Tag: spaceflight

Another Chinese pseudo-company vertically lands a prototype 1st stage

11:52 am

According to China’s state-run press, the Chinese pseudo-company Expace yesterday successfully completed a short hop, with a methane-fueled prototype first stage of its next generation Kuaizhou rocket taking off and landing vertically.

The flight time lasted 22 seconds, and the rocket hovered in the air for nine seconds, with a height accuracy of 0.15 meter. The landing posture of the test rocket was stable, the landing position accurate and the rocket body in good condition, signifying the success of the experiment, according to the company.

Several things. First, this “company” is directly affliated with one of China’s government space agency. Its presently operating Kuaizhou rocket uses solid-fueled stages, adapted directly from missile technology that could only be obtained with full permission of that government. Second, there appears to be a plethora of these Chinese rocket “startups” now flying and testing methane-fueled engines. Want to bet the Chinese government told them all to share design information?

Third, there is also a plethora of Chinese pseudo-companies testing vertical take-off and landing for their first stages. Want to bet the Chinese government also told them to share design information?

Without question China’s space industry is moving fast, and will definitely be a competitive threat in the coming years — assuming outside events, such as war or economic collapse, don’t overwhelm things. However, it is a big mistake to see its industry as made up of independent, privately owned, and competing companies. They raise investment capital, compete for contracts from the government and other Chinese commercial entities, but in the end, everything they do is coordinated from above, by the Chinese communists.

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The future of astronomy, as seen by PBS News in 1991

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Today is the 75th anniversary of the moment astonomers took the lens cap off the Hale Telescope at Palomar, what astronomers call “first light.” In honor of this anniversary, tonight’s evening pause is a somewhat well-done news piece produced by PBS in 1991, describing the state of ground-based astronomy at that time, which was actually another key moment in the history of astronomy. After decades of no advancement following the Hale telescope, the field was about to burst out with a whole new set of telescopes exceeding it significantly, based on new technologies. We today have become accustomed to those new telescopes, but in 1991 they were still incomplete or on the drawing board.

This was also after the launch of Hubble but before it was fixed, so this moment was also a somewhat dark time for astronomy in general. Watching this news piece gives you a sense of history, as seen by those living at that time. It also lets you see some good examples of the standard tropes of reporters as well as some astronomers. They always say this new telescope (whatever and whenever it is) is going to allow us to discover the entire history of the universe, even though it never can, and never will.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs SLIM on the Moon

1:16 pm

LRO images showing before and after SLIM's landing
Click for blink animation.

Scientists using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) were able on January 24, 2024 to obtain a photograph of the SLIM landing site on the Moon, and produce a before and after blink animation showing the lander on the ground.

The two pictures to the right, before and after, were taken from that animation. The bright speck in the after image is SLIM, sitting upside down on the surface. The faint streak of light material going from right to left lower in the photo comes from the fresh ejecta material thrown out from the nearby 1,425-foot-wide Shioli Crater to the west.

This picture confirms once again that SLIM achieved its main goal, landing precisely within a tiny landing zone only 300 feet across.

The landing occurred in the morning on the Moon, so the Sun was in the east. Because SLIM got flipped upside down just before touchdown, its one solar panel ended up facing west, where no sunlight could touch it. Based on the shadows in this picture, east is to the left, and west to the right. The solar panel is sitting in the shadow on SLIM’s right side.

In about a week the Sun will begin setting to the west, illuminating that panel. Engineers in Japan hope that at that time the panel will begin to recharge the spacecraft’s batteries, and it will then begin to operate again, if only a short while before the Sun sets and the very cold and hostile lunar night begins. There is little expectation of SLIM surviving that long two-week lunar night, even if it gets its batteries fully charged.

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Ingenuity’s final resting site on Mars

1:00 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity's damaged propeller
Click for orignal image.

The photo to the right was downloaded from Ingenuity today, and looks downward at the ground below the helicopter, showing the shadow of one of its propellers, with the damage at its tip indicated by the arrow.

It is this damage that forced NASA management to retire the helicopter yesterday. With the tip of one of Ingenuity’s two propellers damaged, the helicopter simply can no longer fly reliably, or at all.

