Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:
** This Year The Space Station Is Getting Its First Major Expansion in a Decade – Scott Manley
The last major addition to the International Space Station was in 2011, after that the forced retirment of the Space Shuttle meant that new hardware was necessarily small, but this year we’re seeing a number of new pieces of hardware which will be attached to the station which will expand it and change the way it looks.
** WE ARE RESILIENT: A Message from NASA Astronauts – NASA
It has been one year since the United States began its battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. This year has been tough and has changed the way all of us live. And yet despite extraordinary circumstances, NASA still accomplished extraordinary things. Aboard the International Space Station, NASA Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover have a message for all of us: Take care of each other and we’ll get through this together.
** Expedition 64 Nanoracks – March 10, 2021 – NASA Video
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 64 Flight Engineers Victor Glover and Shannon Walker of NASA discussed the new Nanoracks Bishop Airlock on the orbital outpost during an in-flight question and answer session with Nanoracks officials March 10. The airlock was delivered to the station on a SpaceX cargo Dragon vehicle in December and was attached to the Tranquility module by the Canadian-built Canadarm2 robotic arm.
In September 2019, the Swedish-American biologist and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir realised her lifelong dream of travelling to space when she launched from Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS), where she would serve as flight engineer for the next seven months. Featuring remarkable footage – including Meir’s euphoric first steps into the ISS and her participation, with fellow astronaut Christina Koch, in the first-ever all-female spacewalk – this short documentary captures scenes from Meir’s roundtrip journey with intimacy and grandeur. Occurring over the course of many tumultuous months on Earth, including the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film also ponders what it’s like to experience the trials of humanity from 254 miles above.
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):
** Jielong-3 rocket to launch in 2022, QS-T raises 100M¥ of funding – China Space News Roundup Ep 23 – Dongfang Hour – YouTube
1) Qiansheng Exploration (QS-T) Announces RMB 100M+ Series A Round … 2) Jielong-3 to make its maiden launch in 2022 … 3) An interesting piece by the Beijing Daily on Beijing’s commercial space ecosystem …
In this week’s Space Cafè WebTalk, Dr. Marco Ferrazzani, Chief of Legal services at the European Space Agency, Paris, France talked about legal considerations on Europe in space.
We discussed the following topics of current interest in European space:
the current state of legal competences in the European landscape , ESA for the EU space programme – institutional cooperation and coordination, with an outlook on the FFPA negotiations, an ever more competitive European space industry – how law and regulations sustain innovation and foster competition, European exploration: how ESA and NASA team up on the way “Forward to the Moon”, sustained by law and international commitments. Dr. Marco Ferrazzani also answered relevant questions from the audience.
** Friday , Mar.5.2021 – Dr. Clive Neal discussed “the Moon, lunar water and resources, policy, China, lunar exploration, settlement, Mars and lots more“.
This artist’s impression shows how the distant quasar P172+18 and its radio jets may have looked. To date (early 2021), this is the most distant quasar with radio jets ever found and it was studied with the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. It is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was only about 780 million years old.Credits: ESO
With the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered and studied in detail the most distant source of radio emission known to date. The source is a “radio-loud” quasar — a bright object with powerful jets emitting at radio wavelengths — that is so far away its light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The discovery could provide important clues to help astronomers understand the early Universe.
Quasars are very bright objects that lie at the centre of some galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes. As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, energy is released, allowing astronomers to spot them even when they are very far away.
The newly discovered quasar, nicknamed P172+18, is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just around 780 million years old. While more distant quasars have been discovered, this is the first time astronomers have been able to identify the telltale signatures of radio jets in a quasar this early on in the history of the Universe. Only about 10% of quasars — which astronomers classify as “radio-loud” — have jets, which shine brightly at radio frequencies [1].
P172+18 is powered by a black hole about 300 million times more massive than our Sun that is consuming gas at a stunning rate.
“The black hole is eating up matter very rapidly, growing in mass at one of the highest rates ever observed,”
explains astronomer Chiara Mazzucchelli, Fellow at ESO in Chile, who led the discovery together with Eduardo Bañados of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
The astronomers think that there’s a link between the rapid growth of supermassive black holes and the powerful radio jets spotted in quasars like P172+18. The jets are thought to be capable of disturbing the gas around the black hole, increasing the rate at which gas falls in. Therefore, studying radio-loud quasars can provide important insights into how black holes in the early Universe grew to their supermassive sizes so quickly after the Big Bang.
