Year: 2022

Lucy engineers again attempt to complete deployment of solar array

12:01 am

Lucy solar panel graphic
Artist’s impression of solar panel

On November 7, 2022, the Lucy science team made another attempt to complete the deployment of one of the spacecraft’s two solar arrays, as shown in the graphic to the right. After launch that array failed to deploy properly, and though later attempts have gotten it mostly open, it has not latched tight.

On Monday, Nov. 7, the spacecraft was instructed to point toward the Sun and operate the array deployment motors for a short period of time. As expected, the latest attempt deployed the wing incrementally forward, but it did not latch. The operation did succeed in providing the team with data to evaluate the array’s status and ascertain any changes since the last deployment attempt on June 16.

During this analysis, the team identified that a small vibration occurred as the unlatched array interacted with the spacecraft’s attitude controller while the array was pointed toward Earth and at a cold temperature. The vibration did not occur as a result of the deployment activity itself. While this vibration is too small to pose a risk to the spacecraft in its current state, further array deployment attempts have been paused while the attitude controller is updated to resolve this issue. In the meantime, the spacecraft was reoriented so that the array is warmer, and the team found that the vibration is not present. The team will re-evaluate further redeployment activities once the updates to the controller are checked out on the spacecraft.

In other words, engineers have decided to halt further deployment attempts until they understand fully the cause of this vibration.

At present, the spacecraft is in good health, and the array, only a few degrees short of full deployment, is producing more than 90% of its expected power, more than enough to run the full mission.

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November 18, 2022 Quick space links

4:07 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s stringer.

 

 

 

  • NASA declares inflatable heat shield test flown on Atlas-5 launch a success

    • And as the agency does so often, it now shuts things down, having no plans to fly it again. It could be scaled up for future Mars missions, but no such mission is presently planned. ULA, which partnered with NASA on the test, is likely to take this technology and use it to recover the 1st stage engines on Vulcan.

 

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Pushback: Court orders school board to stop censoring and banning parents

1:26 pm

The Forsyth County School Board

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In a victory for free speech, a federal judge has ruled that the censorship and banning of some parents by the Forsyth County Board of Education in Georgia was unconstitutional, and must cease immediately.

This is a follow-up of a previous blacklist story from back in August, when those parents sued the board because it would not permit them to speak at board meetings during public comment about the pornography the board was allowing in schools.

Multiple district residents, including Mama Bears members and plaintiffs in the lawsuit Alison Hair and Cindy Martin, have used their time to read aloud from school library books they consider pornographic. Yet while these materials are available to kids in school, the Chair has cut off and banned speakers who read from them at Board meetings when he deems the language inappropriate or profane.
» Read more

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Colliding glaciers

12:19 pm

Overview map

Colliding glaciers

For today’s cool image we return once again to glacier country in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a spot where I think glacial flows coming from the north and south have collided at a low point. The white dot in the box on the overview map above marks its location, with the inset showing the mesas to the north and south that suggest this flow pattern.

What makes these colliding flows especially cool is the source of the northern flow. It appears that came out of the impact heat from that crater, which caused the ice on the downhill side to flow. You can also see the same phenomenon a short distance to the east, with a much smaller crater, likely a secondary impact from the first.

Note also the glacial fill inside the larger crater. This impact happened on top of older glaciers, but later climate cycles caused more ice to be deposited within the crater afterward. That this glacial fill appears terraced and thus layered also suggests that there were several if not many such later climate cycles.

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LightSail-2 completes three-plus year mission, burning up in atmosphere

9:44 am

LightSail-2 sail deployed
LightSail-2, shortly after deployment in 2019.

LightSail-2, an experimental solar sail built by the Planetary Society, finally ended its mission this week, with the test sail burning up in the atmosphere upon re-entry.

LightSail 2 was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in June 2019, settling into an initial orbit at an altitude of around 720 km (450 miles). At that height, the Earth’s atmosphere is still thick enough to create drag, which would threaten to eventually pull the spacecraft down.

