Tag: spaceflight

FAA again delays decision on environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility

1:32 pm

Surprise, surprise! According to an FAA email sent out today, the agency has once again, for the fifth time, delayed its decision on the environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship launch site.

From the email:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is updating the release date for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) on the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard (Permitting Dashboard) and project website. The FAA plans to issue the Final PEA on April 29th. The planned April 29, 2022 release date will allow the FAA to review the Final PEA, including responses to comments, and complete consultation and coordination with agencies at the local, State, and Federal level. All consultations must be complete before the FAA can issue the Final PEA.

This date is now listed on the FAA’s SpaceX-Starship webpage. Nor is the decision a surprise. Expect the FAA to continue this charade month-to-month until after the November election, when the Biden administration will then feel free to block SpaceX’s effort in Boca Chica completely.

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Ukraine War energizes commercial orbital remote sensing industry

10:31 am

Capitalism in space: It appears that the Ukraine War has had a positive effect on the emerging commercial remote-sensing satellite industry.

This industry is made up of a number of new private companies launching satellites to take high resolution images across a range of wavelengths, as well as do surveillance of communications. These companies have in the past decade slowly taken over this market from government satellites, which were becoming too expensive and launching too slowly to meet the military’s needs.

The war is illustrating their success, and firming up their businesses as other customers, such as news organizations, utilize their capabilities.

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Solar Orbiter takes closest image of Sun so far

10:18 am

Solar Orbiter's closest image of the Sun, so far
Click for full interactive image, where you can zoom in, a lot.

Cool image time! The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday released several new images from its Solar Orbiter probe, taken when the spacecraft made its most recent closest approach of the Sun.

One of the images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) is the highest resolution image of the Sun’s full disc and outer atmosphere, the corona, ever taken.

Another image, taken by the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument represents the first full Sun image of its kind in 50 years, and by far the best one, taken at the Lyman-beta wavelength of ultraviolet light that is emitted by hydrogen gas.

The images were taken when Solar Orbiter was at a distance of roughly 75 million kilometres, half way between our world and its parent star. The high-resolution telescope of EUI takes pictures of such high spatial resolution that, at that close distance, a mosaic of 25 individual images is needed to cover the entire Sun. Taken one after the other, the full image was captured over a period of more than four hours because each tile takes about 10 minutes, including the time for the spacecraft to point from one segment to the next.

The photo to the right, reduced to post here, is the EUI photo.

Solar Orbiter has been in its science orbit since November, though that orbit over time will slowly be adjusted to swing the spacecraft into a higher inclination so that it can make the first close-up observations of the Sun’s polar regions. It is also working in tandem with the Parker Solar Probe, which observes the Sun from even closer distances using different instruments.

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Arianespace and SpaceX adjust to the new commercial launch market, without Russia

9:56 am

Link here. The article is mostly about how both companies need to adjust their launch schedules, with Arianespace scrambling to find rockets for its customers who had been scheduled to launch on Russian Soyuz-2 rockets and SpaceX describing how it will readjust its schedule with the addition of the OneWeb satellite launches.

The article had two quotes of interest. First, this fact about Arianespace’s new Vega-C rocket:

The Vega C uses an upper stage engine provided by Ukraine’s Yuzhmash, and supplies of that engine are in question because of the ongoing invasion. ESA officials said March 17 that they have three of those engines, enough to handle the anticipated Vega C missions this year.

ESA is supporting work on a new upper stage engine, M10, for a version of the Vega called Vega E that is slated to make its first launch around 2025. [Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace] said there was “no need” to accelerate work on Vega E, though, citing the Ukrainian engines in storage.

Thus, Vega-C is in the same boat as Northrop Grumman’s Antares, which also relies on Ukrainian rocket engines. When you also add the difficulty that both Blue Origin and ULA are having getting new rockets off the ground because of the delays in the BE-4 engine, it appears that in general there is presently a strong need across the entire rocket industry for rocket engines that is not being fulfilled by the engine builders available. This fact puts the new rocket engine company Ursa Major in a very strong position, should it begin to build bigger engines to serve this need. It also suggests there is an opportunity here for other engine builders, such as Aerojet Rocketdyne, if they have the wherewithal to grab it.

