Tag: spaceflight

Engineers regain full control of CAPSTONE

9:21 pm

After a month of careful tests and analysis, engineers today successfully regained full control of the CAPSTONE lunar orbiter, on its way to the Moon.

The most likely cause of the anomaly was identified as a valve related issue on one of the spacecraft’s eight (8) thrusters. The partially open valve resulted in thrust from the associated thruster whenever the propulsion system was pressurized. To attempt a recovery from this condition, the mission team conducted multiple tests on the vehicle and evaluated extensive telemetry and simulation data and then formulated a plan for attempting recovery of the vehicle’s full 3-axis control.

This recovery sequence was uploaded to the spacecraft yesterday (Thursday) and was executed early this morning (Friday 10/7). Initial telemetry and observation data after the recovery attempt points to a successful recovery of the system which has now regained 3-axis attitude control. The updated spacecraft attitude has oriented the spacecraft solar arrays to the Sun and implemented an orientation for the downlink antennas which significantly improves data downlink performance as compared to the pre-recovery attitude.

The spacecraft is not out of the woods yet. The engineers still need to figure out how to do future course corrections with “the possible presence of a valve that remains partially open.”

Nonetheless, that they have successfully regained full control means they have a very good handle on the issue, which bodes well for the lunar orbital insertion maneuver on November 13, 2022.

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Thick flow exiting dramatic canyon on Mars

1:22 pm

Thick flow into Mamers Valles on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “viscous flow” that has apparently carved the wide curving canyon as it slowly flows into open country to the south.

I would estimate the height of that canyon wall to be around 3,000 feet, though this is a very rough guess. I also image a trail switchbacking up the nose of that canyon wall would make for a truly stupendous hiking experience.

The flow filling the canyon floor appears very glacial, which is not surprising as this canyon is at 37 degrees north latitude, in the mid-latitude band where many glacial features are found. The overview map below provides some more detailed context.
» Read more

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China’s Long March 11 launches from floating sea platform

11:26 am

China today successfully launched two “navigation satellites” from a floating sea platform in the Yellow Sea, using its Long March 11 rocket.

The platform was only about two miles off shore at launch, so the view from the beach drew a large crowd. Video at the first link.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

45 SpaceX
42 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 65 to 42 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 65 to 62. These numbers will change again later today, with a SpaceX commercial launch scheduled for 4:06 pm (Pacific).

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Rocket Lab successfully launches NOAA satellite

10:34 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place a NOAA satellite into orbit, designed to gather data from ground-based sensors.

This was the company’s eighth successful launch in 2022, the most it has achieved in any single year. No attempt was made to recover the first stage on this launch.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

45 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 65 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 65 to 61. The 65 successful launches so far this year is now the second most successful American year in rocketry, exceeded only by the 70 launches in 1966. With almost three months left to go in the year, 2022 looks like it will top that record, by a lot.

SpaceX meanwhile has a launch scheduled for later today, after getting scrubbed yesterday at T-30 seconds because of detected minor helium leak.

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Endurance docks at ISS

9:16 am

Like clockwork SpaceX’s Endurance capsule successfully docked at ISS yesterday, delivering four astronauts to the station for a six month mission.

The most interesting aspect of this launch and crew is Russian Anna Kikina.

Kikina is the first Russian to fly aboard a U.S. spacecraft in nearly 20 years. She and Rubio were launched under a new agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that ensures at least one astronaut or cosmonaut is always aboard the space station even if a Crew Dragon or Soyuz is forced to depart early, taking its crew with it.

Without the seat-swap arrangement, a medical emergency or some other major problem could leave an all-Russian or all-NASA crew aboard without the expertise to operate the other nation’s systems.

The agreement had been stalled almost entirely by the former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. He is now gone however, sent by Putin to take over the fake occupation government in parts of the Ukraine. It appears his bellicose manner, that caused the loss of a billion dollars in launch contracts with OneWeb, was more than even Putin could handle.

With him gone, the new head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, quickly finalized this astronaut barter deal. He has also publicly acted to try to ease tensions between the U.S. and Russian space agencies.

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Startup smallsat rocket company signs spaceport deal with Brazil

9:02 am

The new colonial movement: A Canadian startup smallsat rocket company, C6 Launch Systems, has not only signed a spaceport deal with Brazil to build its own launchpad at that country’s Alcantara Space Center, it has also won its first launch customer.

First, the launchpad is for C6’s rocket, which is unnamed and designed to launch cubesats. The company webpage says they are aiming for suborbital flights in 2021 and orbital flights in 2022, but it is unclear if it has launched anything at this point.

Nonetheless, Brazil is very clearly teaming up with C6. The Brazilian air force hired it to build a launch pad, a Brazilian company, Concert Technologies, has awarded it a launch contract.

Concert Technologies S.A. who are developing a new small satellite constellation have signed a a non-exclusive letter of intent to launch three small satellites with C6 Launch. The broad agreement allows for Concert Technologies to schedule more launches to maintain and expand their high-resolution Earth Observation (EO) constellation.

It appears Concert’s satellites will be targeting both the Earth imagery market as well as communications services in the “internet of things.”

