Tag: engineering

Gaia space telescope identifies more than 350 asteroids with candidate moons

9:24 am

Using the Gaia space telescope, astronomers have identified 352 asteroids that the data suggests have smaller satellite asteroids in orbit around them.

In its data release 3, Gaia precisely pinpointed the positions and motions of 150 000+ asteroids — so precisely that scientists could dig deeper and hunt for asteroids displaying the characteristic ‘wobble’ caused by the tug of an orbiting companion (the same mechanism as displayed here for a binary star). Gaia also gathered data on asteroid chemistry, compiling the largest ever collection of asteroid ‘reflectance spectra’ (light curves that reveal an object’s colour and composition).

These results need to be confirmed by direct observation, as this method does involve some assumptions and uncertainties. If these numbers are confirmed however it will give planetary scientists a better census on the percentage of asteroids with moons, which in turn can be used to create better models of the formation of the solar system as well as the evolution of asteroids over time. At the moment scientists predict about one out of every six asteroids will have a moon. This data suggests that number might be high.

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SpaceX sets August 26, 2024 as new launch date for Polaris Dawn private manned mission

9:15 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

According to a post on X yesterday, SpaceX has rescheduled the launch of the private Polaris Dawn manned orbital flight to August 26, 2024. The flight is financed entirely by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who will also command the mission (his second in space).

The mission will launch on a Falcon 9, with the Dragon Resilience spacecraft carrying four private astronauts. During the orbital flight the capsule will attempt to fly as high as 870 miles, the highest any human will have flown since the Apollo missions. It will then attempt the first spacewalks by a private citizen ever. They will open a hatch, and Isaacman will push himself outside.

The schedule change from July 31st is almost certainly due to the uncertainties surrounding the return of Starliner from ISS, which have also caused uncertainties in the launch date of SpaceX’s next manned mission to ISS. With only two launchpads in Florida for both missions (plus other required launches), a lot of juggling has been required.

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August 7, 2024 Quick space links

3:49 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

  • Another relatively boring press release of an image from Europe’s Mars Expresss orbiter

    • I post so few images from Mars Express because Europe releases so few, and when they do, they don’t usually provide enough good information to understand what one is looking at. For example, this release never really tells us the global location of the picture, info that is crucial to understanding it. I could look it up, but the image itself is just not that interesting.

 

 

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Firefly wins a 20-launch contract from L3Harris

11:26 am

The rocket startup Firefly has been awarded a new 20-launch contract from the aerospace company L3Harris, and is an add-on to an earlier three-launch contract signed in 2023.

The deal calls for two to four launches per year beginning in 2027. The launches will take place at Firefly’s launchpad at Vandenberg in California, and will likely be for mostly military or surveillance payloads.

It appears that Firefly is beginning to grab business from both SpaceX and Rocket Lab, a very healthy development. Its rocket’s capabilities falls somewhere in between both, so it has developed its own customer niche.

All will change of course when Rocket Lab’s larger Neutron rocket becomes operational.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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NASA has decided to consider bringing Starliner down unmanned

10:32 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

It appears that upper management at NASA has decided to force the agency to consider bringing Starliner down unmanned and extending the ISS mission of the two Starliner astronauts to a nine month mission.

The situation is definitely complicated, and no change as yet as been made. The schedule of dockings to ISS has been reconfigured to make this option possible. It appears this is the present plan:

First, they need to upgrade the software on Starliner for an unmanned mission. Apparently the present software on board is not satisfactory for an unmanned docking, even though a different Starliner has already done an unmanned docking last year. For this mission, the software relied on the astronauts to take over manually should there be an issue during undocking. In the previous unmanned demo, the software would react and prevent a problem. For reasons that make no sense, the software on the manned mission did not have this capability. Reinstalling this software will give them the option to send the two astronauts down on Dragon and returning Starliner unmanned.

Second, the next Dragon manned mission has been delayed until late September to allow time for these software upgrades, as well as give NASA and Boeing more time to analyze the situation and decide if a manned return on Starliner is possible. If they decide to not use Starliner, the Dragon capsule would come up to ISS with only two astronauts, and the two Starliner astronauts would then join them on their six month mission, coming home in the spring. For the Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams this would mean their mission will now be 8-9 months long, far longer than the original one-two week mission.

