Our #Inspiration4 crew took many amazing photos in space during their three-day mission, including this out-of-this-world selfie!Jared, Hayley, Sian, and Chris are back home on Earth, but our team is still fundraising for @StJude. Join that effort: https://t.co/NBUL2e3f4x pic.twitter.com/gerXjLbVLY— Inspiration4 (@inspiration4x) September 19, 2021 Inspiration4 landed pretty much on time, splashing down off Cape Canaveral Saturday night at 7:06pm EDT. They were recovered by GO Searcher, and left the capsule with minimal assistance. This marked the first splashdown of a crewed spacecraft in the actual Atlantic Ocean since Apollo 9. Prior to the de-orbit, Crew Dragon Resilience had its orbit lowered to 365 km on Friday afternoon. During splashdown operations, a series of rolling temporary flight restrictions (TFR) was issued down both Florida coasts to ensure airspace was clear for the return, with an extended TFR for the recovery site once it splashed down. Like with the launch, there was some concern about the weather delaying landing. But it cleared up enough for them to be able to finish the mission on time. Another series of TFR's was planned for 3am EDT Sunday morning in case weather delayed the mission's return. SpaceX Booster B1062 arrives to Port Canaveral after 3 flights. GPS-III SV04, GPS-III SV05, & Inspiration4!@inspiration4x @elonmusk 📷: Me for @SuperclusterHQ pic.twitter.com/Gc3MRhiDjA— Jenny Hautmann (@JennyHPhoto) September 19, 2021 In another first, Resilience beat the rocket that lifted it into space back to port. B1062.3 was towed into Port Canaveral last night.
51 years ago today, Luna 16 landed on the Moon, roughly between Webb and Langrenus craters in Mare Fecunditatis. The sixth of the Luna E-8-5 landers intended for sample returns, it was the first to succeed at the mission. Though far too late to extract any sort of propaganda victory that might've blunted the United States completing the first manned landing on the Moon. In total, it collected 101 grams of lunar soil from a single scoop of the surface. It was deposited into a return capsule, which was launched the next day into a direct return trajectory to Earth. Despite no mid-course corrections, the capsule parachuted to a landing in the morning of September 24, 80 km southeast of Jezkazgan, Kazakh SSR. About 0.5 g was sent to the United Kingdom.
Less than four weeks away from the next fly-by of Venus by the Parker Solar Probe on October 16. This next fly-by will raise its velocity at perihelion by another 16 km/s, lowering its orbital period to 96 days. Its perihelion will go down to 9.2 million km, turning up the heat for the probe. Another seven perihelions will take place before the next fly-by of Venus, which should happen in August 2023. ******** Meanwhile, H3 is inching its way closer to its first flight. One of the things that has delayed H3 is issues with development of its Mitsubishi LE-9 first-stage engines. But the SRB-3 SRMs have been ready since last year. JAXA is still hoping to get its first test flight up in 1Q 2022. In addition to the HTV-X, which will hopefully have its first flight later next year, JAXA is studying designs for an HTV-XG variant for the Lunar Gateway. Such a logistics spacecraft could be launched on a possible H3 Heavy variant using three H3 first stages strapped together, or even a Falcon Heavy rocket.
52 years ago today, Guinness Superlatives, the organization behind the Guinness Book of World Records, officially inquired with NASA about the distances achieved by its lunar missions to that point. It would establish that the furthest humans from Earth were the astronauts of Apollo 8, who were 377,348.704 km (234,473.614 miles) from Earth while behind the Moon during their 10th and final lunar orbit. This would be surpassed about 7 months later when Apollo 13 was further from Earth during their cislunar emergency return.
48 years ago today, the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), the predecessor organization to the European Space Agency, signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA regarding the construction of Spacelab. Spacelab would be spearheaded by Entwicklungsring Nord (ERNO), which started in 1969 as a joint venture between German aerospace firms VFW and Fokker. Other European companies would join, including Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (which would subsequently acquire VFW), and companies in the Netherlands and Belgium. ERNO would eventually become the de facto engineering firm that would drive the European Space Agency. It was eventually acquired by EADS, and went through the other already-established jumps of the European military-industrial complex.
