Tag: SpaceX

Fuel leak scrubs launch of Dragon cargo capsule this week

8:52 pm

A fuel leak detected during fueling of hydrazine in a Dragon cargo capsule as it was being prepared for a June 10th launch has forced SpaceX and NASA to delay the launch.

SpaceX detected “elevated vapor readings” of monomethyl hydrazine, or MMH, fuel in an “isolated region” of the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system during propellant loading ahead of this week’s launch, NASA said in a statement.

The fueling of the Dragon spacecraft is one of the final steps to prepare the capsule for flight, and typically occurs just before SpaceX moves the craft to the launch pad for integration with its Falcon 9 rocket.

The Dragon spacecraft has propellant tanks containing hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The two propellants ignite upon contact with each other, providing an impulse for the cargo ship’s Draco thrusters used for in-orbit maneuvers.

Each Dragon spacecraft has 16 Draco thrusters, small rocket engines that generate about 90 pounds of thrust. The Draco engines are used for orbit adjustment burns and control the spacecraft’s approach to the space station, then fire at the end of the mission for a deorbit burn to guide the capsule back into the atmosphere for re-entry and splashdown.

According to the article, it is not yet confirmed that the leak came from the capsule. If so, however, it could become a more serious issue, especially with the recent story — denied strongly by NASA — that a hydrazine leak caused damage to the heat shield of Endeavour during the return of its Axiom commercial passenger flight.

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SpaceX wins more NASA manned flights to ISS

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: NASA has now announced that it is buying five additional manned missions to ISS from SpaceX, beginning in ’26.

This new contract is in addition to a February ’22 NASA award that purchased three more Dragon flights.

After a thorough review of the long-term capabilities and responses from American industry, NASA’s assessment is that the SpaceX crew transportation system is the only one currently certified to maintain crewed flight to the space station while helping to ensure redundant and backup capabilities through 2030.

The current sole source modification does not preclude NASA from seeking additional contract modifications in the future for additional transportation services as needed.

The press release repeatedly makes it clear that NASA very much wishes to buy tickets on Boeing’s Starliner, but until it is declared operational it must give its business to SpaceX. Once Starliner begins flying, NASA will then buy seats on it and alternate between the two companies. Until then however this new SpaceX contract guarantees NASA enough flight capacity to keep ISS occupied, even if Starliner gets further delayed.

Regardless, Boeing has once again lost business to SpaceX because its Starliner capsule is not yet ready. In the long run this contract means fewer total flights for Boeing to ISS, which means less profits.

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FAA once again delays approval for launching Starship from Boca Chica

8:46 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA today announced that it is once again delaying release of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas, setting a new release date only two weeks hence.

The FAA intended to release the Final PEA on May 31, 2022. The FAA now plans to release the Final PEA on June 13, 2022 to account for ongoing interagency consultations. A notice will be sent to individuals and organizations on the project distribution list when the Final PEA is available.

The previous five delays had each been month-long. This two week delay strongly suggests that the bureaucrats are getting close to a final agreement. Whether that means SpaceX will receive an approval, which is what the initial draft had suggested back in December, or be blocked, we shall have to see. A statement SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell in mid-May that the company would be ready to launch Starship by June suggests it will be an approval.

I have been predicting since December that the month-by-month delays would continue until after the November election. I will be quite happy if that prediction ends up wrong.

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The new satellite industry, energized by freedom

12:30 pm

Liberty enlightening the world
Liberty enlightening the world, both on it and in space.

Last week SpaceX successfully completed its 22nd launch in 2022, sending 59 smallsats into orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket.

In the past few decades, the launch of a smallsat would generally have not merited much further coverage. These satellites, almost always based on the 10-centimeter (or 4-inch) square cubesat design, had generally been short term objects built almost always by university students not so much to do space research as to simply learn how to build satellites and learn how they operated in orbit.

This has now all changed, fueled both by the immense drop in launch costs generated by the competition between the new rockets built by SpaceX and the new emerging smallsat rocket companies (Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra) and by the improved capabilities of miniaturized components. Cubesats can now do far more despite being tiny, and they can be launched for much less money.

