Fiona Apple & Elvis Costello – I Want You
An evening pause: Performed live 2006.
Hat tip Lee Stevenson.
Tag: commercial
NASA announces winners in its annual school manned rover design competition
NASA today announced the winning teams in its annual competition for high schools and colleges to come up with the best new designs for manned rovers capable of operating on other worlds.
The annual engineering competition – one of NASA’s longest standing challenges – held its concluding event Friday, April 21 to Saturday, April 22, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
More than 500 students from around the world participated during HERC’s 29th anniversary competition. Student teams represented 16 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, as well as the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, India, Mexico, Peru, and Singapore. Teams were awarded points based on navigating a half-mile obstacle course, conducting mission-specific task challenges, and completing multiple safety and design reviews with NASA engineers.
The first place winners were teams from Escambia High School from Florida and the University of Alabama. NASA also listed winners in a whole range of other categories (“crash and burn”, “pit crew”, “social media”), many of which appear designed simply to make sure everyone got a participation award.
NASA awards 12 companies small development contracts with total value $14.5 million
NASA today announced it has awarded twelve different space companies small development contracts, total value $14.5 million, for developing new technologies ranging from new welding techniques to new thermal protection systems to better lunar rover tires.
The companies are also a wide mix, from large well-established giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing to new startups like Blue Origin and Sierra Space.
SpaceX leases second launchpad at Vandenberg
SpaceX announced yesterday that it has leased a second launchpad at Vandenberg, taking over the pad that ULA previously leased for use by its Delta family of rockets, now being phased out.
The site will be used to launch “Falcon rockets”, which suggests both the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy. All told, SpaceX now has six launchsites, three at Cape Canaveral, two at Vandenberg, and one at Boca Chica, with the Starship/Superheavy site at Kennedy presently under construction.
The launchpad at Vandenberg, dubbed SLC-6 (pronounced “slick-6”), was originally built to launch the space shuttle, something that never happened. When I got a tour of Vandenberg in 2015 I took some good pictures of it.
It is very likely SpaceX will make major changes, as it did to the shuttle launchsite it took over at Kennedy.
Rocket engine company Ursa Major raises $100 million in private investment capital
The American rocket engine company Ursa Major recently raised an additional $100 million in private investment capital, on top of the $85 million it raised last year.
All told, the company has raised $234 million. Its Hadley engine presently has contracts with rocket startups Astra and Phantom, the hypersonic missile testing company Stratolaunch, and the Air Force. It is also developing two larger engines, the Ripley and the Arroway, the latter designed to replace Russian engines previously used by American companies.
Samba – Bamboleo
An evening pause: Stay with it, the second and third dancing couples in this compilation are especially good. This isn’t Astaire & Rogers, but it is superbly done, nonetheless.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Hakuto-R1 lands on Moon but ceases communications at touchdown
Hakuto-R1’s planned landing site is in Atlas Crater.
According to the Hakuto-R1 engineering team, the lander provided full data and maintained communications right up until touchdown, but at that point they lost contact with the spacecraft.
The loss of data at landing suggests something went wrong at touchdown. That they were able to maintain contact until then, and the data appeared correct, suggests that the spacecraft descended properly into Atlas Crater, but then touched down on some rough ground that either caused it to topple, or damaged it on contact.
This remains speculation however. We will have to wait for a full update from Ispace.
This was a engineering mission to test the company’s spacecraft design and its ability to operate a lunar mission. The failure at landing means it achieved about 8 to 9 of its 10 milestones. How this final failure will effect its next mission as well as its contract with NASA remains unclear.
Astra confirms it is buying Ursa Major rocket engines for its Rocket-4 upper stage
Astra yesterday confirmed that it will be buying Ursa Major’s Hadley rocket engine for the upper stage of its Rocket-4, now tentatively scheduled for a first test launch later this year.
Astra has been tight-lipped about the new upper stage engine that would power its new Rocket 4, with CEO Chris Kemp only telling investors last year that the rocket’s substantially increased payload capacity was thanks in part to engine upgrades. Outsourcing the engine helps clarify how Astra was able to so quickly pivot its plans for Rocket 4, including doubling the launch vehicle’s payload capacity from 300 kilograms to 600 kilograms.
Ursa Major has already sold engines to several rocket companies and the government, including Phantom, Vector, Stratolaunch, and the Air Force. It is also building two different larger engines, Ripley and Arroway, with the latter aimed at replacing the engines Russia provided to ULA and Northrop Grumman.
Watching live the landing of Hakuto-R1 on the Moon
I have embedded below the live stream of Hakuto-R1’s landing on the Moon, scheduled for today. The original landing time was targeting “approximately” 8:40 (Pacific), but it is now past that. That time might actually have indicated the start of the live stream. The lander is presently out of contact, on the far side of the Moon.
The landing is targeting the floor of Atlas Crater, located in the northeast quadrant of the visible hemisphere of the Moon.
Update on lunar orbiter CAPSTONE
Link here. The update comes from Advanced Space, the commercial company tasked by NASA with operating the orbiter, whose main goal its to test operations in the type of orbit around the Moon that NASA plans to put its Lunar Gateway space station, dubbed a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).
Thus far, since performing the NRHO insertion maneuver on November 13th, 2022, the spacecraft has spent 154 days operating in the NRHO completing 23 NRHO revolutions. During this time, the mission team has maintained knowledge of the spacecraft state well within the mission requirements using ground-based navigation tools and tracking measurements collected by the Deep Space Network including DSS-17 which is an affiliated site at Morehead State University in Kentucky. This navigation information has continued to support the design and execution of required maneuvers to maintain the orbit.
Minimum maneuver size constraints have been sequentially reduced as the combined mission operations teams at Advanced Space, Terran Orbital, and Stellar Exploration continue to mitigate issues with a thruster valve. Since entering the NRHO the spacecraft has executed six Orbit Maintenance Maneuvers (OMM) using approximately 1.8 m/s of fuel. Although the mission plan was originally to do a maneuver every NRHO (approximately once a week), the higher burn threshold has reduced the number of maneuvers performed while also demonstrating the robustness of the stationkeeping strategy utilized by the mission which is the same strategy planned for the Lunar Gateway.
CAPSTONE’s primary mission ends in May, but it will continue on an extended mission for twelve more months.
Though CAPSTONE has provided NASA important orbital data for maintaining Lunar Gateway in lunar orbit, the orbiter’s biggest achievement is its commercial nature. NASA hired Terran Orbital to build it, Rocket Lab to launch it, and Advanced Space to operate it. There was relatively little government participation. Moreover, this privately-run project has demonstrated that an inexpensive smallsat can quickly accomplish the same things that once only big expensive satellites attempted.
India’s PSLV rocket successfully launches two Singapore satellites
India’s PSLV rocket today successfully put two Singapore satellites into orbit, one a radar satellite and the other a large cubesat testing smallsat communication technologies.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
25 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 India
American private enterprise still leads China 28 to 16 in the national rankings, and is tied at 28 with the entire world combined.
The view from the racecar of the Le Mans race course, as seen in 1968
An evening pause: From the youtube page:
This amazing piece of ground breaking onboard footage allows us to ride onboard one of the Gulf sponsored JWA Ford GT40s for a lap of the Le Mans circuit in 1968. This early onboard coverage was such a big deal, Stirling Moss does the narration. Its cool to see the Le Mans circuit as it was, without chicanes and with primitive safety features.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.