Tag: spaceflight

New leak located in Zvezda on ISS

5:57 pm

Russian astronauts have located the suspected new leak location in the Zvezda module on ISS, and also think there might be another, as yet unlocated.

The specialists have discovered one more crack at the International Space Station and suspect that yet another one exists, ISS Russian Segment head Vladimir Solovyov told Rossiya-24. “So far, we have found one place and suspect another, where as some kind of leak exists. We must bring a powerful microscope on a cargo spacecraft and use to examine this place. We are not totally certain so far,” Solovyov said.

These two leaks are in addition to the one inch crack that caused last year’s leak and has been sealed.

All are pointing strongly to stress fractures in this section of Zvezda, one of the station’s oldest modules at twenty-plus years. The leaks are apparently located in the aft section where ships dock to Zvezda, with over a 100 dockings there since launch.

If the cracks and leaks are caused by stress fractures, the life span of Zvezda is now quite limited. It might be possible to seal the cracks and protect the module from further breaks by ending dockings at its port, but I suspect that will not work. Moreover, if I remember correctly Zvezda has the engines that are used to periodically raise ISS’s orbits. If the stress of firing those engines is too risky than another way must be found to maintain the station’s orbit.

In a few years the private company Axiom will be launching its own modules to ISS, designed in the long run to separate from the station and function independently. If NASA and Axiom are smart, they will make sure this new module matches Zvezda’s capabilities, thus making the Russian module redundant and actually superfluous.

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“The solar system is open for business”

2:28 pm

Link here. The article gives an independent look at the surging capitalism that appears to be driving the resurgent rocket and space industry in the U.S. and elsewhere.

As the author notes in his conclusion:

There was a time when space enthusiasts waited on taxpayer-funded space programs to realize their dreams of routine spaceflight and humanity’s expansion into the cosmos. It’s been a very long wait. Now, privatized launch services are opening up access to space. A new wave of exploration missions is widening human knowledge of the solar system. It’s only a matter of time before entrepreneurs, particularly those with deep pockets, figure out how to make money out there.

I plug this article not because he quotes me extensively, but because he came to these conclusions independent of me, and only called me for comments because he thought I might add depth to his conclusions. That the ideas I have been pushing since the late 1990s are now percolating into the larger culture is a very very good sign.

While in those early days the reporters I spoke to were routinely horrified by the idea of a privately financed space mission and wondered if the government should even allow it (they really would say this), today the idea is now considered the right way to go.

This is progress, even in this time of blacklists and a government focused on crushing its citizens.

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The pit caves of Mars: Can humans someday live in them?

1:24 pm

Four more pits in the Tharsis Bulge on Mars

It has been more than four months since my last report on the pits of Mars. Time to do another.

The collage to the right shows the four different pits photographed by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) since October. The links to each image are:

Like almost all the cave pits so far found on Mars, all are in the Tharsis Bulge of giant volcanoes to west of Valles Marineris. The overview map below shows these pits in the context of every other pit in this region that I have featured on Behind the Black.
» Read more

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Parker completes 7th solar fly-by, sets new records

9:31 am

The Parker Solar Probe this week successfully completed its seventh close fly-by of the Sun, coming within 8.4 million miles and traveling at almost 300,000 miles per hour.

Nor is that all for 2021:

The spacecraft will make three more progressively close passes to the Sun in 2021 alone, as well as two gravity-assist flybys at Venus in February and October to adjust the trajectory of its orbit. After zipping past Venus on Feb. 20, Parker Solar Probe will again make close approaches to the Sun on April 29 and Aug. 9. Following another Venus gravity assist on Oct. 16, the spacecraft will make an even closer solar pass on Nov. 21, with perihelion just 5.3 million miles from the Sun’s surface.

Because the fly-bys of Venus are shrinking Parker’s solar orbit, the time between solar fly-bys is also shrinking.

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Northrop Grumman successfully test solid rocket booster for ULA’s Vulcan

10:45 pm

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumman today announced that it has successfully test fired the strap-on solid rocket booster, qualifying it for flight, for use on ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

In the Jan. 21 static test, the motor fired for approximately 90 seconds, producing nearly 449,000 pounds of thrust to validate the performance capability of the motor, the company said. The firing also verified the motor’s internal insulation, propellant grain ballistics and nozzle in high temperatures.

