Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
[…] Dragon Freedom safely splashed down off the Panama City coast at 11:04 p.m. EDT Tuesday, to wrap up the second all-private crewed voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) for Houston, Texas-based […]
@Axiom_Space successfully wrapped up its 2nd private crewed mission to @Space_Station late Tuesday.
The post Dragon Freedom Splashes Down, Wraps Up Historic Ax-2 Mission first appeared on AmericaSpace.
[…] historic Pad 39A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) atop the brand-new B1080 Falcon 9 core at 5:37 p.m. EDT on 21 May, Ax-2 is the second all-private expedition to the ISS, flown on behalf of Houston, Texas-based […]
After more than a week aboard @Space_Station, the Ax-2 crew is targeting departure & return to Earth later today.
The post Ax-2 Mission Enters Homestretch, Targets Tuesday Departure, Splashdown first appeared on AmericaSpace.
[…] Demo-2 mission in May 2020—and B1060, both of which reached their record-tying 15th launches in mid-December and early January, respectively. Since then, the active status of B1058 and B1060 has been paused […]
After a pair of weather-related delays earlier this week, @SpaceX has launched its 7th Falcon 9 mission of May with @Arabsat's BADR-8.
The post After Weather Delays, SpaceX Launches Arabsat-7B Geostationary Mission first appeared on AmericaSpace.
[…] perhaps, by the success of three back-to-back missions last weekend—including the 30th overall Falcon 9 flight of the year, the 10th Falcon 9 of 2023 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, […]
@SpaceX is aiming for 11:25 p.m. EDT Friday to launch a snakebitten mission for Saudi Arabia.
The post SpaceX Aims to Launch Saudi Arabian Satellite Tonight first appeared on AmericaSpace.
In reply to Martin.
It’s clear, he isn’t as smart as his fan club says. Also, he’s not a rocket scientist. He’s had some good ideas and hired the right people, certainly, but his hubris is as vast as his ego.
OTD in 1973, three astronauts launched to Skylab and in a remarkable turnaround in fortune brought America's crippled space station back from the brink.
The post “We Can Fix Anything”: Remembering Skylab’s Salvation, 50 Years On first appeared on AmericaSpace.
I thought the article was informative. I don’t see the point in taking sides in some pro or anti-Musk debate. He’s clearly good at rockets with Dragon/Falcon Heavy being great successes. But how could he have made such a stupid mistake as to let a rocket of Starship’s power just blast away at concrete and hope for the best? Isn’t it a case of basic engineering – materials’ resistance versus energy? Didn’t he have an civil engineer around who could work it out with basic mathematics? A real blunder like a twelve- year old with pyrotechnics. He rolled the dice unnecessarily and now has set back the programme at least a year.
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1 on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand with the final pair of NASA’s TROPICS hurricane research satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.
Rocket Lab’s live video webcast begins approximately 20 minutes prior to launch, and will be available on this page.
Russia’s next Progress cargo freighter is set for launch Wednesday from Kazakhstan on a mission to carry more than 2.7 tons of fuel, food, experiments, and supplies to the International Space Station.
The Progress MS-23 supply ship is set for liftoff at 8:56 a.m. EDT (1256 UTC) from the Site 31 launch complex at Baikonur, located in a remote part of Kazakhstan east of the Aral Sea. Russian ground teams at Baikonur rolled the Progress MS-23 spacecraft and its Soyuz rocket to the launch pad Sunday, then raised the launcher vertical for final mission preparations.
The Soyuz launch planned to load kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the three-stage rocket in the final hours before liftoff, timed for 5:56 p.m. local time at the spaceport in Central Asia.
After liftoff, the Soyuz 2.1a rocket will head northeast to line up with the space station’s flight path, then shed its four liquid-fueled boosters about two minutes into the flight. The aerodynamic shroud covering the Progress MS-23 spacecraft will jettison moments later, followed by separation of the Soyuz core stage nearly five minutes after liftoff. A third stage engine will ignite to finish the job of putting the cargo ship into orbit about nine minutes into the mission.
The Progress supply ship will separate from the rocket and unfurl its solar panels and navigation antennas, then commence a sequence of engine firings to adjust its orbit to match that of the space station. After a radar-guided rendezvous, the cargo freighter will line up with its docking port at the Poisk module on the Russian segment of the space station. Docking with the Poisk module is set for 12:20 p.m. EDT (1620 UTC).
Russian cosmonauts on the station, part of the lab’s seven-person crew, will open hatches to begin unpacking cargo from the pressurized cabin of the Progress spacecraft. This is the 84th Progress cargo ship to launch to the space station, and the mission is designed Progress 84P by NASA.
Russian managers will meet a few hours before launch to approve loading of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Soyuz rocket. The gantry arms at the launch pad retracted away from the rocket in the final hour of the countdown, and ground crews at Baikonur inserted the launch key into a control panel about six minutes before liftoff.
Propellant tanks on the launcher will pressurize beginning about two-and-a-half minutes prior to liftoff, and engines on the core stage and strap-on boosters will ignite and ramp up to full power to propel the Soyuz off the pad with more than 900,000 pounds of thrust.
Russia’s space agency said the Progress MS-22 cargo ship carries 5,492 pounds (2,491 kilograms) of supplies and fuel to the space station. Here’s a breakdown of the cargo manifest:
• 3,399 pounds (1,542 kilograms) of dry cargo
• 1,080 pounds (490 kilograms) of liquid propellant to refuel the Zvezda service module
• 926 pounds (420 kilograms) of fresh water
• 88 pounds (40 kilograms) of nitrogen to replenish the station’s atmosphere
The dry cargo includes food and clothing for the space station crew members, medical equipment, and experiments. The Russian supply ship could also reboost the orbital altitude of the station, and perform any required burns to steer the complex out of the path of space junk.
The equipment aboard the Progress MS-23 supply ship also includes a student-built nanosatellite from Bauman Moscow State Technical University. The small spacecraft, designed to test solar sail deployment technology, will be released into orbit by a cosmonaut during a future spacewalk outside the station.
The cargo mission will also deliver a video system for observing Earth’s surface as part of Russia’s Uragan experiment, which tracks changes on the planet associated with natural and human-made disasters. The Progress spacecraft also carries a scientific glove box, and equipment for biomedical experiments.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
An Airbus-built communications satellite for Arabsat is buttoned up for liftoff Tuesday night from Cape Canaveral, but stormy weather threatens to delay the launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Falcon 9 has a launch window of more than two hours opening at 11:25 p.m. EDT Tuesday (0325 UTC Wednesday), but there’s just a 30% chance of favorable weather at the opening of the launch window. The forecast improves throughout the night, with a 50% chance of good weather at the end of the launch window at 1:32 a.m. EDT (0532 UTC).
After heading east from Cape Canaveral, the SpaceX launcher will deliver the Badr 8 satellite into an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit about a half-hour after liftoff.
