Bigelow Aerospace may be finished. The company laid off all its workers over two weeks in late March after Nevada, where the company is based, locked down due to the pandemic. They said the workers could be recalled eventually, but some pundits think it's already over. Last year, Bigelow declined to submit a proposal to NASA that, if selected, would've netted them $561 million in funding for a new commercial module on the International Space Station, as well as studies for a potential new free-floating station. That solicitation ultimately went to Axiom Space. (I mentioned them recently, but I could've sworn I made a more detailed write-up before that about Axiom's plans. I'll need to redo that one of these days.) Bigelow Aerospace currently has a contract through 2028 to keep their BEAM inflatable module connected to the ISS. It's currently being used for storage. I have no idea what potential liquidation of Bigelow would mean for that.
60 years ago today, the U.S. Weather Bureau estimated that it would cost them $50,000 to support the planned suborbital missions of Project Mercury in 1961. They were already conducting a study to generalize typical weather patterns in the Atlantic basin to assist NASA with what they could expect for launch, splashdown, and recovery conditions. The weather study would be completed in August 1960.
17 years ago today, the first Mars Exploration Rover, MER-A or Spirit, was launched atop a Delta II 7925 rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral. It and its twin, Opportunity, were launched in the 2003 launch window for Hohmann transfer to Mars. The two rovers were heavy duty, intended for more rugged use than their predecessor, 1997's Sojourner rover. Spirit would land on January 4, 2004, in Gusev crater. The area was named Columbia Memorial Station, in honor of STS-107. Nearby hills were identified and named for all seven STS-107 astronauts, with a further set of three hills renamed for the Apollo 1 astronauts. Spirit would ultimately make extensive exploration of Husband Hill and McCool Hill, as well as a plateau called "Home Plate". The two rovers were warranted for 90 days of use. Spirit got stuck in soft soil in May 2009, and failed about a year later, likely unable to clean off dust from its solar panels. It traveled 7.73 km over the course of its mission; nowhere near as far as Opportunity would, but it landed in a much more target-rich environment. The program would be marketed with secondary logography derived from the Merrie Melodies short "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century". Spirit's mascot would be Marvin the Martian, while Opportunity's mascot would be Duck Dodgers. What, no love for Eager Young Space Cadet or K-9?
Rocket Lab is preparing for the latest launch of the Electron rocket with the "Don't Stop Me Now" mission.Colin Fletcher (@c_fletcher22) overviews the mission, payloads and ongoing booster recovery efforts.https://t.co/O1cxBEPeaR— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) June 10, 2020 All I can say is that I sincerely hope Rocket Lab isn't tempting fate with its mission names lately. The rocket will carry five cubesats, including three for the National Reconnaissance Office. Launch time is set for 12:43am EDT (04:43 UTC) tonight. Meanwhile, early Friday morning, SpaceX will launch their latest crop of Starlink satellites. This was the launch that was delayed by weather and temporarily taken off the manifest to clear the way for Demonstration Mission 2. The buzz around this launch in particular is that, as of this posting, there hasn't been a static firing test yet. Some are guessing that they may test the engines as close as 24 hours before launch. Others think there might not be a static fire at all, given this is a SpaceX mission. The first stage is B1059.3, which was previously used for the last two Cargo Dragon missions, CRS-19 and CRS-20. Its launch time is set for 5:42am EDT (09:42 UTC). There's only a 20% chance of a weather scrub.
More high winds are headed towards LC-1 tomorrow, so we’re going to wait for them to clear before we get back on the pad for the #DontStopMeNow mission. Launch is now targeted for no earlier than 04:43, 13 June UTC. NZT: 16:43 (13 June)ET: 00:43 (13 June)PT: 21:43 (12 June) pic.twitter.com/AF5kabJv0f— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) June 11, 2020 I knew that was going to happen. High winds in the range stopped "Don't Stop Me Now". They also aren't going to bother tonight as said high winds are currently predicted to persist. They are now aiming for 12:43am EDT early Saturday morning (Saturday afternoon local time in New Zealand).