As to why these options are now being considered, it appears to me that both Boeing and NASA engineers were willing to return the astronauts on Starliner, but have been ordered to consider these options by higher ups. It appears that the last hot-fire thruster tests on ISS left everyone with some uncertainties about the situation. Engineers are fairly certain that the reasons some thrusters did not fire as planned during docking was because teflon seals expanded because of heat to block fuel flow. The problem is that these seals showed no problem at all in the most recent test on ISS. That difference creates some uncertainty as to whether they have really identified the cause of the problem. Imagine having an intermittent problem your car mechanic cannot constently make happen.

Because the thrusters did work as intended, Boeing and NASA seemed ready to return Starliner manned. In the agency review last week it appears others at the top were less sanguine (including Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator), and demanded these new options be considered. Based on this speculation, it is almost certain Starliner will come home empty.

Whether this will have significant consequences remains uncertain. During the press briefing today, NASA officials said the agency might still certify Starliner for operational manned missions even if the capsule comes home unmanned.

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A supernova overpowers a spiral galaxy

9:34 am

A supernova overwhelms a small galaxy

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken in early 2023 by the Hubble Space Telescope because a ground-based automated sky survey had detected a new supernovae in late 2022 in this galaxy. The spiral galaxy is dubbed LEDA 857074, and is interesting because of its bright central bar and dim and broken spiral arms.

That supernova is the bright spot inside the galaxy’s central bar. It is so bright that it almost looks like someone accidently pasted a white dot there using a graphics program. From the caption:

Astronomers have catalogued millions of galaxies, so while today tens of thousands of supernovae are detected annually, the chance that one is spotted in any particular galaxy is slim. We also do not know how actively LEDA 857074 is forming stars, and therefore how often it might host a supernova. This galaxy is therefore an unlikely and lucky target of Hubble, thanks to this supernova shining a spotlight on it! It now joins the ranks of many more famous celestial objects, with its own Hubble image.

The galaxy itself had been studied by almost no one until this supernova was discovered in it.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space increases the kinds of satellites it will offer rides to geosynchronous orbit

9:16 am

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space, founder by former SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has announced new plans to make it possible for its tugs to take more kinds of satellites to geosynchronous orbit.

First, the company is revising the design of its larger Helios tug, set to do its first commercial mission in 2027, to carry multiple satellites ranging in weight from 300 to 5000 kilograms. Second, it is upgrading its already-flown smaller Mira tug so that it can be attached to Helios and act as a secondary tug once Helios gets to geosynchronous orbit.

The first Mira demo mission, launched in November 2023, had some communications and software issues but was still considered an overall success. The next mission will fly later this year.

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European aerospace company Safran to open production facility in U.S.

9:06 am

The European aerospace company Safran, which presently partners with Airbus to build the Ariane-6 rocket, has announced that it will open a production facility in Colorado for manufacturing its electrical propulsion thrusters used by satellites.

The American facility will focus on U.S. government and commercial customers, with the French line focusing on customers in the rest of the world. “With this double manufacturing line, we are able to provide trust and confidence to both U.S. domestic, national programs as well as commercial programs,” he said.

The thrusters produced by the two lines will be identical other than the sourcing of components for its power processing unit. The units produced in the United States will use U.S. components while those made in France will use foreign components.

The thruster, called the EPS X00, or “X-hundred”, is a new design and is expected to launch on satellites beginning in 2026. This announcement lets American companies know it is available to them as well. Being built in the U.S. it avoids the strict State Department ITAR regulations that would make it difficult for Safran to sell its European-built thrusters to American satellite companies.

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Axiom changes its CEO

8:59 am

Axiom's space station assembly sequence
The assembly sequence for Axiom’s space station while attached to ISS.
Click for original image.

After founding and leading Axiom for the past eight years, CEO Mike Suffredini, has decided to transfer to the company’s board of directors and pass the company’s leadership to someone else.

