Tag: NASA

Falcon 9 launch puts Dragon in orbit

11:03 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has successfully put its fifth Dragon cargo freighter into orbit, with a docking at ISS scheduled for Tuesday.

Spaceflight Now’s status update above also noted that this is the 13th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010. All these flights have successfully put their primary payloads into orbit as promised, an amazing track record for a new rocket built by a new company only in existence for less than a decade.

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Extending ISS to 2024

10:01 am

An inspector general report released today has outlined some issues that NASA needs to address in order to keep ISS operational through 2024.

In this audit, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that while NASA has identified no major obstacles to extending ISS operations to 2024, it must address several areas of risk to ensure continued safe operations. Specifically, the ISS faces a risk of insufficient power generation due in part to faster-than-expected degradation of its solar arrays. Second, although most replacement parts have proven more reliable than expected, sudden failures of key hardware have occurred requiring unplanned space walks for repair or replacement. Third, with the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet NASA has a limited capacity to transport several large replacement parts to the Station should they be needed. While the ISS Program is actively working to mitigate these risks, anticipating the correct amount of replacement parts and transporting them to the ISS present major challenges to extending Station operations 10 or more years beyond its original expected service life.

The report also noted concerns about the budget and the lack of commitment from NASA’s international partners.

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NASA has chosen Boeing and SpaceX to build manned spacecraft to ferry crews to ISS

1:12 pm

The competition heats up: NASA has made a decision and has chosen two companies to ferry astronauts to and from ISS, and those companies are Boeing and SpaceX.

I am watching the press conference on NASA television. Some quick details from NASA here.

This is a reasonable political and economic decision. It confirms that SpaceX is ready to go and gives the company the opportunity to finish the job, while also giving Boeing the chance to show that it can compete while also giving that pork to congressional districts.

Some details: After NASA has certified that each company has successfully built its spacecraft they will have then fly anywhere from four to six missions. The certification process will be step-by-step, similar to the methods used in the cargo contracts, and will involve five milestones. They will be paid incrementally as they meet these milestones.

One milestone will be a manned flight to ISS, with one NASA astronaut on board.

One more detail. Boeing will receive $4.2 billion while SpaceX will get $2.6 billion. These awards were based on what the companies proposed and requested.

I will have more to say about this tonight on Coast to Coast, as well as on the John Batchelor show.

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Management problems at NASA’s asteroid hunting program

11:15 pm

An inspector general report today criticized NASA’s program to find potentially hazardous asteroids, finding it disorganized and poorly managed.

The report faulted the NEO Program’s lack of structure, and said its resources are inadequate for handling its growing agenda. In addition to the program’s Washington-based executive, Lindley Johnson, NASA funding goes to support six employees at the Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts and six more at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the inspector general’s office said.

The report said the program’s executive fell short when it came to overseeing progress in the asteroid-tracking effort. What’s more, there were no formal partnerships with the Defense Department or the National Science Foundation, or with international space agencies. Those groups could make significant contributions to the effort, the report said.

I do not doubt that this program has management problems. What government agency today doesn’t? And any that are managed well are the exception to the rule. However, the report’s conclusion that “resources are inadequate for handling its growing agenda” is typical Washington-speak for “Give us more money!” which almost never solves the management problems that made the program a failure in the first place.

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An update on the status of NASA manned commercial competition

3:25 pm

Jason Davis at the Planetary Society blog has put together an excellent summary of the status for all three companies competing for NASA’s contract to ferry astronauts to and from ISS.

Key paragraph:

From a quantitative standpoint, Boeing is the leader. Since the first quarter of 2013, the company has been ahead in percentage of milestones completed and percentage of funding awarded. Plus, there’s the simple fact that they’ve finished all of their milestones, while SpaceX and Sierra Nevada asked for extensions. But from a qualitative standpoint, things are less straightforward. SpaceX has already proven they can fly missions to the ISS. And they’re the only CCiCap participant with a pad abort test and an in-flight abort test among their milestones.

