Tag: spaceflight

SpaceX launches 56 more Starlink satellites

8:45 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on its drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their 7th and 10th flights, with the latter a new record.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

43 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 40.

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Biden administration announces India will sign Artemis Accords

1:08 pm

Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House June 21, 2023
Modi meeting Biden upon arrival at White House
on June 21, 2023

As part of the visit of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the U.S., the Biden administration today announced that India has agreed to sign Artemis Accords, becoming the 27th nation to join the American space alliance.

It appears India made this decision after the Biden administration agreed to foster a whole range of cooperative technology exchanges.

Cooperation in advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum information science is also being fostered through the establishment of a joint Indo-US quantum coordination mechanism and the signing of an implementation arrangement on artificial intelligence, advanced wireless, and quantum technologies.

Both countries are working together on 5G and 6G technologies, including Open Radio Access Network (RAN) systems, with plans for field trials, rollouts, and scale deployments in both markets. “Here we’ll be announcing partnerships on open ran, field trials and rollouts, including scale deployments in both countries with operators and vendors of both markets. This will involve backing from the US International Development Finance, for cooperation and to promote the deployments in India,” the official said.

The US will support the removal of telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors through the US rip and replace program and welcomes Indian participation in this initiative.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

One would hope that this decision would help separate India from China and Russia, but this is unclear.

There are other questions. » Read more

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A spectacular Martian glacier

11:24 am

Overview map

A spectacular Martian glacier
Click for original image.

Mars appears to be a planet filled with past surface flows, none of which are active today but all of which came from widely different geological processes. Yesterday’s Martian cool image showed the hardened remains of a lava flow on Mars. Today’s cool image shows us what might one of the best examples of the kind of glacial evidence orbital images have been finding throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The red dot in the inset on the overview map above indicates its location on Mars, in the chaos region dubbed Protonilus Mensae that forms the central part of the 2,000-mile-long Martian region in the north mid-latitudes I dub glacier country. In this region almost every high resolution image shows evidence of glaciers, all protected by a thin layer of dust and debris so they do not sublimate away.

This particular glacier fills a canyon carved into the southern cliff of a mile-high mesa five miles by ten miles in size, and drops dramatically almost 4,700 feet in about four miles. In fact, it so epitomizes what glaciers look like that the camera team for MRO’s high resolution camera used a 2020 image to give a quick lesson on how to spot a glacier on Mars.

This 2023 picture was likely taken as part of a long term monitoring program. Though planetary scientists presently do not think the glaciers on Mars are active and moving, this assumption is not yet confirmed. Taking repeated pictures of this same glacier over time will eventually answer this question.

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Update on SpaceX’s work leading to next Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:29 am

Link here. A static fire engine test program has begun for Starship prototype #25, which will fly on top of a Superheavy prototype. Also, work on the launchpad, badly damaged by the first test flight in April, has proceeded quickly.

During the first integrated test flight of Starship, Super Heavy Booster 7’s 30 working engines dug a sizable hole under the OLM [Orbital Launch Mount] during liftoff. The first images of it pictured a dramatic scene and pointed at some tough repair work ahead for SpaceX teams. Over the last two months, the hole was covered and reinforcements have been installed deep into the ground to strengthen the soil.

More recently, teams have been installing several tons of rebar underneath the OLM. While some rebar remains to be installed, as seen from aerial pictures captured by NSF, this work is expected to be finished soon and should be followed by a convoy of concrete trucks to fill up the pit. SpaceX will then install water-cooled steel plates over this concrete which will help support them and serve as an anchor for them.

The update also describes the numerous additional prototypes SpaceX is building at Boca Chica for further flight tests. It also notes this disturbing fact about the company’s planned Starship/Superheavy launch facility in Florida:

Work on the second set of tower sections, chopsticks, carriage system, and QD arm at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility has come to a halt. Contractor equipment has visibly disappeared and other construction equipment has been removed. The Florida Mega Bay parts have also made their way to Starbase, becoming the second Mega Bay at the Texas facility. The two big cranes that were previously at Roberts Road were also moved to Starbase to aid in the construction of that new Mega Bay.

