Tag: spaceflight

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.
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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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Dusty Gale Crater in the winter

11:18 am

Curiosity's view to the north, May 25, 2022
Click on image for full resolution panorama. For original photos, go here, here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from five images taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera on May 25, 2022, looks north across the floor of Gale Crater at its rim about 25 miles away.

The butte on the left I think (though I am not certain) is the backside of the same butte seen from the front in December 2021. Then, Curiosity was below it looking up. Now, Curiosity is above it looking down.

For scale, that butte is about ten feet high. Navarro Mountain on the right is about 450 feet high, but looks less impressive because it is farther away.

It is now winter in Gale Crater, a time period when there is more dust in the atmosphere. This fact becomes very evident if you compare this panorama with a similar one taken in December 2021 in the Martian fall. Then, the air is crystal clear, and the rim can be seen in great detail. Now, though visible (barely) on the left, the haze makes the more distant peaks on the right almost invisible.

Curiosity has climbed about 1,750 feet since it landed in 2012. It is still about 12,600 feet below the peak of Mount Sharp. The blue dot and yellow lines in the overview map to the right indicates Curiosity’s location when the panorama was taken, and the approximate area covered by it.

Be sure and look at the full resolution panorama, especially the section near the middle, where the dramatic nature of this terrain is most evident.

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Stratolaunch test flight of Roc ends prematurely

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: A recent Stratolaunch test flight of its giant carrier airplane Roc was ended prematurely because engineers had detected an unexpected “test result”.

“While completing Roc testing operations, we encountered a test result that made it clear we would not achieve all objectives for this flight,” the California-based company, which was created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen more than a decade ago, said in Twitter update. “We made the decision to land, review the data, and prepare for our next flight.”

The company has provided little additional information. The flight itself was planned to last as much as 3.5 hours, but only lasted about an hour and a half.

Stratolaunch’s present plan is to offer Roc and its Talon-A payload as a testbed for testing hypersonic flight.

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Delay in Psyche launch wrecks smallsat asteroid mission

9:18 am

The two month delay in the launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission because of software issues has apparently wrecked a smallsat asteroid mission that was to launch as a secondary payload on the Falcon Heavy rocket.

Janus, a NASA smallsat mission selected in 2019, will launch two identical spacecraft as secondary payloads on the Falcon Heavy rocket whose primary payload is Psyche. After a series of Earth flybys, each Janus spacecraft was to fly by different binary asteroids, designated 1996 FG3 and 1991 VH.

However, the mission’s principal investigator said June 8 that mission plan is no longer possible. Speaking at a meeting of NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), Dan Scheeres of the University of Colorado noted that mission plan assumed Psyche launched in August of this year as previously planned. NASA announced May 23 that the mission’s launch had been delayed to no earlier than Sept. 20 to provide more time for testing the spacecraft’s software.

With the revised launch date, he said it’s no longer possible for the spacecraft to perform those Earth flybys with the existing spacecraft design. “Those flybys were essential for setting up our flybys of our target binaries, 1991 VH and 1996 FG3,” he said.

The Janus team are right now scrambling to see if they can find other asteroids the spacecraft can reach, based on the new launch date. Their work however is badly hampered by the uncertainty of that date, which could still change for many reasons.

The heart of the problem, as Scheeres notes, is its status as a secondary payload.

“We have no ability to influence the launch dates or the targeting of the launch vehicle, and that arises from our status as a rideshare,” he said.

The article also describes two other NASA interplanetary smallsat missions that have been badly hindered because of their status as secondary payloads. All three stories strongly suggest that in the future it will make much more sense to put such missions on its own rocket, as the primary payload. This is what NASA did with its CAPSTONE smallsat mission to the Moon, which will launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket sometime before the end of the month.

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Update on Starship in Texas and Florida

9:01 am

Link here. The article goes into great detail describing the status of the Superheavy booster prototype and the Starship prototype now planned for that first orbital launch, with this comment:

While some claim FAA is the hold up for Starship plans [I wonder who], even if the FAA had approved a launch in December of last year, SpaceX likely still would not have been ready for an orbital launch.

Maybe so, but why do journalists today have to bend over backwards making believe the federal government is not a problem, or is not interfering with this private company’s operations? It clearly is a problem, and is interfering with private companies, and it is doing so more and more for political reasons. Good reporting must note this.

The report also provides details on the status of SpaceX’s Florida Starship orbital launchpad. The company only began serious construction in Florida in April, yet large sections of the launch tower as well as its foundation have already been built. The pace of construction — as well as SpaceX’s past history building the Boca Chica launchpad — suggests this launchpad could be ready before the end of the year.

Compare that with NASA’s incompetent effort to build its SLS mobile launchers. The contrast is striking.

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SLS’s 2nd mobile launcher to cost more than $1.5 billion, 3x what was initially budgeted

11:47 am

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

According to an inspector general report [pdf] released today, the second mobile launcher being built by the company Bechtel to transport its SLS rocket from the assembly building to the launch site is likely going to cost more than $1.5 billion, three times what was initially budgeted, and will not be completed any earlier than the end of 2027, four years behind schedule.

Compounding Bechtel’s projected cost increases and schedule delays, an ML-2 [mobile launcher-2] project analysis provided only a 3.9 percent confidence level that the nearly $1 billion cost [twice the original budget] and October 2025 [2.5 years late] delivery estimates were accurate. NASA requires projects to develop budgets and schedules consistent with a 70 percent joint cost and schedule confidence level (JCL), meaning a 70 percent likelihood the project will finish equal to or less than the planned costs and schedule. In fact, an Independent Review Team analysis determined the project would require an additional $447 million and 27 months, for a total contract value of $1.5 billion and a launcher delivery date of December 2027—a schedule that would enable an Artemis IV launch no earlier than the end of 2028.

The first mobile launcher, shown on the left in the graphic, cost more than $1 billion and will used only three times, at most. The second, on the right, is required for all of the assigned interplanetary tasks being given to the full size version of SLS beyond those first three test flights. Without it that version of SLS cannot launch. And even if the launcher is ready by 2028, as the IG report suggests, that will be more than a decade behind schedule, and six years from now.
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