Tag: NASA

NASA awards small study contract to orbital tug company Starfish Space

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: NASA has awarded a small three-month study contract to the U.S. orbital tug company Starfish Space, to consider using its Otter orbital tug to rendezvous and inspect defunct orbital debris.

The award amount was not released, suggesting this is a very small contract designed simply to see if the company’s technology warrants a larger contract.

Some of those features — including Starfish’s Cetacean relative navigation software and its Cephalopod autonomous guidance software — could be tested sometime in the next few months on the company’s Otter Pup prototype spacecraft, which was sent into orbit in June but was forced into an unfortunate spin during deployment. Starfish stabilized the spin in August and is currently making sure that all of Otter Pup’s systems are in working order for future tests.

NASA’s follow-up contract, awarded through the space agency’s Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR, calls for Starfish to assess the feasibility of using its full-scale Otter satellite servicing vehicle to rendezvous with large pieces of space debris and inspect them.

This contract is comparable in goals to the one NASA issued to Astroscale earlier this week, though much smaller.

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Northrop Grumman cancelling its NASA space station project?

9:22 am

According to anonymous sources, Northrop Grumman — one of four company partnerships chosen by NASA to build private commercial space stations to replace ISS — is considering cancelling its project for NASA.

At the International Astronautical Congress meeting this week in Azerbaijan, sources report that there is widespread speculation that one of these four companies, Northrop Grumman, is dropping out of the competition. Northrop’s plan had been to leverage its successful Cygnus spacecraft design to build a free-flying space station.

However, Northrop no longer plans to do so. Rather, it will join the venture backed by Voyager Space, which is partnering with Europe-based Airbus to develop a commercial space station. It’s likely that Northrop would provide cargo transportation services, with Cygnus as part of the team. Officials from Voyager and Northrop Grumman declined to comment on the change in strategy, which could be announced soon.

The original four were Axiom, Voyager Space (then called Nanoracks), Northrop Grumman, and Blue Origin. By teaming up with Voyager Space the number would drop to three, with Northrop simply providing freighter service to Voyager’s station.

Nor is this the only rumored change to these station projects. Last week sources suggested that the partnership between Blue Origin and Sierra Space was breaking up. If so, it remains unclear how that would effect its project for NASA.

These changes to the four proposed NASA stations would leave only Axiom’s space station unchanged and on its original course. Meanwhile, another company, Vast, is developing its own independent station, and SpaceX is considering developing a space station version of Starship.

All these shifts and changes are not to be unexpected, nor are they really bad news. They simply indicate the uncertain nature of any new product, even if that product is as unconventional as a private space station.

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Ispace wins $55 million NASA contract for lunar landing mission

9:17 am

The Japanese company Ispace, which is also establishing operations in the U.S., has won a $55 million NASA contract to send a lunar landing plus communications relay satellites to the Moon in 2026.

Ispace’s Hakuto-R1 lander attempted a landing on the Moon in April, but crashed. The company has a second Hakuto-R mission presently targeting launch next year. The NASA contract would the company’s third, which will be built in its new U.S. facility and be called Apex-1.

In today’s briefing, Ispace representatives announced that the primary customer for its upcoming Mission 3 is NASA, which has selected the company as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS). Ispace stated during the briefing that it has signed a $55 million contract with NASA for Mission 3 in order to land near the lunar south pole carrying approximately 210 pounds (95 kg) of scientific payloads.

But that’s not all the mission will do. On its way to the lunar surface, Mission 3 will deliver relay satellites that will remain in orbit around the moon to serve as communication relays.

Though it will not be surprising if these launch dates slip, Ispace is in a strong position to succeed, considering it is presently the only private company to launch a Moon lander, and got very close to putting it down on the lunar surface successfully.

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Lacking funds to build its spacecraft, the VERITAS project team goes to Iceland

12:29 pm

Because NASA has cut almost all funding for the VERITAS mission to Venus in order to fund its overbudget, badly managed, and behind schedule Mars Sample Return mission, the VERITAS science team, held over with only a tiny holding budget for the next seven years, has taken a geology trip to Iceland to study the volcanoes there.

Early last month, one such field campaign took the mission’s science team to a barren and rocky region in Iceland. There, they studied rocks and surfaces near an active volcano named Askja. Such volcanic areas are being used as analogs of Venus to understand the different types of eruptions that may occur on its surface, and to test out various technologies and techniques to prepare for the VERITAS (or Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) mission, which is not expected to launch sooner than 2031.