The second quote from the article of interest was from a SpaceX official, describing how the company is dealing with the sudden requirement to launch 216 OneWeb satellites:

Tom Ochinero, vice president of commercial sales at SpaceX, said at the conference that the company’s vertical integration and large fleet of reusable boosters offer the company flexibility to accommodate customers like OneWeb. “We can react very quickly because we’re just managing a fleet,” he said. [emphasis mine]

I just love the significance of the highlighted quote. Unlike all past rocket companies, SpaceX doesn’t have to build more rockets to add new customers, which makes adding new customers difficult and expensive. It simply can readjust how it uses the rockets in its fleet to get those new customers in orbit. And the new business will likely pay for SpaceX to expand that fleet so that it can launch more satellites even quicker.

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Ingenuity completes 23rd flight on Mars

11:05 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

JPL announced tonight in a tweet that Ingenuity today completed its 23rd successful flight on Mars.

23 flights and counting! #MarsHelicopter successfully completed its 23rd excursion. It flew for 129.1 seconds over 358 meters [1,175 feet].

The overview map to the right was taken from the “Where is Perseverance?” webpage and annotated by me to show the planned future routes of both Perseverance and Ingenuity. The white dotted line shows Perseverance’s path, now having almost circled the rough ground on its way to the delta and Three Forks. The tan dotted line indicates Perseverance’s future route. The dashed pink and green lines indicate two possible future flight paths for Ingenuity.

The green dot marks the position the science team marked on the map for where Ingenuity landed after today’s flight. They have not yet calculated the actual flight path, which is why it is shown by the tan dashed line. This also means there is as yet some uncertainty about this landing spot.

Originally, the plan had been to get to this spot in one flight. For reasons not yet explained, when the helicopter took off on its 22nd flight during the March 19-20th weekend, it stopped after only about 100 feet. Today’s flight apparently completed the plan, putting the helicopter where it was supposed to be.

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SpaceX raises launch prices

10:55 am

Capitalism in space: Though most of the press has focused on the Starlink announcement on March 22nd that it was raising its subscriber rates, that same day SpaceX announced that it too was raising its prices, increasing its launch fees by 8% to 10%.

The starting prices for a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket will each increase by about 8%. A Falcon 9 launch will cost $67 million, up from $62 million, and a Falcon Heavy launch will now run $97 million, up from $90 million. A footnote on SpaceX’s pricing page notes that “missions purchased in 2022 but flown beyond 2023 may be subject to additional adjustments due to inflation.”

..The company also adjusted its prices for its small satellite rideshare program. Those flights will now start at $1.1 million to fly a payload weighing 200 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit, up from a base price of $1 million. SpaceX increased the cost of additional payload mass by 10% as well and will now charge $5,500 per extra kilogram, up from a previous $5,000 per kilogram.

As with the Starlink announcement, SpaceX officials stated that the price increase was due entirely by inflation.

The irony here is that SpaceX could easily raise its rocket prices by 20%, and still be undercutting its entire competition. Even with these increases it is still by far the cheapest game in town.

Nonetheless, when it comes to inflation we have only just begun. The consequences of the Ukraine war, the sanctions against Russia, the Biden administration’s restrictions on domestic oil production, and the various COVID regulations restricting commerce are all still in effect, and are all putting pressure on supply. Prices will continue to rise.

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SpaceX’s fourth manned Dragon capsule named “Freedom”

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: The astronauts who will fly to ISS on April 19th on the SpaceX’s fourth manned Dragon capsule announced yesterday that they named it “Freedom,” both to honor that fundamental human right that is also fundamental to American history as well as to honor the memory of the first American spacecraft, Freedom 7, which launched Alan Shepard on his short suborbital flight in 1961.

Once launched, SpaceX will have a fleet of four manned capsules, Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom.

Endeavour has carried humans aloft twice for NASA, and is scheduled to fly a record third time on April 3rd when it carries four commercial passengers to ISS for the company Axiom.

Resilience has also flown twice, once for NASA and once for SpaceX itself, launching a crew of commercial passengers in the fall of 2021.

Endurance has flown once, for NASA.

With the addition of Freedom, SpaceX will have a fleet of four manned spacecraft, matching the size of NASA’s now gone shuttle fleet. Whether the company will need to build more will depend on demand and on the number of missions it thinks these reusable capsules can complete safely.

