Space Flight Update

The international group to control global warming, COP28, is being hosted by a country, The United Arab Emirates, that is ramping up its production of oil. The man presiding over the event, Sultan Al Jaber, happens to be the head of Adnoc, the state-owned company that supplies 3 percent of the world’s oil. He also runs the much smaller state-owned renewables company, Masdar.

***

Widely accepted wisdom has it that electric vehicles are easier to maintain than those with internal combustion powertrains. It seems intuitive—EVs have many fewer moving parts than cars that have to detonate small quantities of hydrocarbon fuel thousands of times a minute. However, according to data collected by Consumer Reports, EVs are significantly less reliable than conventionally powered cars.

***

It's just a joke--unless it's true.

***

Space Flight Update

The United States will try once again to land a craft on the Moon on January 25. The lander, named Peregrine, will have no one on board. It was developed by the American company Astrobotic, and will carry NASA instruments to study the lunar environment in anticipation of NASA's Artemis manned missions. NASA has commissioned US companies to send scientific experiments and technologies to the Moon -- a program called CLPS. It is hoped these fixed-price contracts will make it possible to develop a lunar economy and provide transport services at a lower cost.

Takeoff is scheduled for December 24 from Florida aboard the inaugural flight of the new rocket from the ULA industrial group, named Vulcan Centaur. The probe will then take "a few days" to reach lunar orbit, but will have to wait until January 25 before attempting landing, so that light conditions at the target location are right. The descent will be carried out autonomously, without human intervention.

Only about half of the missions that have gone to the surface of the Moon have been successful, In the spring, the Japanese start-up ispace had already attempted to become the first private company to land on the Moon, but the mission ended in a crash. Israel also suffered a setback in 2019. Only four countries have successfully landed on the Moon: the United States, Russia, China and, most recently, India.

In addition to Astrobotic, NASA has signed contracts with other companies, such as Firefly Aerospace, Draper, and Intuitive Machines.

Intuitive Machines is due to take off aboard a SpaceX rocket in January.