On top of this, SpaceX has changed the use of the building previously thought to be the factory for Starship sections. This facility is now being used to process Starlink payload integration with Falcon 9’s fairings.

This slow down is probably because NASA has forbidden Starship/Superheavy launches from this launchpad because it is near the launchpad SpaceX uses for NASA’s manned missions. The agency wants SpaceX to be able to launch Dragon from its other more distant pad, and that work needs to be completed first before the Starship/Superheavy pad can be used.

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Startup orbital tug company experiences technical issues on demo flight

9:36 am

The first test rendezvous and docking of two smallsats built by the startup orbital tug company Starfish Space and space station startup Launcher/Vast are facing significant technical issues because both spacecraft are spinning in an unexpected manner.

Soon after Orbiter SN3 separated from the Falcon 9 upper stage, it experienced an anomaly that set it spinning at a rate on the order of one revolution per second, far outside the bounds of normal operating conditions.

By the time Launcher’s team made contact with Orbiter, fuel and power levels were critically low — and the team made an emergency decision to deploy Otter Pup immediately. In a joint statement issued today, Launcher and Starfish Space said that quick action “gave the Otter Pup mission a chance to continue.”

With assistance from Astro Digital and ground station partners, Starfish’s team contacted Otter Pup and determined that it was generating power — but was also spinning because of the circumstances of its emergency deployment.

The plan had been to deploy Otter Pup and have it rendezvous and then dock with Orbiter, demonstrating the maneuverability of both spacecraft as well as their docking equipment. The spinning now threatens the company’s ability to do this. Over the next few months engineers will make attempts to slow the spinning of Orbiter, but it is unlikely a docking can now be attempted.

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Intelsat and SES end negotiations to merge

9:27 am

In a very short press release, the Luxembourg-based satellite company SES today announced that it has broken off negotiations to merge with the satellite company Intelsat. The full text:

SES announces today that discussions regarding a possible combination with Intelsat have ceased. On 29 March 2023, SES had confirmed that the company engaged in discussions with Intelsat and that there could be no certainty that a transaction would materialise.

It appears the two companies could not settle differences on a number of points, and according to this article Intelsat decided to end negotiations yesterday.

There has been a trend among the established satellite companies to consolidate and merge, faced with the stiff competition from the new satellite constellations of Starlink and OneWeb. It is very possible that both of these companies will either revisit the idea of this merger, or begin negotiations with other established satellite companies.

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Ecuador becomes 26th nation to sign Artemis Accords

9:20 am

In a ceremony yesterday in Washington, Ecuador became the 26th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, a bi-lateral agreement with the United States that was designed during the Trump administration to act as a work around to the limitations to private enterprise in space created by the Outer Space Treaty.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

Adding third world nations to the alliance strengthens it, but it is really the clout of major space players like France, Luxembourg, the UK, the UAE, Italy, and Japan that gives the United States a great deal of leverage in establishing future space legal policy, assuming the alliance is used as originally intended. Considering however the Biden administration’s general hostility to the private sector and freedom, it is unclear if that will be the goal.

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ULA launches Delta-4 Heavy rocket on next-to-last flight

9:02 am

Early this morning ULA successfully place a National Reconnaissance Office classified surveillance satellite into orbit, using its Delta-4 Heavy rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

This was ULA’s its first launch in 2023. At the start of the year, the company’s manifest listed ten launches. Whether is can complete that manifest in the remaining six months is questionable, considering it has rarely managed a launch pace exceeding one launch per month in its entire history.

