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On this day, 30yrs ago, the crew of shuttle Atlantis began a mission like no other. In the words of STS-46's Marsha Ivins, theirs was a mission of "Weird Science".
The post “Weird Science”: Remembering STS-46, Thirty Years On first appeared on AmericaSpace.
A South Korean spacecraft set for launch to the moon next week from Cape Canaveral has been loaded with the fuel it needs to maneuver into a low-altitude lunar orbit for image-taking and scientific observations.
The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, or KPLO, spacecraft is set for launch at 7:08 p.m. EDT (2308 GMT) next Thursday, Aug. 4, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Mission managers said earlier this week the launch was delayed two days to allow time for SpaceX to complete additional work on the Falcon 9 rocket.
Technicians and engineers working inside SpaceX’s payload processing facility recently completed fueling of the Korean lunar probe, following the spacecraft’s delivery to Cape Canaveral from South Korea on July 6.
The spacecraft was loaded with hydrazine fuel inside the SpaceX clean room. South Korean engineers who traveled to the launch base with the KPLO spacecraft also completed final tests on the probe, South Korea’s first mission to the moon and first venture in deep space exploration.
The 1,495-pound (678-kilogram) spacecraft was expected to be encapsulated inside the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing after fueling. The aeroshell will protect the spacecraft during the final phase of launch preparations, and during the first few minutes of the launch itself.
Then SpaceX will transport the payload module from the processing facility to the Falcon 9 rocket’s hangar a couple miles away, where ground teams will connect the spacecraft inside the rocket’s nose cone to the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
The entire rocket will then roll out and will be raised vertical on pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. The KPLO mission is one of two launches currently scheduled next Thursday at the Florida spaceport. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket with a U.S. military satellite is set to lift off about 12-and-a-half hours before the Falcon 9 rocket on the KPLO mission.
Part of the KPLO mission’s purpose is in its name. The mission is a pathfinder, or precursor, for South Korea’s future ambitions in space exploration, which include a robotic landing on the moon in the early 2030s. South Korea has also signed up to join the NASA-led Artemis Accords, and could contribute to the U.S. space agency’s human lunar exploration program.
The KPLO mission is also named Danuri, a combination of the words “dal” and “nurida” in Korean, meaning “enjoy the moon.”
“The basic idea of this mission is technological development and demonstration,” said Eunhyeuk Kim from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. “Also, using the science instruments, we are hoping to get some useful data on the lunar surface.”
The mission carries six science instruments and technology demonstration payloads.
KPLO will test a new South Korean spacecraft platform designed for deep space operations, along with new communication, control, and navigation capabilities, including the validation of an “interplanetary internet” connection using a disruption tolerant network.
The mission’s scientific objectives include mapping the lunar surface to help select future landing sites, surveying resources like water ice on the moon, and probing the radiation environment near the moon.
The $180 million (233.3 billion won) mission will launch toward the moon on a low-energy, fuel-efficient ballistic lunar transfer trajectory, a path being pioneered by NASA’s small CAPSTONE spacecraft, a tech demo mission that launched last month on a Rocket Lab mission and is scheduled to slip into orbit around the moon in November.
If KPLO launches in the first week of August, its arrival date at the moon is fixed on Dec. 16. The Falcon 9 will propel the spacecraft on a trajectory that will take it close to the L1 Lagrange point, a gravitationally-stable location nearly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from the daytime side of the Earth, some four times farther than the moon.
Gravitational forces will naturally pull the spacecraft back toward the Earth and the moon, where the Korean probe will be captured in orbit Dec. 16. A series of propulsive maneuvers with the spacecraft’s thrusters will steer KPLO into a circular low-altitude orbit about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the lunar surface by New Year’s Eve.
After a month of commissioning and tests, the spacecraft’s year-long primary science mission should begin around Feb. 1. If the orbiter has enough fuel, mission managers could consider an extended mission beginning in 2024, Kim said.
One of the payloads on the KPLO, or Danuri, mission is a U.S.-built instrument named ShadowCam.
Derived from the main camera on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, ShadowCam will peer inside dark craters near the moons poles, where previous missions detected evidence of water ice deposits. The NASA-funded ShadowCam instrument is hundreds of times more sensitive than LRO’s camera, allowing it to collect high-resolution, high signal-to-noise imagery of the insides of always-dark craters using reflected light.
NASA is also providing tracking and communications support for the KPLO mission through its Deep Space Network antennas in California, Spain, and Australia. KARI, South Korea’s space agency, also has its own deep space communications antenna, but it doesn’t offer the continuous coverage of NASA’s worldwide network.
South Korea began developing the KPLO mission in 2016 for a planned launch in 2020, but officials delayed the mission due after the spacecraft grew above its original launch weight, and engineers needed more time to complete detailed design work.
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Masten Space Systems, a private California company focused on developing lunar and planetary landing vehicles, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday after recent layoffs and funding problems.
Founded in 2004, Masten won a contract with NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program in April 2020 to develop and fly a robotic lunar lander to touch down near the moon’s south pole. At the time, Masten said its privately-developed XL-1 lander carrying nine NASA-sponsored science and technology instruments was scheduled to reach the moon by December 2022.
But that timeline proved too aggressive, and Masten last year announced the launch of its first lunar mission — called Masten Mission One — would be delayed nearly a year to November 2023. The Mojave, California-based company blamed supply chain issues and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for the delay.
Masten rapidly expanded its workforce to meet the requirements of NASA’s contract, by far the largest project in the company’s history. But financial problems forced Masten to furlough much of its staff this summer. The recent trouble was capped by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing Thursday.
The value of NASA’s contract with Masten grew from $75.9 million to $81.3 million since April 2020. NASA said it has paid Masten $66.1 million so far under the CLPS contract, but Masten was expected to find other customers to fly payloads on the lander to cover the remaining cost of the mission.
“NASA received notification its payloads slated for delivery aboard Masten Mission One may be impacted by Masten business operations,” NASA said in a statement. “The agency is working closely with the company to ensure that any potential changes comply with Federal Acquisition Regulations. In the event Masten Space Systems is unable to complete its task order, NASA will manifest its payloads on other CLPS flights.”
If Masten backs out of its NASA moon landing contract, it would be the second time a company has withdrawn from a CLPS task order. OrbitBeyond returned its CLPS task order to NASA in July 2019, two months after receiving the contract. Including Masten’s first moon mission, NASA has eight CLPS task orders currently on contract.
The CLPS program is designed to allow NASA to deliver science and technology demonstration payloads to the moon on commercial vehicles, at lower cost than possible on government-managed missions. The program is also intended to foster development of a commercial market for lunar transportation services, similar to the model NASA used to develop commercial crew and cargo transportation for the International Space Station.
Masten is one of 14 companies in NASA’s CLPS contractor pool. Each is eligible for a CLPS task order as NASA solicits proposals for missions to carry payloads to the moon.
