NASA

NASA’s Space Launch System makes inaugural journey in historic launch • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Artemis, NASA, SLS, Space, Space Launch SystemNo Comments

After years of preparation and two false starts, NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System has finally taken off and entered orbit. It’s a big win for the space agency — even as it assigns tasks once meant for the SLS to SpaceX instead. Some pre-launch jitters threatened to scrub the launch, but a “red crew” went out to the hot pad to tighten something, and a bad Ethernet switch of all things later also needed to be replaced. But everything came together about 40 minutes after the original T-0, and the rocket had a clean (and impressive-looking) ascent with no hiccups to speak of. It reached orbit and as of 13 minutes after launch the various stages, separations, and cut-offs were green across the board. The SLS is a key part of NASA’s Artemis program, intended to bring humanity back to the Moon “to stay,” as they often emphasize. That means bringing a lot of gear up there, stuff that might take years of ferrying with smaller launch vehicles like the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Rocket Lab Electron. The SLS was built with this kind of heavy duty mission in mind, but setbacks and delays have dogged the program, and now there is considerable speculation that commercial heavy-lift vehicles may soon offer more bang for the buck. But it is also clearly important to the U.S. government to have an option they own top to bottom. Now that the enormous “Mega Moon Rocket” has shown it can get to space, NASA can at least plan on putting the model to work, though that will mean building a fresh one every time — unlike some launch vehicles, this one isn’t reusable. You can watch the final countdown and takeoff here: The mission ahead The main goal of the Artemis I mission is to test the Orion spacecraft and its critical components, like the heat shield upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and the communications systems, before the capsule eventually carries humans later this decade. The capsule will spend around 10 weeks going from orbit to the Moon and back before splashing back down to Earth in the Pacific Ocean, where it will be recovered by a U.S. Navy ship. NASA of course has a more detailed but easy to understand mission plan, and the diagram below shows it quite succinctly: This was NASA’s third attempt to launch the Space Launch System rocket. The first, which took place in August, was called off due to a hydrogen bleed line issue with one of the rocket’s four core stage engines; the second attempt a few days later was scrubbed for the same reason. It seems third time was the charm after all. This mission will have many more crucial and historic moments, so stay tuned for more as the Orion capsule makes its way moonward.

NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal-rich asteroid is back on the books for October 2023 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in falcon heavy, NASA, psyche, Space, SpaceXNo Comments

NASA said Friday that its Psyche mission (named after the asteroid the mission is targeting) has been rescheduled to October next year. The news comes just a few months after the agency announced that it would definitively miss its planned 2022 launch attempt. The delayed schedule is due to late delivery of key components of the spacecraft, including the flight software and testing equipment. The launch window for this year concluded on October 11. NASA conducted an internal review to determine whether the mission could launch next year, in addition to a separate independent review commissioned by the agency to examine the failures that led to missing the launch window. It appears that the review determined that next year’s launch is a go. While the launch window has changed, NASA said the flight profile will be similar: The spacecraft will use Martian gravity in 2026 to propel the spacecraft toward the asteroid Psyche. If the mission does move forward next year, the spacecraft is targeted to arrive at the asteroid in August 2029. The mission, which is being led by Arizona State University, will explore the metal asteroid dubbed “Psyche” located between Mars and Jupiter. It was chosen for exploration because scientists believe it is the nickel-iron core of an earlier planet, making it a rich target for understanding how our own planet came to exist. Folks with asteroid mining ambitions, of course, undoubtedly also have their interest piqued. Total mission costs, including launch, are $985 million; of that, $717 million had been spent as of June. Two additional projects were scheduled to launch with Psyche: a NASA mission called Janus, to explore a twin binary asteroid system, and a technology demonstration of high-data-rate laser communication data. The latter has already been integrated with the Psyche spacecraft and will launch with it, but NASA is still exploring options for Janus. In February 2020, NASA announced it had awarded the launch contract to SpaceX for a value of $117 million. The agency booked a ride on a Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket currently in operation and which has only flown three times in its history. (The fourth could take place as early as next week.)

Moon set for November traffic jam as both ispace and NASA target launches • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in artemis i, ispace, NASA, SpaceNo Comments

If all goes to plan, Florida’s Space Coast could see two separate lunar missions take off in November. Japanese startup ispace said Wednesday it is targeting a launch window of November 9-15 for its first lunar lander mission. Separately, NASA set a trio of possible November launch dates for Artemis I, the first in a series of planned launches to return humans to the Moon by the middle of the decade. For NASA, these November dates are backup opportunities after the agency decided to scrub August’s initial launch attempts due to technical issues. The two missions are part of an increasingly widespread push amongst private industry and government space agencies to conduct more science and explore commercial activities on our large natural satellite. Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test of the massive Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule; chiefly, it will test Orion’s performance in a stable orbit around the moon and the capabilities of its heat shield when it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. It will be followed by Artemis II in 2024, which will be a crewed flight test; then that will be followed by Artemis III the following year, which will land humans, including the first woman and the first person of color, on the moon. NASA eventually aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. Engineers confirmed “minimal work is required” to prepare the Artemis I launch system for its return to the launch pad. The rocket had to be rolled back to NASA’s hangar at Kennedy Space Center due to Hurricane Ian, which swept across Florida at the end of September. NASA said it would return it to the launch pad as early as November 4. The first launch opportunity opens on November 14 at 12:07 AM EST, with two backup opportunities on November 16 and November 19. Like NASA, Tokyo-based ispace is planning its own lunar exploration program. This first mission under the program, dubbed Mission 1 (M1), will see an ispace Hakuto-R lunar lander carry multiple payloads, including a 22-pound rover for the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, to the surface of the moon. M1 will head to space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket; the 7.5 foot-tall Hakuto-R will land on the moon approximately three months after launch. ispace is planning a second mission, Mission 2, for 2023. For that mission, Hakuto-R will deliver a small ispace rover to collect data for the startup’s subsequent lunar missions.

NASA’s DART spacecraft bumped an asteroid off its orbit • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in asteroids, dart, Government & Policy, NASA, SpaceNo Comments

The demise of a spacecraft is usually something rather poignant. But two weeks ago, NASA celebrated one’s destruction. On September 26, NASA executed the final stage of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), in which a spacecraft intentionally crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos to investigate whether such an impact could deflect an Earth-bound stellar object. A successful collision was the first cause for celebration, but now there’s even more reason to cheer. NASA has officially determined the DART mission a success, revealing in a press conference today that Dimorphos’ orbit has changed significantly due to the impact. In crashing DART into Dimorphos, planetary defense researchers hoped the spacecraft’s kinetic energy would transfer to the asteroid, altering its path. In theory, the same method could be used to protect Earth from an incoming asteroid. (For what it’s worth, neither Dimorphos nor the larger asteroid Didymos, which it orbits, pose a threat to our planet.) For mission success, DART needed to change Dimorphos’ nearly 12-hour orbital period around Didymos by at least 73 seconds. After two weeks of observations, the team revealed a 32-minute change in Dimorphos’ orbital period — more than 25 times longer than the benchmark for success. “This result is one important step toward understanding the full effect of DART’s impact with its target asteroid,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said in a press release. “As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way.” The DART team will continue to observe Dimorphos, gathering data from ground-based observatories; the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube satellite, which imaged the collision in close range; and, eventually, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission, which is scheduled to survey Dimorphos in about four years. The image at top from LICIACube shows debris pluming into space from the impacted asteroid. “DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology,” said Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which managed the mission for NASA. “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection.” While we’re a long way off from full-fledged planetary defense capabilities, DART has at least demonstrated that we probably won’t need to send Bruce Willis into space to protect us — an autonomous spacecraft should do the trick.

Oh my gourd • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in international space station, Max Q, NASA, Rocket Lab, Space, SpaceXNo Comments

