Tag: engineering

NASA: first launch of New Glenn is targeting a September 29, 2024 launch date

10:23 am

According to a presentation given by a NASA official at a conference in London yesterday, the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is now targeting a September 29, 2024 launch.

In a presentation at a meeting of a planetary protection committee of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in London April 24, Nick Benardini, NASA’s planetary protection officer, listed a Sept. 29 date for the launch of Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, a pair of smallsats that will go into orbit around Mars to measure the interaction of the planet’s magnetosphere with the solar wind.

NASA selected Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket to launch ESCAPADE, awarding the company a $20 million task order through the agency’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare contract in February 2023 for the mission. The award at the time mentioned only a late 2024 launch, with the expectation that ESCAPADE would be on one of the first, if not the first, flight of the rocket.

Benardini mentioned ESCAPADE in his COSPAR presentation to discuss how the mission was complying with planetary protection requirements, intended to prevent any contamination of Mars, during the assembly of the spacecraft and launch preparations at Cape Canaveral. “They’re slated to be launching Sept. 29 with Blue Origin,” he said.

This is the first time any source at NASA or Blue Origin has revealed a specific launch date. The rocket was originally supposed to fly its first orbital test flight four years ago, but numerous delays, mostly related to the BE-4 engine used by the rocket’s first stage as well as decisions by the company’s former CEO, Bob Smith, to slow all development, pushed that launch back repeatedly. With Smith leaving late last year, the company has suddenly come back to life, with many indications that it was pushing for a launch this year.

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Hubble in safe mode

10:15 am

Barred galaxy
Click for original image.

The Hubble Space Telescope has gone into safe mode, pausing science observations on April 23, 2024 when its computer detected problems with one of its three working gyroscopes.

This particular gyro caused Hubble to enter safe mode in November after returning similar faulty readings. The team is currently working to identify potential solutions. If necessary, the spacecraft can be re-configured to operate with only one gyro, with the other remaining gyro placed in reserve . The spacecraft had six new gyros installed during the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. To date, three of those gyros remain operational, including the gyro currently experiencing fluctuations. Hubble uses three gyros to maximize efficiency, but could continue to make science observations with only one gyro if required.

If they cannot recover that gyro and are forced to resume science operations in one-gyro mode, it will mean the end of sharp images such as the one to the right, released today of the barred galaxy NGC 2217, located about 65 million light years away. Three gyros stablize the telescope in all three dimensions. One gyro can stablize it, but not in all three dimensions. Sharpness will suffer. We will no longer have a fully capable general purpose optical telescope in orbit, no plans in the U.S. to replace it.

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China launches three astronauts to its space station

4:23 pm

Earlier today China successfully launched a three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No word on where the four strap-on boosters, the payload fairing, the core stages, and the upper stage crashed inside China, using very toxic hypergolic fuels. This new crew will replace the present crew, who are completing a six-month tour. The new crew will complete a similar-length mission.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

42 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 36.

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Numerous layers in the interior slopes of Argyre Basin on Mars

12:28 pm

Numerous layers on Mars
Click for original image.

The cool image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on February 22, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It gives us another example the many-layered geological history of Mars, seen in numerous locations across the entire Martian surface.

This example shows many thin layers, going downhill about 450 feet from the mesa near the bottom of the picture to the low point near the picture’s top. At this resolution there appear to be roughly two dozen prominent layers in that descent, but a closer look suggests many more layers within those large layers. Like the terrain that Curiosity is traversing on Mount Sharp, the closer one gets the more layers one sees. And each layer signifies a different geological event, possibly even marking the annual seasons, each either adding or removing a layer of dust or ice, or placing down a new layer of lava.
» Read more

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China reveals its rough plans for building its manned moon base.

9:35 am

At a conference in China this week, the chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, Wu Weiren, outlined roughly the plans for building China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) on the Moon.

According to Wu, the first phase of the ILRS construction project will see a basic station built by 2035 in the lunar south pole region. This basic station will have comprehensive scientific facilities with complete basic functions and supporting elements to carry out regular scientific experiments, and develop and utilize resources on a limited scale.

The second phase will see expansion of the station, set for completion by 2045, with a moon-orbiting space station as the hub and facilities featuring complete functions, considerable scale and stable operation. It will carry out comprehensive lunar-based scientific research and resource development and utilization, and conduct technical verification as well as scientific experiments and research for a manned landing on Mars.

This schedule contradicts other recent government statements that suggested the first phrase would be completed by 2030. Either way, we now have a rough timeline which, based on China’s past announcements, should be a reasonably accurate measure of what it now plans to do.

The timeline however is very long, and many other events outside of this program, such as war with Taiwan or sudden changes in the leadership of the ruling communist party, could change it drastically.

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UK’s CAA gives Saxavord on Shetland Islands its range license

9:15 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has now issued the range license for the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, following up issuing it a spaceport license in December.