This launch was also the next-to-last for the Delta-4 Heavy. ULA is retiring that rocket and replacing it with the still-not-flown Vulcan rocket. The plan had been for there to be an overlap in use as one was retired and the other was initiated. That has not happened.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 48 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 48 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

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SpaceX launches another 47 Starlink satellites into orbit

12:28 am

Just after midnight tonight SpaceX successfully launched 47 more Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairing halves completed their third flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 47 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 47 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

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A lava flow on a Martian lava plain

12:04 pm

A lava flow on a Martian lava plain
Click for original image.

While much of surface of the Martian equatorial regions is comprised of volcanic flood lava, the place where it is most obvious and evident is on the flanks of the three giant volcanoes of the Tharsis Bulge. Here, lava did not simple spout from surface vents to flood low-lying large areas, filling those depressions quickly almost like water. Instead it issued from vents on the slopes of those mountains, or from their calderas at their peaks, and flowed downhill almost like tsunamis of magma.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a great example. Taken on March 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows the foot of one such flow, frozen in place as it oozed down hill from the Arsia Mons, about 300 miles away to the northwest.
» Read more

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Two new European rocket startups sign deal with France to launch from French Guiana

11:28 am

The French space agency CNES today signed agreements with two different European smallsat rocket startups, Spain’s PLD Space and Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), allowing each to launch from France’s old launchpad in French Guiana that was used in the 1970s by its long abandoned Diamant rocket.

From the RFA press release:

Until now, the launch pad in Kourou has only been used by CNES for its Diamant rocket in the 1970s. Now the launch complex is to be given a new purpose, in the tradition of opening access to space through innovative and groundbreaking ventures. As such, RFA is one of the first NewSpace companies to be given the opportunity to use it. The new launch pad will be upgraded and equipped in the coming years with the aim of being used for launches from 2025.

These agreements are part of a slew that have come out of Europe in the past year or so that all indicate that the European Space Agency (ESA) and its partners have finally abandoned any attempts to build rockets, and are instead looking to private enterprise to do it for them. First Germany encouraged private rocket startups, independent of Arianespace and ESA. Then Spain followed with PLD Space. Then Arianespace, the commercial arm of ESA that for decades built all rockets for ESA, announced it was making agreements with these startups to have them launch payloads instead.

These new deals today indicate that France has now joined the rush to private enterprise, which is a very significant development as France as always been the leader in having ESA build its own rockets through Arianespace. It appears it is now looking away from government-run space.

All these actions are also suggest a dim future for ArianeGoup’s Ariane-6 rocket, built under the old system but with an attempt to give private enterprise more power, with ArianeGroup, not Arianespace, owning and controlling it. Its design however was dictated largely by ESA, thus resulting in a rocket that is too expensive and therefore not competitive.

The long term result will be greater competition, both in Europe and worldwide, which in turn is going to fuel a renaissance in rocket development, which in turn is going to speed the exploration and colonization of the rest of the solar system.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Rocket Lab’s payload on its first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

10:00 am

Until today it was unclear whether the successful first suborbital launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket on June 17, 2023 carried a payload. Now we know it did:

The launch took place at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and demonstrated the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed, or MACH-TB, program’s first suborbital flight of a hypersonic payload.

MACH-TB is led by the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center and the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Crane Division. The team selected Leidos as the program’s prime integrator last September, and California-based space company Rocket Lab is one of 12 subcontractors supporting the effort.

It appears the Pentagon program that funded MACH-TB is a different program — from a different Pentagon office — from the one that is funding the next suborbital hypersonic test using Electron. Nor is this unusual for the military. The duplication of these Pentagon programs, with multiple bureaucracies, says a lot more about the utter waste and incompetence and corruption in DC than it does about hypersonic suborbital testing.

For Rocket Lab however this duplication is great news, as it provides the company at least two different customers for its suborbital rocket.

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FAA finally reduces airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral

9:46 am

On June 15, 2023 FAA announced that it has at last reduced the airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral, thus allowing more launches while reducing the disruption to commercial airline traffic.

