A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):
The SOC-i mission will carry an advanced guidance, navigation and control (GNC) payload capable of reorienting the spacecraft while satisfying multiple pointing constraints. SOC-i will also carry an Earth imaging camera, enabling it to take pictures of specified ground locations.
The mission will operate in space for 6 months, and will be supported by a UW ground station being developed in the Aerospace Engineering Research Building. It is a stated goal of the mission to be completely open-source, maintain code on our team’s GitHub page .
Members collaborate throughout the entire design process of the CubeSat, developing different aspects, from its guidance navigation control, electrical power system, physical structure, communications, command and data handling, and imaging configuration.
“Space engineering is such a multifaceted discipline that really, if you show up and just do 10 hours of work, you’re going to learn a hundred new things,” Tormey said. “The thing you get out of it is experience. Even if the work is grueling and hard, knowing that ultimately you’re going to send something up into space is the best motivator ever.”
“Our ANDESITE mission with NASA will demonstrate how CubeSats can play a vital role in providing an unprecedented view into the variations of electrical activity racing through space and its impact on our lives here on earth. GPS services, for example, can be directly affected,” explained Josh Semeter, an electrical engineering professor with Boston University’s Center for Space Physics who first conceptualized the ANDESITE mission.
“If all goes as planned, our CubeSat will release eight small satellite sensors in space to form a first-of-its-kind free-flying mesh network capable of delivering uniquely comprehensive data mapping of magnetic fields and space weather to our smart phones here on campus.”
“TriSept, the University spacecraft team and NASA have completed the initial integration of the ANDESITE mission by installing the CubeSat into the dispenser device and preparing the spacecraft for shipment to Rocket Lab in New Zealand,” said Jason Armstrong, TriSept’s Director of Launch Integration Services.
Illustration of the ANDESITE 6U CubeSat with picosat deployed to study currents in the magnetosphere. Credits: BUSAT
Here is a BUSAT video from 2015 about the ANDESITE project:
** Michael Maloney – Satellite Design For Recovery – Cold Star Project S02E23
Michael Maloney, founder of the advocacy organization Satellite Design for Recovery, is on the Cold Star Project with host Jason Kanigan to talk about the need for including a critical but not-yet-required component to the design of all objects launched into Earth orbit. Satellites and other orbital objects should have mandated design requirements for rendezvous, capture and disposal. The cost of not doing so will be chaos in orbit. Mike is here to tell us about these consequences. Satellite Design for Recovery website: https://satdfr.org/
The joint NASA and Boeing Independent Review Team formed following the anomalies during the company’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program has completed its initial investigation. The team was tasked with reviewing three primary anomalies experienced during the mission: two software coding errors and unanticipated loss of space-to-ground communication capability. During the investigation, the team identified several technical and organizational issues related to Boeing’s work. Separate from the independent team, NASA reviewed its role in the flight test and identified several areas where the agency can improve its level of participation and involvement into company’s processes.
While the review team, NASA and Boeing have made significant progress during the last month, more work will be required to inform the agency’s decision of whether Boeing will need to perform another uncrewed test flight of the Starliner system. NASA will determine if a repeat of the flight will be needed after Boeing has presented its detailed resolution and rework plan and NASA has independently assessed the thoroughness of that plan.
** China launches BeiDou navigation satellite on a Long March 3B rocket. Constellation nears completion.
China Launches Penultimate BeiDou 3 Navigation System Satellite – CCTV Video News Agency
China launched a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province at 19:55 Monday (Beijing Time), paving the way for its completion and full global coverage in May. The satellite, the 54th of the BeiDou family, was sent into a geostationary orbit as planned by a Long March-3B carrier rocket. It will go through the orbital transfer, in-orbit test, and test evaluation before it starts its service.
** Blue Origin releases more videos showing progress in New Glenn launch system development:
Two #BE3U engines will power the upper stage of #NewGlenn. Fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen – these powerful engines are a variant of the #BE3PM flying today on #NewShepard. Here’s a peek at how the test program is going in West Texas. pic.twitter.com/SfUKQVEZ5i
Rocket Lab, a space technology company and the global leader in dedicated small satellite launch, has announced today that its next mission will deploy payloads for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space.
The launch will take place from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula, with a 14-day launch window scheduled to commence from 27 March 2020 NZT. The mission will be Rocket Lab’s 12th Electron launch since the company began launches in May 2017.