If all goes right Vulcan will make its inaugural flight later this year.

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The slowly disappearing dry ice cap at Mars’ south pole

11:44 am

The Happy Face crater near Mars' south pole
Click for the 2020 full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right of two images taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was posted as a captioned image by the orbiter’s science team today.

This crater, dubbed the Happy Face Crater because of the shape of the blobby features within it, is located on the south pole ice cap of Mars, about 200 miles from the south pole itself.

Today’s caption noted how these pictures, taken nine years apart, illustrate the change going on at the Martian south pole.

The “blobby” features in the polar cap are due to the sun sublimating away the carbon dioxide into these round patterns. You can see how nine years of this thermal erosion have made the “mouth” of the face larger. The “nose” consisted of a two circular depressions in 2011, and in 2020, those two depressions have grown larger and merged.

While this caption noted the importance of studying these long term changes in order to understand the evolution of Mars’ climate and geology, it did not give the very specific discovery these changes suggest for Mars globally, a discovery that is actually very significant.

The two ice caps of Mars have some fundamental differences, all presently unexplained. The similarities are obvious. Both have permanent caps of water ice that are presently believed to be in a steady state, not shrinking or growing. Both each winter get covered by a thin mantle of dry ice that sublimates away completely with the coming of spring.

The differences are more puzzling, as shown by the maps of the two poles below.
» Read more

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Three aborted static fire tests yesterday for Starship prototype #9

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: After switching out three Raptor engines following successful static fire tests last week, SpaceX attempted three times to complete a new static fire test of Starship prototype #9 yesterday, only to have all three attempts abort just before ignition.

No word on the cause of the aborts, or what SpaceX’s next step will be. The article at the link speculates that SpaceX is merely being cautious, which doesn’t sound right to me. It could be there are specific issues with prototype #9 that are causing the problems. Remember, this is the prototype that tipped over in the assembly building and needed repairs.

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Curiosity checks out its wheels

1:55 pm

One wheel on Curiosity, as seen in July 2020 and January 2021
For full resolution images, go here and here for the
top image, and here and here for the bottom image.

Having finished a two week look at a sea of sand, Curiosity’ science team has resumed its journey east towards the higher slopes of Mount Sharp.

Before they started out however, they decided to aim the rover’s high resolution mast camera at Curiosity’s wheels to see how they are faring and whether any of the damage that occurred in the early days of the mission has worsened. The photo on the right compares what was seen this week with the damage on the same wheel as seen in July 2020. This is also the same wheel I have posted images of since September 2017.

Not only does there appear to be no appreciable new damage to this wheel in the six months since July, remarkably, a comparison between today’s image and the photo from September 2017, shows little change as well.

In the more than three years since that 2017 photo, Curiosity has crossed Vera Rubin Ridge, crossed the clay unit, climbed up the next ridge to take a look at the incredibly rough terrain of the Greenheugh Pedimont, and then continued across the clay unit on its way to higher and possibly more challenging terrain.

In all those travels it appears this particular wheel has fared rather nicely, accumulating in at least this part little new damage. This bodes well for the rover’s future, as the wheels have been a concern since Curiosity’s first two years on Mars, when engineers found they were experiencing more damage than expected. The travel techniques they have adopted since to protect the wheels appear to be working.

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Hints that NASA will redo the SLS static fire test

9:52 am

While NASA has not yet announced any decision on whether it will redo the full static fire test of its SLS core stage — following the January 16th abort — there are hints coming from industry sources that the agency is leaning to doing another test.

According to sources at the agency, program managers are in fact leaning toward conducting a second hot-fire test in Mississippi. Due to the need to obtain more propellant at the test site, conduct minor refurbishment to the vehicle, and possibly change the erratic sensor on Engine 4, the agency estimates it will require about three to four weeks before conducting another test.

Based on that schedule, the actual Artemis 1 unmanned flight, now set for November, will likely have to be delayed one month to December, since after the static fire test it will take several months to disassembly and prep the core stage for shipment to Florida and then reassembly it and prepare it for launch. That November launch date was predicated on a successful completion of the static fire test by January.

