Space

after-coming-back-from-the-dead,-the-world’s-largest-aircraft-just-flew-a-real-payload

After coming back from the dead, the world’s largest aircraft just flew a real payload

Science, Space, stratolaunch / /

Roc-n-roll —

Falling just short of hypersonic velocity.

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The world's largest aircraft takes off with the Talon A vehicle on Saturday.

Enlarge / The world’s largest aircraft takes off with the Talon A vehicle on Saturday.

Stratolaunch/Matt Hartman

Built and flown by Stratolaunch, the massive Roc aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday. The airplane flew out over the Pacific Ocean, where it deployed the Talon-A vehicle, which looks something like a mini space shuttle.

This marked the first time this gargantuan airplane released an honest-to-goodness payload, the first Talon-A vehicle, TA-1, which is intended to fly at hypersonic speed. During the flight, TA-1 didn’t quite reach hypersonic velocity, which begins at Mach 5, or five times greater than the speed of sound.

“While I can’t share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers,” said Zachary Krevor, chief executive of Stratolaunch, in a statement.

In essence, the TA-1 vehicle is a pathfinder for subsequent versions of the vehicle that will be both reusable and capable of reaching hypersonic speeds. The flight of the company’s next vehicle, TA-2, could come later this year, Krevor said.

A long road

It has been a long, strange road for Stratolaunch to reach this moment. The company was founded in 2011 to build a super-sized carrier aircraft from which rockets would be launched mid-air. It was bankrolled by Microsoft cofounder and airplane enthusiast Paul Allen, who put at least hundreds of millions of dollars into the private project.

As the design of the vehicle evolved, its wingspan grew to 117 meters, nearly double the size of a Boeing 747 aircraft. It far exceeded the wingspan of the Spruce Goose, built by Howard Hughes in the 1940s, which had a wingspan of 97.5 meters. The Roc aircraft was so large that it seemed impractical to fly on a regular basis.

At the same time, the company was struggling to identify a rocket that could be deployed from the aircraft. At various times, Stratolaunch worked with SpaceX and Orbital ATK to develop a launch vehicle. But both of those partnerships fell through, and eventually, the company said it would develop its own line of rockets.

Allen would never see his large plane fly, dying of septic shock in October 2018 due to his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Roc did finally take flight for the first time in April 2019, but it seemed like a Pyrrhic victory. Following the death of Allen, for whom Stratolaunch was a passion project, the company’s financial future was in doubt. Later in 2019, Allen’s family put the company’s assets up for sale and said it would cease to exist.

However, Stratolaunch did not die. Rather, the aircraft was acquired by the private equity firm Cerberus, and in 2020, the revitalized Stratolaunch changed course. Instead of orbital rockets, it would now launch hypersonic vehicles to test the technology—a priority for the US military. China, Russia, and the United States are all racing to develop hypersonic missiles, as well as new countermeasure technology as high-speed missiles threaten to penetrate most existing defenses.

Featuring a new engine

This weekend’s flight also marked an important moment for another US aerospace company, Ursa Major Technologies. The TA-1 vehicle was powered by the Hadley rocket engine designed and built by Ursa Major, which specializes in the development of rocket propulsion engines.

Hadley is a 5,000-lb-thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene, oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle rocket engine for small vehicles. Its known customers include Stratolaunch and a vertical launch company, Phantom Space, which is developing a small orbital rocket.

Founded in 2015, Ursa Major seeks to provide off-the-shelf propulsion solutions to launch customers. While Ursa Major started small, the company is already well into the development of its much larger Ripley engine. With 50,000 pounds of thrust, Ripley is aimed at the medium-launch market. The company completed a hot-fire test campaign of Ripley last year. For Ursa Major, it must feel pretty good to finally see an engine in flight.

After coming back from the dead, the world’s largest aircraft just flew a real payload Read More »

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A hunk of junk from the International Space Station hurtles back to Earth

human spaceflight, international space station, Science, Space, space debris / /
In March 2021, the International Space Station's robotic arm released a cargo pallet with nine expended batteries.

Enlarge / In March 2021, the International Space Station’s robotic arm released a cargo pallet with nine expended batteries.

NASA

A bundle of depleted batteries from the International Space Station careened around Earth for almost three years before falling out of orbit and plunging back into the atmosphere Friday. Most of the trash likely burned up during reentry, but it’s possible some fragments may have reached Earth’s surface intact.

Larger pieces of space junk regularly fall to Earth on unguided trajectories, but they’re usually derelict satellites or spent rocket stages. This involved a pallet of batteries from the space station with a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds). NASA intentionally sent the space junk on a path toward an unguided reentry.

Naturally self-cleaning

Sandra Jones, a NASA spokesperson, said the agency “conducted a thorough debris analysis assessment on the pallet and has determined it will harmlessly reenter the Earth’s atmosphere.” This was, by far, the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station.