The long-awaited next flight of Falcon Heavy, USSF-44, finally has a more solid launch date. It is set to launch the USSF-44 comsat directly to geostationary orbit on October 9. It will also carry some satellite servicing technology demonstrators for Lockheed Martin. Side boosters B1064 and B1065, along with core booster B1066, are set to launch the payloads. USSF-44 is heavy enough that they will need to recover the boosters on drone ships, and expend the core booster. The current plan is to catch B1064.1 on Just Read the Instructions, and B1065.1 on A Shortfall of Gravitas. ******** Meanwhile, coming Commercial Lunar Payload Service landers are reserving their landing sites on the Moon. The Astrobotics Griffin rover is scheduled to launch atop a Falcon Heavy rocket in November 2023, and has a target near Nobile crater in the south polar region. Their MoonRanger rover, which will be launched on a separate Falcon 9 rocket around the same time, is targeting Haworth crater, even closer to the lunar south pole than Griffin. The Firefly Blue Ghost lander is planned to land at a target in Mare Crisium following a launch in 2Q 2023. It will be launched by a Falcon 9. Another unspecified lander is targeting a feature called Reinar Gamma. It is currently planned for December 2023. Reinar Gamma, located near the western edge of Oceanus Procellarum, is referred to as a "lunar swirl". There are several of these features on the near side, and they are noted for unusually high albedo. They were originally believed to be highland areas, but they don't produce any shadow at all., suggesting they are not any higher than their surroundings. Probably the most interesting part of these swirls is that they tend to produce more magnetism than other parts of the lunar surface. This anomaly has been corroborated by the Lunar Prospector and Kaguya orbital missions.
Happy 55th birthday to NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson. Born in Boston and raised in Western Mass, her father was a Navy veteran, and both her parents worked in the military-industrial complex, particularly Martin Marietta. After getting her own bachelor's in electrical engineering from Harvard in 1988, she joined them at Martin Marietta, working on systems on the Titan IV rocket. After two years, she left Martin to do post-grad work at Texas, earning her master's in aerospace engineering in 1992. She would go to JPL after graduation, and was one of the engineers who worked on overcoming the broken high-gain antenna on Galileo. She also worked on interferometry in remote sensing. She was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in the mission specialist track of Group 16 in 1996. At various points, she has worked on payload displays and engine systems. Her first mission was STS-121, a logistics mission to the International Space Station and the second Columbia RTF flight, aboard Discovery in July 2006. With that mission, she became the second African American woman in space. She would also fly STS-120, which she was originally scheduled to fly before the Columbia disaster. In fact, she was the only originally-docketed astronaut retained for the mission. Originally intended to fly in February 2004 on Endeavour, it was instead flown on Discovery in October 2006. The mission would install the Harmony node to the ISS. Her third mission was STS-131, another ISS logistics mission flown aboard Discovery in April 2010. In addition to being part of Project Artemis, Stephanie is currently on the backup crew for USCV-3. Her spot is reserved for a possible Russian cosmonaut on SpaceX Crew-4.
I've mentioned the launch of STS-93, with Columbia delivering the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to orbit, in the past. But as it turns out, I didn't quite do it justice. It was early in the thread. But they threw the kitchen sink at the first female Shuttle commander, Eileen Collins. You see, three days earlier, the launch was scrubbed when one of the console operators at launch control saw an unusual spike of hydrogen in the orbiter's aft compartment. As it turns out, an oxidizer post in the number three (right) RS-25 engine was loose. On ignition, it was violently ejected, tearing open three of the coolant lines in the engine nozzle. I'm fairly sure that's the bright flare on the dorsal side of the inner surface of the engine bell. At T+5 seconds, two of the engine digital control units (DCU) failed. One engine lost its primary, and another lost its backup. The unusual heating from the severed coolant lines affected wires that had suffered undetected damage. The remaining controller in the #3 engine detected a slightly decreased thrust due to the hydrogen leak, and increased oxidizer flow to compensate. This resulted in the main engines shutting down fractionally earlier than expected. But the velocity deficit at MECO was only 15 m/s, a delta-v that the OMS could easily compensate for. The mission otherwise proceeded as planned. The incident led to a fleet-wide inspection of wiring, and some changes in maintenance practices. During orbiter processing, they began to replace damaged oxidizer posts instead of plugging them with gold pins. The inspections delayed missions for five months.
