Tag: spaceflight

Bidding for ticket on first New Shepard manned suborbital flight reaches $2.8 million

8:37 am

Capitalism in space: The first phase in Blue Origin’s auction for the purchase of the first seat on its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft in July has closed, with the high bid now $2.8 million.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has begun unsealing the bids for an open seat on its New Shepard suborbital spaceship, and the high bid hit the $2.8 million mark with more than three weeks to go in the online auction.

Blue Origin says the auction has drawn out more than 5,200 bidders from 136 countries. … Bidding started on May 5 and will conclude with a live auction on June 12. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to Blue Origin’s educational foundation, the Club for the Future.

The first phrase involved sealed secret bids, and ended with the high bid at $1.4 million. The second phase, on-going now with bidding quite brisk, makes the high bid visible to all bidders.

The $2.8 million bid is far higher than the estimated price point predicted for this suborbital flight, which had been in the range of several hundred thousand dollars. The high price is likely because this will be the first flight, and people with cash are willing to spend it to get bragging rights to that seat. At the same time, the high bidding suggests that the previous estimated ticket price might have been low, at least for the first flights.

With three weeks left before the final live auction on June 12th, there is a chance the winning bid could get even higher.

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Typical but still mysterious gullies in a crater on Mars

1:40 pm

Gullies on crater interior wall

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is of a crater in the mid-latitudes of Mars’s cratered southern highlands. The picture was taken on January 4, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and is actually the only high resolution image ever taken of this crater.

The gullies in the north interior wall of this crater are the reason why this picture was snapped. These gullies are very typical on the pole-facing slopes of mid-latitude Martian craters, and have puzzled scientists since they were first discovered in the late 1990s in images taken by Mars Global Surveyor. Since then, thousands have been found, almost all of which in the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where glacial features are also found. Most occur on the more shadowed pole-facing interior slopes of the craters, though at higher latitudes they are also found facing the equator.

Since their discovery scientists have puzzled over their cause, which because of their locations favoring colder temperatures suggest some form of seasonal weather factor. The most preferred hypotheses propose some interaction with water ice or dry ice, or are simply dry flows of rocky granular material. None of these hypotheses have been confirmed. Some evidence suggests they are dry flows, no water involved. Other evidence points to the influence of an underground layer of water ice.

The mystery of these gullies is enhanced by by the wider view from MRO’s context camera below, rotated and cropped to post here.
» Read more

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Senate revises NASA authorization to protect lunar lander award to SpaceX’s Starship

9:47 am

Even as the full Senate today begins its review of NASA’s newest authorization, the bill has been modified to grandfather in the contract award that NASA gave to SpaceX to build its manned lunar lander using Starship.

An earlier version of the bill had included language inserted by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) demanding NASA award within 30 days a contract for a second lunar lander. The modified bill extends that timeline to 60 days, but also specifically protects SpaceX’s contract award:

The Administrator shall not, in order to comply with the obligations referred to in paragraph (1), modify, terminate or rescind any selection decisions or awards made under the human landing system program that were announced prior to the date of enactment of this division.

The revised bill still puts NASA in a ridiculous position. Combined with Cantwell’s amendment, the agency will now be forced to name a second lunar lander contract within sixty days. Though it recommends doubling the money for this program ($10 billion over five years instead of ten), it does not actually appropriate it. Moreover, that new budget recommendation is still about one half of what NASA had originally requested in order to fund the construction of two lunar landers.

Not surprisingly, the entire bill [pdf] has become a pork-laden collection of spending put together without any concern for the needs for the nation. Instead, ithe 1,445-page long bill “is the proverbial ‘Christmas tree’ with a Table of Contents that alone is 15 pages” that different senators keep adding items to, making it a hodge-podge of incoherence.

The bill itself however still has to be approved by both the Senate and the House. While this should act as a corrective to make it more sane, don’t expect that. Instead, the more likely result will be that the two houses of Congress will combine together their own personal earmarks into one humongous bill.

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Discovery channel to launch contest to fly winner to space

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: The Discovery channel today announced that it is planning a contest where the winner will win an eight-day flight to ISS in partnership with the space tourism company Axiom.

