Tag: NASA

Sierra Space powers up its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle for the first time

9:09 am

Sierra Space yesterday announced that it has successfully run electricity for the first time through its first Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity.

The press release is remarkably lacking in detailed information, or graphics. This quote is really the only hard facts mentioned:

Sierra Space simulated the power that will be generated from Dream Chaser’s solar arrays once on orbit. Test engineers plugged that power into Dream Chaser and began turning on systems. Sierra Space exercised flight computers, base processors and low-voltage distribution units.

Tenacity has been under construction since 2016, when the company won its NASA contract to build it. That’s seven years to build a single spacecraft, and yet all they have done so far is feed electricity through it for the first time. In that time period SpaceX not only built multiple prototypes of Starship and Superheavy, it has flown multiple test flights.

Is money an issue? The actual contract amount NASA gave Sierra Space to build Tenacity has never been published, though NASA has said the total awarded for all the cargo missions to be flown by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Sierra Space equaled $14 billion. Since these fixed price contracts also require the companies also commit some of their own funds, or obtain outside financing, it is possible that Sierra Space has had money issues slowing development.

Regardless, Dream Chaser was first supposed to fly in 2020. It is now three years late, with no clear indication that a launch will come anytime soon. In many way, Sierra Space is beginning to remind me of Blue Origin, endlessly issuing promises but never delivering.

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NASA’s corrupt safety panel doubts Starliner is ready for its first manned flight in July

9:26 am

The head of NASA’s safety panel — which over the years has consistently missed the big safety issues while whining about things that did not matter — expressed strong doubts yesterday on whether Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule is ready for its first manned flight in July.

Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the committee, expressed skepticism that NASA and Boeing will be able to close known issues with Starliner in time for a launch currently scheduled for as soon as July 21.

“There remains a long line of NASA processes still ahead to determine launch readiness” for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, the first crewed flight of the spacecraft with two NASA astronauts on board. “That should not be flown until safety risks can either be mitigated or accepted, eyes wide open, with an appropriately compelling technical rationale.”

This panel hasn’t the faintest idea what it is talking about, and should be ignored. It appears that NASA and Boeing are presently reviewing the capsule’s parachute system. Sanders however raised other issues which actually appear more designed to simply slow or even prevent the capsule’s launch.

The panel did the same thing during the development of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule, making irrelevant claims about paperwork and the safety of the company’s Falcon 9 fueling procedures that were ridiculous. Meanwhile, it has ignored much more fundamental numerous safety issues with NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule, such as the agency’s plan to fly it manned using its capsule environmental system for the first time.

It is very possible that there remain serious safety issues with Starliner. I simply note that I would not rely on NASA’s safety panel to provide me an honest or educated appraisal of the situation.

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Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifts two more NASA hurricane monitoring satellites into orbit

8:58 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place the last two of NASA’s four-satellite Tropics hurricane monitoring constellation into orbit.

The first launch occurred about two and a half weeks ago, on May 7, 2023. Both launches were originally contracted to Astra, but when that company discontinued operations of its Rocket-3 rocket, NASA turned to Rocket Lab.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

34 SpaceX
19 China
7 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 39 to 19 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 39 to 33. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including American companies, 34 to 38.

Note that at this moment SpaceX and Rocket Lab are the only American companies that have launched. The established rocket companies, ULA and Northrop Grumman, have launches planned but none as yet, while two American companies have ceased operations, Astra (supposedly temporarily) and Virgin Orbit (permanently).

American freedom resulted in the competition in rocketry which has lowered costs but taken business from the established companies. Freedom has also caused the death of two companies, because the success that freedom brings also carries risks. Failure can happen, but the sum total of achievement is always greater than when competition is squelched.

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SuperBIT high altitude astronomical balloon completes mission

9:32 am

SuperBIT image of Antennae Galaxy
The Antennae galaxy, one of four SuperBIT images released.
Click for original image.

After almost forty days circling Antarctica and taking high resolution images of galaxies and nebula, NASA SuperBIT high altitude astronomical balloon completed its mission today, landing in Argentina.

