Things are getting worse for the Starliner Crewed Flight Test. Apparently, a hot fire test at the end of July for Calypso's service module added more questions. NASA isn't sure about the nature of its problems anymore. There is now speculation that NASA might take two crew off SpaceX Crew-9 to make room for them to return Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore. This means they will end up staying on the ISS nearly 9 months longer than originally planned. This is likely why Crew-9 was delayed a month, from late August to late September. But what do they do with Calypso if the decision is finally made that it is not fit to return Suni and Butch? Everything hinges on whether or not NASA decides Calypso can return with the crew. Because it has to leave before SpaceX Crew-9 can arrive. NASA apparently is a week away from making a final decision.
There are some people claiming Calypso cannot return without a crew on-board. I personally find that difficult to believe since it was used in OFT-1, and that was entirely autonomous. If it's not set up that way right now, Boeing should be able to reprogram it to do so. And it's like I keep saying: it's the lack of transparency on NASA's part that continues to fuel this.
Boeing seems pretty upset, and it appears they feel that they can safely bring home Calypso with Butch and Suni. But then again, Boeing has also lost a lot of credibility.
Whoa. SpaceX is preparing to attempt something wholly unprecedented. I noticed it when I checked on upcoming launches just now. Up first on Saturday, August 10 are back-to-back @Starlink launches from Florida, set to deliver 45 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 9, 2024 They are planning a Starlink launch this morning from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral, at 8:50am EDT. Then they will launch another set of Starlink satellites at 9:03am EDT from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. This will, by far, be the shortest turnaround time between orbital launches at the Eastern Range. Previously, the shortest gap was around 70 minutes. Back in 1966. I need to hurry up and get going.
56 years ago today, NASA was continuing to flesh out plans for a C-prime mission to send Project Apollo to the Moon. Internally, NASA saw no insurmountable problem that would keep them from launching by the end of 1968. There was one entity that wasn't convinced: Rockwell. Their main designer for the CSM, William Bergen, was concerned about the possibility that the pogo oscillations that complicated Apollo 6 might not be effectively mitigated in Saturn V rocket SA-503. Just in case, they thought it might be a good idea to send a lunar module to support the mission in case they were unable to complete TLI. But NASA project manager George Low, and Joseph Kotanchik of the Manned Spacecraft Center, felt that would be a waste of a lunar module. They felt a boilerplate to simulate the mass of a lunar module would suffice for the mission and general, and a lunar module would not be necessary even if pogo oscillations occured in the rocket. Bergen's concerns were understandable. He was put in charge of the Apollo CSM in the wake of the Apollo 204 fire, and likely was a bit averse to too much risk.
So we found out the hold-up regarding discarding Starliner: Boeing removed the ability for Calypso to undock autonomously. Fairly sure Crew Dragon still undocks autonomously. It would be impossible for someone in an EMU to do it because an EMU can't fit through Starliner's hatches to exit once it undocks. Boeing is refusing to say why they removed the ability to autonomously undock from Calypso. But they said it will take four weeks to redevelop and install the capability. And even then, NASA is concerned the update could fail and Boeing could brick Calypso. This has become such a quagmire, which may end up costing NASA enormously if they lose one of their docking ports, that I simply don't see how Boeing ever gets a new contract with NASA again. It's a shame NASA is stuck with Boeing for the Space Launch System. I can't help but wonder if NASA has a backup IDA. If they could replace the IDA, then they could unberth the IDA that Calypso is attached to.
Fram2 will become the first human spaceflight mission to fly over and explore the Earth’s polar regions from orbit. Learn more about the @framonauts mission here → https://t.co/3InB5ybsIx pic.twitter.com/rZ2PCw0GlX— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 12, 2024 SpaceX has decided to endorse a mission flying humans over Earth's poles for the first time. The mission, Fram2, is set to orbit at altitude of 425-450 km to have humans study geophysical properties of the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions from above. It will be the first mission of its kind, finally realizing the vision of the unflown polar Space Shuttle missions of the 1980s. The mission is being financed by South Korean entrepreneur Chun Wang. He's probably one of the most controversial figures to connect to SpaceX; arguably even moreso than Elon himself. He made his money from Bitcoin, and escaped his original offices in the People's Republic of China when they banned cryptocurrency mining in 2017. He has since wandered the globe, currently holding a passport with Malta. He was accused recently of helping a Chinese renegade mine crypto in Russia. The mission will call together a global group of adventurers. The spacecraft commander will be Jannick Mikkelsen, a documentary cinematographer from Finland. She is joined by pilot Eric Philips, an Australian with experience exploring both poles; and German engineer Rabea Rogge in a mission specialist role. Fram2 is currently aimed to launch by the end of 2024.