“I have dedicated over 40 years to advancing humanity through human spaceflight, including the past eight-plus years alongside Dr. Kam Ghaffarian at Axiom Space,” said Suffredini. “For personal reasons, I have decided to step down as CEO, effective August 9th. I will remain as an advisor to ensure a smooth transition and continue my role as a board member.”

Dr. Ghaffarian, Axiom Space’s Executive Chairman and co-founder, will assume the role of interim CEO until a permanent successor is appointed. His extensive experience and deep industry knowledge make him well-suited to lead the company during this period.

Suffredini’s a long career at NASA before founding Axiom was crucial in establishing the company’s success. He knew how to avoid all the pitfalls of working with the government agency, and was able to negotiate the right deals to make the partnership with NASA proceed smoothly. That inside knowledge probably allowed his company to beat out Bigelow Aerospace, which had been the first to build commercial space station modules but has now faded from sight.

The result is that Axiom was to fly commercial passenger flights to ISS using Dragon capsules, and is going to likely be one of the first commercial stations to begin operations. (The race to be first is presently being led by Axiom and Vast, with Vast looking to be slightly ahead.)

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Lufthansa signs deal with Airbus to train its astronauts for the Starlab space station

8:46 am

the proposed Starlab space station
the proposed Starlab space station

Airbus has now signed an agreement with Lufthansa for it to train the astronauts Europe will fly to the Starlab space station, being built by a consortium of American, European, and Japanese companies.

US-based Voyager Space and Airbus signed an agreement in August 2023 to jointly pursue the development of the Starlab space station. The pair is currently targeting 2028 for the launch of the low Earth orbit destination, with commercial activities commencing in 2029. This timeline will allow for a small window of overlap with International Space Station operations before the orbiting laboratory is decommissioned in 2030.

In a 6 August announcement on Twitter, Airbus Defence and Space revealed the expanding team behind the development of Starlab. The list included Hilton Hotels for crew lodging design, Northrop Grumman for the development of an autonomous docking system for resupply spacecraft, and Lufthansa Aviation Training (LAT) for the training of future Starlab astronauts. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, MDA Space, Palantir, and Ohio State University round out the partnership.

Though Voyager Space is supposed to be leading the project and obtained the seed money from NASA to get it started, the nature of this announcement suggests that it is Airbus who is really in charge at this time. At a minimum, the partnership has definitely transferred much control from the U.S. to Europe.

This shift should not be a surprise, since it became clear shortly after the August 2023 deal was signed that Europe had decided to focus its investment energies on Starlab and make it the European space station for the future.

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Next manned Dragon mission to ISS delayed until September 24, 2024

12:10 am

NASA tonight announced that the next manned Dragon mission to ISS has been delayed until September 24, 2024, a pushback of more than a month caused by the thruster issues on Boeing’s Starliner capsule presently docked to the station.

This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory. Starliner ground teams are taking their time to analyze the results of recent docked hot-fire testing, finalize flight rationale for the spacecraft’s integrated propulsion system, and confirm system reliability ahead of Starliner’s return to Earth. NASA and Boeing continue to evaluate the spacecraft’s readiness, and no decisions have been made regarding Starliner’s return.

Since both manned capsule use the same port, Starliner must undock before a Dragon can arrive.

The schedule change also eliminates scheduling conflicts with a Soyuz capsule bringing Russian astronauts to the station in mid-September, and will also allow the launch to switch launchpads so as to not conflict with the SpaceX launch of Europa Clipper, scheduled for October 10, 2024 (though that launch remains in doubt due to other problems with the spacecraft itself).

NASA will be holding a briefing on the status of Starliner at 12:30 pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, August 7, 2024.

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China launches first 18 satellites in a new Starlink-type internet constellation

11:52 pm

China today launched the first 18 satellites in a new Starlink-type internet constellation dubbed Spacesail, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from the Taiyuan spaceport in north China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stage and four strap-on boosters landed within China. Jay notes that this Chinese constellation is now ahead of Blue Origin’s Kuiper constellation, a pattern that sadly has been repeated over and over again.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

77 SpaceX
33 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 91 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 77 to 63.

