Tag: spaceflight

Ingenuity completes 40th flight

9:52 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

As predicted by the Ingenuity engineering team on January 17, 2023, the Mars helicopter yesterday completed its 40th flight, flying approximately 92 seconds and 584 feet to the northwest to place it at the head of the hollow that Perseverance will travel to climb up onto the delta that flowed into Jezero Crater sometime in the past.

The green dot on the overview map to the right shows the helicopter’s position, post flight. The blue dot shows Perseverance’s present position. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s future route.

At the moment, only eleven images have been returned from the flight, and these only show the first 20 seconds of flight. The flight however has been added to the helicopter’s flight log, which shows that Ingenuity actually flew about 23 feet farther and 7 seconds longer than expected. This extra distance was likely because the helicopter needed to find a good landing site, using its upgraded software that allows it to fly over rougher terrain.

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The only rocket stage recovered during the 1960s space race returns to Florida

9:00 am

A section of the Gemini 5 Titan rocket first stage that was recovered by chance right after its launch on August 21, 1965 has now been moved from storage in Alabama to be put on display at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum.

The artifact, which encompasses the upper portion of the Titan II rocket’s first stage, flew with the vehicle from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Kennedy (today Cape Canaveral) in Florida for the first two and a half minutes of flight, reaching about 50 miles high (80 kilometers) before its two-nozzle engine exhausted its propellant supply. Unlike most rockets, which jettison their first stage before firing their second stage engine(s), Gemini-Titan “fired in the hole,” igniting the upper stage before separating from the first.

The Titan II first stage then plunged back to Earth, impacting the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Bermuda with no plans for its recovery. It was only by happenstance that a U.S. Air Force plane spotted the segment floating in the water, which led to a U.S. Navy destroyer, the U.S.S. Du Pont, hauling it out of the ocean and back to shore.

Whether the surviving segment, which housed the booster’s oxidizer tank, tore apart from its fuel tank and engine section during the tumble back to Earth or on contact with the ocean is unknown. The lower section of the stage presumably sank to the seafloor.

Until the shuttle started flying in 1981, this booster section was the only first stage recovered from any American rocket launch. The rocket itself had lifted Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad into orbit, where they spent a then record eight days, proving humans could survive in space long enough to get to and from the Moon.

Lots of pictures at the link. More pictures here.

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Investment in space dropped 58% in 2022

8:49 am

According to a new report by Space Capital, a New York venture capital firm, overall investment in space dropped 58% in 2022, dropping from the $47.4 billion peak in 2021 to $20.1 billion in 2022.

Space Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm, published its Space Investment Quarterly Jan. 19 for the fourth quarter of 2022. The report notes that early-stage startups fared better than later-stage and growth companies.

One exception was SpaceX, which raised $2 billion in 2022, or 32 percent of the total 2022 private investment in space infrastructure. SpaceX was also in the minority because it raised capital in both 2021 and 2022. Only 38 percent of the space infrastructure companies that raised capital in 2021 sought additional funding in 2022.

Essentially, if you remove SpaceX from the picture, major investment in space startups largely came to a halt in 2022. Furthermore, the report states that it also expects further investment in 2023 to be parsimonious. Apparently the venture capital community has realized how risky many of these space startups are (as seen by the loss of stock value for companies like Virgin Galactic, Astra, and Virgin Orbit), and is becoming more careful where it puts its money.

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Lucy team suspends efforts to complete deployment of unlatched solar panel

8:25 pm

Lucy's planned route
Lucy’s planned route to explore the Trojan asteroids

The Lucy science team has decided to suspend its efforts to complete the deployment of the unlatched solar panel that failed to fully open shortly after launch, having determined that little can be accomplished while the spacecraft is so far from the Sun.

A series of activities in 2022 succeeded in further deploying the array, placing it into a tensioned, but unlatched, state. Using engineering models calibrated by spacecraft data, the team estimates that the solar array is over 98% deployed, and it is strong enough to withstand the stresses of Lucy’s 12-year mission. The team’s confidence in the stability of the solar array was affirmed by its behavior during the close flyby of the Earth on Oct. 16, 2022, when the spacecraft flew within 243 miles (392 km) of the Earth, through the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The solar array is producing the expected level of power at the present solar range and is expected to have enough capability to perform the baseline mission with margin.