The article at the link focuses on this research, but the real story is this quote:

The VERITAS science team — which is being supported by a shoestring budget of $1.5 million until 2028, after NASA pulled the mission’s funding earlier this year and disbanded its entire engineering wing — collected samples of young rocks and recent lava flows near the Askja volcano that will be analyzed in a lab, according to a NASA statement.

The reason the budget was pulled was to scrap together any funds available from within NASA’s planetary program for that Mars Sample Return Mission, which is doing to the planetary program what the Webb Space Telescope did to NASA’s astronomy program: killing it. As long as NASA and Congress remain committed to that sample return mission, do not expect many new planetary missions to other planets to fly. Its budget has already quadrupled, and its launch is already expected to be delayed. Worse, the mission’s basic design remains tentative, with many major components nothing more than cool graphics on powerpoint presentations, despite having spent gigantic amounts already.

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Independent review: NASA’s Mars sample return mission is in big trouble

9:27 am

Perseverance's first set of core samples, placed on the floor of Jezero Crater
Perseverance’s first set of core samples,
placed on the floor of Jezero Crater

An independent review of NASA’s Mars sample return mission (MSR) to pick up the core samples being collected by the rover Perseverance has concluded that the project has serious fundamental problems that will likely cause it to be years late and billions over-budget, assuming it ever flies at all.

You can read the report here [pdf]. After thirteen pages touting the wonders and importance of the mission to get those samples back to Earth, the report finally gets to its main point:

However, MSR was established with unrealistic budget and schedule expectations from the beginning. MSR was also organized under an unwieldy structure. As a result, there is currently no credible, congruent technical, nor properly margined schedule, cost, and technical baseline that can be accomplished with the likely available funding.

Technical issues, risks, and performance-to-date indicate a near zero probability of [the European Mars orbiter intended to bring the sample back to Earth] or [the Earth sample facility] or [the Mars ascent vehicle] meeting the 2027/2028 Launch Readiness Dates (LRDs). Potential LRDs exist in 2030, given adequate funding and timely resolution of issues.

• The projected overall budget for MSR in the FY24 President’s Budget Request is not adequate to accomplish the current program of record.

• A 2030 LRD for both [the sample return lander] and [the Mars orbiter] is estimated to require ~$8.0-9.6B, with funding in excess of $1B per year to be required for three or more years starting in 2025.

Based on this report, a mission launch in 2030 is only “potentially” possible, but only wild-eyed dreamers would believe that. It also indicates that the budget for each component listed above requires several billion dollars, suggesting the total amount needed to achieve this mission could easily exceed in the $30 to $40 billion, far more than the initial proposed total budget for the U.S. of $3 billion.

None of this is really a surprise. Since 2022 I have been reporting the confused, haphazard, and ever changing design of the mission as well as its ballooning budgets. This report underlines the problems, and also suggests, if one reads between the lines, that the mission won’t happen, at least as presently designed.

The report does suggest NASA consider “alternate architectures in combination with later [launch readiness dates].” Can you guess what might be an alternate architecture? I can, and its called Starship. Unlike the proposed helicopters and ascent rocket and Mars Orbiter, all of which are only in their initial design phases, Starship is already doing flight tests (or would be if the government would get out of the way). It is designed with Mars in mind, and can be adapted relatively quickly for getting those Perservance core samples back.

Otherwise, expect nothing to happen for years, even decades. In February 2022 I predicted this mission would be delayed from five to ten years from its then proposed ’26 launch date. A more realistic prediction, based on this new report, is ten to twenty years, unless NASA takes drastic action, and the Biden administration stops blocking Starship testing.

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NASA requests proposals from private industry for deorbiting ISS

9:21 am

NASA on September 18, 2023 sent out a request for proposals from private industry for methods for deorbiting the International Space Station (ISS), with a deadline for such proposals of November 17, 2023.

You can review the request here. According to the press release at the first link, the bulk of any contract will be fixed price.

To maximize value to the government and enhance competition, the acquisition will allow offerors flexibility in proposing Firm Fixed Price or Cost Plus Incentive Fee for the Design, Development, Test and Evaluation phase. The remainder of the contract will be Firm Fixed Price.

That the development phase might be cost-plus allows a lot of room for budget growth, however, especially since the companies most likely to want such a contract are the old big companies (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman) that routinely go overbudget and behind schedule.

