Tag: Portal

SpaceX successfully launches cargo Dragon to ISS

12:35 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch cargo Dragon to ISS.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. The cargo Dragon is making its second cargo mission for NASA. It will dock tomorrow.

This was SpaceX’s first launch since June 30th, a gap of almost two months as they initiated operations of a new drone ship in the Atlantic and shifted an older drone ship to the Pacific. In the next few weeks expect their fast launch pace for ’21 to resume, with at least one Starlink launch and the September 15th Inspiration4 commercial manned orbital flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

29 China
21 SpaceX
13 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 32 to 29 in the national rankings.

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Astra third launch attempt fails just before 1st stage engine cutoff

3:57 pm

Astra launch, August 28, 2021

Capitalism in space: The third orbital launch attempt of the smallsat rocket company Astra failed about two and a half minutes into flight, just about twenty seconds before the the first stage engine cutoff and stage separation.

It appeared that the first stage engines shut down about twenty seconds early, and then the rocket began tumbling.

I have embedded the live stream below the fold, cued to just before launch. The image to the right is a screen capture about seven seconds after liftoff. Astra’s rocket did a maneuver at launch I’ve never seen before, where it immediately tilted slightly to transition to the side, and then righted itself to begin gaining altitude. In this image the top of the strongback can be seen on the left, with the now upright rocket beginning its flight.

Whether Astra can figure out what went wrong and attempt another flight before the end of this year remains unclear. This was the third launch in their announced three launch test program, with the goal of reaching orbit on the third launch (today’s). They did not meet that goal, though their second test launch in December came extremely close to orbit with no major technical failures.
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Successful orbital engineering test of magnetic space junk removal technology

10:34 am

Capitalism in space: The Japanese-based company Astroscale has successful completed its first test in orbit of a magnetic capture device designed to someday remove for space junk.

Launched on March 22, ELSA-d (short for “End-of-Life Services by Astroscale demonstration”) brought with it to orbit a 37-pound (17 kilograms) cubesat fitted with a magnetic docking plate. During the experiment on Wednesday (Aug. 25), ground controllers first remotely released a mechanical locking mechanism attaching the cubesat to the main 386-pound (175 kg) removal craft, Astroscale said in a statement. The two satellites were still held together by the magnetic system, which is responsible for capturing the debris.

The cubesat was then released completely and recaptured before floating too far away from the main spacecraft. Astroscale said on Twitter that this maneuver was repeated several times. This short demonstration enabled Astroscale to test and calibrate rendezvous sensors, which enable safe approach and capture of floating objects.

Engineers in the coming weeks plan to do even more challenging tests of ELSA, including a capture attempt where the target is made to tumble like an out-of-control satellite.

Eventually the company hopes to sell its target technology to satellite makers so that its satellites will be able to capture them. It already has a deal with OneWeb to develop this technology for its satellites, whereby one of its clean-up satellites could capture a bunch of defunct OneWeb satellites on one flight and deorbit them safely.

Whether this magnetic capture technique could be used on satellites with metal but no specifically designed target is unclear. If so it would place Astroscale a strong position to gain a large portion of the space junk removal business.

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Another mountain view from Curiosity

12:33 pm

Low resolution panorama
Click for full resolution panorama. The original images can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I hope my readers won’t get tired of seeing these mountain views from Curiosity, but I can’t get enough of them.

The image above is a panorama I’ve created from six photos taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera yesterday. The box marks the location of that spectacular outcrop I highlighted in the previous mountain view five days ago. The red dotted line shows the rover’s upcoming planned route. The white cross indicates the pavement bedrock where the science team hopes to next drill.

For scale, Navarro Mountain is rises about 400 feet from where the rover presently sits. The peak of Mount Sharp is actually not visible, blocked by its near white flank on the panorama’s left edge. That peak is still 13,000 feet higher up from where the rover presently sits.

The rise of rocks next to the words “entering Gediz Vallis” is actually only probably five to ten feet high, as it is very close to the rover.

Curiosity’s travels continue to get more and more exciting to follow.