In their latest status update, NASA said today that they will commit once and for all on whether or not Calypso will return with its crew by the end of next week. They then threw shade at SpaceX, claiming Demonstration Mission 2 went through very similar issues during its mission. Anyone who has read this very thread knows that, unless NASA was lying back then, that was not the case. DM2 was publicly known to be open-ended due to potential ISS crew needs, and had a limit set by NASA of 110 days. A limit they never even touched. And we all know Elon will gladly bring receipts. He has a history of not taking lies about his companies lying down. NASA does have a long record of concealing issues with their missions from the public eye. But if this has any modicum of truth to it, then bringing it up now in an effort to cover for Boeing is wrong. And if they are indeed lying, then perhaps it's time to clean house at NASA again.
SpaceX launched two more Worldview Legion Earth observation satellites for Maxar this morning at 9am EDT from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. Its first stage, Booster B1076.16, did an RTLS landing at Landing Zone 1. The next launch up is the Transporter-11 rideshare tomorrow afternoon at 2:19pm EDT from Pad 4E, Vandenberg. It will be carrying 26 smallsats, and two space tugs with a multitude of cubesats and picosats. Polaris Dawn finally has a solid launch date penned in. It is currently set to launch on Monday, August 26, at 3:30am EDT. There are two more Starlink launches scheduled for next week. And the GSAT-20 launch for New Space India could be written in at any moment; it was penciled in for late-August, and there's a good amount of space on the manifest prior to Polaris Dawn.
As I was going through some past pages, I was reminded of the third-generation SiriusXM satellites. The first one, SXM-7, was launched in December 2020, but failed during on-orbit testing. SXM-8 was launched in June 2021, and has had no issues since activation. The replacement for SXM-7, SXM-9, is penciled in to launch by the end of this year. In the interim, SiriusXM has put in orders with Maxar for an additional three satellites, which would be enough to completely upgrade their entire constellation. These satellites are planned to launch throughout the 2020s. ******** The Europa Clipper is still penciled in to launch on October 10, 2024. That is the beginning of a 20-day window for a trajectory that will included a fly-by of Mars in February 2025, and a fly-by of Earth in October 2026. Once it reaches Jupiter, it will fly-by Ganymede on its way to its orbit insertion burn. The Ganymede fly-by will shave around 400 m/s off its velocity, and the insertion burn will take off another 840 m/s. One last burn at apojove will add 122 m/s to its velocity to raise perijove for the main mission. There is, however, one concern. Back in June, when Europa Clipper was delivered to Kennedy Space Center for final checkouts, NASA discovered that some of the transistors on the probe may not have been adequately hardened against the high radiation environment they will be facing around Europa. A delay to 2025 would add a second Earth fly-by to the trajectory. A 2026 launch date would revert to just Mars and Earth fly-bys. But both would add to the costs of the mission. It's not likely a decision will be made until closer to the current launch window.
Robert Gilruth was born on October 8, 1913, in Nashwauk, Minnesota, way up in the northern interior of the state. As close to Winnipeg as to Minneapolis. His family moved to Duluth when he was 9. As a teenager, he spent his free time building model airplanes, inspired by reading about the work being done by the NACA at Langley Field. He got his master's in aeronautical engineering from Minnesota in 1936, and was hired by the NACA the next year. One of Gilruth's first major reports was Report R755 in 1941, which set requirements for safe handling of aircraft. He also pioneered telemetry recording to study flight data. As work began to focus on missiles, he started to advocate for launching payloads into space. When NASA was formed, he was was named as the head of the Space Task Group. But as fervent as he was for spaceflight, he was alarmed by President John F. Kennedy setting a goal to land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Still, he went to work, in particular setting into motion the interim Project Gemini. Gilruth was named the first Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1962, and would oversee NASA's advancement through Project Apollo. He retired from NASA in early 1972. He died 24 years ago today following a long illness in Charlottesville, Virginia, aged 86. He left a wife and a daughter.
