Rapier108 said:

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bmks270 said:

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Rapier108 said:

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A NASA spacecraft on Mars is losing power as dust from the red planet collects on its solar panels. Officials expect the InSight lander to cease its science work in July, almost four years after it arrived at Mars. https://t.co/Lu0OABlPtL

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 18, 2022

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They couldn't engineer a solar panel wiper?

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I think it actually has one. Not sure if it failed, or the dust is just too much for it.

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With an atmosphere 1/100th of the earth's, what's blowing the dust?

Ag with kids said:

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Rapier108 said:

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bmks270 said:

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Rapier108 said:

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A NASA spacecraft on Mars is losing power as dust from the red planet collects on its solar panels. Officials expect the InSight lander to cease its science work in July, almost four years after it arrived at Mars. https://t.co/Lu0OABlPtL

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 18, 2022

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They couldn't engineer a solar panel wiper?

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I think it actually has one. Not sure if it failed, or the dust is just too much for it.

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With an atmosphere 1/100th of the earth's, what's blowing the dust?

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Wind, although I guess that begs the question.
I'm not sure if ASU answers your question or not.
https://marsed.asu.edu/mep/dust#:~:text=Mars%20dust%20forms%20by%20the,around%20sand%20and%20loose%20particles.

Quote:

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Mars could well be called "the Pigpen Planet" because it's the dustiest place in the solar system. For at least a billion years, Mars has lacked oceans or other large bodies of water to trap windblown material and sediments.

As a result, the entire surface of Mars is dusty, with few places swept completely bare for long. The dust in fact gives Mars its warm color, making it the Red Planet.

Mars dust forms by the weathering of rocks over long periods of time. This happens as winds, including dust devils, blow around sand and loose particles. Due to Mars' lower gravity (about 38 percent of Earth's) and less-dense atmosphere (less than 1 percent of Earth's), particles can hop higher than on Earth and fly farther on each hop. The impact of these windblown particles chips off tiny pieces of rock, which the wind picks up and throws against other rocks in a process that never quits.

Each collision helps grind particles down into smaller pieces until they are five to ten times finer than baby powder. The particles average 3 micrometers (one ten-thousandth inch) in diameter, with some as big as 20 micrometers (eight ten-thousandths of an inch).
. . .
But dust on Mars doesn't always remain on the ground. When winds blow faster than about 20 meters/second (45 miles/hour), they can pick up dust from the surface and carry it to great heights in the atmosphere. When this happens, the stage is set for a dust storm.

Martian dust storms occur at local, regional, and global scales. A "local" storm on Mars would be as big as Arizona, and a "regional" storm could cover the United States. Some storms begin as local but spread in a few weeks to engulf the globe. Others never grow beyond local or regional size. Scientists don't know why some storms grow big, while others don't.

Scientists also don't know for sure what kicks off a storm in the first place, although they have some theories. One idea is that the differences in ground temperature can create these dust storms.

For example, suppose that a big storm occurs in one year. As the storm dies down, lots of dust falls out of the atmosphere onto the surface. This brightens the ground so it reflects more sunlight (higher albedo) and doesn't become as hot. Thus it doesn't generate as much wind.

Eventually, however, local winds blow dust away, which leaves some areas with dark surfaces. Sunlight heats these places as the radiation absorbs the heat causing convection currents to grow at the surface, winds pick up, and then a big storm can arise.

On Mars, the warmest place is the southern hemisphere in the summer. This is because Mars travels in a very elliptical orbit and it comes closest to the Sun at the time of southern summer. When Mars is closest to the Sun, radiation is 45% stronger than when Mars is farthest from the Sun. (For Earth, however, this difference is only 7% due to Earth's more circular orbit and the extremely large hydrosphere (water) that stabilizes global temperatures. Instead, the tilt of Earth's axis controls terrestrial seasons.) This means that on Mars the heating is greatest and winds blow strongest in southern summer, and that's often when the big global dust storms occur.

For all its dust, scientists still wonder why Mars isn't more dusty than it is.
. . .

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Ag with kids said:

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With an atmosphere 1/100th of the earth's, what's blowing the dust?

