Tag: spaceflight

NASA extends Ingenuity’s mission through September ’22

9:31 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

NASA yesterday officially extended Ingenuity’s flight operations on Mars at least through September 2022, outlining in detail the helicopter’s hoped-for flight targets.

The map to the right shows the helicopter’s present location with the green dot, with its two possible future routes proceeding from this location indicated by dashed lines. The red dot indicates Perseverance’s present location, with its planned route from this spot indicated by the dashed lines.

Scheduled for no earlier than March 19, Ingenuity’s next flight will be a complex journey, about 1,150 feet (350 meters) in length, that includes a sharp bend in its course to avoid a large hill. After that, the team will determine whether two or three more flights will be required to complete the crossing of northwest Séítah.

Once Ingenuity crosses the rough terrain and reaches the delta, it will then be used to do more route scouting for the rover.

Upon reaching the delta, Ingenuity’s first orders will be to help determine which of two dry river channels Perseverance should take when it’s time to climb to the top of the delta. Along with routing assistance, data provided by the helicopter will help the Perseverance team assess potential science targets. Ingenuity may even be called upon to image geologic features too far afield (or outside of the rover’s traversable zone), or perhaps scout landing zones and caching sites for the Mars Sample Return program.

This ambitious plan exists because both the helicopter and its engineering team have far exceeded expectations. At the moment, there is no obvious reason why Ingenuity cannot continue to operate for years, an expectation that no one predicted.

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Launching a rocket using atomic explosions?

2:12 pm

Glenn Reynolds and Leigh Outten have just co-written a short paper advocating the use of “pulsed nuclear space propulsion” to launch rockets. You can download it here.

The concept, as first described in the 1950s, is described in the paper as follows:

It is not a tremendous surprise that when you set off an atomic bomb next to something, that something will move. That it could also remain essentially intact, however, was considerably more surprising. The challenge for the Orion team was to produce a spacecraft that could function after being subjected to not one, but many, nearby nuclear detonations, and that could be steered and navigated by an onboard crew.

This turned out to be easier than it sounds. The Orion spacecraft design that resulted involved a large steel “pusher” plate, behind a rather large spacecraft with a total weight of over 4,000 tons. That sort of design is very different from the spaceships we’re used to today.

The bulk of their paper reviews the legal obstacles to launching such rockets, as both the Outer Space Treaty and the Limited Test Ban Treaty put limits on the use of nuclear weapons in space. The paper argues that these limits would not apply to rockets propelled by atomic explosions, since the explosions would not be used as weapons.

The paper also argues that the technical obstacles for building such rockets are also solvable, and might even be easy to solve. This particular quote stood out starkly to me:
» Read more

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OneWeb and Arianespace scramble to find a rocket to launch satellites

10:26 am

Capitalism in space: With the cancellation of the last six Soyuz-2 launches for OneWeb and Arianespace due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, the two companies are struggling to find an alternative rocket to launch the remaining 216 satellites that would complete OneWeb’s satellite constellation.

OneWeb has already paid Arianespace for the launches, so the responsibility to get the satellites in orbit is at present Arianespace’s. The problem is that its flight manifest for both the Ariane-5 (being retired) and the new Ariane-6 rocket are presently full.

Going to another rocket provider is problematic, even if a deal could be negotiated. The flight manifest for ULA’s Atlas-5 and Vulcan rockets is also filled. Though SpaceX’s Falcon 9 could probably launch the satellites, that company’s Starlink satellite constellation is in direct competition with OneWeb, which makes it unlikely the two companies could make a deal.

There have been negotiations with India to use its rockets, but it is unclear at present whether this will work.

One other option is to buy a lot of launches from the smallsat rockets of Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbiter, and Astra. This will likely cost more because more launches will be required, and that would required a complex negotiation between all parties.

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India successfully tests solid rocket booster for its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle

10:11 am

The new colonial movement: India yesterday successfully completed a ground test of the solid rocket booster to be used in its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV).

SSLV was originally scheduled for launch in 2020 but was put on hold for two years when India panicked over the Wuhan flu. ISRO, India’s space agency, hopes now to complete the first launch in the next two months.

The two-year delay cost ISRO significantly in the international smallsat market. While American private companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra continued to launch throughout the epidemic and thus garner business from the smallsat market, India’s market share shrunk. Whether it can recover that share once SSLV begins flying remains to be seen. India’s willingness to shut down so easily will I think make satellite companies hesitate before buying its services.

