Monthly Archives: July 2019

Rockets

Space transport roundup – July.23.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** LightSail-2 unfurled today: Live Coverage: LightSail 2 Sail Deployment | The Planetary Society

** India launches the Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission, which includes an orbiter, lander, and rover. The spacecraft’s elliptical orbit of Earth will gradually extend farther and farther out until on August 14 the engines will fire to put the spacecraft on course for the Moon. It will go into lunar orbit on August 20th. The goal is to separate the lander/rover combo from the orbiter on September 1st and settle down on the lunar surface on September 6th. If successful, the landing will be the first time a spacecraft has reached the southern polar region, where water ice is believed to be embedded in the floors of permanently dark craters.

An animation of the mission:

More about the mission:

** Russian Soyuz launches 3 new ISS crew members and docks with the station just 6 hours after liftoff. The July 20th flight took place on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Currently, the US has no operational system for putting people into orbit (though, in a pinch, the SpaceX Cargo Dragon could certainly be configured to take someone to orbit).

The new members of the ISS crew include cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA physician-astronaut Andrew Morgan. More at:

** Rocket Lab’s next launch set for August and will carry four satellites: Rocket Lab’s Next Mission Focused On Building Constellations And Enabling R&D | Rocket Lab.

Rocket Lab

announced its next launch is a mission carrying satellites destined to begin a new constellation for UNSEENLABS, as well as more rideshare payloads for Spaceflight, consisting of a spacecraft for BlackSky and the United States Air Force Space Command.

The mission – named ‘Look Ma, No Hands’ – will lift-off in August from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, carrying a total of four satellites aboard an Electron launch vehicle.

See also:

** Gilmour Space Technologies prepares for a suborbital launch of the company’s OneVision rocket. The 8.6 meter high, 1600 kilogram vehicle

will flight test the company’s first-stage 80kN orbital engine, and demonstrate their mobile launch capability.

The company plans to launch smallsats into orbit in the 2021 time frame. More about Gilmour Space:

** Blue Origin is making progress with its BE-7 rocket engine that will power the Blue Moon lander vehicle: Blue Origin fires BE-7 lunar lander engine for full 6 minutes – GeekWire

** SpaceX:

*** Falcon 9 set to launch Cargo Dragon on CRS-18 mission on Wednesday at 6:24 pm EDT (2224 GMT) from Cape Canaveral. The weather forecast (pdf), however, gives only a 30% chance of acceptable conditions for liftoff within the instantaneous launch window.

A view of the Falcon 9 static fire test last Friday (via www.USLaunchReport.com):

*** A fuel leak fire following the Starhopper static engine test last week resulted in a scary fireball but caused no significant damage to the vehicle. The first brief flight of the vehicle is planned for this week.

Some recent views of the Starhopper and the orbital Starship demonstrator at Boca Chica Beach, Texas:

*** Elon gives more clues about Super Heavy Booster/Starship system design: SpaceX’s Elon Musk says Starship, Super Heavy will have more than 40 Raptor engines – Teslarati

If the above Starhopper test flight is successful, Elon promises to provide a more extensive update soon after on the latest design details.

*** Elon Musk discusses SpaceX projects in two interviews. Highlights include his belief that the first crewed Dragon mission to the ISS will happen within 6 months, an uncrewed Starship could land on the Moon within 2 years, and with a crew in 3-4 years:

*** More about the Crew Dragon test explosion. Last week, SpaceX released an Update on the In-Flight Abort Static Fire Test Anomaly Investigation that occurred in April. Scott Manley gives a lucid description of the investigation’s findings:

See also:

*** Crew Dragon parachute development and testing appear to have reached a successful conclusion:

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Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA,
and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

Activism, Space Policy

Space policy roundup – July.23.2019

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:

Webcasts:

** Asteroid Day LIVE 2019 – Videos of seminars and panel discussions on planetary defense related topics. For example: this video shows a discussion of

Planetary Defense and in particular, the importance of Asteroid Deflection Missions, DART and HERA. The panel will look at Europe‘s role in US-European cooperation and evaluate the importance and value of multi-country and private industry collaborations on Space Missions and Planetary Science.

** The Space Show – Sun, 07/21/2019 – Rand Simberg and Bill Simon talked about the Evoloterra ceremony in honor of the anniversary of Apollo 11 and about current space developments and policy issues.

** Was the Apollo Program a Bad Idea? | A SciShow Documentary – An extended SciShow video sponsored by Draper’s “We Hack the Moon” initiative, which describes

…how engineers guided us to the moon and back with a fraction of today’s technology. The Apollo program was famous for being risky and expensive. It had a crunched timeline, daring astronauts, and lacked modern tech, and that all kind of makes you wonder… was the Apollo program a bad idea?

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One Giant Leap:
The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

Activism, Space Policy

The Space Show this week – July.22.2019

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, July 22, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): No show on Monday which is now reserved for special programming.

2. Tuesday, July 23, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Michelle Evans for her take on Apollo history and more.

3. Wednesday, July 24, 2019: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.

4. Friday, July 26, 2019; 9:30-11 am PDT (11:30 AM-1 pm CDT, 12:30-2 pm EDT): We welcome back Brad Blair to talk about lunar engineering and many other relevant topics.

