Tag: spaceflight

Update on Astroscale’s mission to de-orbit a OneWeb satellite

9:34 am

Link here. Lots of details. The project is now targeting a ’26 launch, and if successful would be the first to capture a spacecraft in orbit and de-orbit it commercially — assuming some other orbital tug company doesn’t do it first.

One tidbit from the article that I had not known:

While the UK Space Agency and European Space Agency have provided around $35 million in funds, … Astroscale is financing “well over 50%” of the mission.

In other words, both the UK and ESA are following the capitalism model. They have left ownership and control of the de-orbit tug to Astroscale, which means they require it to obtain outside private investment capital on its own.

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“Toxic smell” at Progress hatch was hypergolic fuel

9:24 am

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, annotated to show Zvezda and Poisk locations.

According to information obtained by Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com, the “toxic smell” detected by Russian astronauts immediately after opening the hatch to unload the newly docked Progress at ISS was actually a small but very dangerous amount of hypergolic fuel left over from the previous Progress freighter.

[T]he working hypothesis was that the ground control failed to perform a routine purging of propellant lines between the station and Progress MS-27 before its undocking. As a result, highly toxic residue of hypergolic propellant remaining in the lines could easily spill into the main cavity of the docking mechanism on Poisk, once Progress MS-27 undocked from the module, an industry source told RussianSpaceWeb.com. After the arrival of Progress MS-29, the interior of the docking mechanism between the space station and the cargo ship was re-pressurized trapping the propellant residue and letting it into the station after opening of the hatches. [emphasis mine]

If true, this incident indicates a shocking level of incompetence, sloppiness, or even malice at Russian mission control. How can mission controllers forget to do a “routine purging” of hypergolic fuel, especially when it is known that this very dangerous fuel — which can dissolve skin if you allow yourself to get in contact with it — can “easily spill” into the docking port where people will travel?

The Russian government pays its top-level engineers very little, even as those engineers watch often bungling managers rake in big bucks through legal deal-making as well as bribery and embezzlement (only rarely caught and punished). These circumstances have been suggested as behind the various suspicious leaks in Soyuz and Progress capsules as well as the new Nauka module. In the case of the Soyuz, it was clearly caused by someone drilling a hole on the ground before launch and then fixing it with a makeshift patch that was certain to fail during the mission in space. Both the Progress and Nauka leaks also suggested a similar cause. The Russians told NASA its investigation discovered who drilled that Soyuz hole, but never revealed what it had found. As for the Progress and Nauka leaks, no investigation results were ever even discussed.

There is something distinctly rotten within Roscosmos, a rottenness that it appears Russia is doing little to fix. More likely it can’t really fix it, because the Putin administration in the late 2000s made Russia’s aerospace industry a remake of the Soviet Union, a single government-run corporation that owns everything and blocks all competition. Since then it has shown a steady decline in its ability to accomplish much and the steady growth of problems such as this.

The sooner Americans no longer have to partner with Russia the better. We must hope that NASA can at least get to 2030 and its planned retirement of ISS without a major failure. This leak occurred within the Poisk docking module that is attached to the larger Zvezda module where air is leaking from the station due to serious stress fractures in its hull. Each docking puts more stress on Zvezda, risking a catastrophic failure, so much so that it is now NASA policy to close the hatch between the American and Russian halves of the station whenever such dockings take place.

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UPDATE: Launch did not occur

3:15 pm

UPDATE: Thanks to my readers (see below), we can now confirm that the launch listed below did not occur as indicated at the link I provided, and is rescheduled for a few days hence. I have therefore removed this launch from Russia’s totals for 2024.

The corrected leaders in the 2024 launch race:

122 SpaceX
55 China
14 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 141 to 82, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 122 to 101.

The original post, minus the launch totals:
————————
Russia yesterday apparently launched a classified military payload, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northwest Russia.

This launch however remains unconfirmed by any other sources. No information about its launch or payload appears available on line, except for the link I provide above. Though I am adding it to Russia’s launch totals, I will remove if if further information proves it did not happen.

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Unusual light-colored Martian dunes

1:49 pm

Unusual light-colored Martian dunes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 27, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture was simply labeled a “terrain sample,” which usually means it was taken not as part of any specific research request, but to fill a gap in the schedule so as to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. When such gap-filler pictures are necessary, the MRO camera team tries to snap something of interest. Sometimes the pictures end up somewhat boring. This time however the picture highlights a dune field that is unusually light in color.