Having identified a safe landing area over southern Argentina, balloon operators from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, sent flight termination commands at 8:37 a.m. EDT, May 25. The 18.8-million-cubic-foot (532,000-cubic-meter) balloon then separated from the payload rapidly deflating, and the payload floated safely to the ground on a parachute touching down in an unpopulated area 66 nautical miles (122 kilometers) northeast of Gobernador Gregores, Argentina. NASA coordinated with Argentine officials prior to ending the balloon mission; recovery of the payload and balloon is in progress.

During its nearly 40-day journey, the balloon completed a record five full circuits about the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes, maintaining a float altitude around 108,000 feet. In the coming days, the predicted flight path would have taken the balloon more southerly with little exposure to sunlight, creating some risk in maintaining power to the balloon’s systems, which are charged via solar panels. The land-crossing created an opportunity to safely conclude the flight and recover the balloon and payload.

The picture above, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, has incredible resolution, illustrating the advantage of flying a telescope on a high altitude balloon.

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Launch of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser now scheduled for six month window opening in August

9:47 am

After years of delays, Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity, is now scheduled for launch during the six month mission to ISS of a crew scheduled for launch in August.

Dream Chaser’s first flight on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is expected while Crew-7 is aboard and two of those crew members, NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli and JAXA’s Satoshi Furukawa, recently trained on it. JAXA and NASA formally announced Furukawa’s assignment to Crew-7 today. Furukawa, Moghbeli, ESA’s Andreas Mogensen and a Russian cosmonaut whose assignment has not been officially announced yet, are expected to launch in mid-August for a 6-month stay on the ISS.

The exact launch date within that mission has not yet been determined. It will largely depend scheduling, fitting it in with other launches to the station, assuming Tenacity’s construction is finished in time. That construction began in 2015, and has taken three to four years longer than first announced.

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Three government agencies now investigating the safety of methane-fueled rockets

9:42 am

We’re here to help you! It appears that three different federal agencies have been tasked to investigate the safety of methane-fueled rockets, which SpaceX, Relativity, Blue Origin, and others are beginning to use for their rockets. It burns cleaner and with more power than kerosene and is easier to handle than hydrogen.

Yet, the federal government under Biden now seems worried a new innovation in rocketry is being developed. First, the FAA is studying the explosive potential of such rockets, according to Brian Rushforth, the manager of the innovation division.

The FAA has set up a test stand at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. A crane 43 meters tall will be used to drop stainless steel containers containing mixtures of LOX and methane. A series of tests is planned to start in June on three-week intervals to measure the explosive power of that propellant combination. A second phase, tentatively scheduled for next year, will conduct similar tests with varying velocities. He said the data from those tests will be shared with other government agencies, such as NASA and the U.S. Space Force, along with launch vehicle developers.

Meanwhile, NASA and the Space Force are jointly doing a separate study on how methane-fueled rockets threaten the launch range and other nearby launchpads.

In all three cases it can be argued that these studies make sense. It also can be argued that the Biden administration is putting pressure on these agencies to find ways to squelch this new technology, especially because it is central to the development of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship rocket, and there is real hostility in Democrat/leftist circles to Elon Musk. This latter argument is further strengthened when you consider the explosive possibilities of hydrogen fuel, used by the space shuttle for decades as well as NASA’s SLS rocket. I can’t imagine its danger is less than methane. If hydrogen has been determined to be okay why should methane now be considered a threat?

Either way, we can be sure of one thing: These studies will slow down development by SpaceX and others of these new methane-fueled rockets. They will also provide ammunition for outside environmental groups who want to file further lawsuits against these companies to stop their rockets from launching.

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Capstone does lunar fly-by, takes first lunar pictures, completes main mission

9:47 am

The Moon as seen by Capstone
Click for original image.

The smallsat engineering test lunar orbiter Capstone has now successfully ended its primary mission, completing six months of operation in the near-rectilinear halo orbit that NASA’s Lunar Gateway manned space station intends to fly.

To put a final touch on that main mission, in May mission managers at the private company Advanced Space also completed two additional experiments. On May 3, 2023 they performed a close-fly of the Moon, using the spacecraft’s camera for the first time to take the picture of the Moon to the right.

Then, on May 9 Capstone successfully tested navigation technology in conjunction with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), also in orbit around the Moon.