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NASA solicits proposals for second commercial manned lunar lander

9:25 am

Having received a budget boost from Congress for its manned lunar lander Artemis program, NASA yesterday announced that it is soliciting proposals from the private sector for a second lunar lander, so that the agency will not be reliant only on SpaceX’s Starship.

To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.

As part of this revised program, NASA also is negotiating a revision to its contract with SpaceX. It appears that this change will have SpaceX fly an additional manned mission with Starship, after which NASA would open up competition to everyone on future flights. The press release however is not entirely clear on this point.

This new competition will of course be a boon to the losers in the first manned lunar lander competition, Blue Origin and Dynetics. Both will certainly submit bids, as will others.

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Blue Origin delays 1st New Glenn launch again

9:10 am

Capitalism in space: At a conference earlier this week Blue Origin officials confirmed that the first test flight of its orbital New Glenn rocket will not occur in ’22, but will be delayed again, into ’23.

New Glenn was originally supposed to launch in 2020, and has been delayed repeatedly since then, first because of new requirements imposed by the military and then because of delays in getting Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine operational.

Though ULA is still aiming to launch its Vulcan rocket using the BE-4 in 2022, expect it to eventually recognize reality and delay also to ’23. That rocket was also supposed to make its first launch in ’20, and has been delayed for the same reasons.

These delays have cost both companies dearly. For example, had each been operational as planned, they might have won some or all of the launch contracts that OneWeb lost from the Russians. Instead, that business went to SpaceX.

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Ingenuity completes 22nd flight; Perseverance on a roll

11:37 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet from JPL on March 21, 2021, Ingenuity successfully completed its 22nd flight on Mars during the March 19-20th weekend, flying for 101 seconds at a height of about 30 feet.

The tweet provided no other information, other than another flight might occur as early as later this week.

However, the most recent map update from the rover/helicopter science teams, shown to the right and annotated to post here, tells us what happened. The white dotted line indicates Perseverance’s travels. The tan dotted line indicated the flight path and landing spots for Ingenuity. The dashed tan lines indicate the planned routes for both. The red dot marks Perseverance’s present location. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s location, after its 22nd flight.

The announced flight plan for Ingenuity’s 22nd flight is shown by the two blue dots, heading north and then making a sharp left before landing. Apparently, the helicopter either did not complete that plan, landing earlier for some reason, or the flight team had decided before takeoff to shorten the flight plan significantly.

What we do know is that the helicopter landed safely, from images downloaded on March 20th [sol 384] and from the JPL tweet. The next flight, targeting later this week, could attempt to complete the previous flight plan, or instead continue to break it up into small sections.

Meanwhile, Perseverance has been racing across the Martian surface, traveling almost as much in the past week as it had for the past year. (See the map from March 16th to compare.) Moreover, the Perseverance team shortened its planned route, cutting to the west of that large crater rather than skirting it to the east. The route taken was probably slightly rougher, but nothing the rover couldn’t handle, and it saved travel time. Apparently, the scientists running the rover are now very eager to finally get to the delta, the mission’s primary geological target.

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ISS: Breaking up is hard to do

11:00 am

According to this detailed article by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, it will be be very difficult if not impossible for Russia to detach its half from ISS and go its own way.

The article outlines both the technical and legal reasons, and concludes as follows:

In reality, during the coming years, we are more likely to see food riots in Moscow than we are to see a new Russian Space Station or a deep space scientific exploration mission. Some of this will be due to financial concerns, and some of it will come because of a loss of access to technology from the West.

Already, Russia’s main builder of tanks, Uralvagonzavod, appears to have stopped production due to a lack of components. Roscosmos’s big four companies—RKK Energia, RSC Progress, the Khrunichev Center, and NPO Energomash—will likely not be able to keep up production for long for the same reason as the tank factory.

While everything Berger notes is true, I think he underestimates the willingness of rogue nations, as Russia presently is, to break treaties. Also, the agreements Russia has signed expire in 2024, and Russia needs the next few years to launch more modules to have any chance of making its half workable. Whether it can do it is presently doubtful, but not impossible.

This partnership is ending, whether by choice or reality. Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.

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Startup rocket company begins delivering engines

9:55 am

Capitalism in space: The startup rocket company, Ursa Major, announced today that it has completed qualification tests of its new Hadley rocket engine and has begun delivering flight worthy engines to two different companies.

