Tag: engineering

Stoke Space test fires its first stage engine for the first time

10:02 am

The rocket startup Stoke Space has successfully completed the first static fire test of the methane-fueled rocket engine that will be used on the first stage of its entirely reusable Nova rocket.

The engine, designed to produce up to 100,000 pounds-force of thrust, went up to 50% of its rated thrust in the two-second test. The goal of the test was to see how the engine started up and shut down, Andy Lapsa, chief executive of Stoke, said in an interview. “All of the complexity and a lot of the risk is in that startup transient and shutdown transient,” he said. “The duration of the test was short because the goal was to demonstrate the transient and then back out.”

The engine uses a design called full-flow staged combustion, where both the engine’s fuel and oxidizer — liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen, respectively — go through separate preburners before going into the main combustion chamber. That approach offers greater efficiency and a longer engine life, but is more complex to develop. It is currently used only on SpaceX’s Raptor engines that power its Starship vehicle.

The rocket’s upper stage uses hydrogen as its fuel, as well as a radical nozzle design. Instead of a single large nozzle, the thrust is released from a ring of tiny outlets at the permeter of the stage. It is hoped this design will better protect the system during re-entry from orbit, while allowing for more precise control upon landing, and thus make it possible to reuse the upper stage.

The first test launch is presently scheduled for 2025. This new engine test makes that date more realistic.

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Starliner at ISS: One thruster shut down, another helium leak found, and a new valve issue

9:45 am

According to an update from NASA yesterday, engineers are evaluating three different on-going technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule, presently docked at ISS.

First, of the 28 attitude thrusters on the capsule’s service module, one remains what NASA calls “deselected”, which means it is presently shut down and not in the loop during operations.

Ground teams plan to fire all 28 RCS thrusters after undocking to collect additional data signatures on the service module thrusters before the hardware is expended.

Since the service module is ejected and burns up in the atmosphere, they want to test each thruster beforehand, probably one-by-one to gather as much data as possible. They have to do this after undocking because testing the thrusters while attached to ISS is too risky.

Second, it appears engineers have detected a fifth small helium leak.
» Read more

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Evidence of giant asteroid collision in debris disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris

9:48 am

Data difference between Spitzer and Webb
Click for original figure.

Scientists comparing infrared data collected twenty years apart — first by the Spitzer Space Telescope and then by the Webb Space Telescope — think they have detected evidence of a gigantic asteroid collision in the debris disk that surrounds the very young star Beta Pictoris, located 63 light years away.

The graph to the right shows the change found between the observations. From the caption:

Scientists theorize that the massive amount of dust seen in the 2004–05 image from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicates a collision of asteroids that had largely cleared by the time the James Webb Space Telescope captured its images in 2023.

…When Spitzer collected the earlier data, scientists assumed something like small bodies grinding down would stir and replenish the dust steadily over time. But Webb’s new observations show the dust disappeared and was not replaced. The amount of dust kicked up is about 100,000 times the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, Chen said.

It is believed by scientists that the debris disk that surrounds Beta Pictoris is comparable to the early solar system when the planets first started to form. This collision could be similar to the kind of collision that is thought to have formed the Moon, when a large Mars-sized object smashed into the early Earth.

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Scientists: Water frost detected in calderas of four Martian volcanos

9:33 am

Frost found on four Martian volcanoes

Scientists using data from two European Mars orbiters think they have detected patches of transient water frost in the calderas of four Martian volcanos, all located in the dry equatorial regions of Mars where previously no near-surface ice has been seen.

According to the study, the frost is present for only a few hours after sunrise before it evaporates in sunlight. The frost is also incredibly thin — likely only one-hundredth of a millimeter thick or about the width of a human hair. Still, it’s quite vast. The researchers calculate the frost constitutes at least 150,000 tons of water that swaps between the surface and atmosphere each day during the cold seasons. That’s the equivalent of roughly 60 Olympic-size swimming pools.

You can read the research paper here. The volcanoes with frost were Olympus Mons, Arsia Mons, Ascraeus Mons, and Ceraunius Tholus, as shown by the blue dots on the overview map to the right. All are in the dry tropics of Mars.

The researchers believe the frost comes from the atmosphere, like dew forming in the morning on Earth. For it to take place at these high elevations on Mars however is astonishing. At these high elevations the atmosphere is extremely thin. Furthermore, the dry tropics have so far been found to contain no near-surface water or ice to fuel these processes.

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Starliner’s stay at ISS extended several days

9:10 am

NASA revealed yesterday that it has extended the time that Boeing’s Starliner capsule will remained docked at ISS several days, with undocking now set for June 18, 2024.

New station visitors Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both veteran NASA astronauts, learned on Sunday they will orbit Earth until June 18 before returning home aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The extra days in space will allow teams more time to checkout Starliner’s systems and free up the Expedition crew’s schedule for more spacewalk preparations.

I also suspect that Boeing engineers wanted more time to analyze the data on Starliner’s attitude thrusters and why several failed to work on the flight up to the station. Once the spacecraft undocks with Wilmore and Williams, it will be esssential for those thrusters to work reliably to get both home safely. The capsule can return home even with some of the spacecraft’s 28 attitude thrusters non-functioning, but if a failure occurs at an unexpected moment the results could still be bad.

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French startup gets another space station cargo contract

9:02 am

The French startup The Exploration Company has gotten its fourth contract for its proposed Nyx unmanned reusable cargo capsule, signing a deal with Vast to fly one freighter mission to its proposed second Haven station.

This startup, which has not yet flown anything, already had contracts to fly one cargo mission to ISS (a demo mission for the European Space Agency), one to Axiom’s space station, and three to Voyager Space’s Starlab station. This new contract means The Exploration Company already has a manifest of six missions.