The team elected to suspend deployment attempts after the attempt on Dec. 13, 2022, produced only small movement in the solar array. Ground-based testing indicated that the deployment attempts were most productive while the spacecraft was warmer, closer to the Sun. As the spacecraft is currently 123 million miles (197 million km) from the Sun (1.3 times farther from the Sun than the Earth) and moving away at 20,000 mph (35,000 km/hr), the team does not expect further deployment attempts to be beneficial under present conditions.

The spacecraft will do another Earth fly-by on December 12, 2024, which will send it to the Trojans on the left side of the map above. Before that Lucy will do a mid-course correction in February 2024, at which time the engineers will reassess whether to try again to latch the panel, when Lucy is closer to Earth and thus also closer to the Sun.

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Machete Mesa on Mars

12:41 pm

Machete Mesa on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on November 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a variety of ridges in a region of Mars called Arabia Terra, which is also the largest transition zone between the Martian southern cratered highlands and the northern lowland plains.

While this picture illustrates some nice geological facts about Mars (see below), I post it simply because of the dramatic sharpness of the ridge on top of the mesa, which I guess is several hundred feet high, but only a few feet across, at most, at its peak. A hike along this ridgeline would be a truly thrilling experience, one that the future human settlers on Mars will almost certainly find irresistible. Put this location on your planned tourist maps of Mars. It will likely be an oft-visited site.
» Read more

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Geotail mission finally ends after 30 years

9:18 am

Though initially planned as a four year mission, the Geotail probe — designed to study the Earth’s magnetosphere — finally failed on June 28, 2022 after 30 years of operation.

With an elongated orbit, Geotail sailed through the invisible boundaries of the magnetosphere, gathering data on the physical process at play there to help understand how the flow of energy and particles from the Sun reach Earth. Geotail made many scientific breakthroughs, including helping scientists understand how quickly material from the Sun passes into the magnetosphere, the physical processes at play at the magnetosphere’s boundary, and identifying oxygen, silicon, sodium, and aluminum in the lunar atmosphere.

The mission also helped identify the location of a process called magnetic reconnection, which is a major conveyor of material and energy from the Sun into the magnetosphere and one of the instigators of the aurora. This discovery laid the way for the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, which launched in 2015.

Though it failed in June, engineers worked until November attempting to recover the spacecraft. When those efforts failed, NASA officially ended the mission.

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ABL completes investigation of January 10th launch failure

9:13 am

ABL yesterday released the results of its investigation into the January 10th launch failure of its RS1 rocket.

Just over ten seconds after launch the rocket suffered “a complete loss of power,” its engines shut down, and it came crashing back to Earth about 60 feet to the east of the launch pad. The resulting explosion and fire damaged and destroyed significant equipment, including a nearby “fabric hanger.” The report then goes on to describe the cause:
» Read more

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SpaceX completes first Starlink launch of 2023

8:53 am

Using a new first stage, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched 51Starlink satellites into orbit this morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base, the first Starlink launch of 2023.

The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Pacific.

At present, SpaceX and China are tied for the lead in the 2023 launch race, each having completed 5 launches so far this year. No one else has launched as yet.

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Astronauts complete Soyuz seat liner installation inside Endurance

9:31 pm

Astronauts today completed the installation of Frank Rubio’s Soyuz seat liner inside the Dragon capsule Endurance so that he can return to Earth should an emergency requiring evacuation occur on ISS.

On Jan. 17, NASA Flight Engineer Josh Cassada, with assistance from NASA Flight Engineer Nicole Mann, worked inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance crew ship collecting tools and readying the spacecraft for a seat liner move. The seat liner move, completed today, Jan. 18, ensures NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio will be able to return to Earth in the unlikely event of an emergency evacuation from the International Space Station. Rubio originally launched to the station with cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin aboard the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship on Sept. 21, 2022. The change allows for increased crew protection by reducing the heat load inside the MS-22 spacecraft for Prokopyev and Petelin in case of an emergency return to Earth.

It would be fascinating to get more details about the work that was done to install this Soyuz seat liner in Endurance. Clearly some improvisation was required.

Regardless, this work is only temporary, since Rubio’s seat liner will be shifted again into the replacement Soyuz scheduled to arrive in mid-February.

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January 18, 2023 Quick space links

5:03 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s intrepid stringer.

 

 

 

 

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Curiosity climbs onto the Marker Band

10:51 am

Panorama as of January 17, 2023
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Curiosity’s exploration of the foothills of Mount Sharp continues. The panorama above, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on January 17, 2023 by the rover’s right navigation camera. It looks forward across the flat marker band terrain that the rover has been studying for the past few weeks.

