After a successful mission with Artemis 1 in November, 2022, and with the pieces of the Artemis 2 architecture coming together for a launch targeting late 2024, NASA continues to simultaneously push towards the big items that are key to the future missions.
One of the biggest outstanding feats is getting ready to actually bring humans to the surface of the Moon. Overseeing that aspect of the missions, starting with Artemis 3, is Dr. Lisa Watson-Morgan, the manager of the Human Landing System (HLS) program operating at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
In a sit-down interview with Spaceflight Now amid the von Braun Space Exploration Symposium, Watson-Morgan said getting these landers ready for their debuts on the Artemis 3 and Artemis 5 mission respectively for SpaceX and Blue Origin provide both numerous challenges as well as unique opportunities.
I thought this was interesting
Watson-Morgan and her team are eager to see SpaceX return to flight, stating that they’d like to see around 15 to 17 launches of Starship en route to the crewed landing during the Artemis III mission.
She said because SpaceX ticks off a number of objectives with each flight instead of getting everything done before launching once, these test flights are critical for developing the hardware that will eventually be used to support the HLS program.
15 to 17 Starship launches? That sounds challenging
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
The flight of Booster 9 and Ship 25 is now in the final stage of preparations, focused on regulatory approval that will allow SpaceX to set a launch date. That target is currently tracking mid-November as the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) works on the final element of the FAA’s launch license via an updated Biological Assessment under the Endangered Species Act.
SpaceX has completed most of the prelaunch processing of the next full stack vehicle to fly out of Starbase, with a successful Wet Dress Rehearsal highlighting the recent path to launch.
With the vehicle then destacked, all eyes were on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to complete its process and approve the launch license to allow SpaceX to set the launch date. However, while the FAA confirmed the competition of the safety review portion of the license evaluation this week, full approval is still pending the FWS environmental review portion.
“The FAA is continuing to work on the environmental review. As part of its environmental review, the FAA is consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on an updated Biological Assessment under the Endangered Species Act,” noted the release.
“The FAA and the USFWS must complete this consultation before the environmental review portion of the license evaluation is completed.”
Had the regulatory process been completed at this point, the potential of a launch on Nov. 6 – as documentation pointed towards – would have been on the cards. SpaceX showed during the maiden flight of Starship they can move into a launch stance within days of approval. With the final element yet to be completed, a target of mid-November becomes a more viable aspiration.
Meanwhile:
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
I'm betting on November 16th as the launch date for the second Starship flight. First, it's the one year anniversary of the Artemis I flight. Second, it's our anniversary and there's no way my wife's going to let me sit watching a live feed for hours
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
The U.S. military’s experimental spaceplane will soon soar to orbit using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, a Pentagon news release announced. The X-37B spacecraft will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center no earlier than December 7.
The Falcon Heavy launch will mark the seventh flight of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. The mini-shuttle is operated by Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, in partnership with the United States Space Force. The mission was previously dubbed USSF-52 by the U.S. Space Force.
“We are excited to expand the envelope of the reusable X-37B’s capabilities, using the flight-proven service module and Falcon Heavy rocket to fly multiple cutting-edge experiments for the Department of the Air Force and its partners,” said Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, the X-37B Program Director, in a statement.
The news release said the mission would see the spaceplane operate in “new orbital regimes” without any specific details. Previous X-37B missions have operated in low Earth orbit.
The spaceplane is designed for long-duration missions on orbit for various tests and experiments on behalf of the Space Force as well as NASA. This upcoming flight, OTV-7, will include a radiation experiment called “Seeds-2,” which will study the impacts of radiation on various plant seeds during long-duration spaceflight.
The upcoming flight will also be “experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies” in order to ensure “safe, stable, and secure operations in space for all users of the domain.”
OTV-7 will mark the first launch of the X-37B on a Falcon Heavy rocket. The fifth flight of the spaceplane took off on a Falcon 9 Block 4 rocket back on Sept. 7, 2017. The other four launches used a ULA Atlas 5 rocket to get to orbit.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
A U.S. judge has blocked the U.S. Department of Justice from pursuing an administrative case accusing Elon Musk's SpaceX of illegally refusing to hire refugees and asylum recipients.
U.S. District Judge Rolando Olvera in Brownsville, Texas said in a written order late Wednesday that administrative judges at the Justice Department who hear cases involving anti-immigrant bias were not properly appointed.
Olvera blocked the department's case, which was filed in August, from moving forward pending the outcome of SpaceX's September lawsuit claiming the administrative case violates the U.S. Constitution.
...
In its lawsuit, the company claims that administrative judges are appointed by the U.S. attorney general but have powers that should be reserved only for officials appointed by the president.
Olvera on Wednesday agreed. Because federal law does not give the attorney general the ability to review the judges' decisions, the Constitution requires that they be appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the judge said.
