Tag: capitalism

Cygnus successfully berthed at ISS

9:06 am

Cygnus approaching ISS on November 9, 2022

Despite on of its two solar panels only partly deployed, astronaut Nicole Mann was able to use the robot arm on ISS to grab Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter and bring it into its port, where ground engineers successfully berthed it.

The image to the right is a screen capture from NASA TV as Cygnus approached. You can see the problematic panel at the bottom. Though it has folded out from its initial stored position, it has not opened up fully.

The freighter will stay docked to ISS until late January, during which the crew will unload about four tons of cargo and then fill it with garbage before sending it to burn up over the ocean. We should expect NASA and Northrop Grumman to also plan a spacewalk to not only inspect the panel to figure out what failed, but to see if it can still be deployed.

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Cygnus freighter continues to target ISS rendezvous tomorrow

5:19 pm

Though one of its two solar panels remains undeployed, engineers and Northrop Grumman and NASA have proceeded with four engine burns so as to rendezvous with ISS tomorrow, November 9th, with arrival in the early morning hours.

Expedition 68 NASA astronaut Nicole Mann will capture Cygnus with the station’s robotic arm, with NASA astronaut Josh Cassada acting as backup. After Cygnus capture, ground commands will be sent from mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for the station’s arm to rotate and install it on the station’s Unity module Earth-facing port.

According to this NASA update, it appears that NASA managers are confident that the stuck solar panel is not blocking the grapple point, preventing the arm from grabbing the capsule. At the same time, the wording in the update is just a bit vague, and also suggests that before this capture occurs they will be inspecting Cygnus very carefully.

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Japan issues license allowing Ispace to do private business on Moon

9:51 am

With the launch of Ispace’s first lunar lander, Hakuto-R, only two weeks away, the private company has obtained a license from the Japanese government to conduct private transactions on the Moon.

The license allows Ispace to complete a contract awarded by NASA in December 2020, to acquire regolith from the lunar surface to sell to the space agency. During M1, Ispace is expected to collect regolith that accumulates on the footpad of the landing gear during the touchdown on the surface, photograph the collected regolith and conduct an “in-place” transfer of ownership of the lunar regolith to NASA. After ownership transfer, the collected material becomes the property of NASA, under the Artemis program. Under the contract, the lunar regolith will not be returned to Earth.

Under a second contract awarded to Ispace’s subsidiary [Ispace EU] … Ispace EU will acquire the lunar material on its second mission scheduled for 2024 as part of the HAKUTO-R program. An application for Mission 2 will be submitted to obtain a separate authorization.

This mission will also land the UAE’s first lunar rover, Rashid.

According to the Outer Space Treaty, it is the responsibility of each nation to regulate the private operations of its citizens in space. This action thus follows the laws that Japan has passed to supervise commercial space companies.

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Bad news for Branson

9:43 am

Two stories today suggest that Richard Branson’s space empire continues to totter.

First, a judge ruled that the fraud lawsuit against Branson by other stockholders in the suborbital tourist company Virgin Galactic can go forward.

The suit claims Branson concealed safety problems while he sold off the bulk of his own stock at top dollar. Only after he had dumped his stock were those problems revealed, and the stock price plummeted, now trading at less than 10% of the peak in February 2021, when Branson sold.

Second, it appears that though Branson’s satellite orbital company Virgin Orbit is operational, it is not going to launch as many satellites this year as expected, and thus required an investment of $25 million on November 4th from Branson’s Virgin Group to stay liquid.

Branson clearly wanted to be a major player in space. In the end, he has mostly failed, though once again Virgin Orbit remains a viable launching company for smallsats.

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India’s first private rocket company prepares for its first test suborbital launch

9:23 am

Skyroot, India’s first startup private rocket company, has now scheduled the first test launch of a suborbital version of its Vikram rocket for sometime between November 12the and 16th, depending on weather.

The rocket will be sent into space from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre spaceport in Sriharikota, off the Andhra Pradesh coast.

The space sector was opened up to facilitate private sector participation in 2020. In 2021, Skyroot became the first space technology startup to ink an MoU with ISRO for sharing facilities and expertise.

…The company’s COO & co-founder, Naga Bharath Daka, said “The Vikram-S rocket getting launched is a single-stage sub-orbital launch vehicle, which would carry three customer payloads and help test and validate the majority of technologies in our Vikram series of space launch vehicles.” The four-year-old Skyroot has successfully built and tested India’s first privately developed cryogenic, hypergolic-liquid, and solid fuel-based rocket engines. The R&D and production activities extensively use advanced composite and 3D-printing technologies.

The company has raised $51 million in private investment capital, the most ever raised by a private Indian rocket company.

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November 7, 2022 Quick space links

4:06 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s Twitter stringer, Jay.

