In addition to what will hopefully be the launch of Astra's Rocket 3.1 tonight (window opening 10pm EDT/0200 UTC tomorrow), later tonight will finally be the next Starlink launch. It will be 57 Starlink satellites with the Black Sky Earth observation smallsat rideshare of two. Its window opens at 1:12am EDT (0512 UTC). It will be the fifth flight for first stage B1051.5, which launched Crew Dragon DM-1 for its first flight, then the RADARSAT constellation, and is now on its third Starlink launch. SpaceX is angling for the next Starlink launch to set a record. Currently penciled in for later in August, the next Starlink flight, which will be 58 with the second rideshare for Skysat. It will be launched by B1049.6, the first booster to attempt its sixth launch. Meanwhile, the next Ariane 5 launch has been put back on the manifest after its sensor-triggered scrub earlier this week. Carrying two comsats and the second Mission Extension Vehicle, it's currently schedule for a window opening next Friday, August 14, at 5:33pm EDT (2133 UTC). MEV-2 is targeted for Intelsat 1002. With MEV-1 going so well in its testing, MEV-2 will reach Intelsat 1002 while it's still in the Clarke Belt, instead of fishing it out of a graveyard orbit and bringing it down from there.
Falcon 9 launch was picture-perfect. (I actually woke up after and watched on replay) The two Black Sky satellites deployed separately. They were very bright, reflecting the Sun from behind the second stage being deployed south of Australia. At this posting, the Starlink satellites will deploy in 15 minutes. Rocket is in excellent shape, we will try again tomorrow.— Astra (@Astra) August 7, 2020 Astra scrubbed again, but this time it wasn’t the rocket's fault. They had issues with the sound suppression system. They've already said they’ll try again tonight, which I think will be their last chance in this series of attempts. Hopefully, they’ll finally get all their s*** together.
23 years ago today, Discovery was launched on STS-85 from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. The primary mission was the deployment and retrieval of CRISTA-SPAS 2, using the Shuttle Pallet Satellite free-floating experiment platform to deploy a cryogenically-cooled infrared telescope. It was deployed from Discovery for nine days. A secondary mission was a Canadarm demonstration involving some pre-installed truss. It was a Japanese demonstration coordinated by NASDA in connection with their planned contributions to the International Space Station. The crew of six included Jan Davis on her third and final flight, Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason on his only flight, and Robert Curbeam, the eighth African American astronaut, on his first flight. (I keep wanting to get back to Curbeam.)
Astra couldn't launch Rocket 3.1 last night due to windshear right at the expect altitude of max Q. They're now looking for their next opportunity. But prior to that, yesterday was actually a fairly hefty space news day. United Launch Alliance and SpaceX beat out Northrop Grumman and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for billions of dollars in US military rocket contracts, and will share the load in launching the Pentagon’s highest-priority space missions through 2027. READ MORE: https://t.co/9nbFFX8LlY pic.twitter.com/PE1pjSd7V0— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) August 8, 2020 The United Launch Alliance and SpaceX split the next contract for the next period of launches for the U.S. Department of Defense. The contract is for launches in 2022 through 2027, and will constitute a 60/40 split between ULA and SpaceX. The purpose of this was to remove the Russian-built RD-180 from the equation. Hence, ULA will be using the Vulcan rocket in these launches. The Vulcan is currently purposed to eliminate both Atlas V and Delta IV (which isn't connected to the elimination of the RD-180, just getting rid of Delta IV). Don't know where this will leave Boeing in ULA, but that's beyond the point. This leaves Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin out of the launch services equation respectively with OmegA and New Glenn for now. ******** But don't cry for either of them. Blue Origin is building the BE-4 liquid methane-fueled engine for the first stage of the Vulcan rocket. They have a lot more experience with liquid methane than SpaceX due to their BE-3 engine on the New Shepard suborbital joyride rocket. Still no idea when they plan on launching it with a crew. The capsule on top is designed to carry humans, but their plans to commercialize New Sherpard launches just keep slipping. Maybe that's why Jeff Bezos recently sold $5 billion in Amazon stock. Either that, or he's gonna buy the Washington NFL team. As for Northrop Grumman, they announced plans for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the planned core module for the Project Artemis Lunar Gateway. In the image above, it's the module to the left with the circular Cygnus-style solar panels in addition to rectangular panels; in fact, its construction is largely based on Cygnus, just at a much bigger scale and with human habitation in mind. HALO will have docking ports at zenith, nadir, forward, and aft. It will be the core control module with the central systems, similar to Zvezda on the International Space Station. It is currently set to launch in November 2023, though what rocket it will launch on has yet to be determined. It will launch with the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), the module docked at the HALO nadir port in the image above. It looks to me like it could launch on a New Glenn rocket, but that still needs to go through testing. ******** And SpaceX had some new proposed