Tag: spaceflight

Near the Martian shoreline

1:20 pm

One of the prime areas of research for Mars planetary geologists is the region on Mars where the geography appears to transition from the southern cratered, rough terrain to the northern low, generally smooth, and flat plains. It is theorized by some scientists that the northern plains were once an ocean, probably shallow and probably intermittent, but wet nonetheless for considerable periods. The global map of Mars below, created by the laser altimeter on Mars Global Surveyor, clearly shows the obvious elevation differences between the low northern plans (blue) and the high, more cratered southern regions (changing from yellow to orange as you move higher).

Labeled global Map of Mars

Scientists have spent a considerable effort studying this transition zone (green on the map), illustrated by just one example I recently highlighted, showing that, though there does not appear to be a clear shoreline in many places, there is strong evidence that a shallow ocean repeatedly rose and fell in this transition zone, leaving behind geological ripple marks vaguely reminiscent of those seen on a beach caused by the rise and fall of the tides.

Today we highlight another example, taken in January 2018 at the location indicated by the cross on the above map.
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Tiangong-1 reentry window narrowed to only 3.4 hours and two orbits

5:30 pm

The sky is falling! The Tiangong-1 reentry window has now been narrowed to only 3.4 hours and two orbits, centered on 8:30 pm (Eastern) on April 1.

It appears the world might be dodging this very minor bullet. The new window, which the spacecraft has just now entered as I write this, has allowed for the first prediction on where it should come down, and it appears that this will be in the southern hemisphere in the Pacific west of South America.

Update: Tiangong-1 came down in the Pacific Ocean at 8:15 pm (Eastern) on April 1.

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SpaceX ship returns with this week’s fairing apparently intact

8:08 am

Despite tweets from Elon Musk suggesting it had hit the water at “high speed,” SpaceX’s recovery ship appears to have returned with one half of the fairing intact.

There are several images at the link showing the fairing on the ship. That it recovered it out of the water without damage seems surprising and unlikely. Nonetheless, that it looks intact means that the parafoil managed to slow it down enough to limit damage as it hit the water, and the company seems to be making real progress towards making these fairings reusable.

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Another successful launch for China today

8:57 am

China successfully completed its tenth launch for 2018 today, placing three Landsat-type Earth observation satellites into orbit with its Long March 4C rocket.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:

10 China
6 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA

There have now been 29 launches in the year’s first three months, suggesting a pace that will give us about 120 launches total for the year, the most launches since the 1980s. Then, the Soviet Union was putting up a lot of rockets it could not afford and were not really practical. Now, we have some real competition and profits being made putting up satellites that fill a need. The numbers should only get higher in the coming years.

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A detailed look at Orbital ATK’s Next Generation Launcher (NGL)

8:44 am

Link here. Based on the solid rocket technology developed for the shuttle and then for Ares, they hope to make the first launch in 2021, and actually do two flights that year to get certified by the Air Force so that they can bid on military launch contracts.

Development money for this rocket has come mostly from the Air Force, not from private funds raised by Orbital ATK. It also seems to me that it has taken far longer to get it built than it should if they really wanted to get a rocket up and running to compete for business. Moreover, they expect the Air Force to certify them after only two launches, while it took SpaceX a lawsuit and far more launches to get the same certification.

Thus, all told there is a bit of crony capitalism involved here. NGL might turn out to be a good deal, in the long run, but forgive me if I reserve my opinion.

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NOAA bureaucracy shuts down SpaceX telecast because stupid

3:05 pm

Government marches on! The NOAA bureaucracy forced SpaceX to shut down its launch telecast this morning because agency bureaucrats had decided that views of Earth in the background were the equivalent of a satellite remote sensing system that the agency is required to regulate.

It was definitely an issue with NOAA, the rocket company said. Apparently NOAA recently asserted that cameras on the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX uses for engineering purposes, qualify as a remote sensing system, which are subject to NOAA’s regulation. A provisional license obtained by SpaceX for Friday’s launch of the Iridium-5 mission required it to end views once the second stage reached orbit.