The launch will mark SpaceX’s 36th flight of the year, and the 26th orbital launch attempt so far in 2023 from Florida’s Space Coast.
The nearly 10,000 pound (4.5-metric ton) Badr 8 communications satellite is closed up inside the Falcon 9’s nose cone. Built by Airbus Defense and Space, the Badr 8 satellite will provide C-band and Ku-band communications services to replace capacity currently offered by the aging 15-year-old Badr 6 satellite in geostationary orbit.
Badr 8 will move into position at the same orbital slot as Badr 8, located along the equator at 26 degrees east longitude. The Badr satellites are owned by Arabsat, a pan-Arab consortium of 21 member states based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Badr 8 will provide television broadcast services, video relay, and data services across the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Central Asia.
Arabsat says its investment in the Badr 8 program totals about $300 million, including the spacecraft manufacturing contract with Airbus, the launch agreement with SpaceX, insurance, and ground infrastructure.
Badr 8 is based on Airbus’s Eurostar Neo satellite platform, the company’s newest large spacecraft bus. After separation from the Falcon 9 rocket about 37 minutes into the mission, Badr 8 will unfurl its solar panels and run through a series of post-launch checkouts under the supervision of Airbus ground controllers in Toulouse, France.
Then Badr 8 will use low-thrust, high-efficiency plasma thrusters to maneuver into a circular geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator, settling into an orbit that matches the speed of Earth’s rotation, giving the spacecraft a constant view of its coverage zone stretching from Europe, to the Middle East, and into Central Asia.
The orbital adjustments will take several months, then Badr 8 will complete in-orbit testing and should be ready to commence operational service for Arabsat later this year. The Badr 8 spacecraft is designed for a 15-year service life.
Besides its purpose as a commercial communications satellite, Badr 8 also hosts an experimental laser communications payload for Airbus. The TELEO demonstration will test new optical communications technology in a partnership between Airbus, the French space agency CNES, and Safran Data Systems.
The TELEO payload will test the technology’s ability to beam data from the satellite to a ground station using lasers, allowing for the transfer of information at up to 10 gigabits per second. Airbus and its partners hope to advance the technology for future missions to achieve a one terabit per second bit rate using optical communications.
“This TELEO demonstrator will also enable very high capacity optical feeder link communications, by nature highly robust against jamming, as part of the development by Airbus of a new generation of optical communications technology in space,” Airbus said in a press release.
The launch of Badr 8, if it occurs Tuesday night, will cap a jam-packed sequence of SpaceX missions. It will be the fourth SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in less than five days, following a Falcon 9 flight with Starlink satellites May 19 from Cape Canaveral, a Falcon 9 launch from California Saturday with payloads for OneWeb and Iridium, and the launch of Axiom Space’s Ax-2 private astronaut mission Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Working out of SpaceX’s launch and landing control center just south of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, engineers will oversee the late-night countdown leading up to liftoff of the Badr 8 mission Tuesday night. The Falcon 9 rocket will be filled with a million pounds of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants in the final 35 minutes before liftoff.
After teams verify technical and weather parameters are all “green” for launch, the nine Merlin 1D main engines on the first stage booster will flash to life with the help of an ignition fluid called triethylaluminum/triethylborane, or TEA-TEB. Once the engines ramp up to full throttle, hydraulic clamps will open to release the Falcon 9 for its climb into space.
The nine main engines will produce 1.7 million pounds of thrust for more than two-and-a-half minutes, propelling the Falcon 9 and Badr 8 into the upper atmosphere. Then the booster stage will shut down and separate from the Falcon 9’s upper stage to begin a controlled descent toward SpaceX’s drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” parked in the Atlantic Ocean.
The booster, designated B1062, will extend titanium hypersonic grid fins and use cold gas nitrogen thrusters to control its orientation, then reignite three of its nine main engines for a nearly 30-second braking maneuver during re-entry. A final landing burn with just the center engine will slow the rocket for touchdown on the drone ship about eight-and-a-half minutes into the mission.
A SpaceX recovery ship is also in position in the Atlantic to recover the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing after the nose cone’s two clamshell halves parachute into the sea. The payload fairing will jettison from the rocket about three-and-a-half minutes into the flight, shortly after ignition of the Falcon 9’s upper stage engine.
The Falcon 9 rocket will fire its upper stage engine two times to inject the Badr 8 spacecraft into an elliptical supersynchronous transfer orbit. Separation of Badr 8 from the Falcon 9’s upper stage is expected at T+plus 37 minutes, 13 seconds.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
One month after the launch, this article has aged extremely poorly, just some examples:
“NASA in particular is left with some hard choices arising from choosing Starship as its sole lunar lander for the Artemis III mission.”: Now NASA has selected a 2nd lander from Blue Origin, yet this 2nd lander shares many of the attributes of Starship HLS: It also requires a new still not flown launch vehicle (New Glenn, which is even more delayed than Starship), it also require orbital refilling of cryogenic propellant (liquid hydrogen in this case, harder than liquid methane used by Starship), it also requires multiple launches. So there’s zero chance this new lander would have been faster to develop than Starship.
“Some of that work may, likely will, require additional federal government participation.”: Wrong, SpaceX is busy repairing the launch pad, no additional federal government participation is needed, they’re just doing it.
“The failure of the booster’s guidance & control to detect that the booster was off its normal ascent trajectory, that it was looping during its ascent, and to terminate the flight for a full 1 m 19 s that the booster performed over 3 loop de loops is another issue that will have to be addressed.”: Also wrong, as Elon explained in his twitter spaces interview, FTS activated normally, there is no GNC failure to detect that the booster is off course, it’s just FTS explosive is not powerful enough to break apart the booster immediately.
“More critically for the aspirations of future crewed flight is the failure of the Starship, the launch abort system for the Starship stack, to abort when the booster experienced issues during ascent or when the booster went off its nominal trajectory. Whether this was due to the booster’s own systems not detecting an issue or with Starship remains to be determined.”: Again explained by Elon that this was never programmed into the software for this test, because they want Starship to reenter at a precise location near Hawaii, they don’t want to separate Starship unless they’re sure it can hit the target.
“For the first time in American spaceflight history, the goals of the space program, in the case of Artemis III to land astronauts once again on the Moon’s surface, are hitched to the progress of a single space company over which NASA has little or no control.”: This is just as wrong one month ago as it is now, but this rhetoric is so wrong I have to comment on it: No, it’s not the first time NASA depends on a single company, Orion depends on Lockheed Martin – a single company, SLS core stage depends on Boeing – a simple company, SLS booster depends on Northrop Grumman – also a single company.
“It is worth reminding that the Starship lunar lander has no descent abort capability. “: First of all, it’s wrong, Starship HLS does have descent abort capability. Second, NASA just selected Blue Moon as 2nd HLS lander, and it’s also a single stage lander just like Starship, and if you think Starship doesn’t have “descent abort capability”, Blue Moon doesn’t have it either, so clearly NASA doesn’t think this is an issue.