elements connected to their inclusion in the next DoD launch contract. Coming soon to Pad 39A with SpaceX's NSSL award:- Mobile Service Tower- Extended Falcon Heavy payload fairing pic.twitter.com/wfujmG7vXz— Michael Baylor (@MichaelBaylor_) August 7, 2020 This image was part of the presentation. Apparently, some upgrades are coming both to Falcon Heavy and to Pad 39A. The SpaceX side of the contract explicitly includes both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. FH is currently penciled in for its first Space Force launch some time in Q4 2020. So that could be put more solidly on the schedule soon. Pad 39A is going to see the return of a mobile service structure, undoubtedly to fulfill the DoD's desire to have payloads integrated at the pad. This will doubtlessly see utility with non-DoD launches in the future. Also, it appears the Falcon Heavy will get a stretched payload fairing. One of the questions I've always had was the possibility that Falcon Heavy's payload capacity could be limited by the 12ft diameter of the core stage that it is mounted on. There was no doubt in my mind that we could see a stretched fairing someday. Personally, I think SpaceX would be well-served by designing a wider core stage for Falcon Heavy, perhaps large enough for 13 Merlin 1D engines, so it would provide a true intermediary between the base Falcon 9 and Starship.
47 years ago today, Mars 7 was launched atop a Proton-K rocket from Site 81/24, Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was part of a pair of probes termed "Mars 3MP", both dedicated landers. The previous probe, Mars 6 (launched four days before), is believed to have landed on March 12, 1974, but 4 minutes of data that was returned was hopelessly garbled. As for Mars 7, it didn't even make it to the surface. It released from its bus probe prematurely, its retrorocket failed, and it flew by the planet at a distance of 1,300 km. In both cases, the failures were blamed on transistors that degraded during the course of the flight to Mars, crippling both probes' computer systems. Mars 7 would be their last attempt at Mars for 14 years. They did, however, have other designs for the 1970s. The ambitious Mars 4NM program featured the Marsokhod rovers, and the Mars 5NM program was planned to conduct sample returns. But these relied on the N-1 Moon rocket to succeed, which it did not. Marsokhod would be re-hashed in the 1990s as a joint Mars rover study with NASA connected to Roscosmos' Mars-96 program. The rover was ultimately not included, and the Mars-96 probe was lost in a launch failure on November 16, 1996. NASA would launch its own rover, Sojourner, in the 1996 launch window as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. Mars 5M was a sample return mission proposed for 1979 that involved two probes launched by Proton-K rockets, then docked together before going to Mars. I imagine one of the segments was the return segment to bring the samples back to Earth. Difficulties with the Igla docking system halted development of this mission. The Soviet Union would return to Mars with the Phobos probes in 1988. While the orbiters were successful, their attempted landers on the eponymous tiny moon were not.
19 years ago today, Discovery was launched on STS-105 from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. The mission was largely a logistics and crew rotation flight for the International Space Station. It brought the Leonardo Multi Purpose Logistics Module to the station for the second time, carrying 3,073 kg of equipment and supplies. Among the equipment were the first EXPRESS experiment racks to be outfitted in the Destiny laboratory module. Racks 4 and 5 were installed, and three more were to come in two subsequent missions. The mission also swapped the Expedition 2 crew of Yuri Usachev, James Voss, and Susan Helms, with the Expedition 3 crew of Frank Culbertson, Mikhail Tyurin, and Vladimir Dezhurov. Tyurin was the first rookie crewmember of an ISS Expedition. The mission lasted 12 days, of which 8 were spent docked to the ISS. Following the flight, Discovery was put into refit, during which it was outfitted with a glass cockpit, already installed on Atlantis and Columbia. It wouldn't fly again until after the Columbia disaster.
Part of Discovery's refit, beginning in 2002, was the Orbiter Major Modification (OMM). Prior to this, only Columbia had been put through OMM previously. OMM involved over 100 distinct systems and structural upgrades. I've looked around, and I've found very little technical information about what exactly was done with the OMM. If it was like the one for Columbia, then its computer systems were likely replaced. A lot of the structural work involved replacing things like bolts and windows. Both Atlantis and Endeavour were put into OMM following the Columbia disaster. Undoubtedly, more modifications were included to improve safety as a result. The glass cockpit was not part of the OMM. Endeavour received its glass cockpit during its OMM as well. Atlantis got its glass cockpit during its second Orbiter Maintenance Down Period (OMDP-2) in 1998. Columbia received its glass cockpit as a separate upgrade in 2001; its OMDPs were in 1994 and 1999, following OMM in 1991 associated with its prototype status to make it more like Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. The modifications were originally planned to take place at Boeing's orbiter production facilities in Palmdale, California. Boeing had acquired the original orbiter contractor, Rockwell, in late 1996. NASA got a move approved to consolidate maintenance at the Orbiter Processing Facilities at Kennedy Space Center in January 2002, permitting them to begin OMM work on Discovery there.
