Category: Behind The Black

Dominican Republic signs the Artemis Accords

8:52 am

The Dominican Republic yesterday became the 44th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, original conceived by the Trump administration as bi-laterial agreements between the U.S. and other nations and focused on building a strong coalition for getting the Outer Space Treaty’s limitations on free enterprise and private property cancelled or overturned.

Sadly, under the Biden administration that focus has been pushed aside, replaced with watered-down “principles [that] support the safe and sustainable exploration of space” that are also “grounded in the Outer Space Treaty.”

In other words, nations signing the accords now are simply signing on in the hope of getting American cash by joining the American Artemis program. The full list of nations is as follows: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

Whether this alliance can eventually be used as a tool to overturn the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property in space remains unknown. A new Trump administration would almost certainly shift things back in the right direction, especially if that administration reshaped the entire Artemis program away from its failed reliance on SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway and instead allowed private companies to redesign the program entirely, based on what makes the most economic and engineering sense rather than funding big government projects that accomplish litte except create make-work jobs.

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October 7, 2024 Quick space links

3:02 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Having visited an eye doctor today and had my eyes dilated, posting this afternoon is difficult. Sorry thus for the lack of additional posts.

  • ViaSat-3 F1 satellite enters commercial service
    It is designed to provide internet access to airline customers over North America, including Hawaii. Whether its addition can stave off the competition from SpaceX’s Starlink remains questionable.
  • How Did The Vulcan Rocket Survive This Booster Failure?
    Manley’s analysis is good, but he gets it very wrong when he says the FAA will likely ground Vulcan pending completion of its investigation. The FAA quickly announced no investigation was necessary, nor was Vulcan grounded.
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FAA and the Biden administration proves it is out to destroy SpaceX

9:47 am

The FAA to SpaceX
The FAA to SpaceX “Nice company you got here.
Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

In the past week the FAA proved unequivocally that it is abusing its regulatory powers for political reasons, imposing much harsher regulatory restrictions on SpaceX while allowing other companies much more free rein.

That reality became most evident first with the FAA response to the serious failure of one of the strap-on solid-fueled boosters during the second test launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket on October 4, 2024. During that launch something went seriously wrong with that booster 38 seconds after launch, involving an explosion and what appeared to be ejection of that booster’s nozzle. Though the launch succeeded in placing its payload into the correct orbit, it required the rocket’s main engines to compensate aggressively.

Despite this, the FAA decided no investigation by it was necessary.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial space launches in the United States, said in a statement that it assessed the booster anomaly and “determined no investigation is warranted at this time.” The FAA is not responsible for regulating launch vehicle anomalies unless they impact public safety.

This decision is correct, but the contrast with the FAA’s treatment of SpaceX is quite striking. If the FAA applied the absurd standard it has been using against SpaceX, it would claim that this Vulcan launch threatened public safety because the incident occurred 38 seconds after launch and was thus relatively close to Florida, where an out of control rocket could potentially threaten public safety.

Such a threat of course really doesn’t exist, as the FAA correctly concluded, because the rocket has a self-destruct system to prevent it from crashing in habitable areas.

Yet the agency failed to use this logic with SpaceX. Instead the FAA decided anything SpaceX launches that doesn’t work perfectly poses a serious public safety threat, no matter where or how it happens, and thus has repeatedly grounded SpaceX launches. A first stage, flown already 23 times, falls over after soft-landing successfully on its drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic, and somehow this justified the FAA grounding SpaceX due to the threat to public safety. A second stage, after successfully placing two astronauts into orbit, misfires during its de-orbit burn but still lands in the middle of the ocean, far from any habitable regions, and somehow this justified the FAA grounding SpaceX due to the threat to public safety.

And the fact that a Superheavy returning to its launchpad at Boca Chica will cause a sonic boom — as do every Falcon 9 landings at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg — is now justification for grounding Starship/Superheavy test launches, even though sonic booms pose zero threat to anyone other than startling them with the sudden noise.

The FAA further illustrated its bias against SpaceX when it decided to allow the company to do its launch this morning of Europe’s Hera asteroid mission, but specifically stated that the company’s other launches remain grounded.
» Read more

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Spanish rocket startup PLD unveils a proposed family of rockets plus crew capsule

8:48 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD this week unveiled a proposed family of rockets to follow its Miura-5 rocket, set to launch for the first time in 2025.

The three rockets introduced were the Miura Next, Miura Next Heavy, and Miura Next Super Heavy, all based on a system or modular building blocks. Miura Next will be the base of the modular system will be a single-stick two-stage rocket. Miura Next Heavy will feature two boosters and Miura Next Super Heavy will feature four boosters. The boosters will have a shared architecture with the rocket’s core stage. The first stages and boosters will all feature a propulsive recovery capability.

The smallest of the three rockets will be capable of delivering up to 13,580 kilograms to low Earth orbit, while the most powerful will have the capacity to deliver 53,000 kilograms.