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Winds during a dust storm can be up to 60 mph. Judging from this gif, there's enough wind to kick up some dust

Three times finer than baby powder really puts it into perspective. It's not just like, dusty. It will be the absolute dustiest place ever experienced to man. It'll be worse than stripper glitter. And it covers the entire planet.

We need to terraform that crap hole immediately.

Faustus said:

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Ag with kids said:

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Rapier108 said:

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bmks270 said:

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Rapier108 said:

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A NASA spacecraft on Mars is losing power as dust from the red planet collects on its solar panels. Officials expect the InSight lander to cease its science work in July, almost four years after it arrived at Mars. https://t.co/Lu0OABlPtL

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 18, 2022

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They couldn't engineer a solar panel wiper?

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I think it actually has one. Not sure if it failed, or the dust is just too much for it.

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With an atmosphere 1/100th of the earth's, what's blowing the dust?

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Wind, although I guess that begs the question.
I'm not sure if ASU answers your question or not.
https://marsed.asu.edu/mep/dust#:~:text=Mars%20dust%20forms%20by%20the,around%20sand%20and%20loose%20particles.

Quote:

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Mars could well be called "the Pigpen Planet" because it's the dustiest place in the solar system. For at least a billion years, Mars has lacked oceans or other large bodies of water to trap windblown material and sediments.

As a result, the entire surface of Mars is dusty, with few places swept completely bare for long. The dust in fact gives Mars its warm color, making it the Red Planet.

Mars dust forms by the weathering of rocks over long periods of time. This happens as winds, including dust devils, blow around sand and loose particles. Due to Mars' lower gravity (about 38 percent of Earth's) and less-dense atmosphere (less than 1 percent of Earth's), particles can hop higher than on Earth and fly farther on each hop. The impact of these windblown particles chips off tiny pieces of rock, which the wind picks up and throws against other rocks in a process that never quits.

Each collision helps grind particles down into smaller pieces until they are five to ten times finer than baby powder. The particles average 3 micrometers (one ten-thousandth inch) in diameter, with some as big as 20 micrometers (eight ten-thousandths of an inch).
. . .
But dust on Mars doesn't always remain on the ground. When winds blow faster than about 20 meters/second (45 miles/hour), they can pick up dust from the surface and carry it to great heights in the atmosphere. When this happens, the stage is set for a dust storm.

Martian dust storms occur at local, regional, and global scales. A "local" storm on Mars would be as big as Arizona, and a "regional" storm could cover the United States. Some storms begin as local but spread in a few weeks to engulf the globe. Others never grow beyond local or regional size. Scientists don't know why some storms grow big, while others don't.

Scientists also don't know for sure what kicks off a storm in the first place, although they have some theories. One idea is that the differences in ground temperature can create these dust storms.

For example, suppose that a big storm occurs in one year. As the storm dies down, lots of dust falls out of the atmosphere onto the surface. This brightens the ground so it reflects more sunlight (higher albedo) and doesn't become as hot. Thus it doesn't generate as much wind.

Eventually, however, local winds blow dust away, which leaves some areas with dark surfaces. Sunlight heats these places as the radiation absorbs the heat causing convection currents to grow at the surface, winds pick up, and then a big storm can arise.

On Mars, the warmest place is the southern hemisphere in the summer. This is because Mars travels in a very elliptical orbit and it comes closest to the Sun at the time of southern summer. When Mars is closest to the Sun, radiation is 45% stronger than when Mars is farthest from the Sun. (For Earth, however, this difference is only 7% due to Earth's more circular orbit and the extremely large hydrosphere (water) that stabilizes global temperatures. Instead, the tilt of Earth's axis controls terrestrial seasons.) This means that on Mars the heating is greatest and winds blow strongest in southern summer, and that's often when the big global dust storms occur.

For all its dust, scientists still wonder why Mars isn't more dusty than it is.
. . .

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Science!

TexAgs91 said:

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Ag with kids said:

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With an atmosphere 1/100th of the earth's, what's blowing the dust?

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Winds during a dust storm can be up to 60 mph. Judging from this gif, there's enough wind to kick up some dust

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I get that. But with such a thin atmosphere, it should apply much less force than earth's atmosphere.

I guess it's enough to affect things though...

