Tag: spaceflight

An apparent rocket section washes up on Australian coast

9:19 am

What appears to be a section of India’s PSLV rocket washed up on the western Australian coast yesterday, though at the moment the identity of the wreckage as not been confirmed.

Dr Alice Gorman, an expert in the field of space archaeology, said she believes the object is a fuel cylinder that came from the the third stage of India’s polar satellite launch vehicle rocket (PSLV), as many have suggested on social media.

The article includes a picture of that stage in orbit during a 2017 launch, and the similarity is obvious. If true, its specific launch at present remains unknown, though it appears it could have been floating in the ocean for years, a fact that is surprising in itself.

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SpaceX launches using its second Falcon 9 first stage on its sixteenth flight

9:14 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 54 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The Falcon 9 rocket used a first stage flying on its sixteenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. That is the second 1st stage in SpaceX’s fleet to complete that many flights. Both first stages completed their sixteen flights in only three years, which means that those two first stages have actually flown more times than the entire United States rocket industry did annually from 2000 to 2019. I don’t have a full count, but I suspect both stages have launched in those three years more satellites then the totals for almost all other nations, excepting possibly Russia and the U.S. Both probably allowed SpaceX to amortize the cost of those launches considerably, possibly as much as 90%.

Just remember: Rocket industry experts were insisting even as late as 2016 that it was impractical to make rocket stages reusable, that to make a profit “a partially reusable rocket would need to launch 35-40 times per year to maintain a sizable production facility while introducing reused hardware into the manifest.” Based on that calculation, these experts determined with utmost certainty that a partly reusable rocket — like the Falcon 9 — could never make a profit.

Elon Musk must have agreed, and decided he needed an extra profit center for the Falcon 9. Starlink has provided that profit center. It not only needs that many launches, and pays for them, its profit stream from its internet customers is already adding to SpaceX’s bottom line.

Regardless, Musk has proved these “experts” utterly wrong. I always thought they were talking through their hat, but had no way to prove it. Thank you Mr. Musk for proving the point.

Note too that the two fairing halves on this flight were also reused, completing their ninth and tenth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

47 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 53 to 26, and the entire world combined 53 to 45, while SpaceX alone now leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 47 to 45.

And it is doing this with that impractical, unprofitable, and impossible reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Heh.

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Another look at the vastness of Valles Marineris on Mars

1:06 pm

The vast Valles Marineris
Click for interactive map.

This week I have returned several times to the giant Valles Marineris canyon on Mars in an attempt to capture its incomprehensible and glorious scale. Without question this canyon is going to become one of the prime tourist spots when humans begin living and working throughout the solar system. Fortunately, its vast size will mean that it will take many many centuries before it even becomes close to crowded there.

Today I try a different approach, using the global mosaic created by scientists at Caltech from the context camera images taken by Mar Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). That mosaic processes the images to allow one to see the surface from an oblique angle. The picture to the right covers one small part of the eastern end of Valles Marineris (the white rectangle in the inset), but though small the scale once again is gigantic.

The three white dots are our reference points, one on the north rim, one on the south, and one in the middle on the peak of that central mountain chain. Beginning from the south, the distance from the rim to the middle mountain peak is 43 miles, with the elevation dropping almost 13,000 feet to the floor of the south canyon, than rising almost 10,000 feet to the middle peak. The northern canyon is smaller. From the peak to the north rim is 27 miles, dropping about 9,300 feet and then rising about 8,500 feet to the north rim.

From rim to rim the distance is about 70 miles. Since the middle mountain chain about 18 miles wide, it fills only about 25% of the entire canyon.

In every case, the Grand Canyon would be merely be a small side canyon here. The depths are twice as deep, and the distances are many times larger. In width alone at this point Valles Marineris is seven times wider than the widest part of the Grand Canyon, and this is by far not Valles Marineris’s widest point.
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NASA survives first budget review in Congress

9:51 am

The first 2024 budgets approved by Senate and House appropriation committees for NASA maintain about the same current numbers from NASA’s 2023 budget.

The House committee is recommending $25.367 billion, just shy of the $25.384 billion NASA has now. The Senate committee is proposing $25.000 billion, a greater reduction from current spending. Biden requested a 7.1 percent increase for FY2024, $27.2 billion.