The full proposal is more than 600 pages long, so I have not reviewed it in its entirety. I wonder therefore if NASA would entertain proposals that include salvaging any ISS modules for use on other space stations.

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The actual truth behind the so-called “hidden figures” of the early space race

9:57 am

It is Monday, and thus the news in the morning is somewhat slim. With this in mind I offer my readers some worthwhile history, a long review dubbed “The Portrayal of Early Manned Spaceflight in Hidden Figures: A Critique. The actual review is available here [pdf].

The review uses primary source material, the actual words of the engineers and managers who worked next to black mathematician Katherine Johnson at NASA in the 1960s (both new and old writings and interviews), assessing the historical accuracy of Margot Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures, which essentially claimed that Johnson was a central figure making possible the entire American effort land on the Moon, and whose credit was purposely squelched because she was black, and a woman.

Not surprisingly, you will find that claim to be absurdly false. Not only was Johnson only one of many who did the work, she was treated then fairly and with respect. If anything, her place at NASA was proof that the agency was a forceful part of the civil rights movement, working to give qualified people of all races a fair chance.

Thus, the effort of modern leftist revisionists, led by Barack Obama when he gave Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, to smear America and NASA in the 1960s as racist and bigoted in supposedly suppressing Johnson’s participation is not only unfair, it is an outright lie. If anything, her magnification to star status by today’s politicians, historians, and the entertainment industry has acted to discredit the work done by the many others who worked side-by-side with her, as co-workers.

If you’ve got the time, read the critique. It will not only teach you something about the behind the scenes effort that made the lunar landing possible, it will help you recognize the bigoted dishonesty that is so rampant in today’s intellectual and political culture.

Hat tip to reader Chris Dorsey for letting me know of this review.

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GAO blasts NASA for purposely failing to control the budget of its SLS rocket

10:21 am

In a new report [pdf] released yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) strongly blasted NASA’s non-budgeting process for financing the costs for this SLS rocket, which appear specifically designed to allow those costs to rise uncontrollably.

This one sentence from the report says it all:

NASA does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of the SLS program.

That non-plan is actually in direct defiance of four different reports by both the GAO and NASA’s inspector general over the past decade, all of which found that NASA was not using standard budgeting practices with SLS and which all demanded it do so forthwith. As this new report notes in reviewing this history, in every case NASA failed to follow these recommendations, and instead created budgetary methods designed to instead obscure the program’s cost.

This report notes that NASA continues to do so.
» Read more

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Endeavour Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts safely splashes down

8:53 am

SpaceX’s Endeavour Dragon capsule safely splashed down shorty after midnight last night in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida, completing a six month mission for two Americans, one Russian, and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The UAE astronaut, Sultan Al Neyadi, flew as a paying passenger, obtaining his flight through the private space station company Axiom, which in turn purchased the ferrying services to and from ISS from SpaceX. The Russian flew as part of the barter deal that NASA presently has with Russia, with each flying astronauts on the other nation’s capsules at no cost in order to make sure everyone knows how to use them in case of emergency.

Several additional details: First, in the post-splashdown press conference SpaceX officials revealed they are presently building a fifth manned Dragon capsule to add to its fleet, and are also aiming to fly each as much as fifteen times. This suggests they are anticipating a lot of business hauling both NASA and commercial passengers into space.

Meanwhile, the Russian-launched crew on ISS that launched last September and includes American Frank Rubio is targeting a return-to-Earth on September 27, 2023. If so, they will have completed a 371 day flight, or almost thirteen months. This I think is the second longest human flight so far in space, exceeded only by Valeri Polykov’s fourteen-and-half month mission in the 1990s.

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NASA reveals three year delay in its New Frontiers planetary mission program

9:21 am

NASA last week revealed that because of “budget uncertainty” it will not begin accepting project proposals in its New Frontiers planetary mission program this fall as planned, and will in fact not begin accepting new proposals until 2026.

At a NASA SMD town hall meeting July 27, Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, warned a potential extended delay in the release of the New Frontiers AO. “If the planetary science funding levels that are anticipated as a result of this tight budget environment are actually realized over the next two or so years,” she said, “it is unlikely we’ll be able to solicit New Frontiers perhaps not before 2026.” That delay was made official with the release of the community announcement.

