Yesterday, NASA cleared Crew Dragon Demonstration Mission 2 to proceed in its Flight Readiness Review. Their social distancing game was on-point. Mostly. Looking at you two in the middle left. The Flight Readiness Review was one of those behind-the-scenes moments of the Space Shuttle program to make sure all elements were physically ready to proceed for each mission. The review ends with the signing of the Certificate of Flight Readiness, which means the spacecraft itself is ready for the mission. Later in the afternoon, SpaceX completed its static firing of the Falcon 9 rocket for the mission. The rocket was erected at Pad 39A on Thursday. Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon are vertical on the launch pad pic.twitter.com/2nw9h0jxde— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 21, 2020 The final step to approving the mission to go forward will be the Launch Readiness Review, which will take place on Monday. This undoubtedly will include a review of the data from the static firing. Just two steps closer to once more launching astronauts from American soil again.
58 years ago today, Avco presented a proposal to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center involving using the Gemini platform as the base for a space station. The station would be comprised of three modules, each launched by a Titan rocket, likely a model of the Titan III. The modules would each be 3m wide, 6m long, and connected to each other in a triangle shape. Gemini would be used to ferry astronauts to the station, likely requiring EVA transfer to the station. It is unknown how seriously NASA took Avco's proposal. But it looks very similar to the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory, which was ultimately to be built by Douglas.
Georgi Grechko was born on May 25, 1931, in Leningrad. An academic, he ultimately got a doctorate in mathematics from the Leningrad Insistute of Mechanics (today Baltic State Tech). Once done with that, he went to work at OKB-1, and assisted in designing the N-1 moon rocket. He was chosen as a scientist-cosmonaut in connection with the Soviet lunar program. When it was canceled, he shifted to the DOS space station program, and flew as the flight engineer on Soyuz 17 for the first expedition to Salyut 4 in January 1975. Among the more interesting aspect of this mission was having to resurface the mirror of their on-board telescope when a pointing system malfunction led to it being pointed directly at the Sun. Georgi would return to space with the first expedition to Salyut 6, arriving aboard Soyuz 26 on December 10, 1977. During Expedition 1, He was the first cosmonaut to use the Orlan spacesuit in an EVA. The first Soviet spacewalk since 1969, they used the opportunity to examine the free docking port, which Soyuz 25 had failed to dock with two months earlier. They determined it was structurally sound, permitting them to receive the first Progress logistics spacecraft on January 28 He and Yuri Romanenko returned to Earth aboard Soyuz 27 on March 16. In the interim after that mission, he appeared in a cameo in the 1981 Soviet science fiction film Per Aspera Ad Astra, known in the US as Through the Thorns to the Stars. (A heavily edited version appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000.) He would make one more flight on Soyuz T-14 in 1985. While he went up with Expedition 4 cosmonauts Vladimir Vasyutin and Alexander Volkov, he would instead return with Salyut 7 salvage cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov on Soyuz T-13 after only five days. Georgi left the space program after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He became a professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He died on April 8, 2017, following what was described as a series of chronic illnesses. He was 85. He left a wife and three children.
Hey Ray.....I gotta hand it to ya. This is the only thread on BS that has not strayed off topic....very commendable!
