Tag: spaceflight

SpaceX recovers fairing of upper stage of Falcon 9

8:34 am

The competition heats up: Even as SpaceX made history yesterday in its successful use and recovery of a used first stage, it also recovered for the first time the fairing that protected the satellite.

For the first time, SpaceX also recovered the payload fairing, the conical shaped structure on top of the rocket that surrounds and protects the spacecraft during launch. The fairing separates from the spacecraft in two sections during the launch sequence — in this case, 3 minutes and 49 seconds after launch — and usually falls into the ocean and breaks into pieces. SpaceX outfitted these two fairing sections with parachutes so they could be recovered, which apparently will become standard practice.

Musk also indicated that they are now going to begin an effort to recover the second stage. “What’s the worst that could happen? It blows up? It would anyway.”

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Rush – Countdown

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The video focuses on a shuttle launch, but I think the words apply to all launches, and especially to those that break new ground.

Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife
Technology…high, on the leading edge of life

Hat tip Commodude.

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SLS faces more delays

5:34 pm

Delays by ESA in the construction of the service module for Orion, plus the tornado damage at the Michoud facility in Louisiana, could force NASA to delay the first unmanned test launch of the SLS rocket, presently planned for late in 2018.

NASA is also considering delaying the flight further should the agency decide to make this first unmanned test flight a manned one. They also say they will need more money if they have to put people on the first flight. I guess $43 billion and almost 15 years wasn’t enough.

By the way, it took less than four years to win World War II. From Kennedy’s speech to the Apollo 11 landing was only eight years. One wonders when we, as a nation, will finally wake up and realize that SLS is not a rocket to the Moon, but an never-ending jobs program unable to accomplish anything in space.

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Practically every Russian Proton rocket engine defective

4:36 pm

The investigation of the Russian supply of rocket engines for its Proton rocket has discovered that practically every engine, numbering over seventy, had defects that needed repair.

71 engines, mostly used to power the second and third stages of the Proton rocket, require complete overhauls to remove defects. Arbuzov did not specify what was wrong with the engines. In January, Interfax reported on an investigation into high-quality metals swapped by a plant manager for cheaper alternatives. “Most of the work will be done in 2017, but we understand that some portion will inevitably slip into 2018,” Arbuzov said. “Our main goal is to avoid disrupting the government space program’s launch schedule, or the schedules of the Defense Ministry and commercial customers.”

There is also the possibility that these defects will be found in Soyuz rocket engines as well. Stay tuned.

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A tour of Vector Space Systems

4:31 pm

Jim Cantrell and cars

[UPDATE: I have been informed by Vector’s PR department that they have recently changed the company’s name, dropping “Space Systems” from the title. I can’t really change the title here, but I thought I note this fact for my readers.]

Today I got a quick tour of Vector Space System’s very blue collar but active rocket factory in Tucson, Arizona. My tour guide was Jim Cantrell, the CEO of the company.

Cantrell, shown on the right in front of one of his side businesses fixing and refurbishing race cars and rare luxury sports cars (also located in this factory), started out with a love of race cars, which he still builds and races. As he said to me, “Long endurance car racing is still my thing.”

However, he has also spent his life in the space business. He has worked for government agencies and numerous private businesses, including SpaceX at its very beginning. Vector Space Systems is an effort put together by him and several other people to capture the smallsat market, a market he truly believes is going to explode with activity in the coming years. If things go as he wishes, they hope to launch at least one hundred times a year, from multiple launch sites. Their goal is simplicity and quick turnaround at an inexpensive cost.

The company is presently in the testing phase leading up to their first orbital launches, which they hope to start in 2018. Right now they are building a series of full scale versions of their Vector-R rocket with a dummy second stage. The idea is to do a string of suborbital test flights, the first of which will fly in about a week from Mohave in California, with the second flying from the Georgia spaceport in Camden County. The image below is the first stage of that first test rocket.

Vector test first stage

Vector first stage engine

second test rocket

For this flight their main goal is to test the engine, which Cantrell is showing me in the picture to the right. I was astonished at how small and simple the engine was. In fact, the rocket itself was amazingly small. It looked like it could almost fit inside a typical moving truck.

Below and to the right is the first stage for their second test flight, presently being assembled. They hope it will be ready for flight in only a few weeks after the first flight. They plan five suborbital test flights, with the last capable of getting about 90% to orbit. Along the way they will test their avionics, the rocket’s balancing systems, and its computer and tanks. Once these tests are complete they will then move to testing the orbital version in 2018.

