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:
Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins Jake and Anthony to talk about his recent trip to Boca Chica for Starhopper’s first hop, propellant depots, NASA policy, Artemis, and the passing of his friend, Chris Kraft.
“Back to the Future” explores the decline of the industry in Southern California and its resurgence in recent years. We hear first-person testimony from Southern California residents who came of age during the Cold War and Space Race.
Work on Rocket Lab’s Electron first stage reuse program began in late 2018, at the end of the company’s first year of orbital launches. The plan to reuse Electron’s first stage will be implemented in two phases. The first phase will see Rocket Lab attempt to recover a full Electron first stage from the ocean downrange of Launch Complex 1 and have it shipped back to Rocket Lab’s Production Complex for refurbishment. The second phase will see Electron’s first stage captured mid-air by helicopter, before the stage is transported back to Launch Complex 1 for refurbishment and relaunch. Rocket Lab plans to begin first stage recovery attempts in the coming year.
A major step towards Rocket Lab’s reusability plans was completed on the company’s most recent launch, the Make It Rain mission, which launched on 29 June from Launch Complex 1. The first stage on this mission carried critical instrumentation and experiments that provided data to inform future recovery efforts. The next Electron mission, scheduled for launch in August, will also carry recovery instrumentation.
Rocket Lab Founder and Chief Executive Peter Beck says reusing Electron’s first stage will enable Rocket Lab to further increase launch frequency by reducing production time spent building new stages from scratch.
Animation of snagging the stage with a helicopter:
A video of the press conference about the new scheme:
** Ariane 5 launches on Flight VA249 with the Intelsat 39 comm-sat and the EDRS-C “SpaceDataHighway” satellite, which will be the second node in the European Data Relay System (EDRS) for keeping remote sensing satellites in low earth orbit in constant contact with ground stations.
After 110 days at the International Space Station, the Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS) NG-11 Cygnus resupply vehicle has departed the orbital outpost.
But in a significant change from previous missions, Cygnus will not perform a destructive re-entry within the next few weeks, instead remaining on orbit until the end of the year to test new systems aboard the craft that will aid NGIS in their ability to offer Cygnus as a free-flying science platform for ISS, non-Space Station, and future NASA needs.
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After departing the International Space Station, the NG-11 Cygnus will – as is customary – deploy a series of Cubesats from both a forward hatch-mounted deployer and its standard CubeSat deployer mounted on its service module on the rear of the craft.
** Another step made in construction of the third SpaceShipTwo rocketplane:
We’ve now completed the wing structure of the next spaceship we’re building for @VirginGalactic. The next step will be to join it to the completed fuselage, which will see it begin to resemble the unmistakable SpaceShipTwo pic.twitter.com/zMEsipG8hC
ULA awarded $156 million modification by Air Force for NRO Mission Three on Delta IV Heavy, the last of the contract’s planned flights. Will launch from Cape by 2024. Total value of contract now stands at $467 million. pic.twitter.com/MV0z0s3Nbz
The booster did not return for a soft landing but instead burned all its propellant to obtain maximum performance for this big payload going to GEO. However, one of the fairings was recovered:
The announcement brings SpaceX squarely into the already-heated competition for the burgeoning small-satellite launch market. Although the number of large-satellite launch contracts has stagnated, customer demand for much smaller payloads to a variety of orbits has grown. As a result, a number of companies have been founded in the United States and elsewhere to develop small rockets for smallsat launch services. SpaceX’s entry into this market with the much larger Falcon 9 rocket (at a price of about $15,000 per kilogram) represents a threat to those companies both from a standpoint of securing launch contracts but also by attracting venture-capital funding.
However, Greg Autry, a professor who directs the Southern California Commercial Spaceflight Initiative, said he expects that payload integrators such as Spaceflight will be most hurt by this move. Other companies offering launches in the neighborhood of 150kg (including Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Vector) will retain the advantage of offering dedicated service on their much smaller rockets for a particular orbit.