Virgin has been working on a lot of space-related industries during the 21st century. Richard Branson apparently likes to see himself as an equal to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. He's had his hands all over Scaled Composites for a long time. Today, he's trying to get into orbital spaceflight. Virgin Orbit is the orbital launch subsidiary of Virgin Galactic. Their LauncherOne rocket draws inspiration from the Northrop Grumman Pegasus platform. But there is really very little comparison. Where Pegasus is a solid-fueled rocket, LauncherOne uses a two-stage liquid-fueled rocket. Both stages are fueled by RP-1. The LauncherOne rocket will be carried by Cosmic Girl, a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet, originally part of Virgin Atlantic's commercial fleet. It was originally of British registry, with the callsign G-VWOW. When transferred to Virgin Galactic, which is an American enterprise, its callsign changed to N744VG. LauncherOne was originally intended to be launched from SpaceShipTwo, currently being used for Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tourism racket. But the rocket outgrew SS2, necessitating use of a 747. LauncherOne will be dropped from Cosmic Girl at an altitude of 35,000 feet. It will light its first-stage engines three seconds after drop. LauncherOne has a capacity of 400 kg to SSO, and is intended to launch mostly cubesats. That is on-par with the capacity of Pegasus XL. LauncherOne is scheduled to have its first test launch today, NET 1pm EDT. Its base is Mojave Spaceport, though there are designs on using many airports worldwide, including the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Oita Airport on Kyushu island, Japan, and Ellison Onizuka International Airport in Kona, Hawaii. Today's launch attempt will not be livestreamed. If it succeeds, there are plans for a ten-cubesat launch in NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program in August 2020. There are up to five more launches on its manifest for 2020, with the first one from Kennedy Space Center being a U.S. Space Force Space Test Program (STP) mission. UPDATE: They have penned in 2:40pm EDT for Cosmic Girl's takeoff. The intent is for LauncherOne to be dropped 50 minutes after takeoff.
Well, LauncherOne's first launch attempt was short. Seconds after first stage ignition, some sort of anomaly occurred. Some of the statements I've seen suggest the first-stage engine never developed thrust. I'd imagine it will be a while before Virgin Orbit tells us, much less shows us, what exactly happened. Cosmic Girl was unaffected, and returned to Mojave Spaceport. ******** Meanwhile, we're less than 36 hours away from Crew Dragon Demonstration Mission 2. The 45th Space Wing has flipped the chances of favorable weather at launch time from 40% to 60%. The Launch Readiness Review yesterday stated that the only thing they need is the ability to manipulate the weather. I'm sure if anyone could do it, it's Elon.
Douglas Hurley was born on October 21, 1966, in Endicott, New York, near Binghamton. A distinguished graduate from the Navy ROTC at Tulane, where he earned a civil engineering degree in 1988, he became a Marine Corps Aviator shortly after Desert Storm. Taking part in a fighter/attack squadron, he took three tours of the Western Pacific. After taking test pilot training, he was the first Marine Corps Aviator to fIy the Boeing F/A-18 EF Super Hornet. He was selected to NASA in the pilot track of Group 18 in 2000. He was part of the Shuttle Operations Branch at Kennedy Space Center during STS-107, and would stay there to take part in the Orbiter Reconstruction Team, one of the deepest forensics units of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. His first mission would be as pilot of Endeavour for STS-127 in July 2009, which delivered the Exposed Facility portion of Kibō module to the International Space Station. He would return as pilot of Atlantis on the final Space Shuttle mission, STS-135, in July 2011. After STS-135, Doug became the Assistant Director of New Programs, for the Flight Crew Operations Directorate. In 2014, it was merged into the Commercial Crew Program, and he became Assistant Director of that. Robert Behnken was born on July 28, 1970, in suburban St. Louis. With the Air Force ROTC at Washington-St. Louis, he earned a double bachelor's in physics and mechanical engineering in 1992. He was permitted to go through graduate school prior to his service commitment, and earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from CalTech in 1997. When he entered the Air Force, Bob initially worked munitions at Eglin AFB in Florida. After graduating Air Force Test Pilot School, he was involved in testing the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. He also flew the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon in support thereof. Bob was also selected to NASA with Group 18 in the mission specialist track. He also worked in the Shuttle Operations Branch at Kennedy Space Center, and was part of NASA's NEEMO 11 underwater expedition in 2006. Both his prior shuttle missions were ISS construction missions aboard Endeavour. STS-123 brought the first component of Kibō, the pressurized section of its Experiment Logistics Module, in March 2008, and STS-130 brought the Tranquility node in February 2010. He completed three EVAs during each mission. He spent three years as Chief of the Astronaut Office from July 2012 to his selection to the Commercial Crew Program. Both Hurley and Behnken are Colonels in their respective branches of service. They each are married to fellow Group 18 astronauts: Doug married Karen Nyberg, and Bob married Megan McArthur. Each couple has one son. Doug and Bob, along with Sunita Williams and Eric Boe, were the first astronauts transitioned to the Commercial Crew program on July 9, 2015. On August 3, 2018, their allocation between Boeing and SpaceX was announced. They were assigned to the first SpaceX manned test flight, Demonstration Mission 2. Doug is listed as spacecraft commander, while Bob is listed as joint operations commander. The original plan for DM-2 was a two-week mission, with at least one week spent docked with the ISS. With the delays in the mission causing NASA's rented seats on Soyuz spacecraft to dry up, it is now an open-ended mission that could last as long as four months. It is poetic that the pilot of the final Shuttle mission will command the first manned Commercial Crew mission. And given the research I have done into this, I can't think of a closer-knit crew to kick off a new era in human spaceflight.