In the House the Republican leadership is requiring this House committee to impose a 28.8% cut in the total money allocated to all the agencies under its control (Justice, Commerce, and Science). It appears the committee members have decided to find the cuts in the other departments, such as the Justice Department. In fact, this first budget review strongly suggests Justice is about to see huge cuts, something that corrupt and partisan agency richly deserves.

As for NASA, the Senate report [pdf] had harsh words for the growing expense of the Mars Sample Return mission, and proposed major cuts, including the possibility of eliminating the project entirely. Instead, the Senate committee preferred wasting that money on Artemis and SLS.

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UK government reluctantly admits its space regulatory framework is a problem

9:36 am

According to a report issued by a committee formed by a number of members of the United Kingdom’s parliament, the regulatory licensing framework for its space launch industry is a problem that needs fixing, and in a hurry.

The report also expressed concern about the licensing delays that led to the Virgin Orbit launch being postponed. Virgin Orbit and some of its satellite customers were critical of the UK regulatory process, which was led by the Civil Aviation Authority.

But the committee concluded there was no evidence that the regulatory system contributed to the failure of the Virgin Orbit. The report did state, however, that there is “insufficient co-ordination between the large number of regulatory bodies involved in licensing launches, and this continues to place unnecessary burdens of complexity and administration on companies”.

The MPs [members of parliament] are calling on the Government to take steps to improve the licensing system of UK satellite launch.

It is amusing how these politicians speak from both sides of their mouths. First they say the regulatory system did not contribute to Virgin Orbit’s failure, but then admit the regulatory system is so complex and messy that anyone can see that it certainly did contribute to that failure. It took that system fifteen months to approve the launch, even though Virgin Orbit expected that approval to come in half that time.

Whether this MP report will force action remains unclear. As I noted earlier this week, Orbex applied for a launch license seventeen months ago for a launch it hopes to complete at the Sutherland Spaceport before the end of this year, and it is as yet unclear if any license has been issued. The UK’s two spaceports cannot compete if it is going to take one to two years for each launch license to be approved

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Rocket Lab gets two-launch deal with Japanese satellite company

9:27 am

Rocket Lab today announced that it has signed a two-launch deal with the Japanese satellite company Synspective, bringing to six total the number of Synspective satellites its Electron rocket will place in orbit.

Rocket Lab has been launching for Synspective since 2020 when the Company deployed the first satellite in Synspective’s synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation, which is designed to deliver imagery that can detect millimetre-level changes to the Earth’s surface from space. Since that first mission, Rocket Lab has been the sole launch provider for Synspective’s StriX constellation to date, successfully deploying three StriX satellites across three dedicated Electron launches. Including the two new missions, Rocket Lab is now scheduled to launch three missions for Synspective beginning in late 2023 from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.

This deal illustrates Rocket Lab’s continuing strong position in the launch market, while simultaneously illustrating the lack of any Japanese presence. Japanese Synspective might prefer to work with a Japanese rocket, but none exists that can compete with Rocket Lab.

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ULA officially admits first Vulcan launch is delayed to end of year

9:19 am

Though the announcement was not news or unexpected, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno yesterday officially confirmed that the first Vulcan launch will not occur before the fourth quarter of this year, not this summer as hoped.

In a call with reporters July 13, Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, said the changes to the Centaur upper stage stemmed from an investigation into a test mishap in March, where hydrogen leaked from a Centaur test article and ignited, damaging both the stage and the test rig. The company announced June 24 that it would delay the launch to make “minor reinforcements” to the Centaur.

Bruno also poo-pooed the significance of a failure of a Blue Origin BE-4 engine during a static fire test in mid-June, a failure that had been kept secret until this week.

“This doesn’t indict the qualification at all,” he said, noting that BE-4 engines have more than 26,000 seconds of cumulative runtime. “We’re very confident in the design and the workmanship of the assets that have passed acceptance. This is not unexpected.”

Forgive me if I don’t take him entirely at his word. I guarantee his engineers are looking at that failure very closely to make absolutely sure it doesn’t indicate issues with the two engines on that first Vulcan rocket. It is very likely this is part of the reason that first launch is now delayed until the end of the year.

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Solid-fueled second-stage motor for Japan’s new Epsilon-S rocket explodes during static fire test

9:10 am

A solid-fueled second stage of Japan’s upgraded Epsilon-S four-stage rocket exploded 57 seconds into a two minute static fire test today, likely preventing that rocket’s planned first launch this year.

