Created Monday 06 April 2020
See also: Transportation, Satellites, Space
“We would then plan to fly Sir Richard Branson on the third powered flight.”
Eric Berger - 8/7/2020, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 3.11 of the Rocket Report! A lot of the most interesting news this week came in the world of small launch, with Electron announcing a quick return to flight as well as boosting the capacity of its Electron booster. We were also surprised to see such a robust fundraising effort by ABL Space Systems.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Four companies appear to have a shot: Astra, Firefly, Virgin Orbit, and ExPace.
Eric Berger - 8/12/2020, 9:57 AM
In case you hadn't noticed, we're approaching mid-August. As of Wednesday, there are a mere 142 days left in the year. So as the calendar churns toward the end of the year, this is a good time to ask whether any new commercial rockets that launch small satellites will make it to orbit this year.
Back at the optimistic, pre-pandemic beginning of 2020, we had high hopes for the debut of new rockets from Astra, Firefly, and Virgin Orbit. We also expected to see the first flight of Europe's Vega C rocket, which is now confirmed to slip into 2021.
Since then, a few companies have made launch attempts and failed to reach orbit. Others have been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's a rundown of the companies that could still make orbit this calendar year.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/will-any-new-smallsat-rockets-make-it-to-orbit-this-year/
The team had even declared 'liftoff.'
Jon Fingas - 30 August 2020
Most rocket launch aborts are largely uneventful, but United Launch Alliance’s latest was… dramatic. The spaceflight outfit had to abort its NROL-44 mission (via Parabolic Arc) just three seconds before it was due to start, with the Delta IV rocket’s initiators already covering the vehicle in flames — the crew even declared “liftoff” without realizing that the mission had been cut short. The engines never ignited, ULA said.
It’s not initially clear what the problem was, but it will take at least a full week to try launching again. This shouldn’t affectt SpaceX’s plan to launch an Earth observation satellite on August 30th (today, if you’re reading in time) at 7:18PM Eastern from a nearby launchpad at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX also hoped to launch a Starlink mission earlier in the day, but that was pushed back due to bad weather.
https://www.engadget.com/ula-aborts-mission-just-before-launch-205931211.html
By Tim Fernholz, Senior reporter - November 5, 2020
The Russian founder of a business going public in a $1.2 billion transaction is not allowed to work with his own company’s products because of US rules intended to keep advanced space technology away from geopolitical rivals.
Momentus Space was founded in 2017 to develop a “last-mile” transportation system for satellites launched into orbit, using a novel water-based propulsion system. The company is expected to go public on the NASDAQ in early 2021 after a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, created by the fund Stable Road Capital, purchased it in October.
https://qz.com/1923013/momentus-ipo-is-complicated-by-russian-ceo-barred-from-its-tech/
MICHELLE STARR - 11 DECEMBER 2020
Invisible structures generated by gravitational interactions in the Solar System have created a “space superhighway” network, astronomers have discovered.
These channels enable the fast travel of objects through space, and could be harnessed for our own space exploration purposes, as well as the study of comets and asteroids.
https://www.sciencealert.com/solar-system-arches-of-chaos-create-cosmic-fast-travel-superhighways
Jason Torchinsky - 17 December 2020 7:30PM
One of the most common tropes of science fiction is that almost any vessel or vehicle capable of carrying humans will have some manner of self-destruct mechanism installed, ready to blow the whole mess to the kind of reens that smither. Is any of this based in reality? Are there real-world military vessels or aircraft that actually have such systems? And I don’t mean stuff like the timing chain guides on my Volkswagen Tiguan; I mean deliberate self-destruct systems. So let’s dig a little bit into this.
https://jalopnik.com/are-self-destruct-systems-real-1845906479
alexdory - 3 years before 28 April 2021 (edited)
My goal here
I am Alex, a huge space and aviation geek, working in the Aviation Industry for 11 years now. Ever since I was a child I was fascinated by aviation and space travel and I got to see a lot of science fiction movies, played a lot of science fiction games but it wasn't until I started documenting myself in that field that I understood what is it all about. And what a mind-blowing experience that was. I will try to open your eyes with this, maybe make you interested in following a science career, or just show you some cool and interesting facts.
I will try to keep it simple and easy to read for someone new to this, while also offering more information for the ones that know what I'm talking about.
Let's get more people interested in science,be it space or physics or otherwise. Let's share some of our mysteries.
May 28, 2021
Due to technology advancements in the recent decades, manufacturers have been able to decrease the size of electronics drastically. This has allowed for satellites to decrease in size, causing the small satellite (small sat) market to explode. To launch these satellites, companies have been creating smaller and cheaper rockets. These rockets are called small sat launchers.
Small sat launchers have a number of advantages. Firstly, they can launch small sats on their own dedicated rocket (or on a small rideshare), instead of on a rideshare mission with hundreds of satellites, allowing the customer to go to a more desired orbit. Furthermore, due to the smaller size, these rockets are inherently cheaper; there is no reason to pay for the extra performance of a medium or heavy lift launch vehicle for a small sat.
https://everydayastronaut.com/small-sat-launcher-comparison/
A small step for rockets, a giant leap for people into small rockets
Ian Vorbach - Jun 16, 2021
Up until a few decades ago, satellites were all big. Real big. School bus sized big.
Many satellites are still big. But also, some of them now are small. Real small. Toaster sized small.
The miniaturization of electronics that has down-sized the computers in our pockets has also affected how big our satellites need to be in order to accomplish their missions.
https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/the-launch-landscape-small-rockets
‘We’re in the weather sales business, not production’
By Loren Grush - May 30, 2020, 10:54am EDT
With less than 20 minutes to go before SpaceX’s first crewed flight, weather conditions remained miserable, forcing meteorologists at the Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron to deliver bad news to NASA and SpaceX.
“It definitely hurts, especially when we have those hard requirements that when something hits, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Capt. Jason Fontenot, the space lift weather operations flight commander at the 45th Weather Squadron, said during a press call. “And we just kind of have to pass on the information, saying, ‘Even though we’re not at the launch window yet, this is very unlikely that we will see this take off today.’“
https://www.theverge.com/21275436/spacex-launch-rocket-weather-45th-space-wing-squadron-lightning
“Yeah, I have a lab here full of all my goodies from NASA.”
Warp Drive Inc - September 2021?
Traveling at faster than the speed of light has been the subject of countless works of science fiction. Most notably, the “warp drive” in “Star Trek” allowed cosmic travelers to break the lightspeed barrier to traverse vast galactic distances.
In the real world, research into potential warp drive technologies has been slow, but significant enough to attract the interest of NASA and even a handful of independent ventures.
Take Harold “Sonny” White, a big name in warp drive research who left NASA in 2019 to work at a Houston-based nonprofit called the Limitless Space Institute — where, he says, he was allowed by NASA to continue his work and even take his lab equipment with him.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/warp-drive-scientists-took-equipment-left-nasa
Also, an update on Arca's first orbital launch attempt.
Eric Berger - 10/8/2021, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 4.19 of the Rocket Report! If all goes well during the course of the next week, Capt. James T. Kirk will become a real-life star trekker. There's plenty of other news this week as well, including some words on how SpaceX managed to snag an Italian government satellite launch.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Three competitors have already entered the arena. More are expected.
Eric Berger - 10/28/2021, 3:45 AM
The sprawling International Space Station—so long a beacon of hope, unity, and technological achievement; so gleaming and bright it can be seen from a city's downtown as it passes overhead—is nearer the end of its life than the beginning. And time is running out to replace the station before it's gone.
Its first component, the Russian-built Zarya power and propulsion module, was launched in 1998. The other core pieces of the station were all sent spaceward by 2001. The backbone of the International Space Station, therefore, has spent two decades in space—a harsh environment of wild temperature swings, micrometeoroid impacts, torsional strains, and more.
In recent years, signs of aging have become more apparent, particularly with cracks spreading across the Zvezda module. And more than the hardware is coming apart. The political forces that drove the formation of the space station partnership, principally the desire of the United States and Russia to work together after the Soviet breakup, have given way to a zealous anti-Americanism in Moscow and suspicions in Washington, DC. The partnership remains intact for now, thanks to healthy working relationships among astronauts, cosmonauts, and engineers. But politically, the rhetoric is at times toxic.
4:19 AM Apr 18, 2022 - LouGrims
So did you know that no-one really knows why the most used spacecraft propulsion system today actually works?
I have been bored and kind of sick for the past 2 days so here is a quick thread on Hall thruster physics
Strato Incendus - May 27, 2022
The two most unscientific words in Star Trek are probably “full stop”. :wink: The Impulse Drive is described in the Voyager Technical Manual as 0.25 c (25% of the speed of light). Whatever g forces are required to “immediately” come to a halt from that speed - it's certainly way beyond what the human body can take. If you don't have the luxury of handwaving this away with the (in)famous inertial damping system, you have to start wondering how fast a ship could brake in space without crushing its inhabitants, and how far the ship would keep on coasting in the meantime before coming to a stop.
In my story, I need an “emergency brake” from 0.1 c to a full stop - even though this puts the entire ship's mission in jeopardy. The reason I cite is therefore a (an impending?) failure of the deflector systems: If the ship kept going at 0.1 c, they would eventually run into a dust particle that would blow up the entire craft.
Reference: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/emergency-braking-in-space.1015593/
“He must be out of money by now, surely?”