It is very clear just looking at the actual milestones that what Boeing has done so far is not that impressive. Almost everything on their list is a paperwork review, not construction or testing of actual hardware. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada are building and testing spacecraft. That they have not yet completed their milestones is hardly a big deal in this context.

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The Russian takeover of Crimea once again threatens American access to space

10:12 pm

A decision by the Russians to possibly shift astronaut training back to a base in the Crimea, now under their control, could lock American astronauts from future Soyuz flights.

Shifting the survival training to Russian-occupied Crimea will require foreign cosmonauts to accept travel there without Ukrainian visas, an explicit acquiescence to the new diplomatic status of the province. Refusal to attend survival training is equivalent to failing the training, which by existing training regulations is an automatic disqualification for flight certification. No Crimea trip, no space trip.

The Russians have not yet made this shift official, so it is possible it will not become a problem. However, the article outlines many reasons why it makes good sense for the Russians to do it.

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Construction completed on first Orion capsule

7:32 pm

NASA has released the first photo of the completed first Orion capsule, now finished and scheduled to do a test flight in December.

As interesting as that first test flight will be, launching the capsule to about 3,600 miles before it dives back into the atmosphere to test its heat shield, I can’t get that excited about it. I sincerely believe this program will go the way of Ares, the Orbital Space Plane, Constellation, and a host of other big NASA projects that were too expensive and took too long to build. It will get cancelled before it actually flies any humans anywhere.

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New York dumps NASA contract because of cost overruns.

8:26 am

New York Mayor de Blasio has fired a team of NASA consultants that had been hired by the previous mayor to lead the overhaul of the city’s 911 system after costs skyrocketed and the project fell far behind schedule.

Up to 20 NASA consultants had spent the past two years working on the project, at average annual salaries of $250,000. They’ve conducted technical designs for new radios and computer dispatch systems. That technology will eventually link police, FDNY and emergency medical system dispatchers and field units to the city’s main emergency call center in downtown Brooklyn, and to a still-unfinished backup call center in the Bronx.

City officials did not say they were dissatisfied with NASA’s performance. They simply believe the work can be done cheaper in-house.

Why does this sound familiar?

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Review panel approves extensions for seven planetary missions.

5:19 pm

In approving extensions of seven NASA planetary missions, a review panel concluded that the Curiosity rover wasn’t doing the best it could, and that the project scientist didn’t work hard enough to change their minds.

The Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover landed on the red planet in August 2012. Equipped with a drill to gather surface samples and spectroscopy equipment to analyze the samples, the rover has collected and analyzed five surface specimens so far and, according to the extended mission proposal just approved by NASA, would analyze another eight over the next two years. That is “a poor science return for such a large investment in a flagship mission,” a 15-person senior review panel chaired by Clive Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, wrote in a report published Sept. 3.

The report also chided John Grotzinger, the lead Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for neglecting to show up in person during a Mars-focused senior review panel meeting in May. “This left the panel with the impression that the [Curiosity] team felt they were too big to fail,” the senior review panel wrote.

This sounds like a pissing war between scientists. Grotzinger didn’t give them the required deference so they slammed him. No matter happened, however, we know they weren’t going to cancel Curiosity’s funds.

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Battle of the heavy lift rockets

9:44 am

Check out this very detailed and informative look at unstated competiton between NASA’s SLS rocket and SpaceX’s heavy lift rocket plans that are even more powerful than the Falcon Heavy.

Key quote: “It is clear SpaceX envisions a rocket far more powerful than even the fully evolved Block 2 SLS – a NASA rocket that isn’t set to be launched until the 2030s.”

The SpaceX rocket hinges on whether the company can successfully build its new Raptor engine. If they do, they will have their heavy lift rocket in the air and functioning far sooner than NASA, and for far far far less money.

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The decision on manned spaceflight

9:23 am

The rumors are swirling. Today alone the news included three different articles about NASA’s upcoming decision to down-select to either one or two in its manned commercial crew program.

The third article above speculates that the decision will be made shortly after this weekend, maybe as soon as next week. It also outlines in nice detail the companies who are competing for the contract.