Four commercial space fliers who launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Axiom’s second private astronaut mission Sunday will arrive at the International Space Station on a SpaceX crew capsule Monday to start an eight-day stay full of scientific experiments, student outreach events, and sightseeing.
Docking of SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft at the space station’s Harmony module is scheduled for 9:10 a.m. EDT (1310 UTC), completing an automated rendezvous that saw the capsule match orbits with the complex with a sequence of thruster firings after launching Sunday from Florida’s Space Coast.
The mission is managed by Houston-based Axiom Space, a company with plans to fly a series of fully commercial astronaut missions to the International Space Station before launching their own private standalone research complex in low Earth orbit.
This flight is commanded by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who has spent more time in space than any other American. Whitson is now an employee of Axiom, and is joined by pilot John Shoffner, an investor and amateur race car driver who paid for his seat to the space station. Two Saudi Arabian astronauts — Ali Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi — had their trips sponsored by the Saudi government.
After docking at the station, Whitson and her crewmates will open hatches and float inside the outpost to join the lab’s seven-person long-duration crew, consisting of three Americans, three Russians, and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.
The Ax-2 crew will remain at the station for eight days, with undocking scheduled May 30 to begin a flight back to Earth, targeting splashdown off the coast of Florida.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
@SpaceX has successfully launched its 6th Falcon 9 mission of May, carrying @Axiom_Space's Ax-2 crew to @Space_Station.
The post Long-Awaited Ax-2 Mission Launches, Heads to Space Station first appeared on AmericaSpace.
[…] 158 prior launches included the first humans to orbit the Moon, the first crewed lunar landing, the Skylab space station and the first shuttle flight—the four astronauts ascended the elevator and were assisted into […]
Watch our coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 5:37 p.m. EDT (2137 UTC) on Sunday, May 21, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon 9 will launch SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft with four commercial astronauts on the Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station. Follow us on Twitter.
Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, with more time in space than any other American, will rocket into orbit for the fourth time Sunday, riding a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Florida with a fare-paying investor and private pilot, and the first two Saudi Arabian astronauts to fly to the International Space Station.
The four-person crew will strap into their seats on SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 UTC) Sunday, then ground teams will evacuate the pad to allow SpaceX to start loading liquid propellants into the Falcon 9 rocket shortly after 5 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC).
The countdown is timed for liftoff of the 215-foot-tall (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket at 5:37:09 p.m. EDT (2137:09 UTC), when Earth’s rotation brings Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center under the orbital path of the International Space Station.
Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines will flash to life and power the Falcon 9 off the pad with 1.7 million pounds of thrust, sending the rocket and crew on a trajectory northeast over the Atlantic Ocean to take aim on the space station. Assuming an on-time launch, Whitson and her crewmates will dock at the space station’s Harmony module at 9:24 a.m. EDT (1324 UTC) Monday to begin an eight-day stay at the complex.
Whitson, selected as a NASA astronaut in 1996, is an Iowa native who earned a PhD in biochemistry from Rice University. The 63-year-old astronaut retired from NASA in 2018 after her third space mission, a nearly 10-month expedition on the space station in 2016 and 2017. She has logged 665 days in orbit, more time in space than any other American, and completed 10 spacewalks in her NASA career.
“We really feel like we’re prepared to go,” Whitson said.
She joined Houston-based Axiom Space after leaving NASA, and is set to command the company’s second private astronaut mission to the space station. The mission, known as Ax-2, follows Axiom’s first commercial crew flight to the station last April.
Pilot John Shoffner, who paid for his seat on the Ax-2 mission, will join Whitson for the trip to space. Shoffner, 67, founded Dura-Line, a telecom company specializing in in the placement of fiber optic cables. He is also an experienced pilot with more than 8,500 hours of flying time, a veteran skydiver with more than 4,000 jumps to his credit, and an amateur race car driver.
“I feel like I’ve been preparing for this my entire life,” Shoffner said. “I’ve been a fan of space since I was a child. I grew up in the age of the early Space Race, so getting here now and having a chance to fulfill that excitement is very, very powerful to me.”
Axiom is managing the Ax-2 mission. The company procured launch and transportation services with SpaceX, who trained the crew members on emergency procedures. Whitson and Shoffner are also trained on how to take over manual control of the Dragon spacecraft if necessary. Otherwise, the capsule is designed to fly to the space station on autopilot, along with commanding from SpaceX’s ground team in California.
Two Saudi astronauts will take the other two seats on SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft.
Ali Alqarni is an F-15 fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force and Rayyanah Barnawi is a biomedical scientist. The Saudi government is paying for their rides to space and back.
They will be the first Saudi Arabians to fly to the International Space Station, and Barnawi will be the first Arab woman to reach the complex.
“For me, as a fighter pilot, I’ve always had the passion of exploring the unknown and just admiring the sky and the stars, so it was a great opportunity for me to pursue this passion that I have, and maybe fly among the stars,” Alqarni said.
“I am very honored and happy to be representing all the dreams and all the hopes of all the people in Saudi Arabia, and all the women back home in the region, and this is a great opportunity for me to represent the country, to represent their dreams,” Barnawi said last week in a pre-launch press conference.
The crew will have a busy slate of experiments and educational student outreach events during their eight days at the space station. The commercial astronauts will virtually connect with Saudi schoolchildren in the classroom, performing experiments and demonstrations to help inspire their interest in science and math.
“We are actually conducting at least 20 experiments, 14 of which are led by Saudi scientists,” Barnawi said. T”hese experiments range from human physiology, technology, cell biology, and most importantly is the outreach. One of the goals for this mission … is to do these outreach events for the kids and try to elaborate on the fact that we are here as STEM educators.”
One of the research investigations involves cloud seeding in microgravity, testing techniques that could be used to create artificial rain, an important topic in a desert country like Saudi Arabia.
One of the crew members will wear a skinsuit in space for a demonstration in partnership with MIT. The garment will provide compression and loading to simulate Earth’s gravity, and is designed to reduce the impact of changes the human body encounters in spaceflight, such as spinal elongation and muscle atrophy. A suit like this could help astronauts adapt to microgravity faster, and ease their re-adaptation to Earth’s gravity at the end of a mission, allowing people to fly on multiple short-duration space missions in quick succession.
“The results of that could be profound for the future of spaceflight,” Shoffner said.
Whitson will work on an experiment examining now cancer cells form in space. “This is going to help the scientists learn even more about how that development occurs because in zero gravity they form more like they do in your body.”
NASA is making resources on the space station available for commercial astronaut missions like Axiom’s flights, but Axiom, and ultimately the private crew members or their sponsors, must pay NASA for training and crew accommodations, such as access to the station’s life support system, food, and toilet.
The cost per seat has not been released, but NASA’s inspector general has estimated the price of a seat on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at about $55 million for NASA astronauts. It’s unknown how that might compare to a fully commercial seat price.
So far, NASA has required private astronaut missions to the station be commanded by a former professional astronaut. Retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría commanded the Ax-1 mission last year.