Police received an emergency call shortly after 9 a.m. from a nearby resident reporting that she heard “a loud noise and saw smoke” rising from the Noshiro Rocket Testing Center.

JAXA said that an explosion occurred during a combustion test of the second-stage engine of the Epsilon S rocket, which is an improved model of the small solid-fuel Epsilon rocket, at the facility in the prefecture in the northeastern Tohoku region.

While explosions during static fire tests of liquid-fueled rockets occur periodically, for a solid-fueled motor to explode seems much rarer, and suggests the mix and placement of the solid-fuel within the stage did not occur properly.

This failure continues a string of failures within Japan’s government-run space program, including a failure during the first launch of its new large H3 liquid-fueled rocket earlier this year. At present Japan’s space agency JAXA has set August 26th for one of the last launches of the rocket the H3 is replacing, the H2A, carrying an X-ray space telescope and a small lunar lander. Though today’s failure involves very different technologies and should therefore not impact that launch, it is possible JAXA will stand down entirely to see if there was some systematic issue throughout its management. It sure appears there is.

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India successfully launches Chandrayaan-3

8:35 am


Click for interactive map.

India today successfully launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover probe toward the Moon, carried aloft by its LV-M3 rocket (a variation of its GSLV) from its coastal spaceport in Sriharikota.

Chandrayaan-3 carries the Vikram lander, which will bring the Pragyan rover to the surface. Pragyan will spend about two weeks operating on the lunar surface. The location is indicated by the red dot on the map to the right, in the high southern latitudes. The white cross marks the lunar south pole. Russia’s Luna-25 is scheduled to launch sometime in mid-August.

It will take time to get Chandrayaan-3 into the right lunar orbit for landing, which is presently scheduled for August 13, 2023.

For India this was its fifth successful launch for the year, the most since 2019, before it panicked over COVID. The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

46 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
5 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 52 to 26, and the entire world combined 52 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 46 to 45.

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A Martian gully formed by disappearing glacial ice?

11:53 am

Puzzling Martian gully
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the rim of a seventeen-mile wide crater, and was the scientists label a “gully without apron,” meaning that though something has caused material to disappear within that gully, beginning high on the rim wall, there does not appear to be any piled up apron or debris at the gully’s base.

The blue colors imply the possibility of frost within the gully, while the orange suggests dust or coarse surface material.

The cracks emanating away at right angles from the gully’s base suggest glacial ice, which makes sense based on the location.
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Senate committee approves Biden’s FCC nominees

10:13 am

Despite apparent opposition to the Biden nominees by Republicans, the Senate committee involved has approved the three FCC nominees and moved that the process proceed to a vote in the full Senate.

The article also includes these paragraphs, describing absurdities that could only occur in Congress:

[Ted] Cruz [R-Texas] moved that all the nominations, including Damelin and a nominee for the National Transportation Safety Board plus a list of Coast Guard promotions, be favorably reported. There were no objections and the motion was agreed to.

Immediately thereafter, however, Cruz and other Republicans asked to be recorded as no on Gomez and/or Starks and two Democrats as no on Carr. It’s not possible to discern from the webcast who was speaking in all instances, but the bottom line is that all the nominations were approved and now can go to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. The requests to be recorded as no are a signal that the rest of the confirmation process will not be easy.

Cruz moves the nominees should be “favorably” reported, but then announces he and others are against some.

All in all, this appears to be another example of Republican failure theater. Make it sound like you are trying to block Biden’s policies, but then do whatever is necessary to let them to go into effect. Considering that the Democratic Party appointees at the FCC have been pushing for regulatory power beyond the commission’s statutory authority, it seems absurd for any Republican senator (or Democrat senator for that matter) to okay any Biden nominees who would continue that power grab. And yet, the Republicans appear willing to go along.

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Australian industrial space park threatened with shut down

10:03 am

With the loss of government funds caused by decisions of the new Labor government in Australia, a space-centered industrial park proposed for Adelaide Airport is threatened with shut down.

The previous government was going to contribute about $20 million to build a shared facility, and this had encouraged a number of space manufacturers to add their own $26 million. With the loss of that $20 million from the government two of those companies have now backed out.

The article also notes a number of other space-related areas where government funding is being cut off. All this appears to be the result of the change in government, and the decision of the new Labor government to end such subsidies.