Obviously, all this depends on every test flight being successful. But then, even if something goes wrong they will learn something and move on. For example, they recently transported an engineering version of the rocket to the visitor center at Kennedy. As Cantrell explained, “We learned things new just making that move.”

bumper sticker

In the end, I think the bumper sticker to the right, attached to the window of Vector Space System’s office, sums everything up. The people at Vector want to make money in space, but they — like everyone in the space business — also love making rockets and engines and going fast. What better combination from life could you ask for?

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Atlas 5/Cygnus launch delayed until mid-April

3:17 pm

ULA has delayed its next Atlas 5 launch to send a Cygnus cargo capsule to ISS until mid-April.

Gatens said NASA was now expecting the Cygnus to launch to the station no earlier than the middle of April. “The Orbital launch, the next launch, has slipped due to an investigation of a hydraulic leak in the booster engine compartment that’s in work,” she said. “There are some components being replaced. The investigation is going on and we’re currently targeting no earlier than, probably, a mid-April launch.”

ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye said March 28 that a new launch date has not been set yet for the mission. “Additional information will be provided once testing to resolve the booster hydraulic issue is complete,” she said.

The launch was initially planned for mid-March. This delay has forced NASA to delay a spacewalk because it involves installing equipment that the Cygnus capsule is bringing to ISS.

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Washington Bubble fights back against Capitalism in Space

12:06 pm

The response to my policy paper, Capitalism in Space, has been not surprisingly mixed. Eric Berger at Ars Technica wrote a reasonable analysis that focused on the absurdly high overhead costs of SLS/Orion. There have also been a number of critical reviews, one in Forbes and a second today in the print edition of Space News.

Both have tried to discredit the facts I have put forth about the ungodly cost of SLS/Orion, when compared to commercial space, without actually citing any incorrect facts in my paper. The truth is that everything I have written is true. This graph from my paper remains fundamental:

Table 5 from Capitalism in Space

SLS/Orion is costing four times as much, is taking more than twice as long to build, and is producing one tenth the operational flights. It is essentially a pork-laden jobs program that has no ability to get the United States anywhere in space. It might be an engineering marvel, but the cost is so high and its operational abilities so slow (one flight per year, at best) that it will never be a reliable and effective tool for exploring the solar system.

Meanwhile, private enterprise is getting innovative new rockets off the ground, for far less money, and repeatedly. If we want to settle the solar system, they are providing us the only viable way to do it.

People must recognize that these attacks are essentially the bubble of Washington working to protect its financial and intellectual interests. A lot of people in DC depend on keeping the faucet of government spending flowing to SLS/Orion, even if those projects accomplish nothing. In the case of the attacks from academics, they don’t like the fact that I am an outsider and not beholden to them. Moreover, they are instinctively appalled by the idea of allowing capitalism and freedom to operate freely, without their guiding hands controlling things. Such thoughts must be attacked and squelched (if possible), in order to protect their interests.

That they don’t seem to care that much about the interests of the American people and the country is quite revealing however. As some have said repeatedly, this is how you got Trump.

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Vector signs deal with Georgia spaceport

8:46 am

Vector Space Systems has signed a deal with a Georgia spaceport to conduct one suborbital test flight there of its Vector-R rocket.

The agreement covers only one flight, but considering that Vector is also planning to launch from Kennedy, I think they are doing this to test their rocket’s ability to easily launch from multiple launch sites. It is a small mobile rocket, and they are probably designing its launch systems to be very mobile as well.

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A look at Blue Origin’s upcoming plans

8:38 am

Two stories today give us a peek at Blue Origin’s future plans.

The first outlines how the company plans to launch its orbital rocket, New Glenn, from Florida. The second provides a photo tour of the company’s suborbital New Shepard capsule, as designed for tourist flights.

I must mention that I have been disappointed at the lack of test flights for New Shepard in recent months. Their last flight was in October, almost six months ago, when their test of the capsule’s launch abort system was supposedly a success. No tests since, even though they have said they planned the first manned test flights this year. I am beginning to wonder if they have decided to shift resources to the orbital system and thus slow the suborbital program down.