Happy 59th birthday to NASA astronaut Rick Sturckow. Born in suburban San Diego, he got a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from the Navy ROTC at Cal Poly in 1984. He went into the Marine Corps to become an Aviator, and took tours in the Western Pacific before going through TOPGUN in 1990. After that, he deployed to Bahrain for Desert Shield, and flew 41 combat missions over Iraq in Desert Storm. After returning from the Middle East, Rick was sent to Air Force Test Pilot School. After graduation, he did some test work on the F/A-18EF Super Hornet before being selected to NASA in the pilot track of Group 15 in 1994. Rick would get his assignments with the beginning of assembly for the Internation Space Station. He would be pilot for STS-88 (Endeavour, joining of Unity and Zarya, 1998) and STS-105 (2001, we were just over this). Between those missions, he earned his master's from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2000. Prior to the Columbia disaster, he was chosen to command Endeavour for STS-117, which was to bring the P5 truss segment to the ISS. The mission went forward in 2007, but with Rick commanding a completely different crew, the S3/S4 truss segment, and aboard Atlantis instead. Rick would also command STS-128 (Discovery, ISS logistics and outfitting, August 2009), and was selected as backup commander for STS-134 in 2011 in the wake of the assassination attempt on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the wife of assigned commander Mark Kelly. Rick took leadership roles in the Astronaut Office as Chief CAPCOM and Chief of the ISS branch later in his astronaut career. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2009 as a Colonel. He left NASA in 2013, and went to Virgin Galactic as a test pilot. He piloted VSS Unity, a model of SpaceShipTwo, on its first spaceflight by the USAF standard, reaching an apogee of over 51 miles. Rick is currently awaiting Virgin Galactic beginning operations on its suborbital space tourism racket. He is married, and has two children.
60 years ago today, the technical side of the Sino-Soviet split came to a head when 1,343 Soviet technicians were withdrawn from the Fifth Academy in the People's Republic of China. The move was the result of Chinese scientists having been discovered over the early portions of the year stealing research from the Moscow Aviation Institute. In retaliation, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev expelled all the Chinese engineers from the Soviet Union, and recalled his engineers from China. The withdrawal resulted in 343 Soviet contracts in China going incomplete. 257 Chinese development projects would never be finished as a result. Relations between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China would continue to deteriorate over the next six years, until China formally broke relations as part of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. This would lead to the People's Republic seeking to normalize relations with the United States in the 1970s.
Friday afternoon, Arianespace will once more attempt to launch the Ariane 5 ECA rocket that is carrying two comsats and the second Mission Extension Vehicle. The launch window opens at 5:33pm EDT. The next Falcon 9 launch, with the Black Sky rideshare of two smallsats and 58 Starlink probes, is scheduled for next Tuesday morning at 10:30am EDT. Its first stage will be B1049.6, and will be the first time SpaceX will attempt to recover a first stage for the sixth time. Another Delta IV Heavy is finally setting up for a launch. It will carry NROL-44, an Orion 10 SIGINT satellite. It is scheduled for Wednesday, August 26, with a window opening at 1:50am EDT and lasting over four hours.
Happy 77th birthday to NASA astronaut Jon McBride. I've mentioned him before, but only in passing. Born in Charleston, West Virginia, he graduated from the West Virginia Navy ROTC in 1964. By the time he was commissioned, he was married, and had already fathered one of his three children. After Aviator training at NAS Pensacola, Jon became a fighter pilot in the F-4 Phantom II, flying 64 combat missions over Vietnam. He would later go to Air Force Test Pilot School, after which he would be a project manager for further development of the AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile. He was selected to NASA in the pilot track of Group 8 in 1978. He was one of the chase pilots for the landing of Columbia following STS-1, and also worked in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory. He would be the pilot on Challenger for STS-41-G in October 1984. After that, Jon was selected to his first command, STS-61-E aboard Challenger, which would carry the ASTRO-1 astronomy package to study Halley's Comet in March 1986. Per the above link, you already know how that story ends. In 1987, he was stationed at NASA Headquarters as a liaison for Congressional relations. Following the successful RTF with STS-26 in 1988, Jon was offered command for the repurposed ASTRO-1 mission with STS-35. He declined, and retired from NASA and the Navy (final rank Captain) in May 1989. He would spend several years running businesses in West Virginia. He ran for Governor in 1996, but lost the Republican primary. Soon after, he spent time pursuing business opportunities in Arizona. Jon ultimately settled in Cocoa, Florida, in 2008. In addition to participating in Meet an Astronaut luncheons at KSC Visitor Complex, in the 2010s he worked with the facility on ride improvements. One of the projects he was assisting with was adding a landing segment to their Space Shuttle Experience ride. In addition to his three children, he has seven grandchildren.