Dianne Prinz was born on September 29, 1938, in Economy, Pennsylvania. After getting a degree in physics from Pitt in 1960, she entered post-grad research at Johns Hopkins University. She had developed an interest in studying "space weather", and that was as good a place as any to be at the forefront. After earning her doctorate in 1967, she spent four years as a professor at Maryland before being hired by the Naval Research Laboratory in 1971. One of her first projects was developing a spectroheliograph to be flown on sounding rockets. Her life's work would come with the Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SUSIM), an instrument developed to measure the variance in ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. She was selected as a payload specialist candidate to fly with it on the Space Shuttle, and ultimately served as backup for STS-51-F in 1985. SUSIM was one of the main instruments of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which was launched by Discovery on STS-48 in 1991. She would be part of the instrument's research team, and eventually take over as its principal investigator. Dianne retired from the NRL in 2001 due to lymphatic cancer. She died on October 12, 2002, aged 64.
Fair winds and following seas fine telescope! https://t.co/3ctevC3tib— Julia Bergeron (@julia_bergeron) September 30, 2021 The James Webb Space Telescope is on a boat. It is finally on its way to Guiana Space Centre to be fitted within its fairing and placed atop an Ariane 5ECA rocket. Currently, it is scheduled to be launched on December 18. NASA and ESA are taking a different approach with Hubble's designated successor. Its wavelength range will be 600 nm to 28.3 microns. From orange through near-infrared. The infrared portion will require cooling, but not the active cooling for telescopes like IRAS and Spitzer that went further into infrared. The telescope will be placed in a halo orbit at the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrangian point, far beyond the orbit of the Moon, to get it further away from the gigantic heat sink that is Earth. It will also use a gigantic Kapton shield to block the Sun, keeping the mirror below 50 K (-223 °C). With the focus being on the stars, it's not necessary to capture all wavelengths of visible light. Of course, given the distance, if they discover something wrong post-launch like they did with Hubble, then they're screwed. Maybe. I'm sure Elon might have something to say about that.
Raja Chari was born on June 24, 1977, in Milwaukee. His father emigrated from India and married an American. After graduating from Air Force with a double bachelor's in astronautical engineering and engineering science in 1999, he did a fellowship at MIT, earning a master's in aeronautical and astronautical engineering in 2001. After commissioning in the Air Force and completing pilot training, Raja specialized in the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle. He deployed out of England during the Iraq War. After completing test pilot training at the Naval Test Pilot School in 2007, he became a weapons-oriented test pilot out of Eglin AFB in Florida. After completing Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and working with time-sensitive targeting at CENTCOM, Raja became the commanding officer of the 461st Flight Test Squadron at Edwards AFB. It was here where he was selected to NASA as part of Astronaut Group 22 in 2017. In addition to being part of Project Artemis, Raja was the first Group 22 recruit to be selected for a space mission. With USCV-3, he will be the first rookie astronaut to command a mission since Gerald Carr with Skylab 4 in 1973. (Joe Engle doesn't count as a rookie with STS-2, since he reached space as an X-15 pilot.) Raja is still active in the U.S. Air Force, and has the rank of colonel. He is married, and has three children.
