Tag: spaceflight

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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FAA finally releases its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility

11:44 am

SpaceX's plan of operations at Boca Chica

After almost a half year of delays, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today released its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica, Texas, possibly recommending that future launches of Starship/Superheavy be allowed at that location but also leaving open the continuing ability of the federal government to block further flight tests.

The FAA determined that the Proposed Action would not result in significant environmental consequences and has issued a Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision (FONSI/ROD). … Required mitigation measures are listed throughout Chapter 3 of the final PEA [the environmental reassessment]. Should any future license or permit be issued to SpaceX to perform any aspect of the Proposed Action, the FAA will ensure that SpaceX implements these mitigation measures as conditions for licensure.

You can read the executive summary here [pdf]. The actual reassessment [referred to as the PEA] can be read here [pdf]. The key quote, on page 2 of the reassessment, is this:

The applicant has provided the FAA with a mission profile of proposed launch operations that is
analyzed in this PEA. The FAA’s Federal Action is to issue experimental permit(s) and/or a vehicle operator license to SpaceX for this mission profile, which is described in more detail in Section 2.1. If SpaceX modifies or adds operations as part of its Starship/Super Heavy program in the future, the FAA would analyze the environmental impacts of those activities in a tiered environmental document, which would summarize the issues discussed in this PEA that remain applicable (e.g., the environment around the Boca Chica launch site) and concentrate on the issues specific to the subsequent action (e.g., a mission profile involving a new landing site).

The completion of the environmental review process does not guarantee that the FAA will issue an experimental permit or vehicle operator license to SpaceX for Starship/Super Heavy launches at the launch site. [emphasis mine]

Essentially, SpaceX — after some revisions based on public comments — provided the FAA a detailed outline of its proposed operations, as summarized by the graph above (taken from the executive summary), and the FAA agreed to that program. However, this agreement by the FAA does not include any actual permits for flights or tests.

Furthermore, this recommendation by the FAA is not final. The reassessment also included in great detail a second option, dubbed the “No Action Alternative”:

Under the No Action Alternative, the FAA would not issue new experimental permits or licenses to SpaceX for any test or launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site. In this situation, SpaceX’s production and manufacturing that that do not require a license from the FAA or approval by any other federal agencies would continue at its existing facilities and production and manufacturing infrastructure would expand. Testing operations, including tank tests and static fire engine tests, that do not require approval by the FAA or other federal agencies would also continue at the VLA. In addition, SpaceX could conduct missions of the Starship prototype launch vehicle as authorized by the current license (LRLO 20‐119). 6 The license expires on May 27, 2023. This alternative provides the basis for comparing the environmental consequences of the Proposed Action.

Under this alternative, SpaceX operations at Boca Chica would be severely limited, and would essentially end in May ’23.

In reviewing both documents, it appears that the FAA has given SpaceX a go-ahead with this reassessment, but done so with many caveats. It will issue SpaceX its launch permits, probably on a per launch basis, each of which will require SpaceX to meet more than 130 pages of further environmental and social justice requirements. As noted in the first quote above, should SpaceX fail to meet any of those mitigation measures, future permits will be blocked.

Furthermore, the reassessment appears to have left it open for the White House to choose the “No Action Alternative.”

In either case this reassessment appears to have given any number of agencies within the federal government — including the White House — the clear ability to block SpaceX’s operations repeatedly, after each test flight.

I suspect SpaceX will immediately apply for a launch permit, and hope that political pressure will force the federal agencies to approve that permit.

NOTE: This analysis is based on a first quick review. The documents are long and purposely written to make it hard to figure out what is being proposed. More review is still required.

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Perseverance gets close to its first cliff

9:55 am

Perseverance's first cliff
Click for full image.