Dragon Endeavour is back at Cape Canaveral. The capsule was shipped to Port Canaveral by its recovery ship, GO Navigator, and arrived last Friday. It was taken to a particular part of the base: Area 59. The terminology piques the humor of SpaceX fans, with some saying it's potentially more secretive than Area 51. But it's actually quite mundane. Area 59's exact location is uncertain to me, but I probably just didn't look hard enough. What I do know is it's located south of the base's skid strip, so it's on the southern half of the base. Until 2016, Area 59 was used for satellite processing for missions launched from the Cape. In 2018, it was leased to SpaceX for final prep of new Crew Dragon spacecraft, and post-mission servicing and turnaround of used Crew Dragon spacecraft. Servicing of Endeavour is predicted to take four months. They are planning on re-using it for the USCV-2 ISS crew rotation mission. That mission is penciled in with an NET date of February 2021, which obviously is dependent on how close USCV-1 is to its currently-planned September 27 launch date. ******** Meanwhile, yesterday Northrop Grumman completed its first test run of the new Graphite Epoxy Motor GEM-63XL solid rocket motor at the Thiokol testing ground in Utah. I keep forgetting that Thiokol's chain of acquisitions has put it under Northrop Grumman's thumb. This is another part of the testing for the Lockheed Martin Vulcan rocket, for which it will be used for thrust augmentation. Yet another reason not to feel sorry for NG not getting in on the DoD launch contract with OmegA. They'll make their money on the contract regardless. The GEM-63XL will be the longest small-scale SRM ever produced, at 22 m height. The regular GEM-63, which is less than 2 metres shorter for use among the last Atlas V rockets, is also larger than any SRM produced before it. They actually had to produce a new casting pit at Thiokol's Promontory, Utah, production facility to manufacture them.
Stuart Roosa was born on August 16, 1933, in Durango, Colorado. I've mentioned some weird paths to the astronaut program. Stu's path gets really weird. Out of high school, he kinda wandered through some colleges before becoming a smoke jumper at the U.S. Forest Service in 1953. After that, he went into one of the last aviation cadet programs, and was commissioned in the U.S. Air Force, ultimately becoming a test pilot. He tested the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, and also flew the Republic F-84 Thunderhawk and the North American F-100 Super Sabre. He finally got around to getting his bachelor's in aeronautical engineering from Colorado in 1960. After serving as a service engineering chief at Tachikawa Air Base in Japan in the mid-1960s, Stu was selected among the Original 19 astronaut group in 1966. He completed training so quick, he was already on a support crew that very year. That support crew was for Apollo 204. He was the CAPCOM for the plugs-out test that led to the crew's deaths. He was also on the support crew for Apollo 9. He would eventually be swapped into the prime crew for Apollo 14 as command module pilot. He orbited the Moon 34 times while Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked in the Fra Mauro highlands. He would also serve as backup CM pilot for both Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. It is believed he could've commanded Apollo 20 if it weren't canceled. He was assigned to the Space Shuttle program, but retired from NASA and the Air Force (final rank Colonel) in 1976. Prior to leaving NASA, Stu took part in an advanced business seminar at Harvard Business School. In 1981, he opened a distributor for Coors in Mississippi, one of the earliest Coors distributors east of the Mississippi River. In late 1994, Stu developed pancreatitis. With his body compromised, he contracted viral pneumonia, and died on December 12, 1994, aged 61. He was survived by his wife and four children. His wife was buried next to him at Arlington National Cemetery in 2007.