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Extremely Large Telescope in Chile marks halfway point in construction

9:51 am

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has now celebrated the halfway point in its construction, with completion targeting 2028 when its 39-meter mirror will make it by far the largest telescope in the world.

The 39-meter diameter, or 127 feet or 1,535 inches, is about four times larger than the largest telescope that presently exists, the 10-meter telescope in the Canary Islands. By the time ELT begins operations however the 21-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile should also be in operation.

Sadly, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii will likely not exist, even though it had intended to begin construction before ELT and GMT and be operational now. Leftist opponents in Hawaii have shut construction down now for almost eight years, with little signs of it ever proceeding.

Not that any of this really matters. In the near term, ground-based astronomy on Earth is going to become increasingly impractical and insufficient, first because of the difficulties of making good observations though the atmosphere and the tens of thousands of satellites expected in the coming decades, and second because new space-based astronomy is going to make it all obsolete. All it will take will be to launch one 8-meter telescope on Starship and ELT will become the equivalent of a buggy whip.

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New Viasat geosynchronous communications satellite in trouble

9:31 am

Launched in April, a new geosynchronous communications satellite for the company Viasat is in trouble, with “an unexpected event” occurring during the deployment of its antenna reflector.

Shares of Viasat fell as much as 36% in early trading Thursday, putting it on track for its biggest one-day loss since going public in December 1996. Viasat did not disclose the identity of the reflector’s manufacturer in its release. Dankberg said his company is “working closely” with the manufacturer to resolve the problem. A Viasat spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the manufacturer is a top aerospace and defense company – but noted that it is not Boeing, which built the 702MP+ bus that is the spacecraft’s structure and power.

The company is under severe competitive pressure from the Starlink and OneWeb satellite constellations. This loss could be crippling, even if it obtains a full insurance payment of $420 million.

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July 12, 2023 Quick space links

4:28 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • China unveils proposed plan for first manned lunar mission before 2030

    • The plan calls for separate rockets, one for the manned ascent/descent Earth capsule, and the second for the lunar lander/ascent spacecraft. The two will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit. This is all engineering by powerpoint at this point, though based on China’s track record I’d give it more credence than most of NASA’s recent promises.

 

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More sightseeing in Valles Marineris on Mars

3:01 pm

More sightseeing on a mesa in Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

The opportunity to see more mind-blowing examples of spectacular views on Mars compels me to post another great view of a mesatop within Valles Marineris, the biggest known canyon in the solar system. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an 800-foot-high mesa with two points at its end, the cliff wall below highlighted by numerous layers, many alternating between light and dark material.

The erosion features on the top of the mesa suggests some flow down its middle and into the gap between its two end points. This is the dry equatorial region of Mars, so no near surface water is presently found. In the far past maybe ice, or theorized catastrophic floods of water, caused this erosion.
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Amidst the mountains on Mount Sharp on Mars

10:17 am

Panorama from Curiosity, July 12, 2023
Click for higher resolution. Original images can be found here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The panorama above, created from three images, was taken by Curiosity on July 12, 2023 using its right navigation camera. It looks south in the direction that the science team eventually plans to send the rover, as indicated by the red dotted line on both the panorama and the overview map to the right. The yellow lines on the overview map indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama. Kukenan’s peak rises about 500 feet above the rover, and I guarantee there will be many planetary geologists that are going to study the pictures of its many layers for many years.

At present however Curiosity is heading west, away from that planned route, to visit the small craters about 500 feet away. For almost all of the rover’s decade-long journey in Gale Crater, it has seen relatively few craters, and since it left the floor of the crater and began its climb up the flanks of Mount Sharp three years ago, it has seen none.

Inspecting the floors and surrounding ejecta of these small craters will give the scientists a look at materials that are presently below the surface. While it is likely that material will be of geological layers Curiosity has already traveled over lower down the mountain, it is also possible there will be surprises. The scientists decided they couldn’t pass up this opportunity to find out.

Why have there been so few craters in Gale Crater? Though Mars is hardly as active as Earth, its geological history is almost as dynamic. The surface of Gale has been reshaped by the processes that created Mount Sharp, processes that destroyed craters from early in Mars’ history. The craters the rover is about to see are almost certainly relatively young.

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The Earth and Moon, as seen by Mars Express in Mars orbit

9:21 am

The Earth and Moon, as seen from Mars
Click to see four image movie.