From orbit, this marker band appears very smooth and flat, and is found in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp, always at about the same elevation. The arrows in the overview map to the right mark several places near Curiosity where the band is evident. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present location, the red dotted line its planned route, and the yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama above. The distance across the marker band to the uphill slope is about 500 feet.

Now that Curiosity is on the marker band, it no longer looks smooth. Instead, it is a flat plain of many uneven paving stones interspersed with dust. While not as rough as the Greenheugh Pediment, which Curiosity had to retreat from because it was too hard on the rover’s wheels, the marker band is hardly the smooth soft terrain implied by the orbital images.

These paving stones have also proven difficult to drill into, with Curiosity’s drill already failing twice previously because the rock was too hard. That hardness should not be a surprise, however, as this layer’s flatness in many places shows its resistance to erosion.

As it crosses this wide section of the marker band the science team will obviously be looking for more candidate drill sites. Sooner or later one should work.

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Alabama roadside rest stop about to lose its Saturn-1B rocket

9:02 am

Due to decay and rust, an Alabama roadside welcome center is about to lose the Saturn-1B rocket that has greeted visitors for the past 44 years.

The Welcome Center opened in 1977. In 1979, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center donated the Saturn 1B rocket, 168 feet high and 22 feet in diameter, to stand as a symbol of Huntsville’s role in the space program. The rocket was painted in 2006 and more maintenance was done starting in 2014, but it has steadily deteriorated since then.

“It was starting to fall apart,” [said Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Tourism Department.] “We’ve gotten complaints for years about it.”

The cost to refurbish it appears to be too high. Maybe Sentell can get NASA to donate an SLS rocket for display, since it is very possible that several of those will become available at some point in the future when SpaceX’s much more efficient and cheaper Starship/Superheavy begins flying.

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A review of Boeing’s struggling space effort

8:53 am

Link here. [now fixed] The article, entitled “As Boeing Struggles To Fix Its Airliner Business, Elon Musk Is Eating Its Lunch In Space,” is a remarkably accurate overview of Boeing’s space effort, considering it comes from a mainstream press outlet. This paragraph will give you its flavor:

New competition could also threaten Boeing’s lucrative Space Launch System. Nicknamed the “Senate Launch System” for its origins in 2010 as a pork-barrel program to preserve jobs with the Space Shuttle winding down, NASA procured the rocket with “cost-plus” contracts – totaling $13.8 billion for Boeing so far – which means the contractor is guaranteed its expenses will be covered, plus a profit. Critics say that’s encouraged cost overruns. NASA’s inspector general has pegged the cost of a single Artemis launch at $4.1 billion, which he characterized last year as “unsustainable,” with total spending on the program projected to top $90 billion by 2025. For reference, NASA’s budget this year is $25 billion.

“This is a sucking chest wound on NASA and their ability to actually advance planetary science and lunar programs,” said Chris Quilty, founder of the space -focused financial services firm Quilty Analytics.

That $13.8 billion figure is accurate as to what NASA has paid Boeing, though it underestimates the actual cost of SLS, which is more than twice that.

Read it all. It suggests Boeing faces very tough times ahead in space.

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Oman building its own spaceport

8:46 am

Oman expects to begin construction this year on its own spaceport, intended to be open to commercial launches both orbital and suborbital.

Located in the port town of Duqm, the Etlaq Space Launch Complex, a project by the National Aerospace Services Company (NASCom), could see its first rocket launch early next year.

However, it will take three years to fully complete the centre. “We have two main goals with the Duqm launch land: to build a launch centre for commercial, professional and educational rocket users to assemble, test and launch from,” [officials from NASCom said]. “The launch centre will be globally accessible for expanding rocket companies, and locally available for educational research programmes.”

Though the article at the link is not clear, it appears that NASCom is government-owned.

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American astronaut seat liner shifted to Dragon temporarily

2:58 pm

Though NASA has not issued an update, the Soyuz seat liner used by American astronaut Frank Rubio was supposed to be shifted from the leaking Soyuz capsule to Endurance today, just in case that Soyuz needs to be used as a lifeboat. From the January 13th ISS update:

On Thursday, Jan. 12, the International Space Station mission management team polled “go” to move NASA astronaut Frank Rubio’s Soyuz seat liner from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft to Dragon Endurance to provide lifeboat capabilities in the event Rubio would need to return to Earth because of an emergency evacuation from the space station. The seat liner move is scheduled to begin Tuesday, Jan. 17, with installation and configuration continuing through most of the day Wednesday, Jan. 18. The change allows for increased crew protection by reducing the heat load inside the MS-22 spacecraft for cosmonauts Prokopyev and Petelin in the event of an emergency return to Earth.

