbit.
OTV-3: launched on December 11, 2012 and landed on October 17, 2014, spending over 674 days on-orbit.
OTV-4: launched on May 20, 2015 and landed on May 7, 2015, spending nearly 718 days on-orbit.
OTV-5: launched on September 7, 2017 and landed on October 27, 2019, spending nearly 780 days on-orbit.
As to when and where OTV-6 will return to a wheels-stopped landing is anybody’s guess.
OTV-1, OTV-2, and OTV-3 missions landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, while the OTV-4 and OTV-5 missions landed at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
China space plane
Meanwhile, China’s space plane, catalogued as 53357/2022-093A, has also been circuiting the Earth. It was lofted on August 4th. Space tracker Robert Christy of Orbital Focus notes China’s craft recently acquired a companion.
That new object separated from the main vehicle between October 24 and October 30, Christy reported. The two objects are very close to each other, perhaps station keeping, he said.
Curiosity’s location at Sol 3640. Distance driven to that sol: 17.95 miles/28.89 kilometers.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now wrapping up Sol 3641 duties.
The rover has arrived at a spectacular workspace, “but what made it spectacular – rocks – is what also made it tricky,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Stabilize the rover
“Our left front wheel was propped up just enough on one of the lovely and interesting rocks to make it unsafe to unstow the arm,” Minitti adds. “Fortunately, the rover planners were confident in finding a way to reposition the rover to stabilize us enough to get the arm out, so that [a] small maneuever was added to today’s plan [Sol 3639]. Our fingers are crossed we have better luck tomorrow!”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
While the robot could not apply the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) or the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) to the rocks ahead of the rover, Minitti said “we had no restrictions, short of overworking uplink teams, on using Mastcam and ChemCam [Chemistry and Camera]. “We took full advantage of our additional time to image our amazing surroundings.”
Curiosity Right B Navigation Camera image acquired on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Resistant ridges
A ChemCam raster was planned along one of the notable resistant ridges that span the workspace blocks, on target “Saracura.”
The ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) was used to image a stack of the layers at the edge of the marker band, at target “Curecurema.”
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Layer-parallel imaging like this is a terrific way to interrogate the mechanisms that formed those layers. There were so many interesting textures on the workspace rocks that we could not help but wonder if chemistry had anything to do with them,” Minitti points out.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Multispectral observations
To investigate this, mission operators planned Mastcam multispectral observations of two targets, “Patua” and “Tucano.” Mastcam was to also cover the scene with multiple large stereo mosaics.
Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“One will capture the marker band extending away from us to the south, another will cover the workspace blocks, and a third will image blocks similar to those in the workspace,” Minitti continues, “but out of reach, at target ‘Benevenuto.’”
Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 3640, November 2, 2022.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity managed time for a Navcam dust devil survey, and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) passive and active measurements before and after the rover was repositioned, respectively. Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) and use of the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) run throughout the plan.
“Over the last few years, companies have launched large constellations of satellites to provide services such as phone and Internet access. This trend is expected to accelerate, with tens of thousands of additional satellites expected to be launched by the end of the decade,” writes the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). “Stakeholders have raised questions about federal consideration of potential environmental and other effects as the number of satellites orbiting the Earth increases.”
As noted by the GAO, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of major federal actions prior to making decisions and to involve the public.
Federal agencies consider potential environmental and other effects from large constellations of satellites through licensing and other efforts. GAO reported that these effects could include sunlight reflections, orbital debris, and launch emissions.
What they found
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) consider these potential effects when licensing satellite transmissions and launch and reentry vehicles, respectively. Other federal agencies fund or lead research on these potential effects.
GAO found that “FCC has not sufficiently documented its decision to apply its categorical exclusion when licensing large constellations of satellites.”
To access the full report — “Satellite Licensing: FCC Should Reexamine Its Environmental Review Process for Large Constellations of Satellites” – go to:
