Tag: spaceflight

NASA: Psyche asteroid mission now targeting October ’23 launch

9:51 am

A report [pdf] from NASA on the steps taken by JPL to get the Psyche asteroid mission back on track after it failed to meet its launch date last fall says those steps are working, and the spacecraft should now succeed in meeting its new October ’23 launch date.

Both the report and today’s press release are filled with vague PR blather interspersed with complementing JPL for addressing the issues, including hiring about a dozen more people to get the main software issue that had prevented last year’s launch solved. I noticed one point however that was not mentioned clearly in the press release nor had been made clear in the earlier investigation report that today’s newly released report labels as “COVID-19 Related” issues.

The return to majority in-person work has made a tremendous difference in restoring visibility and informal communications across the project. Drop-in meetings, social coffee hours, off-site intensives, and individuals “walking the floor” have improved team interaction, problem-solving, efficiency, and trust. The team is also making judicious use of remote and hybrid access options as appropriate to ensure flexibility while not compromising their collaboration.

In other words, the panic over Wuhan had so restricted in-person contact at JPL that it had hampered the project’s development. Based on the vague language used to describe almost everything else mentioned in this new report, it appears that this issue more than anything else contributed the launch delay. Not surprisingly, no one at NASA, JPL, Caltech, or in the government wishes to make this admission bluntly. It would illustrate once again the foolishness of the lockdown policies imposed during the panic by the government and academia.

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Tianzhou unmanned freighter completes month-long free flight, re-docks with Tiangong-3

9:30 am

Engineers today successfully re-docked a Tianzhou unmanned freighter to China’s Tiangong-3 space station after 33 days flying in formation with the station.

As is usual, China released no information about the reasoning behind this free flight, though some reasons are obvious. The station has two docking ports, and during that 33-day time period the station also completed a crew swap, with one Shenzhou capsule docking with three new astronauts while the previous crew and its Shenzhou capsule was still docked. The Tianzhou freighter had to undock to provide a port during this time period for the two manned capsules.

This formation free flight and docking was also likely testing the kind of routine maneuvers China plans to do when it launches its Hubble-class optical space telescope next year. That telescope will fly freely near the station during most of its operations. For maintenance and repair however it is my understanding that it will be brought back to the station and docked with it. The just completed independent flight of the Tianzhou freighter demonstrated this capability.

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Russia to launch Luna-25 on August 11, 2023

9:23 am


Click for interactive map.

According to reports in Russia’s state run press, the new launch date for its Luna-25 lander to the Moon has now been scheduled for August 11, 2023.

The launch of an automatic space probe to the Moon, the Luna-25, is scheduled for August 11 this year, the tour operator RocketTrip has said on its website. “August 11 is the launch date,” the website says in the section devoted to the tour to the Vostochny spaceport for the launch of the Luna-25.

The launch had been scheduled for July. The one month delay was announced last week, with no explanation.

The map shows landing locations of three landers that are all scheduled for launch in the next four months. All are targeting spots near the Moon’s south pole (the white cross).

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Barren land on Mars

12:38 pm

Barren land on Mars
Click for original image.

It might seem strange to call any particular place on Mars “barren” when the entire planet has no visible signs of life anywhere. However, much of the surface of Mars involves wind and ice features that show evidence of change and evolution over time. The presence of apparent near-surface ice and glacial features in almost every image located above 30 degrees latitude emphasizes this sense of potential life, even if that life will only be transported from Earth and established there someday by humans.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, has none of these features. It is dry barren bedrock, with only a faint scattering of Martian dust indicated by many faint dust devil tracks.

The picture was taken on March 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The largest and most distinct flat-topped mesa in the image is only about 100 feet high, with the north-south ridgeline to the south about 20 feet high.
» Read more

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Researchers successfully transmit electricity from space

10:22 am

In a test of a system to wirelessly transmit electricity from solar power stations in orbit, researchers from Caltech have succeeded in transmitting a small amount of electricity from an orbiting cubesat launched in January.

“Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space,” [professor Ali] Hajimiri says. “We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there.”

This small scale test mainly proved the technology can survive launch, operate in space, and transmit power back to Earth. Whether the rate of transmission can be profitable remains as yet unknown. Nor is it yet known the effects such energy transmissions through the atmosphere will have.

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Astronomers think they have completed the census of Near Earth asteroids

10:14 am

Astronomers in a new paper [pdf] have concluded that the census of Near Earth asteroids is largely now complete, and have begun focusing their effort on narrowing down the list of potentially dangerous asteroids in that census. From the press release:

Researchers from CU Boulder and NASA have completed a census of hundreds of large asteroids orbiting near Earth—gauging which ones could come precariously close to our planet over the next thousand years. The researchers identified at least 20 asteroids that scientists may want to study more to make certain they pose no threat to life on Earth in the next millennium.