In a series of tweets on Saturday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said he planned to provide an update on the development of the company’s Starship project on August 24. This new spacecraft will serve as both the upper-stage of a large rocket as well as a vehicle capable of propulsively landing on distant worlds and returning to Earth.
Musk said the update would take place in Boca Chica, an unincorporated area along the southern Texas coast near the border with Mexico. This is where the company recently flew a stubby prototype of Starship and is also building a full-scale version of Starship for suborbital tests called Starship Mk1. A separate team of SpaceX engineers is building a similar prototype, Starship Mk2, in Cocoa, Florida.
According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, one or both of the company’s two orbital Starship prototypes could be “ready to fly” – or nearly so – by the end of August. Even if Musk is off by one or several months, it would still make for a spectacular achievement.
The focus of the conversation that led Musk to the classic Musk-time prediction was the topic of a long-promised presentation on SpaceX’s Starship program. Although just a few weeks shy of the usual schedule, 2019’s presentation – set for August 24th in Boca Chica, Texas – more or less follows an annual September update tradition that Musk has consistently followed since 2016. Each year, Musk has given the public a glimpse into the constantly evolving process of designing SpaceX’s next-generation Mars-bound rocket. Despite the tradition’s consistency, 2019 is simply different.
In the last week alone, SpaceX’s twin orbital Starship prototypes have made some truly jaw-dropping progress. Onlookers have witnessed Florida’s Starship push through a rapid growth spurt, while the company’s Texas team has begun to install propellant tank bulkheads and work on a triple-Raptor thrust structure.
Meanwhile, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has suggested that one or both of the orbital-class Starship prototypes could be “almost ready to fly” by August 24th, the date of the CEO’s next official update on Starship (formerly BFR and ITS). Although the actual challenge of building a massive, orbital-class launch vehicle is far subtler than the visible steelwork needed to build its primary structure and pressure vessels, the veritable leaps forward made in both Texas and Florida in the last 7-10 days are extremely encouraging signs.
Just left Starship Texas build site. Very proud of progress SpaceX team has made! Pics are of 9m dome rotation & Starship airframe behind windbreak. pic.twitter.com/1cmOzkPlkn
In a recent blog post, NASA made it clear that changes happening to leadership within the agency – specifically within the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate – are impacting the timelines to return astronauts to the International Space Station(ISS) from US soil. Agency conflicts are just the latest of several setbacks that have impacted the schedule of SpaceX’s crewed Crew Dragon launch debut.
Initially, the SpaceX Demo-2 mission set to carry NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS was slated to occur in the summer of 2019. That demonstration flight has since dropped off of the NASA launches and landings schedule, at least through October. SpaceX is now targeting a Demo-2 launch no earlier than December 2019 but an array of critical milestones must be completed to achieve that goal and both SpaceX and NASA have been keen to express that a crewed Crew Dragon launch in 2019 is a huge stretch.
SpaceX is set to retire its current fleet of Dragon capsules, in use since 2010, next year and begin flying supplies to the International Space Station on a new variant of the Dragon spacecraft based on the model in development to carry astronauts.
After originally awarding SpaceX a cargo transportation contract in 2008 that eventually totaled 20 Dragon missions, NASA selected the company for a follow-on contract — known as Commercial Resupply Services-2 — in 2016 for at least six additional Dragon deliveries through 2024.
The changeover to SpaceX’s next-generation Dragon — called Dragon 2 or Crew Dragon — for cargo missions next year will come with several benefits, including a faster process to recover, refurbish and re-fly the capsules.
For cargo missions, SpaceX has designed a version of the Crew Dragon, or Dragon 2, spacecraft without SuperDraco abort engines. The launch abort system has been a stumbling block in the Crew Dragon program after a spacecraft exploded during moments before a ground test-firing of the abort engines in April.
SpaceX is busy on all fronts, from its bread and butter commercial satellite launches to planning its ultimate future of deep space transportation and multi-planetary colonization. A second static fire test was ordered – and completed for Falcon 9 B1047.3 ahead of next week’s AMOS-17 launch, while a key environmental report shed new details on the company’s plans for a Starship launch pad at its Kennedy Space Center (KSC) 39A complex.
