Tag: spaceflight

SpaceX launches 56 more Starlink satellites

8:45 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on its drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their 7th and 10th flights, with the latter a new record.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

43 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 40.

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Biden administration announces India will sign Artemis Accords

1:08 pm

Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House June 21, 2023
Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House
on June 21, 2023

As part of the visit of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the U.S., the Biden administration today announced that India has agreed to sign Artemis Accords, becoming the 27th nation to join the American space alliance.

It appears India made this decision after the Biden administration agreed to foster a whole range of cooperative technology exchanges.

Cooperation in advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum information science is also being fostered through the establishment of a joint Indo-US quantum coordination mechanism and the signing of an implementation arrangement on artificial intelligence, advanced wireless, and quantum technologies.

Both countries are working together on 5G and 6G technologies, including Open Radio Access Network (RAN) systems, with plans for field trials, rollouts, and scale deployments in both markets. “Here we’ll be announcing partnerships on open ran, field trials and rollouts, including scale deployments in both countries with operators and vendors of both markets. This will involve backing from the US International Development Finance, for cooperation and to promote the deployments in India,” the official said.

The US will support the removal of telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors through the US rip and replace program and welcomes Indian participation in this initiative.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

One would hope that this decision would help separate India from China and Russia, but this is unclear.

There are other questions. » Read more

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A spectacular Martian glacier

11:24 am

Overview map

A spectacular Martian glacier
Click for original image.

Mars appears to be a planet filled with past surface flows, none of which are active today but all of which came from widely different geological processes. Yesterday’s Martian cool image showed the hardened remains of a lava flow on Mars. Today’s cool image shows us what might one of the best examples of the kind of glacial evidence orbital images have been finding throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The red dot in the inset on the overview map above indicates its location on Mars, in the chaos region dubbed Protonilus Mensae that forms the central part of the 2,000-mile-long Martian region in the north mid-latitudes I dub glacier country. In this region almost every high resolution image shows evidence of glaciers, all protected by a thin layer of dust and debris so they do not sublimate away.

This particular glacier fills a canyon carved into the southern cliff of a mile-high mesa five miles by ten miles in size, and drops dramatically almost 4,700 feet in about four miles. In fact, it so epitomizes what glaciers look like that the camera team for MRO’s high resolution camera used a 2020 image to give a quick lesson on how to spot a glacier on Mars.

This 2023 picture was likely taken as part of a long term monitoring program. Though planetary scientists presently do not think the glaciers on Mars are active and moving, this assumption is not yet confirmed. Taking repeated pictures of this same glacier over time will eventually answer this question.

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Update on SpaceX’s work leading to next Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:29 am

Link here. A static fire engine test program has begun for Starship prototype #25, which will fly on top of a Superheavy prototype. Also, work on the launchpad, badly damaged by the first test flight in April, has proceeded quickly.

During the first integrated test flight of Starship, Super Heavy Booster 7’s 30 working engines dug a sizable hole under the OLM [Orbital Launch Mount] during liftoff. The first images of it pictured a dramatic scene and pointed at some tough repair work ahead for SpaceX teams. Over the last two months, the hole was covered and reinforcements have been installed deep into the ground to strengthen the soil.

More recently, teams have been installing several tons of rebar underneath the OLM. While some rebar remains to be installed, as seen from aerial pictures captured by NSF, this work is expected to be finished soon and should be followed by a convoy of concrete trucks to fill up the pit. SpaceX will then install water-cooled steel plates over this concrete which will help support them and serve as an anchor for them.

The update also describes the numerous additional prototypes SpaceX is building at Boca Chica for further flight tests. It also notes this disturbing fact about the company’s planned Starship/Superheavy launch facility in Florida:

Work on the second set of tower sections, chopsticks, carriage system, and QD arm at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility has come to a halt. Contractor equipment has visibly disappeared and other construction equipment has been removed. The Florida Mega Bay parts have also made their way to Starbase, becoming the second Mega Bay at the Texas facility. The two big cranes that were previously at Roberts Road were also moved to Starbase to aid in the construction of that new Mega Bay.

On top of this, SpaceX has changed the use of the building previously thought to be the factory for Starship sections. This facility is now being used to process Starlink payload integration with Falcon 9’s fairings.

This slow down is probably because NASA has forbidden Starship/Superheavy launches from this launchpad because it is near the launchpad SpaceX uses for NASA’s manned missions. The agency wants SpaceX to be able to launch Dragon from its other more distant pad, and that work needs to be completed first before the Starship/Superheavy pad can be used.

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Startup orbital tug company experiences technical issues on demo flight

9:36 am

The first test rendezvous and docking of two smallsats built by the startup orbital tug company Starfish Space and space station startup Launcher/Vast are facing significant technical issues because both spacecraft are spinning in an unexpected manner.

Soon after Orbiter SN3 separated from the Falcon 9 upper stage, it experienced an anomaly that set it spinning at a rate on the order of one revolution per second, far outside the bounds of normal operating conditions.

By the time Launcher’s team made contact with Orbiter, fuel and power levels were critically low — and the team made an emergency decision to deploy Otter Pup immediately. In a joint statement issued today, Launcher and Starfish Space said that quick action “gave the Otter Pup mission a chance to continue.”

With assistance from Astro Digital and ground station partners, Starfish’s team contacted Otter Pup and determined that it was generating power — but was also spinning because of the circumstances of its emergency deployment.

The plan had been to deploy Otter Pup and have it rendezvous and then dock with Orbiter, demonstrating the maneuverability of both spacecraft as well as their docking equipment. The spinning now threatens the company’s ability to do this. Over the next few months engineers will make attempts to slow the spinning of Orbiter, but it is unlikely a docking can now be attempted.