We’ve got our sights set on the Moon with HAKUTO-R Mission 2 RESILIENCE lunar lander planned to launch in winter 2024! Tonight’s Full Moon—a Supermoon, occurring when either a new or full Moon is within 90% of its closest approach to Earth—has us excited for the countdown to… pic.twitter.com/NDuqWmC3kj— ispace (@ispace_inc) August 19, 2024 ispace is preparing for the reflight of their Hakuto-R lunar lander, christened Resilience. The lander and its microrover payload completed vacuum testing in June., It is now penciled in for a launch in Q4 2024. The original Hakuto-R lander attempted its landing near Atlas crater on April 25, 2023. But an error in the altimeter caused it to hover at 5 km altitude instead of complete landing. It eventually exhausted its fuel and crashed. The crash site was identified four weeks later by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The hope is that the microrover will conduct a demonstration of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), a key skill for long-term spaceflight. ******** 🛰🛰It’s TWINS!Two small spacecraft that make up the ESCAPADE mission to Mars arrived in Florida. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers will study the solar wind and Mars’ magnetosphere.ESCAPADE will launch on the first flight of @BlueOrigin’s New Glenn! pic.twitter.com/Qi1WMff0x3— NASA's Launch Services Program (@NASA_LSP) August 18, 2024 Yesterday, Rocket Lab delivered the EscaPADE twin cubesats to Kennedy Space Center for final checkout and launch. Blue Origin is going to try to land the first stage New Glenn on a barge set in Port Canaveral. While they have experience launching the New Shepard and landing it, there's a massive difference between lifting things up and putting them down, and reversing horizontal momentum to return to launch site, and then landing. Not to mention the vagueness of describing it as landing in Port Canaveral. Exactly where in Port Canaveral? The cruise companies may not appreciate something that could block their business. It took SpaceX many attempts to get it right. Blue Origin wants to do it on the first try. We shall see. The launch is currently penciled in for September 29 from Pad 36, Cape Canaveral. ******** SaxaVord Spaceport looks to finally be getting its first flight. That first launch is anticipated to be of the RFA One rocket, being designed by German private aerospace company Rocket Factory Augsburg. The first stage of the RFA One rocket will be powered by nine Helix engines, with a total of about 200,000 lb-f of thrust. The second stage is powered by a single Helix engine with a vacuum nozzle, which is likely around 25,000 lb-f of thrust. Both will be fueled by RP-1. It will also have a third stage, the Redshift space tug. Carrying a single Fenix engine fueled by Nitro. Yes, as in nitromethane. The automotive Nitro. Its thrust will be around 305 lb-f of thrust. It will have a capacity of 1,300 kg to a polar SSO. The first launch, currently penciled in for Q3 2024, will carry an experimental smallsat for Ukraine and several picosats for Germany, Spain, and Greece.
Well that was certainly timely. Not even an hour after I posted that. I don't really follow it that intensely, but it sounds similar to that one Firefly Alpha test at the beginning of 2020. So I guess we're not getting that first launch from SaxaVord anytime soon after all. The launch isn't off the manifest yet, but I can't imagine it's attempted by the end of September now.
64 years ago today, McDonnell came up with an idea to use Project Mercury for an early space station concept. The idea, which they called Mercury Mark I, saw an enhanced Mercury capsule launched atop an Atlas-Agena rocket along with a cylindrical habitat. It would permit a single astronaut to work on experiments in a shirtsleeve environment for up to two weeks. Later fleshing out would posit it being in a 240-mile circular orbit. It would have a deployable disc-shaped array of solar cells for power. I don't think they ever figured out how to actually get the astronaut into the experiment module, however. Over the next year, as the Titan II began to take shape, NASA and McDonnell would evolve this concept into the Mercury Mark II, and eventually Project Gemini. With the larger size of Gemini, the workspace module was eventually cast aside. Later, multiple entities would rehash the idea of using Gemini for prototype space station ideas.
Polaris Dawn was pushed back a day to make way for some extra checkout. It is now scheduled for early Tuesday morning at 3:38am EDT. The launch window for Polaris Dawn is 4 hours long with three distinct launch opportunities. ******** The second of two pairs of Galileo navigation satellites for the European Union aboard the Falcon 9 rocket is penciled in to launch on September 19. Like the first one in April, which expended Booster B1060.20, this one will expend Booster B1062.23. There are three Galileo launches planned for 2025, which will complete the original FOC (Full Operational Capability) constellation. They are currently developing the G2G (Galileo Second Generation) constellation, which could begin launches as soon as late 2025.