NASA and Boeing (the lead contractor building SLS) do not have much schedule margin however. They have begun stacking the solid rocket boosters that strap-on to the core stage. Once this is done the boosters supposedly have a life span of approximately one year, which means the launch must occur by about January ’22 though I would not be surprised if NASA waives that use-by-date if it needs to.

I am in a betting mood this morning. Want to bet SpaceX’s Starship completes its first orbital flight before SLS, even though it has been in development for one tenth the time (2 years vs 20) and for one thirtieth the cost ($2 billion vs $60)? I think the odds right now are very very likely. One way or the other, the race will definitely be neck-and-neck.

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SpaceX buys two floating oil rigs for Starship/Super Heavy

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: As has been expected now since June, SpaceX has now officially purchased two floating oil rigs to be used for the launch and landing of its Starship/Super Heavy reusable heavy-lift rocket.

Named Phobos and Deimos, after the two moons of Mars, they are currently undergoing modifications to support Starship launch operations.

SpaceX has long been hinting at future floating launch and landing sites for their Starship launch system. The super heavy lift launch vehicle will have a large blast danger area and pose noise concerns if launched frequently near populated areas. Therefore, sea launch platforms will play a key role in the launch cadence SpaceX plans to reach with Starship, including on-orbit refueling flights for deep space missions and transportation from one place to another on Earth.

Job postings by SpaceX have indicated that work on offshore launch platforms has begun in Brownsville, Texas, near their Starship manufacturing and launch facilities in Boca Chica. Positions included crane operators, electricians, and offshore operations engineers, and several of the job listings specified that the position was part of the company’s Starship program. Job descriptions for these positions included responsibilities like “designing and building an operational offshore rocket launch facility” and required the “ability to work on an offshore platform in Brownsville, Texas.”

Out of work because you live in a fascist Democratic Party-controlled state and have had your job destroyed by their tyrannical policies? Move to Texas and go to work for SpaceX! At the moment at least the United States remains a collection of 50 sovereign states, with the ability of citizens to move from one to the other freely to improve their lives. Some states, such as Texas and Florida, are moving forward under the American concepts of freedom and private enterprise. Others, such as California and New York, are not.

Want to bet which ones will prosper in the coming decade? I pick Texas and Florida. Anyone willing to bet me?

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Update on China’s pseudo-private commercial launch industry

9:24 am

Link here. Unlike past Space News articles which generally made believe these privately funded Chinese companies were truly private, the article at the link today is very clear about the close supervision maintained by the Chinese communist government over these companies. They might get funding through private investment capital, but everything they do is approved by their government.

A 2014 central government policy shift opened the Chinese launch and small satellite sectors to private capital. Since then around 20 launch vehicle-related firms have been established in China.

These commercial launch companies are being supported by a national strategy of civil-military fusion. This includes facilitating the transfer of restricted technologies to approved firms in order to promote innovation in dual-use technology. The State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) oversees activities.

Provincial and local governments are also providing support for space companies as they look to attract high-end and emerging technology firms.

The initial focus of the article is on iSpace, also called Interstellar Glory Space, which is planning another fund-raising round. This company, whose Hyperbola-1 solid rocket reached orbit for the first time in 2019, is now designing a liquid-fueled rocket whose first stage will be reusable.

The article also gives a quick review of some of the other Chinese companies.

It is all part of the new colonial movement, the international race to gain dominance in space. The competition is presently fierce, and should only become fiercer based on China’s decision to encourage internal competition.

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SpaceX and Rocket Lab complete launches

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: Two successfully launches this morning.

First Rocket Lab used its Electron rocket to launch a German cubesat thought to be a prototype for a Chinese communications constellation, though no information has been publicly released. No recovery attempts were made on the rocket’s first stage.

Then SpaceX successfully completed its 17th Starlink launch and second launch in 2021. This puts about 950 Starlink satellites in orbit. The booster for this flight landed on the drone ship, completing its record eighth flight.