Whitson said one of her roles is to guide her three crewmates, all spaceflight rookies, on the dos and don’ts of living and working on the space station.
“I have shared a long long list of what we’re going to do, what we’re not going to do, how we’re going to do things, and the whys behind all of those,” she said. “There are so many lessons learned after being up in space for 665 days, I’ve got one or two lessons I’ve maybe learned the hard way, and I’m trying to save them some time because our mission is relatively short. So we want to make sure we get the most out of every one of those days.”
Previous visits by private astronauts, or “space tourists,” to the space station occurred on government-led missions on Russian Soyuz spaceships. Before Ax-1, 11 people had traveled to the space station as paying passengers on Soyuz missions, but they all flew with a government-employed cosmonaut commander.
Axiom contracted with SpaceX for the Falcon 9 launch and the Dragon flight to the space station. Axiom plans a third private astronaut mission to the space station late this year, also launching on a SpaceX rocket.
NASA has an agreement with Axiom to build and launch a commercially-owned module to the International Space Station as soon as late 2025. Eventually, Axiom plans to construct a standalone private space station in low Earth orbit. NASA wants a commercial orbital outpost to be ready to take over the type of research performed on the International Space Station by the time it is retired in 2030.
SpaceX rolled the Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon Freedom crew capsule to Launch Complex 39A on Thursday, then raised it vertical for a test-firing of its main engines Friday, leading up to the countdown and launch Sunday.
But the target launch date for the Ax-2 mission was delayed from earlier this month in a ripple effect from schedule slips on a previous SpaceX mission. A Falcon Heavy rocket that was supposed to take off in early April from the same launch pad did not lift off until April 30 after a series of delays caused by technical problems and bad weather. It takes SpaceX about three weeks to reconfigure the launch pad from a Falcon Heavy mission to a crew flight on a Falcon 9 rocket.
That delayed the Ax-2 launch until Sunday, May 21. SpaceX’s next unpiloted cargo mission to the space station is scheduled for launch from the same pad June 3, and that spacecraft will link up with the complex at the same docking port to be used by the Ax-2 mission.
NASA has given Axiom and SpaceX two days, Sunday and Monday, to get the Ax-2 mission off the ground before the space agency directs SpaceX to turn their attention toward preparing for the June 3 resupply launch. NASA has a say in both missions because they are flying to the space station.
Axiom has already shortened the duration of the Ax-2 mission’s stay at the space station from 10 days to eight days to allow the flight to fit into NASA’s schedule before the SpaceX resupply mission next month. Assuming the mission lifts off Sunday, the Dragon Freedom spacecraft would dock at the station Monday, then depart May 30 to head for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida.
“In the end, there was no impact to the research objectives,” said Derek Hassmann, Axiom’s chief of mission integration and operations. “There was some media outreach and other things that we wanted to do, but weren’t a high priority, that were dropped. But all the high-priority objectives we were able to fit into this eight day timeline.”
The Cargo Dragon flight next month will deliver two upgraded roll-out solar arrays to the space station. The installation and deployment of the new solar panels will require one or two spacewalks by the astronauts on the station, along with the use of the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm.
There is a period of high sun angle on the space station in early July, so NASA wants the solar array work complete by then. That will be followed by the scheduled July 21 launch of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule on its first crewed test flight to the station. SpaceX also plans more launches of its Falcon Heavy rocket for the U.S. Space Force and a commercial customer this summer from pad 39A, and SpaceX’s next NASA-contracted crew flight is scheduled for launch from pad 39A is planned in August.
All in all, that leaves few opportunities to fit the Ax-2 mission this summer into a busy schedule of missions to the space station, and into SpaceX’s busy launch schedule from Kennedy Space Center. If the mission doesn’t fly Sunday or Monday, it’s not clear when Ax-2 will have another shot at launching.
“Right now, we’re looking at May 21 and 22,” said Joel Montalbano, NASA’s program manager for the International Space Station. “If we don’t get off by the 22nd, we’ll stand down with the Axiom-2 mission and turn our focus to the SpaceX (cargo) mission. “And then ,at that time, Axiom, NASA, and SpaceX will get together and look for the next best opportunity as we look at the missions that we have this summer, which is not only missions going to the ISS but other missions that use the pad facilities at Kennedy Space Center.”
The weather forecast Sunday shows a good chance that conditions will permit the Falcon 9 to launch the Ax-2 mission. There’s a 60% chance of favorable weather for liftoff Sunday.
But the weather pattern trends wetter early in the week, with an 80% probability Monday that thunderstorms could violate one or more of the launch commit criteria for the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The Ax-2 mission will be SpaceX’s 10th human spaceflight mission, but it comes with a few firsts. The launch will debut a brand new Falcon 9 booster, tail number B1080, making its first flight to space.
For the first time on a crew launch, SpaceX will return the Falcon 9 booster back to a landing zone at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. For all nine previous crew launches, the booster landed on a drone ship offshore, which brought the rocket back to Florida for refurbishment and reuse.
Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, said the company’s high launch rate has shown the Falcon 9 rocket has a bit of extra performance to enable the booster’s return to Florida for landing. The return maneuver requires an additional burn by the rocket’s engines, meaning it needs a bit more residual propellant in the tanks after the booster completes its main task of sending the Dragon crew capsule toward space.
SpaceX has squeezed better performance out of the Falcon 9 rocket on Starlink missions without significant modifications to the engines or other hardware.
“We’ve been able, on Starlink missions, to show that we have extra capability for us to go ahead and utilize for this mission,” Gerstenmaier said. “We’ve always had this kind of capability before, we just weren’t sure that we would always get the performance, but the number of Falcon flights we’ve flown have allowed us to say that that performance is available and can be used where its needed to be used moving forward.”
Gerstenmaier said it’s “advantageous” for SpaceX to return the rocket to land, rather than guiding it to the drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It eliminates the need to worry about weather or sea conditions at the drone ship location, and frees up the recovery vessels for other missions.
“This is nice in the fact that this a new booster, a first flight booster, that we’re going to fly here, Booster 1080,” Gerstenmaier said. “It’ll be good to see it into service, and we expect it to have a long lifetime and serve multiple missions in the future.”
The upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket launching the Ax-2 mission will fire its single engine for about six minutes to accelerate the Dragon Freedom spacecraft to orbital velocity. Separation of the capsule from the rocket is expected around 13 minutes into the mission, followed by the opening of the Dragon’s nose cone to reveal the docking system it will use to attach to the space station.
Then the crew will take off their launch pressure suits and settle into more comfortable clothing for some off-duty time overnight. They will put on their spacesuits again for docking Monday, then open hatches to the space station a few hours later, when they will be welcomed by the lab’s seven long-duration crew members.
