Tag: NASA

NASA signs deal to launch Israel’s first space telescope mission

9:50 am

NASA today announced that it has agreed to provide the launch opportunity for Israel’s first space telescope, dubbed the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT), designed to make wide-field ultraviolet observations from geosynchronous orbit.

Led by the Israel Space Agency and Weizmann Institute of Science, ULTRASAT is planned for launch into geostationary orbit around Earth in early 2026. In addition to providing the launch service, NASA will also participate in the mission’s science program.

The press release, both from NASA and from Weizmann, was remarkably vague about how NASA will provide that launch capability. The only orbital rocket NASA has is SLS. Will ULTRASAT launch as a secondary payload on a future Artemis launch? Or will NASA buy launch services from another rocket company? The press releases did not say.

Regardless, this deal means that American taxpayers have agreed to foot the launch cost of this Israeli space telescope, in exchange for obtaining telescope time for American astronomers. Interestingly, the press releases also provided no information about how much that launch cost would be.

There has long been a need for a dedicated new ultraviolet space telescope, so this deal could be a good one for American astronomers and a worthwhile use of some of NASA’s budget. It just seems inappropriate for NASA to keep the details so secret.

0 comments

NASA outlines its expected needs as a space station customer

9:10 am

NASA has now published an updated detailed specification of what it will want to do on the four private space stations being built to replace ISS.

NASA published two white papers Feb. 13 as part of a request for information (RFI) for its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations effort to support development of commercial stations. The documents provide new details about how NASA expects to work with companies operating those stations and the agency’s needs to conduct research there.

One white paper lists NASA’s anticipated resource needs for those stations, including crew time, power and volume, broken out for each of the major agency programs anticipated to use commercial stations. Companies had been seeking more details about NASA requirements to assist in the planning of their stations.

,,,The second white paper outlines the concept of operations NASA envisions for its use of commercial space stations. The 40-page document described in detail what it expects from such stations in terms of capabilities, resources and operations, as well as what oversight the agency anticipates having.

At the moment NASA has contracts with four different space station companies or partnerships, Axiom, Blue Origin, Nanoracks and Northrop Grumman, each of which is building its own station. Because NASA will initially be the biggest customer for these stations its requirements will help shape those stations significantly, which is why this information is of critical importance for the private companies.

At the same time, NASA is not dictating specific designs. The agency remains the customer, buying time on private facilities that will be owned privately and be free to sell their product to others. Thus, the designs of these stations might not match exactly what NASA desires, since even now there are other customers interested in buying space station time and space.

2 comments

Intuitive Machines completes merger with SPAC as it goes public

9:02 am

Intuitive Machines, one of a handful of American companies building lunar landers for NASA and others, has completed its merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), thus becoming a publicly traded stock but raising less money than expected in the process.

Intuitive Machines said Feb. 13 it had closed its merger with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp., a SPAC that trades on the Nasdaq. The merged company, retaining the Intuitive Machines name, will trade on the Nasdaq starting Feb. 14 under the ticker symbol LUNR.

The companies announced the merger in September 2022, long after the mania surrounding SPACs has cooled both in the space industry and the overall market. Inflection Point had $301 million of cash in trust, and the companies said they had arranged an additional $55 million in investment from the SPAC’s sponsors and a founder of Intuitive Machines, along with $50 million CF Principal Investments LLC, an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald & Company. In an investor presentation linked to the merger announcement, the companies anticipated having more than $330 million in cash after transaction expenses.

However, in the Feb. 13 announcement that the merger had closed, the companies announced only $55 million of “committed capital from an affiliate of its sponsor and company founders.”

It appears that many investors in Inflection Point itself (30% of whom had voted against this merger) had pulled their money from the fund, depleting the $301 million that was originally promised. In addition, yesterday’s announcement made no mention of the $50 million that CF had also committed.

Essentially, the company’s future hinges on the success of its first lunar mission, presently scheduled for June. Should it succeed, the company should be able to replace from other investors the funds that it failed to raise in this merger. Should it fail, it is very possible it will go belly up, as it is likely it will find it difficult if not impossible to find further investment capital.

There is of course the possibility that NASA will keep the company afloat with additional funding, but if so it might be a case of throwing good money after bad, something our government is very good at doing.

1 comment

Update on CAPSTONE in lunar orbit

8:58 pm

Link here. The key takeaway is that this commercial privately built and operated lunar smallsat is doing what it was designed to do, even as its operators continue to overcome periodic technical problems.

