Tag: spaceflight

The Great Space Race

1:00 pm

Yesterday the private commercial launch company SpaceX broke ground on its own private spaceport near Brownsville, Texas.

“This feels great. It feels like the future,” [SpaceX founder Elon] Musk said at the ground-breaking. … He intends to have the first launch in late 2016, with an initial 12 launches a year. Ultimately, “thousands of launches,” he projected. Furthermore, “when we start doing commercial crew activities, I would expect us to launch a crew from here,” he said.

The significance of this construction is not trivial. This will be the first spaceport built by a private company that will be used to launch its privately-built commercial rockets, and will do it for profit. Other spaceports have been established in the last decade for the purpose of private space tourism, but none have seen anything fly, and all those spaceports were some form of quasi-government operation.

SpaceX’s Brownsville spaceport, rumored to be dubbed Mars Crossing, is not a government-run operation, however. It will be wholly owned and operated by the company, and is being built to allow them to launch commercial satellites unconstrained by the rules that make launches from the government controlled spaceports at the Kennedy Space Center as well as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California difficult and complicated.

This ground-breaking also comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that SpaceX and Boeing have been chosen by NASA to build spacecraft to ferry human astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

It also comes at the same time the Russian government has reorganized its entire aerospace industry to place it under government control, committed billions for the accelerated construction of a new spaceport on Russian territory, and launched the first test flight of its own new rocket, Angara, designed to compete for commercial market share while also reenergizing the entire Russian space effort.

Nor is that all.
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MAVEN enters Mars orbit

7:25 pm

Upon completion of its engine burn this evening at 10:10 pm (eastern), MAVEN successfully entered Mars orbit.

Stephen Clark’s status updates on Spaceflight Now were accurate, informative, and right on the money. The live telecast on NASA-TV was confusing, idiotic, distracting, and uninformed. They never once announced when the engine burn had started, ignored the reactions of the people in the control room when they cheered some important event, and spent a lot of time discussing facts that were irrelevant to this event, which is “Will MAVEN achieve orbit!?” Worst of all, the male “anchor” was clearly ignorant of the mission while the female “anchor” spoke in a sing-song manner as if her audience were kindergarten toddlers who needed careful herding. All in all, it was embarrassing to watch.

They did manage to shut up just in time to catch the announcement from mission control that telemetry had confirmed that MAVEN had reached orbit. They then went back to chattering about irrelevant stuff. As I said, embarrassing.

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India inks space deal with China

10:06 am

The competition heats up: India has signed a cooperative agreement with China to work together on several space projects.

Asked about the areas of focus, [Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan] said: “Right now, broadly speaking, it will be natural disasters and remote sensing, which are natural choices. But by March-April 2015, the joint working team would have prepared a roadmap, chalking out various options and opportunities for concentrated efforts in space exploration.”

This article is among a lot of articles from India this week about space and the upcoming orbital insertion of their Mars Orbiter Mangalyaan. As I’ve said repeatedly, this emerging prosperous and capitalist nation is space happy!

Also, when you click on the link make sure you scroll down to read the secondary sidebar piece at the bottom titled “After Mars, Kathakali beckons Isro chief.” There they describe the other culture interests of the head of India’s space agency, and how he plans to spend his time after he steps down in December. It will give you a flavor of India’s culture and how it differs from ours, even as it strives to emulate us.

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Falcon 9 launch puts Dragon in orbit

11:03 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has successfully put its fifth Dragon cargo freighter into orbit, with a docking at ISS scheduled for Tuesday.

Spaceflight Now’s status update above also noted that this is the 13th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010. All these flights have successfully put their primary payloads into orbit as promised, an amazing track record for a new rocket built by a new company only in existence for less than a decade.

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The next week in space

2:09 pm

For the next week there are going to be a number of important events that will determine the success or failure of a number of important space missions. I thought I’d lay out the schedule in a quick post, just to make it clear.

  • Falcon 9 launch: SpaceX is hoping to launch its Dragon capsule to ISS tonight at 2:14 am (eastern). If they are successful, it will be the fourth Falcon 9 launch since July 14. That is a very fast-paced launch schedule, as good as any other launch company’s, and more evidence that SpaceX is an effective competitor in the resurgent launch market.
  • Mavin orbital insertion: NASA hopes to place this Mars mission into orbit on Sunday at around 9:50 pm (eastern).
  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan: There are two important events this week for this mission. First, on Monday, September 22, engineers will do a test firing of the spacecraft’s engine, which has been inactive for the last several months during its cruise to Mars. If that firing is successful, they will do the orbital insertion burn on Wednesday, September 24.

So, stay tuned this week for some fun stuff. And as I’ve been saying, this is only the beginning.

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Extending ISS to 2024

10:01 am

An inspector general report released today has outlined some issues that NASA needs to address in order to keep ISS operational through 2024.

In this audit, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that while NASA has identified no major obstacles to extending ISS operations to 2024, it must address several areas of risk to ensure continued safe operations. Specifically, the ISS faces a risk of insufficient power generation due in part to faster-than-expected degradation of its solar arrays. Second, although most replacement parts have proven more reliable than expected, sudden failures of key hardware have occurred requiring unplanned space walks for repair or replacement. Third, with the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet NASA has a limited capacity to transport several large replacement parts to the Station should they be needed. While the ISS Program is actively working to mitigate these risks, anticipating the correct amount of replacement parts and transporting them to the ISS present major challenges to extending Station operations 10 or more years beyond its original expected service life.

The report also noted concerns about the budget and the lack of commitment from NASA’s international partners.