During the May 9 experiment, CAPSTONE sent a signal to LRO designed to measure the distance and relative velocity between the two spacecraft. LRO then returned the signal to CAPSTONE, where it was converted into a measurement. The test proved the ability to collect measurements that will be utilized by CAPS software to determine the positioning of both spacecraft. This capability could provide autonomous onboard navigation information for future lunar missions.

The mission now enters its extended mission, planned to last at least a year.

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Lucy makes course correction in preparation for 1st asteroid fly-by

9:36 am

Lucy's route through the solar system
Lucy’s route through the solar system

The asteroid probe Lucy on May 9, 2023 fired its engines to successfully make a minor course correction in preparation for a fly by of the asteroid Dinkinesh, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Even though the spacecraft is currently travelling at approximately 43,000 mph (19.4 km/s), this small nudge is enough to move the spacecraft nearly 40,000 miles (65,000 km) closer to the asteroid during the planned encounter on Nov. 1, 2023. The spacecraft will fly a mere 265 miles (425 km) from the small, half-mile- (sub-km)-sized asteroid, while travelling at a relative speed of 10,000 mph (4.5 km/s).

Dinkinesh, the white dot inside the main asteroid belt in the lower left of the map to the right, is the first of eight asteroids Lucy will fly past.

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NASA picks Blue Origin’s partnership for building second manned lunar lander

9:25 am

Artist's concept of Blue Moon
An artist’s concept of Blue Moon

NASA today announced that it has chosen the partnership led by Blue Origin to build a second manned lunar lander for its Artemis program.

Blue Origin will design, develop, test, and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crew transfer in lunar orbit. In addition to design and development work, the contract includes one uncrewed demonstration mission to the lunar surface before a crewed demo on the Artemis V mission in 2029. The total award value of the firm-fixed price contract is $3.4 billion.

The other partners in the contract are Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.

This is NASA’s second contract for a lunar lander, with SpaceX’s Starship the first. The idea is to have two landers available from competing companies for both competition and redundancy, similar to the approach the agency has used for its manned ferry service to ISS, using SpaceX and Boeing. I wonder if NASA’s experience on the Moon will be similar to that ferry service, whereby only SpaceX so far has been able to deliver. The track record of Blue Origin suggests it will do about as poorly as Boeing has with Starliner.

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NASA’s second super pressure balloon develops leak, forcing termination of mission

9:24 am

After only a day and a half after launch NASA’s second super pressure balloon, this time carrying a detector for studying cosmic rays, developed a leak that forced its controllers to terminate the mission.

The scientific balloon launched from Wānaka Airport, New Zealand, May 13, 12:02 p.m. NZST (May 12, 8:02 p.m EDT). The balloon was in flight for 1 day, 12 hours, and 53 minutes before termination over the Pacific Ocean May 14 at 12:54 UTC (8:54 a.m. EDT). The launch was the second and final for NASA’s 2023 New Zealand balloon launch campaign.

During flight, the SPB began experiencing a leak and teams attempted to troubleshot by dropping ballast to maintain the balloon’s altitude. The determination was made to safely terminate over the Pacific Ocean. NASA will investigate the cause of the anomaly.

Meanwhile, the first balloon, dubbed SuperBIT, continues to fly, presently on its fourth circumnavigation of Antarctic while its telescope takes high resolution images of celestial objects.

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Intuitive Machines’ first mission to land on Moon delayed

5:52 pm

Intuitive Machines officials revealed during their quarterly report that the first mission of its Nova-C lunar lander has been delayed from June to late August or September.

The company announced in February plans for a June landing at Malapert A, a crater near the south pole of the moon. That date was a slip from a previously scheduled March launch, which the company said was linked to NASA’s decision to move the landing site to Malapert A.

Altemus said the company made “significant progress” in testing of the lander in recent months, such as structural tests to confirm the vehicle could handle the stresses of launch and cryogenic tanking demonstrations. “We have some functional testing” still to do on the lander, he said, but did not elaborate on the nature of those tests or their schedule ahead of shipping to Cape Canaveral for its Falcon 9 launch.

Two private companies have so far attempted and failed to land on the Moon, Israel’s SpaceIL and Japan’s Ispace. Two American companies, Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic, are both racing to achieve this goal in the coming months. This delay now puts Astrobotic in the lead, with its launch now targeting the summer.

