Tag: spaceflight

Lucy gets a bonus asteroid during its tour of the Trojans

9:44 am

Lucy's planned journey
Click for full image.

While doing observations in March of one of the eight asteroids the Lucy asteroid will visit in the two Trojan asteroid regions fore and aft of Jupiter, scientists discovered it had a companion, thus increasing the total asteroids to be seen close-up by Lucy to nine.

One of the Trojan asteroids on Lucy’s tour, named Polymele, has a companion. Scientists discovered an apparent satellite of Polymele during a ground-based occultation observation in March, when Polymele briefly passed in front of a star, temporarily blocking its light from reaching Earth. The occultation observations were intended to help the Lucy science team determine the shape of Polymele, which only appears as a point of light in telescope images.

“We got a really nice projected shape of Polymele, and then we were very surprised to detect an object about 200 kilometers (120 miles) away from Polymele,” Levison said last week in a presentation to NASA’s Small Bodies Advisory Group. “It’s 5 kilometers (3 miles) in diameter, and it’s sitting almost exactly in Polymele’s equatorial plane.”

Lucy’s science team has temporarily named the object Shaun, after “Shaun the Sheep” in the show “Wallace and Gromit.”

The graphic above, from the Lucy science team, shows the spacecraft’s planned journey during its mission.

Engineers continue their attempts to fully open one of Lucy’s two solar arrays. On June 9th they successfully used the array’s deployment motors again for a short burst to further open the array. The plan is to repeat these short bursts with the hope the array will eventually latch into its intended open position.

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SLS dress rehearsal countdown set for June 20th with launch delayed again

9:28 am

According to NASA officials, the next attempt to complete a dress rehearsal countdown for its SLS rocket will take place on June 20, 2022, with the earliest date an actual launch can occur delayed again, and now set at best for an August 23 to September 6 window.

The article also notes that during a different press conference, NASA administrator Bill Nelson hinted that “there could be slips” in the present target date of ‘2025 for landing humans on the Moon.

Ya think? I guarantee that NASA will not land humans on the Moon in ’25, at least not using SLS. Based on all the issues confronting SLS, as well as NASA’s normal way of doing things, this mission will certainly slip at least one to two more years. And I am being very very very very optimistic.

We must also note that when first proposed by Bush Jr. in 2004, he predicted a NASA manned lunar landing by 2015, which means this launch will be at least one decade behind schedule, with it more likely being later than that.

But then, I can hear our glorious president yelling at me for complaining. “C’mon man! What’s a decade or two when you’re scheduling something important?”

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Curiosity: Into the mountains

11:48 am

Panorama on Mars, June 15, 2022
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The journey of Curiosity into the mountains of Gale Crater continues. The photo above, taken on June 15, 2022 by the rover’s left navigation camera, looks straight ahead at one possible route into those mountains.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right indicates Curiosity’s position. The yellow lines show the approximate area covered by the photo, by my estimate. The recurring slope lineae is a streak that comes and goes seasonally, and could be caused by some form of seepage. The marker layer, as indicated by the arrows, is a geological layer found at about the same elevation in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp.

The red dotted line indicates the planned route of Curiosity, which it is presently striving to return to, having been forced to retreat from the Greenheugh Pediment because of its too-rough terrain.

For scale, Navarro Mountain is estimated to be about 450 feet high. Thus, the peak in the center of the panorama, which I think is the large mesa in the lower right corner of the overview map, is probably twice that height, about 1,500 to 1,700 feet high, and much higher than the two mesas that frame it on either side. Distance and perspective hide this difference.

When Curiosity finally gets inside Gediz Vallis and close to the side of that many-layered mesa, the view should be unbelievably amazing.

The science team has not yet revealed the precise route they plan to take to return to the planned route. While they may aim straight over the saddle in the photo above, I suspect they will instead bear west, following ground that is less steep.