The green dot on the map above shows Ingenuity’s final resting spot. The blue dot shows Perseverance’s present position. Perseverance will surely at some point approach Ingenuity closely to get better pictures of the damage to help engineers better figure out what happened and why. For example, did the propellor simply break during flight? And if so, why?

I freely admit that my optimistic speculations last week were wrong, that Ingenuity was merely having communications issues with Perseverance. I also suspect the Ingenuity engineers were hoping the same thing, and were far more disappointed than I to discover otherwise.

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NASA’s useless safety panel once again sticks its nose where it isn’t qualified to go

11:13 am

For the third year in a row, the annual report of NASA’s generally useless and often corrupt safety panel, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), is once again focused not on technical safety issues related specifically to engineering — the reason the panel was first formed in 1968 following the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed three asteronauts — but NASA’s general management and long term strategies and plans, something that is entirely the responsibility of Congress and elected officials.

As the press release notes right at the top, “The report highlights 2023 activities and observations on NASA’s Strategic Vision and Guiding Principles, Agency Governance, and Moon to Mars Program Management.” On none of these issues does this panel have any expertise, or even qualifications. Most of its membership are former government bureaucrats, with only one panel member coming mostly from the private sector.

More important, while the panel is supposed to be review NASA’s engineering to make sure it is not getting sloppy, its panelists are all management types, not engineers.

To give the panel some credit, its report [pdf] does actually note the many risks NASA is taking on its various Artemis manned lunar flights, including more than a dozen engineering designs which will be flown for the first time on the first Artemis manned mission to land on the Moon. However, while this should be the panel’s number one concern, it buries it inside the report, and simply recommends that NASA redistribute these firsts across multiple missions. How NASA should do this is not addressed.

Last year I simply noted ASAP’s annual report in a quick links post, adding that “It has been so wrong so many times in the past, clearly biased against private space while favoring NASA, its analysis is simply worthless.” That conclusion still applies.

The sooner Congress stops wasting any money on this panel, the better. It provides no real service except to slow down development. And it is now putting itself above Congress in its effort to influence strategic and programming.

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Lucy’s upcoming travels leading to its exploration of the Trojan asteroids

10:16 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Click for original image.

The Lucy engineering team today issued an update, outlining the spacecraft’s upcoming fly-bys in 2024 that will carry it to its next asteroid rendezvouses, first with an asteroid in the main belt, and then with four Trojan asteroids orbiting in Jupiter’s orbit but 60 degress ahead.

The map to the right shows this route. The solid red/white line indicates Lucy’s travels in 2024.

In late January, Lucy will begin the series of two deep space maneuvers. On January 31, the spacecraft will briefly operate its main engines for the first time in space. After analyzing the spacecraft’s performance during that brief burn, the team will command the spacecraft to carry out a larger maneuver, nominally on February 3. Combined, these two maneuvers are designed to change the velocity of the spacecraft by around 2,000 mph (approximately 900 meters per second) and will consume roughly half of the spacecraft’s onboard fuel.

That first brief burn will not only test the engines, it will also tell engineers whether one of Lucy’s solar panels — still not fully deployed and latched properly — will not be disturbed by it. If not, they will proceed with the second burn.

After this it will zip past the Earth, which will slingshot it out to Jupiter orbit, passing one main belt asteroid along the way.

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Northrop Grumman writes off $100 million on its fixed-price Lunar Gateway contract

10:00 am

Northrop Grumman announced on January 25, 2024 that it has written off another $42 million on its fixed-price contract with NASA to build the main habitable module for its Lunar Gateway space station, bringing the total losses so far to $100 million.

The company blamed the latest charge primarily on “cost growth stemming from evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges.” The company offered the same explanation when it reported the charge in the second quarter.

Northrop received a $935 million fixed-price contract from NASA in July 2021 to build the module, which is based on the company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft. HALO will provide initial living accommodations on the Gateway and includes several docking ports for visiting Orion spacecraft and lunar landers as well as additional modules provided by international partners. It will launch together with the Maxar-built Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) on a Falcon Heavy.

