Tag: commercial

Blue Ghost completes first main mid-course correction engine burn

10:22 am

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander has not only successfully completed its first major engine burn, raising its Earth orbit as it slowly moves towards the Moon, but successfully used a joint NASA-Italian instrument to pinpoint its location using Earth-orbiting GPS-type satellites.

Jointly developed by NASA and the Italian Space Agency, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) technology demonstration acquired Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, and calculated a navigation fix at nearly 52 Earth radii: more than 205,674 miles (331,000 kilometers) from Earth’s surface. This achievement suggests that Earth-based GNSS constellations can be used for navigation at nearly 90% of the distance to the Moon, an Earth-Moon signal distance record. It also demonstrates the power of using multiple GNSS constellations together, such as GPS and Galileo, to perform navigation.

These results suggest that if all lunar orbiters had this instrument on board, they could all pinpoint their positions precisely and thus eliminate the chance of collision. It also suggests that it might not be necessary, at least immediately, to build a separate GPS-type constellation around the Moon. Earth’s systems could do the job.

Blue Ghost will spend 25 days in Earth orbit, when it will transfer to lunar orbit for several more weeks before attempting a landing.

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South Korea’s space bureaucracy attempts to encourage private sector development

9:38 am

South Korea’s space agency, the Korea Aerospace Administration, has announced a new effort to encourage that country’s private sector in developing rockets and satellites.

[A] plan will be established to link the National Space Council, the highest policy decision-making body overseeing government space policy, with the Aerospace Development Policy Review Committee. Systems will also be established for workforce training in aerospace and the designation of a space development mission center.

To establish an aerospace economic ecosystem, the participation of the private sector in the development and utilization of launch vehicles and satellites will be expanded. In the aviation sector, future aircraft technologies, including urban air mobility (UAM), will be secured, and localization of aircraft materials and components will be supported. To encourage smooth research and development (R&D) investments in aerospace corporations, the aerospace fund will be revitalized with improvements to regulations and support for overseas expansion.

Overall, a lot of this sounds like meaningless bureaucratic gobbledygook. The goal might be to expand the private sector, but the program still has the space agency running everything, from its new government-built Nuri rocket to its other satellite development programs.

Nonetheless, the desire to encourage the private sector is good. It could simply be that South Korea’s private sector is not mature enough yet to take the lead, and the agency by this announcement is working to push it forward.

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General Atomics successfully tests fuels to be used in an in-space nuclear propulsion system

9:16 am

The company General Atomics announced yesterday that it has successfully tested the fuels it wants to use in an in-space nuclear propulsion system for transporting ships to the Moon and beyond much faster and more efficiently than is presently possible with chemical engines.

[General Atomics] executed several high-impact tests at NASA’s MSFC in Huntsville, AL. The nuclear fuel was tested with hot hydrogen flow through the samples and subjected to six thermal cycles that rapidly ramped-up to a peak temperature of 2600 K (Kelvin) or 4220° Fahrenheit. Each cycle included a 20-minute hold at peak performance to demonstrate the effectiveness of shielding the fuel material from erosion and degradation by the hot hydrogen. Additional tests were performed with varying protective features to provide further data on how different material enhancements improve performance under reactor-like conditions.

It has been known since the 1960s the nuclear propulsion is more efficient that chemical engines. It can burn for longer time periods at higher levels, thus making it possible to get to other planets more quickly, in some cases bypassing the need to depend on orbital mechanics.

The problem however has been political. Getting these nuclear engines into orbit has been too much of a political hot potato. The fear of such engines and radioactivity, largely irrational, has made it impossible to get them built. NASA is now trying again.

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Japan’s government wants its private sector to do all its future space station work, not its space agency JAXA

9:05 am

In a major shift of power away from its government, the Japanese science and technology ministry is presently drafting a policy that would have that country’s private sector lead all work that Japan does on any of the future commercial private space stations being built, not its space agency JAXA as has been done now for decades.

The draft policy specifies how Japan will be involved with the next space station. According to the draft, “the private sector will have such responsibilities as managing [the new space station], and JAXA will support its use.”

JAXA is currently responsible to the management and maintenance of the ISS and serves as the point of contact for its commercial use. However, the government will select a Japanese private-sector company to be the point of contact for the next space station. When JAXA, research institutes or other companies plan to use the ISS, they will have to contact the next station’s point of contact.