5. Sunday, July 28, 2019; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): OPEN LINES. All callers welcome on space, science STEM, STEAM subjects. First time callers wanted.

Some recent shows:

** Sun, 07/21/2019 – Rand Simberg and Bill Simon talked about the Evoloterra ceremony in honor of the anniversary of Apollo 11 and about current space developments and policy issues.

** Tue, 07/16/2019 – Douglas Messier talked about Virgin Galactic, “human spaceflight, NASA key personnel changes, congressional funding for NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin and much more”.

** Sun, 07/14/2019 – Open lines discussion program with listeners.

** Fri, 07/12/2019 – Dr. John Brandenburg talked about “Death on Mars due to huge nuclear bomb explosions, advanced propulsion, beam technology, remote viewing of Mars, XE and Iodine isotopes in the Martian atmosphere, Woodward Mach thrusters & more”.

** Thu, 07/11/2019 – Leonard David spoke about “new book, “Moon Rush: The New Space Race” and our return to the Moon plus other topics”.

See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
The Space Show – David Livingston

 

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Systems

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – July.22.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** East Tennessee middle school students build cubesat for launch from the ISS:

Students are in the final stages of progression from using 3-D printed plastic prototypes to working with space-age materials. The Robertsville Rams’ so-called Ramsat will help study regrowth of forests in the Smokies from space.

The student group, mentored by professionals at nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are awaiting word from NASA on which launch would send up their cubesat as secondary payload to the International Space Station.

** Students at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology working on CubeSat formation flying: Space exploration research ongoing at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology – KNBN NewsCenter1

At SDSM&T, a small group of engineering students are working to take the cubesat to a new level through NASA’s cubesate launch initiative.

“We need to be able to use a camera to figure out where a cubesat is relative to another cubesat,” said Skye Rutan-Bedard, undergraduate researcher.

…

The goal is to communicate between multiple cubesats, getting them close together in space.

“By introducing better technology for getting these cubesats to localize, when they’re close to each other they can produce densely packed constellations and also means we can experiment with docking and getting individual cubesats to dock in orbit,” said Rutan-Bedard.

** Arizona and Puerto Rico students to build CubeSats to carry out asteroid surface simulation experiments: $3M in NASA Funding to Help Students Build CubeSats | UANews

University of Arizona researchers will use $3 million in NASA funding over three years to research the low-gravity surface environments of asteroids, and to provide students from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to design, build and operate CubeSats, or miniature satellites at the UA.

The project was selected through NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project Institutional Research Opportunity, or MIRO, program. The UA, which was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2018, is one of eight institutions to receive a share of more than $8.2 million in cooperative agreements awarded through the MIRO program.

“This project will help us understand asteroid surface geophysics in a way that no one has done before,” said Erik Asphaug, deputy principal investigator for the project and a professor in the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “And the students get to participate in a low-cost endeavor that has huge implications for how we work with asteroids in near-Earth space.”

** Univ. Central Florida Q-PACE CubeSat to study how small dust particles grew into planets:

In the very early stages of planet formation, dust grains trapped in a disk around the young star gently collide with each other, sticking and growing into bigger aggregates. Similarly, particles in planetary rings collide at very low relative velocities and form aggregates leading to many an observed features of Saturn’s rings for example. To better understand these low-velocity collisions and the growth of aggregates, microgravity experiments observing multi-particles systems are required. In particular, collision data for µm to cm-sized particles will help closing the current gap in knowledge of how dust grows into km-sized bodies, as well as better our understanding of particle dynamics in planetary rings.

Q-PACE (CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment) will observe a set of 0.1 mm to cm-sized particles colliding and growing under microgravity conditions. This 3U CubeSat will allow that inherits its format from the NanoRocks experiment currently on the International Space Station will allow for the observation of particle dynamical evolution and growth for an unprecedented duration in time of several years. 

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-202 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • AMSAT is proud to announce the relaunch of its AMSAT Ambassador Program
  • Watch for ISS, SSTV Activity
  • Nihon University Announces FO-99 US Operation Plan
  • FO-29 update from JARL
  • 2019 Mid-Year Fundraising Letter
  • 2019 37th AMSAT Space Symposium and Annual General Meeting
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • ARISS News
  • Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

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The Case for Space:
How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up
a Future of Limitless Possibility

In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Videos: “Space to Ground” ISS report – July.19.2019

This week’s episode of NASA’s Space to Ground reports on activities related to the  International Space Station:

** Astronaut Training: Then and Now

Mission training for astronauts reflects the missions themselves: rigorous. In the Apollo era, astronauts and engineers prepared for the unknown as much as possible, but knew how to improvise in unprecedented situations. Currently, we’ve set our sights on going further, and our modern technology has allowed us to train much more safely – all in pursuit of our next giant leap.

** Astronaut Moments: Drew Morgan

Description: Before launching to the International Space Station on the anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” astronaut Drew Morgan was making his own giant leaps out of airplanes as part of his training.

** We Go as the Artemis Generation

We Go: To the Moon and on to Mars. Our generation, the Artemis generation, will explore farther than we’ve ever gone before. The Artemis program will send the first woman and next man to walk on the surface of the Moon and build a sustainable base to prepare for missions to Mars and beyond.

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Outpost in Orbit:
A Pictorial & Verbal History of the Space Station