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. Will every October issue have a Halloween/autumn pun as its title? I’LL NEVER TELL. In this issue: Blast off for Crew-5 Russia’s rethinking on the ISS News from Firefly, TK and more By the way…We are a little over ONE WEEK away from ZebethMedia Disrupt, which is returning live and in-person to San Francisco on October 18-20. Use this link to receive 15% off passes (excluding online and expo). SpaceX continues to set the industry standard for launch cadence, successfully completing three separate missions in the span of five days. The first was Crew-5 on Wednesday (more on that below), followed by a Starlink mission a scant eight hours later. To cap it all off, it launched two satellites for Intelsat on Thursday night. Crew-5 was a milestone for a few different reasons. The mission (so named because it’s SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program) took off from launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The crew of four — which includes American astronauts Nicole Mann, mission commander, and Josh Cassada, mission pilot; JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, mission specialist; and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, mission specialist — are traveling to the station in a Crew Dragon dubbed “Endurance.” It separated from the Falcon 9 rocket shortly after launch and arrived at the station on Thursday. SpaceX has now delivered 30 humans to space across eight human spaceflight missions. It also marks the first time that a cosmonaut has flown on a SpaceX Crew Dragon and the first time a cosmonaut has flown on an American spacecraft since 2002. Cosmonaut Kikina’s spot on the spacecraft is part of a recent astronaut transportation deal between the U.S. and Russia. American astronaut Francisco Rubio flew to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz last month as part of the deal. Looking ahead, SpaceX’s next CCP mission, Crew-6, will launch in February of next year. The Ax-2 mission, Axiom Space’s second private mission to the ISS, will follow in May. Image Credits: SpaceX Russia is having internal discussions over continuing its participation in the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2024, despite statements made earlier this summer that the country will pull out of the station program by the middle of the decade. Sergei Krikalev, head of human space programs at Roscosmos, said Monday that the Russian space agency is in discussions to extend its “participation in [the] ISS program with our government and hope to have permission to continue next year.” The about-face comes just a few months after Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov announced Russia’s plans to leave the station after 2024, and instead construct its own orbiting station. The ISS is operated in partnership between the space agencies of U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe. America has committed to operate the station through 2030. However, Krikalev admitted that a new Russian station may not be ready by 2025. “We know that it’s not going to happen very [quickly], so probably we will keep flying [on the ISS] until we have any new infrastructure that will allow us to do continuous human presence on low Earth orbit,” he said. Image Credits: NASA More news from TC and beyond ArianeGroup conducted a successful hot fire test of the Ariane 6 second stage, a key milestone in stage qualification testing. The European Space Agency is hoping to launch the Ariane 6 rocket sometime next year. CAPSTONE, NASA’s orbit-charting satellite, has regained three-axis attitude control and remains on track to enter its target orbit around the moon on November 13. Firefly Aerospace can now count itself amongst a small number of space companies to have reached orbit. The company launched its Alpha rocket from Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 2 on October 1 and declared the mission “100% successful” in achieving its primary objectives. Inmarsat is collaborating with U.K. company Livewire Digital to create a “network of networks” for connectivity across Inmarsat’s geosynchronous satellites, terrestrial 5G and a new constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who bankrolled and flew on the Inspiration4 mission last year, outlined his ambitious plans for the Polaris Dawn series of private human spaceflight missions. The first is expected to launch in partnership with SpaceX in March next year. Redwire is buying QinetiQ Space, a Belgium-based supplier of small satellites and other space infrastructure, for €32 million ($31.1 million). Rocket Lab’s punnily-named “It Argos Up From Here” mission blasted off from the company’s New Zealand launch site on Friday. The dedicated launch carried a General Atomics satellite bus carrying an environmental monitoring payload named Argos-4. Skyrora’s head of government affairs, Alan Thompson, expressed concern over the ongoing vacancy of a key science minister position in the British government. “The new Tory administration has yet to recognize and prioritise the massive opportunities held within the UK Space sector, a truth echoed in 80 days of absence despite the previous incumbent’s commitment and readiness to champion UK Space and Science,” he said in a statement. Space billboards could turn a profit despite costing up to $65 million, according to a new study from Russian researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will see its first launch in over three years. The mission, scheduled for October 28, will deploy two satellites to GEO for the U.S. Space Force. SpinLaunch completed its tenth successful flight test using its suborbital accelerator. Unlike other tests, this one carried test customer payloads from NASA, Outpost and others. SpinLaunch said the test “demonstrated that SpinLaunch partners’ standard satellite components are inherently compatible” with the company’s unique kinetic launch system. United Launch Alliance launched two SES satellites aboard its Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission is part of SES’ effort to collect almost $4 billion in government payouts to clear the C-band. Virgin Orbit has completed a full launch rehearsal for its next flight from Spaceport Cornwall. It will be the first orbital space launch to ever take place from