Since most Martian sand is volcanic in origin, it tends to look dark in orbital pictures. That this sand looks bright could be because it is inherently different, or it could be that lighting conditions make what normally looks dark to look bright instead.
» Read more

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NASA: forcing it to fly VIPER would cause it to cancel funding to 1 to 4 other commercial lunar landers

10:31 am

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

According to a response by NASA to a House committee and obtained by Space News, if Congress forces the agency to fly its canceled VIPER moon rover NASA would have to cancel funding to one to four other commercial lunar landers being built by private companies as part of NASA’s CLPS program.

In one scenario, NASA assumed VIPER would launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander as previously planned in September 2025. The agency estimated it would need to spend $104 million to prepare VIPER itself, $20 million of which had already been allocated for activities in fiscal year 2024, along with $20 million in “additional risk mitigation activities” for Griffin. “NASA estimated that these additional funding requirements would lead to cancellation of one CLPS delivery and delay of another delivery by a year,” it stated.

A second scenario anticipated a one-year slip in VIPER’s launch to September 2026. NASA projected an additional $50 million in costs for VIPER and $40 million for Griffin. That would have resulted in two canceled CLPS task orders and a one-year delay to two others.

NASA also revealed it considered “alternative delivery means” for VIPER other than Griffin. NASA did not disclose details about those alternatives, calling them “highly proprietary” but which would have delayed the launch of VIPER beyond 2026 “and would still include significant uncertainty about the reliability of delivery success.” NASA projected total costs of $350 million to $550 million with this scenario, resulting in the cancellation of four CLPS task orders and delaying three to four more by two years.

NASA preferred option is for a private company to take over VIPER. At the moment the agency is reviewing eleven proposals put forth by such companies that has “enough spaceflight experience and technical abilities to conduct the VIPER mission.”

Congress has gotten involved because the science community has lobbied hard to save it. The project itself has been a problem for NASA since its first iteration as Resource Prospector, when NASA would have built both the rover and lander. It has consistently gone over budget and behind schedule, even after NASA gave the lander portion to a private company, Astrobotic. At present the rover is 3X over budget with more overages expected, which is why NASA cancelled it.

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American spaceplane startup signs deal with Australian spaceport startup

10:17 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The American spaceplane startup Titans Space, which hopes to develop a reusuable space plane based on designs developed in the 1970s by Rockwell, has now signed a deal with the Australian spaceport startup Space Port Australia to work together to find an Australian location for both building the spaceplane and launching it.

Titans Space, a company that is taking an innovative approach to the space industry, has ambitious plans to become the largest low-earth orbit and lunar space tourism company in the world, as well as the largest “real estate owner in space and the Moon”.

Space Port Australia, which is headquartered in the NSW regional town of Moree, is committed to creating an integrated space facility which fosters innovation, industry, education and helps grow Australia’s place in the space sector.

Though Titans has raised some investment capital, this project is right now in its aspirational phase. It is very possible none of this will happen. This announcement is mostly an attempt to generate interest in both projects.

As for Space Port Australia, if it finds a location for this project it would be the fourth spaceport in Australia, joining the three spaceports that already have completed or have planned launches, as shown on the map to the right.

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FCC approves use of Starlink for direct cell-to-satellite T-Mobile service

10:02 am

Despite objections from all of SpaceX’s competitors, the FCC has now approved the use of its Starlink constellation for direct cell-to-satellite service as part of T-Mobile’s cellular network.

The decision noted that many technical issues still must be cleared.

There are a few limitations on how this type of service (which the FCC calls “supplemental coverage from space,” or SCS) can work. Right now it officially has to operate as an extension of an existing terrestrial provider, in this case T-Mobile. That’s because the regulations on how you broadcast stuff in space are different from those for how you broadcast stuff to and from a phone (as opposed to a base station antenna). AT&T, for its part, is partnering with AST SpaceMobile.

SpaceX must also be sure that its service does not interfere with other services on the ground, while the ground services do not have to worry about whether they might interfere with the satellite signals.

Nonetheless, this approval likely means that soon users of T-Mobile (as well as AT&T) will no longer have any dead zones. When there are no cell towers available, their phones will simply access the orbiting constellations of either Starlink or AST SpaceMobile.

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ESA flies suborbital rocket from Swedish spaceport

9:55 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday successfully flew a small suborbital rocket from the Esrange spaceport in Sweden, completing the sixteenth such flight since 1987.

The rocket reached an altitude of 256 km before falling back to Earth and providing approximately six minutes of microgravity to six scientific experiments onboard.