This raises some questions about the real purpose behind NOAA’s action, as the regulation specifically exempts “small, hand-held cameras.” SpaceX intends to obtain a full license for such camera views, and as of now there is apparently no restriction in place for SpaceX’s next launch of a NASA cargo ship from Florida, happening as early as Monday.

One theory put forth is that some bureaucrats at NOAA might not have liked the good press that SpaceX got when it broadcast views of the Tesla in space, launched by the Falcon Heavy, and wanted to exert their petty power. This might not be true. What is true is that this interference by NOAA in SpaceX operations is beyond stupid.

But then, why should be expect anything different from our present federal government?

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ESA successfully completes first parachute test for 2020 ExoMars mission

9:33 am

Early in March the European Space Agency successfully completed the first of a series of parachute tests for its 2020 ExoMars rover mission.

The focus of the latest test, conducted in sub-zero conditions in Kiruna, Sweden earlier this month, was the 35 m-diameter second main parachute. The test demonstrated the deployment and inflation of the parachute with its 112 lines connected to a drop test vehicle, via the deployment of a smaller 4.8 m-wide pilot chute.

This test only tested the parachutes deployment system. They still need to do this test at high altitudes to duplicate Mars’ conditions using high-altitude balloons.

When ExoMars reaches Mars, the parachute will act to slow the spacecraft down during descent. For the actual landing, they will be using systems designed and built by the Russians.

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FCC approves SpaceX 4K+ satellite constellation with strict new requirements

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: The FCC today approved SpaceX proposed gigantic 4,425 Starlink satellite constellation, designed to provide internet access worldwide, while also imposing a deadline for its launch and requiring the company to provide detailed de-orbit plans.

SpaceX will have to launch at least half of its constellation of Ku- and Ka-band satellites within six years of today, per the agency’s recently revised rules, or its authorization freezes at the number of satellites in operation at that date. The FCC in September relaxed its deadline, giving operators nine years to launch their full constellation, but even those rules are stricter than what SpaceX would refer. The launch-provider-turned-satellite operator asked the FCC for an okay to launch 1,600 satellites in six years — just over a third of its full constellation.

SpaceX said the FCC’s deadline was “impractical” and that it could start broadband service without the full constellation. The FCC said no, but gave SpaceX permission to re-submit a waiver request in the future. SpaceX said in October it plans to start service with 800 to 900 satellites.

SpaceX’s constellation is the largest of all the applicants, generating concern about its potential to enshroud the Earth in a cloud of space debris. Fleet operators OneWeb, Spire, SES and Space Norway all expressed concern about how SpaceX will protect the space environment when operating so many satellites. But weighing more heavily with the FCC was NASA, which said a constellation as large as SpaceX’s likely needs to meet more stringent standards than what NASA recommends for de-orbit reliability. NASA’s reliability standard is that at least 90 percent of satellites can deorbit properly after their mission is complete.

The FCC did say that SpaceX will have the right in the future to request a waiver on the launch deadline.

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Blue Origin changes engines for New Glenn second stage

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: In order to maintain its goal of launch its orbital New Glenn rocket by 2020, Blue Origin has changed the engine it will use in the rocket’s second stage from a version of its main BE-4 engine to new version of their already developed BE-3 engine, used in their reusable New Shepard suborbital spacecraft.

A Blue Origin executive told SpaceNews the company is shelving development of a vacuum-optimized version of BE-4 and will instead use vacuum-optimized versions of flight-proven BE-3 engines for New Glenn’s second stage and optional third stage. “We’ve already flown BE-3s, and we were already in the development program for BE-3U as the third stage for New Glenn,” said Clay Mowry, Blue Origin’s vice president of sales, marketing and customer experience. “It made a lot of sense for us to switch to an architecture where we get there faster for first flight.”

The BE-3U is the upper stage variant of the liquid hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine that has powered Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard spacecraft on seven suborbital test flights since its 2015 debut. Mowry said switching to the BE-3U for New Glenn’s second stage will allow Blue Origin to conduct the rocket’s first launch in the fourth quarter of 2020. He declined to say how much time the engine change saves compared to the original configuration.