The casting call on Discovery’s website says that eligibility is limited to U.S. residents or citizens, with additional requirements to be disclosed. For now, there are few other details about eligibility for hopeful astronauts applying to the Discovery show, the expected challenges entrants will face and who will serve as judges for the competition, as the series isn’t expected to start filming until next year.

It is so far unclear whether or not eligibility may include people with physical disabilities, but the casting call does include questions about your degree of impairment with physical activities. (The European Space Agency’s current astronaut process is open to candidates with physical disabilities, and the forthcoming Inspiration4 mission includes Hayley Arceneaux, who has a prosthetic limb after childhood bone cancer.)

Discovery said the series will be in eight parts and will chronicle a “grueling” process. “The series will follow each of the contestants competing for the opportunity in a variety of extreme challenges designed to test them on the attributes real astronauts need most, and as they undergo the training necessary to qualify for space flight and life on board the space station,” the channel said in a statement.

It is unclear exactly when this mission will fly, but based on its description and timing I suspect it will not be for several years, and might actually take place after Axiom installs its own module to ISS in ’24.

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1st pictures from Zhurong finally released

9:09 am

Zhurong's front view
Click for full image.

Zhurong's rear view
Click for full image.

China today finally released the first images from its Mars rover Zhurong, proving that the rover landed successfully and is operating as planned. The link takes you to the website of the Chinese space agency, in Chinese. This link provides some details in English.

The two images to the right show the front and rear views from Zhurong, sitting on top of its landing. The black & white front view shows the deployed ramps that the rover will roll down when it begins it operational phase. It shows, as expected, the generally flat terrain of the northern lowlands plains of Utopia Planitia. In the distance however there appears to be distinct features, possibly the rim of a small crater. At the moment the exact location of the rover is not known, so no precise map yet exists of its surrounding terrain. This will change in the coming days as both Chinese and American scientists hone in on the rover using orbital images.

The color rear view shows that the rover’s solar panels and high gain antenna have properly deployed. While the design of Zhurong in many ways imitates the two American rovers Spirit and Opportunity (probably because China hacked into the JPL website for several years and downloaded their blueprints), it also includes several upgrades. For example, Zhurong’s solar panels unfold, providing a significantly larger surface area to gather sunlight. Both Spirit and Opportunity were somewhat hampered by the power they could obtain by their smaller solar panels. Both also experienced times when Martian dust on the panels reduced that power. Zhurong’s much larger panels will protect it better from these issues, and could allow it to survive longer on Mars.

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China’s Long March 4B rocket launches oceanography satellite

12:46 am

China tonight successfully launched a new oceanography satellite using its Long March 4B rocket, completing a three satellite constellation.

No word on whether the rocket’s first stage landed on any villages in the interior of China.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

15 SpaceX
13 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 21 to 13 in the national rankings.

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Martian mesas made entirely of dry ice!

1:27 pm

Dry ice mesas on Mars
Click for full image.

Time for an especially cool image! The photo to the right, taken on February 13, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and cropped and reduced to post here, shows some mesas on the south polar ice cap of Mars.

What makes those mesas cool (literally and figuratively) is that they are thought to be made up entirely of dry ice, part of the thin but permanent frozen carbon dioxide cap in the south. As explained to me by Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona, who requested this image from MRO,

[These mesas are] unusually thick compared to other dry ice mesas (a common landform in the residual ice cap). I only have the lower resolution laser altimeter data to go off for heights here (we may get a stereo pair next year), but from that it looks like 13 meters thick.

That’s about forty feet high, from base to top. In length, the largest mesa on the left is about a mile long and about 1,500 feet wide, on average. And it is made entirely of dry ice!

The red cross on the map below shows the location of these mesas on the south pole ice cap.
» Read more

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ULA successfully launches military reconnaissance satellite

10:56 am

screen capture from ULA's live stream
Screen capture from ULA’s live stream.

Capitalism in space: ULA successfully launched a Space Force military reconnaissance satellite using its Atlas 5 rocket. It also deployed two cubesats.