Thomas Marshburn was born on August 29, 1960, in Statesville, North Carolina, and raised in Atlanta. He worked his way through college, getting a bachelor's in physics from Davidson in 1982 and a master's in engineering physics from Virginia in 1984, before pivoting to medicine. He earned his MD from Wake Forest in 1989, and did his fellowship in emergency medicine in Toledo. In 1994, Tom was one of the first selectees in NASA's Space Medicine Fellowship, a joint venture with the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He also spent time as an attending ER physician in Houston. He would shuttle between Houston and Moscow as a flight surgeon during Shuttle and ISS missions. During this time he would become Medical Operations Lead for the International Space Station. Tom was selected to NASA in the mission specialist track of Group 19 in 2004. His first mission was STS-127 aboard Endeavour in July 2009, where he did three EVAs to help install the exposed facility of the Kibō module. He would return to the ISS with Expeditions 34 and 35 on Soyuz TM-07M in December 2012 through May 2013. During Expedition 35, he would participate in a snap EVA to inspect a possible coolant leak. Tom is set to be pilot of USCV-3. He is married, and has one child.
Mattias Maurer was born on March 18, 1970, in St. Wendel, Germany. After graduating from high school, he did compulsory civil service with a paramedic unit, then studied materials science at several universities throughout Europe. He earned his doctorate in engineering from Aachen in 2004, and would get an MBA from Hagen in 2006. Mattias holds several patents in connection to his research in aluminum foam and thermal spray coatings. As a runner-up for the 2009 European Space Agency astronaut group, this would earn him connections to work as a crew support engineer for the Columbus module at the ISS. He would finally be selected as an ESA astronaut in 2015. Mattias will be the ESA contribution to USCV-3. His mission with ISS Expeditions 66 and 67 will be "Cosmic Kiss".
Kayla Sax was born on September 19, 1987, in Pocatello, Idaho. Raised in suburban Walla Walla, Washington, she was selected to Navy, where she competed in track and cross country, and earned her bachelor's in systems engineering in 2010. She then completed a fellowship at Cambridge, earning a master's in nuclear engineering in 2013. Somewhere along the way, she married Army Special Forces officer Tom Barron. After returning from Cambridge, Kayla was selected as one of the first women to be commissioned as a submarine warfare officer. She completed three patrols as a division officer aboard the nuclear sub USS Maine. She was serving as Flag Officer for the Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy when she was selected to NASA as part of Group 22 in 2017. Kayla's selection to USCV-3 makes her the second member of the group to receive a crew assignment. Her current rank in the Navy is lieutenant commander.
Soyuz MS-18 is being taken for a spin around the block. Relocating to the Nauka docking port.Live on NASA TV:https://t.co/DPTxO69p4f pic.twitter.com/KUplwiPSdA— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) September 28, 2021 Last Tuesday, Soyuz MS-18 was relocated from Rassvet to Nauka nadir and its interim docking port. The docking will clear the way for Soyuz MS-19. Soyuz MS-19 will carry cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov along with a commercial crew of two: Klim Shipenko, and Yulia Peresild. They will be there to film orbital portions for the Russian film The Challenge, produced by Channel One Russia. Soyuz MS-19 is planned to launch tomorrow morning at 4:55am EDT, and will do the typical two-orbit express rendezvous profile before itself docking at Rassvet. After a week and a half on the International Space Station, Shipenko and Peresild will return aboard Soyuz MS-18 with cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky on October 17. Once the film crew leaves, Expedition 65 will transition to Expedition 66. Initially, Thomas Pesquet will serve as Commander, and is scheduled to receive the docking of USCV-3, which is planned to launch early morning October 30. Once USCV-2 leaves on November 8, Shkaplerov will take over as station commander. Novitsky's crewmates, Mark Vande Hei and Pyotr Dubrov, have been approved for a year-long stay on the ISS. They are currently planning on leaving with Shkaplerov on Soyuz MS-19 at the end of March 2022 once their relief arrives aboard Soyuz MS-21. In the interim, a Space Adventures flight will be done with Soyuz MS-20 in December 2021, carrying two Japanese space tourists. One is a billionaire from fashion, and the other will be there to document his flight. It will be the first explicit space tourism flight to the ISS since Soyuz TMA-16 in 2009.
