Tag: NASA

NASA delays Starliner return decision to end of month

9:17 am

In a short FAQ posted by NASA today, the agency quietly revealed that the decision on whether to bring Starliner back with its astronauts on board has been delayed till the end of August.

NASA now plans to conduct two reviews – a Program Control Board and an Agency Flight Readiness Review – before deciding how it will safely return Wilmore and Williams from the station. NASA expects to decide on the path forward by the end of August.

It appears the agency has decided to bring more people into the decision-making process. In the briefing last week, it was then planning only one review, expected to be completed before the end of this week. It now sounds like a second review will occur after the first, pushing the decision back one more week.

All of NASA’s actions in the past three weeks have suggested an increasing involvement by upper management, possibly including White House officials. With an election coming up, the politicans who are supposed to be in charge have apparently inserted themselves into this process and are demanding greater review. I expect in the end the decision will fall to them, and might even be announced by NASA administrator Bill Nelson himself.

These actions have also suggested that upper management does not like the risks involved in returning the crew on Starliner. Politicians do not like to have bad things happen on their watch. We should therefore not be surprised if the decision is made to send Starliner home unmanned.

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NASA reconsiders cancellation of overbudget and behind schedule robotic refueling mission

8:59 am

Due to some pressure from Congress (which wants the 450 jobs the project employs), NASA is now reconsidering its cancellation of the On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (OSAM) 1 mission, designed in the late 2000s to demonstrate the robotic refueling of a dead satellite but is so overbudget and behind schedule that in the interim private enterprise accomplished the same goal now repeatedly for a fraction of the cost.

Language in the final fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill, released just days after NASA’s cancelation announcement, which fully funded OSAM-1 at $227 million, directed NASA to adjust the mission to launch in 2026 within the spending profile NASA included in its 2024 budget request. That could be done, the report accompanying the bill suggested, through “potential de-scoping of some non-essential capabilities,” adding that if it is not possible, NASA should conduct another continuation review in September.

In other words, Congress wants NASA to keep this project, even if it means cutting the budget of other more useful and valuable missions.

OSAM has cost a billion dollars so far, and after almost fifteen years has not yet flown. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman’s MEV servicing robot has already provided fuel to several dead satellites, while orbital tug startups are flying missions and developing the same refueling capabilities for far less. The industry doesn’t need this demonstration mission anymore. It has already demonstrated it, and done so better.

Moreover, why the heck does OSAM require 450 people? That number is absurd, and likely exceeds the payrolls of all the orbital tug companies plus Northrop’s robotic servicing division combined.

There is hope for the American taxpayer. The legislative recommendations above come solely from the Senate. The House appears less interested in spending this money. And NASA has not yet decided what it will do.

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NASA leaning now to send Starliner astronauts home on Dragon, in February 2025

11:01 am

Though a decision will not be made until next week, during a press briefing today the nature of the briefing and the wording by NASA officials suggested that they are now leaning strongly to having the two Starliner astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, return on the next Dragon capsule to launch to the station on September 24, 2024 and return in February 2025.

My conclusion is based on several subtle things. First, no Boeing official participated, the second time in row that they were excluded. Second, this briefing included some new individuals who rank higher in the chain of command, and whose opening statements were clearly written carefully in advance and were read aloud.

Third, and most important, the wording of those statements repeatedly indicated they are looking at Dragon return more seriously. For example, NASA’s chief astronaut Joe Acaba suggested strongly that the two astronauts were now well prepared for an eight month mission, rather than coming home in August 2024. Other statements by officials suggested they themselves are less confident about returning on Starliner. Though the data suggests they can return safely, there remains enough uncertainty to make some people uncomfortable.

One factor not stated but is certainly controlling the situation now is the upcoming election in November. The Democrats who control Washington and the White House will allow nothing to happen that could hurt their election chances. We must therefore assume people in the White House are now in control and are the ones who now intend to make the decision about Starliner’s return.

Based on these factors, we should expect NASA to announce next week that the crew will return in a Dragon capsule. In order for the return to happen on Starliner NASA and Boeing engineers must somehow convince those politicos that the return would be entirely safe. Since these politicos are always risk adverse, it would shock me if they can be convinced. It could happen, but understanding the politically framework is important.

The officials stated that they have scheduled the final review next week, and it appears the decision will be announced then.

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Intuitive Machines wants to land VIPER rover on Moon

9:04 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole

The lunar lander startup Intuitive Machines has now revealed it is putting together an industry partnership to bid on flying NASA’s VIPER lunar rover on its own largest lander, still under development.

In an Aug. 13 earnings call about its second quarter financial results, Intuitive Machines executives said they were planning to respond to a request for information (RFI) that NASA issued Aug. 9 seeking input from companies and organizations interested in taking over the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission that the agency said in July it would cancel.

Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said on the call that his company, which also responded to an earlier call for “expressions of interest” from NASA regarding VIPER, is working with other companies, universities and international partners on responding to NASA’s RFI. He did not identify any of those prospective partners.

…NASA, in its RFI, said that prospective partners would be responsible for the costs of any final testing and other work on the rover itself, as well as delivering it to the lunar surface and operating it once there. NASA, in its July 17 announcement that it would cancel VIPER, said the agency would save at least $84 million by halting work now on the rover, now complete and undergoing environmental testing.

Whether this company can raise the capital to finish this mission, now that NASA has said it cannot, remains unclear. That it is trying, and NASA is not, illustrates however why NASA should get out of the business of building anything and just buy it from the private sector. NASA’s attempt to build VIPER went 3Xs over budget and is considerably behind schedule. Now the private sector see profits in finishing the job, which will in turn save the agency considerable money. Imagine if NASA had done this from the beginning. The savings would have been even greater, and VIPER might right now be even closer to launch.

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NASA inspector general blasts Boeing’s management relating to its work on SLS’s new more powerful upper stage

9:52 am

Boeing's schedule slips in building SLS's upper stage
Boeing’s schedule slips in building SLS’s upper stage

In a report issued today [pdf], NASA’s inspector general harshly criticized the Boeing managment and operations at its Michoud facility, where the company is developing SLS’s new more powerful upper stage. From the report’s executive summary:

Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of rained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing. To mitigate these challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees. Considering the significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud, we found these efforts to be inadequate. For example, during our visit to Michoud in April 2023, we observed a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome—a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3—segregated and pending disposition on whether and how it can safely be used going forward due to welds that did not meet NASA specifications. According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision. The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards.

The report also notes that delivery of that upper stage has been delayed from 2021 to 2027 (as shown by the graph to the right, taken from the IG report), and its cost has risen from $962 million to almost $2.8 billion. It also notes quite bluntly that:

Boeing’s quality management system at Michoud does not effectively adhere to industry standards or NASA requirements, resulting in production delays to the SLS core and upper stages and increased risk to the integrated spacecraft. … Boeing’s process for addressing contractual noncompliance has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur.

Sound familiar? It should. These issues appear to be the same kind of quality control problems that have plagued Starliner, and are also the same kind of problems that had NASA reject Boeing’s bid to provide cargo to its Lunar Gateway station, and state while doing so that it will no longer consider future Boeing bids until the company straightens itself out.

It appears from today’s inspector general report that Boeing has fixed nothing. The report recommends some additional supervision of Boeing from NASA, and more importantly suggests the agency “institute financial penalties for Boeing’s noncompliance with quality control standards.”

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WISE/NEOWISE space telescope mission ends after fourteen years

9:11 pm

Comet NEOWISE, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope
Click for full image.

Launched in 2009, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was shut down today after almost fourteen years of successful observations, with its first years dedicated to creating an infrared survey of the sky. In 2013, after two years of hibernation, it was reactivated and renamed NEOWISE (for reasons that I have always found absurd), with the goal over the next thirteen years of mapping the sky for near Earth objects.

By repeatedly observing the sky from low Earth orbit, NEOWISE created all-sky maps featuring 1.45 million infrared measurements of more than 44,000 solar system objects. Of the 3,000-plus near-Earth objects it detected, 215 were first spotted by NEOWISE. The mission also discovered 25 new comets, including the famed comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE that streaked across the night sky in the summer of 2020.

A Hubble image of that comet is to the right.

The mission was ended because the telescope’s orbit is now too low to provide good data. It is expected to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up before the end of the year.

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NASA has decided to consider bringing Starliner down unmanned

10:32 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NASA/Boeing push back final decision of Starliner return

8:58 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4:57 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hat tip stringer Jay.

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Perseverance finds intriguing geology, and the press goes crazy

9:58 am

Intriguing Martian rock
Click for original image.

A press release from JPL yesterday described an intriguing rock (image to the right) that the Mars rover Perseverance science team has recently been studying, and in doing so repeatedly hinted that its features suggest the possibility of past Martian life. From its first two paragraphs:

A vein-filled rock is catching the eye of the science team of NASA’s Perseverance rover. Nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” by the team, the arrowhead-shaped rock contains fascinating traits that may bear on the question of whether Mars was home to microscopic life in the distant past.

Analysis by instruments aboard the rover indicates the rock possesses qualities that fit the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life. The rock exhibits chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago when the area being explored by the rover contained running water. Other explanations for the observed features are being considered by the science team, and future research steps will be required to determine whether ancient life is a valid explanation.