Leonid Denisovich Kizim was born on August 5, 1941, in Krasnyi Lyman, Ukrainian SSR. After graduating high school, he went to the Chernigov Flight Academy, entering the Soviet Air Force in 1963 as an aviator. Selected as a cosmonaut in 1965, he was one of the youngest ever selected, at age 24. With the uncertainties of the Soviet space program in the late 60s and 70s, he would get a lot of training time, getting a master's degree from the Gagarin Air Force Academy in 1975. He was finally selected to command Soyuz T-3, a two-week visiting mission to Salyut 6 in December 1980. Joined by Oleg Makarov and Gennady Strekalov, it was the first actual three-member crew in a Soyuz spacecraft since Soyuz 11. The crew would do some refurbishment, and also finish crewed testing of the Soyuz 7K-ST model. Leonid's next mission was the third long-term expedition to Salyut 7. He was on the backup crew for the failed Soyuz T-10-1 launch, so he ended up commanding the ultimate Soyuz T-10 along with Vladimir Solovyov and Oleg Atkov in February 1984. Their expedition would be a successful eight-month mission which would be visited by two other crews, including an Intercosmos visitor from India. He completed a then-record six EVAs just during that mission. The crew would return aboard Soyuz T-11 that October. His third and final mission was Soyuz T-15 in 1986, which would open up Mir, and also transfer equipment over to Mir from Salyut 7. He was joined on the mission again by Vladimir Solovyov. The mission lasted a total of four months, roughly split evenly between the two stations on three separate visits. He left the cosmonaut program on June 13, 1987, but remained in the Soviet Air Force, and later the Russian Air Force. In 1993, he was placed in charge of the A.F. Mozhaysky Military-Space Academy in St. Petersburg. He held that position until he retired from the Russian Air Force on September 10, 2001, at the rank of Colonel General (equivalent to Lieutenant General in American armed forces). Leonid died 10 years ago today in Moscow, aged 68. I never did see exactly how. He left a wife and two children.
Happy 80th birthday to NASA astronaut Dr. Taylor Wang. He was born in Jiangxi, China, under Japanese occupation; his native name is Wang Ganjun. His family fled to Taiwan following the Chinese Revolution when he was 12. After graduating high school in Taipei, he moved to Hong Kong, then eventually emigrated to the United States, at some point selecting Taylor as his English name. He began studying physics at UCLA in 1963, and got his doctorate in solid-state physics in 1971. After that, he joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and began studying the effects of microgravity on liquids. One of his advances was acoustic levitation of liquids, which he got a patent for in 1975. He would eventually become a professor and researcher at Vanderbilt. His studies got the attention of NASA, and he was selected as a payload specialist in 1983. He was chosen to bring his acoustic levitation experiments to the Spacelab flight on STS-51-B in 1985. In doing so, he became the first astronaut of Chinese origin. After his spaceflight, Dr. Wang worked on immunoisolation, a technique to protect cellular tissue transplants without immunosuppression drugs. He would also develop follow-ons to his Spacelab experiments for future Spacelab flights, though he'd never fly again himself. In 2010, he appeared on an episode of Ancient Aliens with Giorgio Tsoukalos. I have no idea what for, nor am I interested to go find out what for. I'll be honest, I was wondering how long it would be before I mentioned him. Dr. Wang is married, and has two children.
When the Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde supersonic airliner was retired in 2003, it wasn't because of the crash in Paris in 2000. That only hastened its demise. What killed the supersonic transport was a feedback loop of lack of demand caused by distaste for its dirtiness; both in fuel use, and its sonic booms. One of the holy grails of aviation in this generation is quiet supersonic transport; a supersonic plane that has a deadened sonic boom that is tolerable to those on the ground. NASA thinks it's on to something. Currently under development is the Lockheed Martin X-59 QueSST. The X-59 is designed to be a model that could be scaled up in the future to airliner size. This demonstration model is a single-seater jet with design similar to the Northrop T-38 Talon, landing gear derived from the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the jet engine used in the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The plan is for it to cruise at Mach 1.42 at an altitude of 55,000 feet. Because of its long nosecone, it will feature a 4K camera for a viewscreen for the pilot, similar to what you'd find on Star Trek. The hope is that the sonic boom from the X-59 will be limited to 75 perceived decibels, equivalent to shutting a car door. For comparison, the Concorde's sonic boom routinely reached 110 perceived decibels. NASA is expecting to receive the first X-59 for testing in late 2021. The ICAO is hoping to put together a standard for sonic booms in supersonic transport in 2025, and intends to use data from X-59 testing to form that standard.