The batteries reentered the atmosphere at 2: 29 pm EST (1929 UTC), according to US Space Command. At that time, the pallet would have been flying between Mexico and Cuba. “We do not expect any portion to have survived reentry,” Jones told Ars.

The European Space Agency (ESA) also monitored the trajectory of the battery pallet. In a statement this week, the ESA said the risk of a person being hit by a piece of the pallet was “very low” but said “some parts may reach the ground.” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who closely tracks spaceflight activity, estimated about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of debris would hit the Earth’s surface.

“The general rule of thumb is that 20 to 40 percent of the mass of a large object will reach the ground, though it depends on the design of the object,” the Aerospace Corporation says.

A dead ESA satellite reentered the atmosphere in a similar uncontrolled manner February 21. At 2.3 metric tons, this satellite was similar in mass to the discarded battery pallet. ESA, which has positioned itself as a global leader in space sustainability, set up a website that provided daily tracking updates on the satellite’s deteriorating orbit.

This map shows the track of the unguided cargo pallet around the Earth over the course of six hours Friday. It reentered the atmosphere near Cuba on southwest-to-northeast heading.

Enlarge / This map shows the track of the unguided cargo pallet around the Earth over the course of six hours Friday. It reentered the atmosphere near Cuba on southwest-to-northeast heading.

As NASA and ESA officials have said, the risk of injury or death from a spacecraft reentry is quite low. Falling space debris has never killed anyone. According to ESA, the risk of a person getting hit by a piece of space junk is about 65,000 times lower than the risk of being struck by lightning.

This circumstance is unique in the type and origin of the space debris, which is why NASA purposely cast it away on an uncontrolled trajectory back to Earth.

The space station’s robotic arm released the battery cargo pallet on March 11, 2021. Since then, the batteries have been adrift in orbit, circling the planet about every 90 minutes. Over a span of months and years, low-Earth orbit is self-cleaning thanks to the influence of aerodynamic drag. The resistance of rarefied air molecules in low-Earth orbit gradually slowed the pallet’s velocity until, finally, gravity pulled it back into the atmosphere Friday.

The cargo pallet, which launched inside a Japanese HTV cargo ship in 2020, carried six new lithium-ion batteries to the International Space Station. The station’s two-armed Dextre robot, assisted by astronauts on spacewalks, swapped out aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for the upgraded units. Nine of the old batteries were installed on the HTV cargo pallet before its release from the station’s robotic arm.

A hunk of junk from the International Space Station hurtles back to Earth Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starbase will expand into state park; another Japanese rocket

rocket report, Science, Space / /

43 for 477 —

“Those launches are exciting the young minds that are watching them.”

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This satellite view of SpaceX's Starbase facility shows a fully-stacked Starship rocket on the launch pad, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

Enlarge / This satellite view of SpaceX’s Starbase facility shows a fully-stacked Starship rocket on the launch pad, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

Welcome to Edition 6.34 of the Rocket Report! It’s Starship season again. Yes, SpaceX appears to be about a week away from launching the third full-scale Starship test flight from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, pending final regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Ars will be there. SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch pad at Starbase, and the company’s footprint there is also about to get a little bigger, with the expected acquisition of 43 acres of Texas state park land.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astra’s founders take the company private. Astra’s three-year run as a public company is over. Chris Kemp and Adam London, Astra’s co-founders, are taking the company private after a string of rocket failures and funding shortfalls, Ars reports. Kemp and London bought the company for 50 cents a share. Astra’s board approved the transaction, the company announced Thursday, as the only alternative to bankruptcy. Kemp and London founded Astra in 2016. After emerging from stealth mode in 2020, Astra launched its light-class launcher, called Rocket 3, seven times, but five of those flights were failures. Astra went public via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) in 2021, reaching a valuation of more than $2 billion. Today, its market cap sits at approximately $13 million.

What’s next for Astra? … Where Astra goes from here is anyone’s guess. The company abandoned its unreliable Rocket 3 vehicle in 2022 to focus on the larger Rocket 4 vehicle. But Rocket 4 is likely months or years from the launch pad. It faces stiff competition not just from established small launch players such as Rocket Lab and Firefly but also from new entrants as well, including ABL Space and Stoke Space. Additionally, all of these small launch companies have been undercut in price by SpaceX’s Transporter missions, which launch dozens of satellites at a time on the Falcon 9 booster. Additionally, Astra’s spacecraft engine business—acquired previously from Apollo Fusion—may or may not be profitable now, but there are questions about its long-term viability as well.