NASA currently has three CLPS task orders awarded to Houston-based Intuitive Machines, two to Astrobotic of Pittsburgh, one mission to Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, one to Massachusetts-based Draper, and one to Masten.
Masten’s bankruptcy filing lists SpaceX as its largest creditor. Masten selected SpaceX to launch its XL-1 lunar lander mission, and owes the launch provider $4.6 million. Multiple other aerospace companies also have claims to Masten’s debt.
Masten estimated its assets and debts are each worth between $10 million and $50 million.
Intuitive Machines, one of Masten’s competitors in the CLPS marketplace, will receive first rights to Masten’s launch agreement with SpaceX through a “stalking horse asset purchase agreement,” according to the bankruptcy filing.
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The 22-ton core stage of a Chinese rocket is expected to fall back to Earth some time Saturday, the third time in two years China has allowed such a large booster to re-enter the atmosphere uncontrolled. The unguided re-entry poses a low but avoidable risk to the world’s population, space debris experts said.
The Long March 5B rocket took off July 24 with the Wentian module for China’s Tiangong space station, hauling one of the heaviest payloads launched into orbit in recent years. The nearly 100-foot-long (30-meter) core stage of the Long March 5B rocket fired its two hydrogen-fueled engines for about eight minutes to inject the Wentian module into orbit.
Four strap-on boosters burned their propellant and jettisoned a few minutes after launch to fall into the South China Sea. But the design of the Long March 5B, one of the most powerful operational rockets in the world, means its core stage accelerates to orbital velocity.
Most launchers carry an upper stage to finish the job of placing a payload into orbit, leaving the booster to fall back to Earth in the ocean or to be recovered for reuse, as SpaceX does with its Falcon 9 rocket.
As of early Saturday, the Long March 5B core stage was forecast to re-enter the atmosphere in a period between 1615 GMT (12:15 p.m. EDT) and 1815 GMT (2:15 p.m. EDT), according to a prediction by the Aerospace Corp., a California-based federally-funded non-profit research institute.
The rocket’s orbit takes it between 41.5 degrees north and south latitude during each hour-and-a-half lap around Earth. The land between those latitudes is home to about 88% of the world’s population.
“It’s low risk on a global scale, but it’s unnecessary risk, and it can affect people, so that’s why we’re talking about it,” said Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant at Aerospace Corp. and an expert on the re-entry of space debris.
It’s impossible to predict exactly when and where the rocket re-enter the atmosphere, but surviving debris will likely fall in a long, narrow footprint hundreds miles long and up to a few dozen miles across. The rocket wreckage will most likely to fall into the ocean or in unpopulated areas.
This is the third time China has left a Long March 5B core stage in orbit to come back to Earth in an unguided manner. The uncontrolled re-entry of the first Long March 5B core stage in 2020 spread debris over the Ivory Coast. The Long March 5B re-entry last year occurred over the Indian Ocean, and no debris was found.
The window of uncertainty around when the rocket will re-enter the atmosphere is largely due to unknowns about the rocket’s orientation and the ever-changing density of the upper atmosphere, which is driven by solar activity that causes the atmosphere to expand or contact, according Muelhaupt.
The window shrinks as the time of re-entry gets closer. Five days before re-entry, experts estimated the window with an error of plus or minus one day. By Saturday morning, just a few hours before re-entry, the error reduced to plus or minus one hour.
Aerodynamic drag will eventually slow the rocket’s velocity enough to allow Earth’s gravity to pull back into the atmosphere, where most of the booster stage will burn up. Muelhaupt estimates about 4 to 9 metric tons, or 20% to 40% of the rocket’s dry mass, will survive the scorching heat of re-entry and reach Earth’s surface.
Abandoned rocket bodies and dead satellites regularly re-enter the atmosphere. Around 50 human-made objects weighing more than a ton re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner each year, according to Muelhaupt.
But the Long March 5B core stage will be the sixth largest object to re-enter the atmosphere, not including the space shuttle, Muelhaupt said.
The Aerospace Corp. estimates there probability of a piece of the Long March 5B core stage killing or injuring a person to be between 1-in-230 and 1-in-1,000, meaning there is a 99.5% chance there are zero casualties from the re-entry.
But U.S. government policy guidelines call for managers of space missions to ensure the risk of a death or injury from a re-entry to be no higher than 1-in-10,000. The risk of harm from the Long March 5B re-entry is estimated to be at least 10 times the standard risk threshold for U.S. space missions.
“When it comes down, it will certainly exceed the 1-in-10,000 threshold that is the generally accepted guideline,” Muelhaupt said. “And one of the reasons we’re paying particular attention to this is that in May of 2020, the first test launch of this let debris come down in Africa.”
The risk from the re-entry for any single person is even lower — 6-in-10 trillion, according to the Aerospace Corp. assessment.
“The reality is there are a number of things that you can do about this type of thing, particularly if you’re thinking ahead with your with your mission,” said Marlon Sorge, executive director of Aerospace’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies.
For example, designers can select materials that are more likely to burn up during re-entry, reducing the risk of any debris surviving to impact Earth’s surface.
“With the rocket bodies, they’re just so big that it doesn’t really matter what you do during during your design phase in terms of what you make it of. You’ve got huge chunks of metal where the engines are,” Sorge said.
“But there are other approaches that you can do if you think head, and one of those is controlled re-entry,” Sorge said. “Basically, once you’re done delivering your payload, you turn your rocket around, fire the engine and drive it back into the ocean somewhere, usually, someplace where there’s no population. You do that, and you have pretty much mitigated the risk right there. And that’s one of the things that is done by the U.S. government to mitigate these types of risks.”
After the most recent Long March 5B launch and re-entry last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said China was “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Nelson said in a statement last year.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a press conference last year that it is “common practice” for upper stages of rockets to burn up while re-entering the atmosphere. He incorrectly referred to the Long March 5B rocket body as an upper stage, and said that “most of its parts will burn up upon re-entry, making the likelihood of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low.”
But no other launcher in the world leaves such a massive component in orbit to fall back to Earth. Dead satellites and old rocket stages regularly re-enter the atmosphere, but re-entering objects with masses of more than a few tons are rare.
“Why are we worried? Well, it did cause property damage the last time (a Long March 5B re-entered),” Muelhaupt said this week. “People are having to do preparation as a result.
“And furthermore, this is not needed,” he said. “We have the technology to not have this problem. Every time you see a Falcon 9 land, that core stage is not going to fall somewhere randomly. Bringing things down deliberately in the ocean, when they’re big enough to cause damage, that is the practice we’d like to encourage.”
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NASA has awarded Draper a $73 million contract to deliver science instruments to the far side of the moon on a commercial robotic lander in 2025, the eighth award through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Officials with the companies flying the first two CLPS missions, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, said recently their commercial landers are scheduled to launch late this year or early next year.