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Momentus and Astroscale team up to propose Hubble servicing mission

11:29 am

Capitalism in space: The two orbital tug companies Momentus and Astroscale announced today that they have partnered to propose a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, designed to boost the telescope and extend its life.

The proposed mission concept, a commercial solution to extend the life of this important national asset without risk to humans, includes launching a Momentus Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV) to low-Earth orbit on a small launch vehicle. Once on orbit, Astroscale’s RPOD technology built into the OSV would be used to safely rendezvous, approach and then complete a robotic capture of the telescope. Once mated, the OSV would perform a series of maneuvers to raise the Hubble by 50 km. Removal of surrounding and threatening space debris in Hubble’s new orbit using the Vigoride and Astroscale’s RPOD capabilities will be prioritized after the completion of the primary reboost mission.

As I have written repeatedly, Hubble is a telescope that refuses to die. I predicted that come the 2030s, when its orbit had decayed to a point that it either had to be de-orbited (NASA’s preferred option in the past when it ran everything) or be lifted to a higher orbit to extend its life, people would find a way to lift it.

Now that private enterprise is running the show, NASA is taking advantage of that to ask for private solutions to save Hubble, and not surprisingly it is quickly getting them.

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NASA now demolishing the obsolete mobile launch platform used during Apollo

9:42 am

The second of three mobile launch platforms that were used during the Apollo program to transport the Saturn-5 rocket to its launchpad but are all obsolete and no longer in use is finally being demolished for salvage.

The first has already been scrapped, while the third is still in use for “servicing the crawlerway between SLS launches.”

NASA has been storing the platform in the Vehicle Assembly Building, but there was no longer room there, with Boeing taking over more space for assembling SLS core stages. The platform itself was deemed unsafe for display at any museum, with the cost of making it safe too high.

Better to salvage it than have it sit in the way of future space operations. After all, when you get down to it, it is simply some metal and hardware. The history was accomplished by the humans who built it, and who would be appalled if later generations used their work as a club to prevent new achievements in space.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches two NASA hurricane monitoring cubesats

6:11 pm

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket today successfully placed NASA’s two Tropics hurricane monitoring cubesats into orbit, lifting off from New Zealand ((May 8th New Zealand time).

This is the first of two Rocket Lab launches to get the entire four-satellite Tropics constellation into orbit, with the second schedule for two weeks from now.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

29 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 33 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 33 to 28.

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Suborbital rocket explodes four seconds after launch in New Mexico

9:15 am

An UP Aerospace suborbital rocket exploded yesterday only four seconds after launch in New Mexico, destroying a number of private and NASA science and commercial payloads.

An UP Aerospace rocket, 20 feet tall and carrying a NASA payload, exploded moments after liftoff today. The unfortunate event not only affected the NASA TechRise Student Challenge payloads but also delayed a poignant tribute to the late NASA astronaut, Phillip K. Chapman, and chemist Louise Ann O’Deen.

The rocket was set to launch the cremated remains of Chapman, NASA’s first Australian-born American astronaut, finally granting him his long-awaited journey to space.

Chapman and O’Deen’s remains were payloads from the commercial company Celestis. The thirteen NASA payloads were part of its TechRise Student Challenge program for 6th to 12th grade students.

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Experimental NASA high altitude balloon circles Antarctica in ten days

10:06 am

Overview map
Click for original image.

An experimental NASA high altitude balloon has successfully circled the continent of Antarctica in only ten days, flying at an average elevation of 107,000 feet.

The overview map to the right, annotated for posting here, shows its flight path so far.

“The balloon is performing exactly the way it was engineered to do, maintaining its shape and flying at a stable altitude despite the heating and cooling of the day-night cycle,” said Debbie Fairbrother, NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program chief. “As we continue to test, validate, and qualify this technology for future flights we’re also performing some cutting-edge science.”

The balloon is flying the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) payload, which has already returned brilliant research images from this flight.

Weather permitting, the balloon can be seen from the ground, especially at sunrise and sunset, as it continues on its globetrotting journey. People can track the real-time location of NASA’s super pressure balloon at this website: https://www.csbf.nasa.gov/map/balloon10/flight728NT.htm

The images have so far been of astronomical objects, such as the Antennae galaxy and the Tarantula nebula. Being so high above the atmosphere, the pictures are sharper than ground-based telescopes and have a much wider field of view.