Astronaut Frank Borman, who commanded Apollo 8's historic Christmas 1968 flight that circled the moon 10 times and paved the way for the lunar landing the next year, has died. He was 95.
Borman died Tuesday in Billings, Montana, according to NASA.
Borman also led troubled Eastern Airlines in the 1970s and early '80s after leaving the astronaut corps.
But he was best known for his NASA duties. He and his crew, James Lovell and William Anders, were the first Apollo mission to fly to the moon — and to see Earth as a distant sphere in space.
"Today we remember one of NASA's best. Astronaut Frank Borman was a true American hero," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement Thursday. "His lifelong love for aviation and exploration was only surpassed by his love for his wife Susan."
Launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Dec. 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 trio spent three days traveling to the moon, and slipped into lunar orbit on Christmas Eve. After they circled 10 times on Dec. 24-25, they headed home on Dec. 27.
On Christmas Eve, the astronauts read from the Book of Genesis in a live telecast from the orbiter: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
Borman ended the broadcast with, "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth."
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 04, 2023 11:19 pm
I'm betting on November 16th as the launch date for the second Starship flight. First, it's the one year anniversary of the Artemis I flight. Second, it's our anniversary and there's no way my wife's going to let me sit watching a live feed for hours
SpaceX's next Starship test launch could lift off as early as Nov. 17, pending regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies.
The potential launch from SpaceX's Starbase test site at Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas will mark the company's second test flight of an orbital class Starship and Super Heavy booster — the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. SpaceX launched its first Starship test flight in April, but it exploded shortly after liftoff.
"Starship preparing to launch as early as November 17, pending final regulatory approval," SpaceX wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, late Friday (Nov. 10).
utside of baseball and apple pie, there are two things we as Americans all consider a part of our national identity: Going to space, and redneck engineering. Normally, those two things don't overlap at all, but they did for a moment under NASA's Space Shuttle program. That's how we got the CR-990 Tire Assault Vehicle, which was built to blow up Space Shuttle tires that were too dangerous for a human to touch.
The TAV's story begins in 1993, when NASA was upgrading the Space Shuttle's landing gear. After gliding down through the atmosphere, the 240,000-pound Space Shuttles would land at speeds up to 288 mph, placing enormous stress on their tires. They had to endure triple the load of a Boeing 747 tire, so they weighed 230 pounds apiece according to Michelin, and were nitrogen-filled to as high as 373 psi.
That'll make anyone who has worked with truck tires shudder—semi tires can kill you when they blow out. Bigger, more pressurized Shuttle tires were even more dangerous, bursting with force equivalent to 2.5 sticks of dynamite, according to NASA. That's enough to injure people as far as 50 feet away, or deafen you from 100 feet. NASA's test process of landing a modified airliner on one of the tires could make them pop on landing, but the ones that didn't were more dangerous. Apparently, even a person's touch could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak.
NASA tried multiple ways of popping dangerous tires, notably a bomb disposal robot, but it was imperfect. The bot was expensive, too bulky to drive easily under the test plane, and it wasn't always available. At some point though, a NASA radio contractor by the name of David Carrott had an idea—presumably while browsing a toy catalog.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
Starship has been cleared for its second-ever liftoff.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today (Nov. 15) that it has granted a license for the second launch of Starship, SpaceX's next-generation space transportation system.
"The FAA has given license authorization for the second launch of the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy vehicle," agency officials wrote in an emailed statement this afternoon. "The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements."
The liftoff is set to occur Friday (Nov. 17) from Starbase, a SpaceX facility in South Texas, during a two-hour window that opens at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT; 7 a.m. local time in Texas). You can watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
Friday (Nov. 17) is shaping up to be an exciting day for space fans.
SpaceX plans to launch the second-ever test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Friday from Starbase, the company's facility in far southern Texas. Liftoff is scheduled to occur during a two-hour window that opens at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT), and you can watch all the action here at Space.com.
But just what will that action entail? Read on for a short explainer of this highly anticipated mission.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
Zaxxon wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2023 2:56 pm
Who needs a hype video for tomorrow? Cause SpaceX went and made one...
Put me in coach.....Im read to play...today.......centerfield.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
Ars (which it amuses me to pronounce "arse") has an in-depth look at what NASA wants to see from this Starship launch, and what comes next. It's a bold and almost-sci-fi plan.
Depending on who you ask, SpaceX may need to launch a dozen or more refueling tankers to fill up the methane and liquid oxygen tanks on the Starship lunar lander, which will have emptied its tanks just to get into low-Earth orbit following launch on top of a Super Heavy booster. The Starship lander will use this fuel to boost itself out of low-Earth orbit toward the Moon, descend to the lunar surface with astronauts, and climb back into space to deliver the crew to their Earth return vehicle—an Orion spacecraft.