“I find it very exciting to discover ‘new’ black holes for the first time, and to provide one more building block to understand the primordial Universe, where we come from, and ultimately ourselves,” says Mazzucchelli.
P172+18 was first recognised as a far-away quasar, after having been previously identified as a radio source, at the Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile by Bañados and Mazzucchelli.
“As soon as we got the data, we inspected it by eye, and we knew immediately that we had discovered the most distant radio-loud quasar known so far,” says Bañados.
However, owing to a short observation time, the team did not have enough data to study the object in detail. A flurry of observations with other telescopes followed, including with the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s VLT, which allowed them to dig deeper into the characteristics of this quasar, including determining key properties such as the mass of the black hole and how fast it’s eating up matter from its surroundings. Other telescopes that contributed to the study include the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array and the Keck Telescope in the US.
While the team are excited about their discovery, to appear in The Astrophysical Journal, they believe this radio-loud quasar could be the first of many to be found, perhaps at even larger cosmological distances.
“This discovery makes me optimistic and I believe — and hope — that the distance record will be broken soon,” says Bañados.
Observations with facilities such as ALMA, in which ESO is a partner, and with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) could help uncover and study more of these early-Universe objects in detail.
A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport (find previous roundups here):
** SpaceX SN10 became the first Starship prototype to make a successful vertical landing on March 2nd. Unfortunately, a propellant leak of some sort led to a destructive explosion several minutes after the landing. Here’s the SpaceX webcast, which ended before the explosion. Here is the SpaceX webcast video:
An earlier attempt to lift off in the mid-afternoon was aborted just as the engines fired. Elon Musk said on Twitter, “Launch abort on slightly conservative high thrust limit. Increasing thrust limit & recycling propellant for another flight attempt today.” About three hours later the vehicle lifted off. The ascent to 10 kilometers, the sequential shutdown of the engines as the rocket reached apogee, the flip to the horizontal “belly-flop” orientation, and the aerodynamic control of the vehicle during the descent, all appeared to go quite well.
The technique of bringing all three engines back to life at the start of the flip from horizontal to vertical also appeared to work well. This differed from the previous two landings where two engines were fired up for landing. However, for the SN9 flight, one of the two engines failed during startup and this led to the explosive landing. Elon Musk subsequently (see transcript below) said they would start up all three engines to insure that at least two would operate for the landing. This worked for SN10. After the vehicle was vertical and stable, two of the three engines were shut off and the vehicle descended in a controlled hover via one engine.
Note that the Starship hovering capability differs from the Falcon 9 booster. The F9 booster’s Merlin engine cannot throttle down sufficiently to hover. If the engine did not shut down at the instant the vehicle touches the landing pad, the booster would accelerate back up. The greater power, efficiency, and deep throttling capabilities of the Raptor engines allow for hovering the Starship. This will also be true for the Super Heavy booster. (That’s one reason SpaceX believes they can bring a Super Heavy directly into a catch mechanism on the launch stand. Hovering allows for much greater precision and gentler handling during the landing.)
The SN10 vehicle leaned somewhat after the landing. In closeup videos of the vehicle as it was descending, three of the legs can be seen dangling after deployment rather than in a latched position as intended. The vehicle then rested on the metal skirt surrounding the engines on the side where it should have been supported by legs.
During the final vertical descent, one can also see flames along one side after the two engines stopped firing. After the engines were shut off, there was a fire along one edge along the ground near the same section. Perhaps a methane valve was stuck open or propellant line burst. A robotic water cannon soon began spraying the flames but after a few minutes stopped for some reason and before long the the explosion occurred.
The loss of the vehicle was disappointing but ultimately will be of little significance. These early prototype flights are providing important data on previously untried systems and maneuvers, especially the Raptor engines, the belly-flop descent and the flip to vertical maneuver. Perhaps this vehicle would have flown once more if the landing had gone perfectly but regardless it eventually would have been dismantled and sent to the recycling bin. It was never intended for space.