Virgin Galactic is retiring its only operational spaceship. Over the last year, Virgin Galactic has proven it has the technical acumen to pull off monthly flights of its VSS Unity rocket plane, each carrying six people on a suborbital climb to the edge of space. But VSS Unity has never been profitable. It costs too much and takes too much time to reconfigure between flights. Virgin Galactic plans to fly the suborbital spaceship one more time before taking a hiatus from flight operations, Ars reports. This, along with layoffs announced last year, will allow the company to preserve cash while focusing on the development of a new generation of rocket planes, called Delta-class ships, designed to fly more often and with more people. Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s president and CEO, says the first of the Delta ships is on track to begin ground and flight testing next year, with commercial service targeted for 2026 based out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Bigger and faster… The Delta ships will each carry six customers in the spacecraft’s pressurized passenger cabin, compared to a maximum of four passengers on each VSS Unity flight. Virgin Galactic’s goal is to fly each Delta ship eight times per month, and the company will do this by eliminating many of the inspections required between each VSS Unity flight. The company is building a Delta ship structural test article to put through extensive checks on the ground, validating component life and cycle limits for major components of the vehicle. This will give engineers enough confidence to forego many inspections, according to Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic’s spaceline operations. Virgin Galactic has nearly $1 billion in cash or cash equivalents on its balance sheet, so it’s not in any immediate financial trouble. But the company reported just $7 million in revenue last year, with a net loss of $502 million. So, there’s an obvious motivation to make a change.

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A new Japanese rocket will launch this weekend. A privately held Japanese company named Space One is set to shoot for orbit with the first flight of its Kairos rocket Friday night (US time), News on Japan reports. Space One will attempt to become the first Japanese private company to launch a rocket into orbit. Japan’s existing launch vehicles, like the H-IIA, the H3, and the Epsilon, were developed with funding from the Japanese space agency. But there is some involvement from the Japanese government on this flight. The Kairos rocket will launch with a small “quick response” spacecraft for the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, which is responsible for Japan’s fleet of spy satellites. Kairos, which is the Ancient Greek word for “timeliness,” is made up of three solid-fueled stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage. It can place a payload of up to 550 pounds (250 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit.

Winning hearts and minds… The Kairos rocket will take off from Space One’s Space Port Kii, located on a south-facing peninsula on the main Japanese island of Honshu. This new launch site is hundreds of miles away from Japan’s existing spaceports. Local businesses see the arrival of the space industry in this remote part of Japan as a marketing opportunity. A local confectionery store, not wanting to miss the opportunity to attract visitors, is selling manju shaped like rockets. There are two paid viewing areas to watch the launch, and a total of 5,000 seats sold out in just two days, according to News on Japan. (submitted by tsunam)

UK spaceport project to get 10 million pounds from government. The UK government has pledged 10 million pounds in funding to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. This funding is sorely needed for SaxaVord, which slowed construction last year after its developer ran into financial trouble. In the last couple of months, SaxaVord raised enough money to resume payments to the contractors building the launch site. The UK government’s pledge of 10 million pounds for SaxaVord apparently is not quite a done deal. The UK’s science minister posted on X that the funding was “subject to due diligence.” SaxaVord will eventually have three launch pads, one of which has been dedicated to German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg. This company’s rocket, RFA ONE, is expected to be the first orbital launch from SaxaVord later this year.

The UK spaceport scene… The UK government, local entities, and private industry are making a pretty serious effort to bring orbital launches to the British Isles. Spaceport Cornwall became the first UK facility to host an orbital attempt last year with the failed launch of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, which was released from a carrier jet that took off from Cornwall. There are several vertical launch spaceports under construction or in the concept development phase. SaxaVord appears to be among those closest to reality, along with Sutherland spaceport, also in Scotland, to be used by the UK launch startup Orbex Space. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Starbase will expand into state park; another Japanese rocket Read More »

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After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private

astra, Science, Space / /

What goes up must come down —

First you burn the cash, then comes the crash.

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Image of a rocket launch.

Enlarge / Liftoff of Astra’s Rocket 3.0 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Astra’s long, strange trip in the space business is taking another turn. The company announced Thursday that it is going private at an extremely low valuation.

Four years ago, the rocket company, based in Alameda, California, emerged from stealth with grand plans to develop a no-frills rocket that could launch frequently. “The theme that really makes this company stand out, which will capture the imagination of our customers, our investors, and our employees, is the idea that every day we will produce and launch a rocket,” Astra co-founder Chris Kemp said during a tour of the factory in February 2020.

Almost exactly a year later, on February 2, 2021, Astra went public via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). “The transaction reflects an implied pro-forma enterprise value for Astra of approximately $2.1 billion,” the company stated at the time. For a time, the company’s stock even traded above this valuation.

But then, rockets started failing. Only two of the seven launches of the company’s “Rocket 3” vehicle were successful. In August 2022, the company announced a pivot to the larger Rocket 4 vehicle. It planned to begin conducting test launches in 2023, but that did not happen. Accordingly, the company’s stock price plummeted.

Last November Kemp and the company’s co-founder, Adam London, proposed to buy Astra shares at $1.50, approximately double their price. The company’s board of directors did not accept the deal. Then, in late February, Kemp and London sharply cut their offer to take the company private, warning of “imminent bankruptcy” if the company doesn’t accept their new proposal. They offered $0.50 a share, well below the trading value of approximately $0.80 a share.

On Thursday, Astra said that this deal was being consummated.