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Sunspot update: In July the Sun produced the most sunspots in almost a quarter century

9:13 am

Every month since this website began fourteen years ago, when NOAA posts its update of its monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, I post my own analysis, adding some details to provide the larger context.

Of all those updates — numbering about 168 — this month’s is possibly the most significant. Since around 2008, the Sun began a long period where it was unusually quiet, with the solar maximum that occurred in 2014 possibly the weakest in two hundred years. Before that weak maximum begun, half the solar science community predicted it would be a very powerful maximum, while half predicted a weak maximum. Both got it wrong, though the weak prediction was closer though still too high.

When it came time to predict the next solar maximum, expected around 2025, that same solar science community was once again in disagreement. Most approved a NOAA science panel prediction in April 2020 calling for another weak minimum, similar to the one in 2014. A few dissented, however, and instead predicted in June 2020 that the maximum would be one of the strongest ever. In April 2023 however those dissenters chickened out, and revised their prediction downward, still forecasting a peak higher than the NOAA prediction but no longer anywhere as intense.

Based on what happened on the Sun in July, they should have had more faith in their earlier prediction.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

12:33 am

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

76 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 90 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 76 to 62.

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A frozen bubbly caldron on Mars

11:24 am

A frozen bubbly caldron on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 11, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a nice collection of what the scientists label “irregular ring structures,” interspersed with clusters of small mesas ranging in heights from 13 to 75 feet.

The location is at 27 degrees north latitude, so the presence of near surface ice, which might explain these strange rings, is less likely though not impossible. The stipled nature of the flat ground suggests that near surface ice might be here, resulting in sublimation of that ice and leaving behind a flat but rough surface.

The location however suggests another possibility, which though vastly different in some ways, is almost identical in others.
» Read more

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Rocket Lab successfully launches commercial Earth observation satellite

9:54 am

Rocket Lab today successfully launched a commercial Earth observation satellite from the Japanese company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from New Zealand.

This is the fifth launch of a contract of sixteen launches by Rocket Lab for Synspective.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

75 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 89 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 62.

It is noteworthy that Rocket Lab now has more launches in 2024 than Russia, and is maintaining a pace of more than one launch-per-month. The company had predicted doing 20 launches this year, which seems unlikely at this point, but not completely impossible. It however has now tied its 2022 record for most launches in a year, and is thus almost certainly guaranteed to smash it.

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Chinese scientists discover thin-layered graphene in Chang’e-5 lunar samples

9:47 am

Chinese scientists analyzing one of the lunar samples brought back in 2021 by Chang’e-5 from the Moon’s near side have detected for the first time what they call “natural few-layered graphene.”

You can read the paper here. The samples from Chang’e-5 came from some of what are believed are some of the youngest lava on the Moon. This discovery confirms that conclusion. From the paper:

The identification of graphene in the core–shell structure suggests a bottom-up synthesis process rather than exfoliation, which generally involves a high-temperature catalytic reaction. Therefore, a formation mechanism of few-layer graphene and graphitic carbon is proposed here.

Volcanic eruption, a typical high-temperature process, occurred on the Moon. Lunar soil can be stirred up by solar wind and high-temperature plasma discharge can be generated on the Moon’s surface. … [T]he Fe-bearing mineral particles, such as olivine and pyroxene, in lunar soil might catalyse the conversion of carbon-containing gas molecules in the solar wind or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into graphitic carbon of different thicknesses and morphologies on their surfaces, including few-layer graphene flakes and carbon shells.

These graphene flakes are likely to disappear over time, so its existence reinforces the belief that this lava is young.

Unlike too many American planetary scientists recently — who have repeatedly implied that finding anything even remotely related to life processes suggests the possibility of life on Venus and Mars — the Chinese scientists don’t make the additional absurd claim that finding carbon on the Moon suggests the existence of life. It doesn’t. Kudos to them for being good scientists.

As a result, expect American mainstream media to pay no attention to this result, despite its intriguing and unprecedented nature.