This quiet change, which the company made with no fanfare, carries with it some significant information as well as important ramifications. First, the BE-3 engine is less powerful than the planned BE-4, which is why they will use two BE-3 engines in the second stage instead of one BE-4, while also extending the length of the stage to accommodate more fuel. Though they claim the change will increase the rocket’s range, I suspect however that even with these changes New Glenn’s overall orbital payload capacity will be reduced.

Second, the change indicates that development of the BE-4 engine is proceeding slower than expected, threatening their 2020 launch goal. They have had one test failure that set them back, and the change suggests to me that they are having issues with making the engine restartable.

Third, if they have problems making the BE-4 engines restartable, this means their plans to reuse the first stage of New Glenn will be impacted. While those first stage engines do not need to restart on any single flight, reusing them requires this capability.

Fourth, problems with the BE-4 might cause ULA to reject it and choose Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR-1 engine for its new Vulcan rocket. Up to now ULA has indicated it prefers the BE-4. These issues might change that.

Fifth, this change, combined with the continuing lack of New Shepard test flights, suggests that the company is increasingly considering abandoning this suborbital spacecraft.

I am doing a lot of speculating here, and could be very wrong on many if not all of these suppositions. We shall have to wait and see.

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World View launches first balloon flight since explosion, raises $26.5 million

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: World View today launched its first Stratollite balloon flight since one exploded on December 19 as it was being prepared for launch.

The flight was commissioned by the NASA Flight Opportunities program office for two principal customers, the NASA Ames Research Center and Space Environment Technologies, both of which are studying radiation detection and its energy levels at different altitudes. The balloon vehicle is expected to gather data and stay aloft for less than 24 hours, depending on winds and landing conditions, a World View spokesman said.

More important, the company announced that it had raised $26.5 million in investment capital. All told, it is estimated that the company has raised $48.5 million in three rounds of fund-raising.

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SpaceX successfully launches ten Iridium satellites into orbit

8:30 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully placed ten Iridium satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket.

They did maneuver and landing tests with the first stage, which was making its second flight, but did not try to recover it. They did attempt to catch one half of the rocket’s fairing with their fast-moving ship and its giant net. No word yet on whether that attempt worked. Fairing recovery failed. See comments below.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:

9 China
6 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA
2 Europe
2 India

The U.S. and China remain tied at nine for the lead in the national rankings.

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China successfully launches two GPS satellites

9:16 pm

China’s Long March 3B rocket today successfully launched two GPS satellites.

The launch occurred much earlier today, but China kept quiet about it until much later, when they knew the satellites had finally reached their correct orbits.

This was the third successfully launch today. The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:

9 China
5 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA
2 Europe
2 India

These standings will change even more in the next few days. China has another launch scheduled for the weekend, and SpaceX has one tomorrow and another on Monday.

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Russia launches test smallsat on Soyuz rocket

2:30 pm

Russia today successfully launched a test smallsat on a Soyuz rocket.

No information has been released about the test payload, but the link above speculates it is a new lightweight remote sensing design.

This is the second of three launches scheduled for today. China is next, and soon.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings, for the moment:

8 China
5 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA
2 Europe
2 India

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Further launch delays for Russia’s next ISS module & space telescope

9:18 am

The race to be last! Russia today announced that the launch of both its next ISS module as well as a new space telescope will be delayed until 2019.

The ISS module, Nauka, is years behind schedule, and is presently being cleaned of contamination in its fuel system that was found several years ago.

“Repairs of the MLM Nauka are taking longer than expected, and the deadlines are yet unclear. This means it will not be brought to Baikonur any time soon, and the launch will be postponed until 2019,” the source said.

It was reported earlier that the mission would be delayed for six months. “The delivery of the MLM Nauka to the Baikonur cosmodrome has been moved from September to late 2018. Hence, the module’s launch to the ISS has been provisionally delayed for another six months,” the source said. The launch was scheduled for September 2018 with the possible alternative date in March 2019.

The article also notes delays for Spekr-RG high-energy space telescope until 2019. The article might also describe delays for another satellite, though the writing is unclear.