Everyday Astronaut provides hi-res video of the flight and explosion: Starship SN10 [4k, Clean Audio & Slow Mo Supercut]
Scott Manley’s analysis: SpaceX’s Starship SN10 Successfully Lands After Amazing Flight. Dismantles Itself Spectacularly
** Rocket Lab going public through a SPAC arrangement that will bring in sufficient capital to fund development of the medium-lift Neutron launch system. The SPAC deal gives a value of about $4.1B for Rocket Lab and will produce about $750M in cash.
Initial launch site will be Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island, Virginia. (An Electron launch pad facility is nearly operational there.)
A factory to manufacturing the rocket will be placed near the launch site.
The Arktika (Арктика, meaning “Arctic“) satellites will carry out a variety of missions to compliment other satellite constellations with additional coverage of Russia’s most northern regions. The Arktika-M component of this program focuses on meteorology, with its satellites carrying multi-spectral imaging payloads to help gather data for forecasting. These spacecraft are also equipped with a communications payload to relay data from remote surface-based weather stations and emergency signals.
Each Arktika-M satellite has a mass of about 2,100 kilograms (4,600 lb) and is designed to operate for ten years. Constructed by NPO Lavochkin, the Arktika-M spacecraft are based on the company’s Navigator platform. The spacecraft are three-axis stabilized and carry a pair of deployable solar arrays to generate power.
Original plans called for a pair of Arktika-M spacecraft to be launched, however Russia now plans to deploy at least five over the next four years. A follow-on Arktika-MP series is expected to begin launching in 2026.
The Indian Space Research Organization has launched their first mission of 2021 with a flight of their Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) to deliver Brazil’s Amazônia-1 satellite, along with 18 co-passengers, into Sun-synchronous orbit.
Liftoff from First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, India, occurred Sunday, 28 February at 10:24 IST at the launch site — which is 04:54 UTC, or Saturday, 27 February at 23:54 EST.
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Amazônia-1 is the first Earth observation satellite designed, built, tested, and operated completely by Brazil and is the first of three such satellites planned by the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), a Brazil’s space research and exploration company.
As major progress is being made on the New Glenn launch vehicle and its Cape Canaveral facilities, the schedule has been refined to match the demand of Blue Origin’s commercial customers. The current target for New Glenn’s maiden flight is Q4 2022. The Blue Origin team has been in contact with all of our customers to ensure this baseline meets their launch needs.
This updated maiden flight target follows the recent Space Force decision to not select New Glenn for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Launch Services Procurement (LSP).
New Glenn is proceeding to fulfill its current commercial contracts, pursue a large and growing commercial market, and enter into new civil space launch contracts. We hope to launch NSSL payloads in the future, and remain committed to serving the U.S. national defense mission.
Recent milestones include completion of a New Glenn first stage mockup simulator, completion of a structural test facility, and hardware milestones for tanks, stage modules, and composite fairings.
In addition to program progress, more than 600 jobs have been created in the region. Blue Origin has invested more than $2.5 billion in facilities and infrastructure at all sites, including $1 billion invested in the rebuild of historic LC-36, which is nearing completion.
Blue also posted three videos about the status of the New Glenn facilities in development on Cape Canaveral:
The company intends to have a cargo-only version of the descent element lander ready to take on a demonstration mission to the moon one year in advance of the first crewed landing for NASA’s Artemis program.
“That provides an enormous amount of risk reduction,” Blue Origin chief scientist Steve Sqyures — a veteran of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover missions — explained in the video. “We get to practice. … We can pre-position material, and it can be whatever you want it to be. We can begin to build up Artemis Base Camp.”
Sqyures said the cargo lander will have a crane system to offload a rover and other payloads. NASA’s Langley Research Center has already provided a crane for the pathfinder tests, and Sqyures said Honeybee Robotics is developing a payload-lowering davit system.
Here is a brief video update: Lunar Descent Element Demo Mission – Blue Origin
At our Huntsville, Alabama factory, we built a full-scale pathfinder of our Descent Element lander in preparation for our demonstration mission. This mission will happen a year before landing crew on the Moon. By proving out our technology and pre-positioning equipment, it will start America’s sustainable return to the Moon. To learn more about the Blue Origin-led HLS National Team, visit: www.blueorigin.com/blue-moon/national-team
** Jeff Bezos expected to spend more time with Blue Origin after stepping down as CEO of Amazon. In addition to the lunar lander development mentioned above, Blue needs to begin crewed suborbital New Shepard rocket flights and, as mentioned above, get the New Glenn heavy lifter into operation.