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October 6, 2022 Quick space links

3:43 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Martian crater and mesa sculpted by ancient flow

1:14 pm

Martian crater and mesa sculpted by ancient flow
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 15, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a crater whose ejecta has been sculpted to the east into a teardrop-shaped mesa by some ancient flow, coming from the west.

The crater itself is located in one of several outflow canyons draining out from the volcanic Tharsis Bulge into the northern lowland plain of Chryse Planitia, the biggest of which is Valles Marineris. This particular canyon is one of the smaller and is dubbed Ravi Vallis.

The overview map below illustrates why many scientists think the flow that shaped this mesa came from a catastrophic flood of liquid water, billions of years ago.
» Read more

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Important Roscosmos official endorses continuing cooperation with US in space

12:28 pm

In a clear sign of the distinct change in atmosphere since the removal of Dmitry Rogozin as head of Roscosmos, the executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, Sergei Krikalev, yesterday endorsed the longstanding cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in space.

Krikalev’s comments came after the launch yesterday of Endurance with one Russian astronaut as part of its four-person crew.

At a briefing after the Oct. 5 launch of the Crew-5 mission from the Kennedy Space Center, Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, emphasized long-running cooperation between the United States and Russia in civil space, cooperation that has been strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

“We just continue what we started many years ago in 1975 when the Apollo-Soyuz crew worked together, and now we continue our cooperation,” he said after mentioning a “new phase of cooperation” with the exchange of seats between NASA and Roscosmos.

To understand the importance of Krikalev’s comments, you must also understand the context. First, Krikalev is a very significant figure in the history of Russia. He was called the last Soviet citizen, having been stranded on Mir an extra few months when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Then he was the first Russian to fly on the shuttle, followed later by being on the first mission to ISS, when it was only two modules.

Since his retirement as an active astronaut, he has become the man in charge of Russia’s manned program, where he clashed with Rogozin several times over policy. His opposition to Rogozin almost certainly was a factor in Rogozin’s removal.

Krikalev’s endorsement of continuing the U.S-Russian partnership only cements that partnership, especially because Krikalev himself is a dyed-in-the-wool communist at heart. At least, he said so emphatically when I interviewed him at length in 2003 for Leaving Earth. I doubt his mind has changed in this matter, though his relentless honesty as an engineer has probably shaken his dedication to that failed ideology in subsequent years.

Nonetheless, his standing in Russia gives any statement he makes great weight. Expect more efforts by the Russians to ease tensions with the U.S., though their chances of success will be limited as long as Russia is continuing its unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine.

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Engineers still struggling to regain full control of CAPSTONE

10:50 am

Though its batteries are now getting charged by the Sun, engineers have still not regained full control of the smallsat lunar orbiter CAPSTONE, presently on its path towards the Moon.

As per the latest update:

The CAPSTONE mission team is continuing to work towards recovery of the spacecraft full three-axis control. This work includes collecting information from the spacecraft, running simulations, and refining recovery plans. The vehicle remains stable and power positive in its current configuration.

In other words, they’ve got the spacecraft oriented so that its solar panels can gather enough sunlight to charge the batteries, but its attitude remains incorrect and they do not yet have CAPSTONE fully under their control.

The spacecraft arrives in lunar orbit on November 13, 2022. At that time however it will have to do an engine burn to enter lunar orbit, and if full control is not regained by then this burn will not be possible because engineers will not be able to point it correctly.

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Falcon Heavy to finally launch again?

8:57 am

After three years of delays due to payload issues, it now appears that the next Falcon Heavy launch will likely occur near the end of October.

The tentative date is October 28th, but this is not yet confirmed. Though a manifest of a half dozen Falcon Heavy launches has existed since 2019, and most were originally scheduled for launch in 2020-2021, none has taken place, all supposedly because of payload delays not issues with the rocket itself.

SpaceX officials are now saying that it plans to complete six Falcon Heavy launches within the next twelve months. Two are for the military, three for commercial communications companies, and the last is the Psyche mission for NASA. This last launch is delayed because of software issues discovered in June, only a few weeks before launch. Whether it can fix these issues in time for a new July 2023 launch window remains questionable.

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Satellite about to burn up because Sherpa orbital tug has done nothing

8:46 am

Capitalism in space: A Boeing cubesat satellite launched last month is about to burn up as it returns to Earth because the Spaceflight Sherpa orbital tug that was supposed to raise its orbit has as yet done nothing.

Spaceflight planned to use a chemical propulsion system on the Sherpa, provided by Benchmark Space Systems, to raise the orbit of the vehicle to an altitude of 1,000 kilometers. The Sherpa payload, initially not disclosed by Spaceflight, is a V-band communications demonstration by Boeing called Varuna.

However, tracking information from the U.S. Space Force shows that Sherpa has yet to raise its orbit. Atmospheric drag has caused that orbit to gradually decay, and the spacecraft was most recently tracked in an orbit of 283 by 296 kilometers. That raised concerns that the spacecraft could reenter in a matter of weeks if it does not start firing its thrusters.

Spaceflight officials explain the lack of action is because they are still “commissioning” the tug, whatever that means. It also appears that problems was this same propulsion system caused SpaceX to ban Spaceflight in March as a customer on future rideshare launches.

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