Eric Berger - 3/6/2023, 9:58 AM
One of the most honest moments in a new book, When the Heavens Went on Sale, comes during a discussion between two aerospace technicians working at the rocket company Astra in December 2018. On a Sunday, Les Martin and Matt Flanagan were watching football inside an RV parked at Astra's facilities near Oakland, California.
Martin in particular had a lot of experience at launch companies, having worked primarily on test stands for SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Firefly Space, and now Astra. The two were discussing the challenges of the launch industry and musing about how any company ever made money launching rockets.
65 AA batteries and $10 Arduino processor power space debris solution
Dan Robinson - Tue 21 Mar 2023 13:31 UTC
A tiny satellite with a drag chute built by a team of students has been held up as one small possible solution to the thorny issue of space junk caused by defunct hardware cluttering up Earth’s orbit.
SBUDNIC, a “Sputnik-like CubeSat,” was built by students at Brown University, Rhode Island, from low-cost commercial off-the-shelf parts. It has successfully demonstrated the use of a simple drag sail that helps to degrade the satellite’s orbit and push it back into the planet’s atmosphere faster than would otherwise have occurred.
The problem of space debris is a growing one, with US space agency NASA describing low Earth orbit as “an orbital space junk yard” with millions of pieces of debris flying around, from satellites that are no longer working, down to tiny pieces of spacecraft.
The idea behind SBUDNIC was to demonstrate how future satellites could avoid adding to this problem by including a mechanism to help de-orbit them at the end of their life span. The aerodynamic drag device pulls the satellite out of orbit approximately three times faster than comparable satellites, according to Brown University.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/21/student_satellite_demonstrates_drag_sail/
Axiom Space and Virgin Galactic are hoping to launch astronauts to space in late May, but these companies have very different missions in mind.
George Dvorsky - 8 May 2023
Private crewed space flights were so hot in 2021 and 2022, but the current year has been very quiet in this regard. That’s now about to change, as Axiom Space and Virgin Galactic prepare for their respective space-based missions, both scheduled for late May.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying a crew of four to the International Space Station is set to launch no earlier than Sunday, May 21 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA Space Operations posted this news to Twitter on May 3, just two days after announcing that Axiom Mission 2, or Ax-2, would not fly in early May.
Once on the ISS, the Ax-2 crew consisting of commander Peggy Whitson, pilot John Shoffner, and mission specialists Ali Algarni and Rayyanah Barnawi will spend a dozen days performing science and technology experiments, as the private company prepares to build its own orbital space station, known as Axiom Station. Saudi astronauts Algarni and Barnawi secured their seats on the mission through an agreement between Axiom Space and Saudi Arabia.
https://gizmodo.com/axiom-space-virgin-galactic-private-astronaut-missions-1850415699
Varda Space Industries launched its first in-orbit manufacturing spacecraft on board SpaceX's latest rideshare mission.
Passant Rabie - 14 June 2023
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off this week while carrying 72 small satellites, including the first in-space manufacturing spacecraft with a mission to produce pharmaceutical drugs in orbit and return them back to Earth.
Varda Space Industries’ first space factory is operating in orbit after launching on board a Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Monday, according to a press release. The spacecraft itself was built by Rocket Lab and is designed to provide power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control to Varda’s 264-pound (120-kilogram) capsule, which is designed to manufacture and carry the products on its way back to Earth.
https://gizmodo.com/space-factory-attempts-produce-medical-drugs-in-orbit-1850538869
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday November 05, 2023 09:34AM
Scientists recently noticed that the chemical fingerprint of meteor particles was starting to change.
And last month Purdue University announced that “The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet — the stratosphere — which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth.”
Using tools hitched to the nose cone of their research planes and sampling more than 11 miles above the planet's surface, researchers have discovered significant amounts of metals in aerosols in the atmosphere, likely from increasingly frequent launches and returns of spacecraft and satellites. That mass of metal is changing atmospheric chemistry in ways that may impact Earth's atmosphere and ozone layer…
A Japanese company becomes the first to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit.
Stephen Clark - 8/1/2024, 3:47 PM
There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet.
In February, a Japanese company named Astroscale sent a small satellite into low-Earth orbit on top of a Rocket Lab launcher. A couple of months later, Astroscale's ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) spacecraft completed its pursuit of a Japanese rocket stuck in orbit for more than 15 years.
ADRAS-J photographed the upper stage of an H-IIA rocket from a range of several hundred meters and then backed away. This was the first publicly released image of space debris captured from another spacecraft using rendezvous and proximity operations.
Since then, Astroscale has pulled off more complex maneuvers around the H-IIA upper stage, which hasn't been controlled since it deployed a Japanese climate research satellite in January 2009. Astroscale attempted to complete a 360-degree fly-around of the H-IIA rocket last month, but the spacecraft triggered an autonomous abort one-third through the maneuver after detecting an attitude anomaly.
Some space companies aren't necessarily against this idea, but SpaceX hasn't spoken.
Stephen Clark – Jun 15, 2025 4:07 AM
The Federal Aviation Administration may soon levy fees on companies seeking launch and reentry licenses, a new tack in the push to give the agency the resources it needs to keep up with the rapidly growing commercial space industry.
The text of a budget reconciliation bill released by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last week calls for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, to begin charging licensing fees to space companies next year. The fees would phase in over eight years, after which the FAA would adjust them to keep pace with inflation. The money would go into a trust fund to help pay for the operating costs of the FAA's commercial space office.
The bill released by Cruz's office last week covers federal agencies under the oversight of the Senate Commerce Committee, which he chairs. These agencies include the FAA and NASA. Ars recently covered Cruz's proposals for NASA to keep the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and Gateway lunar space station alive, while the Trump administration aims to cancel Gateway and end the SLS and Orion programs after two crew missions to the Moon.
The Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 budget request, released last month, proposes $42 million for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, a fraction of the agency's overall budget request of $22 billion. The FAA's commercial space office received an almost identical funding level in 2024 and 2025. Accounting for inflation, this is effectively a budget cut for AST. The office's budget increased from $27.6 million to more than $42 million between 2021 and 2024, when companies like SpaceX began complaining the FAA was not equipped to keep up with the fast-moving commercial launch industry.
November 08, 2023
Hot off the heels of the DRACO announcement in July 2023, Lockheed Martin was awarded $33.7 million from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) High Power program to mature high-power nuclear electric power and propulsion technologies and spacecraft design. The JETSON effort is now in the preliminary design review stage, with the option to go to critical design review level.
With Space Nuclear Power Corp (SpaceNukes) and BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT) as our partners – both of whom carry deep expertise in nuclear power and reactor design – our JETSON team will address the escalating need for advanced spacecraft mobility, situational awareness, and power generation that far surpasses traditional spacecraft capabilities. Providing both on-board electrical power and the ability to power electric propulsion Hall thrusters used on Lockheed Martin’s LM2100 satellites, JETSON serves as a critical step forward in using nuclear electric propulsion to get humans to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
“Nuclear fission development for space applications is key to introducing technologies that could dramatically change how we move and explore in the vastness of space,” said Barry Miles, JETSON program manager and principal investigator, at Lockheed Martin. “From high-power electrical subsystem and electric propulsion, to nuclear thermal propulsion or fission surface power, Lockheed Martin is focused on developing these systems with our important government agencies and industry partners.”
Take this $34M, Lockheed Martin, and give us an uranium fission engine for electricity, heat, propulsion
Katyanna Quach - Fri 10 Nov 2023 23:21 UTC
Lockheed Martin has been awarded $33.7 million by the US Air Force Research Laboratory to develop nuclear-powered electric propulsion systems for spacecraft.
Under the military lab's Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) High Power program, Lockheed Martin will work with Space Nuclear Power Corp and BWX Technologies to build a fission reactor that can be used to fly probes through space rather than lift them up into orbit from Earth.
That reactor system is expected to split the atoms in uranium fuel, and use the resulting heat to drive Stirling engines connected to generators to produce between between six and 20 kW of electric capacity. That electricity can then be used to power the craft's onboard electronics and electric Hall thrusters for propulsion. Hall engines work by using a magnetic field to accelerate ions to produce thrust.
This is on top of any power that can be generated from any attached solar panels; when there's not enough light, this atomic system ought to be highly useful.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/10/lockheed_martin_nuclear_spacecraft/
There ain't no party like a Pu-238 party
Richard Speed - Wed 22 Nov 2023 13:15 UTC
NASA has celebrated a shipment of half a kilo of plutonium oxide by the US Department of Energy, the largest since US production of plutonium-238 was restarted just over a decade ago.
Plutonium-238 (Pu-238) is essential for NASA missions using Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS). RPS makes use of the natural decay of Pu-238 to provide heat and electricity through systems such as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG). As such, it's essential for missions where solar power is not an option.
NASA's recent Mars rovers use the fuel, and Perseverance uses an MMRTG to provide the robot with continuous heat and approximately 110 watts of electricity. Other missions, such as Cassini, also used the isotope, and Pu-238 power has kept the Voyager probes running decades after the launch.
According to NASA: “Three dozen missions have explored space for decades using the reliable electricity and heat provided by RPS.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/22/nasa_plutonium238_shipment/
The newly developed concept uses liquid uranium to heat rocket propellant.
Passant Rabie - September 14, 2025
Engineers from Ohio State University are developing a new way to power rocket engines, using liquid uranium for a faster, more efficient form of nuclear propulsion that could deliver round trips to Mars within a single year.