Nauka was first built in the 1990s as a backup for ISS’s first module. In the early 2000s Russia decided to reconfigure it and fly it to ISS, with its launch scheduled for 2007. This means its launch is now going to be twelve years behind schedule.

It sure does appear that Russia’s Roscosmos is competing with NASA to see which government agency can delay its missions the longest. In fact, for fun, let’s put together the standings!

  • Nauka: 12 years behind schedule (originally scheduled for 2007, now 2019)
  • James Webb Space Telescope: 9 years behind schedule (originally scheduled for 2011, now 2020)
  • SLS/Orion: 8 years behind schedule (originally scheduled for 2015, now 2023)

Stay tuned. This race to the bottom is far from over. NASA could still win, especially because it has more than one project in the running.

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India’s GSLV rocket successfully launches military communications satellite

8:56 am

India today successfully launched a military communications satellite using the Mark II version of its large GSLV rocket, the rocket’s fourth successful launch in a row.

Using a combination of liquid and solid-fuelled stages, the GSLV was designed to place communications satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbits. To this end, GSLV has increased performance over the smaller Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), from which it is derived.

GSLV’s first stage consists of a solid-fuelled core, with four radially-mounted liquid-fuelled strap-ons. The strap-ons are part of the first stage, and do not separate from the core. GSLV’s second stage, which is closely related to PSLV’s second stage, burns hypergolic liquid propellants, while the rocket’s third stage uses cryogenic fuel.

…The Mark II, which has a stretched third stage with an Indian engine, first flew in April 2010 but its new engine failed to ignite. The first successful Mk.II launch took place in January 2014. India also has a GSLV Mk.III. However, this is a completely new rocket that reached orbit for the first time last year. Excluding the Mk.III, Thursday’s launch was GSLV’s twelfth flight. In its previous eleven launches, GSLV has recorded six successes, four failures and one partial failure….GSLV’s current run of four consecutive successful launches is the longest that the rocket has achieved.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:

8 China
5 SpaceX
3 Japan
3 ULA
3 Russia
2 Europe
2 India

Both Russia and China have scheduled launches for today, with SpaceX having a launch scheduled for tomorrow, so expect these standings to be updated a lot in the next 24 hours.

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Tiangong-1 re-entry window narrowed further

8:42 am

New calculations have narrowed the reentry window for Tiangong-1 to sixteen thirty-six hours, centered at 6:30 am (Eastern) on April 1.

This means reentry could come anytime during the 11 or so orbits from 10:30 pm (Eastern) on Saturday March 31 to 4:30 pm (Eastern) on Sunday April 1.

This post was incorrect, as the estimate was really 32 hours centered on 6:30 am (Eastern on April 1st, not 16. See my more recent post with an update.

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The James Webb Telescope: a signpost for identifying fake news sources

11:35 am

The news yesterday that NASA will once again have to delay the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope due to a variety of technical issues and management errors not only exemplified the fundamental failure of the federal government, it also illustrated the routine failures of today’s mainstream press.

First, Webb’s new delay epitomizes the systemic incompetence of Washington. Despite being 13 years behind schedule and costing eight times more than originally planned, NASA and its contractors still couldn’t get things right.

Most of the problems have occurred with the spacecraft half of the project, which was built by Northrop Grumman in California and is undergoing testing there. During the teleconference, NASA officials, including acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot, expanded upon technical problems first reported publicly by the agency’s inspector general last month.

These include leaky valves within the spacecraft’s propulsion system and difficulties encountered during deployment tests of the sun shield. Not only did the thin, five-layer sun shield snag during the deployment, but technicians also found seven tears up to 10cm long within the material. NASA and Northrop Grumman have identified fixes for these problems, but their repair has added months of delays to the project, and engineers cannot be sure that more issues will not crop up during further testing.

Such failures, in NASA and in all big federal projects in recent years, are hardly news. Only the willfully blind or those who support wasting tax dollars to distribute pork will deny they exist.

The failures of the federal government however is not the focus of this essay. Instead, the announcement yesterday and the coverage of it by the press provides us a perfect and very obvious signpost for differentiating between the fake news sources that are generally unreliable or too often allow their biases to influence their reporting, and those sources that do a good job.