But first, SpaceX needs to get Starship into space. That's the goal for Saturday with the second test flight of the full-scale Super Heavy rocket and the Starship upper stage. If all goes according to plan, Starship will accelerate to nearly 17,000 mph, just shy of the velocity required to reach a stable orbit around Earth. That will leave the vehicle on a trajectory to naturally re-enter the atmosphere for a targeted splashdown near Hawaii, following a trip most of the way around the world.
Summary of what we think we know shortly after this morning’s Starship launch:
Everything that failed on the first launch seemed to go well: ground systems didn’t blow up real good, all 33 Raptors lit on time and stayed lit, hot staging ‘worked’ in that it got the 2nd stage going—whose engines also all lit and stayed lit—but during boostback the first stage started having engine issues, and RUDded shortly thereafter. 2nd stage appeared to continue a nominal burn and flight path for minutes afterward, then also RUDded.
Great overall result, if not 100% to plan. Will be interesting to see how long before the next test. My early bet is much quicker then the last, as it appears no major issues that would require another lengthy government review before green-lighting another test, meaning the limiting factor should be SpaceX this time.
The second-ever test flight of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket has spurred an investigation, just as the first one did.
Starship lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas on Saturday (Nov. 18), kicking off a test mission that aimed to send the vehicle's upper stage most of the way around Earth.
The target was a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii about 90 minutes after launch. But Saturday's flight ended just eight minutes in, with the "rapid unscheduled disassembly" of Starship's upper stage. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) deemed this outcome a mishap and will supervise an investigation into its cause.
"The FAA will oversee the @SpaceX-led mishap investigation to ensure SpaceX complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements," the agency wrote via X on Saturday. There have been no reports of injuries or damage to public property as a result of the flight, the FAA added in another post.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
As I saw somewhere during the discussion after OFT1, of the 33 engines on the Super Heavy Booster, 22 of them are just counteracting earth's gravity at the time of liftoff. So when on OFT1 they lost five engines at liftoff, they lost 45% of the thrust needed for ascent. I don't know (or perhaps it hasn't been published) how many engines can be out at launch and still achieve mission success. It is dependent on payload weight and mission requirements.
Losing the booster was unfortunate, but since it completed its primary goal of lofting Starship on the right trajectory, it is still mission success. Losing Starship is much more disappointing, hopefully they will have enough instrumentation to be able to assess the cause. I was surprised to hear during the SpaceX video feed that SpaceX is not in continuous contact with Starship during its flight, I figured there would be some kind of Starlink arrangement but perhaps the bandwidth needed is just too much for Starlink to handle.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
Today is Edwin Hubble's birthday. Oddly, he died on the day I was born. Coincidence? Reincarnation? Grasping for a tie-in?
Edwin Hubble (born November 20, 1889, Marshfield, Missouri, U.S.—died September 28, 1953, San Marino, California) American astronomer who played a crucial role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and is generally regarded as the leading observational cosmologist of the 20th century.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
The second test flight of SpaceX's Starship was a photogenic one.
On Saturday (Nov. 18), the massive Starship rocket launched for the second time ever, lifting off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The Super Heavy booster of the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) rocket exploded shortly after stage separation, while the upper-stage Starship vehicle reached an altitude of 91 miles (148 kilometers), well above the 62-mile (100 km) boundary of space before it, too, experienced what SpaceX refers to as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly."
Despite both parts of the vehicle exploding, SpaceX considers the test flight a success. "All 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster started up successfully and, for the first time, completed a full-duration burn during ascent," SpaceX wrote in a recent mission update.
As spaceflight fans and photographers around Boca Chica pointed their cameras to the skies to document the spectacle, Scott Ferguson of Astronomy Live was watching from much farther away with a different kind of instrument: A telescope. Observing from the village of Islamorada in the Florida Keys, Ferguson captured an incredible view of Starship's upper stage as it exploded in suborbital space.
Ferguson told Space.com via email how he captured this incredible footage.
"I had planned this shot for the last couple of years," he wrote. "I came up with the idea when I realized that Starship should fly close enough to the Florida Keys to be well above the horizon during the second-stage burn. I wrote a program for tracking rocket launches that I have used many times for filming launches from Cape Canaveral, normally by using a combination of video-based tracking or joystick-based tracking.
"I realized that Starship would likely launch out of Boca Chica during the day, so I expanded my program's capabilities by writing a predictive tracking feature that uses trajectory predictions from the website FlightClub.io so that the telescope will track where it expects the rocket to be even before it's visible. I still wasn't sure if Starship would reflect enough sunlight to be visible during the day from the Keys, but I decided it was worth the risk.