Startup Ursa Major announced Wednesday that it had completed qualification of its Hadley rocket engine for use by both a space launch vehicle and a hypersonic launch system. The Colorado-based company said it has already started delivering flight-ready Hadley engines to two customers, Phantom Space and Stratolaunch, and plans to produce a total of 30 engines this year.

The engine is relatively small compared to most rocket engines. Phantom will use seven in the first stage of its smallsat Daytona rocket, designed to launch cubesats into orbit. What Stratolaunch will use the engine for is unclear.

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Blue Origin’s engine division manager leaves company; first BE-4 engines arriving in May

9:48 am

Capitalism in space: The head of Blue Origin’s rocket engine division has decided to leave the company, even as it was revealed that the first flight worthy BE-4 engines will not be delivered to ULA until May at the earliest.

According to company sources, the first two BE-4 flight engines are in final production at Blue Origin’s factory in Kent, Washington. The first of these engines is scheduled to be shipped to a test site in May for “acceptance testing” to ensure its flight readiness. A second should follow in reasonably short order. On this schedule, Blue Origin could conceivably deliver both flight engines to United Launch Alliance in June or July. Sources at Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance say development versions of the BE-4—which are nearly identical to the flight versions—have been performing well in tests.

Upon receiving the engines, United Launch Alliance plans to install two of the BE-4s on the Vulcan rocket for a debut launch as soon as possible. While at the Satellite 2022 conference in the District of Columbia, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno on Tuesday said he still anticipates that Vulcan’s debut launch will occur in 2022. However, a summertime delivery would be a very tight schedule for United Launch Alliance.

ULA was initially promised these engines more than three years ago. The delay not only put its Vulcan rocket three years behind schedule, it has delayed the development of Blue Origin’s own orbital rocket, New Glenn, by more than three years as well.

To supply the needed engines for both rockets Blue Origin will need to establish a production line that can churn them out at a much faster pace than indicated so far. Whether it can remains an unknown, with the exit now of the head of the company’s engine division making that unknown even more worrisome.

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Firefly raises $75 million, targets May for next launch attempt

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: In announcing that the company has raised $75 million more in private investment capital, Firefly officials also said that it is now targeted May for its next launch attempt of its Alpha rocket.

The launch was partly delayed because of the federal government’s insistence that a Ukrainian businessman, who had saved the company when it went into bankruptcy, divest his ownership. That has now happened, so Firefly has gotten approval to launch.

Firefly CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC that the company “worked methodically and cooperatively with the government” to both complete the divestment, as well as to add “security protocols” at the company.

With the move complete, Markusic said the company now has “full access to our facilities to go back and launch.” Firefly will next transport its second Alpha rocket from its headquarters near Austin, Texas, to California, and aims to launch as soon as it can.

“We think it’ll take us about eight weeks from here to launch — so in May is our target,” Markusic told CNBC.

The company is also aiming to complete its second test launch two months after the first, assuming all goes well.

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SpaceX switches to newer Starship and Superheavy for orbital test

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has decided that the company will no longer use Starship prototype #20 and Superheavy prototype #4 for the rocket’s first orbital test flight.

Instead, the company will fly two more recently built and upgraded prototypes, rumored to be numbers #24 for Starship and #7 for Superheavy. The company has also decided to switch from the first generation Raptor engines to Raptor-2s.

All these changes likely explain Musk’s announcement that the first orbital launch will not happen sooner than May. The changes also further suggest that SpaceX has realized federal permission to launch from Boca Chica will be further delayed, and thus it might has well push forward in other ways as it waits for the right to launch.

I suspect that if the federal government hadn’t moved in to block operations, it would have flown prototypes 20 and 4 two months ago, just to get some data. Now such a flight seems pointless, as more advanced prototypes are now almost ready to fly.

This decision also reinforces my prediction that no orbital flights will occur out of Boca Chica before summer, and are more likely blocked through November. It also increases my expectation that the first orbital flight might not occur at all in Texas. The longer the Biden administration delays SpaceX’s operations there, the greater the chance the entire Starship/Superheavy launch program will shift to Florida.

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Local state legislators introduce bill to disband Camden spaceport authority

9:14 am

Two Georgia state legislators yesterday introduced a bill to disband the Camden spaceport authority, following a county special election that rejected the spaceport by a vote of 72% to 28%.

Whether the bill becomes law or not will likely not make much difference to the spaceport. It is dead, and the law will merely decide whether it dies quickly, or slowly.