This design concept essentially follows the approach that SpaceX used to develop the Falcon Heavy from the Falcon 9, and saves a great deal of money by using what the company has already developed as part of the larger rocket.

The crew capsule, dubbed Lince, is conceived at this company’s version of Dragon, capable of launching either cargo or 4 to 5 astronauts to any one of the proposed commercial space stations under construction. Capsule drop tests will begin in 2025, with the first launch abort tests in 2028 aiming for the first orbital flight by 2030.

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SpaceX launches Europe’s Hera asteroid mission

8:41 am

SpaceX today successfully launched the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera asteroid mission to the binary asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 23rd rocket, but was not recovered in order to maximum the fuel used to send Hera on its proper route. The fairings completed their 13th and 19th flights respectively.

Hera will do a follow-up rendezvous with the binary asteroids to get a close-up look at the consequences of the Dart impact back in 2022 of Dimorphos.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

96 SpaceX
44 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 113 to 67, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 96 to 84.

For SpaceX, this launch ties the record the company set last year for the number of launches of a private company in a single year, and it did so in just more than three-quarters of the year. The company’s goal of 144 launches in 2024 remains possible, assuming the federal government stopped blocking its operations. For example, the FAA granted the company permission for this one launch, but maintained its grounding of further launches because an upper stage did not land safely in the ocean in the exact right spot.

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October 4, 2024 Quick space links

3:06 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Frozen Martian eddies at the confluence of two glacier rivers

1:46 pm

Frozen eddies at the confluence of two glacial rivers
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels the photo as capturing a “contact near Reull Vallis,” a 1,000-mile-long Martian canyon that flows down the eastern slopes of Hellas Basin, the death valley of Mars.

What I see isn’t a geological contact but a complex jumble of odd-shaped depressions and mesas, surrounded by an eroded surface that seems squashed and deformed by some process. If this is all we had to go on, I would simply label this as another “What the heck?” image on Mars and move on. However, the larger context of the overview map helps explain it all, at least as best as we can explain using orbital data.
» Read more

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NASA pushes discrimination to favor minorities in its education workshops

11:31 am

NASA: dedicated to segregation!
NASA: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” A NASA press release today proudly touted what it called a “Culturally Inclusive Planetary Engagement in Colorado,” one of a series of recent science/education workships designed specifically to help “black and Latinx youth and their families.”

Though the events are apparently not segregated, it also appears that white and Asian kids and their parents were not really welcome.

Planetary scientists and engineers from Boulder, as well as scientists from Florida, Maryland, and Alaska participated. ReaCH partnered with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver, whose staff participated in the workshop to share their perspectives. Other educators local to the Denver area also participated, along with an educational specialist from NASA@ My Library (another Science Activation program). The workshop culminated in an event at the Shopneck Boys & Girls Club in Brighton, CO; workshop participants facilitated a variety of hands-on planetary activities for approximately 120 children. Workshop participants also shared information about college pathways into science professions with teenagers at the Club.

The location and the local organizations were specifically chosen to aid these specific minorites above anyone else.
» Read more

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Sierra Space wins Air Force contract to develop orbital cargo delivery system

9:49 am

The Air Force has now awarded Sierra Space a contract to develop its proposed “Space Ghost” satellite spacecraft, designed to be launched into a stand-by orbit carrying needed cargo, where it can upon command deliver that cargo within 90 minutes anywhere on Earth.

Sierra Space won a contract of undisclosed value as part of the AFRL’s Rocket Experimentation for Global Agile Logistics (REGAL) program. The Air Force is exploring the potential of space vehicles to rapidly transport critical supplies from orbital warehouses back to Earth. This could include reusable reentry vehicles capable of delivering payloads from prepositioned stocks in orbit.

Sierra Space, based in Louisville, Colorado, said its defense technology team designed the Ghost system to be capable of remaining in orbit for up to five years, storing and delivering essential supplies on-demand. Once fully developed, the spacecraft could be used for missions such as delivering rescue kits for downed pilots, medical supplies for disaster relief or logistical support for military operations.

The company began doing drop tests of a Space Ghost prototype heat shield in March, and apparently the data satisfied the Air Force enough to issue this development contract. Whether such a system however makes sense remains unknown. To be able to deliver cargo anywhere on Earth will require putting up a large constellation of Space Ghost satellites, in many different orbits. Moreover, it is unclear how much cargo each satellite would carry.

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Avio completes testing of new redesigned nozzle for its Vega-C second stage

9:31 am

The Italian rocket company Avio yesterday successfully completed the second of two static fire engine tests of the newly redesigned nozzle for the second stage of its Vega-C rocket, paving the way for the company to resume launches after the nozzle design failed both during a launch in 2022 and then again during a static fire test in 2023 after its first redesign.

A launch date has tentatively been scheduled for November, but this date is not yet confirmed. For this and the next several launches in 2025, the rocket will still be managed by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial arm, Arianespace. Beginning late next year however Avio will regain complete control of its rocket and will be able to market it internationally, no longer required to deal with this unneeded government middleman. The launch price will then certainly go down, making Vega-C more competitive.

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