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Treaty allowing U.S. rockets to launch from Australia goes into effect

9:30 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

On July 23, 2024 the Australian government finalized its October 2023 agreement with the United States to allow U.S. rockets to launch from Australia soil, as well as allow Australian rocket startups to launch American satellites.

The agreement is mostly a boost for the three spaceports presently vying for business in Australia. Not only will this widen their customer base — with many international rocket startups looking for alternatives because of regulatory burdens elsewhere — it will allow any Australian rocket startups to sell their rockets to American satellite companies. At the moment there is only one such company, Gilmour, but this treaty will encourage investment in others.

This deal will also add impetus to the negotiations presently going on between SpaceX and Australia.

The company is reportedly in discussions with US and Australian authorities to bring down one of its rockets off Australia’s northwest coast and tow it into a yet-to-be-determined port for repatriation to the US. The talks follow a SpaceX Starship rocket making a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean in June. There are also reportedly tentative discussions about launching rockets from Australia or bringing them back directly onto Australian soil.

Using Australia as a launch site will not do much to relieve SpaceX of the red tape it has been struggling with from the federal bureaucracy, but it will provide it additional options for increasing its launch rate as well as the testing of Starship. It clearly wants to recover Starships as soon as possible for study, and having them brought to Australia quickly after splashdown would facilitate that effort.

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Arianespace finally schedules last Vega launch

9:04 am

After improvising an upper stage fix because the rocket’s Italian manufacturer, Avio, literally lost the stage’s tanks, Arianespace on July 31, 2024 finally scheduled the last Vega rocket launch, targeting a September 3, 2024 lift off from French Guiana.

The change to the upper stage was required after the company managed to lose two of its four propellant tanks. As the production line for the AVUM upper stage tanks had been shut down in anticipation of the rocket’s retirement, Avio was forced to find a way to instead utilize the larger propellant tanks from the Vega C AVUM+ upper stage. With this process now complete, the company has a clear path toward the rocket’s swan song.

This rocket has been replaced by the more powerful Vega-C. Control and ownership on future launches has also been shifted from Arianespace back to Avio as part of Europe’s transition from using a government-run launch monopoly (Ariancespace) to relying on multiple competitive and independent private companies.

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NASA/Boeing push back final decision of Starliner return

8:58 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

Someone at NASA getting cold feet? According to a NASA posting today, the review that was supposed to happen this week to determine a return date for Starliner and its two-astronaut crew has been postponed until next week as engineers continue analzying the results of the recent thruster hot fire tests, both on the ground and on ISS.

The wording of this posting is intriguing, to say the least:

Teams are taking their time to analyze the results of recent docked hot-fire testing, finalize flight rationale for the spacecraft’s integrated propulsion system, and confirm system reliability ahead of Starliner’s return to Earth from the International Space Station.

Forward work for the team also includes finalizing the spacecraft’s undocking procedures and operational mitigations that could be used in flight, if needed, to build further confidence in the system. Meanwhile, Starliner ground and mission support teams are continuing to prepare for undocking by participating in integrated simulations with space station operations teams.

Following the completion of Starliner’s return planning, which is expected to continue into next week, more information will be shared about the agency’s return readiness review preparations and subsequent media briefing. As always, astronaut safety remains the top priority for both NASA and Boeing. [emphasis mine]

Up until this posting, I have been confidently predicting the two astronauts would return on Starliner. Now I am not so sure. It seems the data from the hot fire tests, especially the most recent tests on the Starliner capsule docked to ISS, was not as encouraging or did not confirm the conclusions drawn from the previous ground-based tests, and have required further analysis. This might not in the end make a difference, but the wording of this NASA’s press release, including the highlighted emphasis on astronaut safety, suggests NASA is at least considering the idea of bringing the astronauts home on a Dragon capsule.

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China launches “high-orbit internet satellite”

8:45 am

China last night successfully launched what its state-run press merely labels as a “high-orbit internet satellite”, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichange spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stage and strap-on boosters, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. Previous launches have had those booster crash near habitable area.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

75 SpaceX
32 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 88 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 61.