I strongly expect NASA to pick two companies, not one, as the agency has repeatedly said it wants to have redundancy and competition in manned space flight. To this I agree whole-heartedly. Right now, if I was a betting man (which I am not), I would pick SpaceX and Sierra Nevada as the two companies to get the nod.

If NASA only picks one company that I don’t think there is much doubt that it will be SpaceX.

And then again, government agencies, because of politics, have sometimes made some incredibly stupid decisions. For example, back in the 1970s the company that proposed the space shuttle was rejected for another big space company that had more political clout, which then turned around and essentially stole the first company’s designs to build the space shuttle from them. It just took longer and cost more.

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SLS first launch officially delayed one year

3:18 pm

In a press conference today to tout the development of the SLS rocket, NASA finally admitted that the rocket’s first flight has been delayed a year until 2018, as had been rumored for months.

The cost? $7 billion more from now until that first launch, a number that does not include the billions already spent. I once again note that the entire commercial program, both manned and cargo, has cost less than that, from start to finish, and includes the entire manifest of actual cargo flights to ISS.

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Russia to continue on ISS past 2020?

9:03 am

A Russian news story today suggests that they are leaning strongly to continuing their partnership with the United States on ISS beyond 2020.

“The issue of Russia’s participation at the ISS after 2020 remains open, but there is a 90-percent chance that the state’s leadership will agree to participate in the project further,” [Izvestia] wrote, citing a source at Russia’s Federal Space Agency Roscosmos.

This report gives a better overview of the debate going on with Russia’s government and space agency. If they abandon ISS the work they have already done on new modules for the station will have to be written off, and it appears assembling their own station from those modules will be too expensive and take too long.

It also looks like NASA offered them a second year long mission if they stuck around.

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NASA’s Space Launch System searches for a mission

9:26 am

Managers of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) are searching for a mission that they can propose and convince Congress to fund.

Any honest read of this article will conclude that this very expensive rocket system is an absurd waste of money. It has no mission now, and will never get one considering the cost. Instead, NASA will spend billions to fly two test flights, both unmanned, and then the money will run out.

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What private manned spaceship will NASA pick?

8:47 am

Speculation grows on the upcoming down-select decision by NASA of its manned commercial space program.

Next up is the announcement of the transition to the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts, to be announced later this month, or early in September, depending on political direction. Although the source selection process is obviously an internal debate, with its results embargoed until the time of the NASA announcement, it is hoped that two of the commercial crew providers will move forward with additional funding.

At the ASAP meeting, Ms. Lueders expressed “NASA’s desire to continue the partnerships even after the announcement, including with companies not selected.” That continued association may be in the form of unfunded Space Act Agreements (SAA), not unlike that which Blue Origin is currently working under, as it develops a crew capsule outside of the trio working with CCiCAP funding. “People are recognizing the value of competition and have an appreciation for shared knowledge,” added Ms. Lueders. “NASA has learned from the companies and the companies have learned from NASA. It would be a big plus to continue the relationships.”

As to which companies are likely to win through to the CCtCap phase, that is a tightly kept secret. However, over recent months, sources have noted NASA’s strong affection toward the multi-capable Dream Chaser, while SpaceX has a growing track record with its Falcon 9 and cargo-Dragon combinations via its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) missions. [emphasis mine]

My sense in the last few months has also leaned heavily in favor of Dragon and Dream Chaser, both of whom appear to be moving forward with construction at a fast pace. Boeing meanwhile has instead made it seem that it wishes to invest as little capital in its project as possible, unless it wins the competition. While the first two companies have unveiled real hardware, Boeing continues to show us mostly mock-ups.

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The flight of gifted engineers from NASA

5:43 pm

Rather than work in NASA, the best young engineers today are increasingly heading to get jobs at private companies like SpaceX and XCOR.

It is a long article, worth reading in its entirety, but this quote will give the essence:

As a NASA engineering co-op student at Johnson Space Center, Hoffman trained in various divisions of the federal space agency to sign on eventually as a civil servant. She graduated from college this year after receiving a generous offer from NASA, doubly prestigious considering the substantial reductions in force hitting Johnson Space Center in recent months. She did have every intention of joining that force — had actually accepted the offer, in fact — when she received an invitation to visit a friend at his new job with rising commercial launch company SpaceX.

