Rosetta to announce landing site
The Rosetta science team announced today that they will unveil the chosen landing site for their Philae lander on September 15.
Tag: spaceflight
Review panel approves extensions for seven planetary missions.
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.
SpaceX sets the next Falcon 9 commercial launch date
SpaceX has scheduled the next commercial launch of its Falcon 9 rocket for this coming Saturday.
They have completed their review of the Falcon 9R test failure and have obviously concluded that its problems will not effect the Falcon 9.
Vladimir Putin, space cadet
Two news stories today demonstrate without question that Russia’s newly reorganized aerospace industry and its project to build a new spaceport are not merely the efforts of mid-level bureaucrats in that aerospace industry.
No, these efforts have been instituted and are being pushed at the very top of the Russian government, by Vladmir Putin himself. It appears that he has decided, or has always believed, that Russia deserves a strong and vibrant space program, run from Moscow, and is doing everything he can to make it happen, as part of his personal vision for Russia.
The first story described a visit on Tuesday that Putin made to Russia’s new space port, Vostochny, in the far eastern end of Russia. While there he noted that construction is several months behind schedule and that this slack must be made up. He then endorsed the proposal put to him by space agency officials that the number of people working on construction should be doubled.
The second story described Putin’s endorsement of the construction of a new Russian heavy lift rocket, capable of putting 150 tons into orbit. Such a rocket would be comparable in power to the largest version of the U.S.’s SLS rocket, not due to be launched, if ever, until the 2020s.
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Space geckos froze to death
Russian news sources today reported that the geckos on Foton-M4 died in orbit when their heating system failed and they froze to death.
This failure once again raises questions about quality control in the Russian aerospace industry. A heating system like this is not rocket science (space engineers have been building such systems for decades) and should not have failed.
Musk vs Bezos
The competition heats up: SpaceX is challenging a patent issued to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for landing the first stage of a rocket vertically on a floating platform.
“The ‘rocket science’ claimed in the ‘321 patent was, at best, ‘old hat’ by 2009,” says SpaceX in one of two challenges, filed last week with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board following the approval of the Blue Origin patent in March. SpaceX cites prior work by researchers and scientists who proposed techniques similar to those in Blue Origin’s patent.
If the patent holds it might force SpaceX to pay Blue Origin for the right to bring its Falcon 9 first stage back safely,
All geckos lost from Foton-M4
Upon the return to Earth today of Russian biology satellite Foton-M4 biologists discovered that all the geckos on board had died sometime during the mission.
The cause of death has not yet been announced. The mission itself had some problems, and returned to Earth about two weeks early. Nonetheless, the Russians also announced that flies on board were still alive upon landing.
Battle of the heavy lift rockets
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.
Opportunity to get a reboot
Because of an increasing number of computer resets on the Mars rover Opportunity, engineers plan to reformat the rover’s computer.
The resets, including a dozen this month, interfere with the rover’s planned science activities, even though recovery from each incident is completed within a day or two.
Flash memory retains data even when power is off. It is the type used for storing photos and songs on smart phones or digital cameras, among many other uses. Individual cells within a flash memory sector can wear out from repeated use. Reformatting clears the memory while identifying bad cells and flagging them to be avoided.
Obviously there is a risk, though small, that this action will not work and the mission will end here. Stay tuned.
The decision on manned spaceflight
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.
- Is this the space vehicle that will be NASA’s alternative to Russia’s ‘taxi service’ to orbit?
- First Class or Economy?—NASA’s countdown in the new space race [subscription required]
- Decision on commercial crew program likely to be made after Labor Day weekend
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.
The X-37B just keeps going.
The Energizer bunny of space: The X-37B has now completed more than 600 days in orbit, with no indication when it will return to Earth.
The Air Force is believed to have only two X-37B space planes. These space planes have flown at otal of three missions, which are known as OTV-1, OTV-2 and OTV-3. (“OTV” is short for Orbital Test Vehicle.) The first mission blasted off in April 2010, and the craft circled Earth for 225 days. The second X-37B vehicle launched in March 2011, performing the OTV-2 mission. This spaceflight lasted 469 days, ultimately landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in June 2012. That was the same landing site OTV-1 used after completing its mission.
The current OTV-3 mission is reusing the first X-37B space plane from the OTV-1 flight, showcasing the reusability aspect of the program.
Single sensor caused Falcon 9R failure
SpaceX has identified the cause of the failure of last week’s Falcon 9R test flight failure as a single sensor.
On the Falcon 9R, there was no backup for this sensor, so the rocket was required to self-destruct when the sensor failed. On a Falcon 9, other sensors would have picked up the slack and the rocket would have continued in flight.
That the sensor is used by the Falcon 9, however, explains why they have delayed the next commercial flight. They probably want to make sure they understand why the sensor failed so they can reduce the chance of failure on the Falcon 9.