Category: Behind The Black

Rocket Lab’s payload on its first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

10:00 am

Until today it was unclear whether the successful first suborbital launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket on June 17, 2023 carried a payload. Now we know it did:

The launch took place at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and demonstrated the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed, or MACH-TB, program’s first suborbital flight of a hypersonic payload.

MACH-TB is led by the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center and the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Crane Division. The team selected Leidos as the program’s prime integrator last September, and California-based space company Rocket Lab is one of 12 subcontractors supporting the effort.

It appears the Pentagon program that funded MACH-TB is a different program — from a different Pentagon office — from the one that is funding the next suborbital hypersonic test using Electron. Nor is this unusual for the military. The duplication of these Pentagon programs, with multiple bureaucracies, says a lot more about the utter waste and incompetence and corruption in DC than it does about hypersonic suborbital testing.

For Rocket Lab however this duplication is great news, as it provides the company at least two different customers for its suborbital rocket.

2 comments

FAA finally reduces airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral

9:46 am

On June 15, 2023 FAA announced that it has at last reduced the airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral, thus allowing more launches while reducing the disruption to commercial airline traffic.

The move is part of broader efforts to address the conflicts between launches and commercial aviation, particularly in Florida’s congested airspace. In April, the FAA released a set of factors when considering whether to allow a launch to proceed or ask the launch company to identify alternative windows for the launch.

Among those factors are the timing of the launch, particularly relative to holidays or other special events that cause increases in air traffic, and the duration of the launch window. “The FAA encourages commercial space operations to take place during nighttime hours (to the extent practicable) when other flight operations tend to be reduced,” the guidelines state.

I say “at last” because SpaceX have been pushing for this reduction for years. It knows its rockets will fly very reliably, and even if a rare failure forces their destruction, the territory threatened is much smaller than what was once considered necessary in the past. It just took years to get the federal bureaucracy to recognize these facts.

3 comments

Northrop Grumman’s robotic servicing satellites gets third contract, this time from Intelsat

9:40 am

With an announced contract with Intelsat today, Northrop Grumman has now obtained contracts for all three of its robotic servicing pods that will be launched on its Mission Servicing Vehicle in 2025.

Intelsat ordered the third and last pod available on the debut mission of the company’s new servicing spacecraft, called Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV).

Australian communications satellite operator Optus was the first customer to sign up for the Mission Extension Pods, which are propulsion jet packs that add six years to the life of geostationary satellites. Intelsat in April said it purchased one of the pods, followed by today’s announcement that it ordered a second one.

The MRV is an upgrade from Northrop Grumman’s earlier robot, the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV), which proved that it could autonomously rendezvous and dock with the nozzle of a defunct satellite and provide it with a new thruster and fuel so as to extend its life. With the MRV, multiple revised versions of the MEV are essentially launched at the same time.

Leave a comment

Russia gets a launch contract!

9:31 am

In what has become a very rare event, Russia’s state-run press today announced that Roscosmos has won a launch contract for its Soyuz-2 rocket from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“On June 27th at 3:34 p.m. UAE time [2:34 Moscow time], [UAE’s] MBR Space Centre will launch its maiden mission, PHI-Demo, from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome using the Soyuz-2 rocket as part of the Payload Hosting Initiative,” the media office said in a statement.

The statement says that the initiative, jointly led by MBRSC [UAE’s space agency] and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), is aimed at providing space access and hastening the sustainable progression of novel space technologies.

The satellite will be a secondary payload on the launch of a Russian weather satellite.

It seems this UN office wants to help the Russians, and is working to encourage other nations to use its rockets to get into space. Because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, it has lost all of its international launch business. UNOOSA is apparently working to recover Russia some of that business.

The UAE meanwhile appears to be trying to light the candle from both ends, working extensively with NASA and American private companies while also attempting to partner with Russia and China.

Leave a comment

BepiColumbo completes third Mercury flyby

9:23 am

Mercury as seen by BepiColumbo
Click for original image.

On June 19, 2023, the European Mercury orbiter BepiColumbo made the third of six planned flybys of Mercury on its way to orbit around that planet in 2025.