This was the first Atlas 5 launch in 2021. The satellite has now been deployed into its transfer orbit taking it to its final geosynchronous orbit.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

15 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 21 to 12 in the national rankings. Note also that though we are still six weeks short of the year’s halfway point, the U.S. is already more than halfway to its total from all of 2020, 40 launches. If this pace continues the U.S. has a good chance of reaching launch totals that were only routine during the mid-1960s, at the height of the beginnings of the space race.

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NASA gives an American the seat on Dragon flight that it had been holding for Russian

10:15 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has added an American astronaut to the next manned mission to ISS, set for October.

NASA said that Kayla Barron will join the Crew-3 mission, launching on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft scheduled for launch no earlier than Oct. 23. Barron joins NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, who had been assigned to Crew-3 last December.

The Crew-3 mission will relieve the Crew-2 astronauts who arrived at the station on another Crew Dragon spacecraft April 24. The four Crew-3 astronauts will remain on the station for a six-month stay.

The space agency had been holding that seat open for a Russian, as part of its long term barter arrangement whereby in exchange for flying Americans on Soyuz capsules, Russia flies Russians on American spacecraft. That arrangement had been used repeatedly when the shuttle was flying, but since its retirement the U.S. has been forced to buy its seats on Soyuz as it had nothing to offer in exchange.

With the arrival of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule however NASA has been trying to get the Russians to renew that arrangement. And though an American, Mark Vande Hei, flew for free on a Soyuz last month, the Russians have as yet refused to assign their own astronaut to this upcoming October flight, despite months of negotiations. It appears NASA decided it could wait no longer, and filled the seat with its own astronaut.

In fact, the announcement by Roscosmos on May 13th that the next two Soyuz launches to ISS will carry two commercial passengers each means that Vande Hei cannot return on a Soyuz until next year. The seat he would have used to come home now must be used by these tourists, meaning his mission will now be extended to last for as much as a full year or more.

Unless of course NASA decides to bring him home on a Dragon capsule instead.

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China rolls out rocket for next space station launch

10:00 am

The new colonial movement: On May 15th China rolled out the Long March 7 rocket that on May 20th will carry the first Tianzhou cargo freighter to the already launched core module of its space station.

Tianzhou-2 will carry 4.69 tons of cargo in a pressurized segment and 1.95 tons of propellant, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

Meanwhile, the core stage, dubbed Tianhe, has successfully completed its on-orbit checkouts and has placed itself in the right orbit for the arrival of Tianzhou.

If all goes right with this cargo mission, China is targeting a June launch for the station’s first three-man crew, who will attempt to stay at the station for three months.

Do not expect much information to be released by China during these missions. Like the Soviet Union of old, and as they have been doing routinely since their space program began to gear up in the past decade, they will only make periodic terse announcements, all of which will contain only the most superficial of information. Only much later will more be learned, usually many years after the fact when its news value has vanished and it only concerns historians and space buffs.

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Flash! SpaceX to use a NEW Falcon 9 1st stage!

9:48 am

Both side boosters landing during the 1st Falcon Heavy launch
Both side boosters landing during
the 1st Falcon Heavy launch

Capitalism in space: For the first time in since September 2020, SpaceX has delivered a new Falcon 9 1st stage to its Florida launch site in preparation for launch.

This new stage will be used on the June 3rd launch of a cargo Dragon freighter to ISS.

What is remarkable about this story is that it is news that SpaceX is using a new first stage. Not only have all of their fifteen launches in 2021 lifted off with used boosters, since November 2020 they have completed nineteen launches using only used boosters.

That’s 19 launches in only six months, all with previously flown boosters!

During that time the company’s Falcon rocket division has apparently dedicated its time in upgrading and building new Falcon Heavy 1st stage boosters, in preparation for the first Falcon Heavy launches since June 2019, set for July and October later this year. I suspect the focus has been an effort to upgrade the core booster so that it will be successfully recovered this time, something that did not occur on two of the first three Falcon Heavy launches in 2018 and 2019..
» Read more

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Where is China’s Zhurong Mars rover?

2:13 pm

Where is Zhurong?