The move is part of broader efforts to address the conflicts between launches and commercial aviation, particularly in Florida’s congested airspace. In April, the FAA released a set of factors when considering whether to allow a launch to proceed or ask the launch company to identify alternative windows for the launch.

Among those factors are the timing of the launch, particularly relative to holidays or other special events that cause increases in air traffic, and the duration of the launch window. “The FAA encourages commercial space operations to take place during nighttime hours (to the extent practicable) when other flight operations tend to be reduced,” the guidelines state.

I say “at last” because SpaceX have been pushing for this reduction for years. It knows its rockets will fly very reliably, and even if a rare failure forces their destruction, the territory threatened is much smaller than what was once considered necessary in the past. It just took years to get the federal bureaucracy to recognize these facts.

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Northrop Grumman’s robotic servicing satellites gets third contract, this time from Intelsat

9:40 am

With an announced contract with Intelsat today, Northrop Grumman has now obtained contracts for all three of its robotic servicing pods that will be launched on its Mission Servicing Vehicle in 2025.

Intelsat ordered the third and last pod available on the debut mission of the company’s new servicing spacecraft, called Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV).

Australian communications satellite operator Optus was the first customer to sign up for the Mission Extension Pods, which are propulsion jet packs that add six years to the life of geostationary satellites. Intelsat in April said it purchased one of the pods, followed by today’s announcement that it ordered a second one.

The MRV is an upgrade from Northrop Grumman’s earlier robot, the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV), which proved that it could autonomously rendezvous and dock with the nozzle of a defunct satellite and provide it with a new thruster and fuel so as to extend its life. With the MRV, multiple revised versions of the MEV are essentially launched at the same time.

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Russia gets a launch contract!

9:31 am

In what has become a very rare event, Russia’s state-run press today announced that Roscosmos has won a launch contract for its Soyuz-2 rocket from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“On June 27th at 3:34 p.m. UAE time [2:34 Moscow time], [UAE’s] MBR Space Centre will launch its maiden mission, PHI-Demo, from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome using the Soyuz-2 rocket as part of the Payload Hosting Initiative,” the media office said in a statement.

The statement says that the initiative, jointly led by MBRSC [UAE’s space agency] and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), is aimed at providing space access and hastening the sustainable progression of novel space technologies.

The satellite will be a secondary payload on the launch of a Russian weather satellite.

It seems this UN office wants to help the Russians, and is working to encourage other nations to use its rockets to get into space. Because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, it has lost all of its international launch business. UNOOSA is apparently working to recover Russia some of that business.

The UAE meanwhile appears to be trying to light the candle from both ends, working extensively with NASA and American private companies while also attempting to partner with Russia and China.

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BepiColumbo completes third Mercury flyby

9:23 am

Mercury as seen by BepiColumbo
Click for original image.

On June 19, 2023, the European Mercury orbiter BepiColumbo made the third of six planned flybys of Mercury on its way to orbit around that planet in 2025.

The closest approach was only 146 miles above the planet’s surface. Though no pictures were taken at that point because it was Mercury’s night side, as the spacecraft moved away it used one of its monitoring cameras, designed primarily to monitor the spacecraft itself, to look back at the planet. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is one of the first taken. From its caption:

The image was taken at 19:49 UTC (21:49 CEST) by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 3, when the spacecraft was about 2536 km from the planet’s surface. Closest approach took place at 19:34 UT (21:34 CEST) on the night side of the planet at about 236 km altitude. The back of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s high-gain antenna and part of the spacecraft’s body is also visible in front of Mercury in this image.

Despite the dark nature of the image, several interesting geological features are seen in beautiful detail. Of particular interest is Beagle Rupes, a 600 km-long scarp that snakes over the surface. In this view it is seen cutting through a distinctive elongated crater named Sveinsdóttir, which likely got its shape from an impactor striking the surface at an angle.

The next flyby will occur on September 5, 2024.