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Intelsat and SES end negotiations to merge

9:27 am

In a very short press release, the Luxembourg-based satellite company SES today announced that it has broken off negotiations to merge with the satellite company Intelsat. The full text:

SES announces today that discussions regarding a possible combination with Intelsat have ceased. On 29 March 2023, SES had confirmed that the company engaged in discussions with Intelsat and that there could be no certainty that a transaction would materialise.

It appears the two companies could not settle differences on a number of points, and according to this article Intelsat decided to end negotiations yesterday.

There has been a trend among the established satellite companies to consolidate and merge, faced with the stiff competition from the new satellite constellations of Starlink and OneWeb. It is very possible that both of these companies will either revisit the idea of this merger, or begin negotiations with other established satellite companies.

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Ecuador becomes 26th nation to sign Artemis Accords

9:20 am

In a ceremony yesterday in Washington, Ecuador became the 26th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, a bi-lateral agreement with the United States that was designed during the Trump administration to act as a work around to the limitations to private enterprise in space created by the Outer Space Treaty.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

Adding third world nations to the alliance strengthens it, but it is really the clout of major space players like France, Luxembourg, the UK, the UAE, Italy, and Japan that gives the United States a great deal of leverage in establishing future space legal policy, assuming the alliance is used as originally intended. Considering however the Biden administration’s general hostility to the private sector and freedom, it is unclear if that will be the goal.

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ULA launches Delta-4 Heavy rocket on next-to-last flight

9:02 am

Early this morning ULA successfully place a National Reconnaissance Office classified surveillance satellite into orbit, using its Delta-4 Heavy rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

This was ULA’s its first launch in 2023. At the start of the year, the company’s manifest listed ten launches. Whether is can complete that manifest in the remaining six months is questionable, considering it has rarely managed a launch pace exceeding one launch per month in its entire history.

This launch was also the next-to-last for the Delta-4 Heavy. ULA is retiring that rocket and replacing it with the still-not-flown Vulcan rocket. The plan had been for there to be an overlap in use as one was retired and the other was initiated. That has not happened.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 48 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 48 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

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SpaceX launches another 47 Starlink satellites into orbit

12:28 am

Just after midnight tonight SpaceX successfully launched 47 more Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairing halves completed their third flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 47 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 47 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

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A lava flow on a Martian lava plain

12:04 pm

A lava flow on a Martian lava plain
Click for original image.

While much of surface of the Martian equatorial regions is comprised of volcanic flood lava, the place where it is most obvious and evident is on the flanks of the three giant volcanoes of the Tharsis Bulge. Here, lava did not simple spout from surface vents to flood low-lying large areas, filling those depressions quickly almost like water. Instead it issued from vents on the slopes of those mountains, or from their calderas at their peaks, and flowed downhill almost like tsunamis of magma.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a great example. Taken on March 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows the foot of one such flow, frozen in place as it oozed down hill from the Arsia Mons, about 300 miles away to the northwest.
» Read more

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Two new European rocket startups sign deal with France to launch from French Guiana

11:28 am

The French space agency CNES today signed agreements with two different European smallsat rocket startups, Spain’s PLD Space and Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), allowing each to launch from France’s old launchpad in French Guiana that was used in the 1970s by its long abandoned Diamant rocket.

From the RFA press release:

Until now, the launch pad in Kourou has only been used by CNES for its Diamant rocket in the 1970s. Now the launch complex is to be given a new purpose, in the tradition of opening access to space through innovative and groundbreaking ventures. As such, RFA is one of the first NewSpace companies to be given the opportunity to use it. The new launch pad will be upgraded and equipped in the coming years with the aim of being used for launches from 2025.

These agreements are part of a slew that have come out of Europe in the past year or so that all indicate that the European Space Agency (ESA) and its partners have finally abandoned any attempts to build rockets, and are instead looking to private enterprise to do it for them. First Germany encouraged private rocket startups, independent of Arianespace and ESA. Then Spain followed with PLD Space. Then Arianespace, the commercial arm of ESA that for decades built all rockets for ESA, announced it was making agreements with these startups to have them launch payloads instead.

These new deals today indicate that France has now joined the rush to private enterprise, which is a very significant development as France as always been the leader in having ESA build its own rockets through Arianespace. It appears it is now looking away from government-run space.

All these actions are also suggest a dim future for ArianeGoup’s Ariane-6 rocket, built under the old system but with an attempt to give private enterprise more power, with ArianeGroup, not Arianespace, owning and controlling it. Its design however was dictated largely by ESA, thus resulting in a rocket that is too expensive and therefore not competitive.

The long term result will be greater competition, both in Europe and worldwide, which in turn is going to fuel a renaissance in rocket development, which in turn is going to speed the exploration and colonization of the rest of the solar system.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Rocket Lab’s payload on its first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

10:00 am

Until today it was unclear whether the successful first suborbital launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket on June 17, 2023 carried a payload. Now we know it did:

The launch took place at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and demonstrated the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed, or MACH-TB, program’s first suborbital flight of a hypersonic payload.

MACH-TB is led by the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center and the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Crane Division. The team selected Leidos as the program’s prime integrator last September, and California-based space company Rocket Lab is one of 12 subcontractors supporting the effort.

It appears the Pentagon program that funded MACH-TB is a different program — from a different Pentagon office — from the one that is funding the next suborbital hypersonic test using Electron. Nor is this unusual for the military. The duplication of these Pentagon programs, with multiple bureaucracies, says a lot more about the utter waste and incompetence and corruption in DC than it does about hypersonic suborbital testing.

For Rocket Lab however this duplication is great news, as it provides the company at least two different customers for its suborbital rocket.

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