NASA and its private partners have their eyes set on the Moon and Mars, aiming to establish a regular human presence on distant celestial bodies. The future of space travel depends on building rocket engines that can propel vehicles farther into space and do it faster. Nuclear thermal propulsion is currently at the forefront of new engine technologies aiming to significantly reduce travel time while allowing for heavier payloads.
https://gizmodo.com/new-nuclear-rocket-concept-could-slash-mars-travel-time-in-half-2000658084
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 14, 2025 09:34PM
“Engineers from Ohio State University are developing a new way to power rocket engines,” reports Gizmodo, “using liquid uranium for a faster, more efficient form of nuclear propulsion that could deliver round trips to Mars within a single year…”
Nuclear propulsion uses a nuclear reactor to heat a liquid propellant to extremely high temperatures, turning it into a gas that's expelled through a nozzle and used to generate thrust. The newly developed engine concept, called the centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR), uses liquid uranium to heat rocket propellant directly. In doing so, the engine promises more efficiency than traditional chemical rockets, as well as other nuclear propulsion engines, according to new research published in Acta Astronautica…
Traditional chemical engines produce about 450 seconds of thrust from a given amount of propellant, a measure known as specific impulse. Nuclear propulsion engines can reach around 900 seconds, with the CNTR possibly pushing that number even higher. “You could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months, for example, as opposed to doing the same mission in a year,” Spencer Christian, a PhD student at Ohio State and leader of CNTR's prototype construction, said in a statement.
Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning missions to far-off moons and planets.
Leila Sloman, Contributing Correspondent - April 15, 2024
In October, a Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. The $5 billion mission is designed to find out if Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, can support life. But because Europa is constantly bombarded by intense radiation created by Jupiter’s magnetic field, the Clipper spacecraft can’t orbit the moon itself. Instead, it will slide into an eccentric orbit around Jupiter and gather data by repeatedly swinging by Europa — 53 times in total — before retreating from the worst of the radiation. Every time the spacecraft rounds Jupiter, its path will be slightly different, ensuring that it can take pictures and gather data from Europa’s poles to its equator.
To plan convoluted tours like this one, trajectory planners use computer models that meticulously calculate the trajectory one step at a time. The planning takes hundreds of mission requirements into account, and it’s bolstered by decades of mathematical research into orbits and how to join them into complicated tours. Mathematicians are now developing tools which they hope can be used to create a more systematic understanding of how orbits relate to one another.
“What we have is the previous computations that we’ve done, that guide us as we do the current computations. But it’s not a complete picture of all the options that we have,” said Daniel Scheeres, an aerospace engineer at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/geometers-engineer-new-tools-to-wrangle-spacecraft-orbits-20240415/
Aftershock II reached further into space than any other independently built rocket.
Passant Rabie - November 18, 2024
A group of students broke the record for the highest altitude reached by an independently designed and built suborbital rocket, flying Aftershock II to 470,000 feet (143,256 meters) above Earth’s surface.
The University of Southern California’s student-run Rocket Propulsion Lab (USCRPL) designed and built Aftershock II, and launched the rocket from the Black Rock Desert launch site in Nevada on October 20. Aftershock II reached a velocity of 5,283 feet per second (1,610 meters per second) and Mach 5.5, and became the first non-government or private-company-owned rocket to reach this far into space.
https://gizmodo.com/student-built-rocket-shatters-altitude-record-2000525846
Posted by BeauHD on Friday November 22, 2024 11:00PM
A team of undergraduate students from the University of Southern California's Rocket Propulsion Lab set multiple amateur spaceflight records with their rocket, Aftershock II. “The student-made missile soared 90,000 feet (27,400 meters) beyond the previous record-holder – a rocket launched more than 20 years ago,” reports Live Science. From the report:
The students launched Aftershock II on Oct. 20 from a site in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The rocket stood about 14 feet (4 meters) tall and weighed 330 pounds (150 kilograms). The rocket broke the sound barrier just two seconds after liftoff and reached its maximum speed roughly 19 seconds after launch, the RPL team wrote in a Nov. 14 paper summarizing the launch. The rocket's engine then burned out, but the craft continued to climb as atmospheric resistance decreased, enabling it to leave Earth's atmosphere 85 seconds after launch and then reach its highest elevation, or apogee, 92 seconds later. At this point, the nose cone separated from the rest of the rocket and deployed a parachute so it could safely reenter the atmosphere and touch down in the desert, where it was collected by the RPL team for analysis.
The rocket's apogee was around 470,000 feet (143,300 m) above Earth's surface, which is “further into space than any non-governmental and non-commercial group has ever flown before,” USC representatives wrote in a statement. The previous record of 380,000 feet (115,800 m) was set in 2004 by the GoFast rocket made by the Civilian Space Exploration Team. During the flight, Aftershock II reached a maximum speed of around 3,600 mph (5,800 km/h), or Mach 5.5 – five and a half times the speed of sound. This was slightly faster than GoFast, which had also held the amateur speed record for 20 years.
“I thought best case was maybe 40 seconds of flight time, but I'll take 14 as a win.”
Stephen Clark – Jul 30, 2025 10:13 AM
Back-to-back engine failures doomed a privately developed Australian rocket moments after liftoff Tuesday, cutting short a long-shot attempt to reach orbit with the country's first homegrown launch vehicle.
The 82-foot-tall (25-meter) Eris rocket ignited its four main engines and took off from its launch pad in northeastern Australia at 6:35 pm EDT (22:35 UTC) Tuesday. Liftoff occurred at 8:35 am local time Wednesday at Bowen Orbital Spaceport, the Eris rocket's launch site in the Australian state of Queensland.
But the rocket quickly lost power from two of its engines and stalled just above the launch pad before coming down in a nearby field. The crash sent a plume of smoke thousands of feet over the launch site, which sits on a remote stretch of coastline on Australia's northeastern frontier.
Gilmour Space, the private company that developed the rocket, said in a statement that there were no injuries and “no adverse environmental impacts” in the aftermath of the accident. The launch pad also appeared to escape any significant damage.
The company's cofounder and CEO, Adam Gilmour, spoke with Ars a few hours after the launch. Gilmour said he wasn't surprised by the outcome of the Eris rocket's inaugural test flight, which lasted just 14 seconds.
“I didn't expect that we would get to orbit,” he said. “Never did. I thought best case was maybe 40 seconds of flight time, but I'll take 14 as a win.”
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday July 30, 2025 02:30PM
Australia's first domestically built rocket to attempt orbital launch crashed just 14 seconds after liftoff, though the company still declared the mission a success for igniting all engines and leaving the launch pad. The Associated Press reports:
The rocket Eris, launched by Gilmour Space Technologies, was the first Australian-designed and manufactured orbital launch vehicle to lift off from the country and was designed to carry small satellites to orbit. It launched Wednesday morning local time in a test flight from a spaceport near the small town of Bowen in the north of Queensland state. In videos published by Australian news outlets, the 23-meter (75-foot) rocket appeared to clear the launch tower and hovered in the air before falling out of sight. Plumes of smoke were seen rising above the site. No injuries were reported. The company hailed the launch as a success in a statement posted to Facebook. A spokesperson said all four hybrid-propelled engines ignited and the maiden flight included 23 seconds of engine burn time and 14 seconds of flight.
“Of course I would have liked more flight time but happy with this,” wrote CEO Adam Gilmour on LinkedIn. Gilmour said in February that it was “almost unheard of” for a private rocket company to successfully launch to orbit on its first attempt.
“This is an important first step towards the giant leap of a future commercial space industry right here in our region,” added Mayor Ry Collins of the local Whitsunday Regional Council.
BLISS this: Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail project wants to head into space on the cheap
Thomas Claburn - Wed 26 Jul 2023 11:59 UTC
Boffins believe the future of space exploration may belong to small, affordable probes sailing away under the Sun's power.
In a pre-print paper titled, “BLISS: Interplanetary Exploration with Swarms of Low-Cost Spacecraft,” authors Alexander Alvara, Lydia Lee, Emmanuel Sin, Nathan Lambert, Andrew Westphal, and Kristofer Pister outline a project that aims to go where no one has gone before with a fleet of cheap, tiny Linux-powered spacecraft.
“The BLISS project is intended to demonstrate that cellphone technologies and other miniaturization via technological advancements enable unprecedented capabilities in space,” the authors, affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, state in their paper.
BLISS spacecraft, each with a mass of about 10 grams, are smaller than a 10 cm3 1.33 kg (3 lb) CubeSat. The BLISS design depicts a circuit board joined with a solar panel to form a T-shape, towed by a significantly larger solar sail with an additional “roll sail” to provide rotate the craft.
Posted by msmash on Friday December 26, 2025 09:01PM The first-ever commercial rocket launched at Brazil's Alcantara Space Center crashed soon after liftoff late earlier this week, dealing a blow to Brazilian aerospace ambitions and shares of South Korean satellite launch company Innospace. From a report:
The rocket began its vertical trajectory as planned after liftoff [Monday] at 10:13 p.m. local time (0113 GMT) but fell to the ground after something went wrong 30 seconds into its flight, Innospace CEO Kim Soo-jong said in a letter to shareholders.