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Looking down a canyon on Mars

9:43 am

Looking down a canyon on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right was taken on June 17, 2023 by Curiosity’s high resolution camera, looking back down Gediz Vallis and out across the distant floor of Gale Crater, far below. The white dotted line shows the route within this image where Curiosity had previously traveled inside this canyon, coming up around that shadowed mesa and then off to the west to try to get to terrain that it had earlier retreated because it was too rough on the rover’s wheels. Its subsequent path to the spot where this picture was taken was off to the left of the image, out of view.

This picture illustrates well the steepness and roughness of the mountainous canyon through which Curiosity presently travels. The small mountains visible on the floor of Gale Crater, about sixteen miles away, are no more than 450 feet high. The floor of the crater is 1,900 feet below where Curiosity present sits.
» Read more

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China launches classified experimental satellite

8:40 am

Using its Long March 6 rocket, China today launched what its state-run press called a “new experimental Earth-observation satellite,” lifting off its Taiyuan interior spaceport.

No word on whether the rocket’s first stage crashed near habitable areas, or whether it used parachutes to control its descent.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

41 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 46 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 46 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 41 to 40.

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A Martian crater with a wake of lava

12:47 pm

Overview map

Cool image time! Today’s cool image begins with the overview map to the right. The white dot marks its location, on the western edge of Amazonis Planitia and about 1,000 miles east of the giant shield volcano Elysium Mons.

This is a region of numerous flood lava events that appear to cover the knobby mountainous terrain that was once here. We know that past terrain was knobby because in the black outline just south of this picture the knobs are everywhere, short peaks sticking up from a very flat flood lava plain. The region is also on the northern edge of the dry equatorial regions of Mars, at 27 degrees north latitude. It is likely there is little near surface ice here.

These details will help explain the cool image itself.
» Read more

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NASA official in charge of its manned program denigrates the idea of fixed-price contracts

9:32 am

Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite running the NASA manned program dependent on it
Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite
running the NASA manned program dependent on it

Eric Berger on June 16, 2023 wrote up a careful analysis of comments made by NASA official Jim Free, who is in charge of its Artemis manned program, when he appeared on June 7, 2023 before the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board in Washington, DC.

During that appearance, in which Free provided an update on the program’s status, including admitting that the manned lunar landing will not happen in 2025 but in 2026 — something that everyone in the space industry has known for years but NASA had been denying — Berger then noted this further comment by Free:

Oddly, Free also questioned the value of the contract mechanism that NASA used to hire SpaceX and its Starship lander. “The fact is, if they’re not flying on the time they’ve said, it does us no good to have a firm, fixed-price contract other than we’re not paying more,” he said.

Free did this after trying to place the entire blame for the launch delay on SpaceX, made worse by the regulatory delays being imposed on it by the FAA.

Berger than proceeded to outline in great detail why fixed-price contracts work far better than cost-plus contracts — also known widely in the space industry and detailed myself in Capitalism in Space. To sum up, cost-plus contracts produce very little but cost gobs of money, while fixed-price contracts save money while guaranteeing results. He then asked, “What’s going on here?” and answered it as follows:
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully launches Indonesian broadband satellite

8:48 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully launched an Indonesian broadband satellite, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their seventh and ninth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

41 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 46 to 23 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 46 to 39, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 41 to 39.

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Rocket Lab completes first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

8:42 am

As part of its contract for providing the Defense Department with a testbed for hypersonic testing, Rocket Lab on June 17, 2023 successfully completed the first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket.

The HASTE suborbital launch vehicle is derived from the Company’s Electron rocket but has a modified Kick Stage for hypersonic payload deployment, a larger payload capacity of up to 700 kg / 1,540 lbs, and options for tailored fairings to accommodate larger payloads, including air-breathing, ballistic re-entry, boost-glide, and space-based applications payloads. By leveraging the heritage of Rocket Lab’s low-cost Electron – the world’s most frequently launched commercial small launch vehicle – HASTE offers true commercial testing capability at a fraction of the cost of current full-scale tests.