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FAA’s space bureaucracy chief touts desire to limit his agency’s regulatory fist

10:18 am

Wayne Monteith, the man in charge of the FAA’s office of commercial space — which is tasked with regulating commercial space — revealed in a speech on August 25, 2021 that his goal is to speed that industry’s growth, not hinder it with odious regulations.

Wayne R. Monteith, a retired Air Force general who served for years in space billets in Colorado Springs is now the FAA’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation. He told a Space Symposium crowd at The Broadmoor Wednesday that to a large extent, he’s trying to keep his agency out of the way of the rush to space. “A regulatory agency can either be an accelerator or an inhibitor of industry,” he said. “We choose to be an accelerator.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Don’t be so sure. While right now Monteith noted that the agency is taking a laissez-faire approach to anyone who wants to fly in space, acting only to make sure space accidents will not harm “the uninvolved public,” he also said this in his speech:

Monteith warned, though, that mishaps for manned space flight that escalate to what he called “catastrophe,” have consequences. “The worst case is a catastrophic failure,” he said. “Then, we will regulate.”

In other words, he recognizes that if he tried now to impose his bureaucratic will on commercial space, it would not fly politically. What he really needs to expand his power is some space accident, a crisis you might say, that he can then use to convince others that he should be controlling things more.

Based on the response of the press, public, and American culture in the past half century, his thinking is quite sound. Routinely since World War II, as soon as something goes wrong in any field of endeavor the American public and political class has repeatedly wanted the government to move in and take greater control, under the false premise that somehow the government can prevent further failures.

Instead, we have accomplished less, and fueled the rise of an all-powerful bureaucracy capable and quite willing to squelch achievement. This is the pattern that Monteith is relying on, and based on recent history, he is entirely justified in believing so.

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China studying the construction of large-scale structures in space

9:57 am

The new colonial movement: China has now indicated that it has established a project to study methods for building very large structures in orbit, with uses ranging from generating beamed solar power to providing mega-sized manned spaceships and space stations.

Though vague, the project would have practical applications for potential megaprojects including colossal space-based solar power stations. Such facilities would be based in geostationary orbit and span kilometers. These stations would collect solar energy and transmitting power to Earth through microwaves.

Kilometer-scale, ultra-large spacecraft are described as “major strategic aerospace equipment for the future use of space resources, exploration of the mysteries of the universe, and long-term habitation in orbit,” according to the project outline within the mathematical and physical sciences attachment to the released document.

The project would focus on minimizing the weight of the spacecraft to reduce the number of launches and construction, according to an initial report by the South China Morning Post.

It appears that this project is only in its preliminary design phase, with a budget of $3.2 million. Its existence however reinforces the overall rational and long term approach China’s government is taking to space exploration. At this moment they mean business, and are focused on getting the cutting edge technology designed and built rather then maintaining a bureaucratic infrastructure and the jobs that go with it — as NASA and Russia have been doing for the past forty-plus years.

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Rocket Lab becomes third rocket company to go public

9:46 am

Capitalism in space: On August 25, 2021 Rocket Lab became the third rocket company to go public, following Virgin Galactic and Astra to sign a merger deal with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Nasdaq celebrated the milestone, inviting Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck to ring the market’s opening bell Wednesday morning.

The SPAC merger, with a San Francisco-based company called Vector Acquisition Corporation, provides Rocket Lab with about $777 million. The funds will aid the development of multiple projects, including Rocket Lab’s big, next-generation Neutron rocket, company representatives said.

Nor is this all. Virgin Orbit has also signed a similar deal this wee, and will begin trading stock soon.

All these deals indicate that the investment community is very confident in making big profits in space, and is now willing to commit a lot of cash to that prospect.

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ULA to no longer sell Atlas-5 launches

9:36 am

Capitalism in space: In an interview ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno has announced that they have contracts on all of the company’s remaining Atlas-5 rockets, and will no longer be offering that rocket for new sales.