The closest approach was only 146 miles above the planet’s surface. Though no pictures were taken at that point because it was Mercury’s night side, as the spacecraft moved away it used one of its monitoring cameras, designed primarily to monitor the spacecraft itself, to look back at the planet. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is one of the first taken. From its caption:

The image was taken at 19:49 UTC (21:49 CEST) by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 3, when the spacecraft was about 2536 km from the planet’s surface. Closest approach took place at 19:34 UT (21:34 CEST) on the night side of the planet at about 236 km altitude. The back of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s high-gain antenna and part of the spacecraft’s body is also visible in front of Mercury in this image.

Despite the dark nature of the image, several interesting geological features are seen in beautiful detail. Of particular interest is Beagle Rupes, a 600 km-long scarp that snakes over the surface. In this view it is seen cutting through a distinctive elongated crater named Sveinsdóttir, which likely got its shape from an impactor striking the surface at an angle.

The next flyby will occur on September 5, 2024.

One comment

June 20, 2023 Quick space links

4:51 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

  • An analysis of the landing failure of Hakuto-R1

    • This is thirty minute presentation, which concludes that though there was a failure of the software, in the end the failure was due to management errors, including changing the landing site without doing sufficient simulations.

 

 

  • Delta-4 Heavy launch scheduled for tonight, at 3:29 am Eastern

    • This will be the first Delta-4 Heavy launch in almost three years. More significant, it will be ULA’s first launch in 2023, a number that is even lower that its low launch numbers of recent years. At this pace it will be a challenge for ULA to match its lowest launch counts of five, from ’19 and ’21. UPDATE: Scrubbed, reschedule 24 hours later.

 

 

 

4 comments

Fake pushback: Texas passes law banning DEI at the state universities

1:27 pm

Failure Theater!

Failure theater: This week Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott signed a new law that formally abolished all diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at the state’s public universities and schools.

“An institution of higher education may not establish or maintain a diversity, equity, and inclusion office or hire or assign an employee of the institution, or contract with a third party, to perform the duties of a diversity, equity, and inclusion office,” states the legislation, Senate Bill 17, which takes effect at the start of the spring semester of the 2023-24 academic year.

Exceptions spelled out include “academic course instruction,” “research or creative works by an institution of higher education’s students or faculty,” and activities by student groups.

The new law also bans “ideological oaths,” or DEI statements, for hiring and enrollment. [emphasis mine]

Hooray! The unicorns have come out and the world is now good and pure. All racist teaching at Texas universities will now forever cease!

Bah. This law was first proposed in May. At that time I wrote the following:
» Read more

18 comments

Looking down a canyon on Mars

9:43 am

Looking down a canyon on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right was taken on June 17, 2023 by Curiosity’s high resolution camera, looking back down Gediz Vallis and out across the distant floor of Gale Crater, far below. The white dotted line shows the route within this image where Curiosity had previously traveled inside this canyon, coming up around that shadowed mesa and then off to the west to try to get to terrain that it had earlier retreated because it was too rough on the rover’s wheels. Its subsequent path to the spot where this picture was taken was off to the left of the image, out of view.

This picture illustrates well the steepness and roughness of the mountainous canyon through which Curiosity presently travels. The small mountains visible on the floor of Gale Crater, about sixteen miles away, are no more than 450 feet high. The floor of the crater is 1,900 feet below where Curiosity present sits.
» Read more

7 comments

China launches classified experimental satellite

8:40 am

Using its Long March 6 rocket, China today launched what its state-run press called a “new experimental Earth-observation satellite,” lifting off its Taiyuan interior spaceport.

No word on whether the rocket’s first stage crashed near habitable areas, or whether it used parachutes to control its descent.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

41 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 46 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 46 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 41 to 40.

Leave a comment

John Williams – Imperial March

6:01 pm

An evening pause: What is most important about this performance is that Williams was doing the conducting on his 90th birthday. The only sour note of this performance is the idiotic masks they made some members of the orchestra wear. Obviously, a horn player can’t give anyone an infection, but a violin player can. Note too how all the VIPs on the front of the stage (such as Steven Spielberg) were also immune from COVID and didn’t need masks either. What fools and hypocrites.

Hat tip Phil Berardelli.

8 comments

A Martian crater with a wake of lava

12:47 pm

Overview map

Cool image time! Today’s cool image begins with the overview map to the right. The white dot marks its location, on the western edge of Amazonis Planitia and about 1,000 miles east of the giant shield volcano Elysium Mons.

