May 14, 2023

SpaceX Deploys More Starlink Sats From Florida with Near-Polar Launch (Source: Florida Today)
Another SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink mission that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station may have woken some Space Coast residents early Sunday. Carrying 56 internet-beaming satellites in its payload fairing, the 230-foot rocket flew a southeasterly trajectory and threaded the needle between Florida's Atlantic coastline and the Bahamas after lifting off at 1:03 a.m. EDT from Launch Complex 40. About nine minutes later, the Falcon 9 booster landed on a drone ship stationed off the coast of the Bahamas, marking the end of the 23rd Florida launch of the year. (5/14)

ChatGPT on Mars: How AI Can Help Scientists Study the Red Planet (Source: Space.com)
"It could be done but there could be misleading information," said Sercan Ozcan at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. "ChatGPT is not 100% accurate and it is prone to 'hallucination.'" Ozcan said he's not sure if ChatGPT would be valuable if there is no prior volume of work for it to analyze and emulate. "I believe humans can still do better work than ChatGPT, even if it is slower," he said. His advice is to not use ChatGPT "in areas where we cannot accept any error."

Steve Ruff at Arizona State University is keenly tied to studying Mars. "My immediate reaction is that it's highly unlikely that 'on-the-spot' manuscripts would be a realistic scenario given how the process involves debates among the team over the observations and their interpretation," Ruff said. "I'm skeptical that any AI, trained on existing observations, could be used to confidently interpret new observations without humans in the loop." For the near term, Ruff thinks AI could be used for rover operations, like picking targets to observe without humans in the loop, and for navigation. (5/14)

A Reckoning Awaits Elon Musk’s Renegade Rocket Rivals (Source: The Telegraph)
In the latter half of the 20th century, if you wanted “plucky scientists chasing the final frontier,” you wouldn’t look to NASA, says Ashlee Vance. By contrast, the new breed of renegade engineer-entrepreneurs such as Musk and Beck took ready advantage of cheap consumer electronics parts. What's more, they junked the outdated methods and materials still being used by NASA. “Strip away layers of bureaucracy dating back to the 1960s, and the staid thinking and you ended up in a place where the construction of rockets could be modernised and made more efficient,” Vance says.

Their daring in attempting to build new rockets shouldn’t be underestimated, as Vance points out. The new generation of rocketmen – they are all men – has helped rescue the United States' reputation for space technology, which 15 years ago was looking shabby. Vance says: “China was going gangbusters, while we just had Boeing and Lockheed Martin – it was totally pathetic. Now we’re the envy of the world.” However, a key question remains unanswered: is sending rockets into space a sustainable business? “Nobody knows if any of this is going to work economically,” Vance says. (5/13)

Space Command Hosts Japanese General in Colorado (Source: USSPACECOM)
U.S. Space Command hosted Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, Chairman of the Japanese Joint Staff, during a visit to USSPACECOM headquarters, May 11, 2023, Peterson Space Force Base, Colo. During the visit, members of USSPACECOM briefed Yoshida and his staff on growing threats to the space domain and facilitated a discussion on deepening U.S.-Japan space cooperation. (5/11)