The science team for Europe’s Mars Express orbiter recently turned the spacecraft’s camera upward to capture a sequence of four images of the Earth with the Moon circling around it.

The images were taken at 14:08, 03:10 and 19:49 UTC on 15, 21, 27 May 2023 respectively, and at 15:00 UTC on 2 June 2023. This covers a bit more than half of the Moon’s monthly motion around the Earth. The distance between Earth and Mars varied from 279 186 624 km to 301 016 265 km during this time. The image resolution is about 2570 km per pixel.

To the right is the June 2nd image, cropped and enhanced to post there. The Earth is the larger spot to the left. The picture gives a sense of what the Earth-Moon double planet system looks like from Mars. Unlike all other planets, where the size difference between planet and moon is great, the Earth/Moon system is comprised of a Moon quite large in comparison to its central planet.

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ISRO completes launch rehearsal for Chandrayaan-3’s launch on July 14th

9:10 am


Click for interactive map.

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday completed a full launch dress rehearsal of its Launch Vehicle Mark-3 rocket (LV-M3), in preparation for its July 14, 2023 launch that will put Chandrayaan-3 on its way to the Moon, India’s second attempt to soft land on another world.

More information here. The spacecraft will not reach the Moon until mid-August, and if all goes as planned, the lander Vikram will attempt its landing on August 23rd. If successful, the Pragyan rover will roll off the lander and begin exploration lasting about two weeks, or one lunar day. It is not designed to survive the long lunar night.

The LV-M3 rocket is simply the most powerful variation of India’s Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket, capable of putting large payloads into space or sending probes to other planets.

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Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine explodes during test

4:03 pm

This failure has been kept very quiet, but on June 11, 2023 during a static fire engine test of a Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine, it exploded 10 seconds into the test.

During a firing on June 30 at a West Texas facility of Jeff Bezos’ space company, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test, according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure. The people spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic matters.

The engine that exploded was expected to finish testing in July. It was then scheduled to ship to Blue Origin’s customer United Launch Alliance for use on ULA’s second Vulcan rocket launch, those people said.

The story is based on anonymous sources, but if true it means another serious setback for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Vulcan has the BE-4 engines it needs to launch its first Vulcan, but it might feel forced to delay that launch until it receives the analysis of this failed test.

It also means that even after more than a decade of development, Blue Origin has still not worked out all the kinks in its BE-4 engine. This inability does not speak well for the company. Are they not testing enough? Are they not questioning their designs enough?

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All UN climate models vastly over-estimate warming in the U.S.

2:28 pm

climate models vs observations

According to a direct comparison between actual data and the three-dozen climate models used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the models all overestimate the warming that has happened, sometimes by ridiculous amounts.

The graph to the right shows “the 50-year area-averaged temperature trend during 1973-2022 for the 12-state corn belt as observed with the official NOAA homogenized surface temperature product (blue bar) versus the same metric from 36 CMIP6 climate models [red bars].”

This story isn’t new, and in fact to me has become somewhat boring because the results are always the same. The computer models that global warming climate scientists have pushed at us for decades have been consistently wrong. They routinely have over-predicted the amount of warming. Since such models are expressly designed to provide us reliable predictions, and these models are not reliable or correct, I find it absurd to pay any attention to them.

At the same time, this repeated and continuing failure needs to be mentioned periodically, because politicians and climate warming activists (I repeat myself) continue to ignore this failure as they wave these models around like red flags that must to be obeyed. Not only should these models be ignored, our governments and science community should stop funding these people. Their work is a failure. They don’t deserve further grants.

Let me add one more important note: The observations show an increase of about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. This increase is almost a rounding number, considering the amount of random fluctuations that is routinely seen in the global climate temperature. Even if the trend was extended for a century (something that is not guaranteed at all), the increase would still be only two degrees, hardly a worry.

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A Martian crater with a very weird rim

1:07 pm

A Martian crater with a very weird rim
Click for original image.

In looking through new images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), I sometimes stumble some very strange things, with today’s cool image an example. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 7, 2023 by MRO’s high resolution camera, and shows the western half of a two-mile-wide crater with a very weird rim, almost as if a person had decided he wanted to reshape it with a filigree pattern.