 

  • Chinese spaceplane fantasy 1
  • Chinese spaceplane fantasy 2

    • The animated movies at both links are intriguing, but they mean nothing until we see some real footage of real hardware. Otherwise, this stuff is no different than the decades of powerpoint presentations NASA and Roscosmos would put out about what each intended to do, while doing nothing.

 

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One of two solar panels on Cygnus capsule fails to deploy

3:46 pm

The failure of one of the two solar panels on Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule to deploy today shortly after launch might cause some issues with getting the spacecraft docked to ISS.

Northrop Grumman has reported to NASA that Cygnus has sufficient power to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Wednesday, Nov. 9, to complete its primary mission, and NASA is assessing this and the configuration required for capture and berthing.

The capsule does not dock directly with the station, but is instead grabbed by a robot arm, which then brings it into its port. The grapple point that the arm uses is on the end where the solar panels are, with the docking port at the capsule’s other end. What is not presently clear is whether that point is blocked by the undeployed panel.

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Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket launches Cygnus freighter to ISS

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: Early this morning Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket successfully completed its second launch this year, lifting off from Wallops Island and carrying a Cygnus freighter for ISS.

This launch is also the next-to-last for this version of Antares. Northrop Grumman is using up the last few first stages built in the Ukraine that use Russian engines, after which it will send the next three Cygnus capsules into space using SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It hopes to introduce a new Antares using a Firefly first stage following that.

The leader board in the 2022 launch race remains the same:

51 SpaceX
48 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 73 to 48 in the national rankings, but trails the rest of the world combined 76 to 73.

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Long March 3B launches communications satellite

8:52 pm

China’s Long March 3B rocket today launched a communications satellite from one of its interior spaceports.

No word on where the first stage landed. The satellite replaced one that had failed in 2019 immediately after launch.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

51 SpaceX
48 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 72 to 48 in the national rankings, but trails the rest of the world combined 76 to 72.

A scheduled Antares launch of a Cygnus capsule from Wallops Island in Virginia was scrubbed today because a fire alarm when off in the capsule’s control center in Dulles, Virginia. It has been rescheduled for wee hours of tomorrow.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches but fails to catch first stage

10:54 am

Rocket Lab today used its Electron rocket to successfully launch a Swedish atmospheric research satellite.

The attempt to catch the first stage with a helicopter as the stage came back to Earth on parachutes failed. Based on the live stream, the failure appears unrelated to the helicopter, which never even made an attempt to capture. Nor did the video from the copter ever show the stage in view. A later update explained that the helicopter had lost telemetry from the stage, and for safety reasons would not attempt a capture without that information.

The company will still recover the stage from the ocean and test its engines. An engine from a previous ocean recovery actually passed all subsequent engine tests, suggesting it could even be reused on a launch.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

51 SpaceX
47 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 72 to 47 in the national rankings, though it still trails the rest of the world combined 75 to 72.

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Virgin Galactic losses 3x higher than last year

9:30 am

Even as Virgin Galactic has announced a contract with Axiom to fly a zero gravity suborbital training flight for one of its astronauts, the company also posted its 2021 third quarter statement, revealing losses three times higher than the previous year.

The company posted a net loss of $146 million for the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a $48 million net loss in the same period last year. The widened loss was in part driven by increased research and development cost, which came at $97 million in the June-September quarter, three times higher than last year.

The company posted a net loss of $146 million for the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a $48 million net loss in the same period last year. The widened loss was in part driven by increased research and development cost, which came at $97 million in the June-September quarter, three times higher than last year.

Quarterly revenue was only $767,000, down 70 percent from a year ago. Virgin Galactic hasn’t started commercial service of its suborbital spaceflight. The company currently makes money by taking deposits for future flights and providing engineering services to other companies.

Company officials still say that it will begin flying customers in the second quarter of ’23, as promised, though it also appears that the demand for its business has plummeted. At the same time, it reports it has $1.1 billion in its coffers for future development.

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Orbital tug company signs launch agreement with German rocket startup Isar Aerospace

9:24 am

The German rocket startup company, Isar Aerospace, has now signed a launch agreement with a French orbital tug company, Exotrail, to put multiple tugs into orbit over a five year period.

The companies announced Nov. 3 they signed a launch services agreement to launch Exotrail’s spacevan vehicle on Isar’s Spectrum rocket on multiple missions between 2024 and 2029. The launches will take place from Andøya, Norway, and Kourou, French Guiana. The companies did not disclose a specific number of launches or the value of the agreement.

Exotrail will apparently act as the agent to get the satellite customer by providing that customer transportation to the desired orbit after deployment from Isar’s rocket.

This is the second orbital tug launch contract that Isar has won, with the first from the Italian company D-Orbit. Both deals will fly on Isar’s rocket Spectrum, which it hopes to launch for the first time next year.

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