77 years ago today, the Royal Air Force launched a bomber assault directly on Peenemunde in Operation Hydra. The target was the restarted V-2 rocket program. 596 heavy bombers were sent on the mission: 324 Avro Lancasters, 218 Hadley Page Halifaxes, and 54 Short Stirlings. The RAF was willing to accept a loss of up to 50% of the bombers if it meant doing meaningful damage to the rocket program of Nazi Germany. They ultimately lost 50: 47 were shot down, and three more didn't make it back. A total of 1.5 kT of bombs were dropped on the rocket facility and the city. 180 German civilians and over 500 concentration camp slaves were killed. 245 British airmen were killed, with 45 captured. It's unknown how many of the British POWs survived the war. Two of the rocket scientists, Walter Thiel and Erich Walther, were killed in the raid. Both were killed in the first of three bombing waves that night. Wernher von Braun's home at the facility was destroyed in the third wave, but he had already been evacuated. Although setbacks were originally calculated at 4-6 weeks, it would take months for the V-2 rocket program to resume its work. Part of the mission was a whitebait mission by eight de Havilland Mosquitoes and 10 Bristol Beaufighters which were sent to Berlin as a diversion. They dropped flares and minimal loads of bombs. I didn't see any casualties among the whitebaiters, but they did kill three Germans and one slave laborer in Berlin. The diversion was credited for the heavy damage and relatively low British casualties in the main attacks on Peenemunde. As a result, the Chief of Staff for the Luftwaffe, Hans Jeschonnek, committed suicide. Ironically, the Luftwaffe base at Peenemunde was largely untouched. Nazi Germany would go on to fabricate signs of even heavier damage at Peenemunde in an attempt to persuade the United Nations that they had sustained a fatal blow to their rocketry program. Still, there would be three bombing runs against Peenemunde in 1944, all spearheaded by the U.S. Army Air Force.
The launch of USCV-1 has been delayed about four weeks, to NET October 23. NASA says it's not because of any issues with Demonstration Mission 2, but rather to better fit it in with other scheduled missions arriving at the International Space Station. Kounotori 9 is currently scheduled to undock later today, and is set to re-enter on Thursday. Cygnus NG-14, whose name has not yet been announced, is scheduled to launch on September 30. Soyuz MS-17 is scheduled to launch and arrive on October 14. It will carry the first part of the crew of Expedition 64, which the crew of USCV-1 will join. ******** Arianespace finally launched its latest Ariane 5 ECA rocket from Pad A-3, Guiana Space Centre, this past Saturday night at 6:04pm EDT (2204 UTC). Among its payloads were the second Mission Extension Vehicle. It will use ion engines to take a five-month trip to meet Intelsat 10-02. MEV-1 took four months to reach geostationary orbit. The reason MEV-2 will take longer is because of the different GTO model Arianespace uses for its launches compared to Roscosmos, United Launch Alliance, or SpaceX. The rocket had a set of incremental upgrades with a lighter avionics package and modifications to the payload fairing. These improvements increase its capacity to GTO by 85 kg. The fairing changes in particular will be needed for the James Webb Space Telescope launch, currently set for Halloween 2021. That launch date doesn't tempt fate at all. ******** The next Falcon 9 launch, carrying 58 more Starlink comsats and three SkySat Earth observation satellites, is set to launch this morning at 10:31am EDT (14:31 UTC). The 45th Space Wing is currently predicting a 70% chance of favorable weather at launch. ******** And one last thing... First female general officer promotes, transfers to Space Forcehttps://t.co/ZTEJP723z6 pic.twitter.com/0EjOQXr91x— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) August 17, 2020 Yesterday, the U.S. Space Force got their first female general officer. LtGen Nina Armagno transferred from the U.S. Air Force to the Space Force. In the ceremony, she was promoted from Major General to Lieutenant General, and named the Director of Staff at Space Force Headquarters. She graduated from Air Force in 1988, and went to Squadron Officer School in 1992. She's been serving in space systems pretty much her entire military career, specializing in missile warning systems and space surveillance. She's previously been in command at both the 30th and 45th Space Wings (successively in that order, not at the same time), overseeing launches at both Vandenberg AFB and Cape Canaveral AFS.