The CLPS program is intended to foster development of commercial capabilities to land on the moon, delivering science instruments and cargo in support of NASA’s Artemis program. The first seven CLPS mission task orders awarded by NASA are for landings on the near side of the moon or near the moon’s south pole, where the agency plans to send astronauts on human landing missions.
Draper is one of 14 companies eligible to receive individual mission contracts, or task orders, through NASA’s CLPS program. The task order awarded July 21 was the first received by Draper since NASA selected the first batch of CLPS contractors in 2018 to complete for moon missions.
Draper’s contract with NASA, valued at $73 million, covers the entire mission to the far side of the moon. As prime contractor, Draper is responsible for developing the lander system and procuring a launcher to send the spacecraft from Earth to the moon.
The SERIES-2 lander managed by Draper will attempt to land in Schrödinger Basin, a 200-mile-wide (320-kilometer) impact crater on the far side of the moon near the south pole. The only soft landing on the back side of the moon to date has been China’s Chang’e 4 mission, a robotic lander and rover that touched down on the lunar surface in January 2019.
“This lunar surface delivery to a geographic region on the moon that is not visible from Earth will allow science to be conducted at a location of interest but far from the first Artemis human landing missions,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s science mission directorate. “Understanding geophysical activity on the far side of the moon will give us a deeper understanding of our solar system and provide information to help us prepare for Artemis astronaut missions to the lunar surface.”
Draper is partnering with a company named ispace to design the SERIES-2 lander. Headquartered in Japan, ispace owns a U.S.-based division to build the SERIES-2 lander, which will stand about 11.5 fee (3.5 meters) tall and measure around 14 feet (4.2 meters) wide, including its landing legs.
Systima Technologies, a division of Karman Space and Defense, will lead manufacturing, assembly, integration, and testing of the lander. And General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems will integrate the mission’s scientific payloads. Draper, which developed guidance computers for NASA’s Apollo lunar program, said in a statement it will provide the descent guidance, navigation, and control system for the SERIES-2 lander, plus overall program management, systems engineering, integration and test services, and mission and quality assurance.
“Draper and its teammates are honored to be selected by NASA to deliver these important payloads to the lunar surface, paving the way for human and robotic exploration missions to follow. With our heritage in space exploration, originating with the Apollo program, and our deep roots and broad technology presence in the space sector, Draper is poised to ensure U.S. preeminence in the commercialization of cislunar space,” said Pete Paceley, Draper’s principal director of civil and commercial space systems.
In response to a question from Spaceflight Now, Paceley said Draper has decided on a launch provider for the CLPS mission, but needs to finish paperwork on the deal before announcing it publicly.
Schrödinger Basin is one of the youngest impact basins on the lunar surface with evidence of volcanic activity in the recent geological past. The impact that created the crater uplifted material from the deep crust and upper mantle of the moon, and the location was the site of a large volcanic eruption, according to NASA.
Draper’s lander will deliver three NASA-funded science instruments to the moon with a combined mass of about 209 pounds (65 kilograms). The payloads will collect NASA’s first seismic data from the far side of the moon, drill into the lunar crust to measure subsurface heat, measure the electrical conductivity of the moon’s interior, gather information on the magnetic field at the landing site, and study surface weathering.
Because the far side of the moon is hidden from Earth-based antennas, Draper’s industry team will dispatch two data relay satellites built by Blue Canyon Technologies to an orbit near the moon to link ground controllers and scientists with the lander on the lunar surface.
NASA’s first two CLPS missions are scheduled for launch late this year or early next year, industry officials said.
Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines won the first batch of CLPS task orders in May 2019, when the companies said they planned to land on the moon in 2021. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander is now scheduled to launch at “the end of the year,” said Dan Hendrickson, Astrobotic’s vice president of business development, in a July 20 panel discussion at the NASA Exploration Science Forum.
Timothy Crain, chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines, said the company’s first mission its Nova-C lander is expected to be delayed from late this year into January. Astrobotic’s lander will launch on the inaugural flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, while Intuitive Machines will launch its mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA has awarded three CLPS missions to Intuitive Machines, two to Astrobotic, one to Masten Space Systems, one to Firefly Aerospace, and now has issued one task order to Draper.
NASA and industry officials have emphasized the high-risk, high-reward nature of the CLPS program. Many of the companies in NASA’s CLPS contractor pool have little experience in spacecraft development or operations, and NASA officials have said some of the landings could fail.
Asked about his concerns about the future of the CLPS program, Shea Ferring, a vice president at Firefly, identified NASA’s resilience to failures.
“Are they going to stick with it if the first few missions have problems within the first year?” Ferring said. “This is going to be easy three to five years from now, but until we get to that point, it’s not going to be easy, and we need NASA to stick with it and to be, effectively, our anchor customer.”
“I think the the basic tech to land a robotic lander on the surface of the moon and have it survive for 14 Earth days is there,” Hendrickson said. “But the challenge is in making sure that we steel ourselves as a nation to stomach when we do have a bad day.”
Hendrickson compared the CLPS program to NASA’s commercial cargo program, which contracted with SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Both companies suffered launch failures early in the program.
“The Commercial Resupply Services program had a couple of those in dramatic fashion, and yet they stayed the course, and they kept pushing and kept flying, and now it just happens all the time on a regular basis,” Hendrickson said. “And I think the same will happen for the moon. here may be some challenges along the way, and we need to stay the source to make sure that we’re still progressing.”
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OneWeb and Eutelsat announced plans to merge Tuesday, bringing together OneWeb’s network of internet satellites in low Earth orbit with Eutelsat’s fleet of larger video, data relay, and broadband platforms in geostationary orbit.
OneWeb’s chairman also said Tuesday the company is on track to resume deploying its remaining internet satellites as soon as September, with three SpaceX flights and two Indian launches on tap to replace Russian Soyuz rockets no longer available after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The merger of OneWeb and Eutelsat is a major consolidation in the commercial satellite communications market.
Founded in 2012, OneWeb is a relatively new player in the segment, and has launched 428 of its planned 648 first-generation internet satellites into low Earth orbit, or LEO, at an altitude of around 745 miles (1,200 kilometers). OneWeb operates one of the two large satellite “mega-constellations” currently active in low Earth orbit, alongside the even larger fleet of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, which now numbers around 2,700 spacecraft in orbit, either in service or maneuvering toward their operational altitudes.
OneWeb weathered bankruptcy in 2020, and emerged under the majority ownership of Bharti Global, an Indian telecom company, and the UK government.