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Inspector General: Roman Space Telescope is meeting the budget overruns and schedule delays NASA predicted

4:57 pm

According to the twisted language in a new NASA inspector general report [pdf] describing the present status of the Roman Space Telescope, the project is on schedule and on budget because NASA decided to predict ahead of time how much it would behind schedule and over budget at this moment. From its executive summary:

[A]s of March 2024, Roman was meeting its cost obligations and schedule to launch by May 2027. Roman was on track to launch despite encountering contractor performance issues and cost overruns related to hardware anomalies, under scoping of work, and inadequate oversight of subcontractors. Roman remains on schedule because Science Mission Directorate officials conducted a replan in May 2021 to mitigate the expected cost and schedule growth caused by COVID-19, increasing the life-cycle cost estimate from $3.9 billion to $4.3 billion. This replan also included delaying the launch readiness date from October 2026 to May 2027. As of March 2024, Roman was tracking its project reserves and potential delays with L3Harris as its top risks. Roman has been using its project reserves to mitigate cost growth related to L3Harris’s performance challenges. Despite these contract value increases, Roman is still within its life-cycle cost estimate because the project’s reserves cover these extra costs.

The insulting nature of this inspector general report is astonishing. The administrative state really does think the American public is too stupid to notice this. I wonder if they are right.

The report further notes issues with the telescope’s two subcontractors, BAE Systems and L3Harris, as well as warning of insufficient ground-based antenna capacity for downloading the data that Roman will produce.

[A]s of April 2024, the NSN [Near Space Network] did not have adequate capacity to support Roman’s mission requirements without planned upgrades to the White Sands antenna and lacked the funding to implement the necessary upgrades by the mission’s launch readiness date.

In other words, more money will be needed to build more ground antennas, something that NASA conveniently forgot to mention when it first proposed Roman to Congress. How interesting, but completely par for the course.

Hat tip stringer Jay.

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Research from DART impact mission determines approximate ages of the asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos

12:54 pm

Computer simulation of formation of Dimorphos
Click for full animation

A release this week of new research papers based on data obtained during the impact mission of DART on the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022 has determined the approximate ages of both Dimorphos and the larger asteroid Didumos that it orbits.

Analysis suggested that both Didymos and Dimorphos have weak surface characteristics, which led the team to posit that Didymos has a surface age 40–130 times older than Dimorphos, with the former estimated to be 12.5 million years and the latter less than 300,000 years old.

This research also did a computer simulation that suggests Dimorphos was formed because of Didymos’ fast rotation rate, the fastest asteroid rotation rate so far measured. The spin caused first the development of a ridge on the equator of Didymos, which later literally threw material into space which later coalesced to form the satellite Dimorphus. The graphic to the right is from that simulation.

Other research studied the boulder distribution of Dimorphos, and structural nature of both asteroids.

A European mission, Hera, is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and rendezvous with Didymos and Dimorphos in 2026, obtaining close-up data following the DART 2022 impact.

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Vast announces first two customer payloads on its Haven-1 space station

12:28 pm

Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing

The space station startup Vast today announced the first two customers planning to place payloads on its Haven-1 single module space station, presently scheduled for launch in the second half of 2025.

The company also revealed that these payloads will be installed on the station in what it calls its Haven-1 Lab, which is essentially a variation of the payload rack system used on ISS.

The Haven-1 Lab features 10 Middeck Locker Equivalent payload slots, each roughly the size of a microwave. Each payload slot can weigh up to 30 kg (66 lbs), is provided with 100 W of continuous power, and has access to an Ethernet data connection. Payloads will be operated by the astronaut crew on Haven-1, as well as commanded and monitored by ground operators via Starlink laser links, providing Gigabit/s speed, low latency connectivity. Partners will have the opportunity to return products and samples from space via a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

In tandem with Vast’s announcement of its Haven-1 Lab, the company also announced Redwire and Yuri as its inaugural partners, representing some of the foremost experts in the development of microgravity payloads.