This quote by one of the legislators who introduced the bill, however, should be carved in stone in every statehouse and in the Capitol in Washington:

“It’s hard to ignore how the people vote.”

Too many lawmakers nationwide have forgotten this fact.

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Starlink raises its prices

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: Starlink has now unveiled newer higher prices for getting its internet service, even for those who had previously put down a deposit for the service.

Originally, opting into Starlink required a $499 upfront purchase of a starter kit with all the necessary supplies, including a user terminal, or antenna, for connecting with SpaceX’s satellites. Customers would then pay a $99 monthly charge to keep the service running. Now, the new monthly price going forward will be $110. All new orders of the Starlink kit will now cost $599, and anyone who put down a deposit for the original $499 kit will have to pay $549 instead. The new monthly prices will come into effect at different times for different customers.

The price increase either indicates the lack of competition existing for those who want good internet service in the regions Starlink presently serves, or it suggests the cost of launching the system is higher than Starlink first anticipated. Either way, the higher cost gives an opportunity to others.

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The unbelievably rough and wind-swept surface of Mars’ Greenheugh pediment

11:17 am

Gator-back terrain on Mars
Click for full image.

Since my last update on the travels of the Mars rover Curiosity on February 22, 2022, the rover has been been creeping ever so slowly westward across a plateau that scientists have dubbed the Greenheugh pediment.

Scientists have known for years that the surface of the pediment was going to be rough going. This panorama taken by Curiosity when it first climbed up to the pediment in March 2020 to take a peek before retreating revealed that roughness starkly.

In truth, since beginning its traverse of that pediment in February, the Curiosity team has found the ground not only as rough as expected, but beautiful in a strange sort of way, as illustrated by the March 20, 2022 photo to the right, reduced to post here. As Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center, noted yesterday in a Curiosity update that featured this image:
» Read more

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NASA: Europa Clipper’s cost rise; Mars sample return delayed

10:10 am

At a meeting this week NASA officials admitted that the cost of its Europa Clipper mission has risen by three quarters of a billion dollars, and that the sample return mission to bring back Perseverance’s core samples will be delayed, as well as now require two landers, not one.

NASA revealed significant changes to two of its flagship planetary science missions at today’s Space Science Week meeting at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The cost for Europa Clipper, which will gather data as it makes multiple swingbys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, has grown from $4.25 billion to $5 billion. Separately, NASA and ESA are replanning the Mars Sample Return mission. Two landers are needed instead of one to retrieve samples from the surface of Mars and boost them into orbit for their trip back to Earth. The launches will be in 2028 instead of 2026.

The sample return mission itself is also growing in complexity:

A Sample Fetch Rover will be sent to collect them and take them to a Mars Ascent Vehicle — a rocket — that will shoot them into Martian orbit where they will be transferred to an Earth Return Orbiter for the trip back to Earth.

Initially the plan was for the fetch rover and ascent vehicle to be launched together in 2026, and the Earth Return Orbiter in 2027. But Zurbuchen decided to convene an Independent Review Board in 2020 to get an impartial assessment of the plan by outside experts. The Board cautioned that 2026 was “not achieveable” with 2028 a more realistic date, and that the “program’s schedule and cost are not aligned with its scope.”

Consequently, NASA now has replanned the mission with two landers — one each for the fetch rover and ascent vehicle — instead of one. Both landers will launch in 2028. The Earth Return Orbiter will still launch in 2027. The samples will get back to Earth in 2033.

Prediction: The launch of this fleet of sample return spacecraft will be further delayed, and its overall cost will rise, by a lot. In fact, it is very possible that SpaceX’s Starship will have already returned samples from Mars before NASA’s mission gets off the ground.

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Scientists: Enceladus’ tiger stripes come from underground ocean

9:58 am

The uncertainty of science: Using a new computer model, scientists now think they have shown how on the Saturn moon Enceladus pressure from an underground ocean can push through cracks to produce geysers on the surface.

Rudolph and his colleagues ran a physics-based model to map the conditions that could allow the cracks from the surface to reach the ocean and cause the eruptions. The model accounts for cycles of warming and cooling that last on the scale of a hundred million years, associated with changes in Enceladus’ orbit around Saturn. During each cycle, the ice shell undergoes a period of thinning and a period of thickening. The thickening happens through freezing at the base of the ice shell, which grows downward like the ice on a lake, Rudolph said.