Eutelsat, which already holds a 23% stake in OneWeb, was established in 1977 as a European intergovernmental organization, and became a commercial company in 2001. Eutelsat has a fleet of 36 spacecraft flying in geostationary orbit, or GEO, more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. GEO satellites are typically bigger and more powerful than LEO broadband satellites, providing services to more customers over a fixed geographic region. But they come with coverage limitations over the poles, and their connections come with higher latency, or lag, than LEO constellations.
OneWeb’s business is focused on providing high-speed, low-latency internet services to customers around the world, connecting homes, businesses, schools, airplanes, and ships. Eutelsat’s satellites are primarily focused on traditional video and data services, with some overlap with OneWeb in the internet market.
The merger is one between equals, OneWeb and Eutelsat officials said, with shareholders in each enterprise holding 50% of the combined company once the transaction closes, which is expected by the end of the first half of 2023. The boards of directors of both companies unanimously approved the memorandum of understanding announced Tuesday, but the deal still must pass regulatory approval and win the support of shareholders.
Eutelsat and OneWeb will continue operating under their current names, with Eutelsat remaining headquartered in Paris and OneWeb in London. The agreement sets a valuation of $3.4 billion for OneWeb.
The companies said their operations are “highly complementary” and the merger presents opportunities to develop a common platform for their LEO and GEO services, with hybrid user terminals and interconnected network creating a “one-stop shop” for customers.
“This is truly a first in our industry,” said Dominique D’Hinnin, chairman of Eutelsat. “We will be the only integrated GEO/LEO player around the world.”
“The compelling economics and high throughput of GEO, combined with low latency and ubiquity of LEO constellations, will meet a much wider range of customer requirements,” said Eva Berneke, CEO of Eutelsat, in a teleconference with reporters.
SES, another large operator of geostationary communications satellites, has shunned developing its own LEO broadband constellation in favor of a fleet of internet satellites in Medium Earth Orbit about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) above Earth. According to SES, the O3b constellation in MEO combines the high-throughput benefit of geostationary satellites with the lower latency offered by lower-altitude satellites.
While OneWeb still has about 220 satellites to launch before completing its first-generation network, the company is already planning an even larger constellation called Gen 2. OneWeb announced an agreement with Relativity Space last month for multiple Gen 2 satellite launches beginning as soon as 2025 on the launch company’s next-generation reusable Terran R rocket.
Eutelsat’s resources will now help OneWeb finance its Gen 2 constellation. OneWeb’s other current shareholders include Bharti, the UK government, and the Japanese company Softbank, among others.
“Having made a $500 million investment in OneWeb two years ago, the UK government will now have a significant stake in what will become a single, powerful, global space company, working on the sound financial footing needed to make the most of the technological advantages it has to compete in the highly-competitive global satellite industry, against companies around the world,” said the UK’s Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy.
The UK government said it will retain its “special share” and “exclusive rights” over OneWeb in areas such as national security usage of the network and “first-preference” rights for industrial opportunities.
The UK government will retain the special share and its exclusive rights over OneWeb – securing the company’s future at the centre of the combined group’s global LEO business, national security co over the network, and first-preference rights over domestic industrial opportunities.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, OneWeb’s executive chairman, said the company will give preference to a UK location for the factory for its Gen 2 broadband satellites. The first-generation OneWeb satellites are built in a factory near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida through a joint venture with Airbus.
Mittal said most of the 220 remaining satellites to complete the first-generation network have completed manufacturing Florida. The Florida factory can now be used to produce satellites for other customers.
OneWeb launched its first 428 satellites on 13 Russian-made Soyuz rockets from February 2019 through February of the year. The Soyuz missions were booked through Arianespace, the French launch service provider with rights to market and manage commercial Soyuz launches.
Arianespace was on the hook with OneWeb for six more Soyuz launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, including a 14th launch that was set to take off in March. But Russia’s space agency set conditions on the mission after rolling the rocket and the OneWeb satellites to a launch pad at Baikonur, including a demand that the UK government give up its stake in OneWeb.
The UK government declined, and OneWeb announced March 3 it was suspending launches from Baikonur. Less than a month later, OneWeb announced an agreement with SpaceX to launch some of its remaining satellites. OneWeb finalized a similar agreement with New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of India’s space agency, for launches on Indian rockets.
The contract with SpaceX was surprising to many satellite industry watchers because OneWeb is an indirect competitor in broadband market. SpaceX sells Starlink service directly to consumers, while OneWeb sells to enterprises and internet service providers to provide connectivity for entire businesses or communities.
Mittal said OneWeb was “very fortunate” to recover from the launch setback earlier this year, with plans to resume launches later this year. There are three Falcon 9 flights planned for OneWeb into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral — a short drive from OneWeb’s factory — in late 2022 and early 2023. OneWeb has procured two launches on India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket.
The three Falcon 9 flights will be equivalent o the launch capacity of four Soyuz rockets, which carried as many as 36 OneWeb satellites on each flight. That would mean SpaceX will launch around 48 OneWeb spacecraft on each mission, although the exact figures haven’t been confirmed.
The five additional launches should be complete by next March, with all the satellites entering commercial service by the end of 2023, Mittal said.
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Russia will pull out of the International Space Station project after 2024, the new director of the Russian space program said Tuesday, but no firm dates or plans were revealed and it was not immediately clear what, if anything, might change in the near term.
Yuri Borisov, who was named earlier this month to replace Dmitri Rogozin as head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said after a meeting with President Vladimir Putin “the decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made.”
By that time, he added, Russia will be ready to begin building an independent orbital outpost. But it wasn’t clear what “after 2024” might actually mean in terms of when a withdrawal might start or be complete.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency “is committed to the safe operation of the International Space Station through 2030, and is coordinating with our partners.”
“NASA has not been made aware of decisions (to withdraw) from any of the partners, though we are continuing to build future capabilities to assure our major presence in low-Earth orbit,” he said.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said while no official notice has been received, “we are exploring options to mitigate the potential impacts on the ISS beyond 2024 if Russia does withdraw. For our part, we remain committed to working with ISS partners to ensure the safe operation of the ISS and the astronauts who are on board.”
Before his abrupt departure, Rogozin made repeated threats about pulling out of the project in response to western sanctions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Rogozin’s bellicose tweets lacked any concrete endorsement from Putin.
John Logsdon, a historian and space policy analyst, said Tuesday he took Borisov’s comments “a bit more seriously, because it was the new guy in the context of a meeting with Putin. You don’t do those things casually.”
NASA and Russia began building the International Space Station nearly 24 years ago and the outpost has been continuously staffed by rotating astronaut-cosmonaut crews since October 2000. It is one of the most visible signs of East-West cooperation in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise and the end of the Cold War.
NASA and its other space station parters — the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency — want to operate the lab through 2030, using it for basic research and to test technologies and life support protocols needed for future flights to the moon and Mars.
Nelson has repeatedly expressed optimism Russia would agree to continue the program, telling CBS News earlier this year “this professional relationship between our astronauts and cosmonauts, it’s consistent, and it’s going to stay.”