61 years ago today, Courier 1B was launched atop a Thor-Ablestar rocket from from Pad 17B, Cape Canaveral. It was a reflight from two months previous, when Courier 1A was lost in a launch failure. Instead, Courier 1B would become the world's first active repeater communications satellite. Launched into a roughly 900x1,200-km orbit at the minimal inclination from the Cape, it was used for various tests of the technology. The first message sent with the satellite was a teletype from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the United Nations General Assembly. The probe failed after 17 days. It is believed its on-board clock got out of sync, rendering the probe unable to properly interpret access codes. The launch represented the 100th launch attempt of a Thor-based missile, as well as the fifth launch of the Ablestar upper stage.
Thank you for following @ESA_Bepi @ESA_MTM @JAXA_MMO for our first #BepiColombo #MercuryFlyby! All images will be in the Planetary Science Archive later next week 👍 We'll also catch up with our science teams eagerly awaiting their first tastes of Mercury science data! 🤩 pic.twitter.com/eisz96zdfd— BepiColombo (@BepiColombo) October 2, 2021 BepiColombo is on its way to checking all the boxes at Mercury. It completed its first fly-by of its ultimate target this past Friday night, with a closest approach of 200km above its surface. A flawless, radiant, #MercuryflybyAfter a flawless flyby of Mercury, @BepiColombo is starting to feel the heat. pic.twitter.com/4di2Jux5nB— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) October 2, 2021 This first fly-by is supposed to have dragged its solar-relative velocity down to the point where its aphelion will now be roughly at the orbit of Venus. Its next encounter won't come until late June 2022, when another fly-by of Mercury will bring the probe's orbit completely inside that of Venus. The probe will complete a total of six fly-bys of Mercury before entering orbit in December 2025. The last fly-by in January 2025 will bring its heliocentric orbit roughly in-line with Mercury's, allowing the planet to weakly capture the probe roughly four orbits later. The component probes will then use chemical thrusters to separately enter their intended science orbits.
With the successful launch of Soyuz MS-19 this morning, Yulia Peresild has become only the fifth Russian woman in space. Later this morning, she should become the second Russian woman to visit the International Space Station. When Valentina Tereshkova was launched into space aboard Vostok 6 in 1963, her purpose there was entirely propaganda. The Soviet Union only wanted to show that they put a woman in space first. They had no intention to fly any other woman, much less her again, any time soon. At least, not any serious plans. They certainly led her, and the other recruits in her cosmonaut class, on for the remainder of the 1960s. Tereshkova has said she's willing to go to Mars. Maybe Jeff will shoot her an invite once William Shatner's suborbital joyride succeeds next week. When NASA recruited six women in Astronaut Group 8 in 1978, the Soviet space program decided to remind NASA that they did it first. So they recruited another nine women in 1980. The only one of them to fly was Svetlana Savitskaya. She was a test pilot by training, and at that point was working for aerospace company OKB-115 Yakolev. When it became clear that a NASA mission to send a woman into orbit was imminent, Savitskaya was manifested to Soyuz T-5, and launched on a week-long visit to Salyut 7 in 1982. She would take a second flight to Salyut 7 aboard Soyuz T-12. This time to steal their last propaganda victory: beating Kathryn Sullivan as the first woman to complete an extravehicular activity. There were plans for a third spaceflight for Savitskaya in 1985 to commemorate International Women's Day, but the dereliction of Salyut 7 that year nipped that in the bud. She would've visited Mir in 1986, but by that point she was pregnant. She would instead be hired by NPO Energia, and would work with them until 1994. That they didn't seriously consider any of the other female recruits in her class is telling. The next Russian woman in space wouldn't fly until after the Soviet Union fell. That would be Yelena Kondakova. She was recruited in 1989, and by that point was already married to cosmonaut Valeri Ryumin. Both her parents worked at NPO Energia, and she went to college to become an aerospace engineer. Kondakova would be selected to fly an actual expedition to Mir, not a short intermediary visit like Savitskaya had done. She visited with Soyuz TM-20 in late 1994, spending 5 1/2 months aboard the station as part of Expedition 17. Later, Kondakova would join the Shuttle-Mir program, and was the only Russian woman to fly on the Space Shuttle, taking part in STS-84 aboard Atlantis in May 1997, visiting Mir for the second time. Incidentally, that was Eileen Collins' second flight as a Shuttle pilot. The interim between Kondakova and Peresild is broken only by Yelena Serova. Recruited in 2006, her only flight would be Soyuz TMA-14M, taking part in ISS Expeditions 41 and 42. Prior to becoming a cosmonaut, Serova was a flight engineer, working for RKK Energia at the Russian Mission Control Center (TsUP). ******** As a side note, I mentioned when the United Arab Emirates announced their intention to send astronauts to the International Space Station that I hoped they would include a woman among their trainees. They indeed are. Nora Al Matrooshi (right), currently aged 28, was recruited in April to train as an international participant in NASA Astronaut Group 23. She is a mechanical engineer by trade, who worked at the UAE National Petroleum Construction Company from 2016. She also won the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2011. The group of four Emirati astronaut candidates will be filled out by Mohammed Al Mulla. Al Mulla, who is 33, is a helicopter pilot and flight instructor for the Dubai Police. The rest of Group 23, along with a new ESA astronaut class, are expected to be announced in 2022.
The Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids is just about set. It's scheduled to be launched atop an Atlas V 401 rocket at 5:34am EDT Saturday morning from Pad 41, Cape Canaveral. Two fly-bys of Earth in 2022 and 2024 will send it on its way. It is targeting a total of eight asteroids, which includes one with a small satellite, and a binary pair. The final orbit for Lucy will be a roughly six-year orbit which will repeatedly fly through the Trojan and Greek camps at Jupiter's orbit. Mission extensions are possible as more targets are identified. ******** Two more Atlas V launches are planned for 2021: STP-3, atop an Atlas V 551 on November 22; and USSF-8 on an Atlas V 511, which is likely for December. Even if it's ready, Starliner OFT-2 is just going to have to wait for 2022 now.
OneWeb is doing their next launch of 36 satellites atop a Soyuz-2 rocket from Site 1S, Vostochny Cosmodrome, on Thursday at 5:40am EDT. And in one of the least surprising bits of news in a while, they are now considering shifting some of their flights to the ISRO in 2022. They announced this yesterday. There could also be two Starlink launches this month, with one from Vandenberg and one from Cape Canaveral. ******** But SpaceX and NASA's current focus is on USCV-3. And it's going to be flying on the first of SpaceX's new crop of Crew Dragon spacecraft, C210 Endurance. 🚀 We have a capsule name! @Astro_Raja announces the @SpaceX Dragon capsule has been named "Endurance" by #Crew3. pic.twitter.com/Eu4QTh0ANJ— NASA (@NASA) October 7, 2021 In addition, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Kayla Barron were all undergoing last-minute EVA training at Marshall Spaceflight Center. Raja and Tom will be installing the next set of iROSA solar arrays, which are currently scheduled to arrive aboard Cargo Dragon CRS-24 in December.
43 years ago today, TIROS-N was launched atop an Atlas-E rocket from Pad 2W, Vandenberg AFB. Launched into a polar SSO, TIROS-N was the latest in advanced quick-response weather satellites operated by NOAA. With the advent of GOES, these would now serve to augment the geostationary systems, and provide greater detail on localized phenomena. Its finest hour was when it observed Typhoon Tip, a massive supertyphoon in the western Pacific in October 1979. It is the largest cyclone ever observed, and marked the deepest convection observed in modern history, with a record-low barometric pressure in its eye at 870 hPa during its peak intensity; a record that still stands. While it spent several days as a Category 5 supertyphoon, by the time it struck Japan, it was only a Category 1. But its breadth caused it to affect the country for quite some time, leading to massive flooding and a myriad of shipwrecks. A total of 99 people in Japan died, including 13 American Marines who died in a fire caused by the typhoon at Camp Fuji. TIROS-N was deactivated in February 1981. Weather satellites derived from TIROS-N would continue to be launched into the 2000s.