NASA is always looking for proposals to send probes through the Solar System. Next year, they will be making selections in the Discovery Program for potentially two missions, with a launch target of 2025-26. One of those missions is Trident, which is planned as a fly-by of Neptune that will focus on Triton. The idea is that the probe will not only bring state-of-the-art camera and remote sensing equipment to bear on the day side of the tidally-locked moon, but also use reflected sunlight off of Neptune to attempt to image its night side. The goal is to determine the extent of cryovulcanism on Triton, the satellite where the phenomenon was first hypothesized in 1989. As proposed, the flight will require three fly-bys of Earth, one of Venus, and one of Jupiter to get to Neptune in June or July 2038. Each missed launch window would push its launch back an additional 13 years. But that path only requires an Atlas V 401 rocket. I have no idea if they've given consideration to Falcon 9 or Vulcan if Atlas V is no longer available by then. There have been other proposals to visit Neptune since Voyager 2. A mission called Argo was proposed in the late 2000s. It would've flown by Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, with a potential added KBO fly-by afterward. A sequel to New Horizons that was also proposed in the 2000s saw many proposed paths to several different KBOs, one of which included a fly-by of Neptune. There is also a Triton hopper lander currently under Phase II research at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. Its game-breaker app is a radioisotope rocket engine to propel itself across Triton using sublimated nitrogen ice collected on Triton's surface.
11 years ago today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched atop an Atlas V 401 rocket from Pad 41, Cape Canaveral. The main mission of LRO was to provide high-resolution photographic mapping of the Moon to support future human landing missions. It would also help locate resources on the Moon. A subplot to all of this was the mapping of every previous landing location. It's located all six Apollo landing sites; most of the Soviet landing and crash sites, as well as the pathways of both Lunokhod rovers; both Chinese Chang'e landers; and the impact sites of LADEE, both GRAIL probes, Vikram, and Beresheet. It even once photographed LADEE while it was in orbit. Not that it will convince any of the Moon hoax truthers, mind you. Its primary mission lasted one year. It's still active now, and is believed to be able to last well into the 2020s. Launched along with LRO was the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). Its mission was to find water on the Moon. After Chandrayaan discovered water right before its launch, LCROSS would instead verify its presence. It was kept attached to the Centaur upper stage until the day of its impact. It would fire the Centaur toward Cabeus crater, near the Moon's South Pole, on October 9, 2009, then fly through its ejecta before itself crashing six minutes afterward. It confirmed the presence of water in the permanently shadowed craters of the polar regions.
24 years ago today, Columbia was launched on STS-78 from Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center. The mission was Life and Microgravity Spacelab-2, the fifth Spacelab mission dedicated to biomedical research. It was seen as a preparatory mission ahead of the International Space Station. The mission would also test procedures for the second Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission; namely, using the Shuttle's reaction control system to lift Hubble's orbit. It was so successful that they would use the same procedures to lift the orbit of the ISS during its construction missions as well. Among the crew of seven were French astronaut Jean-Jacques Favier and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk.
47 years ago today, Martin Marietta delivered the first Titan IIIE rocket to the U.S. Air Force at Cape Kennedy. In addition to the planned initial launches for Helios and Viking, the Air Force wanted one extra for a proof of concept launch to be conducted at the beginning of 1974. A large amount of the payload for the planned launch would be boilerplate. Part of it was a model of the Viking spacecraft stack, orbiter and lander. But the model would be fitted with some experiments packages for plasma research.