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Our oppressive federal government really does want to squash SpaceX

10:35 am

Targeted by the government for destruction
Targeted by the government for destruction

In order to understand the full context of the FAA’s environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas and its approval of Starship/Superheavy launches there, it is important to take a closer look at the entire document [pdf] that was released on June 13, 2022. While that approval will now allow SpaceX to proceed, the nature of the document shows us that this government permission has been given very reluctantly, and that there are factions in the federal bureaucracy that are working hard to lay the groundwork to block it at first opportunity.

First, what did the reassessment conclude about the impact of future heavy-lift rocket launches at Boca Chica?

In summary, the FAA concluded that SpaceX’s planned operations “would not result in significant environmental consequences.” [emphasis mine] It then proceeded to provide many pages of analysis for each of the following issues, with almost all coming to the same exact conclusion [emphasis mine]:
» Read more

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OneWeb successfully tests airplane wi-fi using its satellites

10:12 am

Capitalism in space: During an eleven hour test flight, OneWeb has successfully tested the use of its satellite constellation to provide wi-fi service during long international flights.

Flight tests will continue throughout the rest of this year, with certification of the Sidewinder terminal expected in mid-2023. OneWeb expects to launch its new service in the middle of next year. It has so far launched about two-thirds of its 648-strong constellation of satellites.

This puts the OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink constellation in direct competition, since both will be offering this service directly to airlines. Thus, for both the airlines and their customers, this competition will likely not only lower price, it will improve service.

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South Korea postpones tomorrow’s second test launch of its Nuri rocket

9:57 am

The new colonial movement: Because of unexpected sensor reading in the oxygen tank as the rocket was lifted upright at the launch pad, South Korea has postponed its planned launch tomorrow of its home-built Nuri rocket.

According to KARI [South Korea’s space agency], readings of the oxidizer tank sensor normally change when the rocket is being erected. Readings on Nuri’s sensor, however, did not show any change during the process. “The sensor itself could be problematic, or it could be an issue with the cable or the terminal box,” the official said.

This launch would have been the second attempt to complete an orbital launch, with the first Nuri launch failing in October 2021 when tanks inside the third stage broke free during launch.

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Evidence of explosion in ’21 detected from orbital images of Chinese launchpad

9:46 am

Explosion at Chinese spaceporty
Click for full image.

Using orbital images, an amateur space observer has detected evidence that an explosion had occurred at the Chinese Jiuquan spaceport some time in October 2021.

Evidence of the explosion was discovered by space enthusiast Harry Stranger using imagery from Airbus and CNES and posted on Twitter June 10.

The incident occurred at facilities constructed around 16 kilometers to the southwest of Jiuquan’s two main launch complexes. The pair of launch pads are used by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) for hypergolic Long March rocket launches for human spaceflight, civil, military and scientific missions and were unaffected by the blast.

…Further satellite imagery from Planet’s Super Dove satellites seen by SpaceNews indicates that the explosion occurred between 0316 UTC on Oct. 15 and 0407 UTC Oct. 16 (11:16 p.m, Oct. 14 and 12:07 a.m. October 16 Eastern).

At almost exactly the same time China had launched a manned mission from this same spaceport, so the explosion apparently was not related to that launch. Instead, the images suggest that this was related to testing of solid rockets, and could be related as well to the delay in any further launches of the Kuaizhou-11 rocket. According to a press release several months earlier, that rocket was being prepared for a launch by the end of 2021, but no such launch ever occurred.

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Dragon cargo launch now delayed until July to fix fuel leak

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: Having now identified the source of a toxic hydrazine fuel leak in a Dragon cargo capsule that had been scheduled for launch on June 10th, SpaceX has now delayed the launch until July 11th so that it can fix the leak.

After removing propellant from the vehicle, “SpaceX was able to narrow down the source of the issue to a Draco thruster valve inlet joint,” the agency said. “Teams will now remove the specific hardware to replace it ahead of flight.”

Based on standard SpaceX procedures, it will not only replace this one valve, it will carefully figure out why it failed, and introduce an upgrade to all such valves so that this leak issue is never repeated. Such a policy has generally not been followed with much enthusiasm by older rocket companies in the past half century. The result had been the reappearance of such problems again and again, instead of a slow decline as each was found and eliminated.