In a fixed price contract NASA is not suppose to issue change orders. What must be happening is that either the company or NASA are recognizing there are some issues with the initial and then revised designs, forcing Northrop Grumman to issue its own change orders, delaying development and adding costs.

That the company is having problems however is a bit baffling. First, space station module design is not new. There is a history going back decades on how to do this. Second, Northrop is basing this module design on its already launched Cygnus freighters. Though unmanned, these freighters still have to be habitable after docking with ISS. It should not be so difficult to upgrade them.

Regardless, the company has now become hostile to bidding on any future fixed price contracts, or if it does, it will bid much higher (a decision that caused it to lose in another recent bidding contest). Hopefully this decision on fixed price contracts, similar to Boeing’s own decision, will not cause NASA to abandon such contracts. Just because these big, old-space companies can’t work efficiently doesn’t mean others can’t. Fixed-price is how every business in the real world must function. For most NASA projects such a deal is realistic. If these old companies can’t function practically let new companies bid instead. This will be better for NASA and the entire American space industry.

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Lockheed Martin & Boeing get Space Force satellite development contracts

9:43 am

The Space Force has awarded Lockheed Martin and Boeing $66 million contracts each to design their own version of a new communications satellite for the military.

Over the next 15 months, the companies will create prototype satellites showing how they would meet the Space Force’s requirements for the MUOS satellites. DoD announced the contract awards Jan. 25.

The Space Force is expected to select one of the companies in 2025 to manufacture two flight-ready narrowband satellites to modernize the existing constellation of five MUOS satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Narrowband communications use relatively small amounts of data, but are critical for military operations.

A third unnamed company also bid but was not selected. The choice of Boeing for this competition is surprising, considering its numerous management and engineering problems across a wide range of products, from airplanes to space capsules. NASA itself has been so dissatisfied with Boeing’s work that in 2020 it decided at that time “to eliminate Boeing from future award consideration.” That decision appears to still stand. As far as I can remember Boeing not won any NASA contracts since.

Moreover, Lockheed Martin built the current MUOS satellites in orbit, while Boeing does not have a big reputation in recent years building satellites.

All told, it will therefore be extremely surprising if Boeing wins this competition. I suspect the Space Force issued this contract to help keep Boeing a viable company and to give it an opportunity to get its act together. Rewarding incompetence however is rarely successful.

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Ingenuity’s mission on Mars is over

3:55 pm

Ingenuity takes off!
Ingenuity takes off on its first flight, April 19, 2021.
For full images go here and here.

NASA today announced that Ingenuity’s mission on Mars has now ended due to damage sustained to one of its propellers during its 72nd flight.

While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight.

Ingenuity’s engineering mission was designed initially to simply prove that air-powered flight in Mars’ thin atmosphere was possible by a test program of four flights over 30 days. It worked so well that it just kept going and going. During its almost three years of operation on Mars, the helicopter completed 72 flights, for a total air time of about 128 minuntes. It flew a total of about eleven miles, reaching a maximum speed of over 22 miles per hour and a top altitude of about 79 feet. On its 69th flight it traveled a record 2,315 feet, almost a half mile.

All future Mars missions have been changed forever by the success of Ingenuity and its designers and engineers. For example, there are already hints of a helicopter mission to Mars’ giant canyon Valles Marineris. In addition, NASA redesigned its Mars Sample Return Mission to include helicopters based on what it learned from Ingenuity.

More important, Ingenuity suggests that when settlers finally colonize the red planet, it is very possible that air travel will start out more important than ground transport. In fact, long distance roads might never be built, for any number of reasons, because air travel will be available from the beginning.

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African lawfare to take control of space

12:57 pm

Modern academia: Marching with Lenin!
Modern African academia, proudly marching with Lenin!

It appears that a growing cadre of African lawyers are working within international organizations such as the UN and the International Astronautical Union (IAU) to use the Outer Space Treaty as a wedge to take control of space, wresting it from the hands of private commerical companies.

I make this assessment based upon a long article about this new lawfare published today in Wired, describing the training and political goals of a number of young African layers in the field of international space law.

[S]ome players in the global south are gearing up for the orbital future not just by scrambling to launch satellites, but by building up skills in outer space law—the evolving area of international jurisprudence that introduced the “province of all mankind” concept in the first place.