The pressure exerted by this downward-expanding ice on the ocean below is one possible mechanism researchers have proposed to explain Enceladus’ geysers. As the outer ice shell cools and thickens, pressure increases on the ocean underneath because ice has more volume than water. The increasing pressure also generates stress in the ice, which could become pathways for fluid to reach the surface 20-30 kilometers away.

You can read the paper here.

Be warned: This is only a model. Moreover, its conclusions suggest that this mechanism will not work on Jupiter’s moon Europa, which has many planet-wide crack-like features that suggest (as yet unconfirmed) a bubbling up from below.

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Musk says Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a tweet yesterday Elon Musk said that Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May, a delay of two months from his previous announcements.

“We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test,” Musk tweeted in response to CNBC.

While the delay could certainly be because the company needed to prepare enough Superheavy engines, I also suspect it is also because Musk now expects the FAA to not approve the environmental reassessment of Starship’s Boca Chica launch site by the end of March, as has been promised. I predict that sometime in the next few days the FAA will announce another one-month delay in that process, the fourth such delay by that federal agency.

In late-December, when the FAA announced the first delay, I predicted that the first orbital launch of Starship would not happen until the latter half of ’22. I now think that prediction was optimistic. I firmly believe the federal government, controlled by Democrats, will delay that launch until after the mid-term elections in November. It appears to me that the Biden administration wants to reject the environmental reassessment, which would block Starship flights from Boca Chica for years. It just doesn’t want to do it before November, because of the negative election consequences.

I truly hope my cynical and pessimistic analysis is utterly wrong. So far, however, my prediction has proven to be more right than wrong.

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South Korea to build its own unmanned lunar lander

9:31 am

The new colonial movement: The government of South Korea has begun a project to build its own unmanned lunar lander, scheduled for launch sometime in the 2030s.

South Korea presented an action plan to develop a lunar lander weighing more than 1.5 tons that would carry out scientific research on the surface of the moon in the 2030s. The project is to begin in 2024 after a preliminary feasibility study.

The Ministry of Science and ICT would form a working group of industry-academic experts to conduct research on a lunar lander and draw up strategies and detailed plans by August 2022. It is a follow-up project to launch a lunar orbiter in August 2022. The lunar lander will be lifted by a next-generation homemade rocket.

The goal is to encourage the country’s own aerospace industry. The working group will spend the next month recruiting South Korean companies to join the project.

South Korea however has to first get its own homemade rocket, Nuri, to successfully launch. The first launch attempt in October 2021 failed, and the second has been delayed to fix the cause.

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SpaceX ends future business with launch services company Spaceflight

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: For reasons not explained, SpaceX has ended all further business with the launch services company Spaceflight, which acts to find and integrate smallsats from many different companies into a package for launch.

Spaceflight also provides many of those smallsats with a small tug, dubbed Sherpa-LTC, to move them into their preferred orbit once deployed from the Falcon 9 upper stage. It looks like there have recently been problems with this tug that Spaceflight has not been able to resolve to SpaceX’s satisfaction.

The propulsion leak on Spaceflight’s Sherpa-LTC vehicle was discovered about three weeks before the Jan. 13 SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-3 launch. Root-cause analysis of the leak traced the problem to an oxidizer circuit in the propulsion system, which worked as designed but vented some trapped liquid due to a design flaw.

…Regarding the upcoming launch, Spaceflight began working with SpaceX to address concerns about “the analysis and test results of Sherpa and its customer payloads” as soon as it became aware of them.

Despite Spaceflight’s “best efforts, SpaceX chose not to fly the Sherpa vehicle until the analysis and test approaches could be better understood,” Sorensen said. “We continue to work with SpaceX to understand their decision and address any concerns for future missions.”

It appears, though not confirmed, that SpaceX is not just worried about Sherpa, but is also concerned about Spaceflight’s quality control efforts, and that might be the reason it has reject Spaceflight from future launches.

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Sharpest radio image ever taken of newly discovered space object

9:11 am

The first known Odd Radio Circle (ORC)
Click for full image.

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers, using the MeerKat radio telescope in South Africa, have taken the best radio image yet of a newly discovered type of astronomical object, dubbed whimsically as an odd radio circle (ORC).