For example, beginning January 26th the spacecraft stopped receiving commands from ground controllers. The problem solved itself when on February 6th “an automatic command-loss timer rebooted” the spacecraft. Meanwhile,

CAPSTONE has completed more than 12 orbits in its near-rectilinear halo orbit – the same orbit [that will be used by Lunar] Gateway – surpassing one of the mission’s objectives to achieve at least six orbits. The mission team has performed two orbit maintenance maneuvers in this time. These maneuvers were originally scheduled to happen once per orbit, but the mission team was able to reduce the frequency while maintaining the correct orbit. This reduces risk and complexity for the mission and informs plans for future spacecraft flying in this orbit, like Gateway.

Essentially, mission controllers are figuring out the best and most efficient methods for eventually maintaining Lunar Gateway’s orbit around the Moon, when it gets there.

0 comments

Engineers struggle to salvage Lunar Flashlight cubesat

8:52 pm

Because of thruster failures shortly after its December 11, 2022, NASA’s technology test lunar orbiter cubesat Lunar Flashlight has been unable to reach its planned orbit around the Moon.

Instead, first engineers have attempted an improvisation with the one thruster that had not initially failed, and when that did not work are now hoping to instead use the Earth’s gravity to shift its present path so that it will periodically fly over the Moon’s south pole, when it could possible still use its lasers reflectometer to gather data in the permanently shadowed craters there.

[Other than the thrusters, t]he rest of the CubeSat’s onboard systems are fully functional, and the mission recently successfully tested its four-laser reflectometer. This mini-instrument is the first of its kind and is designed and calibrated to seek out surface ice inside the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s South Pole.

As a engineering test satellite, everything that has happened has been to the good, as it has allowed these engineers to push this cutting edge cubesat technology to the limit.

0 comments

Space station builder Voyager raises $80 million in private investment capital

8:36 am

Capitalism in space: Voyager Space, one of three companies that NASA has provided funds to build a private space station, has now raised $80 million in private investment capital.

The funding includes participation from NewSpace Capital, Midway Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other documents viewed by TechCrunch. Seraphim Space also participated, TechCrunch has confirmed. The funding was filed with the SEC on January 27.

The company is building Starlab in partnership with Nanoracks (which is the majority owner of Voyager) and Lockheed Martin, which has already received $160 million from NASA.

1 comment

NASA switches lunar landing site for Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander

11:05 am

Peregrine landing site

NASA today announced that it has changed the planned landing site on the Moon for Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, presently scheduled for launch at the end of March on the first flight of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

The original landing site for Astrobotic’s flight within Lacus Mortis, which is in the northeast quadrant of the lunar nearside of the Moon, was chosen by Astrobotic to suit its lander performance and safety, as well as Astrobotic’s preferences. However, as NASA’s Artemis activities mature, it became evident the agency could increase the scientific value of the NASA payloads if they were delivered to a different location. The science and technology payloads planned for this delivery to the Moon presented NASA scientists with a valuable opportunity, prompting the relocation of the landing site to a mare – an ancient hardened lava flow – outside of the Gruithuisen Domes, a geologic enigma along the mare/highlands boundary on the northeast border of Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, the largest dark spot on the Moon.

The white dot on the map to the right shows this location. The original location was to the west of Atlas Crater in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side, where Ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar lander plans to touch down in April.

This decision by NASA was apparently prompted by the decision to send Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander to Vallis Schröteri in Oceanus Procellarum, which is the rill that flows west out of the crater Aristarchus. Gruithuisen Domes had been a potential landing site for Nova-C, and NASA probably did not want to lose an opportunity to go there.

3 comments

NASA and Russian engineers meeting to discuss status of leaks on ISS’s Zvezda module

9:40 am

According to Russia’s state-run press, NASA and Russian engineers have been reviewing the status of the repairs on the cracks in the Zvezda module on ISS.

Repairs to the various cracks in Zvezda’s hull, done by Russian astronauts in ’20 and ’21, have reduced the leakage from 1,140 grams per day to 300 grams per day. Normally ISS is expected to lose 325 grams per day, across the entire station, so the Zvezda leak doubled this loss, even after the repair. Thus, the hatch to Zvezda is kept closed in order to maintain the atmosphere of ISS at its normal levels, and opened only when there is need to enter it. In addition, its port is no longer used for dockings.

