Check out the presentations on leading edge space technologies given this week at the 2019 NIAC Symposium via the videos on Livestream. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program provides modest amounts of funding to projects that are too close to (or too over) the leading edge for the usual SBIR type of research grants.
Dunes in the north polar region of Mars as seen by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars orbiter. “The dark areas are sand deposited on the surface when the buried CO2 ice sublimated.” Image Credit: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Via Carnival of Space and Universe Today.
** Today a Russian Soyuz launched 3 new ISS crew members including the first astronaut from the UAE. This was the final flight for the Soyuz-FG version of the rocket. The modernized Soyuz-2 will now become the standard crew launch version of the Soyuz family of rockets. The Expedition 61 crew includes Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, United Arab Emirates guest cosmonaut Hazzaa Ali Almansoori. The launch was timed for a fast rendezvous with the station and the spacecraft is set to dock today at 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT).
** A Japanese H-IIB rocket launched a HTV cargo module to the ISS on Tuesday. Following a scrub on Sept. 10 due to a launch pad fire, the H-IIB successfully lifted off yesterday from the Tanegashima Space Center with the eighth HTV (H-II Cargo Vehicle) to go to the ISS. The spacecraft will take 4 days to reach the station with its load of over 4 tons of supplies and equipment, including several new lithium-ion batteries to replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for part of the station’s power system.
*** A Long March 11 launched on Sept.19th with five satellites for the private company Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Science and Technology Co., Ltd. The group of satellites included four with hyperspectral imaging systems and one with video imaging.
This week, after a very hard drive by our teammates in our Long Beach factory, we waved good-bye to our latest test rocket. Our previous LauncherOne served valiantly through a battery of tests highlighted by several captive carry flights and especially by our flawless drop test. Our latest rocket — which has already been fully integrated, tested, checked, re-checked, analyzed, and triple-checked — is destined for a rigorous crucible of engineering demonstrations and tests of its own. The final demonstration for this rocket will also be the biggest test we’ve attempted as a team: during that test, we’ll fire up LauncherOne’s engine in flight and head for space for the first time.
This will be the first Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket to attempt to put a payload into orbit.
We are running 4 test stands at Firefly as we move towards first flight. Currently on TS-2 we are performing Stage 2 Qualification testing. This video shows Thrust Vector Control (TVC) during a recent test. #Firefly#MakingSpaceForEveryonepic.twitter.com/4k2t7gCqzo
** The small company LAUNCHER pushes 3D printing technology to make its rocket engines more efficient:
More 💎💎💎🚀. To further reduce the cost of 3D printing our highest performance copper alloy engines – we more than doubled the powder layer thickness and as a result sped up the 3D printing time by more than 2X. Made possible by AMCM and @3t_am_ltd on an @EOSGmbH 3D printer. pic.twitter.com/rTOdKmQj2B
Blue Origin appears to be targeting NET Nov. 1 for its next suborbital flight of New Shepard. It’s anticipated the company will fly at least two more uncrewed missions before sending people into space.https://t.co/strONivCQ1
Marc Millis, former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project, recently returned from another trip to Germany, where he worked with Martin Tajmar’s SpaceDrive project at Germany’s Technische Universität Dresden. Recent coverage of the ongoing experimental work into spacedrives in both the popular and scientific press has raised public interest, leading Millis to explain in today’s essay why and how the techniques for studying these matters are improving, and how far we have to go before we have something definitive. Millis is in the midst of developing an interstellar propulsion study from a NASA grant even as he continues to examine advanced propulsion concepts and the methodologies with which to approach them.
*** Assembly of the Starship Mk.1 orbital demonstrator accelerated at even a faster pace in the past week at Boca Chica Beach. It appears that some staff from the Mk.2 project in Cocoa Beach, Florida came to help out in Texas so that a complete Starship can provide a dramatic backdrop to Elon Musk’s update presentation on the project this Saturday, Sept. 28th.
For the first time in history, not in science fiction, an actual spaceship is under construction. https://t.co/fm4aOw88mZ
These battery packs were spotted by an eagle-eyed forum user who was first to recognize the hardware for what it likely was. Per the above photo, SpaceX appears to have joined two self-contained Tesla battery packs into single units that were then installed on a header tank. Knowing that the highest capacity Tesla offers is ~100 kWh, the 2×2 packs could store up to 400 kWh and offer instantaneous power output (ignoring thermal limitations) well into the megawatt (MW) range.
The Tesla batteries are needed to run the motors that move the fins:
Many powerful electric motors & batteries. Force required is enormous, as entire fin moves. More about this on the 28th.
*** Yusaku Maezawa raises a few billion dollars from selling stock in his clothing company. This will provide him additional money to fund his Starship flight around the Moon with artist friends. He may also take a preliminary flight to space on a Crew Dragon.
While acknowledging his mistakes at a two-hour press conference, he said there were two personal reasons for his resignation: Preparing for the 2023 lunar mission, including going into space once before that, and wanting to feel the “rush” of building a company from the ground up again.
“Training to go into space will to take up much of my time,” he said, flanked by his successor at Zozo, Kotaro Sawada, and the president of Yahoo Japan.
SpaceX plans as many as 24 launches next year to build out the company’s Starlink network to provide broadband Internet service from space, following up to four more Starlink missions before the end of this year, according to SpaceX’s chief operating officer.
The rapid-fire launch cadence for SpaceX’s Starlink fleet will take up the majority of the company’s launch manifest next year with a series of missions taking off from Florida’s Space Coast, adding new nodes to a network that could eventually contain nearly 12,000 small satellites.
SpaceX completed its last orbital launch on August 7th, placing the AMOS-17 communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) on an exceedingly rare expendable Falcon 9. As of then, SpaceX’s next launch – an internal Starlink mission – was already expected no earlier than October and has since settled towards the end of the month. First reported by NASASpaceflight.com, the first Starlink v1.0 mission (AKA Starlink-1) is tentatively scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) October 17th, followed by Starlink-2 NET November 4th and Starlink-3 NET late-November.
Of note, there have been whispers in the last few days that SpaceX’s next launch is not, in fact, a Starlink mission. Reading between the lines, only two possible spacecraft – JCSAT-18/Kacific-1 or South Korea’s ANASIS – are next on SpaceX’s manifest, the former of which is scheduled to launch no earlier than November 11th and the latter of which does not yet have a firm date.
*** Crew Dragon program continues to move along with progress on parachutes, finalizing the April explosion investigation, and targeting late this year for the in-flight abort test:
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):
1. Monday, Sept. 23, 2019; 2:00 pm PDT (4:00 pm CDT, 5:00 pm EDT): No show today as Monday is reserved for special programming.
2. Tuesday, Sept. 24 , 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): Dr. Anahita Modiriasari will talk about lunar and Martian lava tubes.
3. Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019: Pre-recorded Hotel Mars Program with John Batchelor. See Upcoming Show on The Space Show website for details.
4. Friday, Sept. 27, 2019; 9:30-11:00 am PDT (11:30 am-1:00 pm CDT, 12:30-2:00 pm EDT): We welcome back Dallas Bienhoff will discuss cislunar development and his recent SSI discussion comments.
5. Sunday, Sept. 29, 2019; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): OPEN LINES. We want to hear from you. STEM, STEAM, SPACE, SCIENCE calls welcome. First time callers welcome. Talk about what is on your mind with space.
** Mon, 09/16/2019 – Dr. Patricia Hynes “discussed the upcoming ISPCS Conference to be held in Las Cruces, NM from Oct. 9-10, 2019 with implications for commercial and exploratory space”.
, and about “Apollo’s Biomedical Lessons, human lunar spaceflight and more”.