That signpost is one simple fact: Webb is not a replacement or successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, despite NASA making this false claim for decades. Hubble is an optical telescope. Webb will view the universe in the infrared. These are too entirely different things.

Yet, too many news sources today repeated NASA’s false claim, illustrating how little they know about both telescopes and their design, while revealing their complete inability to do some basic journalistic research. Instead they merely rewrite old press releases, and thus prove clearly by their bad reporting why so many people have so little respect for the modern press.

The worst examples made this false claim right in the headline:
» Read more

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Tiangong-1 reentry window narrowed to 24 hours centered on April 1st

9:15 am

Tiangong-1 landing possibilities

The reentry window for Tiangong-1 has now been narrowed to 24 hours, centered on April 1st. It is still too soon, however, to determine where it will land. The map on the right shows the likeliest regions in yellow, the next likeliest in green, and areas with no chance of impact in blue.

The focus so far has been on where the surviving pieces of Tiangong-1 might land. The summary at the link notes that it also will provide an interesting fireworks display.

It may be possible to see Tiangong-1 reentering depending on your location, the time of day, and visibility during reentry which will not be known until a few days prior to the event…. Visibly incandescent objects from this reentry will likely last tens of seconds (up to a minute or more) in contrast with the vast majority of natural meteors which last mere seconds.

…Depending on the time of day and cloud visibility, the reentry may appear as multiple bright streaks moving across the sky in the same direction. Due to the relatively large size of the object, it is expected that there will be many pieces reentering together, some of which may survive reentry and land on the Earth’s surface.

The spacecraft does carry toxic hydrazine fuel, so if by some miracle a piece falls near you don’t touch it.

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First commercial crew flights still set for 2018 with chance of delay

9:03 am

NASA’s manager of the commercial crew program provided an update to the agency’s advisory board on Monday, noting that both SpaceX and Boeing are making good progress to their scheduled first flights late this year.

The bottom line however is that there is a good chance the flights will slip into 2019, though based on the update it appears to me that the flights will not slip that much beyond that.

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Webb telescope delayed again to 2020

10:34 am

NASA has announced that it is once again delaying the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, from 2019 to 2020.

The observatory was supposed to fly this year. But last fall, NASA bumped the launch to 2019. NASA announced the latest delay on Tuesday. “We have one shot to get this right before going into space,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator of science. He said some mistakes were made while preparing the telescope, and NASA underestimated the scale of the job. [emphasis mine]

None of this is a surprise. Webb is more pork than science. It was originally budgeted at $1 billion, with a planned launch in 2011. It will now cost more than $9 billion, and be delayed almost a decade. Since the project began in the early 2000s, by the time it launches it will have been in development for almost two decades, which is almost a lifetime career for some people.

And note, the article includes the lie that Webb is “a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.” It is not. Hubble is an optical telescope. Webb will only look in the infrared. These are very different things.

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Tiangong-1 re-entry narrowed to four days centered on April 1

11:27 am

Tiangong-1's likely landing locations

China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, is now predicted to crash to Earth in a window that has been narrowed to four days centered on April 1. The map to the right shows the station’s most likely landing areas, with yellow the most likely, green less likely, and blue not at all. Essentially, there is about a 50-50 chance the station will come down in the north mid-latitudes, with about a 70 percent chance it will land in water if it does so.

Thus, the odds of the station hitting a populated area is not large, but it definitely exists. We will not know the exact area of impact until very close to the moment the station finally comes down.

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SpaceX using up old used boosters as it shifts to final Falcon 9 design

8:27 am

Capitalism in space: As SpaceX prepares to introduce its final Falcon 9 design, dubbed Block 5, it also plans to use up its stock of old used boosters, with four of the six launches scheduled through the end of April using previously flown boosters.

The article’s review of SpaceX’s stock suggests that the company will only have two used boosters after these launches. It also notes that the company appears to have decided that these earlier Falcon 9 designs can only fly two or three times safely, and that it will be the Block 5 final design that they hope will finally be the booster that can fly repeatedly and reliably.