The photo to the right is that image. While it is reminiscent of the many planetary nebulae seen in visible light that astronomers have been studying since the 1800s, this weird shape is only seen in radio frequencies, and it is much much larger.

Odd radio circles are so named because they’re large, circular objects which are bright around the edges at radio wavelengths, but which can’t be seen with optical, infrared or X-ray telescopes – and at this stage, astronomers don’t really know what they are.

And they’re massive – about a million light years across, making them sixteen times larger than our own galaxy. But despite their gargantuan size, the objects are difficult to spot, hiding in plain sight.

Planetary nebulae are generally the size of solar systems.

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Russia launches military communications satellite with Soyuz-2 rocket

8:57 am

Russia today successfully launched its tenth Meridian military communications satellite from its Plesetsk spaceport in the Russian interior, using a Soyuz-2 rocket.

Like China, Russian launches drop the expendable first stages and boosters on land. From the article:

On March 17, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced danger zones in three areas of the Komi Republic: the “Vashka” site in the Udorsky District, and “Zheleznodorozhny” site in the Knyazhpogostsky and Kortkerossky districts. According to the warning, the launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket was planned for March 22, 2022, between 15:00 and 17:00 Moscow Time (8:00 – 10:00 a.m. EDT). Backup launch opportunities were reserved for March 23, 24 and 25.

The announced impact sites matched the ground track required for the mission to access an orbit with an inclination 62.8 degrees toward the Equator, which is used by Meridian military communications satellites.

Such danger zones in Russia are the routine for every launch since Sputnik in 1957. And unlike China Russia never made any effort to develop methods for controlling the crash landing of its first stages.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

11 SpaceX
6 China
4 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 6 in the national rankings.

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OneWeb signs deal with SpaceX to launch its remaining satellites, replacing Russia

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: Just 18 days after its contract with Arianespace was suspended because of Russia invasion of the Ukraine, OneWeb has now signed a deal with SpaceX to use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch the remaining 200+ satellites in its satellite constellation.

Few details about the agreement were released Monday morning. “Terms of the agreement with SpaceX are confidential,” OneWeb said in a statement.

OneWeb said the “first launch” with SpaceX is expected before the end of this year, suggesting the company anticipates multiple flights on SpaceX rockets.

It appears that launches could start before the end of this year

There are two big losers in this story. The obvious one is Russia, as it has lost OneWeb as a satellite customer. The second, less obvious, is Arianespace, as it appears it has also lost OneWeb as a customer. It will also have to refund OneWeb any payments the satellite company made for launches that have not occurred, even those that Arianespace had paid Russia for which Russia is refusing to refund.

Though no details have been released about the deal, I would not be surprised if OneWeb got a better price than what it was paying Arianespace. I also suspect that Elon Musk was willing to make this deal with OneWeb, the prime competitor to his Starlink satellite constellation, because he favors the Ukraine in this war.

Finally, this deal will not only make Russia look bad, it will make SpaceX look magnificent. Its PR value cannot be measured for the company.

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Rogozin: Lift sanctions by end of March or else!

10:13 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space corporation that runs all of that nations aerospace industry, yesterday demanded that Europe and the U.S. lift its sanctions against Russia by end of March or he would take further action against them.

“We will wait until the end of March. The lack of response or a negative response would be a basis for our decision,” he said, without specifying what kind of decision it would be.

According to the official, the space corporation was not going to yield to the sanctions.

One immediately asks, what happens at the end of March? Why time further space-related actions then?

Well, the only area in which Russia is still cooperating with the west in space is on ISS. At the end of March, Russia will bring home American astronaut Mark Vande Hei using its Soyuz capsule. This suggests that once Vande Hei comes home, Rogozin will announce that Russia will no longer fly any western astronauts to ISS on its rockets or capsules. He might also further announce actions that will accelerate the end of the ISS partnership, including laying out Russia’s schedule for adding modules to its half of ISS and then detaching it from the station.

If so, good. Such an action will bring clarity to the station’s remaining days, forcing NASA to make sure the station can function after the Russian half is gone. It will probably quicken the development of Axiom’s modules to the station, and might encourage the private construction of other modules to pick up the slack left by the Russian exit.

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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

9:53 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch another 53 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage completed its 12th flight, a new record. The fairings were also reused, one half for the fourth time and the other for the second time. SpaceX continues to maintain a one launch per week schedule in 2022.