The engineering review is also looking into the cause of the cracks, which are believed to be stress fractures caused by the age of Zvezda (ISS’s second oldest module) combined with the many dockings that had occurred at its port. The review is also discussing ways to reduce the problem, until ISS’s retirement in 2030.

3 comments

Lunar Flashlight cubesat in trouble

9:18 am

The mission of NASA’s test cubesat Lunar Flashlight is now threatened because of a problem with its experimental thrusters that use what the agency labels a new “green” propellant.

The spacecraft, called Lunar Flashlight, launched last month on a mission to seek out water ice on the moon. The probe was also expected to test a new “green” propellant during its four-month voyage to the moon, but its thrusters have a problem, NASA said on Thursday (Jan. 12). “While the smallsat is largely healthy and communicating with NASA’s Deep Space Network, the mission operations team has discovered that three of its four thrusters are underperforming,” NASA wrote in an update. “Based on ground testing, the team thinks that the underperformance might be caused by obstructions in the fuel lines that may be limiting the propellant flow to the thrusters.”

Engineers are now devising a plan to fire the thrusters longer and more frequently to make up for the lower thrust. If successful, the cubesat will enter its planned lunar orbit in about four months, where it will use infrared lasers to search for ice in the permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles while testing a variety of other new technologies.

9 comments

Russian investigators conclude leak on Soyuz caused by external impact

9:20 am

ISS as of November 28, 2022
ISS after November 28, 2022 docking of unmanned Dragon freighter.
MS-22 is the Soyuz capsule that is leaking.

The Russian investigators yesterday concluded that the coolant leak on the Soyuz capsule docked to ISS was caused by an external impact, either by a meteroid or a small piece of space junk.

A decision on whether this capsule is still usable for manned flight will be made sometime in January. If not, Russia will move up the launch of the next Soyuz to ISS one month from March to February, but launch it empty. If so, managers will leave the schedule as is.

If the engineers determine the capsule is not flightworthy, it will mean however that until February, ISS is short one lifeboat. At present there are two Dragon capsules docked to ISS, one manned and one cargo. Both return to Earth with a habitable interior, but the cargo capsule is not intended for manned flight. In an emergency however it might be possible to use it.

This situation suggests that NASA should pay to get SpaceX to upgrade the cargo Dragons so that they could always be used as an emergency lifeboat.

9 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Black scientist blacklisted for doing good research

1:57 pm

Oluseyi Hakeem, blacklisted
Hakeem Oluseyi, Space Science Education Lead
for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate

They’re coming for you next: Today’s blacklist column describes an effort to not only cancel from history the man who led NASA for almost the entire 1960s space race, but to also blackball a scientist for doing good research that proved the campaign was not based on any facts.

Shortly before the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope last year, a petition was instigated to get it renamed because of accusations that Webb had persecuted homosexuals during his term as NASA administrator in the 1960s. As is now typical of our modern bankrupt intellectual class, as soon as this petition was issued more than 1,700 people signed it, all accepting at face value its accusations against Webb without any further research.

One scientist, who happened to be black, took a more detailed look at those accusations however and found them to be spurious. As Hakeem Oluseyi wrote:
» Read more

9 comments

Newly passed Senate bill requires consultation between industry and government on space junk

9:50 am

Though the bill still needs to be passed by the House, a just passed Senate bill requires consultation between industry and government on space junk, short circuiting recent attempts at the FCC as well as in the House to impose arbitrary government regulations.

You can read the Senate bill here [pdf].

The final result will still be government regulation on the lifespan and final deposition of any object placed in orbit, from nanosats to large manned space stations, but unlike the earlier FCC proposal and House bill, NASA and other government agencies will have to obtain feedback from the commercial space industry before such regulations are imposed.

Sounds great, eh? In truth, this bill in the end still gives full power to the federal government to control the launching of future spacecraft of all sizes. It also leaves the details entirely up to the bureaucracy. If passed Congress would cede its regulatory power to unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch.

The requirement that industry consultation occur simply means that the initial regulations will likely make some sense. Beyond that however the power it bequeaths to the federal bureaucracy in NASA, FAA, FCC, and other agencies will in the long run be still abused.

The need for the establishment of an independent space-faring society, free from odious Earthbound regulation, continues to grow.

4 comments
1 … 46 47 48 49 50 … 192