Not surprisingly the press immediately went crazy. Here are just a few headlines:
» Read more

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NASA/Boeing: Cause of Starliner thruster failure identified

10:21 am

According to NASA and Boeing officials, ground static fire engine tests have now identified the likely cause of the thruster failures on the Starliner capsule during its docking to ISS in early June, and puts them in a position next week to determine a return date for the capsule and its two astronauts.

It appears the problem is related to teflon seals in the thrusters, detected while engineers did a series of tests on the ground with another Starliner capsule. Based on this information, Boeing thinks it can fix the problem on future capsules, while also insuring there will be no problems returning the astronauts from ISS.

The thrusters in question are all attitude thrusters, where there is a lot of redundancy and the issue has been seen to be well controlled from the start. The larger thrusters used for the undocking and de-orbit burn have been tested as well, and have not shown any similar issues at all.

The ground tests have also identified the cause of the helium leaks within the capsule engine system. Boeing will use this data to fix later capsules as well. These leaks are not a concern for the return to Earth.

The plan now is to do in the next few days one more set of static fire tests with the capsule docked on ISS, doing short bursts with all the attitude thrusters to further confirm what has been learned on the ground. If that goes as expected, a final meeting next week will determine the return date for the capsule and crew.

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SpaceX’s contract to de-orbit ISS reveals the inability of the older space companies to compete

9:49 am

Link here. The article goes into detail about the bidding process that led to SpaceX winning the contract $843 million fixed-price contract to build a specialized Dragon capsule to dock with ISS and de-orbit it. While its focus is on the refusal of the older companies (Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing) to sign the fixed-price contracts that NASA now prefers and that SpaceX can handle with no problem, it was this section that struck me the most:

SpaceX’s bid price was $680 million. The source selection statement did not reveal a price for Northrop’s bid other than saying it was “significantly higher.” Based on NASA’s budget request, Northrop’s bid was likely approximately twice as high.

But SpaceX did not just win on price. Its “mission suitability” score, effectively its technical ability to design, develop, and fly a vehicle capable of deorbiting the space station, was 822, compared to Northrop’s score of 589. SpaceX’s approach had one weakness, compared to seven weaknesses in Northrop’s bid, according to NASA evaluators.

Finally, the selection was also based on past performance by the contractors. SpaceX’s performance was rated as “very high,” given how it has delivered with the Cargo and Crew Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket. Northrop’s performance on Cygnus and its various rockets was given a “moderate” rating. Overall, the NASA evaluators expressed a “very high level” of confidence in SpaceX being able to complete the mission, whereas a “moderate level” of confidence was expressed in Northrop.

In other words, Northrop not only couldn’t do the job as cheaply and wasn’t even willing to do it at a fixed price, its technical performance has not been that good either.

The article focuses rightly on the present lack of any viable competitors to SpaceX, and the problems this raises for the entire American aerospace industry. I want to point out how this situation reveals a much more fundamental problem with the industry itself. The established aerospace industry is not only doing poor work, it is overcharging for it.

Or to put it more bluntly, it is unwilling or unable to compete. Relying on businesses with such bankrupt attitudes is not a good way to get anything done.

The hope had been that the newer startups (Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, Firefly, etc) would pick up this slack, but except for Blue Origin the rocket capabilities of these companies are just not big enough yet to do it. Blue Origin’s proposed New Glenn rocket and associated spacecraft could do the job, but the company has demonstrated for the past decade its desire to emulate the older and failing big space companies rather than a new fresh face.

The new companies, given time, could solve this problem, since they are all willing to innovate and compete, but the apparent increase in the regulations imposed by the FAA and other government agencies in the past two years suggests they will be squelched as well.

Unless something changes, the U.S. is not going to see the space renaissance that seemed so promising only two years ago.

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NASA suspends all U.S. spacewalks on ISS due to water leak

9:03 am

Because of a water leak that occurred in an umblical cord at the beginning of a spacewalk on June 24, 2024, NASA has now suspended all U.S. spacewalks on ISS as it investigates the cause.

Tracy Dyson, a NASA astronaut, had a brief spacesuit leak a month ago while still in the hatch of the International Space Station (ISS). She and Mike Barrett had just opened the door for a 6.5-hour spacewalk for maintenance activities, when showers of ice particles erupted from a spacesuit connection to the ISS. The spacewalk was suspended, but the astronauts were never in any danger, NASA has emphasized.

