Tracey Thorn – Why Does the Wind?
An evening pause: Performed live 2010.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
Tag: commercial
Momentus concedes its Vigoride tug will probably not be able to deploy more satellites
Capitalism in space: Momentus yesterday conceded that because of the problems that have dogged the first flight of its Vigoride tug, it will probably not be able to deploy the remaining smallsats on board.
Previously the company had said that communications issues were interfering with deployment. This update revealed that the tug’s solar arrays had also not opened as intended.
After initially experiencing these anomalies, we were able to deploy two customer satellites from Vigoride on May 28. Since that time, we have continued efforts to deploy other customer satellites, but have not confirmed any subsequent deployments. While we previously established two-way communications with the Vigoride vehicle, we have not been able to continue such two-way communication, which we believe is due to the low power situation on the vehicle due to the deployable solar arrays not operating as intended.
Though this update is very unclear on this point, it appears that Vigoride was able to deploy three objects in total, or a total of six smallsats. How many additional smallsats failed to deploy is not clear.
The company plans its next launch in November, with additional launches next year.
Test of solar sail for de-orbiting smallsat ends successfully
Capitalism in space: The Canadian company Space Flight Labs announced yesterday that its first test of a solar sail for de-orbiting a small satellite ended successfully last month.
The CanX-7 (Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7) was a three-kilogram, 10x10x34cm satellite that was launched on September 26, 2016. The satellite was funded by the Defence Research and Development Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, COM DEV Ltd. (now Honeywell), and the Canadian Space Agency.
According to SFL [Space Flight Labs] “the satellite successfully completed a seven-month aircraft tracking campaign before deploying its drag sails in May 2017 to demonstrate drag-sail based deorbiting.” SFL said it took five years for the drag sail to deorbit the satellite and without it the satellite wouldn’t have burned up in the atmosphere for roughly another 178 year.
When the four drag sails, each about one square meter in size, were deployed, engineers immediately measured an increase in the orbital decay rate. Though it still took five years to force a de-orbit, the system removed the satellite from orbit much sooner than otherwise.
The system is aimed at the smallsat market, satellites too small for other proposed removal methods that also might remain stranded in orbit for a very long time because of their small size.
Nana Visitor – Fever
An evening pause: Another musical gem from the sixth season of the Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Astra launch a failure when upper stage shuts down prematurely
Capitalism in space: A launch attempt today by Astra of two NASA weather cubesats, designed to study the evolution of storms in the tropics, was a failure when the upper stage engine shut down prematurely.
This was the second launch failure for Astra out of three launch attempts in 2022. Both this failure and the February 10th failure occurred after the first stage has successfully done its job. The first was due to the failure of the fairings to separate. Today the fairing ejected properly, but then the second stage engine failed.
The launch however did illustrate something quite profound. Though it occurred about one hour and forty-three minutes into its two hour launch window, the launch team was able to recycle the count three times due to various issues and still launch. What makes this significant is that such quick countdown recycles have now become very routine.
When SpaceX did its first quick countdown recycle back during its first Falcon-1 launches in the 2000s it was astonishing, as NASA would never do such a thing. If a NASA shuttle launch aborted close to launch, the agency would always stand down for at least a day to figure things out. Even today, its ability to do a quick countdown recycle with its SLS rocket is almost impossible, as shown during its first attempt to do a dress rehearsal countdown of SLS in April. With each abort the agency had to reschedule for the next day or even later. It had little ability to quickly turn things around.
Private enterprise has since proven that such slow operations are inefficient and unnecessary.
Meanwhile, Astra needs to fix this issue and launch again. It was able to investigate and fix the fairing issue that caused that February launch failure in just over a month. Hopefully it can do the same again.
Momentus’s space tug successfully deploys two smallsats, despite communications issue
Capitalism in space: In a brief update released on May 31st, Momentus announced that despite the communications issues engineers are having with the communications system on its Vigoride space tug, it was still able to successfully deploy two smallsats several days earlier.