Since NASA won’t let astronauts fly on anything other than Block 5, and insists it fly at least seven times successfully before the agency will allow its astronauts on it, SpaceX has a lot at stake with this final design. If it has problems, the company will be in trouble. If not, the company will cement the dominate position it presently holds in the launch industry.

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Failure history of the Russian launch industry

8:09 am

Doug Messier has compiled a detailed and what appears to be a complete list of all Russian/Soviet launch failures going back to 1988. As he says, “Launch failures are not a bug in the system, they’re a feature.”

What struck me most about his graph is the number of Soyuz rocket failures. For decades, various versions of this rocket have been used to bring astronauts up to either Mir or ISS, and because there have not been any launch failures during those manned launches, the impression given is that the Soyuz is one of the most reliable rockets in existence. Messier’s table proves that impression false, and also tells us that the Russians, and the United States, have been very lucky that no lives have been lost in the past three decades on any Soyuz launches.

The table also illustrates why commercial customers have been so quick to shift their business from the Russians to SpaceX. The Russians have not provided a very good or reliable product. Since 1988 there have only been two years, 2001 and 2003, in which the Russians had no failures. And the table indicates that their failure rate has increased in the past decade.

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India delays Chandrayaan-2 six months

5:46 pm

Because engineers wished more time, India has delayed the launch of its second unmanned Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, from April to October.

Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, in-charge of the Department of Space, Jitendra Singh had on 16 February last said the lunar mission under which the Isro will for the first time attempt to land a rover on the moon’s south pole, will be launched in April.

Sivan (head of ISRO) had earlier said the window to launch the Rs800 crore mission was between April and November 2018. While the “targeted date” was April, Isro would launch the mission in October or November, he had said.

This is a very ambitious mission, so pushing the launch back to October seems quite reasonable. That they are aiming for the south pole is also smart, especially since NASA has abandoned that location as a target to instead build a giant Potemkin village orbiting the Moon, where it can accomplish nothing.

Posted between Flagstaff and Phoenix as we head back from a very successful four-day caving expedition in the Grand Canyon.

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Mars rover update: March 21, 2018

2:10 pm

Summary: Curiosity continues its exploration of Vera Rubin Ridge, including several drilling attempts. Opportunity is halfway down Perseverance Valley.

For a complete list of all past updates going back to July 2016, see my February 8, 2018 update.

Curiosity

Curiosity's traverse map, Sol 1993

For the overall context of Curiosity’s travels, see Pinpointing Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater.

Since my February 8, 2018 update, the Curiosity science team has apparently been loath to leave Vera Rubin Ridge. They had begun the trek to the northeast that would take them towards the exit ridge heading to the southeast, as indicated by the dotted red line on the traverse map above, but then continued past that planned route to continue to the northeast. Along the way they attempted to drill twice using an improvised approach that they hoped would bypass the drill’s stuck feed mechanism, without apparent success.

The panorama below is looking to the west and south, as indicated by the yellow lines in the image above.
» Read more

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SpaceX’s August launch created largest shockwave from rocket ever measured

9:23 am

The August launch by SpaceX of a communications satellite created the largest rocket shockwave in the atmosphere ever measured.

In the new study, Lin and his colleagues used GPS signals to determine how the FORMOSAT-5 launch affected the upper atmosphere. They found Falcon 9’s vertical trajectory created a circular shock wave above the western United States that had never before been seen from a rocket launch. The only similarly-shaped shock wave Lin had seen was from an eruption of Russia’s Sarychev volcano in June 2009.

Not only was the shock wave circular, it was also the largest one Lin had ever seen – roughly four times the area of California. In the new study, he ran computer simulations of rocket launches and found the momentum from a vertical trajectory would tend to create a much stronger atmospheric disturbance than a curved one, which could explain why the shock wave was so large.

In addition to creating a gigantic shock wave, the launch created a hole in the ionosphere above California. Water vapor in the rocket’s exhaust reacted with the ionosphere’s charged particles to create a hole in the plasma layer that took up to two hours to recover.

The rocket’s vertical trajectory was because the overall payload was light. Heavier payload cause the trajectory to curve more as the rocket rises.

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