The result has been wonderfully illustrated by the satellites launched last week on that Falcon 9. Below is a short list of the press releases in the past few days, announcing the successful activation of these satellites:
» Read more

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Environmentalists sue local Boca Chica officials for closing beaches for SpaceX

9:27 am

Muskhate: The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have now sued a variety of local Boca Chica government agencies for periodically closing the beaches during hazardous SpaceX operations.

The Sierra Club, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and non-profit Save RGV have joined together in a lawsuit against the Texas General Land Office, Texas land commissioner George P. Bush and Cameron County in Texas for closing Boca Chica Beach periodically for SpaceX operations during Starship tests, the Sierra Club stated May 5. The Boca Chica beach is near SpaceX’s Starbase facility, where it is building Starship rocket prototypes and their massive Super Heavy boosters.

“Restricting access to a public beach, as the defendants have done, violates the Texas constitution,” the Sierra Club said in a statement. None of the allegations have been proven in court, and the statement does not name SpaceX among the entities pursued in the lawsuit.

These are the same groups that have been lobbying government officials for the past few years to shut SpaceX down. They claim that a change to the state’s laws allowing these closures that was passed in 2013 violates the state’s constitution, and want the courts to agree.

Of course, we all know these organizations really have no interest in keeping the beaches open for public use. What they really want is to shut down SpaceX in Boca Chica, because that company is actually doing something exciting and innovative while bringing billions of investment capital to the Rio Grand Valley, including tens of thousands of new jobs. (The group called “Save RGV” is especially ironic and dishonest, since RGV stands for Rio Grand Valley. If their effort succeeded, they would not save RGV, but destroy it. All those jobs and billions would vanish, leaving the area as depressed and as poor as it has been now for decades.)

These groups also wish to destroy Elon Musk, because he has recently made it clear that he no longer is a knee-jerk supporter of all leftist causes.

Nor will their effort cease should they lose this case in court. They will do what environmental groups have done now for decades, find another minor legal issue and sue again, and again, and again, and again.

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Did SpaceX’s Endeavour capsule have issues with its heat shield during its most recent return to Earth?

9:43 am

According to a May 23rd Space Explored article based on anonymous sources, the heat shield on SpaceX’s Endeavour capsule experienced “dangerously excessive wear upon reentry” because of a propellant leak.

Hypergolic propellant made its way into the Crew Dragon Endeavour’s heat shield, according to sources at SpaceX and NASA who spoke with Space Explored. This hypergolic propellant is used by the Crew Dragon in its Draco engines – hypergolic means that the two parts spontaneously combust upon contact. It is believed that this hypergolic propellant impacted the integrity of the heatshield, causing dangerously excessive wear upon reentry.

NASA however has now bluntly denied these claims:

“The data associated with Dragon’s recent crew reentries was normal — the system performed as designed without dispute. There has not been a hypergol leak during the return of a crewed Dragon mission nor any contamination with the heat shield causing excessive wear,” the NASA statement reads, in part.

“SpaceX and NASA perform a full engineering review of the heat shield’s thermal protection system following each return, including prior to the launch of the Crew-4 mission currently at the International Space Station,” the NASA statement continues. “The heat shield composite structure (structure below the tile) was re-flown per normal planning and refurbishment processes. The thermal protection system on the primary heat shield for Crew-4 was new, as it has been for all human spaceflight missions.”

Such a flat out denial by NASA strongly suggests that the anonymous sources relied on by Space Explored are not reliable, and got their facts wrong. While NASA will often try to hide or spin any issues to make them seem less worrisome, it has almost never denied the existence of a serious problem, when it was revealed that such a problem had occurred.

I know to say this sounds paranoid, but this story also suggests this claim might be part of the growing effort within the federal bureaucracy and the press to attack SpaceX, because of its new irrational hostility to Elon Musk because he supports achievement and free speech.

At the same time, SpaceX has recently had to discard and replace a Dragon heat shield planned for a future mission because of discovered “manufacturing defect” during normal preflight testing. This confirmed story, combined with the unconfirmed and questionable story above, suggests SpaceX needs to take a closer look at the Dragon heat shield design.

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Part 2 of Elon Musk’s most recent tour of Starbase

10:37 am

Looking up from the bottom of the tower
Looking up from the bottom of the tower

Looking down from the top of the tower
Looking down from the top of the tower

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut has now posted part two of his long and most recent tour of Starbase at Boca Chica with Elon Musk. This section is 33 minutes long, and takes us to the top of the new orbital launch tower that SpaceX will use to launch Starship and Superheavy, as well as eventually catch Superheavy upon its return.

Part 1 can be viewed here.

The two images to the right are screen captures from today’s tour.

I have embedded Part 2 below. It has the following interesting take-aways:

  • Musk: “At SpaceX, we specialize in converting the impossible into late.”
  • Musk and his engineers spent several minutes describing in detail how the tower’s chopsticks will work in conjunction with Superheavy as it comes down and the chopsticks grab it.
  • Musk also provided some details about the Starlink-2 satellites, explaining that it is impractical to launch them on Falcon 9, and thus Starship must become operational to fly them.
  • The tour not only stopped near the top of the tower to get a close look at the attachment points for the chopsticks, it went to the tower’s top, at 469 feet in the air, 106 feet taller than the Saturn-5 rocket.
  • In discussing how the economy is not zero sum, Musk revealed why he is at heart a conservative, and is slowly finding this out. That he still leaves out that forgotten word that makes this all possible, freedom, shows his journey is not quite complete.
  • Musk also added his thoughts on the importance of making human civilization multi-planetary. For him, it is really a question of survival.

» Read more

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Spaceflight’s Sherpa-AC tug successfully deploys satellites

9:49 am

Sherpa-AC

Capitalism in space: Spaceflight’s first orbital tug, dubbed Sherpa-AC and launched on SpaceX’s May 25th smallsat Falcon 9 mission, has successfully deployed its satellites as planned.

Spaceflight successfully delivered all five customer payloads, including two hosted payloads on the Sherpa OTV [Orbital Transfer Vehicle, or tug], to their desired orbital destinations.

The Transporter 5 mission marks Spaceflight’s 51st launch, its sixth in 2022, and the first launch of the Sherpa-AC OTV model. Sherpa-AC, named for its “Attitude Control” capabilities, augments Spaceflight’s base free-flying Sherpa with key functionality including a flight computer, attitude knowledge and control, and more, making it ideal for servicing hosted payloads on orbit.

Organizations on Spaceflight’s Transporter 5 mission include Xona Space’s Huginn mission, NearSpace Launch Inc.’s TROOP-3, MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Agile Micro Sat, and Missile Defense Agency’s CNCE Block 2.

The picture above, reduced to post here, shows Sherpa-AC as launched. According to Spaceflight’s webpage, Sherpa-AC can act either as the service module for a smallsat, providing power, attitude control, and communications, or as a tug, bringing the cubesat to its desired orbit and then deploying it. On this flight three cubesats were deployed, and two remain attached, using Sherpa-AC as their service module.

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Astronomers: Shut down satellite companies so we don’t have to adapt!

9:31 am

The Hubble Space Telescope
Space-based astronomy, a concept apparently alien to astronomers

In an article published today in Nature, the astronomy community continued its crybaby complaining of the last three years about the interference posed to their ground-based telescopes by the tens of thousands of small satellites scheduled for launch in the next few years.

These quotes typify the apparent attitude of astronomers:

“This is an unsustainable trajectory,” says Meredith Rawls, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle. “At the moment, our science is fine. But at what point will we miss a discovery?”

…“It’s really quite horrifying,” says Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada.

…The growing threat of satellite constellations adds to other degradations of the night sky such as light pollution, says Karlie Noon, a PhD candidate in astronomy and an Indigeneous research associate at Australian National University in Canberra. “In the same way that our lands were colonized, our skies are now being colonized,” she says. “And this isn’t just Indigenous people.” She points out that companies have launched satellites without necessarily consulting the scientific community. [emphasis mine]

Oh the horror. Scientists weren’t consulted! The nerve of these companies!

In response, astronomers have decided their only solution is to enlist the UN to shut down these satellite companies.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 59 smallsats and tugs into orbit

11:49 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched 59 smallsats and orbital tugs using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage successfully completed its eighth flight, landing at Cape Canaveral. As I write this the upper stage is in the several hour-plus process of deploying the payloads.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

22 SpaceX
16 China
7 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 31 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire rest of the world combined 31 to 26.

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Chinese expert calls for China to find ways to destroy Starlink constellation

11:27 am

A Chinese communications expert at its Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications has written a paper calling for China’s military to develop ways in which it can to destroy SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

According to the South China Morning Post, lead author Ren Yuanzhen and colleagues advocated in Modern Defence Technology not only for China to develop anti-satellite capabilities, but also to have a surveillance system that could monitor and track all satellites in Starlink’s constellation.

“A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system,” the Chinese boffins reportedly said, estimating that data transmission speeds of stealth fighter jets and US military drones could increase by a factor of 100 through a Musk machine connection.

I am sure China (as well as every other superpower — including the U.S. military) is already working on developing methods for either jamming or destroying Starlink. Doing either however is difficult because of the constellation’s nature: many small satellites all of which provide redundancy and are easily replaced. Even more depressing for these power-hungry government entities is the fact that Starlink is not the only constellation now in orbit, with many others soon to follow.

For example, consider the contracts that the NRO announced today with three different surveillance satellite companies, all of which have their own constellations. Getting rid of one is hard. All three is likely impossible.

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Software issues delay Psyche launch seven weeks

9:05 am

Engineers preparing to stack the Psyche probe on top of its Falcon Heavy rocket for an August 1, 2022 launch have been forced to delay that launch at least seven weeks until September 20th at the earliest because of a software issue.

Technicians unboxed the Psyche spacecraft and moved it to a handling fixture for a series of hardware and software tests to make sure the probe survived the cross-country trip from California.

But a technical issue interrupted the test campaign, and will delay the launch of the Psyche mission at least seven weeks.

“An issue is preventing confirmation that the software controlling the spacecraft is functioning as planned,” NASA said in a written statement, responding to questions from Spaceflight Now. “The team is working to identify and correct the issue.”

Assuming no further delays, the spacecraft will still reach Psyche in January 2026.

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SpaceX seeking another $1.725 billion in investment capital

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has begun another private funding round, now asking for $1.725 billion in new investment capital.

The space venture is looking to bring in up to $1.725 billion in new capital, at a price of $70 per share, according to a company-wide email on Friday obtained by CNBC. Notably, SpaceX split its stock price 10-for-1 in February, which reduced the common stock to $56 a share – with the new valuation representing a 25% increase.

When added to past funding rounds — and including the $2.9 billion provided by NASA for turning Starship into a manned lunar lander — SpaceX will have raised approximately $12 billion total for building Starship.

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Well, compared to what NASA has spent for its expendable SLS rocket (about $60 billion), $12 billion is chicken feed, especially because Starship will not be expendable, but entirely reusable.

If this contrast doesn’t illustrate the strength of freedom, competition, and private enterprise over government, I don’t know what does. Government, not caring about making a profit, produces a disposable rocket costing many billions, and takes two decades to do it. Private enterprise in comparison also wants a big rocket, but it also doesn’t look kindly on throwing away its investment with each launch. It instead insists the cost to build it be constrained, as well as the time to do it.

The result: Government accomplishes little and wastes a lot. Private enterprise makes it happen, and quickly for a reasonable cost.

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Launcher fills customer list for first flight of its space tug

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: The startup space tug company Launcher announced yesterday that it has signed deals with ten customers, filling its manifest, for the first test flight of its Orbiter tug.

The tug and its payloads will be launched in October on a Falcon 9. Six of those customers, all cubesats, will be deployed into their preferred orbit by the tug, while four others are payloads that will simply ride on the tug.

The company is now selling planned future missions scheduled in ’23 on other Falcon 9 launches. It is also developing its own smallsat rocket, Launcher Light, with a planned first launch in ’24.

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Elon Musk gives another tour of Starbase

9:59 am

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut has posted another 44 minute long interview with Elon Musk that took place as Musk gave him a recent tour at Boca Chica, walking around the base of the Starship and Superheavy boosters being prepared for that first orbital launch.

I have embedded the interview below. It has the following interesting take-aways:

  • In describing their decision to eliminate completely a separate attitude thrust system for Starship and instead use the fuels in the main tanks using controllable vents, Musk once again demonstrated his engineering philosophy that “the best part is no part.”
  • The company is definitely planning to test the deployment of some Starlink satellites on that first orbital test flight.
  • Musk once again emphasized that there is a high expectation that this first orbital flight will fail, but they are unbothered by this because this first ship is considered a prototype anyway that must be redesigned. Whether it completes its flight or not, the flight will tell them what needs to be done for future iterations.
  • They are aiming with Starship to reduce to cost to bring a ton to the surface of Mars from $1 billion to $100K. Musk called this improvement “insane” but entirely possible.
  • Musk also noted how the design of Starship is not like a plane, which wants to develop lift. Starship instead is designed to fall, but do so as “draggy” as possible. The goal is to shed as much velocity as possible, as soon as possible.

Dodd also notes this video is the first of a new series.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 53 Starlink satellites on a new Falcon 9 rocket

3:18 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites, the company’s second launch in less than 24 hours.

The most newsworthy component of this launch is that for first time since February 2, 2022, and only the fourth time since the beginning of 2020, the Falcon 9 rocket used a new first stage, which successfully landed on its drone ship in the Atlantic. It appears that SpaceX is adding about two new boosters per year to its first stage fleet, based on the evidence from these launches.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

20 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 28 to 15 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 28 to 24.

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SpaceX successfully launches another 53 Starlink satellites

3:22 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites, using a Falcon 9 first stage for the fifth time.

The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

19 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 27 to 15 in the national rankings, as well as the entire world combined 27 to 24, leads that should widen in the next week with two more SpaceX launches as well as Boeing’s Starliner unmanned demo mission launch on ULA’s Atlas-5.

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SpaceX CEO: Starship could launch as early as June

10:15 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s CEO and president Gwynne Shotwell revealed today that Starship could be ready for its orbital test flight from Boca Chica as early as June, though government regulatory obstacles make that launch more likely three to six months from now.

It appears that the delays in getting FAA approval for launch have not been the only issues that have delayed that first launch attempt. Though SpaceX would have likely tried a launch months ago with earlier prototypes had the approval arrived as originally promised, that launch would have likely failed based on ground tests the company has been doing during the delay.

When Musk tweeted his “hopefully May” estimate, SpaceX was nowhere close to finishing the Starship – Ship 24 – that is believed to have been assigned to the orbital launch debut. However, SpaceX finally accelerated Ship 24 assembly within the last few weeks and ultimately finished stacking the upgraded Starship on May 8th. A great deal of work remains to truly complete Ship 24, but SpaceX should be ready to send it to a test stand within a week or two. Even though the testing Ship 24 will need to complete has been done before by Ship 20, making its path forward less risky than Booster 7’s, Ship 24 will debut a number of major design changes and likely needs at least two months of testing to reach a basic level of flight readiness.

A more likely launch date is probably late July at the earliest, though of course that will also depend on the government’s approval, something that presently appears difficult to get.

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Momentus gets final launch permits for its space tug

9:30 am

Capitalism in space: After a year delay due to government security concerns, Momentus has finally gotten all the launch permits required for a launch later this month on a Falcon 9 of its space tug, Vigoride, on its first orbital test flight.

In late April Momentus had gotten FCC approval. Now it has gotten clearance from the FAA. The FAA had blocked last year’s launch because of security concerns related to the foreign connections of several of the company’s founders/investors. Those individuals have now left the company, clearing the way for license approval.

The delay however caused Momentus to lose several customers while allowing another space tug competitor, Launcher, to catch up.

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Yawn: Rogozin tweets threats to Musk, Musk shrugs

8:58 am

In yesterday’s non-news Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos which runs Russia’s entire aerospace industry, issued a threat against Elon Musk for supplying the Ukraine Starlink service in its war against the Russian invasion, and Musk responded with an almost cheerful quip.

On Sunday (May 8), Musk posted on Twitter a note that he said Rogozin, the head of Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos, had sent out to Russian media. The note claimed that equipment for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet system had been delivered to Ukrainian marines and “militants of the Nazi Azov battalion” by the U.S. military. “Elon Musk, thus, is involved in supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment,” Rogozin wrote, according to an English translation that Musk posted. (He also tweeted out a Russian version.) “And for this, Elon, you will be held accountable like an adult — no matter how much you’ll play the fool.”