The draft AO sought proposals for missions on six topics, as recommended by the planetary science decadal survey in 2011: a comet surface sample return, a mission to Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, a lunar geophysical network, a sample return mission to the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin, a mission to characterize the potential habitability of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and a probe of Saturn’s atmosphere.

The New Frontiers program previously funded the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission to Bennu.

The article at the first link above as well as the NASA officials quoted attempt falsely to blame the budget problems on the Republican House leadership, which insisted that the committee which reviews the NASA budget as well as the budgets of Justice and Commerce cut 28.8% from among those agencies in its 2024 budget review. That committee (as well as the Senate) however was very generous to NASA, essentially giving it the same budget as previously, with only a 1% cut, while slashing budgets for departments in Justice and Commerce to make up the difference.

The real blame for this delay in NASA’s planetary program almost certainly falls on the Mars Sample Return mission, which has seen gigantic budget overruns that are apparently swallowing the entire future planetary program. NASA’s planetary budget can’t pay for any other new planetary missions as long as it must pay for the cost overruns for the sample return mission.

This is no surprise, as we’ve seen this movie before. When Webb’s budget ballooned 20x, from its proposed $500 million to $10 billion, it essentially shut down the rest of NASA’s astrophysics program, delaying or cancelling all other space telescope projects for more than a decade. Now the planetary program is experiencing its own version of this same pain.

The problem is the Mars Sample Return mission itself. Its design has been haphazard and sloppy and constantly changing. It is also reliant on older technology ideas that will soon be made obsolete by Starship/Superheavy. NASA would be wiser to delay that project to await the development of the launch capabilities that will make it cost effective, and let a fleet of other missions happen instead.

I guarantee however that NASA won’t do that, because it will require some boldness. The philosophy in Washington remains the same: Do the same failed thing over and over again in the vain hope it might work next time.

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SpaceX launches four astronauts to ISS

7:20 am

Using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX early this morning put four astronauts into orbit for a six month mission to ISS.

The Dragon capsule, Endurance, was making its third flight. The first stage, flying for the first time, landed successfully back at Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

58 SpaceX
37 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 67 to 37. It also leads the entire world combined, 67 to 60, while SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 58 to 60 in successful launches.

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Axiom raises $350 million in private investment capital

11:53 am

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

Axiom announced today that in its most recent round of funding it raised an additional $350 million in private investment capital, almost tripling the private capital it has obtained in total.

Axiom Space announced today that it secured $350 million in its Series-C round of growth funding, lifting the total funds raised to over $505 million from investors and achieving more than $2.2 billion in customer contracts.

To date, Aljazira Capital and Boryung Co., Ltd., have anchored the round, paired with support from an array of diverse backers that include deep-tech venture capital funds and strategic brand partners, positioning Axiom Space as second to SpaceX for the most amount of money raised by a private space company in 2023, based on available pitchbook data.

The press release also reaffirms the company’s planned schedule for its space station project, with the first module launching and attaching to ISS in 2026. The graphic shows the assembly sequence, with the rear docking port the one linked to ISS. When assembly reaches the stage of the fourth image it will then be able to separate from ISS and fly independently in 2031. That last number however is one year later than NASA’s previous predictions for the retirement of ISS, suggesting Axiom knows something NASA has not yet told us.

Hat tip to Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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Ingenuity’s 55th flight completed

9:57 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The Ingenuity engineering team today updated the helicopter’s flight log, showing that the 55th flight occurred on August 12, 2023, one day later than originally planned, and flew 881 feet for 143 seconds, 61 feet and 9 seconds longer than planned.

The overview map above shows the present locations of both Perseverance and Ingenuity. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s new position, while the blue dot marks where Perseverance presently sits in Jezero Crater. Based on this map, the main goal of the flight was apparently to fly Ingenuity over a route that Perseverance will likely use to return to its planned route, as indicated by the red dotted line.

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Intuitive Machines sets mid-November launch date for its Nova-C lunar lander

9:16 am


Click for interactive map.

Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that the launch of its lunar lander, Nova-C, is now targeting a November 15-20, 2023 window, lifting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The yellow dot on the map to the right indicates the landing site, Malapert A, in the southern latitudes of the Moon. The white cross indicates the south pole.

The lander had originally planned to launch in 2021, but delays in construction pushed the launch back two years. A second company, Astrobotics, has its own lander, Peregrine, that though also delayed two years, has been ready to launch since early this year. It won’t launch until the end of this year at the earliest, however, due to delays in readying its rocket, ULA’s Vulcan on its first flight.