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Dawn’s arrival at Ceres delayed one month

5:12 pm

Though engineers have solved the problems caused when a radiation blast disabled Dawn’s ion engine and put it into safe mode for a week, the fix will cause a one month delay in its arrival at the asteroid Ceres.

Controllers discovered Dawn was in safe mode Sept. 11 after radiation disabled its ion engine, which uses electrical fields to “push” the spacecraft along. The radiation stopped all engine thrusting activities. The thrusting resumed Monday (Sept. 15) after controllers identified and fixed the problem, but then they found another anomaly troubling the spacecraft.

Dawn’s main antenna was also disabled, forcing the spacecraft to send signals to Earth (a 53-minute roundtrip by light speed) through a weaker secondary antenna and slowing communications. The cause of this problem hasn’t been figured out yet, but controllers suspect radiation affected the computer’s software. A computer reset has solved the issue, NASA added. The spacecraft is now functioning normally.

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Blue Origin to build rocket engine for Atlas 5

4:36 pm

The competition heats up: Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin has signed a contract with the United Launch Alliance to build a rocket engine for the Atlas 5 rocket so that it will no longer have to depend on Russian engines.

Neither executive [of either company] would discuss a dollar figure, although it’s likely somewhat less than $1 billion. Bruno said a typical liquid-fueled rocket engine takes seven years and $1 billion to develop, but Blue Origin is already several years along on the BE-4. Bruno said the engine could be ready within four years to serve as the main engine on the company’s Atlas V rockets.

This is excellent news, because it shows that ULA is being pro-active in solving this problem, rather then waiting for Congress to act.

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Another contest where you can win a ticket to space

9:39 am

Spaceship Earth Grants (SEG) has launched a contest where it will give away one space flight ticket to fly on any available launch service for every 50,000 applications it receives.

The winner (or winners) will receive a trip aboard a spaceflight provider flight available at the time of the award announcement. In other words, should the likes of space tourism companies like Virgin Galactic or Space Adventures be capable of offering trips into space at the time, then the winning candidate would be booked aboard one of their flights. Subject, of course, to availability and the various restrictions one or all of these companies may impose, along with the rider that no promise is made to be able to fly on a particular carrier.

Be warned however, the application is not free. SEG will charge you from $15 to $90, the amount “dependent upon the relative wealth of the nation in which you live.”

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NASA has chosen Boeing and SpaceX to build manned spacecraft to ferry crews to ISS

1:12 pm

The competition heats up: NASA has made a decision and has chosen two companies to ferry astronauts to and from ISS, and those companies are Boeing and SpaceX.

I am watching the press conference on NASA television. Some quick details from NASA here.

This is a reasonable political and economic decision. It confirms that SpaceX is ready to go and gives the company the opportunity to finish the job, while also giving Boeing the chance to show that it can compete while also giving that pork to congressional districts.

Some details: After NASA has certified that each company has successfully built its spacecraft they will have then fly anywhere from four to six missions. The certification process will be step-by-step, similar to the methods used in the cargo contracts, and will involve five milestones. They will be paid incrementally as they meet these milestones.

One milestone will be a manned flight to ISS, with one NASA astronaut on board.

One more detail. Boeing will receive $4.2 billion while SpaceX will get $2.6 billion. These awards were based on what the companies proposed and requested.

I will have more to say about this tonight on Coast to Coast, as well as on the John Batchelor show.

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Air Force to decide SpaceX certification on December 1

12:39 pm

The competition heats up: The Air Force has set December 1 for its deadline for certifying SpaceX as qualified to launch military satellites.

“I root for SpaceX to come into the competition,” Gen. John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command, said during a speech Tuesday at the Air Force Association’s annual conference. But he warned that the company may not be ready in time. “The most important thing for this nation is assured access to space that works all the time,” he said. “That’s why the certification for SpaceX, hopefully by Dec. 1, is a big event. But if they’re not ready on Dec. 1, we have to stand up and say that, and that’s going to be difficult because I want competition.”

It sounds like the Air Force is setting this date as when it will decide one way or the other, regardless of anything SpaceX has done. I also suspect that, because of politics, this decision will hinge on what NASA decides today concerning its commercial crew contract.

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Russia reiterates that it has no intention to stop selling the U.S. its rocket engines

9:01 am

Russia officials today repeated that they will continue to sell Russian rocket engines to American companies, despite the sanctions imposed on their country because of the Ukrainian situation.

Meanwhile, there’s this story about the budget squeeze in the U.S. that makes it difficult to produce an American-made engine for the Atlas 5 rocket.

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Management problems at NASA’s asteroid hunting program

11:15 pm

An inspector general report today criticized NASA’s program to find potentially hazardous asteroids, finding it disorganized and poorly managed.

The report faulted the NEO Program’s lack of structure, and said its resources are inadequate for handling its growing agenda. In addition to the program’s Washington-based executive, Lindley Johnson, NASA funding goes to support six employees at the Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts and six more at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the inspector general’s office said.

The report said the program’s executive fell short when it came to overseeing progress in the asteroid-tracking effort. What’s more, there were no formal partnerships with the Defense Department or the National Science Foundation, or with international space agencies. Those groups could make significant contributions to the effort, the report said.

I do not doubt that this program has management problems. What government agency today doesn’t? And any that are managed well are the exception to the rule. However, the report’s conclusion that “resources are inadequate for handling its growing agenda” is typical Washington-speak for “Give us more money!” which almost never solves the management problems that made the program a failure in the first place.

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