The rideshare mission will launch several small satellites, including the ANDESITE (Ad-Hoc Network Demonstration for Extended Satellite-Based Inquiry and Other Team Endeavors) satellite created by electrical and mechanical engineering students and professors at Boston University. The satellite will launch as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) and will conduct groundbreaking scientific study into Earth’s magnetic field. Once in space, the ANDESITE satellite will initiate measurements of the magnetosphere with onboard sensors, later releasing eight pico satellites carrying small magnetometer sensors to track electric currents flowing in and out of the atmosphere, a phenomenon also known as space weather. These variations in the electrical activity racing through space can have a big impact on our lives here on Earth, causing interruptions to things like radio communications and electrical systems. The ANDESITE satellite follows on from Rocket Lab’s first ELaNa (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites) launch for NASA, the ELaNa-19 mission, which launched a host of educational satellites to orbit on Electron in December 2018.
The mission also carries three payloads designed, built and operated by the NRO. The mission was procured under the agency’s Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract vehicle. RASR allows the NRO to explore new launch opportunities that provide a streamlined, commercial approach for getting small satellites into space, as well as provide those working in the small satellite community with timely and cost-effective access to space. This mission follows Rocket Lab’s first dedicated mission for the NRO, Birds of a Feather, which was launched on 31 January 2020 NZT from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1.
The ANDESITE and NRO payloads will be joined on the mission by the M2 Pathfinder satellite, a collaboration between the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space and the Australian Government. The M2 Pathfinder will test communications architecture and other technologies that will assist in informing the future space capabilities of Australia. The satellite will demonstrate the ability of an onboard software-based radio to operate and reconfigure while in orbit.
is a new British company developing spaceflight technologies designed to launch satellites into orbit. Black Arrow unique offer is their seaborne launch system – commercial rockets launched from their own Space Ship! This will enable Britain to offer a global service unavailable elsewhere in the world, bypassing many of the issues faced by land launches. Initially, the company aims to launch payloads of up to 500Kg into Polar Low Earth Orbit or 300Kg into Sun Synchronous Orbit. This will support a growing niche in the space market, currently under-served by the international ‘access to space’ sector. In time, the concept will be developed to enable much larger payloads to be launched to higher altitudes and more trajectories.
Black Arrow Space Technologies has negotiated an agreement with a major investor to fully fund the company development activities, up to the completion of the test launch phase of the project, which is anticipated to take between two and three years.
Design and development work will take place in the Oxfordshire area, with engine test stands and the ship fleet, including the launch vessel and support ships, based in South Wales. It is anticipated that around 300 high-skilled jobs will be created by the time that commercial launches begin. Initial launches are planned to take place from the Atlantic Ocean, South West of Ireland.
A Black Arrow rocket launches from a sea-going vessel. Credits: Black Arrow
** Rocket Fuel Injectors – Things Kerbal Space Program Doesn’t Teach – Scott Manley
Rocket Propellent Injectors are critical parts of the engine design, they take the propellents and mix them so that they can quickly burn in the combustion chamber. Injectors can make or (literally) break a rocket design, and over the years we’ve seen rocket engines move from injector plate designs to more efficient options as engineers have come to understand what works well. Thanks to Copenhagen Suborbitals for sharing some video of their injectors being tested, I hope get get to see some more flights with these: https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/
**** SpaceX set to launch another batch of 60 Starlink satellites on March 14th. Liftoff time of the Starlink 5 mission is around 9:36 am EDT (1336 GMT). A static firing on Pad-39A probably will happen on Friday March 13th.
**** SpaceX Falcon 9 launched CRS-20 cargo mission with final Dragon 1 successfully on March 6th. Future cargo missions will use the Dragon 2 vehicles. The first stage booster made a successful landing back at the Cape. This marked the 50th successful landing of a F9 booster.
SpaceX is raising half a billion dollars in new funding, according to documents seen by CNBC on Monday, as the Elon Musk company continues work on three ambitious projects.
The company authorized $500.06 million at a price of $220 per share, the documents show, and values SpaceX at around $36 billion — up from $33.3 billion last year. Notably, the round is about double the $250 million that SpaceX was looking to raise, as CNBC reported previously.
**** Starship
**** Following SN1 pressure test failure last week, a second propellant tank was built and tested over the weekend successfully:
SN2 (with thrust puck) passed cryo pressure & engine thrust load tests late last night
****** SpaceX Boca Chica – Starship SN2 Test Tank Cryo Test – March.8.2020 – – NASASpaceflight – YouTube
At SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site, the Starship SN2 Test Tank underwent what appears to have been a successful cryo proof test under pressurization. Videos and Photos from Mary (@bocachicagal).