The arrival of the Ax-2 mission will temporarily raise the station’s crew size to 11. There are three Americans, three Russians, and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates currently living on the orbiting outpost.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1080.1)
PAYLOAD: Crew Dragon Freedom on the Ax-2 mission
LAUNCH SITE: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: May 21, 2023
LAUNCH TIME: 5:37:09 p.m. EDT (2137:09 UTC)
LAUNCH WINDOW: Instantaneous
WEATHER FORECAST: 60% probability of acceptable weather
BOOSTER RECOVERY: Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: Northeast
TARGET ORBIT: Approximately 130 miles by 143 miles (210 by 230 kilometers); Inclination of 51.6 degrees to the equator
DOCKING AT ISS: 9:24 a.m. EDT (1324 UTC) on Monday, May 22
LANDING DATE: May 30, 2022
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
MISSION STATS:
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
[…] Texas-based AxiomSpace, Inc., has a crew of four—Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot John Shoffner and Mission Specialists Ali Al-Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi of Saudi Arabia—who will support more than 20 scientific research, technology and educational outreach […]
@SpaceX & @Axiom_Space are targeting 5:37 p.m. EDT Sunday to launch the long-awaited Ax-2 mission to @Space_Station. But weather, as always, remains the watchword.
The post Weather Looks 60-Percent-Favorable for Tonight’s Ax-2 Launch first appeared on AmericaSpace.
Hi Jim, great article. As a mechanical engineer, and a fan of history, seeing all the praises thrown at this failure of a launch was driving me mad. Anyone who knows anything about space flight or the history of the Apollo program would know that they managed to not only clear the tower with Apollo 4 but get into orbit. All that without Ansys, AutoCAD, Solidworks, using slide rules.
People are going to lose their lives on this pathetic rocket. One only needs to compare all the means of aborting launch Apollo had at its disposal with Starship. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80646972.pdf
Anyway, ignore the haters and Musk bootlickers, keep up the good work. Cheers
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION
Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.
“We are going to the Moon! Honored to be on this journey with @nasa to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos said in an Instagram post.
John Couluris, Blue Origin vice president for lunar transportation, said the company expects to chip in “well north” of the contract value to fully develop its “Blue Moon” lander, pushing the total cost of the project to around $7 billion. The first piloted landing, part of the fifth Artemis mission, is expected in the 2029 timeframe.
“On behalf of Blue Origin and the national team, I want to thank NASA personally,” Couluris said. “We’re very honored and humbled to be part of this incredible experience. We’re looking forward to participating on Artemis 5, and we’re looking forward to working together.”
Blue Origin’s national team includes Lockheed Martin, which will provide a refueling and servicing spacecraft; Boeing, which will supply docking technology; Draper, supplying guidance, navigation and simulator technology; Astrobotic Technology, with expertise in payload accommodations; and Honeybee Robotics to handle cargo delivery systems.
The contract requires Blue Origin to fly an unpiloted dress-rehearsal landing before astronauts float aboard and descend to the lunar surface during the Artemis 5 mission. That flight will follow the initial Artemis 3 moon landing, using SpaceX’s lander, in the 2025-26 timeframe.
“We want more competition,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We want two landers. That’s better. It means that you have reliability, you have backups. It benefits NASA. It benefits the American people. … It helps NASA share the risk, the technical risk, and the financial risk to enable, at the end of the day, mission success.”
The contract award caps a long, occasionally contentious struggle by Blue Origin to join the Artemis program. The company and another team lost out to SpaceX in 2021 when NASA awarded Elon Musk’s company a $2.9 billion contract to build a variant of its Starship rocket for the initial Artemis 3 moon landing.
Blue Origin protested the original award, delaying work on the Starship lander, but the company’s efforts were unsuccessful. Last November, SpaceX won an additional $1.1 billion to develop an upgraded version of its lander, one capable of longer stays to support “sustained” exploration. It’s not yet clear when that variant might fly.
The fully reusable Blue Moon lander will stand about 52 feet tall, fitting inside the 23-foot-wide nose cone of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. The spacecraft’s crew compartment, capable of supporting four astronauts for up to 30 days, will sit atop four landing legs and rocket motors. A short stairway will provide easy access to the surface.
A squat liquid oxygen tank and larger hydrogen tank will be positioned atop the crew cabin, along with radiator panels and solar arrays. A port on the side of the crew compartment will enable rovers to dock with the lander, allowing astronauts to move from one vehicle to another without having to first venture outside.
The Blue Moon architecture calls for a New Glenn rocket to launch the lander into the elliptical “near rectilinear halo orbit,” or NRHO, that NASA is using for its planned Gateway lunar space station.
Lockheed Martin’s “cis-lunar transporter” spacecraft will carry propellants from low-Earth orbit to the moon where it will link up with the Blue Moon lander in the NRHO, fueling it for its eventual descent to the surface.
The lander will dock at the Gateway station where four Artemis astronauts, launched aboard an Orion capsule by NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, will be waiting. From there, the Blue Moon will carry the crew to the lunar surface, bringing them back up to Gateway and Orion after a stay of up to 30 days.
The NASA contract calls for an unpiloted dress rehearsal descent from Gateway and landing near the south pole before astronauts float aboard during the Artemis 5 mission for the first piloted landing. But Blue Origin plans multiple test flights ahead of the rehearsal using less capable versions of the lander to test specific systems.
The Blue Moon can be configured in two versions.
“The first is a crew configuration that will be able to land four astronauts anywhere on the surface of the moon, day or night,” Couluris said. “That will be the first mission that we fly as part of Artemis 5.
“This vehicle also can be configured for a cargo landing mission able to carry up to 20 metric tons in a round trip … or 30 metric tons to the surface to form the foundation of habitats and other permanent infrastructure.”
In between surface sorties, the lander can simply remain in the near rectilinear halo orbit at or near Gateway while awaiting follow-on missions. Bezos and Couluris said Blue Origin is already working on technologies enabling long-term storage of the ultra-cold liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellants.
Having two independent landers from different providers, NASA said in a statement, “will increase competition, reduce costs to taxpayers, support a regular cadence of lunar landings, further invest in the lunar economy and help NASA achieve its goals on and around the moon in preparation for future astronaut missions to Mars.”
[…] is SpaceX’s fourth OneWeb launch, after three prior missions last December, January and March. Those flights safely delivered 120 Generation One satellites uphill, with […]
[…] pre-dawn liftoff of a veteran Falcon 9 booster from a fog-enshrouded Space Launch Complex (SLC)-4E. Scrubbed yesterday at T-55 seconds—just after the rocket assumed primary control of countdown operations and entered its […]
@SpaceX has wrapped up the 2nd launch of a planned weekend triple-header, as attention turns to Florida's unpredictable weather for a 5:37 p.m. Sunday launch of Ax-2.
The post SpaceX Launches 2023’s Tenth Vandenberg Mission, Ax-2 Completes Static Fire first appeared on AmericaSpace.
[…] Falcon 9 was dramatically scrubbed at T-55 seconds and is now targeting launch early Saturday, with the crew-carrying Ax-2 mission set to close out the weekend with its own Sunday evening flight from from historic Pad 39A at […]
After launching 1 of 2 planned Falcon 9 missions on Friday, @SpaceX looks to Saturday & Sunday to wrap up a weekend triple-header.