Donn Eisele was born on June 23, 1930, in Columbus, Ohio. There's surprisingly little information on his pre-test pilot career. He graduated from Navy in 1952, but was commissioned in the Air Force. He got a master's in Astronautics from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1960, then became a test pilot in 1962. Among his classmates at Aerospace Research Pilot School were Charles Bassett and Theodore Freeman. All three would be selected to NASA in Astronaut Group 3 in 1963. Bassett and Freeman were both killed in jet accidents. But an odd twist of fate would save Eisele's life. He was selected as the junior pilot for Apollo 204. But he dislocated his shoulder twice during the most preliminary training. As a result, he was replaced by Roger Chaffee, and bumped to the second Apollo test flight under commander Wally Schirra. Eventually they were solidified for the first actual Apollo flight, Apollo 7, with him in the CM Pilot position. There was one tiny little problem: Donn was having an extramarital affair. Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton was very hard-lined about this sort of thing, and warned the entire corps that if an affair was made public, they would kick that astronaut out. (Fun fact: he actually did that to Duane Graveline.) Apollo 7 was great technologically, but terrible in terms of astronaut conduct (as I've mentioned here repeatedly). Donn was the last man standing after it, and went on to be the CM Pilot in what was supposed to be Apollo 13. But after it was bumped to Apollo 14, his affair became public, and he was drummed out of the Astronaut Corps. After spending a couple years at Langley Research Center, he retired from NASA and the Air Force (final rank Major) in 1972. He would eventually divorce, and married the woman he had an affair with. Immediately out of NASA, he spent two years as a manager in the Peace Corps in Thailand. Donn spent some time at Marion Power Shovel before becoming an investment manager at Oppenheimer. He also spent a year on the City Commission of Wilton Manors, Florida, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. He was travelling in Japan for the opening of a Space Camp extension in Tokyo when he died of a massive heart attack on December 2, 1987. He was 57. He was survived by his wife, his ex-wife, and a total of six children between them (four from the first, two from the second). He was cremated in Japan, and his ashes were buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His second wife donated his personal Moon rock sample to the Broward County Library system in 2007; it's on display at their Main Library in Fort Lauderdale. It is the only Moon rock that is possessed by any library system.
The second SkySat rideshare on a Falcon 9 Starlink mission has been shuffled behind a rideshare for BlackSky Global. Its next two photomapping satellites will launch NET Thursday at 4:39pm EDT. The second SkySat launch is now penciled in for July. Also planned for July now is SAOCOM 1B. ******** Tonight at 9:51pm EDT, the Vega rocket is scheduled for its return-to-flight after a launch mishap last July. It will carry eight smallsats, and a total of 57 cubesats. It's a proof-of-concept flight with two different cubesat carriers. Among them, it will carry the first satellites for Slovenia and Monaco.
I've brought it up a few times. I could've sworn I wrote something up about it, but I guess I never actually pasted it here. Oh well... At the end of January, NASA selected Axiom Space to manufacture and supply commercial add-on modules for the U.S. side of the International Space Station. The plan is to launch the core node module in 2024. The modules are designed by French architect Phillipe Starck. The first node would have four common berthing mechanisms on all sides and a docking port on the forward end. All the renderings I've seen show it attached to the ISS at Harmony forward. I have no idea if it will attach to PMA-2, or if PMA-2 will be moved. Axiom will eventually add two habitation modules and its own cupola. All the modules would have their own solar power. When the ISS is retired (currently set for 2030, but who knows?), with the Russians (maybe) detaching their modules; and the Americans, Europeans, and Japanese moving to the Lunar Gateway; Axiom will move the zenith module to Node 1's port CBM, and attach a power and radiator module, which will also have its own EVA airlock, at the zenith CBM. It will then be detached from the ISS, and become its own standalone commercial space station. The plans for the standalone station also add a second node, a research and manufacturing module, and a logistics module which appears to have exposed experiment attachments. It will have four docking ports, and plenty of space for further expansion.