…All systems performed well during the flight and the valuable payloads were recovered by helicopter soon after landing. Flight samples of the experiments will now be returned for further analysis to science teams from Sweden, Germany and Finland, after more than two years of preparations.

This suborbital launch is only a preliminary of much bigger things to come. The rocket startup Firefly is building a launchpad at Esrange for orbital launches. Furthermore, the European startup MaiaSpace, a subsidary of ArianeGroup, plans to do tests of its partly reusable Maia rocket there in 2025.

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Judge dismisses lawsuit against SpaceX by activists

9:41 am

A federal judge has now thrown out a lawsuit that had been filed by anti-Musk activists in an attempt to halt all launches by SpaceX of its Starship/Superheavy rocket at Boca Chica.

U.S. District Judge Rolando Olvera issued his ruling last Thursday in response to the request filed by Save RGV on Oct. 9. The group has alleged that SpaceX’s water deluge system is releasing untreated industrial wastewater during launches and sought to halt the launches.

The water deluge system is designed to dampen the effects of Starship’s rocket engine blasts during liftoff and static fire engine testing.

“At the beginning of the Starship-Super Heavy Launch System’s development, it became evident that a deluge water system was necessary to protect the launch site and surrounding areas during launches,” Olvera wrote in the order. “A deluge water system sprays large quantities of potable water at the base of the spacecrafts during launch to prevent fires and reduce dispersal of dust and debris.

“Because of these dangers, Defendant cannot launch its spacecrafts without the deluge water system.”

SpaceX had argued that environmental reviews by both federal and state agencies had determined that the deluge system caused no harm. Olvera concurred, and also noted that to block launches would do significant harm to SpaceX and NASA’s entire lunar program.

This activist group, which represents almost no one in southern Texas, has no real interest in the environment. It filed this and other lawsuits simply as lawfare to try to stymie SpaceX for political reasons, knowing that we have more than seven decades of data at spaceports in Florida and California that prove rocket launches and deluge systems cause no environmental harm. In fact, they help wildlife by creating a large refuge where that wildlife can thrive.

Expect further similar lawsuits, all of which will be summarily dismissed afterward.

What I wonder is who is paying for this lawfare? SaveRGV likely doesn’t have the resources.

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Engineers restore Voyager-1 after communications issue

9:20 am

The Voyager missions
The routes the Voyager spacecraft have
taken since launch.

Engineers have now manged to resume normal communications with the Voyager-1 interplanetary probe after it had shut down its main communications channel last month due to low power levels.

Earlier this month, the team reactivated the X-band transmitter and then resumed collecting data the week of Nov. 18 from the four operating science instruments. Now engineers are completing a few remaining tasks to return Voyager 1 to the state it was in before the issue arose, such as resetting the system that synchronizes its three onboard computers.

The X-band transmitter had been shut off by the spacecraft’s fault protection system when engineers activated a heater on the spacecraft. Historically, if the fault protection system sensed that the probe had too little power available, it would automatically turn off systems not essential for keeping the spacecraft flying in order to keep power flowing to the critical systems. But the probes have already turned off all nonessential systems except for the science instruments. So the fault protection system turned off the X-band transmitter and turned on the S-band transmitter, which uses less power.

The S-band transmitter had not been used since 1981, so it took awhile for ground engineers to find the very weak signal. Once found however it was possible to recover operations, though those operations will likely continue for only another year or two. The spacecraft’s power supply is expected to finally run out sometime in ’26 or ’27.

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Two launches early today

9:11 am

China and SpaceX successfully completed launches early today.

First, the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace launched a new version of its Zhuque-2 methane-fueled rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China. The mission placed two test satellites into orbit, but more important, the launch tested the rocket’s new fuel-loading systems that copies SpaceX’s, loading the fuel quickly and cooling it to a lower temperature to increase its density and thus allow more to be packed into its tanks.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage crashed inside China.

SpaceX then placed 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

122 SpaceX
55 China
14 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 141 to 82, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 122 to 101.

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Etched terrain on Mars

2:12 pm

Etched terrain on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is another example of what I call a “What the heck!” image. The picture to the right, simply cropped to post here, was taken on September 22, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows what the scientists label as “etched terrain,” an incredibly twisted and eroded landscape that to me actually defies description. In trying to research what scientists have learned and theorized about this terrain, it appears they think it is material that flowed over older terrain (thus its lack of many craters) that was subsequently eroded by later processes.

Why it eroded so strangely however is not really understood. It could have been caused by near-surface ice sublimated to the surface and thus causing many breaks, but since this terrain is located right on the equator in the dry tropics, it is a very long time since water was present here.
» Read more

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