On July 15, Russia and NASA finalized a deal to resume launching U.S. astronauts aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft and cosmonauts aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules starting in September.
The idea is to ensure at least one Russian and one American is on board the station at all times to operate their respective systems, even if an emergency forced a U.S. or Russian vehicle to leave early, along with all its crew members. That agreement runs through June 30, 2025.
Joel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said from a technical standpoint, the space station can safely fly to 2030 or even longer.
“The teams are looking at it and we’ll be ready to go to 2030,” he said. “And if somebody asks us to go a little longer, I’m going to put a smile on your face and say we can go do that.”
One of the most complex engineering projects ever attempted, the International Space Station is made up of two primary segments, one managed by NASA and the other by Roscosmos.
The U.S. segment, as it’s known, features four huge NASA-supplied solar wings, two on each end of a truss as long as a football field, complex cooling systems, computer networks, high-speed communications systems and 10 pressurized modules built by NASA, ESA and JAXA, along with a sophisticated robot arm supplied by the Canadian Space Agency.
The U.S. segment also features four docking ports that can accommodate Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ships, Japanese HTV freighters, SpaceX Dragon crew and cargo ships and Boeing’s Starliner crew ferry craft.
The back section of the station, made up of six pressurized compartments, is operated by Roscosmos. One of those, known as Zarya, connects the U.S. and Russian segments. It was paid for by NASA but is operated by Russia. Four Russian docking ports are currently used by Progress cargo ships and Soyuz crew ferry vehicles.
Russia provides the propellant and thrusters needed to keep the outpost in orbit while NASA provides most of the station’s electrical power, satellite communications and day-to-day stability provided by four massive gyroscopes.
Periodically boosting the station’s altitude is critical because even orbiting 260 miles up, a thin trace of atmosphere is present. As the station plows through those atoms and molecules at 17,000 mph, or more than 80 football fields per second, that slight “atmospheric drag” acts to slowly but surely reduce the lab’s altitude.
Russia delivers the needed propellant aboard unpiloted Progress cargo ships, which can either fire their own thrusters to provide reboost or transfer propellants to tanks aboard the station for use by on-board thrusters.
NASA’s four control moment gyros, or CMGs, work to re-orient the station as needed without the use of thrusters, saving propellant. While that reduces the amount of fuel needed, it does not provide reboost. Without periodic Russian rocket firings, the lab would slowly descend and eventually re-enter the lower atmosphere and break up.
Along with keeping the station in orbit, the Russians were expected to provide the propulsion and control at the end of the station’s life to drive it out of orbit over an unpopulated stretch of the south Pacific Ocean to prevent any chance of injury or property damage from debris that might survive re-entry.
While NASA recently tested its own reboost capability using a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship, the agency does not have the capability — yet — to provide all the propellant and thrusting needed if Russia does, in fact, pull out.
One option: NASA possibly could pay Russia for reboost flights like the agency did for post-shuttle seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.
“The other possibility, and I think it’s not very probable, is it forces a decision to abandon the station earlier by NASA and its partners,” Logsdon said, adding that would free up money that could be diverted to the agency’s Artemis moon program.
While Nelson has expressed optimism Russia would remain on board through 2030, he also has said NASA would come up with a way to keep the station in operation if the Russians ended their support.
“If they abandon the space station? We’d manage, we’d figure it out,” Nelson told CBS News in March. “We know we can continue it for the short term. We’d have to do other things, and those contingency plans are already there. But we don’t anticipate that.”
[…] also the US military, though, unlike NASA, the military has options. Just last weekend, SpaceX launched a communications satellite called Globalstar-2, but satellite trackers believe the mission also carried covert payloads, which […]
SpaceX and NASA have delayed the launch of the next U.S. crew flight to the International Space Station from early September to no earlier than Sept. 29, allowing time for ground teams to replace an interstage on the mission’s new Falcon 9 booster after it was damaged during transport.
The Falcon 9 booster stage, riding horizontally on a truck and trailer, struck a bridge during the trip from SpaceX’s factory in Hawthorne, California, to the company’s test facility in McGregor, Texas, where the rocket will be test-fired before continuing on to the Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations.
The launch of the Crew-5 mission to the space station was scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 1. NASA announced July 21 that the launch of SpaceX’s fifth long-duration crew rotation flight to the station is now scheduled for Sept. 29, at the earliest.
“SpaceX is removing and replacing the rocket’s interstage and some onboard instrumentation after the hardware was damaged during transport from SpaceX’s production factory in Hawthorne, California, to the company’s McGregor test facility in Texas for stage testing,” NASA said in a statement.
The interstage is the black section near the top of the reusable 15-story-tall first stage. During the first phase of launch, the upper stage’s large Merlin engine nozzle sits inside the interstage, which also holds the rocket’s grid fins used for control and stability during the rocket’s re-entry and landing.
NASA said its engineers reviewed SpaceX load, shock, and structural analyses of the booster, along with detailed and X-ray inspections. The work verified the damage was isolated to the interstage, according to NASA.
“After all replacement hardware is installed, the booster will undergo stage testing and be further assessed prior to acceptance and certification for flight,” NASA said.
NASA astronaut Nicole Mann will command the planned six-month Crew-5 mission. She will be joined by NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, who will become the first Russian to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Kikina’s inclusion on the crew was confirmed July 15 after NASA and Roscosmos — Russia’s space agency — finalized a barter “seat swap” agreement to allow Russian cosmonauts to fly to the station on U.S. crew missions and U.S. astronauts to launch and land on Russian Soyuz spaceships. The no-funds-exchanged agreement will help ensure the station always has at least one U.S. and one Russian crew member on-board, in the event of a failure or grounding of an American or Russian crew mission.
The delay from early September to late September moves the Crew-5 launch after the launch and docking of a Russian Soyuz crew vehicle Sept. 21. The Soyuz mission will fly two Russian cosmonauts and NASA flight engineer Francisco Rubio to the station. They will replace an outgoing Russian crew who will return to Earth around Sept. 29 on their Soyuz spacecraft.
Mann and her crewmates will fly on SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance capsule, which splashed down May 6 to wrap up NASA’s Crew-3 mission, its first mission to the space station. SpaceX is refurbishing the spacecraft at a facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for its second launch on the Crew-5 mission.
“As part of the refurbishment process, teams will install new components such as the heat shield, parachutes, and pod panels,” NASA said. “This also will be the first time all four forward bulkhead Draco engines, which orient and provide altitude adjustment for the spacecraft during flight, are reused on a NASA commercial crew mission.
“SpaceX recently completed Dragon’s propulsion system checkouts and will soon mate the heat shield to the spacecraft,” NASA said. “Once refurbishment is complete, Dragon will be stacked to its trunk ahead of transporting the vehicle to SpaceX’s hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.”