“We’re done. They’re all sold,” CEO Tory Bruno said of ULA’s Atlas V rockets in an interview. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has 29 Atlas V missions left before it retires sometime in the mid-2020s and transitions to its upcoming Vulcan rocket, Bruno said. The remaining Atlas V missions include a mix of undisclosed commercial customers and some for the Space Force, NASA, and Amazon’s budding broadband satellite constellation, Project Kuiper.

This means that the company is now firmly committed to its Vulcan rocket, which also means it is entirely committed to the repeatedly delayed BE-4 engine that Blue Origin is building for that rocket. This announcement suggests that Bruno is confident that the BE-4’s problems have been overcome, and that Blue Origin is about to begin regular assembly of the many flightworthy engines ULA will need.

If so, this is really good news. It not only means that Vulcan launches will finally begin, but that Blue Origin might also begin flying its New Glenn rocket. Both will give the U.S. some competitive options for getting big payloads into space. Right now the only real choice at a reasonable price is SpaceX, and having one choice is never a good thing.

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Amazon protests SpaceX’s Starlink plan to FCC

9:23 am

Amazon on August 25, 2021 filed a protest with the FCC against SpaceX’s proposed expansion of its Starlink constellation that would allow almost 30,000 satellites to be launched.

“Should the Commission depart from its rules and precedent and endorse the approach of applying for multiple, mutually exclusive configurations, the consequences will extend far beyond the SpaceX Amendment,” wrote Mariah Shuman, corporate counsel for Amazon’s broadband megaconstellation venture Project Kuiper, in an Aug. 25 letter to the FCC. “However inefficient this strategy might be for the Commission and parties responding to applications, other prospective licensees will surely see the benefit in maximizing their optionality by describing multiple configurations in their license applications.”

Shuman asked the FCC to “dismiss SpaceX’s Amendment, and invite SpaceX to resubmit its amendment after settling on a single configuration for its Gen2 System.”

It appears Amazon does not want the FCC to approve multiple proposed satellite configurations put forth by SpaceX in a single application. Instead, it wants the FCC to force SpaceX to pick one, and submit that alone. It also appears that doing what Amazon requests would be more in line with past FCC policy.

While Amazon might have a point, the optics once again make another Jeff Bezos’ company look ugly, more interested in using the courts to stymie its competitors than actually launching anything. Amazon’s Kuiper internet constellation was first proposed in early 2019. More than two years have passed and none of its more than 3200 satellites have launched — not even one test satellite — with no clear indication yet on when launches will finally begin.

SpaceX began testing its Starlink system in 2018, and already has about 1,700 operational satellites in orbit. The comparison between the two companies is stark, and not favorable to Amazon.

In fact, Elon Musk was not shy in taking advantage of these optics to note them quite sharply in a tweet yesterday, saying, “Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX.”

Amazon is not Blue Origin, but both companies were founded by Bezos, and it appears right now that both prefer court battles to rocket engineering.

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Webb telescope finally completed, ready for shipment to launchpad

2:15 pm

After more than two decades of construction (ten years behind schedule) and more than $10 billion (20 times the original cost), the infrared James Webb Space Telescope has finally completed its testing and is ready for shipment to its launch site in French Guiana to be mounted on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Now that observatory testing has concluded, shipment operations have begun. This includes all the necessary steps to prepare Webb for a safe journey through the Panama Canal to its launch location in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America. Since no more large-scale testing is required, Webb’s clean room technicians have shifted their focus from demonstrating it can survive the harsh conditions of launch and work in orbit, to making sure it will safely arrive at the launch pad. Webb’s contamination control technicians, transport engineers, and logistics task forces are all expertly prepared to handle the unique task of getting Webb to the launch site. Shipping preparations will be completed in September.

If all goes well, NASA and ESA hope to launch the telescope in late October. It will then take about six months for the telescope to unfold and reach its operating position a million miles from Earth in the Earth’s shadow.

Let us all pray that everything works. If it does not, there will be nothing that can be done to fix it for probably at least five years, if then, as it will be out of reach of any maintenance mission, manned or unmanned.

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