The Dragon 2 model is also being used as the base of the CRS2 version of the Cargo Dragon spacecraft. Although SpaceX is saying the Crew Dragon will not initially be re-used—the first one is most certainly destined to become a museum piece somewhere—it also can be re-used. And I could've sworn that I saw somewhere that Crew Dragon spacecraft might be re-used as Cargo Dragons at some point. But the first Cargo Dragon will definitely be a new one, and has been manifested to launch NET October 30. Dragon CRS-21 is planned for the typical 30-day mission of the original Cargo Dragon. Future Cargo Dragons can extend their missions further. The main exposed payload for this launch will be the Bishop Airlock Module by NanoRacks. It will be attached to the Tranquility node, likely at Tranquility port. It is expected to double cubesat deployment from the ISS, with greater flexibility on who it is open to. The current equipment airlock on Kibō is limited in availability, and can only deploy up to 10 cubesats each year. Dragon CRS-21 currently has three cubesats among its payload, though more may be announced in the coming months.
Update: The astronauts were sealed into Crew Dragon a few minutes ago. Hatch leak check was good. Currently raining at Pad 39A, but the 45th Space Wing is seeing improving conditions, and the current rain should end in about half an hour. (They won't begin loading the subcooled LOX until about T-30 minutes, so they're not forming any extra ice on the rocket with the rainfall at this time.) 3:10pm: The ground crew has left Pad 39A. If emergency egress is required (I'm guessing that would be an extremely short SHTF window), it will be unassisted. 3:34pm: GO for Launch. They are going to load in the oxidizer, and attempt to launch today. 3:49pm: GO for oxidizer load. Launch Control now must remain at posts until either a hold or second stage separation. Just pending the weather.
Launch abort at T-16 minutes. Weather simply wasn’t cooperating today. They’ll give it another try Saturday afternoon. Launch window will be 3:21pm EDT.
The first stage of the Atlas V rocket that will launch with the Mars 2020 mission was erected at the Vertical Integration Facility at Pad 41, Cape Canaveral, this morning. It will be joined with four Aerojet AJ60 solid rocket motors with the 541 configuration. Really, any Atlas V launch from here on could be the last one where these are used. Lockheed Martin is preparing to transition to the Thiokol GEM 63 Graphite Epoxy Motor for Atlas V. The first use will be an STP launch for the U.S. Space Force. It does not yet have a solid launch date, but is supposed to take place some time in 2020. Mars 2020 consists of two parts: the Perseverance rover, and the Ingenuity helicopter. Perseverance is the easy part. Its landing target is Jezero crater, on the NW edge of Isidis Basin, about half way around the planet from Olympus Mons. It will also collect samples for a potential sample return currently targeted for the 2031 Mars transfer window. The hard part is Ingenuity. Ingenuity is a first-of-its-kind helicopter rover, a technology demonstrator from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will carry a solar panel that will provide 350 watts of power on Mars. It has a rotor diameter of 1.2 m. If it operates as predicted, it will fly across the surface at 10 m/s (36 km/h), and travel for 90 seconds. It is figured to have a radio range of 1 km. For the test flight, Perseverance will place it on the ground, then drive 300 m away before it takes off. If Ingenuity does well, then there could be future flying rovers to travel around Mars autonomously. Launch is currently planned for July 17 at 9:10am EDT.