SpaceX's launch yesterday was on-time and perfect. And first stage B1049.6 stuck the landing, the first time a first stage was caught for the sixth time. Something I found out recently is that SpaceX is only inspecting first stage boosters and repairing as needed through ten flights. Their plan is to refurbish after ten flights. I have no idea if they would theoretically put a first stage through multiple refurbishments. ******** NASA is completing its Green Propellant Infusion Mission. The GPIM probe was launched as part of the second Space Test Program mission (STP-2) on a Falcon Heavy rocket in June 2019. It was placed into a roughly 440-mile circular orbit. The objective of the mission was to eliminate hydrazine from monopropellant space systems. The monopropellant used on GPIM is AF-M315E, chemical name hydroxylammonium nitrate. The probe carried basic Earth sciences experiments, as well as some collision avoidance experiments. NASA is satisfied with AF-M315E's effectiveness at both attitude control and delta-V firings. They are now lowering GPIM's perigee to 111 miles. The higher drag at the new perigee will eventually drag it down so it will fall out of orbit and burn up within a few weeks. ******** The first polar orbit launch from Cape Canaveral in 60 years finally has a solid date again. Delayed because of Argentina's lockdown from the pandemic, the SAOCOM 1B Earth observation satellite has finally been returned to the manifest with a launch date of next Thursday, August 27, at 7:19pm EDT (2319 UTC). But oh wait... did I say first in 60 years? It turns out it was only 51 years. NASA did attempt to launch a satellite into polar orbit from Cape Kennedy in 1969. It was the ESSA-9 probe. ESSA, the Environmental Science Services Administration, was the predecessor organisation to NOAA; it was reorganized in 1970. The ESSA probes were based on the TIROS satellite. Future satellites in this vein, based initially on TIROS-M, would begin a new series with the NOAA name. The original ESSA series of probes was not re-named. Previous ESSA probes, along with future NOAA satellites (but not all TIROS satellites), were launched from Vandenberg AFB. But NASA decided they wanted to give a polar orbit launch from Cape Kennedy another try. This launch, conducted with a Thor-Delta E1 rocket from Pad 17B, took place on February 26, 1969. While it did succeed, NASA has not attempted a polar orbit launch from Cape Canaveral since then. I would imagine they didn't attempt the dogleg maneuver that SpaceX will try to avoid as much occupied land during the first stage burn as possible, and probably launched over the Florida peninsula again.
The #Nauka module for @roscosmos has arrived at Baikonur for final launch processing! But it's not the only @Space_Station expansion (and deconstruction) effort Russia has planned over 2021 and 2022.Ian Atkinson (@IanPineapple) has the story for you: https://t.co/DMyVBk8s27— Chris G (@ChrisG_SpX) August 19, 2020 JFC, Nauka finally showed up at Baikonur Cosmodrome for its final pre-launch checkouts. The module, derived directly from the TKS functional cargo block modules, has been delayed for 13 years, forcing multiple overhauls of expired systems. It's currently penciled in on the manifest for an April 20, 2021, launch atop a Proton-M rocket. It was originally set to be a second FGB, but is now termed a Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module. Its name is Russian for "science". It will replace the Pirs airlock at Zvezda nadir. Its arrival is supposed to begin a new period of expansion at the International Space Station. Presuming it arrives on time, it will be followed later in 2021 (currently penciled in for Q3) by Prichal, a new docking module like the docking node at the core of Mir. It was formerly known as Uzlovoy. It will be launched by a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, and dock at Nauka nadir. Like Pirs and Poisk before it, it will be part of a modified Progress spacecraft, in this case Progress M-UM. It will serve as the eventual base of OPSEK, a future Russian space port which will serve much the same purpose as the Project Artemis Lunar Gateway. With the plan, Prichal will be the only permanent part of OPSEK, with modules docked to it swapped out when they exceed their service life. Only Prichal will be refurbished on-orbit. A Science and Power Module which will connect to Prichal is planned for a 2022 launch, but funding for it has been limited.
Great to see that our home spaceport in Sutherland has been fully approved. We're pleased to have helped design this facility & looking forward to launching contracted customers on Orbex's re-usable space launch vehicle from the UK's 1st orbital spaceport. https://t.co/PdlvRBjFxW— Orbex Space (@orbexspace) August 19, 2020 Yesterday, a planning council that governs development in the Highlands of Scotland approved Sutherland Spaceport, the first launch facility for the United Kingdom Space Agency. The spaceport will be located on A' Mhòine Peninsula, which is roughly dead center on the north shore of Great Britain. It will be located roughly 200 miles due north of Glasgow, and 80 miles north of Inverness. Their first launch pad is hoped to be ready by early 2022 for the Orbex Prime rocket. Prime is planned to be a smallsat rocket with an SSO capacity up to 500 kg. They are planning on it being fueled by propane, and they want to re-use the first stage. Orbex is not the only British rocket startup. There's another company forming in Edinburgh called Skyrora. They've already tested a couple suborbital rockets in preparation for their orbital rocket, the Skyrora XL. They've done engine tests with RP-1 and Ecosene, an experimental fuel derived from waste plastic. Skyrora wants to launch from the UK as well, but doesn't have solid plans for a launch facility as of yet. They are targeting a maiden launch in 2023.
Despite the four-week delay in the mission, allegedly for scheduling issues, work is proceeding quite well in the lead-up to the first operational Commercial Crew mission, USCV-1. On Tuesday, Crew Dragon capsule C207 arrived at Kennedy Space Center for final checkout. The second stage that will place it in orbit underwent a successful static fire at SpaceX's testing facility in McGregor, Texas, that same day. Its first stage, B1061, has been in Florida for the past month, and is waiting at SpaceX's integration facility near Pad 39A.