A range licence is a legal requirement ahead of a space launch, but is not in itself permission to launch. This licence grants the broad approval to provide ‘range control services.’ Specifics will depend on the launch vehicle and will be outlined as part of relevant launch licences.

Work by the Civil Aviation Authority continues in assessing potential launch operators from SaxaVord.

Sounds good, eh? Not so fast. It took the CAA about two years to issue these two spaceport licenses, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to launch from Saxavord. The CAA must still issue launch licenses to the specific rocket companies wishing to launch. Though the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg wants to do the first orbital test flight this year from Saxavord, it still must get that launch license. Do not be surprised if it takes the CAA more than a year to issue it.

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China releases new geological atlas of the Moon

9:03 am

China's geologic map of the Moon

The map above is one low resolution example of a new detailed geological atlas that Chinese scientists have created and just released, using data obtained from all of China’s recent lunar missions, both orbiters and landers.

More information here.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has released the highest-resolution geological maps of the Moon yet. The Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe, which took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile, reveals a total of 12,341 craters, 81 basins and 17 rock types, along with other basic geological information about the lunar surface. The maps were made at the unprecedented scale of 1:2,500,000.

…The CAS also released a book called Map Quadrangles of the Geologic Atlas of the Moon, comprising 30 sector diagrams which together form a visualization of the whole Moon.

The map has been released in both Chinese and English.

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First and second stages of first Ariane-6 rocket are now assembled and on the launchpad

8:48 am

Having integrated together the core first stage and the upper stage of the first Ariane-6 rocket, engineers have now lifted both vertical on the launch pad in preparation for its launch sometime in June or July.

Next two strap-on boosters will be attached to the core stage, as well as the payloads made up of eighteen different smallsats and experiments, including two test re-entry capsules testing their ability to bring payloads safely back to Earth.

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Astroscale wins contract to complete removal of large piece of space junk

8:39 am

Capitalism in space: Japan’s space agency JAXA has now awarded the orbital tug startup Astroscale a contract to complete the removal of an abandoned upper stage from a previously launched rocket.

Astroscale has already flown the first phase of this project, with its ADRAS-J tug flying in March and April a demo rendezvous mission with the rocket stage, getting to within several hundred meters of the stage. The second phase, now approved, will grab the stage with a robot arm and then de-orbit it. No date for the launch of that second phase was announced.

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Flat tadpole depression in ancient Martian crater

12:32 pm

Flat tadpole depression in ancient Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reducedl, and enhanced to post here, was taken on February 24, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed a “terrain sample” by the camera team, it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain that camera’s proper temperature. When they have to do this, they try to pick interesting targets, though there is no guarantee the result will be very interesting.

In this case the camera team already knew this location would have intriguing geology, based on an earlier terrain sample taken a year ago only eight miles to the south. The landscape here is a flat plateaus surrounding flat depressions, some of which appear connected by drainage channels. Today’s picture shows one flat depression with a short tail-like channel flowing into it.

Note the pockmarked surface. The many holes could be impact craters, but they also could be holes caused when the near-surface ice at this location sublimated into gas and bubbled upward to escape. Now all we see is dry bedrock, the flat ground riddled with holes.
» Read more

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Movies of two supernovae remnants produced from two decades of Chandra X-ray images

9:51 am

Using more than two decades of data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have created two movies of the supernovae remnants the Crab nebula and Cassiopeia A.

I have embedded those movies below. From the press release:

Over 22 years, Chandra has taken many observations of the Crab Nebula. With this long runtime, astronomers see clear changes in both the ring and the jets in the new movie. Previous Chandra movies showed images taken from much shorter time periods — a 5-month period between 2000 and 2001 and over 7 months between 2010 and 2011 for another. The longer timeframe highlights mesmerizing fluctuations, including whip-like variations in the X-ray jet that are only seen in this much longer movie. A new set of Chandra observations will be conducted later this year to follow changes in the jet since the last Chandra data was obtained in early 2022.

…Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) is the remains of a supernova that is estimated to have exploded about 340 years ago in Earth’s sky. While other Chandra movies of Cas A have previously been released, including one with data extending from 2000 to 2013, this new movie is substantially longer featuring data from 2000 through to 2019.

» Read more

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Several new missions to the asteroid Apophis proposed by commercial and governments

9:39 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon showing Apophis’s path in 2029

At a conference this week several new missions to the asteroid Apophis during its close Earth fly-by in 2029 were proposed by both private companies and government entities.

  • Blue Origin is considering sending its Blue Ring orbital tug, launched in 2027 on a Falcon 9.
  • JPL proposes sending two cubesats on the orbital tug mission previously announced by the startup ExLabs.
  • NASA continues to study sending the two Janus spacecraft, since its original asteroid mission was lost when the Psyche asteroid mission was delayed.
  • The European Space Agency has two different missions under study.

With all of these missions, the big obstacle is funding. Most are either only partly funded, or not at all.

At the moment the only mission actually on its way to Apophis is OSIRIS-APEX, which having completed its sample return mission to Bennu was then sent to Apophis.

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