73 years ago today, the German rocket scientists launched a V-2 rocket from White Sands Missile Range with their first Hermes B ramjet-powered cruise missile as a second stage/payload. It was supposed to go north into the range. It went south instead. It reached an apogee of 50 km. The missile ended up striking a graveyard south of Ciudad Juarez. In Mexico. The rocket scientists joked about infiltrating the U.S. and attacking Mexico. Ironic, considering the Second Reich (German Empire) tried to get Mexico to attack the U.S. during World War I. (see: Zimmermann Telegram) But seriously, this followed a test two weeks before where a V-2 missile suffered steering issues and went off the range. The rocket scientists would focus on guidance systems, and the next test wouldn't happen for another six weeks.
Currently, the DM2 crew is preparing to go to sleep. They are orbiting 10 km below the ISS, and slowly working their way closer. The plan for tomorrow morning is to dock at 10:29am EDT at Harmony forward. Early in the morning, they will complete one more pair of co-elliptical burns to raise its orbit into the vicinity of the International Space Station. They have christened their spacecraft Endeavour. Both astronauts have flown on the eponymous Space Shuttle orbiter. The zero-g marker is one of their sons' dinosaur plushes, an apatosaurus named Tremor. SpaceX is doing continuous streaming of the mission. I would imagine they plan on running until they have docked with and boarded the ISS.
The crew just got the wake-up call. The chosen wake-up song was "Planet Caravan" by Black Sabbath, from their second album, Paranoid. The SpaceX webcast commentators mentioned they didn't expect something that soothing. I personally didn't expect something that soothing from Black Sabbath. Especially that early in their discography. EDIT 7:09am EDT: Just heard in the SpaceX feed that the spacecraft could dock as soon as one orbit early. They mentioned they are two hours away from the earliest possible docking time.
Orlando Rays here. I have asked for my username to be changed. Just letting anyone who reads this semi-regularly know.
Capture was at 10:16am EDT. Station power is connected to Dragon, they are equalizing pressure through the PMA vestibule, and making sure all comm lines to Dragon are up.
The hatch on Endeavour was opened at 1:02pm EDT. Unlike Apollo–Soyuz, where Alexei Leonov shot through the open hatch like he was defecting from the Soviet Union, DM-2 ingress was a very deliberate process involving lots of steps, and bringing in umbilicals to make sure the spacecraft was safed and integrated in the station's environmental control system. Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, in that order, entered the station 20 minutes after hatch opening, becoming members of the Expedition 63 crew.
50 years ago today, NASA published the specifications agreed to as benchmarks resulting from the Phase A studies into what would become the Space Shuttle. Some highlights: Both the lifting body design and variable-geometry wings were eliminated due to perceived complexity issues: The lifting body design made arrangement of internal equipment more difficult due to its curved geometry, and its aerodynamics were poor at subsonic speeds. Variable-geometry wings greatly increased maintenance time, as well as the number of potential failure points. Its superior subsonic aerodynamics to all other geometry options did not outweigh those issues. Desired 6,800-kg payload capacity when launched at a maximum orbital inclination of 55° from Cape Kennedy. Obviously, that meant even higher capacity launched due east (28.5°). Payload bay dimensions of 4.6x18.3 m. Mean mission length of a week, with a fully-optimized time from assembly to launch of 43 hours. (They never got anywhere near that.) No in-flight refueling. Passive stage separation. Launch acceleration limited to 3 g. Able to land at FAA Category 2 airstrips with standard 3,000m runway distance Orbiter able to sustain a single system failure and remain operational, and fail-safe with two system failures. The hope was the be fully operational by the end of 1977.