Gregory Jarvis was born on August 24, 1944, in Detroit. He grew up in the central upstate New York town of Mohawk, then went into the Air Force ROTC at SUNY-Buffalo. After graduating with an electrical engineering degree in 1967, he was permitted to do postgraduate study before his service commitment. He earned his master's from Northeastern in 1969. Gregory spent four years in the Air Force, and was honorably discharged as a Captain in 1973. He then went to work with Hughes, where he worked on satellite design. In 1984, Hughes offered him up to be a payload specialist on a Space Shuttle flight. The plan was for him to study the behavior of fluids in microgravity. Two planned mission appearances, STS-51-D and STS-61-C, were both aborted when he was bumped for a sitting Congressman. Respectively, Sen. Jake Garn and Rep. Bill Nelson. His next stop was STS-51-L. Something something Challenger disaster... He was 41. His story, however, doesn't quite end there. His corpse actually disappeared from the middeck of Challenger during recovery efforts at the bottom of the Atlantic. He slipped out of the flight deck as it was being raised, floated to the surface, and was washed away in the current. They finally found his remains again in mid-April 1986, in one of the last official recovery sweeps for wreckage. He left a wife and three children. His high school in Mohawk was renamed for him, though it is now a middle school (it was previously Junior and Senior High). He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific.
Starship is preparing for its next set of hops at Boca Chica. SN6 was fitted with a Raptor engine, and successfully conducted a static fire Sunday night. They are now proceeding toward a 150m hop, which could happen as early as this Friday. The next series of hops won't be done with SN5. Not yet, anyway. Apparently, it sustained some stress damage when landing from its first 150m hop earlier this month, and SpaceX needs to repair it. Those repairs are ongoing, but SN6 is ready for its own campaign, so they are proceeding with it. They are hoping to make multiple hops with SN6, as well as SN5 once it's repaired, to refine launch and processing procedures. SN7.1 is going to be another tank-only structure that will be put through fatal pressure tests. SpaceX wants to see just how strong the tanks are when manufactured with 304L, a stainless steel alloy. SN8 will be fitted with three Raptor engines and a nose cone. It is planned for flights as high as 20 km altitude, with hopes to test landing techniques. Parts for an SN9 have already been sighted, and that is believed to be a backup to SN8, much as SN6 is backing up SN5.
22 years ago today, Singapore-Taiwan 1 was launched atop an Ariane 4 44P rocket from Pad A-2, Guiana Space Centre. ST-1 was a joint venture between Singapore Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom, the biggest telecom company in Taiwan. It provided telephone, DBS, and VSAT services between Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The comsat was used for 13 years, replaced promptly by ST-2 after its launch in 2011.
The launch of NROL-44 atop a Delta IV Heavy was pushed back from early tomorrow morning to early Thursday morning. ULA cited a "customer request". The launch time 2:12am EDT (0612 UTC). That will be just over four hours after the planned launch of Electron's return-to-flight, late tonight at 11:05pm EDT (0305 UDT tomorrow, 3:05pm tomorrow local time). The Electron rocket will be carrying an Earth observation satellite, Whitney-1 by Capella Space. Its mission name is "I Can't Believe It's Not Optical". ******** Meanwhile, Boeing is getting ahead of themselves and naming more crew to their first crew rotation with Starliner. That mission is planned to be commanded by Sunita Williams. She is being joined by rookies John Cassada and Jeanette Epps. A fourth crew slot is available. Epps has had an interesting journey to becoming the second female African American astronaut. Jeanette Epps was born on November 3, 1970, in Syracuse, New York. She was part of a pair of twins (with sister Janet), and has at least one other sibling, a brother. We'll get to him shortly. After getting a bachelor's in aerospace engineering from Le Moyne College, a local private university, she began postgraduate research at Maryland, during which she took part in a NASA fellowship. She ultimately got a doctorate, and published many research papers. After her academic work. Dr. Epps spent some time as a researcher at Ford Motor Company before taking a technical intelligence job at the CIA. Her specialty seems to have been forensics; she got a patent while at Ford for technology to detect the location of a frontal collision. She was selected to NASA as part of Group 20 in 2009. During her training, she took part in both the NEEMO 18 underwater expedition and the CAVES 19 underground expedition. She's one of the few astronauts to do both, and only the second woman to take part in CAVES. She was selected to Soyuz MS-09, which would've put her on Expeditions 56 and 57 in the second half of 2018. This would've made her the first African American on an Expedition to the International Space Station. But that January, she was removed from the flight in favor of fellow Group 20 recruit Serena Auñon-Chancellor. Auñon-Chancellor was previously set for Expeditions 58/59, and was replaced there by Anne McClain. I don't think any official explanation was given for Epps' removal from the flight, only that she would be considered for future missions. Her brother, however, went on a Facebook rant claiming Epps had been fighting "oppressive racism and misogyny" at NASA, and suggesting that her removal was retaliatory. That post was later removed. Dr. Epps refused to comment about her brother's comments at the time, and it hasn't come up since. There are certainly plenty of astronauts that have been bumped from missions, and many who have waited a long time to fly. Now, the only question remaining for Dr. Epps is whether or not Boeing can finally get their s*** together. Maybe she can be put on a SpaceX mission if they can't.