NASA said in May that the Crew-5 mission will fly with a different heat shield structure than originally planned after a composite substrate failed in acceptance testing due to a “manufacturing defect.”
The heat shield’s 13-foot-diameter (4-meter) composite structure — located at the bottom, blunt end of the Dragon capsule — is detachable and interchangeable between the reusable spacecraft in SpaceX’s Dragon fleet. SpaceX installs thermal protection tiles on the composite structure to protect the spacecraft from the searing heat of atmospheric re-entry at the end of each mission.
Once processing is complete at the Dragon refurbishment facility at Cape Canaveral, the Dragon Endurance spacecraft will be mated with its Falcon 9 rocket at the SpaceX hangar. Then the fully-assembled launcher will roll to pad 39A for a test-firing and final flight preparations.
Like the Soyuz crew rotation earlier in September, SpaceX and NASA’s Crew-5 mission will replace the four astronauts who have been at the space station since April on the Crew-4 mission. The Crew-4 astronauts will ride SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom capsule back to Earth for a splashdown off the coast of Florida in early October, while Crew-5 remains in orbit at the space station until spring.
SpaceX flies long-duration crew rotation missions to the station under contract with NASA. The U.S. space agency originally awarded SpaceX six crew rotation flights in 2014, then added eight more in two separate contract extensions announced earlier this year, giving the company 14 total NASA-funded astronaut missions through the end of the 2020s, four of which have already launched.
A contract extension announced in February covered three Crew Dragon missions, with NASA paying SpaceX about $64.7 million per round-trip astronaut seat.
Boeing, NASA’s other commercial crew provider, aims to launch its first crew test flight to the space station late this year or in early 2023. Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule completed a successful unpiloted test flight to the station in May, two-and-a-half years after a first attempt ended prematurely due to software problems.
NASA has contracted with Boeing for six operational crew rotation flights, which will alternate with SpaceX Crew Dragon missions once the Starliner is certified for astronauts.
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China’s Tiangong space station received a new room Sunday with the docking of the Wentian laboratory module, a half-day after launching on a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket. The three-person crew on the Chinese space station later opened hatches and floated inside the new science module for the first time.
The Wentian module docked with the forward port of the Tianhe core module at 3:13 p.m. EDT (1913 GMT) Sunday as the vehicles flew about 240 miles (385 kilometers) over the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
Chinese commander Chen Dong on the Tiangong station opened hatches and entered the Wentian module at 10:03 p.m. EDT Sunday (0203 GMT Monday). Crewmates Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe joined Chen inside the Wentian module for inspections before downlinking a message to Chinese ground controllers in Beijing.
The astronauts are about one month into a six-month expedition on the Tiangong space station. They arrived last month on China’s Shenzhou 14 spacecraft and are scheduled to return to Earth in December.
The Wentian module launched at 2:22 a.m. EDT (0622 GMT; 2:22 p.m. Beijing time) Sunday aboard a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang space center on Hainan Island, China’s southern most province. The powerful single-stage launcher, assisted by four strap-on boosters, deployed the more than 50,000-pound (23-metric ton) Wentian module into orbit about eight minutes later.
The Long March 5B’s core stage remained in a low orbit after the launch, and is expected to fall back into the atmosphere for an unguided re-entry in the coming weeks.
The Wentian spacecraft partially extended its solar panels, as planned, and completed a series of rocket burns to fine-tune its approach to the Tiangong space station, completing an automated rendezvous and docking about 13 hours after launch.
Wentian, which means “quest for the heavens,” will later be relocated to its permanent position on a lateral port of the Tianhe module. The 33-foot-long (10-meter) robotic arm on the core module will move Wentian to its new location. Another large module, named Mengtian, is scheduled for launch in October to complete the initial construction of the Tiangong station.
In their final locations, the three modules will give the space station a “T” shape, with docking ports to receive visiting crew and cargo ships. The fully-assembled Tiangong complex will be about one-sixth the size of the International Space Station, but still the second-largest spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
The Wentian module, measuring about 58.7 feet (17.9 meters) long, is fitted with 22 external mounting platforms to host science instruments and unpressurized experiments in the vacuum of space. There are accommodations for up to eight life science and biological research racks inside the module’s pressurized volume, and the new module will add an airlock to support spacewalks outside the Tiangong space station.
Now docked at the Tiangong station, the massive module will fully unfurl its solar panels to a span of about 180 feet (55 meters) tip-to-tip to produce its own electricity. The solar arrays on the Wentian module are the largest ever flown on a Chinese spacecraft.
The Wentian module also carries a small 16-foot (5-meter) robotic arm designed for more precise movements than the larger 33-foot arm on the outside of the Tianhe core module. Wentian’s arm, which can be combined with the Tianhe arm for a longer reach, will primarily be used to transfer experiments and other hardware outside the station.
The crew on the complex will stage two or three spacewalks from the Wentian module in the next few months.
“The Wentian experimental cabin is mainly for space life science research, equipped with experimental cabinets such as life ecology, biotechnology, and variable gravity science,” said Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, in a press briefing last month.
Wentian’s experiments will support research into genetics, aging, organs, tissues, and cells. The variable gravity experiment rack can generate accelerations between a hundredth the pull of Earth’s gravity up to 2g, supporting comparative studies under different gravity conditions, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
The Wentian module also has three crew sleep cabins and a bathroom, doubling crew capacity provided by the Tianhe core module.
When complete, the space station will support a permanent presence of three astronauts, and a crew of six people for short durations. The next crew to launch to the Tiangong station later this year will arrive before the departure of the current team of three astronauts, temporarily increasing the crew size to six for the first time.
The China Manned Space Agency says the Wentian module has the capability to control the entire space station assembly, and can be used as a backup to the Tianhe core module to manage the complex.
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Continuing a record-breaking launch cadence, SpaceX sent a Falcon 9 rocket aloft Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with 53 more satellites for the company’s Starlink internet network, the sixth Falcon 9 launch in 17 days and 33rd overall this year.
The launch Sunday was the 20th Falcon 9 mission of the year dedicated to deploying satellites for the Starlink network. SpaceX has now launched 1,013 Starlink satellites since the beginning of January.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:38:20 a.m. EDT (1338:20 GMT) Sunday to begin SpaceX’s Starlink 4-25 mission. Fifty-three Starlink satellites rode into space atop the Falcon 9, flat-packed inside the rocket’s nose cone.
The satellites, each weighing more than a quarter-ton, will join SpaceX’s commercial network beaming low-latency, broadband internet signals to consumers around the world. SpaceX says Starlink connectivity is currently available in 36 countries, providing service to nearly a half-million subscribers.