Decay said:

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Three times finer than baby powder really puts it into perspective. It's not just like, dusty. It will be the absolute dustiest place ever experienced to man. It'll be worse than stripper glitter. And it covers the entire planet.

We need to terraform that crap hole immediately.

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The atmosphere is 93.5% CO2 according to that article. Plants would like that...

That'd be death if you have to breath that in for a long period of time. Or at least major long term lung damage.

Decay said:

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Three times finer than baby powder really puts it into perspective. It's not just like, dusty. It will be the absolute dustiest place ever experienced to man. It'll be worse than stripper glitter. And it covers the entire planet.

We need to terraform that crap hole immediately.

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And the dirt is toxic due to perchlorates. Elon has talked about sending robots there. Maybe he's only sending robots there.

Would water / biological interaction (oxygen etc) help combat the toxicity? I'd imagine the dust would start to chill out if you introduced water and grass, but if it's toxic we might be forever boned.

Anyone wanna take bets on something going wrong....

Ag_of_08 said:

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Anyone wanna take bets on something going wrong....

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On trying to colonize Mars?

Faustus said:

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Ag_of_08 said:

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Anyone wanna take bets on something going wrong....

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On trying to colonize Mars?

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Link didn't post... grr

My apologies for the snark!
That makes more sense.

Faustus said:

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My apologies for the snark.
That makes more sense.

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Lol no worries I laughed!

Dang, 3 starlink launches in 5 days.

#starlink 2022-05-19 status report: 1836 in service, 2442 total ever launched, 217 re-entered, 115 ground stations. See https://t.co/Xmk6C0mUWt pic.twitter.com/KXIZ2fxito

— satellitemap.space (@starlink_map) May 19, 2022

There are a lot of those little things floating around nowadays.

Starliner is trying again today. Fueling up now.

Looks like they are targeting a 6 PM CT launch.

ULA and Boeing are counting down to the 2nd uncrewed test flight of Starliner. Weather has improved to 80% GO! #OFT2

Join the @NASASpaceflight team starting at 5:45pm ET (2145 UTC) for live views and Q&A! 👇https://t.co/jyTAXwEGPY pic.twitter.com/6nAwqnPm3n

— Stephen Marr (@spacecoast_stve) May 19, 2022

C'mon Boeing, just don't waste all your fuel because you can't figure out where you are.

4 minutes

Liftoff. Looks good.

It made orbit but I haven't heard whether it's in the right orbit, and/or any issues occurred. I'm sure we won't until they do/don't start an ISS approach...... because we all know that PR is stupid, and they can't livestream things with real cameras or give updates when it's a multi billion dollar boondoggle.

Yesterday there was a callout for nominal orbit insertion, so I think they made it. To your point, though, they're still far from being in the clear.

They made that call during OFT1 if I remember right ;-)

From another forum it's apparently nominal;

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To clarify from the post-launch media briefing, there are 12 OMAC thrusters distributed between 4 doghouses. In the port doghouse, 2 of the thrusters had early shutdowns, but the 3rd was ok. Starliner has levels of redundancy that include the loss of any one doghouse, with the others compensating. The RCS thrusters can also suffice in a pinch. It was not necessary to invoke those scenarios.

They are reviewing the data to understand the early shutdowns on the 2 thrusters, and may be able to recover them in flight. They mentioned that it could be an instrumentation or software setting issue.

Overall the flight is still nominal and there are no concerns about the mission at all. There are 4 more OMAC burns scheduled, 3 before the docking and 1 for de-orbit. All could also be done with RCS if that became necessary.

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More from nasa space flight.com:

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Starliner will take just over a day to reach the International Space Station. In addition to the maneuvers that are needed to keep it on track for rendezvous, the spacecraft will undergo a series of demonstrations including an abort burn, an RCS control and attitude hold test, space-to-space commanding to ensure the crew of the ISS can send instructions to the spacecraft, and checkouts of the Vision-based Electro-optical Sensor Tracking Assembly (VESTA) sensors that will guide its automatic docking with the station.

Starliner is currently expected to dock with the ISS at 7:10:24 p.m. EDT (23:10:24 UTC) on Friday or 24 hours, 15 minutes, and 39 seconds mission elapsed time. It will dock at the forward port of the Harmony module, via Pressurized Mating Adaptor 2 (PMA-2) and International Docking Adaptor-Forward (IDA-F). Starliner will stay at the ISS for about four days before undocking to begin its return to Earth.