Time for some cool images from Perseverance! The rover, now on Mars for more than a year, has finally begun its journey up the delta of material that some time in the past flowed through a gap in the rim of Jezero Crater. In doing so, it has also finally got close to a nearby cliff, within fifty feet or so, and used its high resolution left mast camera (mastcam) to take the photos to the right. The first, cropped and reduced to post here, was a wider shot taken on June 10, 2022, with the red arrow pointing to the part of the cliff featured in the second image below, taken on June 12, 2022, after the rover had moved in closer. This second photo is also cropped and reduced to post here.
» Read more

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Astra launch a failure when upper stage shuts down prematurely

11:09 am

Capitalism in space: A launch attempt today by Astra of two NASA weather cubesats, designed to study the evolution of storms in the tropics, was a failure when the upper stage engine shut down prematurely.

This was the second launch failure for Astra out of three launch attempts in 2022. Both this failure and the February 10th failure occurred after the first stage has successfully done its job. The first was due to the failure of the fairings to separate. Today the fairing ejected properly, but then the second stage engine failed.

The launch however did illustrate something quite profound. Though it occurred about one hour and forty-three minutes into its two hour launch window, the launch team was able to recycle the count three times due to various issues and still launch. What makes this significant is that such quick countdown recycles have now become very routine.

When SpaceX did its first quick countdown recycle back during its first Falcon-1 launches in the 2000s it was astonishing, as NASA would never do such a thing. If a NASA shuttle launch aborted close to launch, the agency would always stand down for at least a day to figure things out. Even today, its ability to do a quick countdown recycle with its SLS rocket is almost impossible, as shown during its first attempt to do a dress rehearsal countdown of SLS in April. With each abort the agency had to reschedule for the next day or even later. It had little ability to quickly turn things around.

Private enterprise has since proven that such slow operations are inefficient and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Astra needs to fix this issue and launch again. It was able to investigate and fix the fairing issue that caused that February launch failure in just over a month. Hopefully it can do the same again.

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Russia proposes restart of ExoMars partnership with ESA

8:17 am

Russia’s aerospace corporation Roscosmos has proposed to the European Space Agency (ESA) that its partnership to launch and land ESA’s Franklin rover on Mars be renewed, despite the Ukraine War and Roscosmos’ confiscation of 36 OneWeb satellites.

[According to Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin] the equipment and Kazachok landing platform for the mission have the potential for launch in 2024. “ESA colleagues promised to make requests to their patrons, who are ESA member states. If they cooperate and give their consent, the mission may be implemented,” Rogozin said.

He estimates the likelihood of this scenario to be at about 708%. [sic] Roscosmos plans to get the response in late June. [emphasis mine]

It would not be surprising if ESA made this deal, despite its stupidity. Roscosmos’ actions recently, especially related to OneWeb, prove the people running it are very untrustworthy business partners. Yet Europe’s historic willingness to deal with the devil for short term gain — eventually and repeatedly leading to overall disaster — is legendary.

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Momentus’s space tug successfully deploys two smallsats, despite communications issue

8:21 pm

Capitalism in space: In a brief update released on May 31st, Momentus announced that despite the communications issues engineers are having with the communications system on its Vigoride space tug, it was still able to successfully deploy two smallsats several days earlier.

The update also says that the company plans “… to continue work to address the anomalies on the Vigoride spacecraft announced on May 27 and deploy additional customer satellites.”

Based on these updates, as well as the company’s description of this mission, it is not clear how many other smallsats still need to be deployed.

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Russian government gives Roscosmos permission to negotiate astronaut barter deal

8:00 pm

The Russian prime minister yesterday signed a decree giving Roscosmos permission to negotiate a astronaut exchange deal with NASA, whereby for every American that flies on a Soyuz to ISS one Russian would fly on either a Dragon or Starliner capsule.

NASA has been pushing for this arrangement for about a year, but Russia was at first skittish about flying on Dragon. Then its invasion of the Ukraine raised further barriers. Now that it is clear the Russians have no options in space but to stick with ISS for at least the next few years, the Russian government has relented and will allow this barter arrangement to go forward.

NASA had been pushing to put the first Russian on a Dragon in the fall. That flight is now likely to happen.

Of course, all this could change should things change drastically in the Ukraine. The partnership on ISS remains quite fragile politically, even if the astronauts and engineers and workers of both sides continue to work together well.

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