“Astra Space, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which the acquiring entity has agreed, subject to customary closing conditions, to acquire all shares of Astra common stock not already owned by it for $0.50 per share in cash,” the company stated. The acquiring entity consists of Kemp, London, and other long-term investors.

Where Astra goes from here is anyone’s guess. Rocket 4 is likely months or years from the launch pad. It faces stiff competition not just from established small launch players such as Rocket Lab and Firefly but also from new entrants as well, including ABL Space and Stoke Space. Additionally, all of these small launch companies have been undercut in price by SpaceX’s Transporter missions, which launch dozens of satellites at a time on the Falcon 9 booster.

Additionally, Astra’s spacecraft engine business—acquired previously from Apollo Fusion—may or may not be profitable now, but there are questions about its long-term viability as well.

“I don’t fault management for seizing the opportunity to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by SPAC’ing, but a pre-revenue launch company without a proven rocket was probably never a good match for the public markets,” said Case Taylor, investor and author of the Case Closed newsletter.

Taylor added that he hopes that Astra spacecraft engines find a way to thrive in the new Astra, as the space industry values their performance. “I hope to see that diamond survive and thrive,” he said.

After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private Read More »

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Daily Telescope: A brilliant shot of a comet as it nears the Sun

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

A streaker —

The comet should brighten further as it nears the Sun in the coming weeks.

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Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and the great Andromeda Galaxy.

Enlarge / Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and the great Andromeda Galaxy.

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s March 7, and today’s photo features a Halley-type comet that is currently approaching the Sun. It will reach perihelion on April 21.

The comet, named 12P/Pons–Brooks, features a brilliant ion tail, and its nucleus is estimated to be around 30 km in diameter. The comet should brighten further as it nears the Sun in the coming weeks. However, at an apparent magnitude of 4.5, it is unlikely to be visible to the naked eye—that’s why we have telescopes.

12P/Pons–Brooks was imaged here by the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy. The covered field of view is about 16×11 square degrees, and there is a bonus photobombing by the Andromeda Galaxy.

Source: Gianluca Masi

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Daily Telescope: A brilliant shot of a comet as it nears the Sun Read More »

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Russia’s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads

angara, angara a5, launch, russia, Science, Space, vostochny / /

A winding road —

Russia’s heavy-lift Angara A5 rocket is about to launch on its fourth test flight.

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Technicians assemble an Angara A5 rocket at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East.

Enlarge / Technicians assemble an Angara A5 rocket at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East.

Roscosmos

By some measures, Russia’s next-generation flagship rocket program—the Angara—is now three decades old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a prolonged economic recession.

It has been nearly 10 years since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. The heaviest version of the Angara rocket family—the Angara A5—is about to make its fourth flight, and like the three launches before, this mission won’t carry a real satellite.

This next launch will be a milestone for the beleaguered Angara rocket program because it will be the first Angara flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest launch site in the country’s far east. The previous Angara launches were based out of the military-run Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

On Wednesday, Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said technicians at Vostochny have fueled the Angara A5’s Orion upper stage and will soon install it on the rest of the rocket. The Angara A5 will roll to its launch pad a few days before liftoff, currently scheduled for next month.

The Angara A5 rocket is supposed to replace Russia’s Proton launch vehicle, which uses toxic propellant and only launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Angara’s launch pads are on Russian territory. Until a few years ago, the Proton was a competitor in the global commercial launch market, but the rocket lost its position due to reliability problems, competitive pressure from SpaceX, and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian officials once touted Angara as a successor to Proton on the commercial market. Now, Angara will solely serve the Russian government, but it’s doubtful the government has enough demand to fill the Angara A5’s heavy launch capacity on a regular basis. According to RussianSpaceWeb.com, a website run by veteran Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak, the Russian government didn’t have any functional satellites ready to fly on the upcoming Angara A5 launch from Vostochny.

Eventually, the Angara A5 could take over the launch responsibility of the handful of large satellites that require the capacity of the Proton rocket. But this is a small number of flights. The Proton has launched three times in the last two years, and there are roughly a dozen Proton launch vehicles remaining in Russia’s inventory.

Russia plans a next-generation crew spacecraft, Orel, that officials claim will begin launching on the Angara A5 rocket in 2028. There’s no evidence Orel could be ready for test flights within four years. So, while the Angara rocket is finally flying, albeit at an anemic rate, there aren’t many payloads for Russia to put on it.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Angara rocket's launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome last year.

Enlarge / North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Angara rocket’s launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome last year.

Russia’s economic woes might explain some of the delays that have befallen the Angara program since 1992, but Russia’s space program has long suffered from chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and corruption. Angara is the only rocket Russia has developed from scratch since the 1980s, and the Russian government selected Khrunichev, one of the country’s oldest space companies, to oversee the Angara program.

Finally, in 2014, Russia launched the first two Angara test flights, one with a single-booster lightweight version of the rocket, called the Angara 1.2, and another with the heavy-lift Angara A5, made up of five Angara rocket cores combined into one rocket.