Once the replacement Soyuz MS-23 arrives at the space station on Feb. 22, Rubio’s seat liner will be transferred to the new Soyuz and the seat liners for Prokopyev and Petelin will be moved from MS-22 to MS-23 ahead of their return in the Soyuz.

I expect that once this work is completed tomorrow NASA will issue an update.

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The sea of dunes surrounding the Martian north pole

12:25 pm

The sea of dunes surrounding the Martian north pole
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on December 5, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a collection of wormlike dunes located in the giant sea of dunes that surrounds the Martian north pole ice cap.

North is to the top. The season when this picture was taken was northern winter. The Sun is barely above the horizon, only 8 degrees high, and shining from the southeast. Because it is winter it is also dust season, making the atmosphere hazy and thus making the light soft. No distinct shadows, except that the sides of the dunes facing away from the Sun are darkly shadowed.

The consistent orientation of the dunes suggests that the prevailing winds blow from the northeast to create the steep-sided alcoves. The wind however might not be the only factor to form these dunes.
» Read more

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Hakuto-R completes five of ten milestones on test flight

7:56 am

Ispace’s private commercial lunar lander, Hakuto-R, has now completed five of the ten milestones the company had established before launch as its goals on this first test flight to the Moon.

The first five milestones completed are:

  • Completion of launch preparations
  • Completion of launch and deployment
  • Establishment of a Steady Operation Status
  • Completion of the first orbital control maneuver
  • Completion of stable deep-space flight operations for one month

The next five milestones involve entering final lunar orbit and landing successfully, the most difficult milestones of all.

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SpaceX to build five Starship/Superheavy prototypes in 2023

7:51 am

According to Elon Musk, SpaceX intends to build five Starship/Superheavy prototypes in 2023 for flight testing.

Assuming they can get launch permits, these five rockets should provide the company ample launch testing capability for at least the next two years, especially if it succeeds in landing these units and can consider reusing them in test flights.

At this moment, the launch permits from the federal government appears the main obstacle to getting this heavy lift reusable rocket tested and operational.

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A Martian river canyon?

11:56 am

A Martian river canyon?
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image highlights the biggest mystery of Mars that has baffled scientists since the first good pictures of its surface were taken in the early 1970s by the Mariner 9 orbiter. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a very small segment of the 400-mile-long meandering canyon on Mars called Nigal Vallis. From the Wikipedia page:

The western half of Nirgal Vallis is a branched system, but the eastern half is a tightly sinuous, deeply entrenched valley. Nirgal Vallis ends at Uzboi Vallis. Tributaries are very short and end in steep-walled valley heads, often called “amphitheater-headed valleys.”

We can see one of those short tributaries on the image’s left edge. The overview maps below provide a wider view of this entire canyon.
» Read more

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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches Space Force satellites

4:06 pm

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket today successfully launched a Space Force communications satellite plus a secondary military payload.

The two side boosters completed their second flight, landing at Cape Canaveral. The core stage was not recovered, as planned. Actual deployment of the satellites will not occur for another six hours.

At this moment China leads SpaceX 5 to 3 in the 2023 launch race. No one else has as yet launched successfully.

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Russia delays three planned lunar probes because of sanctions

10:56 am

The research division that is building Russia’s Luna 26, Luna 27, and Luna 28 probes to the Moon announced today that these missions will likely be delayed up to two years because many needed components are no longer obtainable due to the international sanctions imposed on Russia because of its invasion of the Ukraine.

“Previously, we designed equipment using foreign components that we could buy from our foreign colleagues. Now that the sanctions have been imposed, we will [be switching to] Russian-made components,” Mitrofanov explained. According to him, researchers have to change design solutions amid the Western restrictions.

Some of these components cannot be so easily replaced by Russian versions. Assuming the Ukraine war does not end soon, expect even longer delays for these unmanned lunar missions.

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Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane completes 2nd captive-carry test flight

3:48 pm

Stratolaunch’s giant Roc airplane, the largest in existence, successfully completed its second captive-carry test flight, carrying a Talon-A (TA-0) hypersonic test vehicle under its central fuselage during take-off and landing.

The flight set a new duration record lasting a total of six hours and reached a maximum altitude of 22,500 ft., representing another important step forward in the company’s near-term goal of completing separation testing with TA-0. Primary test objectives included flight outside of the local Mojave area for the first time and evaluation of the separation environment. Roc and TA-0’s onboard data systems provide critical information on the aerodynamic loads and moments prior to release of TA-0, helping to ensure safe separation of the vehicle from Roc. The flight team also practiced chase formation and communication sequencing for the upcoming separation test.