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Sierra Space developing crewed version of Dream Chaser; will train astronauts

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: In a press release mostly focused on touting the company’s new project to establish a training center for astronauts, Sierra Space dropped this bigger story:

A crewed variant of the Dream Chaser spaceplane is currently in development and will be operational in 2026, having successfully completed its System Requirements Review (SRR) earlier this month. Orbital Reef will be on orbit and operational in 2027.

Though it was always expected that the company would upgrade the cargo version of Dream Chaser it is presently building, until now it had been made no announcement to that effect. Moreover, until now Sierra Space has functioned much like the old big space companies, doing nothing without a contract from NASA. This effort to build a manned version of Dream Chaser is apparently occurring without any such contract. All Sierra has right now is a contract to launch cargo to ISS.

The astronaut training center fits in nicely with this new manned Dream Chaser, which also fits in nicely with Sierra Space’s partnership to build the commercial space station Orbital Reef.

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Ingenuity successfully completes its 29th flight on Mars

3:51 pm

Ingenuity's 29th flight, estimated

Based on this tweet posted yesterday, Ingenuity has successfully completed its 29th flight on Mars, placing it in “a better communication position with the rover.”

According to the helicopter’s flight log, the flight lasted about 66 seconds, was about 587 feet long, and had a maximum altitude of 33 feet.

On the overview map to the right the green dot marks Ingenuity’s position before the flight. The yellow line is my guess as to the approximate flight path for this 29th flight. In this new position the helicopter is better aligned with the hollow that Perseverance will climb (as indicated by the red dotted line), and will therefore also have better line of sight communications with it.

The flight itself tells us that the engineers have not only gotten the helicopter recharged, they have developed new flight software to compensate for the loss of a sensor that was used to determine Ingenuity’s elevation.

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Momentus concedes its Vigoride tug will probably not be able to deploy more satellites

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: Momentus yesterday conceded that because of the problems that have dogged the first flight of its Vigoride tug, it will probably not be able to deploy the remaining smallsats on board.

Previously the company had said that communications issues were interfering with deployment. This update revealed that the tug’s solar arrays had also not opened as intended.

After initially experiencing these anomalies, we were able to deploy two customer satellites from Vigoride on May 28. Since that time, we have continued efforts to deploy other customer satellites, but have not confirmed any subsequent deployments. While we previously established two-way communications with the Vigoride vehicle, we have not been able to continue such two-way communication, which we believe is due to the low power situation on the vehicle due to the deployable solar arrays not operating as intended.

Though this update is very unclear on this point, it appears that Vigoride was able to deploy three objects in total, or a total of six smallsats. How many additional smallsats failed to deploy is not clear.

The company plans its next launch in November, with additional launches next year.

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Test of solar sail for de-orbiting smallsat ends successfully

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: The Canadian company Space Flight Labs announced yesterday that its first test of a solar sail for de-orbiting a small satellite ended successfully last month.

The CanX-7 (Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7) was a three-kilogram, 10x10x34cm satellite that was launched on September 26, 2016. The satellite was funded by the Defence Research and Development Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, COM DEV Ltd. (now Honeywell), and the Canadian Space Agency.

According to SFL [Space Flight Labs] “the satellite successfully completed a seven-month aircraft tracking campaign before deploying its drag sails in May 2017 to demonstrate drag-sail based deorbiting.” SFL said it took five years for the drag sail to deorbit the satellite and without it the satellite wouldn’t have burned up in the atmosphere for roughly another 178 year.

When the four drag sails, each about one square meter in size, were deployed, engineers immediately measured an increase in the orbital decay rate. Though it still took five years to force a de-orbit, the system removed the satellite from orbit much sooner than otherwise.

The system is aimed at the smallsat market, satellites too small for other proposed removal methods that also might remain stranded in orbit for a very long time because of their small size.

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