“That spacewalk ended early because of a water leak in the suit’s service and cooling umbilical; that’s the site that’s connected to ISS,” station program manager Dana Weigel, of NASA, told reporters in a teleconference Wednesday (July 17). (Astronaut spacesuits stay connected to ISS life support systems via that umbilical until just before they exit the hatch.) “We’re still taking a look at the cause of the water leak, and what we want to do to recover,” Weigel added. “We’ll go look for the next opportunity for where we want to do the spacewalk. It’s not time-critical or urgent, and so we’ll find the best, logical place to put it.”

At this moment NASA has still not identified the cause of the leak, though astronauts on ISS have been inspecting the umblical cord as well as the entire suit, disassembling components where possible.

What really needs to happen is the delivery of newly designed suits, something NASA has wanted done for about fifteen years. The agency spent most of that time making powerpoint presentations and spending a billion dollars, with no new suits produced. It is now hoping its spacesuit contract with Axiom will get it new spacesuits.

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NASA and Boeing complete ground static fire tests of Starliner

11:20 pm

According to a press announcement tonight from NASA, the agency and Boeing have now completed the static fire tests using a Starliner ground capsule to duplicate the engine burns required to bring the in-space capsule back to Earth, carrying its two astronauts.

Teams completed ground hot fire testing at White Sands and are working to evaluate the test data and inspect the test engine. The ongoing ground analysis is expected to continue throughout the week. Working with a reaction control system thruster built for a future Starliner spacecraft, ground teams fired the engine through similar inflight conditions the spacecraft experienced on the way to the space station. The ground tests also included stress-case firings, and replicated conditions Starliner’s thrusters will experience from undocking to deorbit burn, where the thrusters will fire to slow Starliner’s speed to bring it out of orbit for landing in the southwestern United States.

Engineers now need to complete a review of those tests, followed by a full review leading to a decision as to when the astronauts will return on Starliner. No dates have yet been set, but expect these reviews to be completed within two weeks, and that Starliner will likely be scheduled for return in early August, prior to the scheduled launch of the next Dragon manned mission in mid-August.

All this assumes the FAA will clear SpaceX to resume launches before then. SpaceX is apparently ready to resume this week, but we have no indication the FAA will go along.

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Scientists: Biden has infused DEI and racial quotas throughout the entire federal science bureaucracy

1:39 pm

Joe Biden, allied with Hamas
Joe Biden, like the KKK in love with racist quotas

A new research paper just completed by a international group of scientists details at length how the policies of critical race theory and its “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” philosophy has been infused deeply into all levels of the entire federal science bureaucracy, influencing grant awards and hiring at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in ways that warp science and research and make good research impossible..

You can read the paper here [pdf]. From the press release:

The paper exposes how DEI has spread much further and more deeply into core scientific disciplines than most people, including many scientists, realize. This has happened, in large part, by presidential executive order (specifically, EO 13985 and EO 14091), implemented through the budget approval process.

The two executive orders listed were issued by President Biden in 2021 and 2023 respectively, with the first issued on his very first day in office. If you have the patience, it worth reading both, since they outline in great detail the goals of this administration to favor the hiring and promotion of “underserved communities,” which the first order lists as follows:
» Read more

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NASA cancels its VIPER payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander

9:06 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole

Late yesterday NASA announced it was canceling the VIPER rover that was the primary payload on Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander, scheduled for launch in the fall of 2025.

NASA stated cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth as the reasons to stand down on the mission. The rover was originally planned to launch in late 2023, but in 2022, NASA requested a launch delay to late 2024 to provide more time for preflight testing of the Astrobotic lander. Since that time, additional schedule and supply chain delays pushed VIPER’s readiness date to September 2025, and independently its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander also has been delayed to a similar time. Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions. NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent.

Knowing a bit of history is important to understand this decision. In the first half of the 2010s VIPER was called Resource Prospector, and was intended as an entirely NASA-built lunar lander and rover mission with a budget of about billion dollars. In 2018 however the Trump administration cancelled it as part of its decision to shift from missions designed, built, and owned by NASA to making NASA simply a customer buying products from private sector. Rather than spend a billion on one lunar lander/rover mission, NASA would use that money to buy multiple lunar landers from private companies, and put its instruments on those.

NASA then decided to repurpose the rover portion of Resource Prospector, turning it into VIPER to launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. However, that project still carried with it all the problems that curse all government-designed, government-built, and government-owned projects. It had no fixed price contract but instead had the typical government unlimited checking account, and thus its costs kept rising with repeated delays in construction.

When then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed the project at the 2019 International Astronautical Congress, the estimated cost was $250 million. By the time NASA was ready to make a cost commitment to Congress, that grew to $433.5 million with landing in 2023. That landing date slipped to 2024 with a cost of $505.4 million. Now it has slipped again to 2025 and with a cost of $609.6 million, more than 30 percent above the commitment. That triggered an automatic cancellation review, Kearns said, which took place last month.

