Paul Davis – I go Crazy
An evening pause: Performed live on television, probably sometime in the 1970s.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Tag: commercial
Tomorrow’s landing of Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lunar lander
Nova-C is Odysseus’s landing spot
NASA has now announced its planned live stream coverage of tomorrow’s landing attempt of Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lunar lander near the south pole of the Moon.
Intuitive Machines is targeting no earlier than 5:49 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 22, to land their Odysseus lunar lander near Malapert A in the South Pole region of the Moon.
Live landing coverage will air on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. NASA TV can be streamed on a variety of platforms, including social media. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates beginning 4:15 p.m., as the landing milestones occur. Upon successful landing, Intuitive Machines and NASA will host a news conference to discuss the mission and science opportunities that lie ahead as the company begins lunar surface operations.
No live stream is of course active yet. When it goes live tomorrow afternoon I will embed the youtube broadcast here on Behind the Black.
If successful, Odysseus will be the first American landing on the Moon since the manned Apollo missions more than a half century ago. It will also mark the first successful lunar landing achieved by a privately-built spacecraft. Companies from Israel, Japan, and the U.S. have already tried and failed.
Space Perspective unveils test balloon capsule for unmanned test flights
The high altitude balloon company Space Perspective yesterday unveiled the test balloon capsule, dubbed Excelsior, which it plans to use for a program of ten flights beginning this year, prior to beginning manned flights on its Neptune manned capsule, shown in the graphic to the right.
Neptune is designed to take eight passengers to altitudes of twenty miles for several hours, not quite space but high enough to see the curvature of the Earth. The company had said in 2022 it would begin commercial flights by the end of 2024, but it now says it is targeting 2025.
Florida-based Space Perspective is one of two American companies attempting to fly high altitude balloon flights for tourists, with Tucson-based World View the other. There is presently no word when World View will begin its first manned flights.
Firefly: Software caused failure of upper stage in December
According to the rocket startup Firefly, a software issue prevented the engine on the upper stage of its Alpha rocket from firing its final burn, leaving a Lockheed Martin satellite in the wrong orbit.
In a Feb. 20 statement, Firefly said an error with the guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software for the upper stage of the Alpha on the company’s “Fly the Lightning” mission Dec. 22 kept the upper stage from firing as planned to circularize its orbit. That left the upper stage and its payload, a Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite, in an orbit with a low perigee.
The investigation, which included the company’s own mishap team as well as an independent review, found that the error in the GNC software algorithm “prevented the system from sending the necessary pulse commands to the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters ahead of the stage two engine relight.” Firefly didn’t elaborate on the issue, but the RCS thrusters likely would have been used to ensure the stage was in the proper orientation and to settle its tanks so propellant would flow from them into the engine.
From this description it appears the attitude thrusters (RCS) had not worked correctly, and this made it impossible for the main engine to fire, either because the computer sensed it was in the wrong orientation, or its fuel could not flow properly to the engine.
The company says it has made corrections, and still expects to launch four times this year.
SpaceX launches Indonesian communications satellite
SpaceX today successfully launched an Indonesian communications satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
Indonesia’s reasons for buying SpaceX’s launch services are explained here. The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
16 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia
2 Japan
2 India
2 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 19 to 16, with SpaceX now tied 16 to 16 with the entire world combined (excluding American companies).
The Doobie Brothers – Jesus Is Just Alright with Me
An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1973. Back then, a song like this was entirely okay for a mainstream band to perform and mainstream TV show to air. Today, such songs are put into a “Christian music” ghetto, regardless of their quality.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
How SpaceX got Indonesia’s business
Link here. The article describes not only how Elon Musk and SpaceX persuaded the Indonesian government to buy Falcon 9 launches and introduce Starlink into its country, it describes how a Chinese launch failure contributed as well.
When a Chinese rocket malfunctioned shortly after launch in April 2020, destroying Indonesia’s $220 million Nusantara-2 satellite, it was a blow to the archipelago’s efforts to strengthen its communication networks. But it presented an opportunity for one man. Elon Musk – the owner of SpaceX, the world’s most successful rocket launcher – seized on the failure to prevail over state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corp (CGWIC) as Jakarta’s company of choice for putting satellites into space.
The most fascinated aspect of the article for me however was its effort to create a sense that the U.S. government dislikes SpaceX’s independence.
But the U.S. government and military are concerned about their reliance on SpaceX, especially given Musk’s muscular business style, according to one current and one former U.S. official working on space policy. While legacy U.S. defence contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin typically consult the State Department before making foreign deals, Musk and SpaceX dealt directly with Jakarta, the two officials said.