Though only two-miles wide, this crater actually has been named Johnstown. I suspect this is because of its strange rim, prompting a research effort and the need to provide it a name. Why the rim has this repeating pattern of gaps, however, is beyond my pay grade to explain, and I have been unable to track down any research papers about it. The nearby surrounding surface suggests vaguely the possibility that this is a caldera, not an impact crater, but even so why would the rim of the caldera have these regular breaks?
» Read more

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Zhurong found Mars drier than expected and less eroded than the Moon

10:43 am

According to a new paper, Chinese scientists using data from their Zhurong Mars rover have found little or no evidence of water in the immediate underground, while also finding the surface less eroded than the surface on the Moon.

A layer of regolith covers the surface of Mars, which is the result of geologic processes that occurred over millions to billions of years. Compared to the observations from satellites, the Zhurong rover of China’s first Mars mission (Tianwen-1) had a closer look at the properties of the regolith layer in the explored region within southern Utopia Planitia. There is evidence that the exposed materials might be related to aqueous activities. Local landforms on the surface suggest the possible presence of buried volatiles, like water ice. The radar instrument (RoPeR) on board the rover can expose subsurface structures and the dielectric properties of the regolith layer at high-resolution, to assess their composition. The loss tangent results suggest that water ice is not the main component of the local martian regolith at some depth. The scattering distribution of radar profile along the traveling path and heterogeneous subsurface features show more diverse surface processes and weaker space weathering effects on Mars than those on the airless Moon.

Since Zhurong landed in the equatorial regions, its data about the lack of water simply confirmed other data from orbit and from other rovers/landers. Though there are features even here that suggest the presence of water, that water made those features a long time ago, and is now gone.

The data suggesting the regolith is less eroded than the Moon, however, is a surprise, and counter-intuitive.

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ESA to issue contract for new lander for its Franklin Mars rover

10:23 am

According to the head of the European Space Agency (ESA), it plans to issue a contract for new lander for its Franklin Mars rover in the next few months, replacing the Russian lander that was lost when ties with that country were broken after it invaded the Ukraine.

Josef Aschbacher, the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), says the agency will soon release a contract opportunity to design the ExoMars mission’s lander, to replace the Russian one lost when their partnership severed in 2022. “We will issue a contract for the development of the lander, and this will go out soon, in the next few months or so,” Aschbacher told Space.com July 1, hours after the Euclid “dark universe” mission launched here. “This is all in full preparation.”

Aschbacher’s wording is vague enough to leave open the possibility that ESA is considering hiring one of the many private companies from the U.S. and Japan to build it. It is also possible it is waiting to see if India’s Chandrayaan-3 lands successfully on the Moon after its launch this week. If so, India could possibly get that contract.

The present targeted launch date for Franklin is 2028, so there is plenty of time for another lander to be built.

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To raise cash Astra will sell off some of its stock

10:15 am

Short of cash, Astra officials have now decided to sell about $65 million worth of the company’s existing stock.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published after the markets closed, Astra said it had signed a sales agreement with Roth Capital Partners under which it will sell up to $65 million of its stock in an “at-the-market” offering, where shares are sold at the going market rate.

Net proceeds from the stock sale, the company said, would go towards working capital and general corporate purposes. That includes development of its next-generation launch vehicle, Rocket 4, as well as continued production of its Astra Spacecraft Engine electric thrusters.

The stock sale comes as the company was running low on cash. Astra reported having $62.7 million in cash as of the end of the first quarter, with a net loss of $44.9 million. The company reported no revenue in the first quarter.

The $65 million figure is based on the present value of the stock. If the market price drops, a good possibility, the company will raise less.

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NASA gives up on finding a new asteroid target for Janus

10:02 am

Without funding for its own launch vehicle, and unable to find a new asteroid target that can be reached by any future planned NASA launch, NASA has decided to shelf the Janus asteroid mission, putting the spacecraft into storage.

Designed to send twin small satellite spacecraft to study two separate binary asteroid systems, Janus was originally a ride-along on the Psyche mission’s scheduled 2022 launch. Psyche’s new October 2023 launch period, however, cannot deliver the two spacecraft to the mission’s original targets, and Janus was subsequently removed from the manifest.

The spacecraft will remain in storage, and might be revived at some point in the future, should another mission’s launch allow it to reach some other asteroid.