Some of the cause of the 2023 delay was because Astrobotic’s Griffin lander wasn’t ready either. Now however it appears VIPER still won’t be ready for the 2025 launch, even though the lander will be ready.

NASA has therefore decided to stop throwing good money after bad, and kill the rover. It however has not killed its funding for Astrobotic’s Griffin, and the mission will go forward, with the company offering its now open payload space to others. It also may use this space to fly a demonstration mission of its own proposed LunarGrid solar power system.

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SpaceX to FAA: Allow launches to resume before completion of July 11th launch failure investigation

10:59 am

SpaceX on July 15, 2024 submitted a request to the FAA to quickly determine that the July 11th Falcon-9 launch failure posed no threat to public safety, and thus allow the company to resume Falcon 9 launches before the investigation of that failure is completed.

The FAA has two means of allowing a rocket to return to flight operations following a mishap. The first is that it approves a launch operator-led mishap investigation final report, which would include “the identification of any corrective actions.” Those actions need to be put in place and all related licensing requirement need to be met.

The other option is for a public safety determination to be issued. This would be an option if “the mishap did not involve safety-critical systems or otherwise jeopardize public safety,” according to the FAA.

“The FAA will review the request, and if in agreement, authorize a return to flight operations while the mishap investigation remains open and provided the operator meets all relevant licensing requirements,” the FAA wrote on its website.

SpaceX is apparently expecting the FAA to quickly approve this request, as it has now scheduled its next Falcon 9 launch for July 19, 2024, at the end of this week.

The lower level workers at the FAA probably want to get out of the way, but they have to obey orders from above, and it is my suspicion that the White House is applying pressure to make life hard for SpaceX. As I have noted, the FAA has not required the same level of due diligence from either NASA and its SLS rocket, or Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

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FAA to “investigate” SpaceX launch failure

9:12 am

In what appears to be a perfect example of bureaucratic hubris, the FAA announced right after the Falcon 9 upper stage failure on July 11, 2024 that it “is requiring an investigation” and that it “will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions.” The agency added:

A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. In addition, SpaceX may need to request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates any corrective actions and meet all other licensing requirements.

It is difficult to count all the ways this announcement is arrogant and political.

First, why has the FAA made no such similar demands upon Boeing and its Starliner capsule, during any of its three flights, all of which have had serious issues? On the present manned flight, the failure of its thrusters during docking posed a safety issue to the crew then, and poses a clear safety issue to the public when it comes time for the capsule to return to Earth. If those thrusters don’t fire as planned Starliner could crash anywhere.

Yet the FAA has been entirely uninterested. Could it be because Boeing is not owned by Elon Musk, and the Biden administration isn’t demanding the FAA come down hard on it?

Second, does the FAA really think SpaceX wouldn’t do an investigation of the upper stage failure without an order from the FAA? If anything, left to its own devices it is more likely the FAA would do nothing — as it has done with Boeing with both Starliner and the issues that have occurred with both SLS and Orion. SpaceX however will do an investigation without question, because the company takes such incidents very seriously, and always fixes the problem so that it does not pop up again.

Third, there is absolutely no one at the FAA qualified to do this investigation, or to determine if SpaceX’s “corrective actions” are the right choice. These are bureaucrats, not cutting edge engineers. All they are going to do is watch SpaceX’s people do the work, kibitz a bit here and there, and then rubberstamp the conclusions of the company’s engineers, after making SpaceX wait while it retypes SpaceX’s report.

To claim the FAA has the ability to “approve” any engineering actions here is absurd.

Fourth, to threaten to deny SpaceX’s launch license for future Falcon 9 rockets — the most reliable and dependable rocket ever built — illustrates again the partisan nature of this action. The specificity of the agency’s demands here runs very counter to its demands after other past launch anomalies, involving both SpaceX and others. It is as if the agency has gotten orders to do whatever it can to micromanage everything SpaceX does in order to hinder its operation.

I still expect SpaceX to finish its investigation within weeks, and be ready to fly by the end of July, when the Jared Isaacman manned mission is scheduled. I also now expect the FAA to block that schedule and cause an additional several week delay as it slowly retypes SpaceX’s conclusions.

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Europa Clipper mission threatened by faulty transistors

9:31 am

Engineers have learned that transistors installed on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission were not built to the right specifications and could fail in the harsh environment surrounding Jupiter.

The issue with the transistors came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected. In June 2024, an industry alert was sent out to notify users of this issue. The manufacturer is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation test and analysis efforts in order to better understand the risk of using these parts on the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Testing data obtained so far indicates some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa because the parts are not as radiation resistant as expected. The team is working to determine how many transistors may be susceptible and how they will perform in-flight. NASA is evaluating options for maximizing the transistors’ longevity in the Jupiter system. A preliminary analysis is expected to be complete in late July.