At posting the upper stage still had one more engine burn to insert itself into the final orbit, followed by satellite deployment.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

11 SpaceX
6 China
3 Russia
2 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 17 to 6 in the national rankings.

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The journey so far of China’s Zhurong Mars rover

11:07 am

Zhurong's journey on Mars, as seen by MRO
Click for full image.

Elevation map and wider overview
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) today released a new orbital photo that shows the entire journey on Mars of China’s Zhurong rover, since it landed in May 2021. That image, reduced to post here, is to the right. From the caption, written by Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona:

This HiRISE image, acquired on 11 March 2022, shows how far the rover has traveled in the 10 months since it landed.

In fact, its exact path can be traced from the wheel tracks left on the surface. It has traveled south for roughly 1.5 kilometers (about 1 mile). This cutout highlights the rover and the rover’s path (with contrast enhanced to better reveal the tracks).

The white curves that the rover has apparently been inspecting as it moved south are called megaripples, mid-size sand dunes from three to six feet in height that are generally found to be inactive, though not always. From a recent report about Zhurong’s findings:

“The examples Zhurong has visited appear very bright-toned in satellite images taken from orbit, and the team thinks that this is because the megaripples are covered with a layer of very fine dust,” says Matt Balme at the Open University, UK, who wasn’t involved in the analysis. “This means these features are probably currently inactive, as any present-day windblown sand would tend to remove the dust.”

That report used data from the rover’s first sixty days on Mars, after it had passed its first megaripple and had just reached the parachute and backshell. It does not include any later data in the past eight months, as Zhurong rolled past another nine megaripples and several small craters.

It also doesn’t include any data obtained as the rover skirted the wide apron that surrounds the large depression in the lower left. That depression looks like a crater at first glance, but because it appears to be on top of a mound it could instead by an old pitted cone. There are a lot of these cones in this region of the northern lowland plains of Mars, and planetary scientists really want to know whether they were formed from erupting ice, lava, or mud.

The Chinese have so far not released any data on what they have found in these later travels. We shall have to wait for further published papers.

The wider elevation overview map to the right, first published on August 24, 2021 and cropped and annotated to post here, shows Zhurong’s future potential geological targets to the south. The cone to the southwest as well as the nearest scarp to the south are probably the rover’s primary goals.

Though the released results have hinted that the geology here was shaped by both wind and water, direct evidence for water has not been found, or revealed by the Chinese. Zhurong has a radar sensor that could detect evidence of near surface underground ice, if it was there. As far as I know at this point, no results from that instrument have as yet been published.

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ESA makes official the split with Russia

9:32 am

At a press conference yesterday officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) officially announced that the partnership with Russia to launch its Franklin rover to Mars has ended, and the launch will not happen in ’22.

The program is not cancelled, but “suspended.” ESA is looking for alternatives to get its Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are correctly aligned for launches only every 26 months, so the next opportunities are in 2024, 2026, and 2028. Aschbacher said it is not feasible to be ready by 2024, so it will be one of the later dates.

Since Russia had been providing both the launch rocket and Mars lander, ESA cannot simply find a different rocket. It needs to come up with its own lander, or find someone else to build it. For example, one of many new private American companies building lunar landers for NASA might be able do it, though ESA would likely prefer a European company. If it did decide to go with an American company, it would certainly not hire one until it succeeds in completing successfully at least one planetary landing.

The officials also outlined ESA’s need to find new launch rockets for many other missions it had planned to launch on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket. That need will also be an opportunity for American rocket companies, but more significantly it could be a blessing for Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket. The Ariane 6 has struggled to find customers because of its high cost. The loss of Russia as a launch option will likely drive some ESA business to it.

Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin in turn announced that it will go ahead with its own Mars mission, using the lander on an Angara rocket

“True, we will lose several years, but we will replicate our landing module, make an Angara rocket for it and carry out this research mission from the newly-built Vostochny spaceport on our own. Without inviting any ‘European friends’, who prefer to keep their tails between their legs the moment they hear their American master’s angry voice,” Rogozin said on his Telegram channel.

Whether Russia will actually do this is questionable. For the last two decades Roscosmos has promised all kinds of numerous planetary missions and new rockets and new manned capsules, none of which has ever seen the light of day. To make such a thing happen now seems even more doubtful.

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