To be clear, the researchers say the odds of any of these rocky bodies striking the planet are extremely low, and are next to zero for the coming century. But because the fallout from such an impact would be catastrophic, it’s important to be sure, said Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz, lead author of the study. “We don’t want to alarm people, because the results are not alarming,” said Fuentes-Muñoz, a doctoral student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “But there are a lot of uncertainties in predicting so far into the future.”

To sum up, none of those 20 asteroids has any chance of hitting the Earth in the next few hundred years. Beyond that the uncertainties make it difficult to predict. Reducing those uncertainities is now the focus of their work.

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German rocket startup successfully completes full duration engine test of upper stage

10:03 am

The German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg on June 2, 2023 successfully completed a full duration engine test of the upper stage of its rocket.

Launch service provider Rocket Factory Augsburg AG (RFA) has successfully hot fired its upper stage for a full duration of 280 seconds. This marks the successful completion of the Integrated System Test (IST) campaign, in which a staged-combustion Helix engine was integrated into an upper stage tank system and hot fired several times up to full duration in the final test. This is the 1st time in Europe that a privately developed staged combustion upper stage has been successfully hot fired.

The company will also use the Helix engine in its first stage, so this test essentially proved its capability for that use as well. With this success, the company will now start constructing the first stage, with the first launch of the entire rocket targeting the end of this year.

Two important tidbits about this story. First, the test was done at a private testing facility in Germany. In the past all such testing was done under the control of the the European Space Agency, at its sites. Germany has essentially now broken that monopoly in its push to develop its own independent rocket industry of competing private companies.

Second, the launch is presently aiming to take off from a launchpad the company has leased and is building at the new Shetland Island spaceport in the United Kingdom. I wonder if it will have the same regulatory problems as Virgin Orbit in getting its launch permit. If so, that launch won’t happen this year.

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Three astronauts return to Earth safely from China’s Tiangong-3 space station

9:49 am

After completing six months in space on China7s Tiangong-3 space station, three astronauts safely returned to Earth yesterday, with their Shenzhou capsule touching down in inner Mongolia.

This mission was the first full six month mission on the station. During their mission they completed four spacewalks. Though little was published about what was accomplished on those EVAs, it is likely it involved completing the construction of the station as well as installing some exterior experiments.

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SpaceX successfully launches cargo Dragon to ISS

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched another cargo Dragon freighter to ISS, lifting off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

This cargo capsule is on its fourth flight. The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The capsule carries about 7, 000 pounds of supplies, including another set of new solar arrays for ISS, and will dock with ISS tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
20 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 43 to 20 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 36. SpaceX by itself leads the world 38 to 36, but when you add other American companies it still trails everyone else combined 38 to 42.

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SpaceX launches 22 2nd generation Starlink satellites

6:19 pm

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 22 2nd generation Starlink satellites into orbit, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 8:20 am (Eastern).

The first stage completed its third flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their sixth and ninth times respectively.

The company had hoped to follow this launch with a second from Cape Canaveral only hours later, sending a new Dragon cargo freighter to ISS, but that launch was scrubbed due to weather concerns later in the day. It has been rescheduled for tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

37 SpaceX
20 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 42 to 20 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 42 to 36. SpaceX by itself leads the world 37 to 36, but when you add other American companies it trails everyone else combined 37 to 42.

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Avalanche to the east of Gale Crater on Mars

1:38 pm

Landslide on Mars
Click for original picture.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an avalanche that slumped downward out of the material that forms the interior western wall of an unnamed 25-mile-wide crater about 100 miles east of Gale Crater, where Curiosity has been roving for more than a decade.

The scientists call these types of Martian avalanches “mass-wasting events”, since the entire mass of the cliff moves downhill in a chunk, rather than as a pile of rocks that grows in size and strength as it picks up material on its way down.

It is not clear how old this slide is. A lot of the material on this slope appears to be Martian dust, some of which has flowed into the avalanche material after it had slide downhill.
» Read more

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Shadowcam on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter sees no obvious ice in the permanently shadowed interior of Spudis crater

10:30 am

Overview map

Using Shadowcam, a camera built by Arizona State University that is on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter and is designed to see into very dark regions of little light, scientists have obtained optical images showing the permanently shadowed interior of Spudis Crater, located only about ten miles from the Moon’s south pole.

That picture is below. To the left is an annotated overview created from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) high resolution images. The white box inside Spudis Crater indicates the area covered by the section of the Shadowcam image I have focused on. The red outlines indicate areas that are thought to be permanently shadowed. The relatively flat ridgeline between Shackleton and Spudis is one of the prime future landing sites for NASA’s Artemis program.
» Read more

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