This issue could be disaster for the mission, which has a launch window that opens on October 10, 2024. If it is impossible to replace the bad transistors, NASA will be faced with two choices, neither great. It could launch regardless and hope for the best. It could delay the mission to fix the problem, which might involve a delay of years waiting for a new launch window.

This story appears to illustrate once again the decline in quality control that appears to be happening across much of American industry. The technology for building radiation-hardened equipment has been standard for decades. For a company to deliver equipment below standard now suggests incompetence or fraud, neither of which speaks well for it and the entire industry.

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Starliner return delayed until after ground thruster tests are completed and analyzed

9:15 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked during the unmanned demo
flight in May 2022

According the NASA and Boeing officials yesterday, they are in the process of doing ground thruster tests to emulate the problems that occurred on the thrusters during docking procedures to ISS in early June, and will not decide on a return date for Starliner until after those tests are completed and analyzed, expected sometime in the next two weeks.

It appears some of the ground tests were delayed slightly due to the arrival of Hurricane Beryl in Texas.

It is very important to note that the astronauts are not “stranded” on the station, as a lot of news organizations are still claiming. The thrusters on Starliner that failed are part of the service module, which will not return to Earth when the astronauts come home on the the capsule. They therefore want to do as much research as possible beforehand in order to determine the cause of the failures in order to prevent them on future capsule flights. For example, the ground tests are first attempting to duplicate precisely what happened during docking, and will then do tests attempting to duplicate what will happen during de-orbit.

In the meantime, they appear to have no doubt that they can use Starliner for return, no matter what. At the moment only one thruster appears out-of-commission, and none of the thrusters that failed during docking are used for the de-orbit burn. They are only used for orientation, and the capsule has ample redundancy for this function sufficient for de-orbit.

In addition, it is a good thing for them to extend Starliner’s total flight time. I suspect even if everything had worked as planned they would have extended this mission as they have. This allows them to prove out the in-space operation of the capsule and service module. So far it appears that operation has been excellent, which is one reason they are willing to delay the return to do the ground tests.

Overall, my impression is that the situation is entirely under control, and in fact NASA is reasonably satisfied with the capsule’s operation in general. It appears that the agency will likely have no problem in flying future manned missions with Starliner, though it will want the thruster issue solved beforehand.

As for Boeing, these problems have stained its reputation further, and have likely made it much more difficult to sell future capsule flights to other customers. I would say however that after listening to the last few press briefings it seems to me that Boeing’s manned space division is now doing the proper due diligence it should have done before. For example, the thruster problems appear to be related to overheating during use, which is a very fixable issue.

These facts actually makes me more confident in the capsule, and future potential customers should do the same review themselves.

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SpaceX gets NASA contract to launch gamma-ray space telescope

9:09 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a new gamma-ray space telescope, dubbed the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), using its Falcon 9 rocket and targeting an August 2027 launch date.

The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $69 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The COSI mission currently is targeted to launch August 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

This wide-field gamma-ray telescope will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. NASA’s COSI mission will probe the origins of the Milky Way’s galactic positrons, uncover the sites of nucleosynthesis in our galaxy, perform studies of gamma-ray polarization, and find counterparts to multi-messenger sources. The compact Compton telescope combines improved sensitivity, spectral resolution, angular resolution, and sky coverage to facilitate groundbreaking science.

The stated launch price gives us a sense of what SpaceX is charging these days for launches. The contract award also illustrates once again why the delays in developing ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets — caused by Blue Origin’s difficulties in manufacturing its BE-4 rocket engine — has ended up costing both companies a lot of money in sales. SpaceX keeps getting these launch contracts because Vulcan and New Glenn are not yet flying operationally. Vulcan has flown once, but it is probably isn’t capable of adding additional launches to is manifest. More important, the rocket is not yet reusable, and probably could not match SpaceX’s price.

As for New Glenn, it supposedly will make its first launch this fall, but we shall see. It remains four-plus years behind schedule, and though it is described as reusable, its first stage landing vertically like a Falcon 9, it is doubtful it will become doing this on its first launches. It needs to prove out its systems first.

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Collins officially backs out of contracts to build spacesuits for NASA

10:20 am

According to an announcement today from NASA, Collins Aerospace has now officially backed out of its NASA contracts to build a new spacesuit for both space station and lunar operations in the agency’s Artemis program.

In 2022 and 2023, NASA awarded Collins Aerospace two task orders under the agency’s xEVAS (Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services) contract. The first task order was to deliver a next generation spacesuit and spacewalking system for potential use on the International Space Station with a base value of $97.2 million. The second task order was to advance additional spacesuit capabilities with a base value of $5 million.