At this moment we do not have confirmation that China’s rover Zhurong landed safely on Mars. Assuming it did, the mosaic to the right, made from two images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) context camera, shows that landing zone, with the white cross indicating the centerpoint of the suspected landing site, as leaked to the Chinese press back in October 2020.

The red boxes are the only two images released by China that were taken by its Tianwen-1 orbiter of this landing zone. The two white boxes show the areas covered by two of the seven or so photographs taken by MRO’s high resolution camera since that location was revealed. Below is a map showing all the images MRO has taken of this location.
» Read more

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Why no visual confirmation of the landing on Mars of China’s Zhurong rover?

12:03 pm

Despite more than 48 hours having passed since China announced the successful landing of its Zhurong rover on Mars in the northern lowland plain of Utopia Planitia, no images or data of any kind has been released by that nation or its space agency.

It is very possible that this is totally expected, since they have always said they will need about a week of checkouts before they rollled the rover off the lander and begin its operations.

At the same time, China has been very very creative with providing early images for all its planetary missions. For example, within hours of landing they had released images from their Chang’e-5 lunar sample return lander. Similarly, only hours after Chang’e-4 landed on the far side of the Moon with its Yutu-2 rover China released images.

They did the exact same thing when Chang’e-3 landed in 2013 with its Yutu-1 rover.

I can’t imagine they don’t have some cameras on the Mars lander to snap pictures of the horizon or the ground directly below. They might not, but if so the lack would be truly astonishing.

It is also possible China is holding the data close for any number of political reasons, though this doesn’t make much sense since the whole political point of these planetary missions is to sell China to the world.

The more time that passes with no confirmation data, the more it will appear that something is wrong. If this conclusion is incorrect, China needs to act now to dispel these doubts.

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SpaceX launches 52 Starlink + 2 customer satellites

4:09 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 52 Starlink satellites along with two smallsat satellites.

They have put just under 1,700 Starlink satellites into orbit. The first stage completed its 8th launch, and the fourth in 2021, according to the SpaceX announcer. Let me repeat that: That’s four launches of the first stage in less than five months. The fairing halves were also flying on their second flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

15 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 20 to 12 in the national rankings.

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Rocket Lab launch fails

9:22 am

Rocket Lab’s launch yesterday of its Electron rocket failed when the upper stage began tumbling right after stage separation and engine start.

This was the second Electron failure in twenty launches. The last, in July 2020, was also caused by a problem in the upper stage, though far less dramatic. In that case an electric failure caused the upper stage engine to shut down prematurely before it had reached orbit.

Though the launch was a failure, the recovery of the first stage as part of Rocket Lab’s effort to make it reusable appears to be proceeding as planned. According to the company’s statement:

Electron’s first stage safely completed a successful splashdown under parachute and Rocket Lab’s recovery team is working to retrieve the stage from the ocean as planned.

I have embedded below the fold the Rocket Lab live feed, cued to just before the failure. You can see that as soon as the upper stage fires it begins to tumble.
» Read more

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China’s Zhurong rover successfully lands on Mars

10:45 pm

The rover landing site for Tianwen-1's rover

The new colonial movement: China’s today successfully landed its Zhurong rover on the northern lowland plains of Mars dubbed Utopia Planitia.

China’s lander and rover began their descent to the surface at about 4:00 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) by separating from the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which since March has been used to capture imagery of the targeted landing site for study. An aeroshell protected the stacked probes as they plunged into the atmosphere at 3 miles per second (4.8 km per second), generating tremendous heat in the process.

Once inside the atmosphere, while traveling at supersonic speeds, the spacecraft deployed a 2,150-square-foot (200 sq. meter) parachute to slow its approach to less than 328 feet per second (100 m per second). China based the canopy design on the parachutes it has used on Shenzhou missions to return astronauts to Earth.

Finally, the Tianwen-1 lander fired thrusters similar to the type on China’s Chang’e lunar landers to make the final descent. A laser range finder and a velocity sensor helped guide the craft as it hovered at about 328 feet (100 m) to identify obstacles and measure the slopes of the surface before touching down safely.