The update also says that the company plans “… to continue work to address the anomalies on the Vigoride spacecraft announced on May 27 and deploy additional customer satellites.”
Based on these updates, as well as the company’s description of this mission, it is not clear how many other smallsats still need to be deployed.
How tennis balls are made in a Pakistan factory
An evening pause: This was how things were done in the first century of the industrial revolution. Apparently, that century still exists in some places in today’s world.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Stratolaunch test flight of Roc ends prematurely
Capitalism in space: A recent Stratolaunch test flight of its giant carrier airplane Roc was ended prematurely because engineers had detected an unexpected “test result”.
“While completing Roc testing operations, we encountered a test result that made it clear we would not achieve all objectives for this flight,” the California-based company, which was created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen more than a decade ago, said in Twitter update. “We made the decision to land, review the data, and prepare for our next flight.”
The company has provided little additional information. The flight itself was planned to last as much as 3.5 hours, but only lasted about an hour and a half.
Stratolaunch’s present plan is to offer Roc and its Talon-A payload as a testbed for testing hypersonic flight.
Update on Starship in Texas and Florida
Link here. The article goes into great detail describing the status of the Superheavy booster prototype and the Starship prototype now planned for that first orbital launch, with this comment:
While some claim FAA is the hold up for Starship plans [I wonder who], even if the FAA had approved a launch in December of last year, SpaceX likely still would not have been ready for an orbital launch.
Maybe so, but why do journalists today have to bend over backwards making believe the federal government is not a problem, or is not interfering with this private company’s operations? It clearly is a problem, and is interfering with private companies, and it is doing so more and more for political reasons. Good reporting must note this.
The report also provides details on the status of SpaceX’s Florida Starship orbital launchpad. The company only began serious construction in Florida in April, yet large sections of the launch tower as well as its foundation have already been built. The pace of construction — as well as SpaceX’s past history building the Boca Chica launchpad — suggests this launchpad could be ready before the end of the year.
Compare that with NASA’s incompetent effort to build its SLS mobile launchers. The contrast is striking.
Amy Macdonald – Let’s Start A Band
An evening pause: Performed live 2017.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
Vulcan likely delayed until ’23
According to Eric Berger at Ars Technica, continuing delays with both the rocket’s payload and main engines, ULA’s Vulcan rocket will almost certainly not launch before the end of this year, as hoped by the company.
The rocket’s first stage BE-4 engines are being built by Blue Origin, and are already four years behind schedule. According to Berger’s sources, they will not be delivered to ULA until mid-August, which makes a launch in ’22 very unlikely, especially because both the engines and rocket are new, and will need time for fitting and further testing as a unit.
As for the payload, Berger’s assessment is not based on any new information. The payload, Astrobotic’s first lunar lander dubbed Peregrine, has also been experiencing delays, but the article provides no further information on whether it will miss its targets to be ready in ’22.
Regardless, it appears that Blue Origin is still dragging in its effort to build the BE-4 engine. If Vulcan cannot launch this year, it will threaten ULA’s long term future, since the company is depending on it to replace its Atlas-5 and Delta rockets. The delays now are allowing others to catch up and grab business that ULA might have garnered had Vulcan been operational as planned.
Turbo – Happy Birthday
An evening pause: I dare you not to smile. Or even laugh.
Hat tip Cotour.
SpaceX successfully launches Egyptian communications satellite
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched an Egyptian communications satellite using its Falcon 9 rocket.
The first stage completed its seventh flight, and landed safely on the drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
23 SpaceX
18 China
8 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 32 to 18 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 32 to 29.
Musk: Starlink will not go public until ’25 at the earliest
Capitalism in space: According to Elon Musk, a public sale of stock for the Starlink internet satellite constellation has now been pushed back another three to four years, and will not occur any earlier ’25.