The Angara A5 can place up to 24.5 metric tons (about 54,000 pounds) into low-Earth orbit, according to Khrunichev. The expendable rocket has enough power to launch modules for a space station or deploy the Russian military’s largest spy satellites, but in 2020, each Angara A5 reportedly cost more than $100 million, significantly more than the Proton.

The smaller Angara 1.2 has flown twice since 2014, but both missions delivered functional satellites into orbit for the Russian military. The much larger Angara A5 has launched three times, all with dummy payloads. The most recent Angara A5 launch in 2021 failed due to a problem with the rocket’s Persei upper stage. The Orion upper stage set to fly on the next Angara A5 mission is a modified version of the Persei, which is itself modeled on the Block-DM upper stage, a design with its roots in the 1960s.

Essentially, the Angara A5 flight will allow engineers to test out changes to the upper stage and allow Russia to activate a second launch pad at Vostochny, which itself has been mired in corruption and delays. Medium-lift Soyuz rockets have been flying from Vostochny since 2016.

Russia’s next-generation rocket is a decade old and still flying dummy payloads Read More »

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The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14

Science, Space, spacex, starship / /

Excitement guaranteed —

This third flight has a reasonable chance of success.

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SpaceX's Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship rocket completes a fueling test on Sunday night.

SpaceX

After SpaceX completed a fueling test of its third full Starship stack on Sunday night, successfully loading more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant onto the rocket, it was only a matter of time before the world’s largest rocket took flight.

Now, we have a tentative date. In a post on the social media site X, the company posted a link to watch “Starship’s third flight test” at 7: 30 am ET (11: 30 UTC) on March 14. Published on Tuesday morning, the social media post was ‘hidden,’ but somehow discovered late Tuesday night.

Nevertheless, this is a credible date that the company is working toward. Following the fueling test on Sunday night at the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, the hardware appears to be in good shape. Although SpaceX has yet to receive its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency recently announced that it has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight in November. So a mid-March launch date is plausible from a regulatory standpoint.

The first two Starship flights in April and November last year ultimately failed, but each of the experimental launches provided valuable data. On the second mission four months ago, the first-stage Super Heavy booster performed a nominal flight before it separated from the Starship upper stage. The Starship vehicle exploded a few minutes into its flight due to a leak during a liquid oxygen vent.

Based upon learnings from these first two flights, this next mission, with upgraded hardware and flight software, likely has a reasonable chance of success. Among the milestones SpaceX will seek to complete during this test flight are:

  • Nominal first-stage performance, followed by a controlled descent of the Super Heavy booster into the Gulf of Mexico
  • Starship separation from the first stage using “hot staging,” meaning engine ignition while the first stage is still firing its engines
  • Starship reaching an orbital velocity and engine shutdown
  • Early-stage testing of in-space refueling technology inside the propellant tanks of Starship
  • Controlled splashdown of Starship near the Hawaiian islands after flying around two-thirds of the planet.

SpaceX is seeking to demonstrate the basic flight capabilities of Starship so that it can move into a more operational phase with the big rocket. The company wants to begin deploying larger Starlink satellites from the vehicle this year, which will enable direct-to-cell phone Internet connectivity.

Additionally, a higher cadence of missions will allow the company to begin developing the technology and procedures needed for the in-space storage and transfer of propellant for deep-space missions. This is a necessary step for SpaceX to fulfill its obligations to NASA for the Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the Moon later this decade.

In a recent update, the company said more Starships are ready for flight, so a higher cadence is possible if this month’s flight is a success. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration disclosed that SpaceX is seeking to launch Starship at least nine times this year.

The next Starship mission has a tentative launch date: March 14 Read More »

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SpaceX just showed us what every day could be like in spaceflight

Science, Space, Space X / /
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Sunday night from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ferrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Sunday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ferrying a crew of four to the International Space Station.

Between Sunday night and Monday night, SpaceX teams in Texas, Florida, and California supervised three Falcon 9 rocket launches and completed a full dress rehearsal ahead of the next flight of the company’s giant Starship launch vehicle.

This was a remarkable sequence of events, even for SpaceX, which has launched a mission at an average rate of once every three days since the start of the year. We’ve reported on this before, but it’s worth reinforcing that no launch provider, commercial or government, has ever operated at this cadence.

SpaceX has previously had rockets on all four of its active launch pads. But what SpaceX accomplished over a 24-hour period was noteworthy. Engineers inside at least four control centers were actively overseeing spacecraft and rocket operations simultaneously.

The sprawl of SpaceX

On Sunday night at the Starbase facility in South Texas, teams loaded more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) Starship rocket slated to lift off as soon as this month on the third full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s next-generation launcher.

This was likely the final major test before SpaceX launches the third Starship test flight. The countdown rehearsal of the fully stacked rocket ended as planned at T-minus 10 seconds, just before the booster’s Raptor engines were ignited; SpaceX then drained the vehicle of propellant. SpaceX previously test-fired the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage separately.