Redwire has flown numerous payloards already to ISS, including cutting edge 3D printers. Yuri is less well known, but it appears both it and Redwire are taking advantage of Vast’s much simpler paperwork requirements than NASA’s. Vast has taken no NASA funds, so it can approve payloads at its whim. Speeds things up, saves money, and everyone benefits.

These payloads will likely be part of the first Haven-1 manned mission, where four astronauts will spend 30 days in space, ferried to and from the module using a Dragon capsule and launched almost immediately after Haven-1 is placed in orbit.

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Update on Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica

10:48 am

Link here. Progress is being made, but it remains unclear when the next orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship will take place. Musk had predicted early August, and though the company appears getting close, there remains no word yet on from the FAA about issuing a launch license.

The article at the link however provides a lot of information about the construction of the second launch site at Boca Chica, as well as the future Starship prototypes to be launched. The next flight, the fifth, will use what SpaceX is calling its Block 1 version of the spaceship. The sixth flight will also fly this version. The seventh flight however will fly what SpaceX dubs its Block 2 verison, incorporating many upgrades and changes based on the previous test flights.

This information suggests several things. First, SpaceX wants to do three more orbital test launches in the near future, likely before the end of this year. Whether the FAA will allow such a thing remains unknown. The environmental reassessment that it issued in 2022 allows SpaceX to do five launches per year at Boca Chica, but requires the company to get FAA approval for each one, and also requires SpaceX to submit extensive paperwork before that approval will even be considered. Whether the FAA can move quickly enough between test flights to get this three more launches completed before December seems very doubtful, based on its past track record.

Second, it gives us a sense of the overall development. In developing Falcon 9, SpaceX went through five Block designs before the operational Block 5 that now flies so routinely. The company however was flying operationally and profitably by Block 2. If SpaceX is now moving to Block 2 for Starship, it means it is likely confident that this version will be capable of returning Starship to the ground undamaged and up to additional flights.

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First flight of government-built hopper to test vertical landings delayed two years

10:12 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

This story about a first stage government-built Grasshopper-type rocket designed to demonstrate and test vertical landing has instead become a perfect demonstration of why governments should not design, build, and own anything.

It appears the first test flight of the Callisto test rocket, first proposed in 2015 and being built by a joint partnership of the German (DLR), French (CNES), and Japanese (JAXA) space agencies, has now slipped from 2024 to 2026.

Earlier this month, CNES deployed a refreshed website. Prior to that deployment, the agency’s Callisto project page had stated that the rocket’s first flight would occur in 2024. The new Callisto project page has a more detailed timeline, stating that the detailed design phase will be completed by the end of 2024. Vehicle integration in Japan is then expected in 2025, followed by a first launch from the Guiana Space Centre between 2025 and 2026. This revision outlines an approximate two-year slip in the project’s timeline. [emphasis mine]

These three agencies took almost a decade to simply conceive and design the project. Apparently they not yet even built anything. This despite a budget of slightly less than $100 million carved out of the entire budget for creating the Ariane-6 expendable. Compare that with SpaceX, which conceived its Grasshopper vertical test prototype in 2011, began flying that year, and resulted in an actual Falcon 9 first stage landing in 2015.

Will Callisto ever fly? Maybe, but don’t expect it to produce a rocket that is financially competitive with SpaceX. Instead, expect these three government agencies to subsidize its cost in order to make its price competitive on the open market. More likely Callisto will fly a few times, but will likely result in no new orbital rocket. Instead it will be superseded by the private rocket startups worldwide that are now building actual orbital rockets and will likely make them reuseable before Callisto even leaves the ground.

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Boeing names new CEO, set to take over on August 8, 2024

10:32 am

Boeing today named a new CEO, Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, who among the candidates being considered appears to be the only one who did not have a long career at Boeing.

Ortberg emerged as a leading candidate only recently. Others who were reportedly considered for the job included Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive and now CEO of its most important supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, and another longtime Boeing executive, Stephanie Pope, who recently took over the commercial airplanes division.

Ortberg led Rockwell Collins from 2013 to 2018, when it merged with United Technologies and wound up as part of RTX, the company formerly known as Raytheon. He retired from RTX in 2021.