NASA and United Launch Alliance officials met Wednesday and cleared an Atlas 5 rocket for launch from Cape Canaveral before dawn Saturday with the Lucy asteroid mission, a robotic spacecraft to visit unexplored asteroids in the outer solar system. https://t.co/WjZof9ib28 pic.twitter.com/2lMBB4FT49— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) October 14, 2021 NASA and ULA have completed their Flight Readiness Review for the Lucy mission. It is still a go for 5:34am EDT Saturday morning. What's interesting is that while the 45th Weather Squadron gives it a 90% chance of launch favorability, it plunges to 50/50 for Sunday morning, and 60% for Monday morning. So something is definitely on its way. Meanwhile, a solid launch time has been penned in for the second Starlink launch out of Vandenberg SFB. It is now scheduled for Sunday morning at 8:30am PDT.
When it is finally launched, the Project Artemis Lunar Gateway is planned to be placed in a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point. The best way I can describe an NRHO is a transposed highly-elliptical orbit around body 2 of the three-body problem. In an NRHO, the spacecraft would be 3,000 km away from the North Pole of the Moon at perilune, and 70,000 km away from the South Pole of the Moon at apolune. If things go as calculated, the Lunar Gateway will only require 10 m/s of delta-v on an annual basis. And it would take 730 m/s of delta-v for a lander to move from the Lunar Gateway to an actual lunar polar orbit. Before the Lunar Gateway, there is a mission that will verify the NRHO calculations: CAPSTONE. It is a 12U cubesat that will be launched to the Moon atop an Electron rocket. The recent launch issues with the Electron rocket have led CAPSTONE to be delayed to a planned launch of February 18, 2022. It will use the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for navigation support during its mission. ******** The triumph of the Ingenuity drone on Mars has led to the green-light of another mission. Dragonfly is a drone planned to explore one of the most important moons of the Solar System: Titan. It was selected as part of the New Frontiers program in 2019. Planned for launch in 2027, and a nine-year cruise, it will be powered by a 70-watt mmRTG. The target is Selk, believed to be a crater in the Shangri-La region of the moon. The landing point is 800 km NNW of where the Huygens lander touched down in 2005. The drone will be designed to withstand the frigid environment, with temperatures averaging around 94 K (−179 °C). While Titan has 83% of the gravity of the Moon (a guesstimate of 1/7 of the gravity of Earth), its atmospheric pressure is measured around 1,450 hPa (about 1.4 Earth atmospheres). So the propellors for Dragonfly won't need to be anywhere near as big as those for Ingenuity. The mmRTG will power the experiments directly, and will charge a Lithium ion battery that will power the propellors. They estimate they will be able to fly up to eight kilometers on a single battery charge. It will carry its own high-gain antenna to connect to Earth directly. The trajectory plan is for one fly-by of Venus, and three of Earth. This is based on a launch from an Atlas V 411 rocket. So if Falcon 9 or larger is selected, it might not need that many gravity assists.
This is not good at all. Boeing is still trying to determine the cause of the valve issue that caused the most recent delays in Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2. It now will not fly at all in 2021, and the delay from the incidents of OFT-1 will now surpass two years. And there's only a hope they can fly in the first half of 2022. Given the current launch schedule at Pad 41, it's unlikely it'll fly before the Spring. Would it be so difficult to switch to a different spacecraft? Maybe even the one from OFT-1? Feels like they might be better off at this point. Recent statements have said Boeing will pick up all costs, and will fulfill the original contract with NASA. I'm beginning to wonder if NASA is getting fed up with the delays, and might be preparing to cut their losses. I would imagine it wouldn't be too late to bring in Dream Chaser to pick up the slack. Of course, that would always be possible once Sierra Nevada starts proving itself in the CRS2 program. The first Dream Chaser launch is currently penciled in for H2 2022. It will likely see more solid scheduling once Vulcan's maiden launch takes place.
63 years ago today, NASA briefed aerospace companies that were bidding to design the Little Joe sounding rocket. Little Joe was being developed to conduct in situ escape system and parachute tests for Project Mercury. They would launch a boilerplate of the Mercury spacecraft that carried only the launch escape system tower and the proposed parachute system. Their plan was to use a cluster of four Recruit rockets as boosters, and four Sergeant rockets as sustainers. The recruit engines would only burn for a second and a half, while the Sergeant rockets would burn for a total of 37 seconds.