The 2021 launch race:

2 SpaceX
1 Virgin Orbit
1 China
1 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 4 to 1 in the national rankings.

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SLS static fire abort not caused by malfunction but too-tight parameters

1:51 pm

According to NASA today the reason the SLS static fire test cut off after only one minute was because of too conservative margins set in the computer software.

In an update today, however, NASA said it was engine 2 that caused the abort. At that moment, the engines were underdoing a gimble test where they are rotated in different directions just as they must do during ascent to steer the rocket. Actuators in the Thrust Vector Control system that generate the force to gimble an engine are powered by hydraulic Core Stage Auxiliary Power Units (CAPUs). The CAPUs for engine 2 exceeded pre-set test limits and the computer system automatically shut down the test as it was designed to do, but NASA said it would not have been a problem during a launch.

According to NASA’s update,

The specific logic that stopped the test is unique to the ground test when the core stage is mounted in the B-2 test stand at Stennis. If this scenario occurred during a flight, the rocket would have continued to fly using the remaining CAPUs to power the thrust vector control systems for the engines.

Note too that another issue during the test needs resolution:

Initial data indicate the sensor reading for a major component failure, or MCF, that occurred about 1.5 seconds after engine start was not related to the hot fire shutdown. It involved the loss of one leg of redundancy prior to T-0 in the instrumentation for Engine 4, also known as engine number E2060. Engine ignition begins 6 seconds prior to T-0, and they fire in sequence about 120 milliseconds apart. Test constraints for hot fire were set up to allow the test to proceed with this condition, because the engine control system still has sufficient redundancy to ensure safe engine operation during the test. The team plans to investigate and resolve the Engine 4 instrumentation issue before the next use of the core stage.

No decision has been made yet whether they will do another static fire test before shipping the core stage to Florida for launch. They are under a time limit, as they have begun stacking the SLS rocket’s strap-on solid rocket side boosters, and those only have a life expectancy of one year once stacking has begun.

As far as I am concerned, nothing about the development of this rocket makes sense. I would never fly on it no matter how much money was offered to me, and anyone who does must know the terrible risk they take.

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More evidence Mars’s glaciers formed across many ice ages

11:26 am

The uncertainty of science: New research using the boulders found on the top of Martian glaciers has now strengthened the evidence that Mars must have undergone many previous ice age cycles going back as much as 800 million years, with those glaciers waxing and waning during each cycle.

This new data helps map the cycles earlier than 20 million years ago, which have been difficult to map out based solely on the orbital data available from Earth and from Mars orbit. The results suggest that before then there were from six to twenty additional cycles during the last 300 to 800 million years.

These numbers are decidedly uncertain. It is likely that there were many more cycles, as suggested by the many layers seen at the edges of the north and south polar ice caps.

Be aware as well that if you read the press release you should know that it falsely implies that this research is the first to map out these ice age cycles. This is not true. All this research has done is provide more evidence for cycles prior to 20 million years ago, cycles that scientists have long believed must have happened based on other data.

In the end, for us to map out the full climate history of Mars will require numerous ice core samples at the planet’s poles, something that will not be possible until people are living and working on Mars routinely.

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Mysterious colors on Mars, near the landing site of Europe’s rover

10:17 am

Mysterious colors on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! Today the science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) released a new captioned image, which I have cropped and reduced to post here to the right.

The photo was taken October 12, 2020, and shows a small very colorful area on top of an isolated hill. To quote the caption, written by Sharon Wilson:

An isolated, elongated mound (about 1 mile wide and 3.75 miles long) rises above the smooth, surrounding plains. Horizontal layers are exposed at the northern end of the mound, and its surface is characterized by a very unusual quasi-circular pattern with varying colors that likely reflect diverse mineral compositions.

…The origin of this mound is unknown, but its formation may be related to the clay-bearing rocks in the nearby Oxia Planum region.

» Read more

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Chang’e-5’s lunar samples less dense than expected

8:59 am

Because the lunar samples retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 probe were less dense than expected, it ended up recovering only 3.8 pounds of material rather than the targeted 4.4 pounds.

