The new colonial movement: China’s Chang’e-5 return vehicle with its sample capsule attached has separated from the orbiter, and is now waiting in lunar orbit for its December 13th window for firing its engines for return to Earth.
The official state-run press article included little other information.
Capitalism in space: NASA officials have revealed that they are considering hiring commercial communications companies to build and launch a communications network of satellites to support its Mars science missions.
In recent presentations to advisory committees, NASA officials have discussed the possibility of working with industry to place several satellites into orbit around Mars that would serve as relays for other missions, notably the proposed Mars Ice Mapper. Such satellites, they said, could greatly increase the amount of data missions can return to Earth and end reliance on aging science missions that also serve as data relays.
One proposal presented at those meetings features three satellites in equatorial orbits at altitudes of 6,000 kilometers. The satellites would be equipped with radio links for communicating with other spacecraft in orbit and on the surface as well as to and from Earth. The satellites may also include laser intersatellite links to allow them to communicate with each other.
Based on the number of missions ongoing and planned for Mars, the agency has recognized it needs to establish a dedicated system for communicating with those missions, rather than depending on the science orbiters they have in orbit. That they are looking to commercial companies to build this for them, with NASA acting merely as a customer, as an excellent sign that the agency has now completely accept this approach, as I recommended in Capitalism in Space, rather than acting as the big boss that controls everything.
China yesterday launched a military surveillance satellite using its Long March 3B rocket.
No word on whether the first stage or its strap-on boosters landed on any homes, or whether they had grid fins for better controlling their descent, as China has tested previously.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
32 China
22 SpaceX
13 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S. still leads China in the national rankings, 35 to 32. That lead will hopefully widen in less than an hour with the first SpaceX launch of its second generation Dragon cargo freighter to ISS.
Click for full image.
The science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) late yesterday released an image taken of Chang’e-5 on the surface of the Moon. The image to the right, reduced to post here, is that photo.
China’s Chang’e 5 sample return spacecraft made a safe touchdown on the lunar surface at 10:11 EST (15:11 UTC) 01 December 2020. LRO passed over the site the following day and acquired an off-nadir (13° slew) image showing the lander centered within a triangle of craters.
The LROC team computed the coordinates of the lander to be 43.0576° N, 308.0839°E, –2570 m elevation, with an estimated accuracy of plus-or-minus 20 meters.
If all goes well, the return capsule, which lifted off from the Moon yesterday, will dock with the return vehicle in orbiter later today.
Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company Astra is now targeting December 7th for its second of three test launches in its program to develop an orbital commercial rocket.
Astra plans to launch its two-stage, 38-foot-tall (12 meters) Rocket 3.2 from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island between Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, representatives of the California startup announced last month. The window on each day runs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST (1900 to 2200 GMT; 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time in Alaska).
The orbital attempt will be the second for Astra, which aims to claim a sizable chunk of the small-satellite launch market with its line of flexible, cost-effective rockets. The first test flight, in September of this year, ended with a bang about 30 seconds after liftoff. Astra’s Rocket 3.1 experienced an apparent guidance issue, prompting controllers to terminate the flight for safety reasons.
They determined the failure was a software issue that they appear to have now fixed.
The company has made it clear that has always expected that it will take three launches to reach orbit, so a failure on this launch would not surprise them. They do seem very confident however that they will succeed this time.
The new commercial division of India’s space agency ISRO, dubbed the Department of Space (DoS), has signed a development deal with a new private Indian smallsat startup, Agnikul Cosmos, that has plans to build a rocket that will launch from Kodiak, Alaska in ’22.
More information here.
The agreement is designed to provide technical support to the company. Initially the company had only planned to launch from an ISRO launch facility in India. It now appears they are widening their goals to include an U.S. site as well, probably to encourage sales to American satellite companies.
Their rocket, 3D printed, also appears very small, and targets the smallest size smallsat market.
Capitalism in space: Aevum, a new entrant in the race to provide low cost reusable launch services for the emerging smallsat market, has unveiled the world’s largest drone, dubbed RAVN-X, designed to take off and land at airports and then release an upper stage rocket that takes the satellite into orbit.
RAVN-X is not the first air-launched rocket catering to the “smallsat” market. Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus system has flown dozens of times since the 1990s. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne failed in its first launch attempt earlier this year, will try again later this month with an attempt to launch 10 NASA-funded “CubeSats”—small satellites that typically weigh less than 10 kilograms each. But both Pegasus and LauncherOne use traditional, piloted jets, whereas Aevum’s driverless drone is unique, says Phil Smith, a senior analyst at Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm. Still, Smith says, RAVN-X is flying into a crowded market, with more than 100 small launch vehicles in development. “There’s a plethora of systems out there,” he says. “There isn’t room for more than perhaps three to five or so.”