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ESA narrows landing site choice for ExoMars 2020 to two

10:02 pm

The European Space Agency has narrowed its choice of landing sites for its ExoMars 2020 rover mission.

Two ancient sites on Mars that hosted an abundance of water in the planet’s early history have been recommended as the final candidates for the landing site of the 2020 ExoMars rover and surface science platform: Oxia Planum and Mawrth Vallis.

A primary technical constraint is that the landing site be at a suitably low level, so that there is sufficient atmosphere to help slow the landing module’s parachute descent. Then, the 120 x 19 km landing ellipse should not contain features that could endanger the landing, the deployment of the surface platform ramps for the rover to exit, and driving of the rover. This means scrutinising the region for steep slopes, loose material and large rocks.

Oxia Planum was selected in 2015 for further detailed evaluation. Although not yet complete, the investigation so far indicates that the region would meet the various constraints.

They will spend the next year evaluating both sites, though based on the press release it sounds as if Oxia Planum is the favorite.

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Reused first stage static fire dress rehearsal today

9:03 am

Update: The countdown and static fire test has been completed, apparently successfully. The launch however is now set for Thursday.

SpaceX today plans to do the first static fire dress rehearsal countdown of a Falcon 9 rocket using an already used first stage.

The static fire process for SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket is one of the last critical components in the pre-launch flow ahead of liftoff. For SES-10, the Falcon 9 and mated second stage will be moved to the launch pad on top of the TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher) and will be taken to vertical at historic launch complex 39A. Once the Falcon 9 is vertical, technicians and engineers will complete all of the connections between the TEL/launch mount and LC-39A and proceed into countdown operations on Monday morning.

For this particular static fire, SpaceX has up to an eight-hour window.

If all goes well, they plan to do the actual launch on Wednesday.

The article by the way also provides a nice detailed history of the first stage.

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X-37B sets new orbital record

8:57 pm

The X-37B presently in orbit this weekend set a record for the longest in-orbit flight for the Air Force’s fleet of two ships.

As of today (March 25), the X-37B has spent 675 days on its latest Earth-circling mission, which is known as Orbital Test Vehicle-4 (OTV-4). The previous record was 674 days, set during OTV-3, which lasted from December 2012 to October 2014. It’s unclear what the new duration record will end up being; most X-37B activities and payloads are classified, and the Air Force has historically been tight-lipped about landing plans.

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Next Proton launch tentatively set for May

9:05 am

The Russians have tentatively scheduled their next Proton launch for May, contingent on the repair work being done on the rocket’s engines.

The engine repairs are required because of corruption in the factory that made them. Previously, the Russians had hoped to get Proton off the ground by April. That is no longer likely.

The link above includes a manifest of Russian launches through next year. Interestingly, it only includes three commercial launches. A quick review of the launches listed at this site only includes another three or so commercial launches much farther in the future. All in all, it appears that the Russians are getting less business for this rocket. I also suspect this will remain the case until they get things fixed and begin launching again, though they will need to cut their prices significantly to match SpaceX’s.

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More problems for Russian ISS module

10:37 pm

A Russian module intended for ISS, delayed for years because of technical problems, appears to have more issues that could delay it further, and might even prevent its launch entirely.

As its original 2007 launch date came and went, more and more delays pushed back the MLM’s launch. Then, in 2013, engineers discovered a leaking fueling valve as well as contamination in the propulsion system. At the time, reports said repairs and cleanup would take nearly 10 months.

Those months stretched into years. During the last four years, engineers have been working diligently replacing a jungle of pipelines, valves, and thrusters—part of Nauka’s sophisticated propulsion system—in an effort to get rid of the sawdust contamination introduced during botched upgrades. Because the spacecraft has stayed earthbound much longer than intended, parts of Nauka have also slipped out of warranty.

Fighting off political and logistical concerns surrounding the project—as well suggestions that they ground the MLM entirely until it can serve as the first module of Russia’s own space station—the tedious cleanup and repair effort entered its final phase this year, and the module finally appeared on track for launch at the end of this year or, at the very latest, the first half of 2018.

Then things went from bad to worse. In the past few weeks, engineers found the same contamination they’ve been fighting for years inside the module’s propellant tanks. The repair team tried to wash off these contaminants, but so far all efforts to cleanse the vessels have failed.

Read the whole article. The situation is not good.