The probe had estimated the lunar rocks to have a density of 1.6 grams per cubic millimetre, based on data from past missions by other countries, said Pei Zhaoyu, the mission spokesman. Going by that figure, the probe stopped taking samples after just 12 hours, apparently assessing that the target had been reached. “However, from tests, the actual density might not be that high,” Pei told reporters.

This is not a failure, but a discovery. In order to make sure the lander did not recover too much material, weighing too much, they needed to set limits based on the expected weight of the material recovered. That these samples taken from the Mons Rümker volcano complex are lighter than expected reveals something about them. It suggests the lava here was different than lava samples taken elsewhere.

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Pioneers and the future

1:31 pm

The asteroid mining ship Dream Watcher docked on the Mars space station.
From Pioneer: The asteroid mining ship Dream Watcher docked
on the Mars space station Landville, c2183.

When I first wrote my sole science fiction book, Pioneer, back in the mid-1980s, I strongly believed (and still do) that for the human race to prosper in space and truly build new civilizations on other worlds, freedom, private enterprise, and courage would be required.

It was for this reason there is absolute no mention of NASA in the book. Unlike most modern movies that idolize this mostly dysfunctional government agency and see it as the only solution for accomplishing anything in space (watch The Martian again to see what I mean), I knew that while government will be strongly involved in space exploration for the foreseeable future, for anything to get done quickly those governments will best step aside and figure out how to let their citizens both freely do it and also own what they do.

This weekend’s aborted SLS static fire test illustrates my point perfectly. Rather than depend on private enterprise to get this rocket built, both George Bush Jr. and Congress decided to give the job to their government bureaucrats. The result has been nothing for now over a decade.
» Read more

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Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne successfully reaches orbit

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: After eight years of development, Virgin Orbit has finally used its LauncherOne air-launched rocket to successfully put ten satellites into orbit.

After an eight month stand down to resolve issues revealed during the first mission of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, the company made their second orbital launch attempt on Sunday, January 17. The air-launched rocket successfully carried ten CubeSats to their target orbit for NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program.

This makes Virgin Orbit the second smallsat rocket company to achieve orbit, following Rocket Lab. They have beat out a large number of startups, and are now well positioned to gain some of the market share in this new component of the launch market.

They have also made true my September 2016 prediction that Virgin Orbit would complete its first commercial launch before Virgin Galactic’s first suborbital commercial flight, even though Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo began development eight years earlier.

As for the 2021 launch race, right now only SpaceX and Virgin Orbit have launched in 2021. They are tied for the lead, and also combine to put the U.S. ahead 2 to nothing over everyone else.

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SLS core stage static fire test aborts after only one minute

9:23 pm

During the crucial first static fire test of SLS’s core stage yesterday — meant to last a full eight minutes — the booster aborted the test after only one minute.

It’s still too early to know exactly what caused the early shutdown in Saturday’s engine test.

Flight controllers could be heard during the test referring to an “MCF” (a major component failure) apparently related to engine No. 4 on the SLS booster. John Honeycutt, NASA’s SLS program manager, added that at about the 60-second mark, cameras caught a flash in a protective thermal blanket on the engine, though its cause and significance remain to be determined.

Honeycutt said it’s too early to know if a second hot-fire test will be required at Stennis, or if it can be done later at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the SLS is scheduled to launch the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission around the moon by the end of this year. Similarly, it’s too early to know if Artemis 1 will still be able to launch this year. “I think it’s still too early to tell,” Bridenstine said of whether a 2021 launch for Artemis 1 is still in the cards. “As we figure out what went wrong, we’re going to know kind of what the future holds.” [emphasis mine]

If this engine abort had occurred during a launch, with the two strap-on solid rocket boosters still firing (and no way to turn them off), the entire rocket would have been lost. Thus, for NASA to even consider shipping this core stage to Florida before figuring out the problem and fixing it is downright insane.

They need to figure out what went wrong, fix it, and then test again, even if if means the first unmanned Artemis flight experiences a serious delay. If they don’t then this whole program is proved to be an idiotic sham (something I have believed for about a decade), and should be shut down by Congress and the new President, immediately.

I am reporting this late because this weekend I was out in the country on a caving trip, taking a very much needed break from the truly horrible news of modern America.

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