This is a region of numerous flood lava events that appear to cover the knobby mountainous terrain that was once here. We know that past terrain was knobby because in the black outline just south of this picture the knobs are everywhere, short peaks sticking up from a very flat flood lava plain. The region is also on the northern edge of the dry equatorial regions of Mars, at 27 degrees north latitude. It is likely there is little near surface ice here.

These details will help explain the cool image itself.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Pushback: Judge blocks race-based program of Biden administration

11:45 am

Modern segregation
Modern Democratic Party segregation

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” On June 5, 2023 federal Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas ruled [pdf] that a race-based development agency, dubbed the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and created under Biden administration, was patently illegal under both the U.S. Constitution and numerous civil rights laws, and must cease awarding grants based on race.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit [pdf] filed for three individuals by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), one of whom, Christian Bruckner, was specifically told by the local office of MBDA “…that it could not help him because of his race.” The lawsuit notes that:
» Read more

9 comments

NASA official in charge of its manned program denigrates the idea of fixed-price contracts

9:32 am

Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite running the NASA manned program dependent on it
Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite
running the NASA manned program dependent on it

Eric Berger on June 16, 2023 wrote up a careful analysis of comments made by NASA official Jim Free, who is in charge of its Artemis manned program, when he appeared on June 7, 2023 before the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board in Washington, DC.

During that appearance, in which Free provided an update on the program’s status, including admitting that the manned lunar landing will not happen in 2025 but in 2026 — something that everyone in the space industry has known for years but NASA had been denying — Berger then noted this further comment by Free:

Oddly, Free also questioned the value of the contract mechanism that NASA used to hire SpaceX and its Starship lander. “The fact is, if they’re not flying on the time they’ve said, it does us no good to have a firm, fixed-price contract other than we’re not paying more,” he said.

Free did this after trying to place the entire blame for the launch delay on SpaceX, made worse by the regulatory delays being imposed on it by the FAA.

Berger than proceeded to outline in great detail why fixed-price contracts work far better than cost-plus contracts — also known widely in the space industry and detailed myself in Capitalism in Space. To sum up, cost-plus contracts produce very little but cost gobs of money, while fixed-price contracts save money while guaranteeing results. He then asked, “What’s going on here?” and answered it as follows:
» Read more

16 comments

SpaceX successfully launches Indonesian broadband satellite

8:48 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully launched an Indonesian broadband satellite, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their seventh and ninth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

41 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 46 to 23 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 46 to 39, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 41 to 39.

3 comments

Rocket Lab completes first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

8:42 am

As part of its contract for providing the Defense Department with a testbed for hypersonic testing, Rocket Lab on June 17, 2023 successfully completed the first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket.

The HASTE suborbital launch vehicle is derived from the Company’s Electron rocket but has a modified Kick Stage for hypersonic payload deployment, a larger payload capacity of up to 700 kg / 1,540 lbs, and options for tailored fairings to accommodate larger payloads, including air-breathing, ballistic re-entry, boost-glide, and space-based applications payloads. By leveraging the heritage of Rocket Lab’s low-cost Electron – the world’s most frequently launched commercial small launch vehicle – HASTE offers true commercial testing capability at a fraction of the cost of current full-scale tests.

Because of its military nature, Rocket Lab’s press release was generally terse in providing details. Sources in the industry tell me that this launch was designed to prove out the required suborbital capabilities of Electron prior to the first hypersonic test flight. When that flight takes place, it will carry a hypersonic test vehicle built by another company, Hypersonix.

Rocket Lab with this launch demonstrated again the smart flexibility of the company. It only announced this suborbital concept for Electron in April. Only two months later it has test flown it. It is now ready to fly an actual hypersonic test flight, and waits only for the test vehicle to be provided by Hypersonix. The speed of this program leap-frogged Stratolaunch, which is also offering its Roc airplane and Talon hypersonic test vehicle to the military but started its project in late 2020 and is still not ready for flight.

One comment

PLD’s first suborbital test launch aborted just prior to launch

1:07 pm

According to company officials, the first suborbital test launch of PLD Miura-1 rocket was aborted today just prior to launch because some of the umbilical fuel and power lines failed to disconnect as planned.

The launch was from PLD’s launch site in Spain. No word when the company will try again. Before it can build its orbital Miura-5 rocket it needs the test data from this suborbital launch.