Mann says student help is very valuable when it comes to design and creation. Senior Patrick Gorman is working on the research through the summer, currently designing the chassis and antenna for the CubeSat. He’s the president of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space organization on campus and the project appealed to him because of the variety of work he can do.
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Mann says one of the reasons he’s happy the university guided him to making the satellite is the learning opportunity it provides to students like Gorman.
“Think how much more beneficial this is to a student who helped build something and gets to see it launch rather than get to see something else launch that someone else built. It’s much more satisfying for people involved, which I think is better for the education aspect of the program here.”
Mann says the prototype of the satellite should be complete in the next year, with the first launch of their CubeSat expected in two years.
After meeting all its benchmarks for demonstrating small-satellite weather forecasting capabilities during its first 90 days, a Colorado State University experimental satellite is operating after more than one year in low-Earth orbit.
TEMPEST-D (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems – Demonstration), a type of small satellite called a 6U CubeSat, is still providing precise images of global weather – exceeding the expectations of even its engineers.
TEMPEST-D is about the size of an Oxford dictionary and was deployed from the International Space Station last July carrying a miniaturized microwave radiometer. Measuring at five frequencies, TEMPEST-D can see through clouds to reveal the interior of storms where raindrops and ice crystals form.
Pauline Faure, assistant professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department, and Maria Pantoja, assistant professor in the Computer Science and Software Engineering Department, each received a $25,000 award. The awards recognize faculty members who contribute new knowledge in the field of engineering; partner with industry; involve students with advanced ideas; and enhance teaching by introducing state-of-the-art topics in the classroom.
The awards provide time and resources for professional growth and development to enrich the educational experiences of Cal Poly students. In addition to their mini satellite work, the faculty members also plan to expand the use of parallel computing to study earthquakes, Hawaiian bird calls and wine production.
Faure said her main goal is to facilitate access to space to more people through STEM education, using mini-satellites called CubeSats as a tool.
“This is important because space is supposed to be available to all nations regardless of the hardships they might be facing,” she said. “Yet, space has a reputation of being inaccessible, complex and expensive.”
CubeSats, co-created by retired Cal Poly faculty member Jordi Puig-Suari, have allowed students and private citizens worldwide to become more involved in space research. Several CubeSats developed at Cal Poly have been launched into space.
1. Monday, August 5, 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, August 6, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Mike Mongo to discuss his Johnny Appleseed project and more.
3. Wednesday, August 7, 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. Thursday, August 8, 2019; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Ed Wright to provide news and updates for the upcoming Space Studies Institute Seattle conference in early September.
5. Friday, August 9, 2019; 9:30-11 am PDT (11:30 am -1 pm CDT, 12:30-2 pm EDT): We welcome Trisha Navidzadeh to the program regarding her work with the analysis of the commercial aerospace investment market and more.
6. Sunday, August 11, 2019; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): We welcome Dr. Craig Hardgrove. His focus is on thermal infrared and nuclear remote sensing of the Moon and Mars. He is the Principal Investigator for the LunaH-Map CubeSat mission that will orbit the Moon to map hydrogen-rich deposits in permanently shadowed regions.
Recent shows:
** Sun, 08/04/2019 – Dr. Joel Sercel talked about the company “Momentus, its technology, the use of space resources, water as a propellant and much more”.
** Tue, 07/30/2019 – Robert Zimmerman (Behind The Black ) talked about “SpaceX Starship progress, NASA lunar program, Congress, budgets, private sector excitement, tax dollars vs. private dollars and much more”.
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:
Did the public support Project Apollo? Dr. Emily Margolis joins the show to explore the domestic politics and cultural impact of the space age throughout the 1960s. Despite the success of the lunar landings, there was more opposition to Apollo than we generally remember. Chief Advocate Casey Dreier also provides an update on some important developments in the U.S. Congress on the eve of their August recess—including some potentially good budget news for NASA.
and “asteroid impacts, asteroid defense, NASA, FEMA, asteroid pop culture, asteroid mining and much more”.