The post As Year’s 30th Falcon 9 Flies, SpaceX Scrubs Iridium/OneWeb Launch, Watches Ax-2 Weather first appeared on AmericaSpace.
After three weeks of intense analysis and troubleshooting, European Space Agency flight controllers have finally succeeded in freeing a jammed 52-foot (16-meter) boom critical to the Jupiter-bound JUICE probe’s ice-penetrating radar instrument.
The Jupiter Icy Moons mission – JUICE – was launched April 14 atop an Ariane 5 rocket. On its way to the first of several gravity assist flybys, the spacecraft successfully deployed its over-size solar arrays and a 10.6-meter (35-foot) magnetometer boom.
But a long antenna boom needed by the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration, or RIME, instrument, designed to peer beneath the frozen crusts of Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, failed to unfurl when first commanded, raising concerns a major element of the long-awaited mission could be in jeopardy.
Engineers at ESA’s mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, concluded the jammed boom was being held by a small pin. They attempted to shift the pin slightly by re-orienting the spacecraft so the mechanism could warm in the sun. They also fired thrusters to rock the probe back to add a bit of force. Engineers noted increased movement, but the boom remained held in place.
On May 12, commands were sent to fire a non-explosive actuator, or NEA, located near the jammed bracket assembly. The resulting shake apparently moved the pin by a few millimeters, just enough to allow the antenna boom to unfold and lock in place.
“The Flight Control Team then commanded the release of the final remaining part of the RIME antenna boom, which extends in the opposite direction,” ESA tweeted. “Confirmation of a successful deployment arrived shortly after.”
The news prompted widespread relief among JUICE scientists and engineers, along with a bit of now-relaxed tweeting.
“We thought about celebrating with a rhyme, but it’s Friday evening, who’s got the time?” the operations team tweeted. Added Daniel Scuka, a control center communications officer: “T’was happy hour time, so having a little juice – when I heard the good news that rime was loose!”
Good news indeed.
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 16 satellites for OneWeb’s internet network and five satellites for Iridium’s voice and data relay constellation. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Watch our live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 6-3 mission at 12:41 a.m. EDT (0441 UTC) on May 19 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Follow us on Twitter.
Another Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff early Friday from Cape Canaveral with a batch of 22 upgraded, new-generation Starlink internet satellites, the first of two SpaceX missions scheduled for launch in a span of less than nine hours.
The Starlink 6-3 mission is scheduled to launch at 12:41:30 a.m. EDT (0441:30 UTC) from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, but weather conditions could be iffy. The official forecast predicts a 60% chance of weather conditions violating launch criteria at 12:41 a.m., but the odds improve a few hours later.
If weather conditions or a technical problem prevents launch at the first opportunity, SpaceX has backup launch times available at 1:31 a.m., 2:19 a.m., and 3:09 a.m. EDT. There’s a 40% chance of unfavorable weather at the day’s final launch opportunity.
Like all Starlink launches, the Falcon 9 rocket will release the new batch of internet satellites into an orbit below their final operating altitude. The satellites will then use on-board propulsion to raise their orbits to an altitude of more than 300 miles (500 kilometers).
The Starlink 6-3 mission will continue launching SpaceX’s new Starlink V2 Mini satellite platform fitted with improved phased array antennas with four times the communications capacity of earlier generations of Starlink satellites, known as Version 1.5, to beam internet signals to consumers around the world. Despite their name, the Starlink V2 Mini satellites are nearly times as massive and more than four times larger than the older Starlink V1.5 satellites.
The “Mini” moniker refers to SpaceX’s plans to launch an even larger full-size Starlink V2 satellite design on the company’s huge new Starship rocket. The Starship has nearly 10 times the payload lift capability of a Falcon 9 rocket, with greater volume for satellites, too.
The full-size Starlink V2s will be capable of transmitting signals directly to cell phones. But with the Starship rocket not yet operational following its first full-scale test flight in April, SpaceX began launching second-generation satellites on Falcon 9 rockets and developed the V2 Minis to fit on the company’s existing launch vehicles.
The first group of 21 Starlink V2 Mini satellites launched Feb. 27 on a Falcon 9 rocket, but some of those spacecraft were decommissioned and intentionally steered back into the atmosphere due to technical problems. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, said the first batch of Starlink V2 Mini satellites were “experiencing some issues, as expected.” SpaceX planned to thoroughly test the satellites before boosting them above the altitude of the International Space Station to their final operating orbit.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, tweeted the first group of Starlink V2 Mini satellites were “experiencing some issues, as expected.” SpaceX planned to thoroughly test the satellites before boosting them above the altitude of the International Space Station to their final operating orbit.
SpaceX continued launching older-model Starlink V1.5 satellites on a series of missions in March and April, before resuming deployment of the bigger, more capable Starlink V2 Mini satellites with a Falcon 9 launch April 19. Since then, SpaceX has launched four missions with the older Starlink V1.5 satellites before switching back to the larger V2 Minis with Friday morning’s launch.
In addition to improved communications capability, the Starlink V2 Mini satellites have more efficient, higher-thrust argon-fueled propulsion systems. Argon is cheaper than the krypton gas SpaceX used to fuel ion engines on the older-generation Starlink V1.5 satellites.
“This means Starlink can provide more bandwidth with increased reliability and connect millions of more people around the world with high-speed internet,” SpaceX said before the first launch of Starlink V2 Mini satellites in February.
Each Starlink V2 Mini satellite weighs about 1,760 pounds (800 kilograms) at launch, nearly three times heavier than the older Starlink satellites. The are also bigger in size, with a spacecraft body more than 13 feet (4.1 meters) wide, filling more of the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing during launch, according to regulatory filings with the Federal Communications Commission.
The larger, heavier satellite platform means a Falcon 9 rocket can only launch around 22 Starlink V2 Mini payloads at a time, compared to more than 50 Starlink V1.5s on a single Falcon 9 launch. The first two Falcon 9 launches with Starlink V2 Mini satellites carried 21 spacecraft, while Friday’s Starlink 6-3 mission will deploy 22 spacecraft, matching or slightly exceeding the record for the heaviest payload SpaceX has ever launched into space.
The two deployable solar panels on each Starlink V2 Mini satellite span about 100 feet (30 meters) tip-to-tip. The previous generation of Starlink V1.5 satellites each have a single solar array wing, with each spacecraft measuring about 36 feet (11 meters) end-to-end once the solar panel is extended.
The enhancements give the Starlink V2 Mini satellites a total surface area of 1,248 square feet, or 116 square meters, more than four times that of a Starlink V1.5 satellite.
The Federal Communications granted SpaceX approval Dec. 1 to launch up to 7,500 of its planned 29,988-spacecraft Starlink Gen2 constellation, which will spread out into slightly different orbits than the original Starlink fleet. The regulatory agency deferred a decision on the remaining satellites SpaceX proposed for Gen2.