Hoffman took him up on the offer, flying out to Los Angeles in the spring for a private tour. Driving up to the SpaceX headquarters, she was struck by how unassuming it was, how small compared to NASA, how plain on the outside and rather like a warehouse.

As she walked through the complex, she was also surprised to find open work areas where NASA would have had endless hallways, offices and desks. Hoffman described SpaceX as resembling a giant workshop, a hive of activity in which employees stood working on nitty-gritty mechanical and electrical engineering. Everything in the shop was bound for space or was related to space. No one sat around talking to friends in the morning, “another level from what you see at NASA,” she said. “They’re very purpose-driven. It looked like every project was getting the attention it deserved.”

Seeing SpaceX in production forced Hoffman to acknowledge NASA might not be the best fit for her. The tour reminded her of the many mentors who had gone into the commercial sector of the space industry in search of better pay and more say in the direction their employers take. She thought back to the attrition she saw firsthand at Johnson Space Center and how understaffed divisions struggled to maintain operations.

At NASA young engineers find that they spend a lot of time with bureaucracy, the pace is slow, their projects often get canceled or delayed, and the creative job satisfaction is poor. At private companies like SpaceX, things are getting built now. With that choice, no wonder the decision to go private is increasingly easy.

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NASA headquarters staff votes to unionize.

4:56 pm

NASA’s bureaucracy marches on: The staff at NASA headquarters today voted to unionize.

“This successful vote will allow us to work with management to improve working conditions for NASA support and administrative staff here at NASA headquarters, thereby improving operations, saving money, and retaining an engaged and professional workforce,” said Tifarah Thomas, a program specialist within NASA’s Office of the Chief Health & Medical Officer. Professional support specialists at NASA headquarters include budget analysts, policy analysts, administrative specialists, secretaries, and others.

NHPA currently represents nearly 200 engineers and scientists at NASA in Washington. The combined unit, including the professional support specialists who voted today for IFPTE representation, will now represent more than 500 workers at the headquarters of America’s space agency. IFPTE also represents engineers and scientists at NASA labs and research facilities from coast-to-coast.

Anyone with the slightest objectivity knows that the working conditions for federal employees in Washington is glorious, with pay about double what everyone else in the country makes and benefits far exceeding even the best private packages. In addition, the hours are great and just slightly longer than what my generation would have called bankers’ hours. Moreover, if I can be blunt, these engineers are mostly paper pushers. They are not the one’s designing and building anything that might fly in space. Their only reason to unionize now is because they see a threat to their cushy jobs with the advent of private space and are organizing to secure their unneeded positions.

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NASA admits that it is struggling to meet the 2017 launch date for SLS

11:13 pm

Delays in the construction of Orion’s European-built service module as well as cracks in the spacecraft’s heat shield are threatening the planned 2017 launch date for Orion’s first test flight, unmanned, beyond Earth orbit.

Note that this program, costing anywhere from $10 to $20 billion, is only building a handful of capsules for flying three or four test flights. Beyond that, there is no money.

I have predicted this before, and I will predict it again: SLS will never take any humans anywhere. The cost is too high, the bureaucracy too complex, and the schedule is too slow. It will vanish when the new private companies begin flying humans into space in the next three years.

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The Dream Chaser test vehicle to fly again

10:08 am

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has announced that its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle has been refurbished and will complete a number of manned and unmanned flight tests in the fall, with their schedule on track for a November 2016 orbital test flight.

“We will do between two and five additional flights. A couple will be crewed. As a result of the vehicle being upgraded, we will be flying our orbital flight software, which will give us about a year’s worth of advancement on the vehicle.” Flights are expected to last over a six- to nine-month period, he adds.

Sierra Nevada has also continued to expand its partnerships, both in the aerospace industry as well as with other countries. The first action is likely part of a lobbying effort to help convince NASA to choose it when it down selects its commercial manned program from three manned spacecraft to two later this year. The second action indicates that even if Sierra Nevada is not chosen by NASA, they plan to proceed to construction anyway to serve other customers.