Because of its military nature, Rocket Lab’s press release was generally terse in providing details. Sources in the industry tell me that this launch was designed to prove out the required suborbital capabilities of Electron prior to the first hypersonic test flight. When that flight takes place, it will carry a hypersonic test vehicle built by another company, Hypersonix.

Rocket Lab with this launch demonstrated again the smart flexibility of the company. It only announced this suborbital concept for Electron in April. Only two months later it has test flown it. It is now ready to fly an actual hypersonic test flight, and waits only for the test vehicle to be provided by Hypersonix. The speed of this program leap-frogged Stratolaunch, which is also offering its Roc airplane and Talon hypersonic test vehicle to the military but started its project in late 2020 and is still not ready for flight.

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PLD’s first suborbital test launch aborted just prior to launch

1:07 pm

According to company officials, the first suborbital test launch of PLD Miura-1 rocket was aborted today just prior to launch because some of the umbilical fuel and power lines failed to disconnect as planned.

The launch was from PLD’s launch site in Spain. No word when the company will try again. Before it can build its orbital Miura-5 rocket it needs the test data from this suborbital launch.

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The icy mesas of Mars’ glacier country

12:06 pm

Overview map

The ice mesas of Mars' glacier country
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this image “Cross-Section of Glacier-Like Form,” probably because the mesa in the center of the picture clearly shows numerous layers as you descend from its peak to the surrounding plains, an elevation difference of about 200 feet.

The white dot about 250 miles due south of Lyot Crater on the overview map above marks the location of this mesa, inside the chaos terrain of Deuteronilus Mensae that is the western section of the 2,000 long strip in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars that I call glacier country, since practically every image, like today’s, suggests the presence of glaciers.

The oblique mosaic below, created using MRO’s context camera images, illustrates this fact even more spectacularly.
» Read more

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Lightning on Jupiter

10:53 am

Lightning on Jupiter
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 30, 2020 by Juno during its 31st close fly-by of Jupiter, and was enhanced and processed by citizen-scientist Kevin Gill.

In this view of a vortex near Jupiter’s north pole, NASA’s Juno mission observed the glow from a bolt of lightning. On Earth, lightning bolts originate from water clouds, and happen most frequently near the equator, while on Jupiter lightning likely also occurs in clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, and can be seen most often near the poles.

Juno was about 20,000 miles above Jupiter’s clouds when it took this picture, located at about 78 degrees north latitude.

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Rocket Lab about to launch a secret mission

9:27 am

Rocket Lab is gearing up to launch a rocket from Wallops sometime between June 15th and June 20th but it will provide no live stream and no press access.

The article at the link then speculates that this launch might be the first military hypersonic test flight using a suborbital version of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

That launcher is called HASTE, short for “Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron.” As that name suggests, HASTE is derived from the workhorse Electron and is designed to help test technologies for hypersonic craft — highly maneuverable vehicles capable of flying at least five times the speed of sound.

HASTE can haul up to 1,540 pounds (700 kilograms) of payload aloft, whereas Electron can deliver a maximum of 660 pounds (300 kg) to low Earth orbit. The suborbital rocket also features a modified version of Electron’s “kick stage” specialized for the deployment of hypersonic payloads, Rocket Lab said in an April 17 statement that announced HASTE’s existence.

The suborbital rocket is scheduled to make its debut right about now, on a mission whose details are hard to come by, according to that statement.

If so, we will only find out some limited details after launch, based on what the military decides to release publicly.

Regardless, the HASTE project demonstrates the ability of Rocket Lab to quickly improvise in order to find new ways to make money from its existing assets. For its stockholders, it is another piece of evidence that the company is a good investment.

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ESA transfers its Artemis-2 Orion service module to NASA

9:18 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday officially handed over to NASA its second completed Orion service module, to be used in 2024 on the first manned Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-2, that will carry four astronauts on a mission around the Moon.