…Nicholas Eftimiades, a former U.S. intelligence officer and expert on Chinese espionage operations at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said SpaceX’s CEO had ruffled some feathers in the U.S. capital: “Elon Musk does things his way and some officials don’t like that”.
The only Pentagon official quoted however had nothing negative to say about SpaceX.
It is likely there are officials in the Pentagon who want SpaceX to crash and fail, especially considering the full court press by many agencies against SpaceX since Biden became president. It is also likely that Reuters, which published this article, wants that full court press to succeed, and is eager to spin any SpaceX success badly, if it can. In general today mainstream press sources like Reuters operate as arms of the Democratic Party. If Biden wants SpaceX killed, so will Reuters.
No matter. The article can’t help describing why SpaceX is successful. It competes aggressively, and wins customers because it produces products that work, reliably.
Australian rocket startup raises $36 million in private investment capital
The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space has now raised $36 million in private investment capital in its most recent fund-raising round. The company had previously raised $46 million.
The funding supports the small launch vehicle startup’s campaign to manufacture, test and begin launching rockets and satellites from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland.
Gilmour Space, founded in 2012, is developing a three-stage rocket called Eris. The first Eris test flight is expected “in the coming months, pending launch approvals from the Australian Space Agency,” according to the Gilmour Space news release. A second test flight is expected later this year and commercial launches are scheduled to begin in 2025. [emphasis mine]
The map to the right shows both the location of Gilmour’s Bowen launch site, but also that of Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), which is building a spaceport open to all rocket companies.
Gilmour had originally announced plans for an April 2023 launch. Though it is not surprising for a new rocket company to experience delays in developing a new rocket, the highlighted phrase in the quote above, which has appeared in a previous story in September 2023 about the delays at Gilmore, strongly suggests Australia’s government might be a problem as well. Its legal framework is strongly influcenced by Great Britain’s, which has turned out to be a nightmare for both rocket companies and spaceports. That approvals have been pending now for many months is further evidence this is so.
Dave Mason – We just disagree
An evening pause: Hat tip Cotour.
ESA awards Spanish launch startup PLD a million-plus development contract
Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) today awarded the Spanish launch startup PLD a €1.3 million contract to develop a payload deployment system for its Miura-5 orbital rocket, expected to make its first launch in 2025.
Designed to release all types of satellites with as much flexibility as possible, the payload system – called MOSPA for Modular Solution for Payload Adapter – will allow PLD Space to offer its customers a wider range of missions and services, including accommodation of CubeSats, nanosatellites and microsatellites. The development of the modular payload adapter will be done in partnership with OCCAM Space. The goal is to create the hardware to be as light as possible while also being as adaptable as possible to launch more satellites and meet market demands.
“PLD space has proven itself with its first launch last year, and we look forward to seeing the experience applied to the Miura 5 launch services development,” says ESA’s Jorgen Bru, “The payload adapter development engaged today was chosen to increase market competitiveness and ensure that many different types of satellites and customers can fly.”
This contract once again signals ESA’s shift from depending solely on its own launch company, Arianespace, to instead obtaining launch contracts from as many private, independent, and competing European companies as possible. Arianespace, for many reasons (some not its fault), failed to develop rockets capable of competing with SpaceX, and also failed to get them developed on time. ESA presently has no launch capability, and has had to sign contracts with SpaceX to get its payloads into orbit.
The shift is ground-shaking. It suggests that in the next two decades Europe should have a half dozen competing rocket companies of its own, all striving for business and thus all working hard to come up with ways to reduce launch costs. Under the Arianespace monopoly, little innovation took place, launch costs never dropped, and though for many years it controlled a majority of the launch market, it could never make a profit.
Rocket Lab successfully launches Japanese commercial space junk demo satellite
Rocket Lab today successfully launched a commercial test mission of commercial space junk removal satellite, dubbed ADRAS-J and built by the Japanese company Astroscale, in partner with Japan’s space agency JAXA. It is designed to demonstrate the ability to make a close rendezvous of a large piece of space junk and then photograph and inspect it closely to determing it precise condition to facilitate later removal efforts.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
15 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia
2 Japan
2 India
2 Rocket Lab
A lot of launch entities grouped at 2. Expect Iran and Japan to fall away as Russia, India, and Rocket Lab continue to launch regularly this year, with Russia and Rocket Lab eventually outpacing India.
American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 18 to 16, with SpaceX still trailing the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 15 to 16.
Maurice Jarre – Lawrence of Arabia
An evening pause: Performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. I think this makes for a good way to start the weekend. If you have time, get the movie and watch it. One of the greatest ever made.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.