After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Collins Aerospace have mutually agreed to descope the existing task orders on the Collins Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services contract. This descope includes ending the International Space Station suit demonstration, which was targeted for 2026. No further work will be performed on the task orders. This action was agreed upon after Collins recognized its development timeline would not support the space station’s schedule and NASA’s mission objectives.

NASA still has a second and similar spacesuit deal with Axiom, which appears to be moving forward as planned. Whether the agency will consider new offers from other companies to replace Collins is not known at this time. It is instead possible NASA will reserve this $102.2 million to use to help Axiom if it runs into problems.

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NASA awards SpaceX $843 million contract to de-orbit ISS

10:14 am

NASA today announced that it has awarded SpaceX a $843 million contract to build a de-orbit spacecraft that can dock to ISS and fire its thrusters so that the station will be safely de-orbited when it is retired in 2030, burning up over the ocean.

While the company will develop the deorbit spacecraft, NASA will take ownership after development and operate it throughout its mission. Along with the space station, it is expected to destructively breakup as part of the re-entry process.

The announcement provided no other details. It is not clear whether the thrusters on a Dragon capsule would be sufficient for this task. Most likely not, which means SpaceX will have to develop something else to do the job. Maybe its bid proposed using a Starship for the task.

It is also not clear whether any modules on ISS will be salvaged for other uses before de-orbit. The modules that the commercial company Axiom plans to attach to ISS in the next year or so are supposed to undock to form its own independent space station sometime later this decade. Will Russia’s modules do the same? And will any other modules?

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Collins reportedly in the process of canceling its NASA spacesuit contract

9:19 am

As if NASA didn’t have enough spacesuit problems, with a ISS spacewalk this week canceled because one of the NASA-built suits on the station began leaking water again, Collins Aerospace, one of the two companies that won contracts to build new spacesuits, is now in negotiations to end that contract.

But Collins’ role in the program has been bumpy and development has fallen behind schedule, and the company has been in talks with NASA officials on how to wind down its role in the program, the two people said. “After a thorough evaluation, Collins Aerospace and NASA mutually agreed to descope Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) task orders,” a Collins spokeswoman said in a statement, referring to the spacesuit contract.

If this story is confirmed, it means at present only Axiom is building new spacesuits that can either be used on ISS or on future Artemis missions to the Moon and Gateway. Whether NASA will put out the Collins contract for bid again is unknown. In its original cargo capsule contracts early in the 2010s, one company failed to raise sufficient funds to build its capsule, so NASA cancelled it and awarded Orbital Sciences and its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule the deal.

If the contract is put out for new bidding, SpaceX would be in a very strong position to win, as its own internally financed spacewalk spacesuits are about to get their first flight test on Jared Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn mission on the Resilience Dragon capsule later this summer.

The failure of Collins here is disturbing, and might be an indicator of an overall loss in American engineering capabilities. Once a challenge like this would have posed no problem for any American aerospace company. Now such tasks are increasingly difficult and unachievable.

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Spacewalk on ISS canceled due to spacesuit issue

8:48 am

Two astronauts on ISS were forced today to abort their spacewalk soon after opening the hatch to go outside because a water issue in one suit.

This is the second time this spacewalk has been aborted. The first time, on June 13, 2024, was canceled due to an unspecified “spacesuit discomfort issue.”

This cancellation might cause a problem with the presently unscheduled return of Starliner, as its June 26, 2024 return was postponed to allow this spacewalk to take place without any schedule conflicts. Or it might simplify Starliner’s return, as the spacewalk will not happen due to spacesuit issues.

Note also that the American suits are old, and prone to these kinds of water leak issues. NASA started a project to replace them fifteen years ago, spent more than a billion on designs, getting nothing built, before abandoning its effort and awarding the project to two private companies.

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Starliner return delayed again, until July

10:08 pm

NASA tonight announced that it is once again delaying the undocking from ISS and the return to Earth of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two astronauts, with the return date a as-yet unspecified date in July.

The move off Wednesday, June 26, deconflicts Starliner’s undocking and landing from a series of planned International Space Station spacewalks while allowing mission teams time to review propulsion system data.

It seems to me that they have decided the more time Starliner spends in space right now, the more data they can gather about its flightworthiness in the future. Remember, the first manned Dragon demo mission stayed at ISS for more than two months.

Their approach however — announcing small delays over and over again — is extremely poor PR. It makes it seem as if the capsule’s various issues — thrusters, helium leaks, and valves — are a more serious than I think they are.

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Family whose home was damaged by NASA battery ejected from ISS files claim

3:29 pm

The Florida family whose home was damaged when a battery that NASA had ejected from ISS smashed through the roof of its house has now filed an $80,000 claim with the space agency.