He will take charge of the company as of August 8, 2024.

It remains to be seen if Ortberg can fix things. As the article notes, since 2019 Boeing has lost more than $25 billion, and has been saddled with numerous quality control failures in almost all its technical divisions, from building airplanes to providing maintenance to building space capsules. The failures in its airplane divisions resulted in several crashes that killed 346 people, and caused it to accept a deal with the Justice Department that included a fine of $243.6 million to avoid a criminal trial. That deal however has not yet been accepted by the judge in the case.

Ortberg will have to demonstrate somehow that the culture at Boeing itself has changed. The first thing he could do to indicate he is serious about doing so would be to shut down entirely Boeing’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy. Getting rid of that poisonous race-based anti-quality program would go a long way in convincing others that Ortberg means business, and wants to put talent, skills, experience first in everything Boeing does, something previous CEOs have clearly not done.

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A review of Japan’s effort to create a commercial space industry

9:54 am

Link here. The article does a nice job outlining the efforts of the new startups in Japan that have been successful in flying missions, such as the orbital tug company Astroscale and the lunar lander company Ispace, as well as newer companies such as Shachu, which proposes building and selling modules for use on any one of the new commercial space stations under construction.

The article also talks at length about Japan’s newly created ten year $6.5 billion strategic fund, designed to be provide funding for many different commercial projects and inspired by NASA recent switch from being the designer, builder, and owner of everything to simply a customer buying products from the private sector.

The fund has been given to Japan’s space agency to administer, and it remains unclear whether that government agency is prepared to give up power to the private sector as NASA has. This quote illustrates this uncertainty:

Since the effort is just starting, both companies and JAXA are uncertain how well the fund will work. Yasuo Ishii, senior vice president of JAXA, said the agency has assigned 450 people to administer the fund, including researchers and other experts. “We used to be an R&D institution and now we’re a funder,” he said.

He said JAXA will closely monitor progress on the initial awards made through the fund. “If some don’t go well, we may terminate them.”

It seems JAXA is so far using this fund to establish a large bureaucracy for itself, rather than issuing contracts to the private sector to build things JAXA needs.

We shall see how this plays out. The Japanese aerospace industry appears to be similar to the American space industry around 2008, with lots of old established big companies working hand-in-glove with the government space agency and a lot of small startups trying to establish themselves as competitors. In the U.S. at that time NASA was very resistant to give contracts to the startups. It took strong political pressure from within the upper levels of government, first in the Obama administration and then in the Trump administration, to force a change at NASA. Whether this will happen in Japan remains unknown.

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China scientists propose both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon

9:34 am

In line with the remarkably rational and long term plans China has developed for exploring the solar system, Chinese scientists have proposed the country develop both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon, with both including constellations of satellites in orbit as well as facilities on the ground.

A first phase would establish satellites in elliptical frozen orbits around the moon. A second phase would see further … satellites and spacecraft at Earth-moon Lagrange points 1, 2, 4 and 5, a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), and a spacecraft in geostationary orbit, termed a cislunar space station.

A third and final phase would add satellites in existing and new distant retrograde orbits (DRO), forming a near-moon space and extended space constellations. The system also includes comprehensive ground-based facilities.

While this plan is simply a proposal, it fits with China’s overall strategies for lunar exploration, all of which are designed carefully so that they can be scaled up for more complex operations there as well as elsewhere in the solar system. And based on China’s track record in space in the past decade, we should be entirely confident this program or some variation will be built.

That is, unless China undergoes a major economic collapse and a change in leadership that has different priorities.

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ULA completes its 4th launch this year and last Atlas-5 launch for the Space Force

9:10 am

Though ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket still has a number of launches on its manifest before it is retired, early this morning the company successfully completed the last Atlas-5 launch for the Space Force, the rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

This was ULA’s fourth launch in 2024, the most in a year for the company since 2022. The leader board for this year’s launch race remains unchanged:

74 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise however now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 87 to 47, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 74 to 60.

Note: A Rocket Lab that had been scheduled for today has been delayed two days.

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