According to the article, Aevum already has a billion dollars in launch contracts with the Space Force. They are targeting ’21 for their first orbital flight.
Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed a contract with a private company, ClearSpace SA, for the first dedicated commercial mission to remove a piece of orbiting space junk.
ESA officials signed a contract with ClearSpace on Nov 13. to complete the safe deorbiting of a payload adapter launched aboard the second flight of the Arianespace Vega rocket in 2013.
Unlike traditional ESA contracts that involve the agency procuring and coordinating the mission, ClearSpace-1 is a contract to purchase a service: the safe removal of a piece of space debris. ESA officials said they intend this mission to help establish a new commercial sector led by European industry. The 86 million euros supplied by ESA will be supplemented with an additional 24 million euros ClearSpace is raising from commercial investors. Approximately 14 million euros of the privately-raised funding will be utilized for the mission, while the remaining 10 million will be set aside for contingencies, ESA spokesperson Valeria Andreoni told SpaceNews.
First, that the ESA has decided here to shift from running the mission and to merely being the customer buying the product from a private company is magnificent news. Europe has been, like NASA was in the 2000s, very reluctant to give up its total control in the design, construction, and launch of rockets and spacecraft. That they are now mimicking NASA’s own shift in the 2010s to this private model, as I outlined in detail in Capitalism in Space, means that ESA’s bureaucracy is finally coming around to the idea of freedom, capitalism, and private enterprise. What a thing!
Second, though this mission is commercial, it isn’t really a practical economic solution to the removal of most space junk. The contract will cost $104 million, plus the additional private capital ClearSpace has raised. None of this appears to include the launch cost. Yet, it will only remove one defunct object in orbit.
Such a technology will be useful for removing specific large pieces of space junk that pose a risk should they crash to Earth. It will not be economically useful for removing the small junk in orbit that threatens other working satellites and spacecraft. For that technology to be cost effective it will need to be able to clean up many objects on a single flight.
Capitalism in space: The space tourism balloon company Space Perspectives has now raised $7 million for the initial development of their Neptune stratospheric balloon, designed to take tourists up to about 30 miles for long flights at the edge of space.
The company, with about 15 employees currently, will use the funding to continue development of Spaceship Neptune, a stratospheric balloon system designed to carry people to an altitude of 30 kilometers. Such flights would give people an experience similar to some aspects of spaceflight, notably the view.
A first test flight of the system, without people on board, is scheduled for the first half of 2021 from the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “It will really take us through the concept of operations” of the system, Taber MacCallum, co-founder and co-chief executive of Space Perspective, said in an interview. “It allows us to jump into serious hardware testing.”
If all goes well, they plan to begin selling tickets next year as well, with the first commercial flight targeted for ’24. This funding round also likely puts the company ahead of its two Spanish competitors, who are presently tied up in litigation against each other.
The article also quotes company officials as lauding the FAA’s new revised licensing procedures, the first industry response I’ve seen to these new licensing procedures. The new rules [pdf] required a document 785 pages long (actually larger than the FAA’s first proposed revision), making it hard to determine their effect — for good or ill — without actually using them. This positive review by an industry user is a very positive sign.
Click for LabPadre live stream from which this still was captured.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now scheduled the first 9-mile-high flight of its 8th Starship prototype for either December 4th, 5th, or 6th.
On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction for SpaceX to conduct a Starship launch from its facility near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. The notification allows the company to attempt a Starship hop on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, between the hours of 9am EST (14:00 UTC) and 6pm EST (23:00 UTC) daily. SpaceX must still obtain a launch license from the FAA for this flight.
The company’s founder and chief engineer, Elon Musk, has said SpaceX will attempt to fly Starship to an altitude of 15km to demonstrate the performance of three Raptor engines over the course of several minutes. The company’s previous flights to about 150 meters, in August and September, used a single Raptor engine.
This higher flight profile will take Starship above nearly 90 percent of Earth’s atmosphere, which will allow the company to do several new tests: assess the performance of body flaps on Starship, transition from using propellant from the main fuel tanks to smaller ones used for landing burns, and test the vehicle’s ability to reorient itself for returning to the launch site.