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SSL sues Orbital ATK over proprietary in-space servicing technology

10:33 pm

Space Systems/Loral has filed a lawsuit against Orbital ATK over that company’s improper access to proprietary information concerning its in-space servicing plans.

At least four confidential SSL documents were viewed and distributed by an Orbital ATK employee working at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where the data is stored as part of an ongoing SSL partnership with the U.S. space agency, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Orbital declined to comment.

SSL, a subsidiary of Canada-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., said it was informed of the data breach by NASA in December 2016. Orbital acknowledged the unauthorized access of SSL’s data and fired the employee, but did not respond to questions about the scope of the breach or about five other Orbital employees whom NASA said may have read the SSL documents, the lawsuit said.

The two companies are in direct competition for doing in-space robotic servicing of satellites. Last month Orbital ATK sued DARPA for its contract with SSL for this work, claiming the contract violated U.S. policy that forbids DARPA from competing directly against commercial companies. It appears that this new lawsuit is a bit of tit-for-tat.

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Labor strikes force Arianespace to suspend all French Guiana launches

3:48 pm

Arianespace today announced that it is suspending all launches from French Guiana indefinitely while it works out the labor problems that surfaced this week with wildcat strikes.

Arianespace chief executive Stephane Israel tweeted Wednesday that officials will set a new target launch date as soon as possible.

The delay will likely cause Arianespace to push back the following launch from French Guiana. Once the Ariane 5 takes off, a Russian-made Soyuz rocket is next in line at the tropical space base, slated to loft the Boeing-built SES 15 communications satellite into orbit to provide in-flight Internet connectivity for airline passengers, and support government, networking and maritime customers across North America. SES 15 also hosts a payload for the FAA’s Wide-Area Augmentation System to enhance airline navigation and safety across the United States.

Liftoff of SES 15 was scheduled for April 4, but it takes nearly two weeks to reconfigure the French Guiana spaceport and downrange tracking stations between launches.

These problems play into the hands of Arianespace’s competitors, SpaceX, the Russians, and ULA.

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Another NASA authorization bill this year?

9:20 am

Less than a day after President Trump signed the first NASA authorization bill since 2010, it appears that two major players, one in industry and one in Congress, would like to revisit this bill again this year.

The first story summarizes and quotes from a series of tweets sent out by Elon Musk reacting to the bill, of which the most important noted ““changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing. Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars,” and adding, “Perhaps there will be some future bill that makes a difference for Mars, but this is not it.”

The second story describes comments made by Cruz at a Commercial Spaceflight Federation breakfast on March 22, where he noted that in 2017 Cruz hoped to do it all over again, with a different focus: “In this coming Congress, I hope to take up another commercial space launch piece of legislation, and a longer-term NASA authorization.”

I suspect that both want and expect some changes in how NASA has been doing things, and the just-signed authorization did not accomplish that. The bill was written last year, as Cruz also noted in his remarks, and thus could not reflect any policy changes we can expect from Trump. I also suspect that both Musk and Cruz want to influence that policy, which is not yet determined. I am hoping that Capitalism in Space, which their offices have both received, is having some of its own influence here, even if it is tiny.

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More wear found on Curiosity’s wheels

6:58 pm

Routine inspections of Curiosity’s wheels has found new damage on the rover’s left middle wheel.

None of this is unexpected. Nor is it a serious problem. They expected the wheels to wear out over time, though I must say that it seems to me that Curiosity’s wheels, in use now for about five years, do not seem to be doing as well as Opportunity’s, working on Mars for more than a dozen years. Opportunity was only supposed to last for 90 days. Curiosity was designed to last years. Yet, it seems that Curiosity’s wheels are wearing out faster than Opportunity’s.

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Vector Space Systems plans launches from Kennedy

6:52 pm

The competition heats up: Vector Space Systems will this weekend erect a test version of its two-stage Vector-R rocket and launch platform for display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center.

CEO Jim Cantrell also “will announce the intention of the company to use the launch facilities in the future,” according to Space Florida. The two-stage Vector-R — the “R” is short for Rapid — stands 42 feet tall and measures 42 inches around, and is designed to deliver micro-satellites weighing up to about 135 pounds to orbit. The rocket is expected to debut in 2018, flying up to six times. The company eventually envisions launching 100 or more times a year.

Much of this sounds like a bit of PR aimed at the public, not an actual flight plan. However, if they are prepping for an eventual launch at Kennedy there is also no reason they shouldn’t hype that fact beforehand.