The company has a contract with the Air Force to use the operational Talon-1 spacecraft, released from Roc, to do hypersonic test flights, hopefully in the first half of 2023.

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Sweden cuts ribbon on Esrange spaceport

3:42 pm

Sweden yesterday officially inaugurated a new commercial launch site at the Esrange spaceport that the ESA had used previously for suborbital tests.

The site is an extension of the Esrange Space Centre in Sweden’s Arctic, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the town of Kiruna. Around 15 million euros ($16.3 million) have been invested in the site, which is expected to serve as a complement to Europe’s space hub at Kourou in French Guiana. It will also provide launch capabilities at a time when cooperation with Russia and the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan has been curtailed by the war in Ukraine.

Esrange’s state-owned operator, the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), aims to launch its first satellite from the site “in the first quarter of 2024”, a spokesman told AFP on Friday.

At this moment, there are three commercial rocket spaceports racing to complete the first orbital launch from Europe. Esrange in Sweden and the two UK spaceports, Spaceport Sutherland in Scotland and SaxaVord in the Shetland Islands. Cornwall in the UK is an airport, so it can only launch rockets that use an airplane, which essentially limits its launch customers to Virgin Orbit.

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Chinese company based in Hong Kong signs deal to build spaceport in Djibouti, Africa

2:57 pm

Djibouti's location in Africa
Djibouti’s location is indicated in black.

The government of Djibouti, one of the smallest nations in Africa and located at the southern end of the Red Sea, has signed an agreement with a pseudo Chinese company, the Hong Kong Aerospace Technology Group, to build a major spaceport there.

According to the translated press release, the five year project will cost one billion dollars, include a lease for 30 years, and involve the construction of a port, highway, and electrical power distribution system.

As much as Hong Kong for more than two centuries has been a haven for private enterprise, it is now under the control of the communist Chinese, and they would not allow anyone from Hong Kong to make such a deal unless they were in full control.

Based on the map, there is almost no launch path out of Djibouti that will not cross another nation’s territory. Unless the Chinese plan to make all the first stages launched from this site reusable, they are going to dropping stages on a lot of people’s heads, without their permission. And they will be doing it to some places where war is often and continues to be the most frequently used negotiating tactic.

Hat tip to stringer Jay.

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Searching for surface changes caused by the biggest recorded Martian quake

1:27 pm

Location of May quake
The white patches mark the locations on Mars of the largest quakes detected by InSight

On May 4, 2022, the seismometer on the InSight Mars lander detected a 4.7 magnitude earthquake on Mars, the largest ever detected.

The map to the right shows the approximate location of that quake by the white patch with the green dot. (You can read the paper describing this quake here [pdf].) This is also the same approximate location of a small five-mile-wide crater known to have many slope streaks on its interior walls.

Slope streaks are a uniquely Martian geological feature whose origin remains unknown. They resemble dark avalanche streaks flowing downhill, but make no changes in the topography, and lighten with time. They also occur randomly throughout the year. Two slightly different theories for their formation suggest that the streaks are triggered by the fall of dust particles, though neither is proven or even favored.

If either of these theories are true, then the 4.7 magnitude earthquake at this location should have caused the formation of more streaks. To find out, scientists have used the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to compare that crater both before and after the quake to see if any new streaks has appeared. Below is a side-by-side comparison of these images.
» Read more

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FCC votes to create its own space bureaucracy, despite lacking statutory authority

9:55 am

On January 9, 2023 the commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission FCC voted [pdf] to create its own space bureaucracy designed to regulate the lifespan of new satellites, despite lacking legal authority to do so.

As noted almost as an aside by this news article,

In order for the planned changes to go into effect, the FCC will first have to obtain congressional approval for the reorganization and place a notice in the Federal Register.

This vote pushed forward the plan announced in November that attempts to expand the regulatory power of the FCC beyond its legal authority. Expect Congress to push back somewhat, but right now most power in Washington is held by unelected bureaucracies like the FCC, not the elected legislators as defined by the Constitution. The FCC will continue to push hard, and mostly win in this power game. Congress right now is too divided and weak to fight back.

The result will be new regulations on satellite construction made by non-engineers and paper-pushers in the FCC, not engineers and managers in the companies actually building the satellites.

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Lunar Flashlight cubesat in trouble

9:18 am

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

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

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

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