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Mark Vande Hei sets new record for longest American space flight

10:03 am

Mark Vande Hei today set a new record for the longest American space flight, exceeding the 340 days flown by Scott Kelly on ISS in 2012-2013.

Since Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth on March 30th, his total record flight time should end up being 355 days, just short of a full year.

Vande Hei arrived at the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on April 9, 2021, knowing at the time that he would be there for at least for the five to six months that is typical today for expedition crew members. His mission was extended by NASA in September to allow for a Russian movie crew to visit the orbiting complex and, more importantly, protect against a crew rotation schedule that could leave the station without any Americans on board.

Vande Hei’s record will be the fifth longest, behind four other Russians on Mir. Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov were the first to complete a year long flight in 1987-1988. Valery Polyakov holds the record for the longest flight, 437 days in 1994-1995. Sergei Avdeyev’s flight of 381 days on Mir in 1998-1999 is the second longest.

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Astra successfully completes its second orbital launch

9:44 am

Capitalism in space: After a February 10, 2022 launch failure, the rocket startup Astra today successfully completed its second orbital launch and first in 2022, putting its first commercial payloads into orbit.

Unfortunately the separation and deployment of a payload platform from the upper stage had not been confirmed as of this posting. While the payloads can still function attached to the upper stage (they are not fully functional satellites), if this deployment turns out to be a failure it will put a stain on the launch. Astra confirmed the successful deployment of the payloads about an hour after launch.

That the company could investigate a launch failure, fix the problem, and resume launches in just over a month however speaks well for its future. If the deployment failed fixing it should proceed as quickly. Meanwhile, the company announced yesterday a new multi-launch contract through 2025 with Spaceflight, which finds launches for smallsats and also provides a small tug to move them into their preferred orbit.launches.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race remain unchanged:

10 SpaceX
5 China
2 ULA
2 Russia

The U.S. now leads China 16 to 5 in the national rankings.

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Entire Russian communications satellite industry threatened by Russia’s Ukraine invasion

9:12 am

Because almost all Russian communications satellites rely on western components, the sanctions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of the Ukraine will likely prevent the future launch of any such satellites.

The overwhelmingly wide sanctions against the Kremlin left practically no chance for Russia to complete any of its communications satellites in the development pipeline at the time due to their dependency on Western payloads.

Conceivably, Russia could turn to China for necessary components or/and Moscow could try again developing necessary competencies inside the country, but given little signs of progress on both of those fronts in the past, it could probably take years if not decades before all the technological gaps could be closed and it would be even more difficult to do under much harsher economic conditions and export controls. It is also a question whether China would be interested in boosting strategically important industries in Russia with potential military implications or whether it would want to challenge the Western sanctions regime by putting at risk its far more important trade relations with the United States.

The article at the link also notes the generally low quality of Russian communications satellites, which for example generally last only five to six years, compared to the 10 to 15 year lifespan of western satellites. This low quality has meant that Russia has been unable to sell this technology to anyone outside Russia.

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Mesa in the Martian northern lowlands

3:21 pm

Mesa in the dry northern lowlands
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 2, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows a mesa sticking up on the relatively flat and featureless northern lowland plains in Utopia Planitia, the second largest impact basin on Mars.

The full image shows three such mesas. Though pictures taken in the northern lowlands of Utopia tend to show evidence of buried ice or glaciers, the impression I get from this picture is one of dryness. If there is any ice here, it is below ground. And even that seems unlikely. The surface surrounding nearby craters does not have that squishy and slushy look that is seen in the north when an impact occurred on near surface ice. Instead, the ground looks solid.

The overview map below reinforces this impression.
» Read more

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Russia today confirmed it will return NASA astronaut as planned

9:12 am

As expected, Russia today confirmed in its state-run TASS news agency that NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will come back to Earth in its Soyuz capsule on March 30th, as planned.

The Soyuz MS-19 space capsule with Anton Shkaplerov, Pyotr Dubrov and Mark Vande Hei is expected to land on March 30. Dubrov and Vande Hei arrived on the ISS in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft together with Oleg Novitsky. This descent module brought back to Earth the two feature film crew members – actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko, who had arrived on the ISS together with Anton Shkaplerov in the Soyuz MS-19 on October 5.