The press release did not state how long this flight will last, but it did mention a second balloon mission is planned, flying a European cosmic-ray detector.

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NASA announces winners in its annual school manned rover design competition

9:48 am

NASA today announced the winning teams in its annual competition for high schools and colleges to come up with the best new designs for manned rovers capable of operating on other worlds.

The annual engineering competition – one of NASA’s longest standing challenges – held its concluding event Friday, April 21 to Saturday, April 22, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

More than 500 students from around the world participated during HERC’s 29th anniversary competition. Student teams represented 16 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, as well as the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, India, Mexico, Peru, and Singapore. Teams were awarded points based on navigating a half-mile obstacle course, conducting mission-specific task challenges, and completing multiple safety and design reviews with NASA engineers.

The first place winners were teams from Escambia High School from Florida and the University of Alabama. NASA also listed winners in a whole range of other categories (“crash and burn”, “pit crew”, “social media”), many of which appear designed simply to make sure everyone got a participation award.

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NASA awards 12 companies small development contracts with total value $14.5 million

9:28 am

NASA today announced it has awarded twelve different space companies small development contracts, total value $14.5 million, for developing new technologies ranging from new welding techniques to new thermal protection systems to better lunar rover tires.

The companies are also a wide mix, from large well-established giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing to new startups like Blue Origin and Sierra Space.

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Update on lunar orbiter CAPSTONE

1:58 pm

Link here. The update comes from Advanced Space, the commercial company tasked by NASA with operating the orbiter, whose main goal its to test operations in the type of orbit around the Moon that NASA plans to put its Lunar Gateway space station, dubbed a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).

Thus far, since performing the NRHO insertion maneuver on November 13th, 2022, the spacecraft has spent 154 days operating in the NRHO completing 23 NRHO revolutions. During this time, the mission team has maintained knowledge of the spacecraft state well within the mission requirements using ground-based navigation tools and tracking measurements collected by the Deep Space Network including DSS-17 which is an affiliated site at Morehead State University in Kentucky. This navigation information has continued to support the design and execution of required maneuvers to maintain the orbit.

Minimum maneuver size constraints have been sequentially reduced as the combined mission operations teams at Advanced Space, Terran Orbital, and Stellar Exploration continue to mitigate issues with a thruster valve. Since entering the NRHO the spacecraft has executed six Orbit Maintenance Maneuvers (OMM) using approximately 1.8 m/s of fuel. Although the mission plan was originally to do a maneuver every NRHO (approximately once a week), the higher burn threshold has reduced the number of maneuvers performed while also demonstrating the robustness of the stationkeeping strategy utilized by the mission which is the same strategy planned for the Lunar Gateway.

CAPSTONE’s primary mission ends in May, but it will continue on an extended mission for twelve more months.

Though CAPSTONE has provided NASA important orbital data for maintaining Lunar Gateway in lunar orbit, the orbiter’s biggest achievement is its commercial nature. NASA hired Terran Orbital to build it, Rocket Lab to launch it, and Advanced Space to operate it. There was relatively little government participation. Moreover, this privately-run project has demonstrated that an inexpensive smallsat can quickly accomplish the same things that once only big expensive satellites attempted.

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Ohio local authorities approves land sale for future private astronaut training facility

7:44 am

The local city council in Brook Park, Ohio, yesterday approved by a vote of 7-0 the purchase of nearly thirteen acres by the British company Blue Abyess to allow it to quickly build its proposed private astronaut training facility.

The Brook Park location will be built around a very large, 150-foot deep, multi-level pool. It’s an area that can replicate what life would be like in outer space and allow for the necessary training, dubbed astronaut boot camp for space exploration. “They’re not swimming pools. They’re aimed at industry, whether that’s marine offshore energy, maritime defense, subsea technology, human performance in extreme environments, or how do humans cope with green space environments,” Vickers said.

Officials say this project could be a huge economic driver, potentially bringing more than 100 jobs to the area.
In addition, it will likely generate major interest from tourists.

The facility will also include a hotel for those private astronauts, whether commercial or tourist. Located next to the Glenn Research Center, the company hopes to provide its services to both the public and NASA.

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