We have some live news going on. NASA announced today that the first two EVAs to install the last set of Lithium ion batteries on the International Space Station will be on June 26 and July 1. Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken are planning to take just about 7 hours for each install, but they are anticipating potential delays in tasks. If needed, a third EVA for the first set of replacements will take place on July 6. Installation of the final set of batteries is planned to begin in mid-July. When DM-2 returns right now depends on whether or not there are EVA delays. They are aiming to end the mission and return Behnken and Doug Hurley as early as August 2. With that, USCV-1 is on the home stretch. They are planning on six weeks of final review for DM-2 data, so it's looking like they're aiming for at least September to launch their first crew rotation. USCV-1 looks to be planning on docking at PMA-3 at Harmony zenith. The Crew Dragon capsule, C207, is currently in production in Hawthorne. Its first-stage booster, B1061, is about to be shipped from SpaceX's checkout facilities in Texas to Cape Canaveral.
Here is an opinion piece that suggests that NASA use the SpaceX Dragon for manned moon flights instead of SLS/Orion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/22/send-spacex-dragon-moon/
There are a lot of people who wonder that. One of the big problems is the lack of efficiency and agility in the classic military-industrial complex. We see that with the issues Boeing is facing with Starliner, as well as with the Space Launch System. Even with the streamlining of the production process as part of the Space Launch System program, we're still waiting for the first launch. Ares V was estimated to be available in the 2020s. SLS was supposed to debut in 2019. It's currently scheduled for November 2021, but even that date is threatened. So the dolling-up of Ares V was apparently all for naught. Elon Musk himself has said his Starship is not intended as a competitor to the SLS. I've said as much in the past. But the urgency of the Space Race era has definitely been lost. I feel like more commercial competition might help. Starship, and even New Glenn, might be able to do the job intended for Orion and Artemis much more efficiently.
23 years ago today, Columbia was launched on STS-94 from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. It was the NASA equivalent of Groundhog Day, as this was essentially a reflight of STS-83. It held Spacelab with the Microgravity Science Laboratory payload, and the EDO module. Unlike last time, it would actually go the full 16 days. The two payload specialists, scientists Greg Linteris and Roger Crouch, would be among the scant few payload specialists that would fly twice. But in an oddity, joining them in this double mission being their only flights was the pilot, Susan Still. ******** Susan Still was born on October 24, 1961, in Augusta, Georgia. Her father was a prominent medical doctor who was one of the earliest burn specialists. After getting an aeronautical engineering degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1982, Susan went to work in the Lockheed wind tunnels in Atlanta while researching aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. After earning her master's in 1985, she was commissioned in the Navy, becoming an Aviator specializing in electronic warfare aircraft. She was selected as an astronaut in the pilot track of NASA Group 15 in 1994. This meant she was selected to a mission very quickly as the first Group 15 pilot to fly a mission (fellow Group 15 pilot Pamela Melroy wouldn't fly her first mission until 2000), and had the luck to fly twice in the same calendar year. I think there's only one other astronaut who's done that outside of the members of these two missions. After this mission, she married fellow Navy officer Colin Kilrain. She became a liaison for the Astronaut Office at NASA Headquarters specializing in legislative affairs. She left NASA in 2002, and retired from the Navy in 2005 at the rank of Commander. Her husband is now a Vice Admiral, and is the special operations commander for NATO. They have three children together.
35 years ago today, the European Space Agency launched the Giotto probe atop an Ariane 1 rocket from Pad A-1, Guiana Space Centre. Giotto was the crown jewel of the Halley Armada, a global fleet of space probes set to examine Halley's Comet during its 1986 apparition. It would be the most daring of the probes, targeted to enter the comet's coma and attempt to photograph its nucleus up-close. After the rocket placed it into GTO, ESA used its standard Mage 1 apogee boost motor to launch Giotto into heliocentric orbit. They just needed to fire it at perigee instead of apogee. Its initial escape placed it inside Earth's orbit. Giotto would encounter Halley's Comet on March 14, 1986. It flew by at a distance of 596 km, and got many images of the nucleus before debris struck and destroyed the probe's camera. After the encounter, the probe did a mid-course correction to set up a July 2, 1990, fly-by of Earth. It was placed in safe mode until the day of that fly-by, at a distance of 22,730 km. The fly-by put Giotto on a course to encounter Comet Grigg-Skjellerup on July 10, 1992. The mission was closed on July 23, 1992, with the probe again placed in safe mode. It flew by Earth again in 1999, but was not awoken.