Look closely at the screen capture of Starship above. Note how there is no launch tower at all, and that the launchpad is simply a platform on which the ship sits. This lack indicates two things. First, the ship’s large diameter gives it a much lower center of gravity compared to all other rockets. It doesn’t need the launch tower for support. This is why SpaceX can move it back and forth from the assembly building on the equivalent of a large flatbed truck.
Second, the lack illustrates SpaceX’s lean and mean engineering style. When this spacecraft finally launches to orbit on top of a Super Heavy first stage, it will certainly need a launch tower, not so much for support but to fuel it and allow access to and from while on the launchpad. None of this infrastructure however is needed now for the ongoing development work. Why waste money and time building it when they don’t yet know the exact specifications of the final rocket itself?
SpaceX is taking advantage of the first point to do the second, thus speeding development and lowering its cost.
UPDATE: The official state-run Chinese press has announced that the ascent capsule with the lunar samples has lifted off from the Moon. The rendezvous and docking is next, which is likely the most difficult technical task for the autonomous unmanned probe. No word yet on when that will occur.
Original post:
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The new colonial movement: China’s Chang’e-5 lunar lander has completed its sample collection on the Moon, and is set to lift-off sometime today for a rendezvous and docking with its return vehicle in lunar orbit.
The milestone signaled the start of the mission’s return voyage, which includes an ambitious series of automated maneuvers to blast off from the lunar surface Thursday and rendezvous with an orbiter circling the moon. Chang’e 5 will attempt the first-ever docking between two robotic spacecraft in lunar orbit, then transfer the moon rock container into the return craft.
If all goes according to plan, Chang’e 5’s sample container should re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and parachute to a landing in China’s Inner Mongolia region around Dec. 16.
If successful, this will the ninth spacecraft to bring samples back from the Moon, and the first since the 1970s. It will also firmly establish China as a major space power that is presently competitive to the U.S. and has also bypassed Russia completely. Even though it is likely they stole much of the technology for doing such planetary missions, China’s engineers have done a good job of refining and improving the engineering, as shown by the number of firsts being achieved by this Chang’e-5 mission.
Click for full image.
The new colonial movement: China’s state-run press has now released several images taken by Chang’e-5 on the lunar surface, including movies showing the landing and the ongoing digging operations.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is part of a fisheye panorama of the entire landing site. I have cropped it to show only the central part. Except for the distant mountain, the terrain is very flat, which is not surprising as this is the Ocean of Storms mare.
Note however how deep the landing pad is pressed into the ground. This gives a sense of the dust layer that covers the surface.
The link above, as well as this link, show additional images as well as the two movies.
Take off is next, followed by the autonomous rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit with the craft that will bring the sample capsule back to Earth sometime around December 16.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has now provided a detailed update on the company’s first successful recovery of the first stage of their Electron rocket from the ocean on November 19, 2020.
Much of the press release reiterates what the company CEO Peter Beck said on November 24th, but in much better engineering detail. Key finding:
The stage held up remarkably well – not bad after experiencing the trip to space and back in just 13 minutes. The carbon composite structure was completely intact. As expected, the heatshield on the base of the stage suffered some heat damage during re-entry. It was never designed for this load case, but before we strengthen the heat shield we wanted to see just how much heat it could take unchanged. With a wealth of data on this now, our team has already started working on upgrades for future recovery missions.
They also intend to re-fly some components from that stage. I have embedded below the fold their footage taken during from the inside of the first stage during its splashdown.
The next recovery attempt in early ’21 will also splash down in the ocean. Before they attempt a helicopter snatch from the air they want gather more data.
» Read more
The new colonial movement: According to the state-run Chinese press, Chang’e-5 has successfully obtained its first lunar sample from a 2-meter deep drilled hole.
After making a successful soft landing at 11:00 p.m. BJT on Tuesday, the lander started rolling out its solar panel wings and unlocking some of the payloads onboard to prepare for sample collection.
The lander first drilled a 2-meter-deep hole, digging out soil, and sealed it up at 4:53 a.m. on Wednesday [today]. Next, it will use its robotic arms to scoop up more samples from the lunar surface for backup.
If all goes right, they will collect a second sample from the surface using a scoop, and then the ascent capsule will take off tomorrow. It will then rendezvous and dock with the orbiter and return capsule.
Capitalism in space: Arianespace tonight successfully launched a United Arab Emirates (UAE) military reconnaissance satellite from French Guiana, using Russian Soyuz-2 rocket.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
31 China
22 SpaceX
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S. continues to lead China 35 to 31 in the national rankings.