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.

An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for “in excess of $80,000” for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties. “We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall,” Worthy said.

No lawsuit has been filed so far, as the family is trying to work this out with NASA amicably, and also help set a precedent for future such incidents. NASA in turn gave the family a claim form and is now reviewing the form they submitted.

The article I think is incorrect when it states that this incident “falls outside the Space Liability Convention” (which was written under the Outer Space Treaty) because the debris didn’t come from a foreign country but was launched and de-orbited by an American government agency. The Outer Space Treaty makes whoever launches anything in space liable for any damages. If NASA attempts to fight this it will be violating not only the language but the spirit of the treaty.

5 comments

Starliner’s return delayed again

8:44 am

NASA today announced that the return of Starliner from ISS, carrying two astronauts, has been delayed again, from June 18th to June 22nd.

It appears engineers want to perform more tests of the the spacecraft’s attitude thrusters before undocking. The failure of some thrusters during docking on June 6th has raised some concerns.

NASA and Boeing teams also prepared plans for Starliner to fire seven of its eight aft-facing thrusters while docked to the station to evaluate thruster performance for the remainder of the mission. Known as a “hot fire test,” the process will see two bursts of the thrusters, totaling about a second, as part of a pathfinder process to evaluate how the spacecraft will perform during future operational missions after being docked to the space station for six months. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are kind of a lie. While there is no doubt this test will tell engineers a lot about future operations, such a test, while attached to ISS, would never have been approved had the thrusters all worked as planned during docking. The real reason for this static fire test is to make sure the thrusters will work once undocked.

If they don’t work, there could be a safety issue putting the astronauts in Starliner for return to Earth.

NASA plans a press briefing on June 18th at noon (Eastern) to outline in better detail the situation.

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NASA accidently airs simulated medical emergency on ISS, panicking the public

9:18 am

NASA yesterday accidently aired an on-going drill where ground astronauts were simulating a serious medical emergency, causing public alarm because it appeared the emergency was on ISS itself.

The regular scheduled livestream was interrupted at 6:28 p.m. ET by an unidentified speaker — apparently a flight surgeon — liaising with the crew on the ISS on how to deal with a commander suffering from serious compression sickness.

The speaker advises the crew to “check his pulse one more time,” before placing the stricken astronaut inside a suit pumped full of pure oxygen. She says any action would be “best effort treatment” and better than doing nothing. “Unfortunately, the prognosis for Commander is relatively tenuous,” she says.

She says she is “concerned that there are some severe DCS [decompression sickness] hits” and tells the crew to get him in a suit as soon as possible. She mentions that there is a hospital in San Fernando, Spain, with hyperbaric treatment facilities, in an apparent suggestion of ordering an emergency evacuation from the space station.

But after fueling alarm among the space enthusiasts listening, NASA revealed that the scenario wasn’t real — the ISS crew were all safely asleep at the time.

It appears this was a training exercise on the ground. For reasons that have not been explained, the audio somehow got rerouted onto NASA’s public live stream channel, forcing the agency to quickly issue an explanation.

One comment

Hubble goes to one-gyro mode, limiting the telescope’s observational capabilities; NASA rejects private repair mission

9:59 am

Story Musgrave on the shuttle robot arm during the last spacewalk of the 1993 Hubble repair mission
Story Musgrave on the shuttle robot arm during
the last spacewalk of the 1993 Hubble repair mission

After the third safe mode event in six months, all caused by issues with the same gyroscope, engineers have decided to shift the Hubble Space Telescope to what they call one-gyro mode, whereby the telescope is pointed using only one gyroscope, and the remaining working gyro is kept in reserve.

The spacecraft had six new gyros installed during the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. To date, three of those gyros remain operational, including the gyro currently experiencing problems, which the team will continue to monitor. Hubble uses three gyros to maximize efficiency but can continue to make science observations with only one gyro. NASA first developed this plan more than 20 years ago, as the best operational mode to prolong Hubble’s life and allow it to successfully provide consistent science with fewer than three working gyros. Hubble previously operated in two-gyro mode, which is negligibly different from one-gyro mode, from 2005-2009. One-gyro operations were demonstrated in 2008 for a short time with no impact to science observation quality.

While continuing to make science observations in one-gyro mode, there are some expected minor limitations. The observatory will need more time to slew and lock onto a science target and won’t have as much flexibility as to where it can observe at any given time. It also will not be able to track moving objects closer than Mars, though these are rare targets for Hubble.

This NASA press release is carefully spun to hide the simple fact that in one-gyro mode, the telescope will simply not be able to take sharp pictures. » Read more

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