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NASA awards new spacesuit contracts

9:50 am

NASA yesterday issued two relatively small spacesuit contracts to the two companies it already has hired to develop different spacesuits, one for the Moon (Axiom) and the other for orbital spacewalks (Collins).

The new contract awards provides each company $5 million to begin design work for adapting their suits for the other tasks, with the goal aimed at having two different suits for Moonwalks and spacewalks, from two different companies. For the companies, having suits that work both in orbit and the Moon will enhance their product. For Axiom, it will also allow it to develop its own suit it can use on its own space station.

The original contracts awarded Axiom $228.5 million for its Moonsuit, and Collins $97.2 million for a new orbital suit. NASA has previously spent about a billion dollars and fourteen years trying to build its own new orbital spacesuit, and had failed to create anything.

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The inconceivable scale of Mars’ canyons

1:25 pm

Overview map

Today’s cool image takes us to one of Mars’ biggest canyon systems that while linked to Valles Marineris, the biggest Martian canyon of them all, is considered a separate canyon system because it is made up of a labyrinth of criss-crossing canyons instead of a single major canyon line.

In fact, its name is Noctis Labyrinthus, as shown on the overview map to the right. In many ways its complex pattern is reminiscent of the chaos terrain seen mostly in Mars’ mid-latitudes, but there are major differences. The rectangle marks the area we shall zoom into below to show these differences as well as to feebly illustrate the grand scale of these canyons.

First, the formation of these canyons is closely linked to the volcanic events that formed the three giant volcanoes to the west. They are also strongly linked (in ways not yet fully understood) with the suspected catastrophic floods that drained from Noctis, through Valles Marineris, and out into the northern lowland plains to the east, eons ago when this dry equatorial region could have been wet.
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New Australian government cancels $1.2 billion program to launch four government satellites

10:09 am

The new Australian Labor government has canceled a $1.2 billion program funded by the previous government to pay for four satellites to provide both civilian and military data from orbit.

The cut will primarily affect the NSMEO program, which was to have four satellites launched between 2028 and 2033 to give Australia a new stream of information from space. While the goal was primarily for civil use, maritime situational awareness data — crucial for keeping an eye on Australia’s sovereign waters — was also part of the project. Also, the weather and earth observation capabilities would have had clear military applications.

Instead the new government has decided to continue the previous policy of using the space capabilities of “its international partners.”

It is unclear whether this decision is good or bad. If the money was to be spent buying these satellites from new Australian satellite companies, it could have helped jump start that nation’s satellite industry. If the plan had instead been to have the government design and build the satellites, then it likely would have merely been a government jobs program that would have cost a lot and accomplished little. In the latter case the new government would thus be shutting down a wasteful program. In the former it prevents a new private industry from forming.

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Orbex to expand facilities in Scotland and Denmark

9:57 am

The British rocket startup Orbex today announced that it is expanding its factory and office space in its facilities in Scotland and Denmark, the former at its facility it leases at the new spaceport in Sutherland.

The company is adding an extra 1,500 square metres of factory and office space to its existing 4,750 square metre estate in Forres, Scotland and Copenhagen, Denmark. The additional space will increase the company’s launch vehicle production and propulsion system manufacturing capacity and add an extra software laboratory and an avionics clean room space with ISO 8 and ISO 9 sections. The additional capacity in Forres is just 3km from its test site at Kinloss, allowing for quick turnaround between the two sites, as Orbex ramps up its testing in the countdown to launch.

The press release doesn’t give any information about the expansion in Denmark. I wonder if it is occurring as a hedge against the kind of bureaucratic delays in the UK that destroyed Virgin Orbit. Orbex’s Prime rocket is presently under construction in Scotland, with its first launch planned for this year out of Sutherland. Whether it can get a launch permit promptly is doubtful, based on the fifteen months it took Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve Virgin Orbit. Orbex applied for the launch license in February 2022 (seventeen months ago) and so far there is no word from CAA about its approval.

Other Scandinavian spaceports are under construction in Sweden and Norway, which suggests establishing facilities in Denmark could strengthen Orbex’s ties to these new spaceports, especially in Sweden as both Sweden and Denmark are members of the European Union. Norway meanwhile as strong trades ties to the EU. Orbex has also signed a deal with Arianespace to launch ESA payloads, and it could be those launches could occur in French Guiana.

It seems wise if Orbex prepares for launch problems in the UK. Today’s announcement could be signalling that preparation.

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