This sounds very much like a threat, as Musk acknowledged in a follow-up tweet on Sunday. “If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya,” he wrote. Musk’s mom, Maye, didn’t appreciate that glib response, tweeting, “That’s not funny” along with two angry-face emojis. The billionaire entrepreneur responded, “Sorry! I will do my best to stay alive.” (It was Mother’s Day, after all.)

Musk’s light-hearted response only stands to reason, considering Rogozin’s loud-mouthed track record. Nothing he says really matters, so why should Musk care that much. Musk probably posted Rogozin’s comments out of amusement more than anything else..

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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched 53 Starlink satellites, using and landing the Falcon 9’s first stage for the twelfth time.

The fairings halves were flying for their third and sixth times. This was also SpaceX’s sixth launch in less than a month.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

18 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 26 to 14 in the national rankings, as well as all the entire world combined 26 to 23.

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Endurance successfully splashes down, returning 4 astronauts after a 6 month mission

11:50 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s Endurance spacecraft successfully splashed down tonight off the coast of Florida, bringing home four astronauts after a six month mission on ISS.

This event capped a remarkable month for SpaceX. It launched two manned missions to ISS (one of which was entirely private) while returning two (including that private mission after seventeen days). In between the company also launched three Falcon 9 rockets putting satellites into orbit. All told, in the four weeks since the April 8th launch of the Axiom private manned mission to ISS, SpaceX completed five launches, all of which successfully landed the first stages for later reuse.

More important, everything on every one of those launches and splashdowns went like clockwork, with no problems, delays, or glitches. The only thing that delayed anything was the weather, something no one can do anything about.

Rocket engineering is hard, maybe the hardest technical challenge facing humans. The high quality of SpaceX’s work however is beginning to make it seem routine.

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Endurance undocks from ISS for splashdown tonight; Watch here

9:29 am

SpaceX’s Endurance manned capsule today undocked from ISS carrying four astronauts with a planned splashdown off the coast of Florida at shortly after midnight (Eastern) tonight.

I have embedded the live stream for the splashdown below. It will go live about 11:00 pm (Eastern) in order to cover all the splashdown events:

11:48 p.m. Trunk jettison
11:53 p.m. Deorbit burn
12:04 a.m. Nosecone closed
12:43 a.m. Dragon splashdown
» Read more

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A quake south of Starship’s prime landing sites on Mars

1:31 pm

The lowlands south of Starship's prime landing site
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on February 23, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Though it shows the largely featureless northern lowland plains of Mars, it is particularly interesting for two reasons.

First, according to the photo’s label this scarp/ridge is apparently near a quake detected by the seismometer placed on Mars by the lander InSight, located about a thousand miles to the southwest. Though no information of the strength of this quake is available, it is likely to have been a small and weak one, interesting mostly because it indicates some small underground instability or a recent small impact on the surface. The image favors the former, as it shows no obvious recent features of change. What it does show is one very intriguing flow feature draping the scarp. As the location is at 34 north latitude in a region where scientists have found a lot of evidence of water ice very close to the surface, the flow could very well be glacial in nature, though dismissing a lava origin would be a mistake.

The second reason this location is of interest is what lies relatively nearby, as shown in the overview map below.
» Read more

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Fish & Wildlife documents now reveal its objections to SpaceX Boca Chica facility

9:32 am

We’re here to help you! Documents obtained by CNBC under a Freedom of Information request have revealed the specific objections of Fish & Wildlife that has helped delay the approval of the FAA’s environment reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility for Starship launches.

SpaceX must take steps to track and mitigate its impact on endangered species and their habitat in order to gain approvals for testing and commercial launches of its Starship Super Heavy lift-launch vehicle in Boca Chica, Texas, according to documents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service obtained by CNBC.

The documents, released by the federal agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, show that recent declines in an endangered bird species, the piping plover, have already been correlated with SpaceX activity at the South Texas facility.

The documents also reveal that SpaceX is, for now at least, reducing the amount of energy it plans to generate at a utility-sized natural gas power plant on the 47.4-acre launch site there.

According to a lawyer from the radical environmentalist organization the Center for Biological Diversity who was interviewed for the article, Fish & Wildlife’s demands are not tremendously restrictive, and might actually allow the project to go forward, since they appear to only require SpaceX to “monitor affected animal populations carefully, limit construction and launch activity to specific seasons or times of day and night, and use shuttles to reduce vehicle traffic of workers on location.”