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Orion first test flight scheduled

10:00 am

NASA has set December 4 for the first test flight of Orion.

In related news, the Navy has successfully completed a splashdown recovery test of Orion.

I haven’t labeled these stories “The competition heats up” because I have serous doubts Orion or SLS will survive the next Presidential election, even if this test flight on a Delta 4 Heavy rocket is a complete success. And if you want to know why, just read the first article above. It lists the long troubled ten-year long history of this capsule, with the following punchline describing the schedule for further launches with the actual SLS rocket:

While the first SLS/Orion mission, known as EM-1, is still officially manifested for December 15, 2017 – internally that date has all-but been ruled out. Internal schedules shows EM-1 launch date as September 30, 2018, followed by the Ascent Abort (AA-2) test – required for crew launches – on December 15, 2019, followed by EM-2 on December 31, 2020.

I find also find it interesting that in describing the many problems Orion has had in development, the article fails to mention the cracks that appeared in the capsule that required a major structural fix. Nor does the article mention the ungodly cost of this program, which easily exceeds $10 billion and is at least four times what NASA is spending for its entire program to get three different privately built spaceships built in the commercial program.

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The next U.S. Mars rover will try to make and store oxygen

9:59 am

Of the seven science instruments proposed for the next U.S. Mars rover, scheduled for a 2020 launch date, MOXIE test the engineering to produce and store oxygen, pulled from the Martian atmosphere.

Developed in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it’s based on the fact that the Martian atmosphere, though extremely thin, is composed of 96 percent carbon dioxide, which means its a vast potential source of oxygen for future explorers and settlers. Essentially, MOXIE is a fuel cell in reverse. Instead of generating electricity by using oxygen to burn a fuel, it uses a process called solid oxide electrolysis , where electricity is employed to split carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon monoxide.

This process would see Martian air pumped into the unit through a dust filter and pressurized before being passed into a fuel cell. At high temperatures, some ceramic oxides act as oxygen ion conductors. In the fuel cell, a thin, non-porous disc of this ceramic separates two porous electrodes. One electrode acts as the cathode and the other as the anode. Carbon dioxide passes through the cathode and when it comes into contact with the ceramic, the interaction of electricity and the ceramic causes the carbon dioxide to split into oxygen and carbon monoxide. The oxygen and the carbon monoxide are then separated and the oxygen stored.

What makes this unusual is that NASA has actually dedicated one science instrument to engineering research, not pure science. The agency does not do this much anymore, but such research is essential if the U.S. is going to someday send humans to other planets.

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Russia outlines its space exploration plans for the next two decades

9:21 am

At a science conference in Moscow on Saturday the director of Russia’s Space Research Institute described in detail the future exploration plans for the Russian space program.

According to the story, Russia plans to return to the Moon and Mars with unmanned probes. He also described how the first missions will be in partnership with Europe, followed by Russian missions designed to test and prove the technologies. If these flights go well, in 2024 Russia will consider trying again with a repeat of the Phobos-Grunt mission that failed in 2012

This last detail is a change from previous reports that said Russia would launch Phobos-Grunt 2 in 2018. It is also consistent with much of the Russian program for the last two decades (as well as most of NASA’s own ambitious manned exploration program), where the agency makes bold announcements of future plans but somehow with each new announcement the dates for the actual launch have always been pushed back. The actual flight never seems to happen.

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Commercial communications satellites for Mars?

8:03 am

The competition heats up? NASA is considering a different commercial approach for providing communications to and from its Mars probes.

The purpose of NASA’s request for information, or RFI, released July 23 “is to explore new business models for how NASA might sustain Mars relay infrastructure, consisting of orbiters capable of providing standardized telecommunication services for rovers and landers on the Martian surface, in the Martian atmosphere, or in Mars orbit,” according to a posting on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

According to the post, NASA will use information it receives from respondents to inform its future Mars exploration strategies, but the agency has not decided to pursue a commercial interplanetary telecom initiative. “We are looking to broaden participation in the exploration of Mars to include new models for government and commercial partnerships,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, in a statement. “Depending on the outcome, the new model could be a vital component in future science missions and the path for humans to Mars.” [emphasis mine]

It is important to highlight the fact that NASA has not yet made a decision on this issue. The best thing the agency could do, in my opinion, would be to step back, design nothing, but let private companies bid on providing the service. The expertise at many of the private satellite companies providing communications efficiently and inexpensively to private customers worldwide would easily provide NASA better communications at Mars for less money.