And it is official. The NASA press conference on the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test is getting underway now. Nelson begins by announcing that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return with the Crew-9 mission on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2025. Starliner will return uncrewed.Watch…— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) August 24, 2024 NASA has pulled the plug on Starliner Crewed Flight Test 1. Pending an extended Flight Readiness Review, Starliner Calypso will return uncrewed within the next couple weeks. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the ultimate decision was made in the context of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While some at Boeing believe that Calypso can return safely, NASA decided the risk to Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore was too great for it to return with them on-board. At the International Space Station, Crew Dragon Endeavour will receive a minor reconfiguration to ensure Suni and Butch will have a way to return should an emergency take place before Crew Dragon Freedom arrives with the abbreviated SpaceX Crew-9 crew. Stephanie Wilson and Aleksandr Gorbunov have been dropped from Crew-9. Gorbunov could be pushed to Crew-10. I think Wilson will likely be moved full-time to Project Artemis. Instead, SpaceX will send suits that will fit Butch and Suni up in Freedom so they will be able to return wearing SpaceX suits. SpaceX's flight suits are not custom-fitted, and they've already identified suits that will accommodate each of them. The issue finally cost Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun his job, putting a cherry on top of a long list of issues that piled up and finally became too much. After originally planning on leaving at the end of 2024, he finally resigned on August 8, expediting his replacement with Kelly Ortberg. ******** As for Starliner, something that needs to be emphasized is that most of the problems are with the service module, not Calypso itself. That's the way it was with OFT-1, and that's the way it is now. NASA is insisting that they want Starliner to be part of their crew redundancy. But this will mean that there will be a second Crewed Flight Test. At Boeing's expense, since they're still eating the cost overruns. And SpaceX will be the only game in town on the US side of the ISS for at least another two years.
See ya Calhoun! Too bad Boeing can’t claw back some of its losses from their horrible corporate leaders over the last couple of decades.
EDIT: Aleksandr Gorbunov will be on SpaceX Crew-9. Zena Cardman will be retained as Commander. While non-American pilots are far from new on Crew Dragon spacecraft, this will be the first time a Russian will take the role.
75 years ago today, Frank Everest took Chuck Yeager's Bell XS-1, 46-062 Glamorous Glennis, out for a test flight. It was the 124th flight of the XS-1, the 50th for the U.S. Air Force, and Everest's seventh. Everest's specialization seemed to be high-altitude testing. For flights where maximum altitude are known, he has three of the four highest. In the case of this flight, he was going to test a partial pressure suit, an emergency implement in case of cabin pressure loss. When he reached the top planned altitude of 21,000 metres, sure enough, the XS-1 lost cabin pressure. It is unknown if this was coincidence, or if it was the plan for the flight. Regardless, the suit worked, and Everest did an emergency descent to an otherwise nominal landing.
SpaceX is pulling out all the stops with Polaris Dawn. The Polaris Dawn crew will wear smart contact lenses in space to monitor their intraocular pressure, in efforts to learn more about Spaceflight Associated Neuroocular Syndrome, or SANS, as part of a University of Colorado Boulder research experiment.This is just one of 36… pic.twitter.com/QoTJsjOSzc— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) August 21, 2024 As part of the experiments, each astronaut will wear special contact lenses which will constantly monitor intraocular pressure. It's part of a Colorado-Boulder study on Spaceflight-Associated Neuroocular Syndrome (SANS). There is evidence that long-term periods of microgravity could cause changes in eyesight. Research up to now has focused on intracranial pressure, the pressure of fluids within and around the brain, but evidence that this varies significantly with microgravity has been practically non-existent. So it seems they want to focus on the eyes themselves in this mission. More photos from Polaris Dawn and SpaceX’s full rehearsal of launch day activities → https://t.co/zktZ1R453H pic.twitter.com/0yHIya7fJP— Polaris (@PolarisProgram) August 25, 2024 Meanwhile, the Polaris Dawn crew underwent their full dress rehearsal yesterday in preparation for launch early tomorrow morning at 3:38am EDT. As it stands right now, the 45th Weather Squadron is giving the mission an 80% chance of launch favorability. ******** Something that's been in the back of my mind with the lead-up to Polaris Dawn is the similarity between this mission and Project Gemini. This is starting to feel like SpaceX feels the need to reconfirm a lot of what NASA has already learned. Of course, NASA hasn't made things easy in their dealings with SpaceX, especially early on. There is a new book coming out titled Reentry that chronicles SpaceX's dealings with NASA in the Commercial Crew program, particularly vis-a-vis how NASA has dealt with Boeing. From the excerpts I've seen, it seems the astronauts themselves have been having issues dealing with Boeing, while SpaceX has done everything right by them. According to the book, Doug Hurley flat-out refused to work with Boeing, he was so turned off by their dealings. The proverbial straw for him was a previously-undisclosed propellant issue in one of Starliner's pad abort tests at White Sands in 2018. Which might explain how they lost one of the parachutes. The irony of this is that Sunita Williams was originally hoping to fly with SpaceX. She'll get her wish now.
It's Tuesday morning, and Polaris Dawn is still on the ground. During fueling early this morning, a helium leak was detected. In this case, it was in the surface systems in the mobile launcher. The launch is now schedule for early tomorrow morning. Same time, 3:38am EDT. ******** I can't believe SpaceX is already on its third launch for Starshield. That launch is planned for late Thursday evening at 10:51pm EDT from Pad 4E, Vandenberg. The People's Republic of China is nervous about Starshield. They think Starshield could host ICBM interceptors.