Leave a comment

June 16, 2023 Quick space links

3:08 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

May everyone have a great weekend!

2 comments

The icy mesas of Mars’ glacier country

12:06 pm

Overview map

The ice mesas of Mars' glacier country
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this image “Cross-Section of Glacier-Like Form,” probably because the mesa in the center of the picture clearly shows numerous layers as you descend from its peak to the surrounding plains, an elevation difference of about 200 feet.

The white dot about 250 miles due south of Lyot Crater on the overview map above marks the location of this mesa, inside the chaos terrain of Deuteronilus Mensae that is the western section of the 2,000 long strip in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars that I call glacier country, since practically every image, like today’s, suggests the presence of glaciers.

The oblique mosaic below, created using MRO’s context camera images, illustrates this fact even more spectacularly.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Lightning on Jupiter

10:53 am

Lightning on Jupiter
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 30, 2020 by Juno during its 31st close fly-by of Jupiter, and was enhanced and processed by citizen-scientist Kevin Gill.

In this view of a vortex near Jupiter’s north pole, NASA’s Juno mission observed the glow from a bolt of lightning. On Earth, lightning bolts originate from water clouds, and happen most frequently near the equator, while on Jupiter lightning likely also occurs in clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, and can be seen most often near the poles.

Juno was about 20,000 miles above Jupiter’s clouds when it took this picture, located at about 78 degrees north latitude.

4 comments

Rocket Lab about to launch a secret mission

9:27 am

Rocket Lab is gearing up to launch a rocket from Wallops sometime between June 15th and June 20th but it will provide no live stream and no press access.

The article at the link then speculates that this launch might be the first military hypersonic test flight using a suborbital version of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

That launcher is called HASTE, short for “Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron.” As that name suggests, HASTE is derived from the workhorse Electron and is designed to help test technologies for hypersonic craft — highly maneuverable vehicles capable of flying at least five times the speed of sound.

HASTE can haul up to 1,540 pounds (700 kilograms) of payload aloft, whereas Electron can deliver a maximum of 660 pounds (300 kg) to low Earth orbit. The suborbital rocket also features a modified version of Electron’s “kick stage” specialized for the deployment of hypersonic payloads, Rocket Lab said in an April 17 statement that announced HASTE’s existence.

The suborbital rocket is scheduled to make its debut right about now, on a mission whose details are hard to come by, according to that statement.

If so, we will only find out some limited details after launch, based on what the military decides to release publicly.

Regardless, the HASTE project demonstrates the ability of Rocket Lab to quickly improvise in order to find new ways to make money from its existing assets. For its stockholders, it is another piece of evidence that the company is a good investment.

One comment

ESA transfers its Artemis-2 Orion service module to NASA

9:18 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday officially handed over to NASA its second completed Orion service module, to be used in 2024 on the first manned Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-2, that will carry four astronauts on a mission around the Moon.

The European Service Module-2 will power the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis II mission that will see NASA astronauts commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen complete flyby of the Moon and return to Earth.

The crew will fly Orion to 8889 km beyond the Moon before completing a lunar flyby and returning to Earth. The mission will take a minimum of eight days and will collect valuable flight test data, in the first time for over 50 years that humans have voyaged to our natural satellite.

The odds of this launching in 2024 are relatively slim. It will also be the first time NASA will be flying Orion’s environmental systems (the systems that keep the astronauts alive). We all hope those system work perfectly this first time, since people will be on board.

Leave a comment

Axiom delays launch of first space station module to ’26

9:08 am

Buried in a Space.com article today about Axiom was the important revelation that the company has now officially delayed the launch of its first space station module that will be attached to ISS from 2024 to 2026, with the rest of its follow-up modules delayed as well.

In January 2020, Axiom won NASA’s contract to construct the first commercially manufactured module for the ISS. “Our first module is going to be in 2026,” David Zuniga, senior director of in-space solutions at Axiom, told Space.com. This is an update to the company’s previously stated target of 2024.

Axiom’s first station component will attach to the forward port of the ISS’ Harmony module and serve as the springboard for the remaining pieces of the company’s planned space station architecture. Axiom is planning to attach a second module in 2027 and a third module a year later. Finally, a thermal power module, scheduled for sometime before 2030, will allow Axiom’s space station to detach from the ISS and become a free-flying, commercially run low Earth orbit (LEO) destination.