Both India’s Chandrayaan-3 and Russia’s Luna-3 are right now on their way to the Moon, with each planning a landing next week.

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NASA engineers still struggling to understand why Orion’s heat shield ablated so much

9:10 am

NASA engineers still do not understand why the heat shield on its Orion capsule ablated as it did during its return to Earth on the first unmanned Artemis-1 mission.

The agency is still running tests. It also expressed confidence that the issue will not delay the Artemis-2 mission, the first intended to carry humans on SLS and in Orion and still scheduled for late 2024.

At the same time, agency officials hinted that the third Artemis mission, which has always been planned as putting humans on the Moon for the first time since Apollo, might not achieve that goal. It is still not clear whether the mission’s lunar spacesuits as well as SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander will be ready on time. The latter is facing serious regulatory problems imposed by the Biden administration that is generally preventing it from flight testing the spacecraft.

That second Artemis mission, the first planned to carry humans, is one that actually at present carries the most risk. It will not only use a heat shield that at present engineers do not entirely understand, it will be the first Orion capsule to have the environmental systems necessary for its human cargo. NASA is putting humans on the first test flight of those systems.

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Boeing delays first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024

4:21 pm

Because of both parachute and wiring issues in its Starliner capsule, Boeing revealed today that it is delaying the first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024, so that it has time to change and test the parachutes as well as remove the flammable tape inside the capsule.

The company had been hoping to finally fly that first manned flight last month, but was forced to cancel when in June it discovered two shocking problems. First the connections between the parachutes and the capsule were too weak, and second, for some reason engineers had used tape to protect the capsule’s wiring that was too flammable and had to be replaced or covered somehow.

Boeing is taking the tape off in places where it’s easy and safe to do so and considering other remediation techniques, such as protective barriers or coatings over it, in trickier spots, Nappi said.

The parachute work is multifaceted as well. For example, Boeing has modified the soft link design to make it stronger, and the new version is being manufactured now, Nappi said. The company also decided to swap out Starliner’s parachute system, putting a new version slated for the first operational mission on board for [the crew flight test]. The new soft links will be incorporated into the new chutes, which will get to strut their stuff during a drop test soon. “We expect that the drop test will occur in mid to late November,” Nappi said. “That’s what the planning indicates at this point, and we’ll watch that closely.”

The seemingly endless number of mistakes and bad engineering that we have seen during the development of Starliner speaks very badly of Boeing in almost every way possible. These last two problems are especially egregious. Neither should have ever happened, and if so should never had been unnoticed until a mere month before launch and years into the project.

It must also be noted that March ’24 is merely a target date. Don’t bet the house on it happening then.

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NASA agrees to let Axiom fly a fourth private manned mission to ISS

10:10 am

NASA and Axiom have now signed a new agreement allowing Axiom to fly a fourth private manned mission to ISS, tentatively scheduled for no earlier than August 2024.

Through the mission-specific order, Axiom Space is obtaining from NASA crew supplies, cargo delivery to space, storage, and in-orbit resources for daily use. The order also accommodates up to seven contingency days aboard the space station. This mission is subject to NASA’s pricing policy for the services that are above space station baseline capabilities.

The order also identifies capabilities NASA may obtain from Axiom Space, including the return of scientific samples that must be kept cold and other cargo, and the capability to use the private astronaut mission commander’s time to complete NASA science or perform tasks for the agency.

The company has already hired SpaceX to provide the transportation to and from ISS, using its Falcon 9 rocket and one of its fleet of four manned Dragon capsules.

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Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket successfully places Cygnus freighter into orbit

5:44 pm

Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket tonight successfully launched a Cygnus freighter into orbit to ISS, flying for the last time with a first stage built in the Ukraine with engines from Russia.

Until Firefly can provide Northrop Grumman with a new American-made first stage, for the next three Cygnus cargo missions to ISS the company has purchased SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

This was Northrop Grumman’s first launch in 2023, so there is no change to the leader board in the 2023 launch race:

51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 59 to 30, and the entire world combined 59 to 50, with SpaceX by itself still leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 50.

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NASA puts off planetary mission competition for budget reasons

9:55 am

NASA has decided for budget reasons to delay the competition by scientists for a planetary mission by at least one year because of new budget constraints which the agency claims come from the budget limits imposed by Congress.