There had been a number of stories in the mainstream press suggesting the Russians would leave Vande Hei behind in response to the international sanctions being imposed on Russia because of its invasion of the Ukraine. All were based on a single comment by Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin, who had simply noted visuals from a Russian news source and aired in the U.S. that showed the Russian half of ISS separating away and leaving Vande Hei behind. Rogozin was only noting that the U.S. press was worried about this possibility.

There was no chance the Russians would separate its half of ISS now. Zero. To do such a thing will require several months of preparation. For example, the Russian half has at least one module, Zvezda, that is failing. If Russia ever creates its own new space station using part of ISS, it will have to launch some new modules first.

Also, for Russia to leave Vande Hei behind would be a public relations disaster that would only make worse the disaster of its invasion of the Ukraine. Russia might end its partnership at ISS in the near future, but it won’t do it in a way that might threaten the lives of any astronauts, from any nation.

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Supernova discovered in Cartwheel galaxy

8:54 am

Cartwheel Galaxy, before and after supernova
Click for full image.

Cool image time! In reviewing a December 2021 image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken by the New Technology Telescope in Chile, astronomers noticed something that was not there in earlier images, a new supernovae.

The photo above, reduced to post here, compares a 2014 image, taken by the Very Large Telescope, with the 2021 photo. In the lower left of the new image is a bright object not in the previous photo.

This event, called SN2021afdx, is a type II supernova, which occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its evolution. Supernovae can cause a star to shine brighter than its entire host galaxy and can be visible to observers for months, or even years — a blink of an eye on astronomical timescales. Supernovae are one of the reasons astronomers say we are all made of stardust: they sprinkle the surrounding space with heavy elements forged by the progenitor star, which may end up being part of later generations of stars, the planets around them and life that may exist in those planets.

Cartwheel is about 500 million light years away, and because of its bright outer ring is one one of the more unusual nearby galaxies.

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Ingenuity completes 21st flight on Mars

3:54 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet today from JPL, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has successfully completed its 21st flight on Mars, traveling 1,214 feet in two minutes and nine seconds at an average speed of 12.6 feet per second.

The red dot on the map to the right shows Perseverance’s location as of today. The green dot indicates Ingenuity’s position before the 21st flight. Since neither the Perseverance nor the helicopter teams have posted any updates describing the 21st flight, it is difficult to indicate a precise location for its landing site. All we know is that the helicopter is supposed to fly to the northwest, cutting across the rougher region while the rover follows the tan dotted line around that rough region, with both targeting the delta to the northwest.

As a guess, I have placed a black dot about 1,200 feet to the northwest.

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Russia to lose seventeen launches due to Ukraine sanctions

9:43 am

This article at Space News today provides a nice summary of the number of launches that Russia’s Roscosmos will likely lose in the next three years due to the break off of commercial operations against that country because of its invasion of the Ukraine.

According to the article, Russia will lose sixteen launches. The list however misses one South Korean satellite scheduled for launch on an Angara rocket later this year. The total breakdown of this lost business is therefore as follows:

13 launches lost in 2022
3 launches lost in 2023
1 launch lost in 2024

The entities impacted are as follows:

Government launches:
Europe: six launches in ’22 and ’23, totaling eight satellites
South Korea: two launches in ’22
Sweden: one launch in ’22

Commercial launches:
OneWeb: six launches in ’22, totaling 199 satellites
Axelspace: one launch, totaling four satellites
Synspective: one launch

If the Ukraine War were to end today, it is possible that most of the government launches would be reinstated. The commercial companies however are almost certainly going to find other launch providers, no matter what. OneWeb for example is hardly going to trust its business to Russia after that country cancelled the launches and (at least at this moment) has confiscated the already delivered satellites.

If the war continues for another two or three months, then all this business will vanish for good, as alternative rocket companies will likely be found.

This list however does reveal one interesting fact. It appears that very few private companies have been interested in buying Russian launch services, with or without the Ukraine War. Most of Russia’s international customers have been other governments. Even OneWeb falls partly into this category, as it is half owned by the United Kingdom.

This fact suggests that Russia’s product has simply not been competitive against the new commercial market. The governments meanwhile probably had political motives in addition to economics to throw their business Russia’s way. Those political motives are now gone.

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