The schedule for the next Starship launch hinges on approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is reviewing SpaceX’s actions to correct the malfunctions that occurred on the second Starship test flight in November. Last week, the FAA announced it closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight, which was largely successful in demonstrating significant progress on SpaceX’s privately funded rocket program. But the test flight ended with explosions of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, prompting an FAA investigation.

On the next Starship flight, SpaceX wants to perform some early-stage testing of the in-space refueling technology it will need for later Starship flights, such as missions to the Moon for NASA.

SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket undergo a countdown rehearsal Sunday night in South Texas.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket undergo a countdown rehearsal Sunday night in South Texas.

At the same time that SpaceX’s team in Texas managed the Starship countdown rehearsal, another group of engineers and technicians on Florida’s Space Coast stepped through a Falcon 9 launch countdown Sunday night. Three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut strapped into their seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft on top of the Falcon 9 rocket, then waited for liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 10: 53 pm EST Sunday (03: 53 UTC Monday).

The Falcon 9 launch of NASA’s Crew-8 mission Sunday night was the first of three Falcon 9 launches over the next 20 hours. Next in line was a launch at 5: 05 pm EST (2205 UTC) Monday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 53 small payloads on SpaceX’s 10th Transporter rideshare mission. The customer payloads on this Falcon 9 launch included MethaneSAT, an $88 million satellite funded primarily by philanthropic donations to monitor methane greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

Then, less than two hours later, at 6: 56 pm EST (2356 UTC), a Falcon 9 rocket took off from SpaceX’s most active launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission delivered 23 more Starlink broadband satellites into orbit for SpaceX’s commercial Internet network. At 1 hour and 51 minutes, this was the shortest time separation to date between two SpaceX launches.

All three Falcon 9 launches ended with landings of the rockets’ first-stage boosters.

A view of 53 small satellite payloads before encapsulation into the Falcon 9 rocket's payload fairing, ahead of liftoff on the Transporter 10 rideshare mission.

Enlarge / A view of 53 small satellite payloads before encapsulation into the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing, ahead of liftoff on the Transporter 10 rideshare mission.

While controllers at Starbase, Cape Canaveral, and Vandenberg looked after these three Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX engineers at the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles tracked the performance and progress of the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station, where it docked early Tuesday. Next week, another SpaceX capsule, Crew Dragon Endurance, will depart the station to bring a different four-person crew back to Earth.

SpaceX, which now has more than 13,000 employees, pulled off a similar rapid-fire launch cadence in mid-February with three Falcon 9 launches in approximately 23 hours, but this time included the additional complexity of operating a Dragon crew capsule en route to the ISS, plus the Starship countdown in Texas. While all this was going on, a handful of ground controllers also monitored the health of the Dragon spacecraft currently docked at the space station.

SpaceX just showed us what every day could be like in spaceflight Read More »

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Daily Telescope: A new Webb image reveals a cosmos full of galaxies

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

Deep field —

See a galaxy as it was just 430 million years after the Big Bang.

–

This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies.

Enlarge / This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, et. al.

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s March 5, and today’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope.

It’s a new deep-field image from the infrared space telescope, showcasing a portion of the “Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey” region of space that has previously been observed by other space telescopes, including Hubble and Chandra. Almost everything in this image that doesn’t have lines emanating from it is a galaxy.

Such deep field images are poetic in that they’re just showing a tiny fraction of a sky—the width of this image is significantly less than a single degree of the night sky—and yet they reveal a universe teeming with galaxies. We live in a cosmos that is almost incomprehensibly large.

If you click through to the Webb telescope site you will find an annotated image that highlights a galaxy in the far lower-right corner. It is galaxy GN-z11, seen at a time just 430 million years after the Big Bang.

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, et. al.

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

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NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission

Maxar, NASA, osam-1, satellite servicing, Science, Space / /
Artist's illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit.

Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of the OSAM-1 spacecraft (bottom) linking up with the Landsat 7 satellite (top) in orbit.

NASA

NASA has canceled an over-budget, behind-schedule mission to demonstrate robotic satellite servicing technology in orbit, pulling the plug on a project that has cost $1.5 billion and probably would have cost nearly $1 billion more to get to the launch pad.

The On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 mission, known as OSAM-1, would have grappled an aging Landsat satellite in orbit and attempted to refuel it, while also demonstrating how a robotic arm could construct an antenna in space. The spacecraft for the OSAM-1 mission is partially built, but NASA announced Friday that officials decided to cancel the project “following an in-depth, independent project review.”

The space agency cited “continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges” for the decision to cancel OSAM-1.

Mission creep

The mission’s cost has ballooned since NASA officially kicked off the project in 2016. The mission’s original scope called for just the refueling demonstration, but in 2020, officials tacked on the in-orbit assembly objective. This involved adding a complex piece of equipment called the Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER), essentially a 16-foot-long (5-meter) robotic arm to assemble seven structural elements into a single Ka-band communications antenna.