Charles Conrad was born on June 2, 1930, in Philly. His family was hit very hard by the Great Depression, being into banking and real estate. His father left their family, and he had to be taken care of by his mother and her side of the family, who were not hurt as bad. He suffered from dyslexia, resulting in him flunking out of the private school attended by others in his family after 11th grade. His mother found the Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York, and he excelled so much that he was able to get admission to Princeton. He was also center and team captain for Darrow's football team in 1948. Once at Princeton, he entered their Navy ROTC. Toward the end of his college life, he met his eventual first wife, Jane DuBose, who came from a rancher family in Texas. Her father seemed to like him; he was the first person to ever call him "Pete" instead of "Peter". I have seen nothing on why he was even called Peter, except that it's not actually part of his legal name. Pete and Jane married shortly after he graduated from Princeton with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1953. Commissioned as an Ensign, Pete went to NAS Pensacola for Naval Aviator training. He would specialize in carrier aircraft, and also become a flight instructor. Eventually, Pete went to Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, where among his classmates were eventual astronauts Wally Schirra and Jim Lovell. At various points, he also flew and taught with Alan Shepard. Pete was among the candidates for the Mercury Seven, but was particularly against the methods used to test them. He took his frustration out during the Rorschach test, describing one blot pornographically, and telling the psychologist that a blank card was actually upside down. On their official denial of his application, NASA described him as "not suitable for long-duration flight". Shepard came back later and invited Pete to apply for the New Nine in 1962. Finding the tests far less needlessly invasive, he took them seriously this time, and was selected. Ironically, he was chosen for the first long-duration flight, the eight-day Gemini 5 mission in August 1965, being junior pilot under commander Gordo Cooper. He described the mission as "eight days in a garbage can". His second mission would be Gemini 11 in September 1966, where he commanded Richard Gordon as they set the Earth-orbit altitude record. Moving into Project Apollo, he was named backup commander to Dave Scott's crew, which ultimately put him in command of Apollo 12. Pete put his usual humorous spin on the mission, knowing it was never going to measure up to Apollo 11 on its own. But he had to deal with a very serious issue first. When his intended Lunar Module pilot, Clifton Williams, was killed in a T-38 crash in October 1967, he asked Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton to assign Alan Bean as LM pilot in his place. He originally wanted Bean, but Slayton was set on putting him in the Apollo Applications Program. With Williams' death, he finally yielded. After the mission, Pete was promoted to Captain in the Navy. He was named the commander of the first manned crew for Skylab, Skylab 2. He almost became yet another NASA victim of a T-38 crash when it malfunctioned while he was returning to Houston from ILC in Delaware in 1972. When the jet ran out of fuel, he directed his jet toward an empty field, and was able to safely eject. Of course, as noted in the link above, the Skylab 2 mission became a repair mission, as they brought new solar shields which would occupy the intended experiment airlock, and he had to go out and fix the jammed solar panel. After that mission, Pete retired from NASA and the Navy. For a while, he worked on innovating cable television. In 1976, he was hired as an executive and consultant at McDonnell Douglas. One of the projects he worked on was the DC-X Delta Clipper single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft project. Pete and Jane spent several years apart with their careers, but remained amicable. They had four children together. They finally divorced in 1988, and both later re-married. His youngest child died of lymphoma in 1990, aged 29. Pete, his second wife, and friends were on a motorcycle convoy from his home in Huntington Beach, California, to Monterey, on July 8, 1999, when he crashed on a turn while doing the speed limit. Despite wearing a helmet, he died from internal injuries at a hospital in Ojai. He was 69. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full honors. At the time, NASA was putting together a grove of trees to honor fallen astronauts at Johnson Space Center. During Christmas, they were all lit with white lights. Pete expressed his wish that, when his time came, his tree instead be lit with different colors. To this day, when the grove is strung with lights for Christmas, his tree is strung with red lights. His motto was always, "When you can't be good, be colorful." Doesn't hurt when you're able to be both.