NASA has planned to release the announcement of opportunity, or AO, for the fifth New Frontiers mission in November, after releasing a draft version for public comment early this year. The release of the final AO would have kicked off a competition ending with the selection of a mission in the fall of 2026 for launch in the early 2030s.

However, after a debt-ceiling agreement enacted in early June that would keep non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 levels for fiscal year 2024, NASA tapped the brakes on those plans. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said at a June 21 meeting of the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee that the release of the AO would likely be delayed beyond November as NASA evaluates the implications of the debt-ceiling deal.

That claim is likely bogus. I suspect the real reason the agency has been forced to delay this project is because of cost overruns in other already existing planetary missions, most specifically the Mars Sample Return mission, whose budget has apparently doubled from about $4 billion to $8-$9 billion. Congress is likely not going to increase NASA’s budget in 2024, so this cost overrun forces it to find savings elsewhere.

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NASA changes have cost Northrop Grumman $36 million on its Lunar Gateway module

9:47 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday revealed that unexpected requirement changes to the specifications of its HALO module for NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station has raised its cost for this fixed price contract by $36 million.

In the company’s fiscal second quarter financial results released July 27, the company announced an unfavorable estimate-at-completion adjustment of $36 million for its work on the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, one of the first elements of the Gateway. The company blamed the charge on “evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges” that caused cost growth on the program.

…“We think that is best applied for commercial items or production programs with stable requirements and mature designs,” [the company’s CEO] said of fixed-price contracts. “As it’s turning out on the HALO program, the requirements are not as stable as we or the government anticipated, and we’re working with them to address that change management as we go forward.”

The HALO module was an upgrade of the company’s Cygnus cargo freighter, with its original fixed-price contract for $935 million.

On a fixed-price contract, NASA is not supposed to change its specifications. The company gets somewhat general requirements from NASA, and then builds the product to its own specifications. It appears that either NASA managers don’t seem to understand this and are causing the company problems, or the company itself had not anticipated some design and construction issues before bidding and are struggling to address them now. In the latter case Northrop Grumman managers might have themselves not understood the nature of fixed-price contracts, and had assumed NASA would simply pick up any increase in the project’s budget, as it does in cost-plus contracts. It apparently is not, and thus this old big space company is now suddenly forced to face reality.

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Houston mission control loses contact with ISS for about 90 minutes

10:25 am

NASA’s mission control in Houston yesterday lost contact with ISS for about ninety minutes during work at the Johnson Space Center, an outage apparently caused or related to upgrade work being done there.

Back-up systems were activated but not used, while communications continued through Russia’s mission control in Moscow. Nor was anyone on the station ever in any danger, according to NASA officials.

The only concern with such an outage would be the many systems on the American half of ISS that are closely controlled and maintained by the ground. On the Russian half the goal has always been to build its station modules so they could run independent of ground operations.

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JPL employee admits he used COVID money fraudulently to grow pot

9:12 am

A JPL employee has pled guilty to lying on his applications for COVID loans in order to use the money “to pay off a real estate debt and fund his illegal cultivation of marijuana.”

Armen Hovanesian, 32, of Glendale, agreed to plead guilty to defrauding a government sponsored loan plan in 2020, admitting to using some of the fraudulently obtained cash to fund an illegal marijuana cultivation operation. Hovanesian works as a cost-control and budget-planning resource analyst for the JPL, which is a federally funded research lab for NASA, according to the United States Department of Justice.

From June 2020 to October 2020, Hovanesian submitted three loan applications to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program for businesses he operated. The program provided low-interest financing to small businesses, renters and homeowners affected by disasters, including the coronavirus pandemic. As part of his plea agreement, he admitted to making false and fraudulent statements when applying for the loans, including lying about each business’s revenue from the previous year, as well as making “false and fraudulent” statements regarding what he planned to do with the money if approved for the loans. [emphasis mine]

That this guy’s job at JPL was essentially a bean counter suggests this might help explain the center’s recent budget and management problems. It certainly indicates the quality of its management has declined.

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NASA awards 11 small development contracts to a variety of companies

9:01 am

Capitalism in space: NASA today announced that it has awarded small contracts to eleven different companies, ranging from big established companies like ULA and Lockheed Martin to small startups like Varda and Zeno, for developing a range of new technologies, from power production on the Moon to making building materials from lunar soil.