In other words, like manned flight and cargo delivery to ISS, NASA should simply become a customer, and let private companies build and own the products that NASA buys.

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Sierra Nevada signs deal with Japan

9:14 am

The competition heats up: Japan has signed a development agreement with Sierra Nevada in connection with its Dream Chaser manned spacecraft.

I was also tempted to preface this post with the phrase, “Who needs NASA?” Sierra Nevada has a viable product that can get humans into space cheaply. Several countries, Germany, now Japan, want to get their own citizens into space, and have realized what a bargain Dream Chaser is. Sierra Nevada is taking advantage of this demand to sell its product worldwide. If Congress decides to defund them, or NASA decides not to pick them to continue development, they very clearly intend to build the ship anyway. It just won’t be used to put American astronauts into space.

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Another ISEE-3 update

2:24 pm

The team trying to resurrect ISEE-3 had very mixed results in its attempt today to get the spacecraft’s propulsion system working.

They managed to get “several instances of thrust,” which suggests there is fuel, the system can function, and that their strategy is on the right track. They did not however get full thrust as hoped, and are not quite sure why the spacecraft only partly responded. They are analyzing the data while they apply to NASA for an extension of their license to transmit to the spacecraft.

This last point is merely a formality. What can NASA do if they continue anyway? Nothing. NASA will say yes, partly because it is good public relations and partly because most of the people at NASA are also fans of this effort.

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Space junk damages ISS coolant radiator?

9:09 am

According to the Russian Interfax news agency, a piece of space junk has hit a coolant radiator on the U.S. portion of ISS.

The source says that no coolant has escaped from the system and that NASA engineers are analyzing images to assess the damage.

Readers should be aware that I have tried without success to find the NASA website the story claims is the source for this information. Moreover, this story is reported nowhere in the U.S. press, and it is strange for a NASA website to report something like this and it not be quickly picked up by the U.S. press.

Thus, I am not entirely convinced yet that this story is accurate.

Update: a commenter below has provided this link to a subsequent post at nasaspaceflight about the impact.

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NASA and Boeing finalize contract to build the SLS rocket

3:37 pm

NASA and Boeing today signed a $2.8 billion contract for Boeing to build the core stage of the SLS rocket

Scheduled for its initial test flight in 2017, the SLS is designed to be flexible and evolvable to meet a variety of crew and cargo mission needs. The initial flight-test configuration will provide a 77-ton capacity, and the final evolved two-stage configuration will provide a lift capability of more than 143 tons.

It would be nice for the U.S. to have this heavy-lift rocket, but I fully expect the funds to run out immediately after it makes its inaugural flight, despite the wonderful pork it provides to so many Congressional districts. It just costs too much per launch.

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Update on the LDSD partly successful test flight

11:52 am

Another eleven news stories were published today on the LDSD test flight (go here to find them all), but only two gave an honest and informative appraisal of the parachute failure and the program’s future. This CBS report clarified the results well with these two quotes:

The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator then fell toward impact in the Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii. The carrier balloon apparently came apart after the LDSD’s release and it was not immediately clear what recovery crews standing by in the landing zone might be able to retrieve.

and this:

Two more LDSD vehicles are being built for “flights of record” next summer.

Another report from Space Insider also provided this key information, something I would have expected every journalist in the world to have considered essential to their report.

Sadly, not one of the other news stories saw fit to mention that the test vehicle might have been destroyed because of the failure of the chute, nor did any of them bother to report that two more such test vehicles are under construction, allowing program to continue anyway.

That so many news stories were published on this test flight indicates the interest that exists in it. Too bad most reporters writing these stories were only interested in providing us propaganda and pro-NASA cheer-leading.

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