While Japan wants to have one of its own modules on one of the commercial stations, as it presently has on ISS, it appears the government does not want JAXA to lead this project. Instead, it wants Japan’s private sector to run the show by working out its own deals with the private commercial stations. At present the Japanese company Mitsui is partnering with Axiom on its station, so this is likely the first station where a deal could be worked out.

It seems that Japan is trying to poke its private sector out of its doldrums. Right now that sector seems unable to take any action on its own. It sits and waits for guidance from the government before acting, and even then acts timidly, waiting to see if the government approves of each step. What the Japanese government now wants instead is some independent action, not linked to government policy.

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Trump picks Janet Petro of Kennedy to be acting NASA administrator, not Jim Free of headquarters

8:41 am

In a surprise move, the Trump administration announced yesterday that the expected person to take over as acting administrator of NASA until Jared Isaacman is approved by the Senate would not be Jim Free. the present associate administrator at NASA headquarters, but Janet Petro, who is presently director of the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA had so much assumed Free had the job that it had already listed him as acting administrator today on the NASA webpage.

There has of course been speculation as to why Trump made this unexpected choice. My guess is that Trump wants to reduce significantly the size of NASA headquarters, and thus wants someone from outside to run it for the present. Petro has been at Kennedy since 2007. Before that she was in the private sector.

Free has been a working out of DC for several years, and thus has stronger ties to the workforce there.

The decision also makes it clear to the NASA bureaucracy who is in charge. Decisions will no longer be made by that bureaucracy without strong input from Trump.

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Anna Lapwood – Hans Zimmer’s Cornfield Chase & Saint-Saëns’ Sinfonie #3 Organ finale

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live 2024. Seem celebratory enough for Inauguration Day.

Hat tip Alton Blevins, who also needs to clean out his full inbox so that he can receive emails. It has been full now for several weeks, and all emails to him thus bounce.

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Has the tourist balloon company Space Perspective gone belly-up?

1:28 pm

Space Perspective's Neptune Capsule
Space Perspective’s Neptune balloon capsule

According to the local paper Florida Today, the high altitude tourist balloon company Space Perspective owes more than $90K rent on its facility at Florida’s Space Coast Regional Airport, and has apparently ceased activity in mid-December.

Activity appears to have largely ceased at Space Perspective’s “Mission Control” office building at the Titusville airport, where the facility has appeared largely unoccupied the past two weeks. Nobody answered the doorbell during a trio of FLORIDA TODAY visits since Jan. 6, and no vehicles were in the parking lot just before 1 p.m. Wednesday.

FLORIDA TODAY has left messages unsuccessfully attempting to contact Space Perspective executives. One vehicle was parked in the Mission Control lot Tuesday afternoon, and an employee answered the doorbell. A FLORIDA TODAY reporter passed along a written message seeking comment from company officials.

Another source notes that numerous former employees in recent weeks have been looking for new jobs in the Florida region.

The Florida Today article also documents several other cases where the company had had problems paying its bills.

It is possible the company is dead. There is also the possibility that it remains alive, but has decided to skip town because it is now setting up operations in the Middle East. In one of its last major announcements in November 2024 it revealed it is in negotiations with a number of Middle Eastern nations for flying balloon flights there.

All in all this story is very puzzling. The company had already built its Florida factory for making its balloons, and had done one test flight of a prototype manned capsule for tourist flights. It seemed poised to begin commercial operations. To shut down so suddenly now suggests a lot of things, some of which could indicate some very dishonest motives indeed.

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U.S and Norway sign deal to allow U.S. companies to launch from Andøya

10:18 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The U.S. and Norway have now signed an agreement that will make it possible for American rocket and satellite companies to launch from Norway’s Andøya Spaceport, easing State Department rules that up until now made such launches difficult if not impossible.

[The Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA)] will ensure the protection of U.S. technology, enabling the transfer of commercial launchers to Norway. Similar agreements have been established between the U.S. and other allied nations, including Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Right now Andoya has only two rocket customers, the German startup Isar Aerospace and a Polish suborbital startup, SpaceForest. Both hope to do launches sometime this year. Unlike the red tape that the United Kingdom has imposed on its new spaceports, Norway appears to be doing everything it can to grease the wheels so that launches can occur quickly and on schedule.

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