Five of the technologies will help humanity explore the Moon. For astronauts to spend extended periods of time on the lunar surface, they will need habitats, power, transportation, and other infrastructure. Two of the selected projects will use the Moon’s own surface material to create such infrastructure – a practice called in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU. Redwire will develop technologies that would allow use of lunar regolith to build infrastructure like roads, foundations for habitats, and landing pads.

Blue Origin’s technology could also make use of local resources by extracting elements from lunar regolith to produce solar cells and wire that could then be used to power work on the Moon.

Astrobotic’s selected proposal will advance technology to distribute power on the Moon’s surface, planned to be tested on a future lunar mission. The company’s CubeRover would unreel more than half a mile (one kilometer) of high-voltage power line that could be used to transfer power from a production system to a habitat or work area on the Moon.

The contracts range in price from $1.6 to $34.7 million, with Blue Origin getting that largest award.

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NASA gives up on finding a new asteroid target for Janus

10:02 am

Without funding for its own launch vehicle, and unable to find a new asteroid target that can be reached by any future planned NASA launch, NASA has decided to shelf the Janus asteroid mission, putting the spacecraft into storage.

Designed to send twin small satellite spacecraft to study two separate binary asteroid systems, Janus was originally a ride-along on the Psyche mission’s scheduled 2022 launch. Psyche’s new October 2023 launch period, however, cannot deliver the two spacecraft to the mission’s original targets, and Janus was subsequently removed from the manifest.

The spacecraft will remain in storage, and might be revived at some point in the future, should another mission’s launch allow it to reach some other asteroid.

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NASA awards new spacesuit contracts

9:50 am

NASA yesterday issued two relatively small spacesuit contracts to the two companies it already has hired to develop different spacesuits, one for the Moon (Axiom) and the other for orbital spacewalks (Collins).

The new contract awards provides each company $5 million to begin design work for adapting their suits for the other tasks, with the goal aimed at having two different suits for Moonwalks and spacewalks, from two different companies. For the companies, having suits that work both in orbit and the Moon will enhance their product. For Axiom, it will also allow it to develop its own suit it can use on its own space station.

The original contracts awarded Axiom $228.5 million for its Moonsuit, and Collins $97.2 million for a new orbital suit. NASA has previously spent about a billion dollars and fourteen years trying to build its own new orbital spacesuit, and had failed to create anything.

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Redwire gets new contract to build two more replacement solar panels for ISS

9:44 am

Redwire has gotten a new contract from NASA, through its main contractor Boeing, to build two more Roll-Out Solar Arrays (IROSA) for ISS that are being installed to replace the stations aging original solar panels.

Since 2021, a total of six Redwire-built arrays have been developed, delivered, and deployed on the ISS, augmenting its critical power supply. Each wing provides an additional 20+ kW of power once deployed, and all eight IROSA wings combined will provide more than 160 kW for over 10 years.

These roll out arrays are installed during a space walk, and then roll out on top of the old panels. They are small but more power efficient.

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Sierra Space says first Dream Chaser will be ready for launch by December

12:41 pm

In a presentation at an investor conference on June 27, 2023, a Sierra Space official provided an update on the status of its first Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, stating that they expect it to be ready for launch by December, with the main question whether its ULA Vulcan launch rocket will also be ready.

The launch is supposed to be the second for Vulcan, but the first launch was just delayed for an undetermined amount of time so ULA can make modifications to the rocket’s Centaur upper stage. Once Tenacity is flying Sierra has a contract with NASA for seven cargo flights to ISS, with plans beyond.

The company is also working on a second version that can carry both crew and cargo. Vice said that version will have 40% greater cargo capacity than the first version and can support a six-person crew.

The ability of Dream Chaser to glide back to Earth in a runway landing, rather than splash down in the ocean, is a key selling point to customers, he argued. “We just think that landing at runways around the world is a huge differentiator: low-g landing back on a runway for both time-critical cargo and science, but also just the way people are going to want to fly back and land.”

The official also indicated that this human-rated version is being designed to work with the private Orbital Reef space station that Sierra Space is building in partnership with other companies. The company also said it is planning its own free flying version of its Orbital Reef LIFE module that the company hopes to launch by the end of 2026, ahead of Orbital Reef. If so, that would make this the sixth independent private space station planned by American companies.

Because much of this presentation was designed to impress potential investors, we should take it with a touch of skepticism. Nonetheless, that the company is considering launching its own station, independent of the Blue Origin-led Orbital Reef station, suggests it has its own doubts about whether that project will ever take off as planned, and has thus decided to make its own contingency plans.