Specifically, the FCC granted SpaceX authority to launch the initial block of 7,500 Starlink Gen2 satellites into orbits at 525, 530, and 535 kilometers, with inclinations of 53, 43, and 33 degrees, respectively, using Ku-band and Ka-band frequencies. SpaceX started launching older-design Starlink V1.5 satellites into the orbits approved for the Gen2 constellation in December.
The FCC previously authorized SpaceX to launch and operate roughly 4,400 first-generation Ka-band and Ku-band Starlink spacecraft that SpaceX has been launching since 2019. SpaceX is nearing completion with launches to populate the first-generation Starlink network.
With the launch Friday, SpaceX will have sent 464 Starlink Gen2 satellites into orbit, including Starlink V1.5 and Starlink V2 Mini spacecraft. After this mission, SpaceX will have deployed 4,469 Starlinks satellites in all, including test units no longer in service. More than 4,100 Starlink satellites are currently in orbit, according to McDowell.
The Gen2 satellites could improve Starlink coverage over lower latitude regions, and help alleviate pressure on the network from growing consumer uptake. SpaceX says the network has more than 1 million active subscribers, mostly households in areas where conventional fiber connectivity is unavailable, unreliable, or expensive.
During the overnight countdown beginning late Thursday night, SpaceX’s launch team will be stationed inside a launch control center just south of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to monitor key systems on the Falcon 9 rocket and at the launch pad. SpaceX will begin loading super-chilled, densified kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the 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 southeast over the Atlantic Ocean. The Falcon 9 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 separate 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 (640 kilometers) downrange approximately eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. The reusable booster, designated B1076 in SpaceX’s inventory, will fly on its fifth trip to space Friday.
The Falcon 9’s reusable payload fairing will jettison during the second stage burn. A recovery ship is also on station in the Atlantic to retrieve the two halves of the nose cone after they splash down under parachutes.
Landing of the first stage on Firday’s mission will occur just as the Falcon 9’s second stage engine cuts off to deliver the Starlink satellites into a preliminary parking orbit. Another upper stage burn 54 minutes into the mission will reshape the orbit ahead of payload separation.
Separation of the 22 Starlink spacecraft, built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, from the Falcon 9 rocket is expected about 65 minutes after liftoff.
The Falcon 9’s guidance computer aims to deploy the satellites into an orbit at an inclination of 43 degrees to the equator, with an altitude ranging between 195 miles and 200 miles (314-by-323 kilometers). After separating from the rocket, the 22 Starlink spacecraft will unfurl solar arrays and run through automated activation steps, then use their argon-fueled ion engines to maneuver into their operational orbit.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1076.5)
PAYLOAD: 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites (Starlink 6-3)
LAUNCH SITE: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: May 19, 2023
LAUNCH TIME: 12:41:30 a.m. EDT (0441:30 GMT)
WEATHER FORECAST: 40-60% 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 northeast of the Bahamas
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: Southeast
TARGET ORBIT: 195 miles by 200 miles (314 kilometers by 323 kilometers), 43.0 degrees inclination
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
MISSION STATS:
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
[…] close-to-perfect conditions for two launches earlier this month, SpaceX’s next mission of May is facing a decidedly dicier weather picture. A four-times-used […]
@SpaceX is aiming for its 4th Falcon 9 launch of May just after midnight Thursday, with weather remaining the watch-word.
The post Weather Looks Iffy for Post-Midnight Falcon 9 Launch first appeared on AmericaSpace.
NASA’s small Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, sent to the moon last year to search for water ice deposits at the moon’s south pole, will not be able to complete its science mission after a problem with the probe’s propulsion system.
The briefcase-size spacecraft was developed partially as a technology demonstration mission. NASA said May 12 that a new low-power, radiation-hardened flight computer and an upgraded radio, with added precision navigation capability for deep space, performed well on the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, retiring risk so the technology can be used on future small spacecraft missions.
But another novel technology on Lunar Flashlight ran into problems. The propulsion system, with four tiny thrusters, was unable to generate enough power to steer Lunar Flashlight into orbit around the moon, leaving the mission unable to accomplish its scientific objectives.
“There were a number of different technologies on there, which all worked except the thrusters,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s space technology mission directorate.”
Engineers believe debris accumulated in the spacecraft’s fuel lines prevented its thrusters from generating consistent thrust. Ground controllers developed a way to get reliable thrust out of one of the thrusters by increasing fuel pump pressure far beyond the system’s operational limit, while opening and closing the system’s valves. But the same procedure failed to get consistent performance from the other three thrusters.
Ground teams needed to maneuver the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft last week to have a chance of getting the spacecraft on a trajectory to make close flybys of the moon’s south pole, where the craft would have shined lasers into permanently shadowed craters to measure the quantity and composition of water ice hidden on dark crater floors. Previous space missions have found evidence of subsurface ice, and hints of water ice deposits at the surface at the bottoms of craters.
“They made some progress, but they just didn’t have enough time, and the clock ran out,” Reuter said Tuesday in a presentation to the NASA Advisory Council’s technology, innovation, and engineering committee.
Lunar Flashlight, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, would have attempted to confirm the presence of ice at the lunar surface, where water resources could be accessible to future astronauts to create drinking water and rocket propellant.
“It’s disappointing for the science team, and for the whole Lunar Flashlight team, that we won’t be able to use our laser reflectometer to make measurements at the moon,” said Barbara Cohen, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But like all the other systems, we collected a lot of in-flight performance data on the instrument that will be incredibly valuable to future iterations of this technique.”
Lunar Flashlight launched Dec. 11 from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding as a piggyback payload on the same launcher as the privately-developed Hakuto-R lunar lander from the Japanese company ispace. The Hakuto-R lander crashed on the moon April 25 after running out of fuel in the final moments of descent, according to ispace.
The original flight plan for Lunar Flashlight called for the 31-pound (14-kilogram) spacecraft to enter an oval-shaped orbit around the moon in April that would have taken the spacecraft as close as 9 miles (15 kilometers) from the lunar surface once per week. With time running out, engineers developed a backup plan to steer Lunar Flashlight into a high orbit around the Earth that would take the spacecraft near the moon’s south pole with lower frequency.
In the end, without the propulsion system producing consistent thrust, Lunar Flashlight will leave the Earth-moon system and head into interplanetary space, ending the possibility of it achieving its scientific objectives.
“Technology demonstrations are, by their nature, higher risk and high reward, and they’re essential for NASA to test and learn,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for small spacecraft technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a press release. “Lunar Flashlight was highly successful from the standpoint of being a testbed for new systems that had never flown in space before. Those systems, and the lessons Lunar Flashlight taught us, will be used for future missions.”
Lunar Flashlight was previously assigned to launch on the first flight of NASA’s huge Space Launch System moon rocket. NASA selected 13 CubeSat missions, including Lunar Flashlight, to ride on the first SLS flight, known as Artemis 1.