****** SpaceX Boca Chica – Post SN2 success, facility grows for more Starships – March.9.2020 – NASASpaceflight – YouTube
As SpaceXers prepare to remove SN2 from the launch site, Starship SN3 is being constructed amid a large scale work on growing production facility in Boca Chica. Videos and Photos from Mary (@bocachicagal).
****** SpaceX Boca Chica – Starship Rings on the move amid more construction – March.10.2020 – NASASpaceflight – YouTube
Lots happening at Boca Chica as SpaceXers lay the foundations for yet another new facility, while Starship rings dodge the concrete smoothers and SN3 continues to prepare for stacking. Videos and Photos from Mary (@bocachicagal).
This illustration shows a night-side view of the exoplanet WASP-76b. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets. To the left of the image, we see the evening border of the exoplanet, where it transitions from day to night.
Researchers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed an extreme planet where they suspect it rains iron. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets.
“One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron,”
says David Ehrenreich, a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He led a study, published today in the journal Nature, of this exotic exoplanet. Known as WASP-76b, it is located some 390 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces.
This strange phenomenon happens because the ‘iron rain’ planet only ever shows one face, its day side, to its parent star, its cooler night side remaining in perpetual darkness. Like the Moon on its orbit around the Earth, WASP-76b is ‘tidally locked’: it takes as long to rotate around its axis as it does to go around the star.
On its day side, it receives thousands of times more radiation from its parent star than the Earth does from the Sun. It’s so hot that molecules separate into atoms, and metals like iron evaporate into the atmosphere. The extreme temperature difference between the day and night sides results in vigorous winds that bring the iron vapour from the ultra-hot day side to the cooler night side, where temperatures decrease to around 1500 degrees Celsius.
Not only does WASP-76b have different day-night temperatures, it also has distinct day-night chemistry, according to the new study. Using the new ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s VLT in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the astronomers identified for the first time chemical variations on an ultra-hot gas giant planet. They detected a strong signature of iron vapour at the evening border that separates the planet’s day side from its night side.
“Surprisingly, however, we do not see the iron vapour in the morning,”
says Ehrenreich. The reason, he says, is that
“it is raining iron on the night side of this extreme exoplanet.”
[María Rosa Zapatero Osorio, an astrophysicist at the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and the chair of the ESPRESSO science team, adds,]
“The observations show that iron vapour is abundant in the atmosphere of the hot day side of WASP-76b“
“A fraction of this iron is injected into the night side owing to the planet’s rotation and atmospheric winds. There, the iron encounters much cooler environments, condenses and rains down.“
This result was obtained from the very first science observations done with ESPRESSO, in September 2018, by the scientific consortium who built the instrument: a team from Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and ESO.
“We soon realised that the remarkable collecting power of the VLT and the extreme stability of ESPRESSO made it a prime machine to study exoplanet atmospheres,”
says Pedro Figueira, ESPRESSO instrument scientist at ESO in Chile.
“What we have now is a whole new way to trace the climate of the most extreme exoplanets,”
concludes Ehrenreich.
This comic-book-style illustration by Swiss graphic novelist Frederik Peeters shows a close-up view of the evening border of the exoplanet WASP-76b. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets. Theoretical studies show that a planet, like WASP-76b, with an extremely hot day side and colder night side would have a gigantic condensation front in the form of a cloud cascade at its evening border, the transition from day to night, as depicted here.
A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest (find previous space policy roundups here):
It’s officially budget season! NASA’s fiscal year 2021 budget request is out, and it proposes billions of dollars of new funding for Project Artemis. But not every program is so lucky: the WFIRST space telescope, two Earth Science missions, a Mars mission, and NASA’s STEM engagement program are slated for cancellation. Why is Artemis growing and science shrinking? Will Congress let those cuts happen? The Society’s Chief of D.C. Operations, Brendan Curry, joins Casey Dreier and Mat Kaplan to break down the details and political headwinds facing NASA funding in the coming year.
1. Monday, March 9, 202: No special programming on this day this week.
2. Tuesday, March 10, 2020: No programming on this day this week.
3. Wednesday, March 11, 2020, Pre-recorded Hotel Mars Program with John Batchelor. See Upcoming Show on The Space Show website for details.
4. Wednesday, March 11, 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Professor Madhu Thangavelu of USC for news and updates about his space design class.
5. Thursday, March 12, 2020: No special show today.
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