Sunday’s launch followed a familiar profile for Starlink missions, with the Falcon 9 rocket heading northeast from Florida’s Space Coast. Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines powered the Falcon 9 into the sky, burning for two-and-a-half minutes before switching off, allowing the first stage to separate from the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
A single Merlin engine on the upper stage fired for six minutes to inject the 53 Starlink satellites into orbit, targeting an altitude ranging between 144 miles and 210 miles (232-by-338 kilometers) at an inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator.
The Falcon 9’s payload shroud jettisoned during the upper stage burn. A SpaceX recovery vessel downrange was in position to retrieve the two halves of the nose cone after parachuting into the sea.
The rocket’s reusable first stage — tail number B1062 in SpaceX’s fleet — also returned to Earth for landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” parked in the Atlantic Ocean east of Charleston, South Carolina. The vertical, propulsive landing on the drone ship completed the booster’s eighth trip to space since entering service in November 2020.
The upper stage deployed the 53 Starlink satellites while flying over the North Atlantic Ocean about 15-and-a-half minutes into the mission. Four retention rods that kept the satellites firmly attached to the rocket released to allow the solar-powered Starlink spacecraft to fly free of the Falcon 9.
The satellites will naturally disperse from differential drag, extend their solar panels, and activate ion propulsion thrusters to begin climbing to their operational altitude of 335 miles (540 kilometers). The orbit-raising will take several weeks to several months, depending on the final operating plane for each satellite.
SpaceX has launched 2,957 Starlink satellites after Sunday’s mission, including prototypes and earlier spacecraft designs no longer in service. About 2,701 Starlink satellites are currently in orbit, with 2,665 spacecraft functional, and 2,155 Starlinks providing commercial internet service, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert tracker of spaceflight activity.
SpaceX’s Starlink network architecture includes orbital “shells” at different inclinations. SpaceX has filled the first orbital shell at 53.0 degrees inclination, and is currently launching satellites into the 53.2-degree layer and one of two polar-orbiting shells at an inclination of 97.6 degrees to the equator. SpaceX has also launched one Starlink mission into a 70-degree inclination shell. The company has not yet launched any dedicated missions into the other polar-orbiting shell.
The Starlink spacecraft are fitted with laser inter-satellite links to facilitate data transfers in orbit, without needing to relay signals through ground stations, which come with geographical, and sometimes political, constraints. Laser crosslinks can also reduce latency in the Starlink network because signals need to travel a shorter distance.
With 33 missions in the books for 2022, SpaceX is on pace for nearly 60 Falcon 9 launches this year, nearly double the 31 Falcon 9 flights accomplished in 2021. SpaceX has launched more successful missions into orbit so far this year than the combined efforts of any other nation, and the company is far outpacing its chief competitors in the commercial marketplace.
The launch Sunday was the final Falcon 9 flight scheduled for July
SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for Aug. 2 from Cape Canaveral with the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, South Korea’s first space exploration mission. The Korean spacecraft will orbit the moon with a suite of cameras and science instrument from Korean research institutions and NASA.
Two more Starlink missions are also on tap in the first half of August, one from the Kennedy Space Center and one from Vandenberg Space Force in California.
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[…] did not come a moment too soon. In remarks delivered before 14 July’s launch of the CRS-25 cargo mission, Deputy ISS Program Manager Dana Weigel remarked that a decision on integrated crewing had to be […]
[…] Orbital Flight Test (OFT-1) in December 2019 was followed by a lengthy NASA/Boeing investigation and a second OFT last May. That correspondingly extended Mann and Cassada’s wait for their first flight into […]
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Starlink 4-25 mission will launch SpaceX’s next batch of 53 Starlink broadband satellites. Follow us on Twitter.
SpaceX plans to send another cluster of 53 Starlink internet satellites in orbit Sunday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, the company’s 33rd mission of the year and sixth launch of July. Liftoff from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is set for 9:38 a.m. EDT (1338 GMT).
The Falcon 9 booster will land on SpaceX’s drone ship parked downrange in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral.
The rocket will head northeast from the Kennedy Space Center, aiming to deliver the flat-packed broadband relay stations to an orbit ranging between 144 miles and 210 miles in altitude (232-by-338 kilometers). Deployment of the 53 flat-packed satellites from the Falcon 9’s upper stage occurred about 15 minutes after liftoff.
With Sunday’s mission, designated Starlink 4-25, SpaceX will have launched 2,957 Starlink internet satellites, including prototypes and test units no longer in service. The launch Sunday will mark the 53rd SpaceX mission primarily dedicated to hauling Starlink internet satellites into orbit.
Stationed inside a firing room at a launch control center at Kennedy, SpaceX’s launch team will begin loading super-chilled, densified kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 vehicle at T-minus 35 minutes.
Helium pressurant will also flow into the rocket in the last half-hour of the countdown. In the final seven minutes before liftoff, the Falcon 9’s Merlin main engines will be thermally conditioned for flight through a procedure known as “chilldown.” The Falcon 9’s guidance and range safety systems will also be configured for launch.
After liftoff, the Falcon 9 rocket will vector its 1.7 million pounds of thrust — produced by nine Merlin engines — to steer northeast over the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket will exceed the speed of sound in about one minute, then shut down its nine main engines two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. The booster stage will release from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, then fire pulses from cold gas control thrusters and extend titanium grid fins to help steer the vehicle back into the atmosphere.
Two braking burns will slow the rocket for landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” around 400 miles (650 kilometers) downrange approximately eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.
The booster flying on the Starlink 4-25 mission, known as B1062, will launch on its eighth trip to space. It debuted with the launch of a U.S. military GPS navigation satellite in November 2020, and launched the all-private Inspiration4 and Axiom-1 crew missions in September 2021 and in April of this year.
Most recently, the booster flew June 8 with the Egyptian Nilesat 301 geostationary communications satellite.
Landing of the first stage on Sunday’s mission will occur moments after the Falcon 9’s second stage engine cut off to deliver the Starlink satellites into orbit. Separation of the 53 spacecraft, built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, from the Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled at T+plus 15 minutes, 24 seconds.
Retention rods will release from the Starlink payload stack, allowing the flat-packed satellites to fly free from the Falcon 9’s upper stage in orbit. The 53 spacecraft will unfurl solar arrays and run through automated activation steps, then use krypton-fueled ion engines to maneuver into their operational orbit.
The Falcon 9’s guidance computer aims to deploy the satellites into an elliptical orbit at an orbital inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator. The satellites will use on-board propulsion to do the rest of the work to reach a circular orbit 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth.
The Starlink satellites will fly in one of five orbital “shells” at different inclinations for SpaceX’s global internet network. After reaching their operational orbit, the satellites will enter commercial service and begin beaming broadband signals to consumers, who can purchase Starlink service and connect to the network with a SpaceX-supplied ground terminal.