But that’s where the plucky little satellite’s special ability came in. Although it’s only the size of a shoebox, LightSail 2 unfurled a big reflective sheet, called a solar sail, about the size of a boxing ring. The idea is that photons from sunlight strike this sail and generate tiny amounts of thrust, allowing the craft to change its orbit.

And LightSail 2 demonstrated this concept beautifully. In three and a half years, the spacecraft completed around 18,000 orbits and traveled 8 million km (5 million miles), adjusting its orbit continuously to keep itself aloft. But all good things must come to an end, and sometime on November 17, drag finally won the tug-of-war and pulled the spacecraft back to Earth.

LightSail-2 was the third time a light sail had been flown in space, with the first, Ikaros, deployed by the Japanese in 2010 and flown in solar orbit through 2012. That mission was successful in using sunlight to accelerate the sail. This was followed by LightSail-1 in 2015. That mission has some communications problems, but eventually succeeded in its main engineering mission by testing the sail deployment system.

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Boeing announces major reorganization

9:33 am

Boeing yesterday announced that it is doing a major reorganization of its defense, space, and security divisions.

The action will replace numerous executives while reducing eight different divisions into four.

Such action was long overdue, considering Boeing’s many recent engineering failures, from space (Starliner) to aviation (737-Max), all of which demanded such a reorganization and consolidation, simply to pay the bills if not to fix serious management shortcomings. The bad economy has only made this more urgent.

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Japan to stay on ISS to 2030 in exchange for an astronaut flight to Gateway

9:26 am

NASA yesterday announced that Japan has agreed to remain on ISS through 2030, the first international partner to do so, and in exchange will get a Japanese astronaut flight to the Lunar Gateway station.

Under the Gateway Implementing Arrangement, NASA will provide an opportunity for a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut to serve as a Gateway crew member on a future Artemis mission. This formally represents the first commitment by the U.S. to fly a Japanese astronaut beyond low-Earth orbit aboard NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft.

I remain very doubtful in the long run these flights will occur on SLS, which simply cannot launch frequently enough to make the entire program viable. More likely with time the rocket will be replaced by other commercial carriers.

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1st suborbital launch by Indian private company

9:18 am

Skyroot, a commercial rocket startup in Indian, yesterday became the first Indian company to complete a rocket launch, sending its Vikram-S suborbital rocket on a short flight.

I have embedded the launch below, cued to just before lift-off. The launch itself, which lasted only about six minutes, reached a elevation of just under 56 miles, tested of the rocket’s first stage, as well as a number of other systems.
» Read more

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SpaceX cancels launch after reviewing static fire test data

9:06 am

After a review of the test data produced during its standard dress rehearsal countdown and static fire prior to launch, SpaceX decided to cancel a Falcon 9 launch yesterday, carrying 52 Starlink satellites.

The first stage booster had previously launched 10 times, though it is not clear if this is the cause of the delay.

It’s not the first time SpaceX has delayed a launch indefinitely after a static fire test, but it is the first time in years. SpaceX semi-regularly stands down from launch attempts to conduct inspections or complete minor repairs or component replacements when data is amiss or contradictory, but those plans tend to mention the next launch target. This time, even SpaceX’s website has been scrubbed to say that “a new target launch date [will be announced] once confirmed.”

The last time a prelaunch static fire was explicitly blamed for a launch delay was in August 2019, when SpaceX fired up a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of its Amos-17 launch, didn’t like what it saw, decided to replace a valve on the booster, and then conducted a second static fire test to clear the rocket to launch. It’s possible that Starlink 2-4’s sequence of events will end up being similar.

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ABL’s RS1 rocket aborts at ignition

8:59 am

The first test launch of ABL’s RS1 rocket aborted at T-0 yesterday, just as the rocket ignited its engines.

From a company tweet:

RS1 aborted terminal count during ignition. The vehicle is healthy, and the team is setting up to offload propellant for today. More information to come on our next opportunity.

Though it appears all is well with the rocket, the company has not yet announced a new launch date. The present launch window closes November 21, 2022.

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