The craft crashed within a pre-designated safety zone and did not harm anyone, he said. Brazil's air force said firefighters were sent to analyze the wreckage and impact zone. “We are deeply sorry that we failed to meet the expectations of our shareholders who supported our first commercial launch,” the CEO wrote in the letter, which was posted on the company's website on December 23. Innospace shares plunged nearly 29% in Seoul in its biggest daily drop and heaviest daily trading volume since its July 2024 listing.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/12/27/010236/rocket-crashes-in-brazils-first-commercial-launch
Saturday, 5 September 2020
Early September 2020, the space tracking community was in nervous anticipation of a rather mysterious Chinese launch. Amidst tight security measures, a Changzeng-2F (CZ-2F) rocket was readied at SLS-1 of Jiuquan's Launch Area 4. Chinese tracking ships were taking up positions near South America and in the Arabian Sea. Two NOTAM's appeared suggesting a launch between 5:20 and 6:00 UT on September 4. Something was afoot! Speculation was, that this was the long anticipated inaugural launch of a robottic Space Plane, a version of the Shenlong, China's answer to the American Air Force's X-37B robottic Space Plane.
Then, on September 4th, the Chinese news agency Xinhua published a very brief news item announcing that a CZ-2F from Jiuquan had launched a 'Reusable Experimental Spacecraft' earlier that day.
The bulletin was scarce in information but stated that “after a period of in-orbit operation, the spacecraft will return to the scheduled landing site in China. It will test reusable technologies during its flight, providing technological support for the peaceful use of space”.
No further details were given on launch time, orbit or character of the spacecraft. The description of the spacecraft is a bit ambiguous. Instead of a space plane, a 'reusable spacecraft' could in theory also be some sort of capsule (e.g. like the SpaceX Dragon): but most analysts think this indeed refers to the long rumoured space plane, China's answer to the US X-37B.
https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2020/09/china-launches-reusable-experimental.html
Jody Serrano - 7 September 2020 7:06PM
In recent days, China has quietly launched a secret reusable spacecraft, left it in orbit for two days and safely landed it back on Earth. And although the spacecraft is top secret—we’re not even privy to its design—there are some things that China apparently wants the world to know about it.
According to Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the launch took place on Friday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. The spacecraft was launched with a Long March-2F rocket, per the South China Morning Post, and successfully returned to its scheduled landing site on Sunday.
A Chinese military source confirmed to the Post that staff and visitors to the launch site had been warned not to film the lift-off or talk about it online.
https://gizmodo.com/china-launched-and-landed-a-secret-reusable-spacecraft-1844978534
Most of China's launch fleet is powered by hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide.
Eric Berger - 9/8/2020, 6:44 AM
On Monday, a Long March 4B rocket launched from China's Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying a remote-sensing satellite. This 50-year-old spaceport is located in north-central China, about 500km to the southwest of Beijing.
As often happens with the first stages of Chinese rockets launching from the inland Taiyuan facility, the spent Long March 4B booster fell downstream of the spaceport. In this case, it landed near a school, creating a predictably large cloud of toxic gas.
Unlike most of the world's spaceports, several of China's launch sites are located at inland locations rather than near water to avoid such hazards. For security purposes, China built three of its major launch centers away from water during the Cold War, amid tensions with both America and the Soviet Union.
The rocket would have more lift than even the most powerful version of NASA's SLS.
Eric Berger - 2/24/2021, 6:56 AM
China has officially approved the development of a super heavy lift rocket, named the Long March 9, or CZ-9 vehicle. The decision was revealed on Wednesday by Chinese state television.
In a snippet from an interview with CCTV, the deputy director of the China National Space Agency, Wu Yanhua, said the main purpose of the new rocket is for any “crewed lunar landing or crewed Mars landing missions” the country may undertake.
According to Chinese officials, the country will target the year 2030 for a debut launch. This is consistent with previous timeline estimates. The rocket is planned to have a lift capacity of 140 metric tons, with the capability of sending 50 or more tons into lunar orbit. It would be an immense vehicle, with a 10-meter diameter core and 5-meter side boosters. China would also like to eventually make the rocket, or at least part of it, reusable.
Isaac Schultz - 29 April 2021 11:30AM
China today launched the main module of its new space station into low Earth orbit. The ambitious project is set to be China’s answer to the International Space Station, which has never included China in its membership.
The 55-foot core module is called Tianhe, or Harmony of the Heavens. It blasted off from the Wenchang Launch Center in Hainan in the wee hours of Thursday morning, late Wednesday night for the United States. It launched aboard a 190-foot-tall Long March-5b Rocket, which has been the flagship launcher of the program since 2016. This is the first of 11 launches planned to see the finished product of the Chinese Space Station in operation by late 2022.
https://gizmodo.com/chinas-space-station-is-a-step-closer-to-reality-with-l-1846788388
Satellite shootdown test still causing operational and diplomatic hassles after 14 years
Laura Dobberstein - Fri 7 May 2021 / 07:01 UTC
Tired of space junk and weapons, US military commanders presented to Congress on Wednesday an argument to create a framework for rules-based order in space.
One reason for their call was that in January 2007 China demonstrated its ability to destroy a satellite in space when it shot a ballistic missile at one of its own inactive weather satellites.
According to US Space Force Lieutenant General Stephen Whiting, at a House Foreign Affairs and House Armed Services joint subcommittee hearing, the resulting spray of junk comprised 3,000 trackable objects, 10 per cent of all space debris the US tracks. He sternly referred to China's test as “very irresponsible.”
Outrage swiftly followed Beijing's 2007 test and China announced it will not do further anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) in the wake of the incident. But it didn't need to: the debris was already a menace in orbit around 850km above Earth.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/07/space_debris_regulation/
Posted by msmash on Monday December 06, 2021 10:44AM
The Yutu-2 rover is on a roll. It's been exploring the far side of the moon since early 2019 as part of China's Chang'e-4 lunar lander mission. It now has its eyes set on a strange-looking cube-shaped object it spotted in the distance. From a report:
Andrew Jones, a journalist who covers the Chinese space program for SpaceNews and Space.com, highlighted a new rover update in a series of tweets Friday. The nickname for the cube-shaped object translates to “mystery house.” The rover team is planning to drive over and get a closer look at the object. As with Yutu-2's intriguing discovery of a “gel-like” substance inside a crater in 2019, don't get too excited for aliens. That substance turned out to be glassy-looking rock. And as far as I know, Stanley Kubrick never planted a monolith on the real moon, and those metal sculptures that were once all the rage on Earth haven't made the trek across space. Yutu-2's view of the cube is fuzzy and far-off, so the object's true nature should become clearer as the rover gets closer. The most likely explanation is a boulder. This part of the moon is pockmarked with impact craters, which can feature quite a bit of chunky debris.
It’s probably a displaced boulder, but the Yutu 2 rover will now investigate this “obtrusive cube” from up-close to make sure.
George Dvorsky - 12/06/21 11:55AM
An intriguing object that appears cube-shaped has attracted the attention of scientists working on China’s Chang’e 4 mission on the far side of the Moon.
Juxtaposed against the blackness of space, the object sticks up from the horizon like a sore thumb. It’s practically begging the Yutu 2 rover to come on over and say hi—and mission controllers with the Chang’e 4 mission seem willing to oblige, according to Our Space, a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The “mysterious hut,” as Our Space describes it, was spotted in Von Kármán crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin. This spot on the far side of the Moon is where Yutu 2 has been working since the mission landed there on January 3, 2019.
https://gizmodo.com/chinese-rover-to-investigate-mysterious-hut-spotted-o-1848165985
Cube-shaped object is probably just a rock. Yutu will check it out anyway
Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor - Mon 6 Dec 2021 05:00 UTC
China's Moon rover, Yutu 2, has sent images of a strangely geometric object.
A post to Chinese social media site qq.com describes the object as a “mysterious hut” thanks to its cubic shape.
The post was made by “Our Space” – a qq.com account that promotes the feats of China's National Space Agency (CNSA) and appears to have some official approval to do so.
The “hut” is just 80 metres from Yutu 2's present position, and Our Space suggests CNSA's boffins are keen to trundle over and have a closer look.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/06/yutu_2_moon_rover_spots_hut/
China's Yutu-2 lunar rover has discovered some interesting features of the far side of the Moon.
Isaac Schultz - 19 January 2022 2:42PM
The Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 has been exploring the far side of the Moon for three years, making it the longest lunar surface mission in history. In a paper published today in Science Robotics, the Yutu-2 team reports on the rover’s progress and what it has revealed so far about the Moon’s far side.
Yutu-2 landed on the Moon in January 2019 as part of the Chang’e-4 mission, the first to ever land on the Moon’s far side. The mission’s goals are to study the composition of the basalt rocks on the Moon’s far side and to compare those volcanic rocks to the rocks on the near side of the Moon. Since its landing, the rover has traveled some 3,300 feet, analyzing the geology of our nearest celestial neighbor along the way.
https://gizmodo.com/the-moon-s-far-side-is-covered-in-sticky-soil-and-fresh-1848385460
If confirmed, it would mark the second recent incident in which Chinese rocket parts performed problematic reentries into Earth's atmosphere.
George Dvorsky - 19 April 2022
Investigators with the Indian space agency say a 9-foot-wide metal ring and a large cylindrical object, among other bits of debris that fell onto a western Indian village in early April, were likely produced by a Chinese rocket that disintegrated on re-entry.
The falling debris coincided with reports of flashing lights seen in the skies over Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh during the evening of April 2, according to an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Facebook post, which added that a metal ring and cylinder-like object fell onto an open field in Pawanpur village.
“We were preparing a community feast, when the sky blazed with the red disc which fell with a bang on an open plot in the village,” an unnamed woman told the Times of India. The woman, an inhabitant of Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, said “people ran to their home fearing [an] explosion and remained inside for nearly half an hour.”
This marks the second time in two months that pieces of rocket debris have crashed onto India.