If the Starlink 4-25 missions lifts off as scheduled Sunday, SpaceX will have launched six Falcon 9 rockets in just 17 days this month, deploying 251 Starlink internet satellites on five flights while also dispatching a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1062.8)
PAYLOAD: 53 Starlink satellites (Starlink 4-25)
LAUNCH SITE: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: July 24, 2022
LAUNCH TIME: 9:38:20 a.m. EDT (1338:20 GMT)
WEATHER FORECAST: 80% chance of acceptable weather; Low risk of upper level winds; Low risk of unfavorable conditions for booster recovery
BOOSTER RECOVERY: “A Shortfall of Gravitas” drone ship east of Charleston, South Carolina
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: Northeast
TARGET ORBIT: 144 miles by 210 miles (232 kilometers by 338 kilometers), 53.2 degrees inclination
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
MISSION STATS:
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The English-language live broadcast of the Wentian module’s launch is embedded on this page. The video feed comes from China’s CGTN television network.
China’s heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket was fueled for launch early Sunday with the second major element of the Chinese Tiangong space station, adding a new working compartment for the three astronauts living on the orbiting research lab.
The Wentian lab module is buttoned up for launch on the Long March 5B rocket at approximately 2:17 a.m. EDT (0617 GMT) Sunday from the Wenchang space center on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province.
The launch will mark the eighth flight of a Long March 5 rocket, the most powerful launcher in China’s inventory. It will be the third flight of the Long March 5B configuration, which flies without an upper stage and is tailored to haul heavy payloads into low Earth orbit. The Long March 5B launcher’s lift capability to low Earth orbit is around 55,000 pounds, or 25 metric tons.
The 176-foot-tall (53.7-meter) Long March 5B rocket was loaded with kerosene fuel for its strap-on boosters and cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel for its core stage in the final hours before liftoff Sunday. The boosters and core stage will also consume super-cold liquid oxygen in combination with the liquid fuel to power the Long March 5B off its seaside launch pad at Wenchang.
Gantry arms on the Long March 5B’s 300-foot-tall (92-meter) launch pad tower will open in the final phase of the countdown, clearing the way for the heavy-lifter to take off from Wenchang and head east over the South China Sea.
In the final seconds before liftoff, sparkers will fire under the Long March 5B’s core stage to burn off any hydrogen gas that accumulated during the countdown. Then the core stage’s twin YF-77 hydrogen-fueled engines will flash to life, followed moments later by ignition of eight kerosene-fed YF-100 engines ignited on the rocket’s four strap-on boosters
The ten engines will push the Long March 5B rocket into the sky with 2.4 million pounds of thrust.
The four boosters will cut off and jettison about three minutes into the mission, and the core stage will consume all its propellant about eight minutes after liftoff, before releasing the Wentian lab module for the rest of the journey to the Tiangong space station.
The Wentian module encapsulated for launch inside the Long March 5B’s 67-foot-long, 17-foot-wide (20.5-by-5.2 meter) payload fairing carries a robotic arm and mounting posts to host science instruments and unpressurized experiments in the vacuum of space.
There are accommodations for life science and biological research racks inside the module’s pressurized volume, and the new module will add an airlock to support spacewalks outside the Tiangong space station.
The Wentian module, with a launch weight near 50,000 pounds (23 metric tons), will dock with the Tianhe core module on China’s Tiangong station in low Earth orbit. Chinese astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe living on the Tiangong complex will monitor Wentian’s arrival, then become the first crew members to float into the station’s new module.
The massive Wentian module will unfurl solar panels to a span of about 180 feet (55 meters) tip-to-tip to produce its own electricity.
The launch of the Wentian science lab will add the second of three large pressurized modules needed to complete the initial construction of the Tiangong station. The Tianhe core module launched on a Long March 5B rocket in April 2021, and Chinese ground teams are preparing the Mengtian module for launch on a Long March 5B rocket in October.
The Wentian module carries a small robotic arm designed for more precise movements than the larger arm positioned outside the Tianhe core module. Wentian’s arm will primarily be used to transfer experiments and other hardware outside the station.
Wentian, which means “quest for the heavens,” will initially dock with an axial port on the Tianhe module, a docking mechanism that was recently cleared by the departure of a no-longer-needed Tianzhou cargo ship. Tianhe’s mechanical arm will move the module to its final position on the side of the space station’s core section.
The Mengtian module scheduled for launch later this year will arrive at the Tiangong space station in a similar way. Once Wentian and Mengtian are in their final positions, the Chinese station will have a distinctive “T” shape with its three main pressurized elements.
The crew on the complex will stage two or three spacewalks from the Wentian module in the next few months.
“The Wentian experimental cabin is mainly for space life science research, equipped with experimental cabinets such as life ecology, biotechnology, and variable gravity science,” said Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, in a press briefing last month.
Wentian’s experiments will support research into genetics, aging, organs, tissues, and cells. The variable gravity experiment rack can generate accelerations between a hundredth the pull of Earth’s gravity up to 2g, supporting comparative studies under different gravity conditions, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
The design of the Long March 5B rocket used to launch the Wentian module means the launcher’s core stage is expected to enter orbit before releasing its payload.
The core stages on the previous Long March 5B missions in 2020 and 2021 re-entered the atmosphere about one-to-two weeks after launch. The Long March 5B’s core stage measures about 100 feet (30 meters) long and has an empty mass of about 23.8 tons (21.6 metric tons), making it one of the largest and most massive human-made objects to ever re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner.
A similar uncontrolled re-entry is expected for the Long March 5B core stage after the launch of the Wentian space station module Sunday.
After the most recent Long March 5B launch and re-entry last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said China was “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Nelson said in a statement last year.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a press conference last year that it is “common practice” for upper stages of rockets to burn up while re-entering the atmosphere. He incorrectly referred to the Long March 5B rocket body as an upper stage, and said that “most of its parts will burn up upon re-entry, making the likelihood of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low.”
But no other launcher in the world leaves such a massive component in orbit to fall back to Earth. Dead satellites and old rocket stages regularly re-enter the atmosphere, but re-entering objects with masses of more than a few tons are rare.
Larger booster and core stages used on other rockets typically fall back to Earth without reaching orbit, usually in areas downrange from the launch site that are clear of people.
Like most space junk that comes back into the atmosphere, much of the Long March 5B rocket burns up as temperatures reach thousands of degrees during re-entry. But some debris could reach Earth’s surface intact.
The risk of any of the rocket debris harming someone or damaging property is low, with objects most likely to fall into the ocean or in unpopulated areas. But the uncontrolled re-entry of the first Long March 5B core stage in 2020 spread debris over the Ivory Coast. The Long March 5B re-entry last year occurred over the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese space station orbits about 236 miles (380 kilometers) above Earth, at an inclination of 41.5 degrees to the equator. The orbit means the spent Long March 5B core stage could come down anywhere between 41.5 degrees north and south latitude.
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