Hat tip to Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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Surprise! The cost for the Mars Sample Return mission is ballooning!

10:11 am

According to NASA, the cost for the Mars Sample Return mission could possibly rise to as high as $8 to $9 billion, more than double the $3.8 billion to $4.4 billion estimated by a 2020 review.

NASA itself has recently become very silent about the project’s expected cost.

NASA officials have been careful not to give any estimates of costs for MSR in recent presentations, stating that it will wait until a formal confirmation review for the program, scheduled for the fall, before providing an official cost and schedule baseline. That will come after a series of preliminary design reviews and a review by a second independent board led by Orlando Figueroa, a former director of NASA’s Mars exploration program.

Those earlier numbers were never realistic, based on NASA’s recent track record. The cost of its big projects — Webb, SLS, Orion, Roman Telescope — always grows exponentially, once the project gets going.

This cost increase however is a serious political problem for NASA and this sample return mission, as the House is demanding major real cuts in the budgets of almost all federal agencies. While I expect NASA to survive these cuts without great harm, a program that shows out-of-control budget growth might become a target by the House, which is likely why NASA scheduled its review of the sample return mission to occur in the fall, after the House approves its next budget. Better to announce bad news as late as possible.

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Biden administration announces India will sign Artemis Accords

1:08 pm

Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House June 21, 2023
Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House
on June 21, 2023

As part of the visit of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the U.S., the Biden administration today announced that India has agreed to sign Artemis Accords, becoming the 27th nation to join the American space alliance.

It appears India made this decision after the Biden administration agreed to foster a whole range of cooperative technology exchanges.

Cooperation in advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum information science is also being fostered through the establishment of a joint Indo-US quantum coordination mechanism and the signing of an implementation arrangement on artificial intelligence, advanced wireless, and quantum technologies.

Both countries are working together on 5G and 6G technologies, including Open Radio Access Network (RAN) systems, with plans for field trials, rollouts, and scale deployments in both markets. “Here we’ll be announcing partnerships on open ran, field trials and rollouts, including scale deployments in both countries with operators and vendors of both markets. This will involve backing from the US International Development Finance, for cooperation and to promote the deployments in India,” the official said.

The US will support the removal of telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors through the US rip and replace program and welcomes Indian participation in this initiative.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

One would hope that this decision would help separate India from China and Russia, but this is unclear.

There are other questions. » Read more

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Update on SpaceX’s work leading to next Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:29 am

Link here. A static fire engine test program has begun for Starship prototype #25, which will fly on top of a Superheavy prototype. Also, work on the launchpad, badly damaged by the first test flight in April, has proceeded quickly.

During the first integrated test flight of Starship, Super Heavy Booster 7’s 30 working engines dug a sizable hole under the OLM [Orbital Launch Mount] during liftoff. The first images of it pictured a dramatic scene and pointed at some tough repair work ahead for SpaceX teams. Over the last two months, the hole was covered and reinforcements have been installed deep into the ground to strengthen the soil.

More recently, teams have been installing several tons of rebar underneath the OLM. While some rebar remains to be installed, as seen from aerial pictures captured by NSF, this work is expected to be finished soon and should be followed by a convoy of concrete trucks to fill up the pit. SpaceX will then install water-cooled steel plates over this concrete which will help support them and serve as an anchor for them.

The update also describes the numerous additional prototypes SpaceX is building at Boca Chica for further flight tests. It also notes this disturbing fact about the company’s planned Starship/Superheavy launch facility in Florida:

Work on the second set of tower sections, chopsticks, carriage system, and QD arm at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility has come to a halt. Contractor equipment has visibly disappeared and other construction equipment has been removed. The Florida Mega Bay parts have also made their way to Starbase, becoming the second Mega Bay at the Texas facility. The two big cranes that were previously at Roberts Road were also moved to Starbase to aid in the construction of that new Mega Bay.

On top of this, SpaceX has changed the use of the building previously thought to be the factory for Starship sections. This facility is now being used to process Starlink payload integration with Falcon 9’s fairings.

This slow down is probably because NASA has forbidden Starship/Superheavy launches from this launchpad because it is near the launchpad SpaceX uses for NASA’s manned missions. The agency wants SpaceX to be able to launch Dragon from its other more distant pad, and that work needs to be completed first before the Starship/Superheavy pad can be used.

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