We don’t yet know the exact touchdown point. The image above is a mosaic of two wide angle photos from the context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), with the white cross marking the spot previously leaked by the Chinese press as the landing site. The white box shows the area covered by the only high resolution MRO photo, as of October 2020. Since then MRO has taken a number of additional high resolution images of this area. The red boxes are the areas covered by the only two high resolution images released by China from its Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter

Note that the rover is actually not yet on the ground. It still sits on the lander. A ramp will be deployed and it will then roll down on the ground to begin what China says is a planned 90 day mission, with the most important data likely coming from the rover’s ground penetrating radar, looking for underground ice.

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The flaking and cracked floor of a Martian crater

1:10 pm

The flaking and cracked floor of a Martian crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the central portion of the floor of an unnamed 5-mile-wide crater in northeast corner of Hellas Basin, the deepest large depression on Mars.

The latitude is 33 degrees south, where many glacier features have been identified, especially inside craters.

In this case, the cracked and flaked surface of this crater floor suggests what geologists call exfoliation, “the breaking off of thin concentric shells, sheets, scales, plates, and so on.” On Earth exfoliation generally refers to an erosion process seen on rock faces, though you can see it on other types of materials.

In this Martian crater we appear to be seeing the exfoliation of different ice layers, sublimating away at different rates as they are exposed to the Sun. The layers probably suggest different periods on Mars when snow was falling here, causing the glaciers to grow. The sublimation we see now suggest periods when this region was warmer and the ice was shrinking. Whether we are in such a period now is not yet determined by scientists.

Either way, the photo suggests at least two such cycles, though if we could drill down into this material we would likely find evidence of many more.

Below the fold is a global map of Mars, showing the location of this crater with a red cross in Hellas. The regions surrounded by white borders are areas where many glacial features have been found.
» Read more

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SpaceX in FCC filing outlines first orbital flight plan for Starship

9:40 am

The flight plan for Starship's first orbital flight
Click for full images.

Capitalism in space: This week SpaceX filed the flight plan for the first orbital flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, taking off from Boca Chica and landing in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

The images to the right are from the filing, which also states:

The Starship Orbital test flight will originate from Starbase, TX. The Booster stage will separate
approximately 170 seconds into flight. The Booster will then perform a partial return and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 20 miles from the shore. The Orbital Starship will continue on flying between the Florida Straits. It will achieve orbit until performing a powered, targeted landing approximately 100km (~62 miles) off the northwest coast of Kauai in a soft ocean landing.

No date is listed as yet, though the filing suggests they are aiming for a launch before the end of the year. It also appears that though both Starship and Superheavy will make controlled vertical landings, both will target locations in the ocean. It could be that SpaceX plans to place its two refurbished oil rigs at both of those locations, but this is not stated in the filing.

Achieving this flight before the end of the year remains a serious hill to climb, though if any company could do it, SpaceX is the most likely.
» Read more

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Roscosmos announces two commercial tourist flights to ISS

9:49 am

Capitalism in space: Roscosmos, the government corporation that controls of all of Russia’s space industry, announced today that it will be flying two different commercial tourist flights to ISS, both occurring before the end of this year.

The first will take place in October.

Roscosmos [is] sending an actress and a director to the ISS in October with the aim of making the first feature film in space. The film, whose working title is “Challenge,” is being co-produced by the flamboyant head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and state-run network Channel One.

The second will take place in December, and will fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa (the man who has already purchased a Moon mission on SpaceX’s Starship) and his assistant Yozo Hirano in a Soyuz capsule to ISS for twelve days.

Let’s review the upcoming tourist flights now scheduled:
» Read more

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Senate committee mandates NASA award 2nd lunar lander contract

9:25 am

More crap from Congress: A Senate committee has approved a new NASA authorization that requires the agency to award a second lunar lander contract — in addition to the one given to SpaceX — even though that authorization gives NASA no additional money to pay for that second contract.

This provision was inserted by senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). Washington state also happens to be the state where one of the rejected companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, is located. I wonder how much cash Bezos’ has deposited in Cantwell’s bank account.

This provision not only does not give NASA any cash to build two lunar landers, what NASA dubs the Human Landing System (HLS), it forces NASA to violate other laws.
» Read more

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