These contracts pose a puzzle. Why is this startup getting all these deals, but not Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus or SpaceX’s Dragon capsules? Or have these two American companies signed deals without the same PR splash?

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Bill Anders, the thoughtful astronaut who liked to go fast

12:27 pm

Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968 launch of Apollo 8
Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968
launch of Apollo 8

The death of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on June 7, 2024 requires that I give the public my own personal taste of the man, whom I met and interviewed when I was writing my 1998 history of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8.

The first time I met Bill Anders was in 1997. Anders had told me to fly into Los Angeles for our first interview. A few days before my arrival, however, his wife Valerie realized that both she and Anders would not be in Los Angeles, but in San Diego.

Rather than have me change flights, Anders agreed to drive up to LA, pick me up at the airport, and drive me to San Diego so I could interview Valerie. During the two hour drive I would be able to interview him.

Anders was waiting for me as I exited the terminal. As I have noticed routinely, he seemed much smaller than I expected, as does every astronaut at first meeting. Anders guided me to a low-slung sports car, which he slid into with ease. I — being 6′ 4″ — had to crowbar my way in.

And then Anders demonstrated instantly one reason he was chosen to fly to the Moon. He started the car, and backed out of the parking space and out of the lot at what seemed to me to be about seventy miles an hour. And he did it with total control.
» Read more

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After only seven commercial flights, Virgin Galactic retires Unity

9:33 am

The delays have never really ended: After only seven commercial flights (the most recent this past weekend), Virgin Galactic has now retired its Unity suborbital spacecraft, and will cease flights for two years while it builds a new generation suborbital craft.

Virgin Galactic flew the last commercial flight of Virgin SpaceShip (VSS) Unity yesterday. Future suborbital trips will have to wait until the new Delta-class spaceships are ready in 2026. They can carry six passengers instead of four, increasing revenue. This flight, Galactic 07, took a Turkish researcher and three private individuals across the imaginary line that separates air and space for a few minutes of weightlessness.

Founded in 2004 and largely funded by Sir Richard Branson as part of his Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic is still trying to demonstrate that commercial suborbital human spaceflight can be a profitable business. Last year Branson told the Financial Times he would stop investing in Virgin Galactic, putting pressure on CEO Michael Colglazier to cut costs and focus on getting the Delta version flying. After all these years of waiting to fly commercial passengers,VSS Unity will stop after just one year and seven commercial flights.

Branson had promised that Virgin Galactic would be flying hundreds of times per year by the mid-2000s. Didn’t happen. Virgin Galactic took deposits from hundreds (it claimed), but even now has only flown 30 people on those seven flights, many of whom have been recent customers, not the many original supporters. That’s the sum total of all of Richard Branson’s achievement with this company in two decades.

Now, with Branson out of the picture, the new management has to redo everything again, because what Branson designed was not profitable. I have serious doubts the company will fly again in 2026.

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SpaceX completes two Starlink launches hours apart

9:49 am

SpaceX last night completed two Starlink launches hours apart from opposite coasts. First its Falcon 9 rocket took 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its 16th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Then, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg carried 20 Starlink satellites into orbit, its first stage completing its 21st flight (tying the record), landing safely on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

62 SpaceX
27 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 72 to 41, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 62 to 51.

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A close-up of rocks on Mars

10:30 am

Curiosity's robot arm about to take a close look at the ground
Click for original image.

Close-up of rocks on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 6, 2024 by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located at the end of the rover’s robot arm and designed to get close-up high resolution images of the ground that the arm is exploring.

The picture above, taken just after the one to the right and cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, shows the robot arm shortly after it has rotated upward after placing MAHLI right up against the ground. Note the tread marks. The science team apparently chose these target rocks because they were likely ground somewhat as the rover rolled over them, breaking the rocks to expose new faces.

According to the scientists, the camera was about two to three inches away from these rocks when it snapped the picture, with the scale about 16 to 25 microns per pixel. Since a micron is one millionth of a meter, this picture is showing us some very small details within a much larger rock.

I post this because I have rarely seen such colorful and crystal-like surface features from Curiosity.

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Chinese pseudo-company raises $207 million

9:53 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer announced yesterday that it has raised an additional $207 million from Chinese investment sources during its most recent funding round, bringing the total amount it has raised to $552 million.

Space Pioneer—full name Beijing Tianbing Technology Co., Ltd—announced the funding worth more than 1.5 billion yuan ($207 million) June 6. At least 15 investors participated in the funding, including a mix of private equity and state-linked investment vehicles.

These include state-linked Wuxi Chuangfa, CCTV Fund, CITIC Securities Investment, Hefei Ruicheng and SDIC Taikang, and private equity and investment firms Bohua Capital Management, Guoyu Gaohua, Deyue Investment and more.

The company is developing its Tianlong-3 reusable rocket, essentially a copy of SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It already has completed one launch of its Tianlong-2 expendable rocket, using government engines.

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Iran to build coastal spaceport

9:47 am

Iran's spaceports

According to Issa Zarepour, Iran’s minister of communications and information technology, Iran is now planning a new spaceport on its southern coast near the city of Chabahar.

“[The process of construction of] the first phase of the port is being completed thanks to round-the-clock endeavor,” he said. He noted that the process had so far witnessed as much as “56-percent physical progress.”

“The facility would be inaugurated by the Ten-Day Dawn ceremonies,” the minister said. He was referring to the 10-day-long annual celebrations that mark the historic run-up to the victory of the country’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. The celebrations will start in late January next year.

The spaceport is expected to host its first launch by next March, Zarepour added.

The map shows Chabahar’s location. It also shows Iran’s present spaceport in Semnan, where it has previously launched all its rockets.

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