The European Service Module-2 will power the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis II mission that will see NASA astronauts commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen complete flyby of the Moon and return to Earth.

The crew will fly Orion to 8889 km beyond the Moon before completing a lunar flyby and returning to Earth. The mission will take a minimum of eight days and will collect valuable flight test data, in the first time for over 50 years that humans have voyaged to our natural satellite.

The odds of this launching in 2024 are relatively slim. It will also be the first time NASA will be flying Orion’s environmental systems (the systems that keep the astronauts alive). We all hope those system work perfectly this first time, since people will be on board.

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Axiom delays launch of first space station module to ’26

9:08 am

Buried in a Space.com article today about Axiom was the important revelation that the company has now officially delayed the launch of its first space station module that will be attached to ISS from 2024 to 2026, with the rest of its follow-up modules delayed as well.

In January 2020, Axiom won NASA’s contract to construct the first commercially manufactured module for the ISS. “Our first module is going to be in 2026,” David Zuniga, senior director of in-space solutions at Axiom, told Space.com. This is an update to the company’s previously stated target of 2024.

Axiom’s first station component will attach to the forward port of the ISS’ Harmony module and serve as the springboard for the remaining pieces of the company’s planned space station architecture. Axiom is planning to attach a second module in 2027 and a third module a year later. Finally, a thermal power module, scheduled for sometime before 2030, will allow Axiom’s space station to detach from the ISS and become a free-flying, commercially run low Earth orbit (LEO) destination.

This schedule puts Axiom at some risk. ISS is likely going to be retired in 2030. Axiom has to therefore be able to detach its space station before that happens. It seems however with this new schedule that it might not be ready. And if it can’t, it will then need to arrange some deal with NASA and ISS’s international partners to either take over operations of ISS temporarily or convince these nations to operate it a little longer.

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A private Russian rocket?

9:01 am

According to two short stories in the Russian state-run press (here and here), a private Russian company, dubbed SR Space, is developing a private orbital rocket, and has already completed two launches of a test rocket, though neither launch reached suborbital space.

It is now assembling its first suborbital rocket intended to reach space.

As the SR Space press office specified for TASS, the new sub-orbital rocket is set for its launch at the end of the year. “The launch is scheduled for the end of the current year to deliver a signal transmitter payload,” the press office said. The transmitter’s signal sent to Earth is expected to be received by drones engineered by the company. “This is necessary to test interaction with remotely piloted aircraft systems and the technology of their remote control and flight control of a swarm in automatic mode,” it explained.

This will be the first launch of a private sub-orbital rocket in Russia to an altitude of over 100 km (the altitude where outer space begins). The carrier rocket will measure 5.17 meters in length and 0.45 meters in diameter and weigh 253 kg.

SR Space appears to be the same kind of pseudo-company that China allows. It has obtained private funding, and is operating with some independence hoping to win contracts from the Russian government in order to earn a profit. At the same time, it without doubt does nothing without that government’s permission and approval, and can be taken over at any time by that government, as happened to Russia’s last commercial rocket company S7 that wanted to use the Sea Launch ocean platform to fly commercial launches.

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Tomorrow’s final launch of Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket delayed indefinitely

2:01 pm

Arianespace officials today cancelled tomorrow’s final launch of its Ariane-5 rocket — supposedly to be replaced by the not-yet-flown Ariane-6, citing issues with “three pyrotechnical transmission lines that are associated with the Ariane 5’s solid rocket boosters.”

No new launch date has been set. There is the possibility that to resolve this issue the rocket will have to be rolled back to its assembly building and destacked. If so, the launch will be delayed months.

At the moment, Europe has only managed one launch in 2023, a far cry from the seven to twelve launches it used to do annually, before SpaceX came along and offered a cheaper rocket that could launch more frequently and quicker.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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