"On the day of the launch, I called a friend who was watching the launch in person from Boca Chica, so that he could call out the moment of launch and I could sync the start of the tracking to that moment without any internet streaming delay from the webcast. I just had to hope the first stage of the flight went off without a hitch this time; IFT-1 [Starship's first test flight, which launched on April 20] never rose above the horizon for me in Florida, and it wouldn't be until 5 minutes into flight that Starship would even reach the horizon from the Keys. Minute after minute, I kept hearing reports that all the engines were still running on the first stage.
"Then the hot staging happened without issue. My excitement kept building. First stage explodes. No issue for me; it did its job sending Starship on its way. Then as Starship rose my heart sank when I could not see anything against the blue sky. Just when I thought it was over, I saw a cloud suddenly appear in the finder camera. I knew it had to be Starship, so I quickly moved the telescope with the joystick to put it in frame.
"There it was, spinning out of control, spewing clouds of gas in multiple directions. I realized the cloud I saw was probably the flight termination system destroying the vehicle, yet it looked to me like the whole thing was still intact. I thought the flight termination system had failed to blow it up, much like IFT-1. It wasn't until I got home and reviewed the footage that I realized it was just the front nose section and forward flaps that were still relatively intact.
"SpaceX has since asked if I would be willing to provide the video to them, and I have already sent them the stabilized version of the footage. I am just now completing the upload of the original raw file from the camera, so that they can perform their own analysis of the footage."
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
During the wee hours of Christmas Eve this year, before the gift wrapping begins and the aroma of gingerbread brightens the air, a spacecraft is set to launch to the moon.
It's called the Peregrine Lunar Lander, named for the fastest flying bird on Earth. If all goes to plan, the robotic avian will zoom through space and fly into the moon's gravitational tides, then meticulously lower its orbit until eventually touching down on a region of ancient lunar lava flows known as the Bay of Stickiness, or Sinus Viscositatis.
This mission will be one for the history books for several reasons, one of which is the fact it'll be the first to launch under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, created as a way for the agency to bring payloads to the moon without having to construct all the spacecraft necessary to bring those payloads there. In this case, the company Astrobiotic is behind the Peregrine lander and NASA's paying to stash a few things onboard.
As for the rocket, there's another first to discuss. Peregrine will be lifting off on the first flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket. The successor to the company's Atlas V and Delta IV vehicles, Vulcan Centaur is, among other things, built to carry quite a hefty amount of stuff to space.
First flight of the Vulcan Centaur? If I had experiments flying on this mission I might be more than a little worried
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2023 1:39 pm
First flight of the Vulcan Centaur? If I had experiments flying on this mission I might be more than a little worried
That's why they chose a low-value payload. The linked story doesn't say, but I think Peregrine only cost something like $35 million. And I presume that Astrobotic is getting a sweetheart price on the launch, since they're effectively just replacing ballast.
jztemple2 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2023 1:39 pm
First flight of the Vulcan Centaur? If I had experiments flying on this mission I might be more than a little worried
That's why they chose a low-value payload. The linked story doesn't say, but I think Peregrine only cost something like $35 million. And I presume that Astrobotic is getting a sweetheart price on the launch, since they're effectively just replacing ballast.
True, but is there a backup plan for those who are flying experiments on the Peregrine? Do they get a second attempt on a later launch vehicle? Just wondering.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
Some interesting updates to the latest design for Moonship (please change the name, SpaceX. Starship HLS is not doing it for me.)
Lots of detail at the link, but the tl;dr version is that the solar panels have moved flush with the rocket body to take advantage of the low-horizon sun, it's 16' taller to carry more fuel, the engine compartment is black instead of white, and a few other fiddly/speculative changes.
During the wee hours of Christmas Eve this year, before the gift wrapping begins and the aroma of gingerbread brightens the air, a spacecraft is set to launch to the moon.
It's called the Peregrine Lunar Lander, named for the fastest flying bird on Earth. If all goes to plan, the robotic avian will zoom through space and fly into the moon's gravitational tides, then meticulously lower its orbit until eventually touching down on a region of ancient lunar lava flows known as the Bay of Stickiness, or Sinus Viscositatis.
This mission will be one for the history books for several reasons, one of which is the fact it'll be the first to launch under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, created as a way for the agency to bring payloads to the moon without having to construct all the spacecraft necessary to bring those payloads there. In this case, the company Astrobiotic is behind the Peregrine lander and NASA's paying to stash a few things onboard.
As for the rocket, there's another first to discuss. Peregrine will be lifting off on the first flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket. The successor to the company's Atlas V and Delta IV vehicles, Vulcan Centaur is, among other things, built to carry quite a hefty amount of stuff to space.
First flight of the Vulcan Centaur? If I had experiments flying on this mission I might be more than a little worried
Dirty little secret - some of these CLPS companies don't quite get that going to space really is rocket science. Like for one payload (not saying which one) where it was discovered that the payload came with an extra instrument - whose weight wasn't listed in the specs. Because what's a couple of extra kg gonna hurt?