Passant Rabie - 18 May 2022 11:01AM
An area on the western coast of India has been hit by fragments of space debris that may have been a result of a Chinese rocket re-entering the atmosphere and breaking up into smaller pieces. Sadly, this is becoming an all-too-familiar story.
The fragments crashed onto the villages of Bhalej, Khambholaj, and Rampura, all located in India’s Gujarat state, on May 12, as reported in the Indian Express. Villagers reportedly heard loud thuds and went outside to find large black metal balls weighing around 11 pounds (5 kilograms). There were no reported injuries across the three villages, which are all located within approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) of each other.
China was initially looking to emulate NASA’s SLS rocket but is now seeking to build something more akin to SpaceX’s Starship.
George Dvorsky - 9 November 2022 5:20PM
Reusable rockets, whether large or small, are the future, and as a newly unveiled model of a Long March 9 launch vehicle suggests, Chinese rocket scientists are coming around to the idea.
A team in China presented its updated model at the ongoing Zhuhai Airshow, as reported in SpaceNews. The new Long March 9 design, with its grid fins and noticeably absent side boosters, evokes SpaceX’s Starship, and with it, thoughts of reusability. Speaking to China Central Television, Liu Bing, design director at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), confirmed the new direction but said the design hasn’t been finalized, according to SpaceNews.
https://gizmodo.com/china-s-new-megarocket-design-shows-nasa-s-sls-is-alrea-1849763600
The core stages of the rocket have performed four uncontrolled reentries to date, posing a potential threat to human lives and property.
Passant Rabie - 12 November 2022 3:41PM
Less than a week after China’s Long March 5B rocket performed an uncontrolled reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, a Chinese official revealed plans to amp up the launch rate of these rocket within the next few years.
During an interview with local media, the director of the general design department at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, Liu Bing, said the Long March 5B rocket will now be used to launch a “multi-satellite network.” Liu was likely referring to the country’s plan of building an internet satellite megaconstellation called Guo Wang, which will include more than 12,000 satellites in orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/china-launch-uncontrolled-problematic-march-5b-rockets-1849772938
A Long March 6A rocket lifted off in November to deliver an environmental monitoring satellite.
Passant Rabie - 13 December 2022
On November 12, China’s Long March 6A rocket broke apart after launch, scattering debris in low Earth orbit. Now, reports suggest that the disintegrated upper stage of the rocket has grown to a cloud of 350 pieces of space debris.
The rocket launched at 5:52 p.m. ET on November 11 from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China, carrying the Yunhai 3 environmental monitoring satellite.
https://gizmodo.com/space-space-junk-starlink-chinese-rocket-march-6a-1849884756
The parachute system helps to control where falling rocket boosters land on Earth, steering them away from populated areas.
Passant Rabie - 12 June 2023
In an effort to prevent falling rockets from landing on populated areas, China tested a parachute system designed to control where its rocket boosters land back on Earth.
China successfully carried out the first test of its parachute system during a recent launch of its Long March 3B rocket, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology announced on Friday. The rocket delivered a BeiDou navigation satellite to orbit, lifting off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province on May 17, China’s state media Xinhua reported.
The news, which was delivered nearly a month after the test, doesn’t specify where the rocket booster landed. Instead, Xinhua stated that the rocket booster was brought down by the parachute to a “predetermined location,” and that the parachute narrowed the landing area by 80%.
https://gizmodo.com/china-tests-parachute-control-falling-rocket-boosters-1850529845
Tech shrinks landing zones by 80 percent
Laura Dobberstein - Wed 14 Jun 2023 02:34 UTC
After years of expecting the world to deal with debris from the Long March rockets, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) has developed a parachute system to guide its rockets to a predetermined landing zone.
According to state-sponsored media, analysis of debris from a test determined that the parachute narrowed the landing area range of a recent Long March 3B rocket launch by 80 percent.
The Long March 3B was returning from sending a BeiDou navigation satellite into orbit to add to China's GPS equivalent. When it reached a predetermined altitude, it opened its parafoil.
Using parachutes is not unusual for spacecraft. NASA has used them since the earliest days of its space missions, and private operators have also employed the decelerators.
NASA, of course, has the additional safety precaution of launching its space vehicles from coastal areas where debris from failed launches is most likely to fall into the ocean. China, like the old Soviet Union, is more secretive about its launch sites.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/14/china_long_march_parachute/
This satellite may carry a large telescope to continuously monitor the Indo-Pacific.
Stephen Clark - 12/15/2023, 5:20 PM
China's largest rocket apparently wasn't big enough to launch the country's newest spy satellite, so engineers gave the rocket an upgrade.
The Long March 5 launcher flew with a payload fairing some 20 feet (6.2 meters) taller than its usual nose cone when it took off on Friday with a Chinese military spy satellite. This made the Long March 5, with a height of some 200 feet, the tallest rocket China has ever flown.
Adding to the intrigue, the Chinese government claimed the spacecraft aboard the Long March 5 rocket, named Yaogan-41, is a high-altitude optical remote sensing satellite. These types of surveillance satellites usually fly much closer to Earth to obtain the sharpest images possible of an adversary's military forces and strategically important sites.
With over 100 launches planned this year alone, matching Musk makes sense
Simon Sharwood - Thu 7 Mar 2024 04:29 UTC
China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has promised to launch three new rockets this year alone, and may also start to send reusable boosters into space next year.
Chinese media report that the Corp's R&D director Wang Wei this week disclosed that Beijing is prepping a pair of reusables. One will have a diameter of four meters, the other will reach five. By way of contrast, SpaceX's Falcon has a diameter of 3.7 meters and its Starship rounds out at nine meters, while NASA’s Space Launch System is 8.4 meters across.
This is no mere “mine's bigger than yours” contest. Diameter is an indication of a launcher's potential payload volume, but not necessarily the mass it can lift. Just what capability these boosters will bring to China's space program is therefore unclear.
Wei promised the smaller of the two will launch in 2025, and the big booster will follow a year later.
Launch startups in China and Europe are borrowing ideas and rhetoric from SpaceX.
Stephen Clark - 9/13/2024, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent advancements in reusable rockets are coming from China's quasi-commercial launch industry. This industry is no longer nascent. After initially relying on solid-fueled rocket motors apparently derived from Chinese military missiles, China's privately funded launch firms are testing larger launchers, with varying degrees of success, and now performing hop tests reminiscent of SpaceX's Grasshopper and F9R Dev1 programs more than a decade ago.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
“They have to have on-orbit refueling because they don’t access space as frequently as we do.”
Stephen Clark – Sep 22, 2025 4:11 PM
A handful of other US companies, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, are on the way to replicating or building on SpaceX's achievements in recycling rocket parts. These launch providers are racing a medley of Chinese rocket builders to become the second company to land and reuse a first stage booster.
But it will be many years—perhaps a decade or longer—until anyone else matches the kinds of numbers SpaceX is racking up in the realm of reusable rockets. SpaceX's dominance in this field is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday.
“It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force's deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”
George Dvorsky - 30 April 2021 11:33AM
Following yesterday’s launch, the core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket inadvertently went into low Earth orbit. The booster—now spinning out of control—is poised to perform an uncontrolled reentry from orbit, potentially threatening inhabited areas.
As SpaceNews reports, the core stage will likely fall from low Earth orbit at some point in the next few days, making it one of the biggest human-made objects to perform an uncontrolled reentry. The gigantic core stage, measuring 98 feet (30 meters) long and 16 feet (5 meters) wide, might burn up during atmospheric reentry, but debris could potentially reach the surface. Odds are that bits and pieces from the booster will fall into the ocean or onto uninhabited areas, but there’s a nonzero chance for it to threaten human lives and property.
https://gizmodo.com/100-foot-tall-booster-from-chinese-rocket-will-likely-m-1846797068
Matt Novak - 5 May 2021 7:30AM
The U.S. military is tracking an enormous piece of Chinese space debris which is expected to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere sometime around May 8, according to a press release from U.S. Space Command. But as the Pentagon points out, no one knows quite where it will land yet.
The space debris in question is formally known as a Long March 5B, the rocket that launched part of China’s Tianhe Space Station into orbit on April 28. As Space News notes, the reentry of this rocket is one of the largest uncontrolled entries in history and there are concerns it could land in an area inhabited by humans.
https://gizmodo.com/u-s-military-doesnt-know-where-chinese-space-debris-mi-1846826506
The 20-ton booster is big enough that some parts are likely to reach the ground.
John Timmer - 5/6/2021, 3:45 AM
In late April, China successfully launched a major component of its planned space station. Since then, the booster that put the component into orbit has been circulating in an unstable orbit, and various tracking organizations are indicating that it's likely to come back in a completely uncontrolled manner. It's a big-enough piece of hardware that some parts are likely to survive until they reach the ground. While odds are that will happen over the ocean, there's no guarantee re-entry won't happen over a populated area.
As Ars' Eric Berger described last year, the Long March 5B has an unusual design. Meant for heavy lifts to orbit, the rocket doesn't have an upper stage; instead, its main stage travels all the way to orbit with its payload. Once there, one option is to leave it in a stable orbit, where it would add to the increasing clutter in low Earth orbit. The alternative is to de-orbit the stage.
Most countries have settled on a controlled de-orbit, in which control is maintained over the booster and enough fuel is retained to allow decisions to be made about when the hardware re-enters the atmosphere. That allows any material that survives re-entry to land harmlessly in the ocean.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/world-waits-to-see-where-a-chinese-booster-will-come-down/
George Dvorsky - 6 May 2021 10:59AM
A glistening image of China’s wayward Long March 5B rocket, which is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere this weekend, has been captured by astronomers with the Virtual Telescope Project.