His revised date means Starlink’s IPO has been delayed once again for another three years. In an email to SpaceX workers in 2019, also obtained by CNBC, Musk gave a three-year timeline for Starlink’s public offering, meaning an IPO could have taken place this year.
In 2020, Musk tweeted that Starlink would “probably IPO” in “several years.” He then tweeted in June 2021 that it would be “at least a few years before Starlink revenue is reasonably predictable” and taking it public any earlier would be “very painful.”
This quote however from Musk I think best describes his experience being in charge of a publicly traded company: “Being public is definitely an invitation to pain.”
France signs Artemis Accords
The U.S. State Department yesterday announced that France has become the twentieth nation to sign the Artemis Accords.
The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
France’s signing is a major breakthrough, as both it and Germany, major players in the European Space Agency, have appeared to resist signing on because to do so would have limited their ability to partner with Russia on space projects (Russia opposes the accords). The Ukraine War has apparently ended France’s resistance. It no longer has any partnerships with Russia, and is not likely to form any new ones in the near future.
We should expect Germany to sign on in the near future as well.
As I wrote in May, the future factions in space are now becoming clearer. On one side we have the American Alliance, signers of the accords who support private property. On the other we have Russia and China, who oppose the accords because they also oppose private property.
In May I also included a third faction, made up of non-aligned space powers. That faction now appears to be fading away, though it still includes Germany and India.
The Cure – Why Can’t I Be You
An evening pause: Boy, is he having fun singing this. From 2019.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
France re-approves Starlink service
Capitalism in space: After finally completing what France’s telecom bureaucracy ARCEP calls “a public consultation,” the French government once again approved Starlink service on June 2nd.
ARCEP had authorized Starlink in February 2021, however, France’s highest administrative court revoked the license April 5 after ruling that the regulator should have first launched a public consultation.
That ruling came after two French environmental activist organizations submitted an appeal to challenge Starlink’s frequency rights, citing concerns including the impact of megaconstellations on views of the night sky and space debris.
This approval, combined with recent approvals of Starlink in the Philippines and Nigeria, continues the steady expansion of Starlink service globally.
Fuel leak scrubs launch of Dragon cargo capsule this week
A fuel leak detected during fueling of hydrazine in a Dragon cargo capsule as it was being prepared for a June 10th launch has forced SpaceX and NASA to delay the launch.
SpaceX detected “elevated vapor readings” of monomethyl hydrazine, or MMH, fuel in an “isolated region” of the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system during propellant loading ahead of this week’s launch, NASA said in a statement.
The fueling of the Dragon spacecraft is one of the final steps to prepare the capsule for flight, and typically occurs just before SpaceX moves the craft to the launch pad for integration with its Falcon 9 rocket.
The Dragon spacecraft has propellant tanks containing hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The two propellants ignite upon contact with each other, providing an impulse for the cargo ship’s Draco thrusters used for in-orbit maneuvers.
Each Dragon spacecraft has 16 Draco thrusters, small rocket engines that generate about 90 pounds of thrust. The Draco engines are used for orbit adjustment burns and control the spacecraft’s approach to the space station, then fire at the end of the mission for a deorbit burn to guide the capsule back into the atmosphere for re-entry and splashdown.
According to the article, it is not yet confirmed that the leak came from the capsule. If so, however, it could become a more serious issue, especially with the recent story — denied strongly by NASA — that a hydrazine leak caused damage to the heat shield of Endeavour during the return of its Axiom commercial passenger flight.
Heart – Alone
An evening pause: Performed live 1987. I posted a pause of this group performing this song, with full orchestra, one year ago. This performance is more intimate with just the band. It also was done thirty years earlier, so they are younger and more intense.
Hat tip Tom Wilson.
New Shepard flies six passengers on suborbital hop
Capitalism in space: Blue Origin’s suborbital reusable spacecraft today completed its fifth passenger flight and 21st overall, carrying six people.