Though the Outer Space Treaty is still the cornerstone of space law, other international agreements have built up around it over the years—and more still are desperately needed to regulate today’s realities in space. “This is an area of rulemaking where they’re just setting up the rules for the future, so you need to have a perspective now,” explains Timiebi Aganaba, a British-Canadian-Nigerian professor at Arizona State University who has been instrumental in driving African interest in space law. “If the system gets built without you—if you come in later—people will start quoting laws to you.”

In 2011, Aganaba helped organize the first teams of African law students to enter something called the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. The global tournament, named after an architect of the Outer Space Treaty, uses fictional court cases to train young lawyers how to think through the plausible conflicts that could soon arise beyond the atmosphere—and it is far and away the most important professional conduit into the field of space law. Students who make it to the final round of the competition argue their cases before actual judges from the International Court of Justice—the world’s highest forum for legal disputes between countries. And since 2011, teams from Africa have become a force in the competition. In 2018, South Africa’s University of Pretoria won the international championship.

If Aganaba’s name rings a bell to my readers, it is no surprise. » Read more

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The shaky ground near the Moon’s south pole

10:54 am

Map of lunar south pole showing areas of instability
Click for original map.

According to a paper just published that reviewed and reanalyzed the seismic data gathered by the seismometers placed on the Moon by the various Apollo landings, scientists have determined that the south pole region where NASA wants its first manned Artemis lunar landing to take place happens also to be one of the Moon’s most active moonquake regions. From the paper’s conclusion:

We suggest that the lobate thrust fault scarps in the south polar region in and around the areas of the proposed Artemis III landing regions, particularly the de Gerlache Rim sites and Nobile Rim 1 regions, are potential sources for future seismic activity that could produce strong regional seismic shaking. If slip events on these young faults occur in the south polar region and elsewhere on the Moon, regolith landslides and potential boulder falls can be expected at distances of tens of kilometers from the source faults. Small amounts of water ice in the lunar regolith are expected to significantly increase the cohesion, stabilizing steep slopes against shallow landslides from seismic shaking. Based on our analysis of an N9-level event in the south polar region, we conclude that such an event poses a potential hazard to future robotic and human exploration in the region.

The map to the right is figure 10 from the paper, showing the south pole centered on Shackleton Crater. The colored dots mark areas of potential instability should a quake occur, with the blue boxes indicating all the NASA’s candidate landing sites for the manned Artemis 3 mission. Note the concentration of dots on the interior rim of Shackleton.

The planned landing site of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander, scheduled for launch in mere weeks, is beyond the top of this map, to the north.

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Starliner launch in mid-April continues on target

10:35 am

In an update today from NASA, it appears the first manned flight of Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule remains on target for a mid-April launch on a ULA Atlas-5 rocket.

Engineers continue to analyze the data from the recent parachute drop test that appeared to prove out the redesign of the capsule’s parachutes. Also, the work to replace or mitigate the flammable tape in the capsule has been completed.

Boeing completed removal of P213 tape that may have posed a flammability risk in certain environmental conditions. Boeing removed more than 17 pounds, or roughly 4,300 feet, of the material from the Starliner crew module. For areas in which removal of the tape carried an increased risk to Starliner hardware, Boeing applied tested remediation techniques such as overwrapping the P213 tape with another non-flammable, chafe-resistant tape, and installing fire breaks on wire harnesses.

No explanation as yet has been released as to how it was even possible for Boeing to have used this tape, considering it has been common practice since the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 to avoid the use of flammable materials in spacecraft. Nor has any explanation been issued on how the weak link in the main parachute connection to the capsule was not discovered until only weeks before the manned flight, last summer.

Nonetheless, both issues appear solved. After years of delays and innumerable problems, Boeing might finally be ready to fly Starliner with passengers. It desperately needs this flight to be successful, especially considering the company’s other ongoing problems with its 737 airplane. It also will not receive the rest of its contract payments from NASA until this flight is a success, and the delays and problems have cost the company more than $1.5 billion. The contract was fixed price, so Boeing has had to pay for all the additional costs from its own pocket.

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