The single-second exposure was captured on May 6.
“At the imaging time, the rocket stage was at about 700 km [435 miles] from our telescope, while the Sun was just a few degrees below the horizon, so the sky was incredibly bright: these conditions made the imaging quite extreme, but our robotic telescope succeeded in capturing this huge debris,” Gianluca Masi, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project, explained in a recent post. “This is another bright success, showing the amazing capabilities of our robotic facility in tracking these objects.”
https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-capture-wild-image-of-china-s-out-of-contro-1846836623
George Dvorsky - 7 May 2021 3:18PM
An out-of-control Chinese rocket is scheduled to reenter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend, but no one is sure exactly when or where the debris will land. Here’s why we don’t yet know and, more importantly, when we can expect to find out.
During the Apollo era, the atmospheric reentry time of the arriving command modules could be predicted down to the exact second. As to when the core stage of China’s Long March 5b rocket—currently tumbling in low Earth orbit—will perform its reentry remains an open question. Without knowing the reentry time, predicting a possible impact zone is impossible.
https://gizmodo.com/when-will-we-know-where-the-chinese-rocket-will-crash-1846847686
Jody Serrano - 9 May 2021 6:53PM
After days of fretting over when and where an out-of-control Chinese rocket would land as it fell back to Earth, China announced early Sunday that the rocket had landed in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives. Although it was unclear whether the debris had caused any damage, NASA sharply scolded China for failing to be responsible with its space debris.
In a statement released on Sunday after the debris landed, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said that spacefaring nations had to minimize the risks to people and property on Earth when it comes to re-entries of space objects. Nelson also maintained that it was important to maximize transparency regarding these re-entries. In this case, the space debris consisted of the core stage of a Long March 5B rocket, which was 98 feet (30 meters) long and 16 feet (5 meters) wide.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-admin-scolds-china-after-out-of-control-rocket-lan-1846856584
Long March 5B lands 45km from the Maldives
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 10 May 2021 / 03:58 UTC
Bits of China's Long Match 5B rocket have returned to Earth without inconveniencing anyone, but did irritate NASA enough for the agency to issue a sternly-worded statement.
Bits of the bird landed in the Indian Ocean at 10:24 AM Sunday Beijing time, missing the Maldivian island of Kudahuvadhoo by about 45 kilometers.
The China Manned Space Agency issued a statement dated May 9th that offered the following observations:
The vast majority of the device burned up during the reentry, and he landing area of the debris is about a sea area with the center at 2.65 degrees north latitude and 72.47 degrees east longitude.
The uncontrolled landing of the rocket was much anticipated across the world, as no one could predict its exact destination, other than a 70 percent chance it would be in water. Those knowledgeable about re-entries, like astronomer Jonathan McDowell, tried to soothe the public with graphs proving a worst case land crash damage would be comparable to a small plane crash.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/10/long_march_misses_people/
US officials saw the uncontrolled reentry as irresponsible.
Jon Fingas - May 9th, 2021
China's large Long March 5b rocket has fallen to Earth mostly as expected, much to the chagrin of critics. According to the BBC, Chinese media said debris from the uncontrolled reentry splashed into the Indian Ocean just West of the Maldives at about 10:24PM Eastern. It's unclear if any debris hit land, although harm to people or property was unlikely given the location.
The rocket launched on April 29th to carry a Tiangong space station component into orbit, and started losing altitude soon afterward. A 2020 rocket is believed to have spread some debris on Ivory Coast in western Africa.
https://www.engadget.com/china-long-march-5-b-rocket-reentry-ocean-debris-155538404.html
Sat, May 8, 2021, 8:17 PM
Sat, May 8, 2021, 8:17 PM·2 min read
A large segment of a Chinese rocket re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean on Sunday, the Chinese space agency said, following fevered speculation over where the 18-tonne object would come down.
Officials in Beijing had said there was little risk from the freefalling segment of the Long March-5B rocket, which had launched the first module of China's new space station into Earth orbit on April 29.
https://news.yahoo.com/chinese-rocket-segment-disintegrates-over-031749100.html
The Long March 2D second stage delivered three military satellites in June 2022 before falling unexpectedly back to Earth last week.
Passant Rabie - 14 March 2023
The Long March 2D second stage is believed to have reentered over an unpopulated part of Texas on March 7 and so far there are no reports of injuries or damage to property. Sadly, as more rockets are sent to space and as rules around these matters remain vague, it’s the new normal we have to deal with.
Last week, bits of China’s Chang Zheng 2D ‘Long March’ rocket fell over Texas following a risky uncontrolled reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, according to the U.S. Space Command. The rocket’s second stage reentered over the southern region of North America on March 7 at 10:30 p.m. ET, a statement from the U.S. Space Command is quoted in the U.S. Naval Institute News (USNI).
https://gizmodo.com/uncontrolled-chinese-rocket-disintegrates-texas-1850224637
Two previous launches of the Long March 5B rocket resulted in chaotic reentries, prompting fears of a recurrence and a threat to human life.
Kevin Hurler - 21 July 2022 11:00AM
A powerful rocket is set to blast off from Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan on a mission to expand China’s first space station. Similar to previous launches of the Long March 5B, however, the rocket could perform a dangerous uncontrolled reentry on its return.
China is in the midst of constructing its Tiangong space station—the country’s answer to the International Space Station—with one of the station’s modules already in place. China’s space agency is gearing up to launch the station’s Wentian module, which is set to occur this Sunday July 24 from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan.
https://gizmodo.com/another-chinese-rocket-could-be-headed-for-a-dangerous-1849207203
There’s a slim but nonzero chance that debris from the 25-ton core stage will land on inhabited areas.
George Dvorsky - 27 July 2022 11:45AM
Experts are predicting that the gigantic core stage of a recently launched Long March 5B rocket will crash to Earth within a matter of days, but the precise location remains impossible to guess.
The Long March 5B rocket blasted off on July 24 from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan. The rocket successfully delivered the Wentien lab to low Earth orbit, where it docked with China’s Tiangong space station some 13 hours later.
https://gizmodo.com/china-out-of-control-rocket-predicted-crash-july-31-1849337299
Some social media users captured footage of the Long March 5B’s fiery re-entry.
Igor Bonifacic - July 31, 2022 2:24 PM
After carrying the latest piece of the country’s Tiangong space station to orbit on July 24th, a Chinese Long March 5B rocket reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, creating a dazzling (albeit somewhat unsettling) display as it crashed down in the Indian Ocean. A Twitter user named Nazri Sulaiman captured a 27-second clip of the rocket’s first stage breaking up in the skies above Kuching, Malaysia. Sulaiman and others initially confused the spacecraft with a meteor shower until astronomers correctly identified the debris as the remains of a Chinese rocket.
On Saturday afternoon, US Space Command confirmed the Long March 5B re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 12:45PM ET. China said most of the debris burned up in re-entry over the Sulu Sea between the Philippines and Malaysia. Unlike many modern rockets, including the SpaceX Falcon 9, the Long March 5B can’t reignite its engine to complete a controlled atmospheric re-entry. That has led to worry about where the rocket would land every time China has launched one. On a test flight in 2020, remnants of a Long March 5B fell on villages in the Ivory Coast, leading to property damage.
https://www.engadget.com/china-long-march-5b-re-entry-182425022.html
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday July 30, 2022 06:52PM
The 25-ton core stage of a Long March 5B rocket “reentered Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean this afternoon,” reports Space.com, citing an announcement on Twitter from the U.S. Space Command.
Mission managers didn't screw anything up; this end-of-life scenario is built into the Long March 5B's design, to the consternation of exploration advocates and much of the broader spaceflight community. This disposal strategy is reckless, critics say, given that the big rocket doesn't burn up completely upon reentry.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday July 30, 2022 11:34AM
Newsweek reports that “A huge piece of space debris appears to have fallen from the sky and landed on a sheep farm in Australia.”
On July 9, locals across the Snowy Mountains in southern New South Wales heard a bang, ABC Australia reported. It was heard for miles, by those as far away as Albury, Wagga Wagga and Canberra…. Sheep farmer Mick Miners then came across a strange, charred object on his ranch, south of Jindabyne, on July 25. “I didn't know what to think, I had no idea what it was,” Miners told ABC Australia.
He found the 10 foot chunk of metal wedged into the ground in a remote part of his sheep paddock.
NASA chief slams Beijing for not disclosing Long March 5B trajectory
Katyanna Quach - Tue 2 Aug 2022 00:11 UTC
Debris leftover from China's Long March 5B rocket has reportedly crashed down into the sea off the Philippines, and scattered on land by the borders of Indonesia and Malaysia.
The 23-ton piece of junk measured 53.6 metres in length, and was a booster component of the China National Space Administration's (CNSA) most advanced rocket. Specifically, the booster was part of a Long March 5B vehicle that carried the Wentian laboratory cabin to the country's Tiangong orbiting space station last month. After the module successfully docked to the station, the rocket booster began tumbling back down to Earth.
According US Space Command, the booster reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on Saturday.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/02/china_rocket_splashdown/
The Long March 5B core stage reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, lighting up skies across parts of northern Borneo.
George Dvorsky - 2 August 2022
Reports of fallen space junk are pouring in from parts of Indonesia and Malaysia, suggesting debris from China’s out-of-control rocket reached land—including areas perilously close to homes.