A NASA spokesperson said in 2021 that issues with the original propulsion system for the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, a solar sail, forced managers to switch to an alternative design using non-toxic “green” propellant. That slowed development of the mission, and coupled with effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, prevented the spacecraft from being ready for integration with the Artemis 1 rocket.
The propulsion system on Lunar Flashlight was supplied by California-based VACCO Industries, with an ionic liquid-based fuel blend based on the oxidizer ammonium dinitramide, produced by Eurenco Bofors in Sweden. The thrusters were manufactured by the Swedish company Bradford ECAPS.
After missing its ride on Artemis 1, Lunar Flashlight was assigned to launch on a SpaceX rocket with a commercial moon lander owned by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. That launch has been delayed to 2023 due to delays in developing Intuitive Machines’ lander, so NASA was able to switch Lunar Flashlight to the Hakuto-R mission for liftoff in December.
NASA is studying the possibility of a replacement for Lunar Flashlight to pursue the mission’s original science goals, according to Reuter.
“We’ll be looking at what it would take to repeat the mission because we really want to send that message, when there’s something that doesn’t go right, let’s figure out a way to update it next time,” Reuter said.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
[…] 0. “NASA, Axiom, SpaceX Discuss Upcoming Ax-2 Space Station Mission” AmericaSpace, 15 May. 2023, https://www.americaspace.com/2023/05/15/nasa-axiom-spacex-discuss-upcoming-ax-2-space-station-missio… […]
United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket was filled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants at Cape Canaveral last week for a tanking test, but managers decided to move the rocket back inside a hangar for a few adjustments before proceeding with an engine test-firing.
The Flight Readiness Tanking Test, or FTT, on May 12 was a precursor to the Vulcan rocket’s Flight Readiness Firing, a planned six-second ignition of the launcher’s two Blue Origin-built BE-4 main engines. That test, previously scheduled as soon as Monday, will be delayed at least a few days.
The tanking test and test-firing follow a series of propellant loading demonstrations on the Vulcan rocket in March. ULA delivered the Vulcan first stage and Centaur upper stage to Cape Canaveral in January for the inaugural Vulcan launch. The launch company completed pathfinder testing on a Vulcan test article at Cape Canaveral in 2021.
The Vulcan rocket will replace ULA’s Atlas and Delta rocket families, which have their roots in the early years of space exploration more than 60 years ago. ULA is a 50-50 joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which merged their Atlas and Delta rocket programs in 2006. The Vulcan rocket will fly in several configurations, with varying numbers of strap-on solid rocket boosters and different payload fairing sizes available on each flight, depending on mission requirements.
A ULA spokesperson said the company’s engineers “collected excellent data” during the May 12 tanking test, which mimicked a launch countdown with holds, readiness polls, and other milestones.
“Based on the test, there are several parameters that will be adjusted prior to conducting the Flight Readiness Firing,” the ULA spokesperson said in a statement. “We are rolling back to the Vertical Integration Facility, where our access is better and the vehicle is protected to isolate and perform those adjustments.”
Riding a mobile launch platform, the Vulcan rocket rolled off the launch pad and back into the Vertical Integration Facility, or VIF, on Monday, a journey on rail tracks stretching about a third of a mile. The same hangar and launch pad are used by ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket, but the company built a new launch platform specifically designed for Vulcan.
Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, said engineers will adjust a setting associated with ground hydraulic pressure, change the topping rate for liquid oxygen, and adjust the flow of purge and chill gases to the BE-4 engine igniters. “All normal stuff,” Bruno said, adding that the tanking test May 12 was intended to uncover such issues.
The Vulcan rocket sports a colorful paint job with a bright red flame emblazoned on the side of the 17.7-foot-side (5.4-meter) first stage. For the tanking tests and the Flight Readiness Firing, the Vulcan rocket is not fitted with any solid rocket boosters or a payload fairing. Once the test-firing is complete, ULA will install two of the Northrop Grumman-built solid-fueled boosters and the payload shroud supplied by Beyond Gravity, formerly known as Ruag Space.
The Vulcan rocket’s inaugural flight will be the first first launch to use new methane-fueled BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. At full throttle, each BE-4 engine can generate about 550,000 pounds of thrust. Two of them will power each Vulcan core stage, with zero, two, four, or six solid rocket boosters to add thrust in the first couple of minutes of flight.
The Vulcan rocket’s Centaur upper stage, called the Centaur 5, is an upgrade to the upper stages currently flying on ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket. The Centaur 5 has a wider diameter to accommodate larger cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen propellant tanks, along with two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engines. The Centaur flying on the Atlas 5 rocket typically flies with a single engine.
Once all of the Vulcan rocket configurations are operational, the new rocket will fully replace and grow the lift capability currently offered by all of ULA’s rockets. The largest Vulcan rocket variant, with a single core stage, will have more payload lift capability than ULA’s Delta 4-Heavy, which has three liquid-fueled first stage boosters connected together.
Eventually, ULA plans to recover the reuse BE-4 engines from Vulcan launches, but not the entire first stage.
ULA unveiled the Vulcan rocket in 2015, then targeting a first launch of the new vehicle in 2019. The company selected Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine for the first stage propulsion system in 2018. At that time, ULA aimed to launch the first Vulcan test flight in 2020.
But delays, primarily caused by issues discovered in BE-4 engine production and testing, forced the first Vulcan test flight to slip several years.
Outside of the test rig/ stand. Test article is inside (you can’t see it). Hydrogen leak. H2 accumulated inside the rig. Found an ignition source. Burned fast. Over pressure caved in our forward dome and damaged the rig. pic.twitter.com/0d0KpI1ggj
— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) April 13, 2023
Now the main technical roadblocks before ULA clears the Vulcan rocket for launch are the Flight Readiness Firing and an investigation into an explosive blast during a ground structural test of a Centaur 5 upper stage test article in March. ULA says the “anomaly” was caused by a hydrogen leak, causing the flammable fuel to accumulate inside the test rig before it ignited.
The blast damaged the test stand and caved in the forward dome of the Centaur test article, according to Bruno. ULA has not said whether the hydrogen leak originated on the test stand or inside the Centaur upper stage itself.
With a successful Flight Readiness Firing and completion of the probe into the Centaur test explosion, Bruno said ULA is “protecting” for the possibility of launching the Vulcan test flight this summer.
The Vulcan rocket will launch a commercial moon lander developed by Astrobotic, which will attempt to deliver a batch of NASA experiments and tech demo payloads to the lunar surface. The Astrobotic lander, named Peregrine, is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, which buys rides to the moon for agency payloads on commercially-owned spacecraft.
Two prototype satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network will also be aboard the first Vulcan launch.
ULA’s Vulcan rocket has been selected by the U.S. Space Force to launch the majority of the military’s large national security satellites for the next five years. The military requires to “certification flights” of the Vulcan rocket before it is approved for national security launch missions.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