The addition of SPIDER meant the mission would launch with three robotic arms, including two appendages needed to grab onto the Landsat 7 satellite in orbit for the refueling demonstration. With this change in scope, the name of the mission changed from Restore-L to OSAM-1.

A report by NASA’s inspector general last year outlined the mission’s delays and cost overruns. Since 2016, the space agency has requested $808 million from Congress for Restore-L and OSAM-1. Lawmakers responded by giving NASA nearly $1.5 billion to fund the development of the mission, nearly double what NASA said it wanted.

Restore-L, and then OSAM-1, has always enjoyed support from Congress. The mission was managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Former Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) was a key backer of NASA missions run out of Goddard, including the James Webb Space Telescope. She was the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee when Congress started funding Restore-L in late 2015.

At one time, NASA projected the Restore-L mission would cost between $626 million and $753 million and could be ready for launch in the second half of 2020. That didn’t happen, and the mission continued facing delays and cost increases. The most recent public schedule for OSAM-1 showed a launch date in 2026.

In 2020, after reshaping the Restore-L mission to become OSAM-1, NASA formally laid out a budget for the renamed mission. At the time, NASA said it would cost $1.78 billion to design, build, launch, and operate. An independent review board NASA established last year to examine the OSAM-1 mission estimated the total project could cost as much as $2.35 billion, according to Jimi Russell, a NASA spokesperson.

The realities of the satellite servicing market have also changed since 2016. There are several companies working on commercial satellite servicing technologies, and the satellite industry has shifted away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, as OSAM-1 would have demonstrated with the Landsat 7 Earth-imaging satellite.

Instead, companies are focusing more on extending satellite life in other ways. Northrop Grumman has developed the Mission Extension Vehicle, which can latch onto a satellite and provide maneuvering capability without cutting into the customer spacecraft to refuel it. Other companies are looking at satellites that are designed, from the start, with refueling ports. The US military has a desire to place fuel depots and tankers in orbit to regularly service its satellites, giving them the ability to continually maneuver and burn propellant without worrying about running out of fuel.

NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission Read More »

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Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft

blue origin, Science, Space / /

A new era at Blue —

Company seeks: “Experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems?”

–

Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The space company named Blue Origin is having a big year. New chief executive Dave Limp, who arrived in December, is working to instill a more productive culture at the firm owned by Jeff Bezos. In January, the company’s powerful BE-4 rocket engine performed very well on the debut launch of the Vulcan booster. And later this year, possibly as soon as August, Blue Origin’s own heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn, will take flight.

But wait, there’s more. The company has also been hard at work developing hardware that will fly on New Glenn, such as the Blue Ring transfer vehicle that will be used to ferry satellites into precise orbits. In addition, work continues on a private space station called Orbital Reef.

One of the key questions about that space station is how astronauts will get there. The only current means of US crew transportation to low-Earth orbit is via Blue Origin’s direct competitor, SpaceX, with its Dragon vehicle. This is likely unpalatable for Bezos.

Boeing is an official partner on Orbital Reef. It has a crewed spacecraft, Starliner, set to make its debut flight in April. But there are serious questions about Boeing’s long-term commitment to Starliner beyond its seven contracted missions with NASA, in addition to concerns that its price will be about 50 percent higher than Dragon if it ever flies private astronauts. Blue Origin has also had some discussions with India about using its new crew capsule.

All of these options have downsides, especially for a company that has a vision of “millions of people living and working in space.” It has long been understood that Blue Origin will eventually develop a crewed spacecraft vehicle. But when?

Now, apparently.

A bit of history

A dozen years ago, the company was performing preliminary studies of a “next-generation” spacecraft that would provide transportation to low-Earth orbit for up to seven astronauts. Blue Origin ultimately received about $25 million from NASA’s commercial crew program before dropping out—SpaceX and Boeing were the ultimate victors.

For a time, the crew project was on the back burner, but it has now become a major initiative within Blue Origin, with the company hiring staff to develop the vehicle.

The first public hint of this renewed interest came last June, when NASA announced that Blue Origin was one of seven companies to sign an unfunded Space Act Agreement to design advanced commercial space projects. Later, in a document explaining this selection process, NASA revealed that Blue Origin was working on a “commercial space transportation system.” This included a reusable spacecraft that would launch on the New Glenn rocket.

“The development plan for the reusable CTS (commercial space transportation system) has significant strengths for its low external dependence, approach to mature its technologies, and demonstrated technical competency,” NASA stated in its source selection document, signed by Phil McAlister, director of the agency’s commercial space division.

Staffing up for a crew vehicle

The best evidence that Blue Origin is serious about developing an orbital human spacecraft has come in recent job postings. For example, the company is seeking a leader for its “Space Vehicle Abort Thrusters Integrated Product Team” on LinkedIn. Among the preferred qualifications is “experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems.”