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Rocket Lab raises $75 million

6:43 pm

The competition heats up: Rocket Lab announced today that it has raised an additional $75 million in investment capital.

The new funding round is led by venture capital firm Data Collective, with contributions from another VC firm, Promus Ventures, and an undisclosed investor. Several prior investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and K1W1, also participated in the round.

Rocket Lab said the Series D round brings the total raised by the company to $148 million, and values the company at more than $1 billion. Rocket Lab announced a Series B round of unspecified size in 2015, and Peter Beck, the company’s chief executive, said the company did an unannounced Series C round in the interim involving only existing investors.

In an interview, Beck said the money will go towards increasing the production capacity for its Electron rocket, set to make its debut later this year. “This is really all about scaling,” he said. “The funding is all about producing the vehicle in much more significant numbers.”

They say they will make their first launch in the coming months, but remain vague about specific dates.

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The rings of Saturn

9:38 am

The rings of Saturn up close

Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped to post here, is part of one of the closest and highest resolution images that Cassini has yet taken of Saturn’s rings. The image was taken in January during one of the spacecraft’s ring grazing orbits, and has a resolution of 2,300 feet per pixel. And yet, as noted by the Cassini science team, “Even at this level of detail, it is still not fine enough to resolve the individual particles that make up the ring.”

In prepping the image, all I did was crop it to show the closest rings. I purposely did not reduce its resolution, so that you can see that no individual particles are visible. The rings of Saturn are truly made up of billions of small objects, behaving in many ways like liquid floating in the gravity well of Saturn. If you don’t believe me, download the full image and zoom in on it as much as you like. All you will see are pixels.

The fundamental science question therefore is not how Saturn’s rings behave (though this is certainly important and quite fascinating) but why did those rings end up the way they are. No other planet has rings anything like Saturn’s in their density and make-up. Why? Are Saturn’s rings a normal process that only occurs for short times around planets, which is why only Saturn has these types of rings at present? Or is it a rare event, so rare that we happen to be very lucky to see such a thing at all?

Even more important, Saturn’s rings and their behavior are likely linked closely to the same phenomenon that describe the formation of planets around a star. The more we can learn about why these rings exist, the more we will learn about why planets exist, both here circling the Sun as well as around stars everywhere else.

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SpaceX signs lease for Florida warehouse to refurbish 1st stages

6:29 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX has signed a five year lease for a Florida warehouse near Port Canaveral store and refurbish its recovered Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stages.

This lease just firms up the reality that SpaceX is shifting from expendable first stages to a fleet of reusable first stage. Any rocket company that does not do the same is going to be left in the dust.

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Ariane 5 launch delayed by labor strike

4:06 pm

The launch of two communications satellites on an Ariane 5 was delayed today by a strike at Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport.

A work stoppage at the Ariane 5 rocket’s launch base in South America prevented rollout of the booster to the launch pad Monday, pushing back the liftoff of two communications satellites for Brazil and South Korea until at least Wednesday.

The fully-assembled launcher was set to roll out of the final assembly building Monday morning for the 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometer) journey to the ELA-3 launch zone at the Guiana Space Center. Arianespace officials were aiming for a launch attempt Tuesday evening.

But the rollout did not happen due to a “social movement” at the spaceport, according to Arianespace. Officials blamed the postponement on a strike among a segment of the workforce at the Guiana Space Center, which is managed by CNES, the French space agency, with support from the European Space Agency and numerous European contractors.

The article suggests that this was not a sanctioned strike, based on the expiration of a contract. Instead it appears to have been a wildcat strike, created to apply the most pressure in order to blackmail the company into giving the strikers more money. If so, and if Arianespace agrees to terms, its labor relations in French Guiana are going to decline quickly.

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SpaceX successfully launches commercial satellite

11:40 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX tonight successfully launched Echostar 23.

This launch is almost four weeks after their last launch, which sent a Dragon capsule to ISS. Their goal this year has been to do one launch every two weeks, a goal they have not yet reached. The next launch, which will also place a commercial communications satellite into orbit, is tentatively set for March 27, and will also be the first launch that reuses a first stage. If they make that happen it will be first time they have hit the two week launch rate this year. They will then try to follow with another Dragon resupply mission, this time reusing a Dragon capsule for the first time.

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