The 100-foot-long (30-meter) core stage fell back to Earth on Saturday, July 30, after having spent just six days in low Earth orbit. The precise time and location of the rocket’s return remained vague even during the hours and minutes leading up to the reentry, but the sudden flood of sightings from Indonesia and Malaysia made it clear that the core stage broke up above the northern coast of Borneo. The Long March 5B core stage (CZ-5B) moved in a northeasterly direction and in a straight line that stretched from Sarawak through to the Sulu Sea just west of Palawan Island in the western Philippines.
https://gizmodo.com/debris-from-china-s-uncontrolled-rocket-crashed-near-po-1849359985
Experts say it's a near certainty that China's Long March 5B rocket will perform an uncontrolled reentry following an expected launch next week.
Passant Rabie - 26 October 2022
China rolled out its Long March 5B rocket on Tuesday in anticipation of its upcoming liftoff to place the third and final piece of the Tiangong space station in orbit. It’s all very exciting, but an out-of-control core module will likely result, as was the case on three previous occasions.
The heavy-lift rocket was transported to the pad on Tuesday, carrying a 23-ton lab module named Mengtian (which translates to “dreaming of heavens”). It took about three hours for the Long March 5B to make the nearly 2 mile (3 kilometer) journey at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, according to China National Space Administration (CNSA).
https://gizmodo.com/problematic-rocket-launch-expected-china-space-station-1849705767
It's still too early to tell where the Long March 5B core stage might fall, but estimates will improve in the coming days.
George Dvorsky - 1 November 2022
A 21-metric-ton core stage is poised to perform an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere at 10:21 p.m. ET on November 4, give or take around 16 hours. Sadly, this marks the fourth time that a remnant from China’s Long March 5B rocket has threatened human lives and property.
The Long March 5B blasted off from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan on Monday, October 31, delivering the third and final module, called Mengtian, to China’s Tiangong space station. Most rocket stages are brought down with reignited engines, allowing them to be steered away from populated areas, but not the Long March 5B. Very irresponsibly, China’s space agency hasn’t taken this precaution with its heavy-lift launch vehicle, leaving it largely up to chance as to where it might land.
https://gizmodo.com/chinas-latest-out-of-control-rocket-expected-to-crash-o-1849729433
Complex variables are making it nearly impossible for experts to narrow down where and when China’s rocket will crash on Friday.
George Dvorsky - 3 November 2022 1:13PM
An out-of-control booster from a recently launched Long March 5B rocket is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Friday. The 22-metric-ton object poses a threat to human lives and property, but determining exactly when and where it will crash is proving to be fiendishly difficult, and here’s why.
The rocket, carrying the third and final module for China’s Tiangong space station, took off from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan on October 31. As expected, the core stage didn’t perform a reentry burn and instead entered into a very low orbit. This is now par for the course, as China’s Long March 5B rocket pulled the exact same stunt during its three previous launches. It’s how China’s space agency chose to design the rocket, forcing us to dread each launch and wonder where debris from the 108-foot-long (33-meter) booster will crash.
https://gizmodo.com/why-its-so-hard-to-predict-where-china-s-out-of-control-1849737639
The out-of-control core stage fell harmlessly into the ocean, but not before forcing airspace closures in Europe.
George Dvorsky - 4 November 2022 10:12AM
The booster from a Chinese Long March 5B rocket reentered Earth’s atmosphere at 6:01 a.m. ET Friday, with debris falling west of the Mexican coast. There are no reports of injuries, but the 22-metric-ton core stage threatened populated areas during its final orbit.
U.S. Space Command confirmed the booster’s atmospheric reentry through Twitter, saying it fell over the south-central Pacific Ocean. Interestingly, Space Command tracked a second atmospheric reentry connected with the Long March 5B rocket, suggesting the rocket snapped into two large pieces.
https://gizmodo.com/china-rocket-falls-into-pacific-ocean-1849742616
It was the fourth uncontrolled re-entry for China’s Long March 5B.
Igor Bonifacic - November 6, 2022 1:45 PM
For the second time this year, the uncontrolled remnants of a Chinese Long March 5B came crashing to Earth. On Friday morning, US Space Command confirmed pieces of the rocket that carried the third and final piece of China's Tiangong space station to orbit had re-entered the planet’s atmosphere over the south-central Pacific Ocean, reports The New York Times. The debris eventually plunged into the body of water, leaving no one harmed.
The episode marked the fourth uncontrolled re-entry for China’s most powerful heavy-lift rocket following its debut in 2020. Unlike many of its modern counterparts, including the SpaceX Falcon 9, the Long March 5B can’t reignite its engine to complete a predictable descent back to Earth. The rocket has yet to harm anyone (and probably won’t in the future). Still, each time China has sent a Long March 5B into space, astronomers and onlookers have anxiously followed its path back to the surface, worrying it might land somewhere people live. On Friday, Spain briefly closed parts of its airspace over risks posed by the debris from Monday’s mission, leading to hundreds of flight delays.
https://www.engadget.com/long-march-5b-uncontrolled-rentry-november-184505247.html
Frightening video shows what appears to be the rocket booster crashing down on a populated area, trailed by a yellow-ish cloud.
Passant Rabie - 24 June 2024
A video circulating online appears to show debris from a Chinese rocket falling above a populated area, with residents running for cover as a heavy cloud of dark yellow smoke trails across the sky in a frightening scene.
The suspected debris may have come from China’s Long March 2C rocket, which launched on Saturday, June 22, carrying a joint mission by China and France to study Gamma-ray bursts. The launch was declared a success, but its aftermath was captured by videos posted to Chinese social media sites.
The videos show what appears to be the first stage rocket booster of the Long March 2C rocket tumbling uncontrollably over a village in southwest China, while local residents cover their ears and run for shelter from the falling debris. There are no reports of injuries or damage to property. That said, unverified video and images show a gigantic cloud erupting at the site of the crashed rocket, and the booster itself seemingly next to a roadway.
https://gizmodo.com/china-rocket-booster-crash-leaking-toxic-fuel-1851557049
Space Pioneer's Tianlong-3 rocket somehow escaped its restraints during a static fire test on Sunday.
Passant Rabie - 1 July 2024
Chinese company Space Pioneer accidentally launched the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket during a Sunday test of the vehicle that went terribly wrong. The rocket crashed and exploded near a city in Central China, but no injuries have been reported so far.
Footage shared on social media showed the rocket’s first stage emerging from a massive cloud and taking to the skies before losing momentum as its engines shut down. It then falls to the ground, producing a large fireball.
https://gizmodo.com/chinese-rocket-accidentally-launches-crashes-tianlong3-1851571157
10, 9, 8 … hang on, did anyone check we bolted this thing down properly?
Simon Sharwood - Mon 1 Jul 2024 06:28 UTC
Private Chinese launch outfit Space Pioneer has launched a rocket by mistake.
The company yesterday posted news of a static fire test of the Tianlong-3 liquid carrier rocket, a craft it compares to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
The first stage of the vehicle lit up as planned, with nine engines all roaring and pumping out a combined 820 tons of thrust.
Video of the suggests the rocket was stacked vertically. Space Pioneer's statement says it was secured to a test bench - a common arrangement that sees extremely resilient restraints fitted so that when engines fire there’s plenty of hot gas to be seen and measured, and lots of vibration, but the rocket doesn’t go anywhere.
But Space Pioneer’s test bench experienced a structural failure that allowed the rocket to break free and become airborne.
The test bench may have been lousy, but the rocket’s flight computer was set up to detect unexpected flight and did its job by shutting down its engines.
Here’s what happened not long after shutdown.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/01/space_pioneer_accidental_rocket_launch/
Space Pioneer had been prepping the vehicle for its debut launch later this summer.
Eric Berger - 7/1/2024, 5:52 AM
One of the most promising Chinese space startups, Space Pioneer, experienced a serious anomaly this weekend while testing the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket near the city of Gongyi.
The rocket was undergoing a static fire test of the stage, in which a vehicle is clamped to a test stand while its engines are ignited, when the booster broke free. According to a statement from the company, the rocket was not sufficiently clamped down and blasted off from the test stand “due to a structural failure.”
Video of the accidental ascent showed the rocket rising several hundred meters into the sky before it crashed explosively into a mountain 1.5 km away from the test site. (See various angles of the accident here, on the social media site X, or on Weibo.) The statement from Space Pioneer sought to downplay the incident, saying it had implemented safety measures before the test, and there were no casualties as a result of the accident. “The test site is far away from the urban area of Gongyi,” the company said.
This is not entirely true, however. Located in the Henan province in eastern China, alongside the Yellow River, Gongyi has a population of about 800,000 people. The test stand is only about 5 km away from the city's downtown and less than a kilometer from a smaller village.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/chinese-space-firm-unintentionally-launches-its-new-rocket/
Helium-3 also draws excitement as future fusion energy source
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 12 Sep 2022 05:38 UTC
China announced last Friday it discovered a hitherto unknown mineral in samples returned from the Moon.
The mineral, dubbed “Changesite-(Y)”, was named after Chang’e – a moon goddess in Chinese mythology and the namesake of the Chang’e-5 mission that retrieved a sample of lunar dust in 2020.
China's sample weighed about 1.73kg (3.8lbs) on Earth. It was collected from both the surface of the Moon and about 6.5 meters beneath the surface in an area thought to have been the site of volcanic activity. The loot was shared among 33 research organizations.