Following a deorbit burn, the capsule and service module will separate. The service module will burn up on reentry, while Starliner's capsule will land at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. If the OFT-2 mission is completed successfully, Starliner's next mission will be the Crewed Flight Test (CFT) when it will carry astronauts into orbit for the first time.

Following its use in the OFT-2 mission, Starliner capsule number 2 is expected to be refurbished and is currently expected to fly again on the first operational crew mission, which will follow the successful completion of the CFT.

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I read that some of the thrusters didn't fire, but they had enough backups so that it still made the orbit.

So they still ****ed up, they just manage to make it to the right orbit this time.

Will be interesting to see if the partner nations throw a fit over the unreliable thruster system as they approach.

Yeah, but I don't think it's that big a deal this time.

Starliner OFT-2 is expected to dock with the ISS in under nine hours, but there's no current word on status.

We have heard teams have been working issues overnight (hardly unexpected), so the next thing we'd want to hear is a green path to rendezvous. pic.twitter.com/MNGelgfet4

— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) May 20, 2022

I am kinda pulling for them as I don't want to see Boeing fail forever, and the capability/ability to re-boost is important.

What's the worst-case scenario? Hitting ISS? Uncontrolled deorbit?

Worst case would obviously be death.


Best-worst case is scrub the attempt to dock and come home.

OnlyForNow said:

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Worst case would obviously be death.


Best-worst case is scrub the attempt to dock and come home.

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Okay, I walked into that one.

I think if something is legit wrong, it has to do with approach to the ISS and the orbit they are in (from what little I've read and listened to), this means scrubbing the attempt to dock at the ISS.

Dunno what that really means though, they can't loiter in space very long with the fuel they have so I figure they return home at the first available window, once they know they can't take corrective action.

Looks like having tons of bureaucracy in aerospace development doesn't increase reliability or increase the success rate of first time system test.

Hiring based on "tell me about a time" questions instead of technical competence. Siloed mono-task engineering roles. All of these old aerospace companies need a refresh in how they operate.

nortex97 said:

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Yeah, but I don't think it's that big a deal this time.
. . .
I am kinda pulling for them as I don't want to see Boeing fail forever, and the capability/ability to re-boost is important.

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Yeah me too.

It's kind of funny I'm hoping Ariane 6 has problems since I'm a SpaceX fanboy, but I'd like to see our other domestic programs succeed.

I guess I have a some nationalistic populism in me as well.

Lots of new launch vehicles being developed from new contenders. It's an exciting time in the launch market. Below is some of the activity in the launch market outside of just SpaceX, ULA and NASA, along with their raised capital to date. Two stand outs here are Relativity and ABL each with $/kg below $10,000 and without reusability, both have their first launch planned for this year. And SpinLaunch is projecting $2,500/kg based on some published news articles if their mass accelerator system works, but its projected for 2025 or later.

(r) Reusable
(wip) In development, has not yet reached orbit


Blue Origin (funding total unknown):
New Glenn (r)(wip) - LNG 1st stage, H2 2nd Stage, 45,000 kg!

Relativity Space ($1,300M raised):
Terran 1 (wip) - LNG, 1,250 kg, $12M (9,600 $/kg)
Terran R (r)(wip) - LNG, 20,000 kg

Rocket Lab ($710M raised):
Electron (r) - Kerosene, 300 kg, $7M (23,300 $/kg)
Neutron (r)(wip) - Methane, 13,000 kg

ABL Space Systems ($419M raised):
RS1 (wip) - Kerosene, 1,350 kg, $12M (8,800 $/kg)

Astra ($300M raised):
Rocket 4.0 - Kerosene, 300 kg, $3.95M (13,100 $/kg)

Virgin Orbit (funding total unknown + $230M SPAC/IPO):
Launcherone - Kerosene, 500 kg, $12M (24,000 $/kg)

SpinLaunch ($110M raised):
Orbital Accelerator (wip)
Electric 1st stage, unknown 2nd stage fuel
200 kg, $0.5M ($2,500 $/kg!)