Launch Update: The launch window for our #ICantBelieveItsNotOptical mission opens tomorrow, but due to weather we’re now targeting no earlier than 03:05, 29 Aug UTC. PT: 20:05, Aug 28ET: 23:05, Aug 28 NZT: 15:05, Aug 29 Stay tuned for updates! pic.twitter.com/6UCHAFcDP7— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) August 25, 2020 "I Can't Believe It's Not Optical" has been shifted from late tonight EDT to late Friday night EDT due to Weather. Meanwhile, Rocket Labs locked up a dedicated launch for European conglomerate OHB Group yesterday. It will be a single comsat currently targeting a Q1 2021 launch. ******** SpaceX has put another Starlink launch on the manifest. It's listed right now just for 60 Starlink satellites, and is scheduled for Sunday morning at 10:08am EDT. The first stage will be B1060.2, the second flight for the booster that lifted the most recent GPS Block IIIA satellite on June 30. If the launch time holds, it will be the second reflight with a sub-2 month recycle, after they did the same with B1058 from DM-2 to ANASIS-II. The September manifest for SpaceX currently has two possible Starlink flights, the SXM-7 comsat for SiriusXM, and the next GPS Block IIIA satellite. Only the GPS launch is penned in with a certain launch time, with a four-hour-long window opening at 8pm EDT on September 30 (0000-0400 UTC October 1). Only the GPS launch currently has a booster assigned to it, new booster B1062. If SpaceX is looking to further explore pushing its turnaround time lower, then I'd imagine we might see B1049 and/or B1051 for the Starlink launches. There's a part of me that thinks Starlink is a front to test the limits of Falcon 9 first-stage reusability without risking other people's payloads.
3 1/2 years ago, I mentioned two approaching asteroid missions, Lucy and Psyche. I would hear about both on occasion, but I got a detail today about one of them that was very big indeed. It's amazing what you can glean off idle Twitter conversations. An insight into the early processes that go into preparations for launching flagship missions. The Psyche (asteroid) mission is scheduled for July 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from KSC 39A.So these preps are happening almost two years from launch: https://t.co/P9P3LLScPm— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) August 26, 2020 It turns out, Psyche has not only been moved up, but has been penned in to be the first operational interplanetary mission on the Falcon Heavy rocket. A few months after it was announced, scientists planning Psyche's trajectory to its eponymous target, the super-dense Main Belt asteroid 16 Psyche, discovered a more efficient trajectory if they moved the launch forward one year. Instead of launching in 2023 to arrive some time in 2030, as I originally reported, it can now launch in the summer of 2022, take a gravity assist of Mars in 2023, and arrive at Psyche in early 2026. It is currently penciled in for August 2022. Its placement on Falcon Heavy was announced this past March. That was after it had completed three successful launches over 2018 and 2019. ******** Two other missions will be included on the Psyche launch: EscaPADE, and Janus. Both are technology demonstrators to see if smallsats can accomplish interplanetary missions currently reserved for much larger probes. EscaPADE will study the mechanics of the solar wind stripping Mars of its atmosphere. It's being framed as a follow-up to MAVEN, and is being developed by one of MAVEN's educational partners, UC-Berkeley. It will attempt to enter areocentric orbit while Psyche and Janus fly by in 2023. Janus is a pair of smallsats that will bring cameras in visible light and infrared to study binary asteroids in the Main Belt. Neither of its targets have official names yet. Janus is being developed by Lockheed Martin with assistance from Colorado-Boulder. If its mission goes as hoped, the probes will reach their targets around the same time Psyche arrives at its target. ******** As for Lucy, it has a launch window that spans from mid-October to early-November 2021. It's set to launch on an Atlas V 401 rocket. It's planned to observe Trojan asteroids, asteroids that are fellow travelers in Jupiter's orbit, from 2027 through 2033. Its launch services were locked in at the end of January 2019. SpaceX protested the contract, but withdrew the protest after a month.