This schedule puts Axiom at some risk. ISS is likely going to be retired in 2030. Axiom has to therefore be able to detach its space station before that happens. It seems however with this new schedule that it might not be ready. And if it can’t, it will then need to arrange some deal with NASA and ISS’s international partners to either take over operations of ISS temporarily or convince these nations to operate it a little longer.

8 comments

A private Russian rocket?

9:01 am

According to two short stories in the Russian state-run press (here and here), a private Russian company, dubbed SR Space, is developing a private orbital rocket, and has already completed two launches of a test rocket, though neither launch reached suborbital space.

It is now assembling its first suborbital rocket intended to reach space.

As the SR Space press office specified for TASS, the new sub-orbital rocket is set for its launch at the end of the year. “The launch is scheduled for the end of the current year to deliver a signal transmitter payload,” the press office said. The transmitter’s signal sent to Earth is expected to be received by drones engineered by the company. “This is necessary to test interaction with remotely piloted aircraft systems and the technology of their remote control and flight control of a swarm in automatic mode,” it explained.

This will be the first launch of a private sub-orbital rocket in Russia to an altitude of over 100 km (the altitude where outer space begins). The carrier rocket will measure 5.17 meters in length and 0.45 meters in diameter and weigh 253 kg.

SR Space appears to be the same kind of pseudo-company that China allows. It has obtained private funding, and is operating with some independence hoping to win contracts from the Russian government in order to earn a profit. At the same time, it without doubt does nothing without that government’s permission and approval, and can be taken over at any time by that government, as happened to Russia’s last commercial rocket company S7 that wanted to use the Sea Launch ocean platform to fly commercial launches.

Leave a comment

June 15, 2023 Quick space links

4:52 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

  • Kuiper official urges governments to regulate the methods used by satellite makers to maneuver their satellites

    • I like Jay’s comment: “How many satellites does Kuiper have again? Zero. Damn arm-chair satellite companies!” The timing of this statement, a day after the WEF issued its proposed government guidelines for de-orbiting satellites, suggests Amazon supports that effort, but has a different approach as to how those rules should be implemented.

    In other words, Amazon wants to dictate how others build their satellites. Or make it illegal for them to do so as they wish. Seems a great plan for eliminating one’s competition.

5 comments

Tomorrow’s final launch of Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket delayed indefinitely

2:01 pm

Arianespace officials today cancelled tomorrow’s final launch of its Ariane-5 rocket — supposedly to be replaced by the not-yet-flown Ariane-6, citing issues with “three pyrotechnical transmission lines that are associated with the Ariane 5’s solid rocket boosters.”

No new launch date has been set. There is the possibility that to resolve this issue the rocket will have to be rolled back to its assembly building and destacked. If so, the launch will be delayed months.

At the moment, Europe has only managed one launch in 2023, a far cry from the seven to twelve launches it used to do annually, before SpaceX came along and offered a cheaper rocket that could launch more frequently and quicker.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

2 comments

Some real pushback: Former Starbucks employee, fired to give Starbucks a white scapegoat, wins $25 million in lawsuit

1:37 pm

Enthusiastically supports racial discrimiation
Punished enthusiastically for enthusiastically
supporting racial discrimination

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Shannon Phillips, a former Starbucks employee for thirteen years who was fired from the company following a racial incident at one of its stores, has been awarded back pay and $25.6 million in compensatory and punitive damages by a jury, who ruled she was fired simply because she was white and Starbucks needed a scapegoat.

The controversy began when the staff at a Starbucks store called the police on two blacks sitting in the store.

Rashon Nelson and his friend Donte Robinson were arrested at the Philly Starbucks in April 2018 after an employee called 911 to say they weren’t paying customers and had refused to leave. The men, who said they had been simply sitting at a table waiting for a potential real estate business partner to arrive, were arrested for trespassing.

In response to the widespread protests that followed, Starbucks temporarily shut its 8,000 locations nationwide in order to give its employees “anti-bias training,” while coming to an out-of-court settlement with the two men, whereby they each were paid a symbolic $1 but the company set up a $200,000 program to help young entrepreneurs.

The company also decided to fire Phillips, even though she was not at the store when the incident occurred. That firing was because she had objected to the company’s order for her to suspend a white manager who had had no connection to the incident at all.
» Read more

5 comments
1 … 131 132 133 134 135 … 1,077