As it just so happens, both of SpaceX's autonomous landing drones, Just Read the Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You, are currently based out of Port Canaveral. As we speak, OCISLY is returning to port with B1058.1, the first stage that launched Dragon Endeavour into orbit on Saturday. JRTI is currently steaming out into the Atlantic for the next mission. SpaceX put the Starlink-7 launch back on the manifest shortly after the successful launch of Demonstration Mission 2. It will be launched with B1049.5, the fifth launch attempt for first stage B1049. They'll get a fifth landing one of these days. There are three brand new Falcon 9 core stages waiting in the wings. B1060 and B1062 will both launch GPS Block IIIA navigational satellites. B1061 is earmarked for USCV-1, SpaceX's first planned ISS crew rotation. It is unknown if the U.S. Space Force will permit SpaceX to attempt to recover B1060 and B1062. B1061 certainly will, if B1058 tells us anything. A third landing drone, A Shortfall of Gravitas, waits in the wings. But SpaceX isn't doing any Vandenberg launches until NET November 10. As of 2018, ASOG was planned to be on the Cape, but who knows what Elon Musk has planned now?
43 years ago today, Rockwell shipped the Space Shuttle Orbiter Main Propulsion Test Article, MPTA-098, from the port at Seal Beach, California, to be received at the National Space Technology Laboratory (today Stennis Space Center) in Mississippi. MPTA-098 was essentially the central fuselage of a Space Shuttle orbiter without wings or any of the exterior shielding. Its purpose was to test the propulsion system. It would be mated to a test article external tank, and fitted with three RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engines. It would be used for the certification program for the RS-25. Naturally, this would be a rocky journey, including an engine explosion in June 1979. The RS-25 would not be certified as human-rated until January 1981, when a series of tests simulated a normal mission profile, as well as several abort modes. In 1988, a company called Essex borrowed MPTA-098 to do studies into the proposed Shuttle-C unmanned cargo vehicle. The project was canceled in 1990. Today, MPTA-098 and the test article external tank are on display at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the visitor center for the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
10 years ago today, the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket was conducted from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. Its payload was a boilerplate of the Dragon spacecraft, termed the Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit. Its sole purpose was real-world verification of launch aerodynamics. It achieved a 155x157mi orbit. The rocket did have a slight unplanned roll at liftoff, but it stopped before it cleared the lightning rod grid. There was also a slight roll in the second stage right before its shutdown. The boilerplate remained attached to the second stage, which only had enough battery power for launch operations. SpaceX lost contact with it shortly after it achieved orbit. It remained in orbit for three weeks, and is believed to have re-entered over the Middle East on June 26. It is believed the upper stage was sighted over Australia during its first orbit, around sunrise at that point, and produced a swirling apparition in the sky, perhaps caused by venting of its fuel and oxidizer. SpaceX attempted to recover the first stage even back then. They tried to have it parachute into the Atlantic. But the first stage broke up during its descent before the parachutes could deploy. The maiden flight was definitely a far better start than its predecessor, the Falcon 1, which failed in its first three launch attempts.
33 years ago today, NASA announced the selection of Astronaut Group 12. The pilots were Andrew Allen, Ken Bowersox, Curtis Brown, Kevin Chilton, Donald McMonagle, William Readdy, and Kenneth Reightler. The mission specialists were Tom Akers, Jan Davis, Michael Foale, Greg Harbaugh, Mae Jemison, Bruce Melnick, Mario Runco, and James Voss. Jemison would become the first Black woman in space. Readdy and Bowersox would become executives within NASA, and Chilton became the first astronaut to become a four-star General. Melnick was the first astronaut representing the U.S. Coast Guard. Voss and Melnick were the only members born in the 1940s. Foale was the youngest member of the group, the only one born in 1957.