I have been hearing since this year, even before the pandemic, that the satellite internet company OneWeb may be going bankrupt. But something interesting happened today: They got a bailout from the government of the United Kingdom. The UK government and an Indian company called Bharati Enterprises have each chipped in US$500 million to buy out OneWeb and settle its debt. It will represent a 90% stake in the company, with its original investors keeping 10% stake. Some very odd things are resulting from this announcement. The United Kingdom wants to use the OneWeb constellation as the basis of a native navigational satellite system. Analysts don't think the satellites currently in space are up to the task. They also want to limit which nations can use the new system, thus limiting its income from the purchase. Although some elements of OneWeb's manufacturing are already based in the UK, some are questioning whether or not OneWeb's prime manufacturing will be moved from its main facilities in Exploration Park at Kennedy Space Center. So nobody really knows what's going on with this yet. We don't even know when the next batch of OneWeb satellites will be launched. The remaining launches for the year were taken off the manifest when they filed for bankruptcy.
Rocket Lab lit up the sky for the Fourth of July. Except it was in New Zealand, where it was already July 5. During the second stage burn for their latest Electron rocket, the video feed suddenly and unceremoniously froze. The telemetry, however kept working. And the speed stopped increasing about three minutes before it was supposed to. The remaining five minutes or so of the webcast was rather uncomfortable on the part of its host, until it came to an end, with him citing the webcam footage going out. It's unknown what exactly happened, except that, obviously, the rocket was lost. Electron actually uses electric turbopumps in its engines. They are battery-powered, and they typically hot-swap the batteries at the T+6 minute mark. Speculation initially was that this hot-swap failed, the initial battery depleted, and the second-stage engine cut off as a result. Until people pointed out that the engines stopped about 30 seconds before battery hot-swap was supposed to take place. So we'll have to wait for them to investigate and tell us what exactly happened. A brief statement about today's mission from our founder and CEO, Peter Beck. pic.twitter.com/QUShtzp7J0— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) July 5, 2020 Sorry to hear about this. Hope you get back to orbit soon. Rockets are hard.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2020 The name of the mission was "Pics Or It Didn't Happen". Maybe that's why the feed cut off...
75 years ago today, France conducted their second series of rocket tests with Jean-Jacuqes Barre's EA 1941 rocket design. Three launches were attempted. The most successful launch, though the rocket fired its engines around half as long as planned (7.5 seconds, with 13 seconds planned), still reached an apogee of 30 km, and went 60 km downrange into the Mediterranean from its launch site in Toulon on the French Riviera. Barre would conduct a third series of tests on July 18 before shifting from the EA 1941 model to the EA 1946 Eole rocket. But none of his launches would see the success from this series, as development would eventually shift to the Veronique series.
The July manifest for SpaceX is beginning to flesh out, with at least three launches solidly scheduled. On Wednesday, SpaceX is planning on launching their next crop of Starlink satellites. This will include the BlackSky Global rideshare of two Earth observation smallsats. Launch is scheduled for a minute before Noon EDT (15:59 UTC). On July 14, they are scheduled to launch a military comsat for South Korea, their first military satellite. Time is currently TBD. And the launch of SAOCOM 1B, an Argentine Earth observation satellite, is finally reset for July 25 at 7:19pm EDT (23:19 UTC). This is the one that will launch into polar orbit from Florida. Supposedly. Another Starlink launch with the second SkySat rideshare is tentatively set for some time this month.
22 years ago today, Russia launched a pair of German satellites into orbit atop an R-29 Shtil submarine-launched ballistic missile from the submarine K-407 Novomoskovsk in the Barents Sea. The Shtil is a three-stage liquid-fueled SLBM. Honestly, I don't know what possessed them to use it for an orbital launch. It's estimated to have a top payload capacity to LEO of 160 kg. The two satellites were called Tubsat-N, and were basic store-and-dump comsats. Based on the parameters I've seen, they could probably be referred to as cubesats today. They were placed in a 240x480-mile orbit, and both had re-entered by 2002. An instrumentation package designed to measure the performance of the rocket re-entered in 2014.