I see it differently. I think Fish & Wildlife bureaucrats are struggling to come up with reasons to block SpaceX. They know that decades of data in Florida prove that rocket launches have no negative impact on wildlife. To claim such a thing in Texas is thus not justified. They are trying to do it anyway.

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Viasat once again demands government block its competitor Starlink

9:50 am

In a letter to the FCC submitted on May 2, 2022, Viasat once again demanded the government block the deployment of SpaceX’s full 30,000 Starlink satellite constellation.

SpaceX shouldn’t be allowed to greatly expand its Starlink network while light pollution issues surrounding its deployed satellites remain unresolved, Jarrett Taubman, Viasat vice president and deputy chief of government affairs, said in a letter to the regulator.

While calls for a thorough environmental review that Viasat made for Starlink’s current generation of satellites in December 2020 were largely rejected, Taubman said SpaceX’s plan to grow the constellation by seven times “would have significant aesthetic, scientific, social and cultural, and health effects on the human environment on Earth.”

In other words, rather than try to compete with SpaceX, Viasat wants the government to squelch that competition. Though Viasat’s previous complaints have been rejected entirely, there is no guarantee that the Biden administration will continue to reject them. Recent evidence suggests instead that it will instead use this complaint as another opportunity to limit SpaceX’s operations, for political reasons.

Meanwhile, the only possible harm to Earth the full Starlink constellation might do is cause a limited interference in ground-based astronomy. Since astronomers have made so little effort to get their telescopes into orbit, above such interference, few should sympathize with them. If anything, Starlink should be the spur to get all of its telescopes off the ground and into space. Astronomers will not only avoid light interference from Starlink, they will get far better data without the atmosphere smearing their vision.

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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

2:37 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage successfully flying and landing for the sixth time.

That first stage had flown only three weeks ago, thus completing the fastest turnaround yet.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

17 SpaceX
12 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 24 to 12 in the national rankings.

8 comments

Surprise! FAA delays SpaceX approval at Boca Chica another month

11:56 am

As I have been predicting now for months, the FAA today announced that it is once again delaying approval of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility one more month, to May 31, 2022.

This is the fifth time since December that the FAA has delayed the release of the environmental assessment. When the first delay was announced in December 2021, I predicted that this stone-walling by the government will likely continue for many months, and delay the first orbital launch of Starship “until the latter half of ’22, if then.”

Since then it has become very clear that the other federal bureaucracies at NOAA and Fish & Wildlife which must sign off on the approval are hostile to Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Starship, and are acting to block this approval, with this stone-walling having the unstated support of the Biden administration. When the third delay was announced at the end of February, I predicted no approval would ever occur, that the Biden administration wants to reject the reassessment and force the issuance of a new environmental impact statement, a process that could take years. To do this before the November election however will cost votes, so the administration would instead delay the approval month by month until November.

This prediction has been dead on right, unfortunately. Expect more month-by-month delays until November, when the Biden administration will then announce — conveniently just after the election — the need for a new impact statement requiring years of study.

The one hope to stop this government intransigence will be a complete wipe-out of the Democratic Party in Congress in those November elections. A strong Republican Congress with large majorities in both houses could quickly force the Biden administration to back down on many issues, including this effort to shut SpaceX down in Texas.

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Axiom signs deal with the UAE to fly one astronaut to ISS in ’23

10:52 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom announced today that it has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirate (UAE) to fly a UAE astronaut to ISS in ’23 for a six month mission.

Axiom was able to put its own passenger on this flight because of a complex deal with NASA that had Axiom act as the go-between for Mark Vande Hei’s launch on a Soyuz in April ’21. Axiom brought the flight for NASA (which didn’t have the funds), and got in exchange a free seat for a passenger on a later American launch. Axiom has now sold that seat to the UAE.

The UAE in turn solidifies its space effort, with a six month manned mission to ISS.

The deal also demonstrates the priceless value of leaving ownership to American companies. Axiom made this deal to sell globally its long term space station plans, and it will use a SpaceX Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to launch it. Both companies thus make money on their products, instead of the cash going to NASA. Such profits will only encourage further sales, not only to these companies but to other competing American rocket and space station companies.

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