Most human spacecraft have “abort thrusters” as part of their design. Built into the crew vehicle, they are designed to automatically fire when there is a problem with the rocket. These powerful thrusters pull the crew vehicle away from the rocket—which is often in the process of exploding—so that the astronauts can parachute safely back to Earth. All of the crewed vehicles currently in operation, SpaceX’s Dragon, Russia’s Soyuz, and China’s Shenzhou, have such escape systems. There is no practical reason for abort thrusters on a non-human spacecraft.

After years of secrecy, Blue Origin is revealing more about its intentions of late. This is likely due to the long-awaited debut of the New Glenn rocket, which will announce Blue Origin’s presence as a bona fide launch company and significant competitor to SpaceX. It’s therefore probable that the company will talk more about its crewed spaceflight ambitions later this year.

Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft Read More »

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The world’s most-traveled crew transport spacecraft flies again

commercial crew, Commercial space, crew dragon, Crew-8, falcon 9, human spaceflight, international space station, launch, NASA, Science, Space / /
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with the Crew-8 mission, sending three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with the Crew-8 mission, sending three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s oldest Crew Dragon spacecraft launched Sunday night on its fifth mission to the International Space Station, and engineers are crunching data to see if the fleet of Dragons can safely fly as many as 15 times.

It has been five years since SpaceX launched the first Crew Dragon spacecraft on an unpiloted test flight to the space station and nearly four years since SpaceX’s first astronaut mission took off in May 2020. Since then, SpaceX has put its clan of Dragons to use ferrying astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.

Now, it’s already time to talk about extending the life of the Dragon spaceships. SpaceX and NASA, which shared the cost of developing the Crew Dragon, initially certified each capsule for five flights. Crew Dragon Endeavour, the first in the Dragon fleet to carry astronauts, is now flying for the fifth time.

This ship has spent 466 days in orbit, longer than any spacecraft designed to transport people to and from Earth. It will add roughly 180 days to its flight log with this mission.

Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 10: 53 pm EST Sunday (03: 53 UTC Monday), following a three-day delay due to poor weather conditions across the Atlantic Ocean, where the capsule would ditch into the sea in the event of a rocket failure during the climb into orbit.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin put on their SpaceX pressure suits and strapped into their seats inside Crew Dragon Endeavour Sunday evening at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX loaded liquid propellants into the rocket, while ground teams spent the final hour of the countdown evaluating a small crack discovered on Dragon’s side hatch seal. Managers ultimately cleared the spacecraft for launch after considering whether the crack could pose a safety threat during reentry at the end of the mission.

“We are confident that we understand the issue and can still fly the whole mission safely,” a member of SpaceX’s mission control team told the crew inside Dragon.

This mission, known as Crew-8, launched on a brand-new Falcon 9 booster, which returned to landing a few minutes after liftoff at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9’s upper stage released the Dragon spacecraft into orbit about 12 minutes after liftoff. The four-person crew will dock at the space station around 3 am EST (0800 UTC) Tuesday.

Crew-8 will replace the four-person Crew-7 team that has been at the space station since last August. Crew-7 will return to Earth in about one week on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, which is flying in space for the third time.

The Crew-8 mission came home for a reentry and splashdown off the coast of Florida in late August of this year, wrapping up Crew Dragon Endeavour’s fifth trip to space. This is the current life limit for a Crew Dragon spacecraft, but don’t count out Endeavour just yet.

Fleet management

“Right now, we’re certified for five flights on Dragon, and we’re looking at extending that life out,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “I think the goal would be for SpaceX to say 15 flights of Dragon. We may not get there in every single system.”

One by one, engineers at SpaceX and NASA are looking at Dragon’s structural skeleton, composite shells, rocket engines, valves, and other components to see how much life is left in them. Some parts of the spacecraft slowly fatigue from the stresses of each launch, reentry, and splashdown, along with the extreme temperature swings the capsule sees thousands of times in orbit. Each Draco thruster on the spacecraft is certified for a certain number of firings.

Some components are already approved for 15 flights, Stich said in a recent press conference. “Some, we’re still in the middle of working on,” he said. “Some of those components have to go through some re-qualification to make sure that they can make it out to 15 flights.”

Re-qualifying a component on a spacecraft typically involves putting hardware through extensive testing on the ground. Because SpaceX reuses hardware, engineers can remove a part from a flown Dragon spacecraft and put it through qualification testing. NASA will get the final say in certifying the Dragon spacecraft for additional flights because the agency is SpaceX’s primary customer for crew missions.

The Dragon fleet is flying more often than SpaceX or NASA originally anticipated. The main reason for this is that Boeing, NASA’s other commercial crew contractor, is running about four years behind SpaceX in getting to its first astronaut launch on the Starliner spacecraft.

When NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar commercial crew contracts in 2014, the agency envisioned alternating between Crew Dragon and Starliner flights every six months to rotate four-person crews at the International Space Station. With Boeing’s delays, SpaceX has picked up the slack.

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