Click for full image.
The new colonial movement: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team today released an update of the travels of China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover, presently operating on the far side of the Moon.
The photo to the right, reduced and annotated to post here, shows the rover’s present position, having traveled about 1,650 feet to the northwest in the 22 months since landing. The goal, according to Yutu-2’s science team, is to get the rover beyond the present ejecta field of debris thrown from a large impact to the north, and reach a basalt covered region about a mile away. At the pace they are setting, about 100 feet per lunar day, it is going to take them about another three years to get there. Whether the rover will last that long is the question, but I suspect they are hopeful, based on the almost two years of operations so far.
If you go to the link you can also see a short movie showing month-by-month where the rover ended up when it shut down for each long lunar night.
The new colonial movement: According to official Chinese reports, Chang’e-5 has successfully soft-landed on the Moon in preparation for its gathering of samples to bring back to Earth.
The Chang’e 5 lander began final descent at 09:58 EST (14:58 UTC) with an expected touchdown 15 minutes later at 10:13 EST (15:13 UTC).
All broadcasts of the event were abruptly stopped just before the landing burn was to begin — throwing the mission into question with CCTV in China at first saying landing coverage would resume at 21:00 EST — an 11 hour delay to the landing. Minutes later, official sources — via social media — proclaimed a successful landing.
Blocking a broadcast like this is very typical of totalitarian governments, and totalitarian societies. Think about that the next time Youtube or Google or Facebook or Twitter or an American university silences speech they don’t like.
As for the lander, all other news reports that I have so far found provide no further details. It appears that all we know comes from a single sentence announcement of success from the Chinese press.
The failure of a power unit on the Orion capsule slated to fly on SLS’s first test flight late in ’21 could delay that test flight by as much as an additional year.
Replacing the PDU isn’t easy. The component is difficult to reach: it’s located inside an adapter that connects Orion to its service module — a cylindrical trunk that provides support, propulsion, and power for the capsule during its trip through space. To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation.
Lockheed has another option, but it’s never been done before and may carry extra risks, Lockheed Martin engineers acknowledge in their presentation. To do it, engineers would have to tunnel through the adapter’s exterior by removing some of the outer panels of the adapter to get to the PDU. The panels weren’t designed to be removed this way, but this scenario may only take up to four months to complete if engineers figure out a way to do it.
A third option is that Lockheed Martin and NASA could fly the Orion capsule as is. The PDU failed in such a way that it lost redundancy within the unit, so it can still function. But at a risk-averse agency like NASA, flying a vehicle without a backup plan is not exactly an attractive option. It’s still not clear what went wrong inside the unit, which was tested before it was installed on the spacecraft, according to a person familiar with the matter.
None of these options are good. The first two will certainly delay the planned November 2021 launch, which by the way is already four years behind schedule. The third will risk a failure of the mission, which though unmanned would certainly lead to further delays in the manned mission expected one or two years later.
That they don’t know why the unit failed and cannot fix it easily speaks very badly to the design of Orion and SLS. Compare this with SpaceX, which in the past month has demonstrated it can in only days switch out engines on both its commercial Falcon 9 rocket and its new next generation Starship rocket. Moreover, SpaceX has demonstrated repeatedly that once they identify an issue they move immediately to understand it and fix it.
With NASA, Orion, and Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin, such flexibility and agility appears all but impossible. They have designed a monster that cannot be fixed easily, cannot launched quickly, and costs an ungodly amount of money.
I increasingly believe that Starship will reach orbit before SLS/Orion, even though the latter has been in development for almost three times longer, and will cost 25 times more.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has apparently decided to do an additional static fire engine test with its eighth Starship prototype tomorrow, November 30th, thus rescheduling the 50,000 foot vertical hop for December 2nd.
The link goes to the LabPadre live stream, running 24-hours per day.
More details here.
The new colonial movement: China’s lunar sample return probe Chang’e-5 has now entered in lunar orbit, with its landing to occur in three days.
Over the next week, the probe, composed of four parts – the orbiter, lander, ascender and Earth re-entry module – will perform multiple complicated tasks on a tight schedule.
The four parts will separate into two pairs. The lander and ascender will head to the moon and collect samples, while the orbiter and Earth re-entry module will continue to fly around the moon and adjust to a designated orbit, getting ready for the docking with the ascender.
The landing operation is expected in three days. Once touched down on the lunar surface, the lander will collect two kilograms of lunar sample.
The plan once on the surface is to gather a sample from the surface as well as from a six-foot deep core sample.