A joint announcement from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) described the samples as “a phosphate mineral in the form of columnar crystals found in lunar basalt particles.”
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/12/china_discovers_new_mineral_on/
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday June 02, 2024 12:34AM
China's Chang'e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon China's moon probe has “successfully touched down on the far side of the moon,” CNN reports, in “a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country's aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon” by 2030.
The mission's ultimate goal is to return to Earth the first samples from the moon's far side, CNN reports. And China's lunar lander “is now expected to use a drill and a mechanical arm to gather up to 2 kilograms of moon dust and rocks from the basin, a crater formed some 4 billion years ago.”
To complete its mission, the lander will need to robotically stow those samples in an ascent vehicle that made the landing with it. The ascent vehicle will then return to lunar orbit, where it will dock with and transfer the samples to a re-entry capsule, according to mission information provided by the China National Space Administration. The re-entry capsule and orbiter will then travel back to Earth's orbit and separate, allowing the re-entry capsule to make its expected return later this month to the Siziwang Banner Landing Site in China's rural Inner Mongolia region.
Simone McCarthy - Updated 8:50 PM EDT, Sat June 1, 2024
China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon.
The Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced.
China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time.
The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.
If all goes as planned, the mission — which began on May 3 and is expected to last 53 days — could be a key milestone in China’s push to become a dominant space power.
The country’s plans include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and building a research base at its south pole – a region believed to contain water ice.
Sunday’s landing comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, eye the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.
Samples collected by the Chang’e-6 lander could provide key clues into the origin and evolution of the moon, Earth and the solar system, experts say – while the mission itself provides important data and technical practice to advance China’s lunar ambitions.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/01/china/china-change6-moon-landing-intl-hnk-scn/index.html
The most dominant space storyline for the rest of this decade is the US-China race.
Eric Berger - 6/3/2024, 12:24 PM
China landed a spacecraft on the Moon this weekend for the fourth time, successfully placing its Chang’e 6 lander in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon.
After the landing on Saturday evening (United States time), the autonomous spacecraft will spend about 48 hours collecting samples. It will do so by two different means, drilling to collect material from beneath the ground, as well as using a robotic arm to gather regolith from the surface.
Then a part of the spacecraft is due to blast off from the surface of the Moon—likely on Monday evening, US time—before making a return flight to China. If successful, this would be the first time samples have been returned to Earth from the far side of the Moon.
China has now landed two missions on the moon's mysterious far side.
Mike Wall - 1 June 2024
China has landed on the moon's mysterious far side — again.
The robotic Chang'e 6 mission touched down inside Apollo Crater, within the giant South Pole-Aitken basin, at 6:23 a.m. Beijing Time on Sunday (June 2) , according to Chinese space officials. It was 6:23 p.m. EDT (2223 GMT) on June 1 at the time of the landing. The probe “successfully landed in the pre-selected area,” China's space agency said.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) now has two far-side landings under its belt — this one and Chang'e 4, which dropped a lander-rover combo onto the gray dirt in January 2019. No other country has done it once.
https://www.space.com/china-change-6-lands-on-moon-far-side-sample-return-mission
By Simone McCarthy, CNN - Updated 8:50 PM EDT, Sat June 1, 2024
China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon.
The Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced.
China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time.
The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.
If all goes as planned, the mission — which began on May 3 and is expected to last 53 days — could be a key milestone in China’s push to become a dominant space power.
The country’s plans include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and building a research base at its south pole – a region believed to contain water ice.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/01/china/china-change6-moon-landing-intl-hnk-scn/index.html
Tasks on far side of the Moon were heavily automated
Laura Dobberstein - Tue 4 Jun 2024 16:15 UTC
Just days after China's Chang'e-6 probe landed on the far side of the Moon, state-sponsored media reports it is heading back with samples onboard.
The spacecraft, which was the first to ever land in this region of the Moon, touched down on Sunday after launching on May 3. It was tasked with collecting and returning samples using a drill and robotic arm in a short two-day turnaround.
Now the ascender part of the spacecraft has taken off from the Moon's surface to dock with the orbiter and eventually return. If all goes well, the samples will be with researchers in late June.
The total mission duration is slated to be 53 days.
China already has samples from the near side of the Moon as Chang'e-5 touched down there in 2020. The more rugged far side is considered a much harder feat because it is blocked from Earth's view. It requires a communications satellite, in this case China's Queqiao-2, to bounce messages back to Earth.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/china_moon_sample_farside/
China is aiming to become the first nation to return rock and dust from the lunar far side.
Passant Rabie - 4 June 2024
After a short visit to the Moon’s far side, a Chinese spacecraft loaded with lunar rock and dust has started its return trip to Earth to deliver these precious samples.
China’s Chang’e 6 mission ascent vehicle lifted off from the Aitken Basin on the lunar south pole on Monday at 7:38 p.m. ET (7:38 a.m. Beijing time on Tuesday), and is on its way back home, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
Chang’e-6 launched from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on May 3 and arrived on the Moon nearly one month later. The spacecraft touched down on Aitken Basin, the largest and oldest impact crater on the Moon’s far side. This crater may have exposed parts of the Moon’s mantle by blasting it to the surface. By grabbing samples from this impact crater, the mission could help scientists understand early impacts that helped shape Earth and the Moon and why the lunar far side is different than its near side counterpart.
https://gizmodo.com/china-moon-probe-samples-far-side-return-begins-1851517843
Andrew Jones - June 4, 2024
Material from the far side of the moon has begun its journey for Earth after Chinese spacecraft collected samples and launched them into lunar orbit.
The Chang’e-6 mission ascent vehicle lifted off from atop the mission lander in Apollo crater at 7:38 p.m. Eastern June 3 (2338 UTC), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced. The ascender is now tracking the Chang’e-6 orbiter in a retrograde low lunar orbit.
Chang’e-6 landed on the lunar far side late June 1 and began collecting rock and regolith samples with a scoop and drill shortly afterwards. Up to 2,000 grams was then loaded into the ascent vehicle.
“The packaging work has been completed in a normal condition and the whole process is smooth,” Li Xiaoyu, an engineer from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), told CCTV.
The ascent vehicle lifted off and achieved autonomous positioning and attitude determination with the assistance of the Queqiao-2 relay satellite.
https://spacenews.com/change-6-moon-samples-collected-and-launched-into-lunar-orbit/
Re-entry capsule containing precious cargo from mission has parachuted into Inner Mongolia
Ian Sample - Tue 25 Jun 2024 02.41 EDT
China has become the first country to gather samples from the far side of the moon and bring them back to Earth in a landmark achievement for the Beijing space programme.
A re-entry capsule containing the precious cargo parachuted into a landing zone in the rural Siziwang Banner region of Inner Mongolia on Tuesday after being released into Earth’s orbit by the uncrewed Chang’e-6 probe.
The return of the lunar material wraps up a highly successful mission for the China National Space Administration (CNSA) amid a wave of interest in which space agencies and private companies will build instruments and bases on the moon and exploit its resources.
The Chang’e-6 mission, named after the Chinese moon goddess, blasted off from Hainan province in south China on 3 May and touched down on 2 June on the side of the moon that is never seen from Earth. The moon shows only one face to the Earth because it is tidally locked and completes one full rotation in the time it takes to circle the planet.
Now to figure out if it really is rich in useful stuff that could fuel further exploration
Laura Dobberstein - Wed 26 Jun 2024 02:26 UTC
China's Chang'e-6 re-entry capsule reached Earth on Tuesday after a 53-day mission to the far side of the Moon. And it came back with a sample onboard.
The probe was the first ever to touch down in the region when it did so in early June – collecting samples on its quick two-Earth-day visit, before heading back to the blue planet.
After a parachute-assisted landing in Inner Mongolia, China's National Space Administration (CNSA) announced the re-entry capsule “operated normally, marking the complete success of the Chang'e-6 mission of the lunar exploration project and the world's first return of samples from the far side of the Moon.”
After ground processing, the lander will be airlifted to Beijing to remove the sample container and its contents. Those contents are expected to include up to 2kg of dust and rocks from Luna. China has said it will share scientific data and access to samples with the international community.
The samples come from the far side of the Moon's largest impact crater, the South Pole–Aitken basin (SPA basin). The far side of the Moon is thought to have a significantly different geological history compared to the near side, meaning different materials are present.
The area is abundant in helium-3 and has significant deposits of water ice in its permanently shadowed craters, as well as elements and minerals that could come in handy should humans ever be stationed on their natural satellite.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/china_far_side_sample/
After nearly every flight, the upper stage of this rocket breaks apart in orbit.
Stephen Clark - 8/9/2024, 5:41 AM
The upper stage from a Chinese rocket that launched a batch of Internet satellites Tuesday has broken apart in space, creating a debris field of at least 700 objects in one of the most heavily-trafficked zones in low-Earth orbit.
US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit with a network of radars and optical sensors, confirmed the rocket breakup Thursday. Space Command initially said the event created more than 300 pieces of trackable debris. The military's ground-based radars are capable of tracking objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches).
Later Thursday, LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket. The number of debris fragments could rise to more than 900, LeoLabs said.
The culprit is the second stage of China's Long March 6A rocket, which lifted off Tuesday with the first batch of 18 satellites for a planned Chinese megaconstellation that could eventually number thousands of spacecraft. The Long March 6A's second stage apparently disintegrated after placing its payload of 18 satellites into a polar orbit.
Space Command said in a statement it has “observed no immediate threats” and “continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain.” According to LeoLabs, radar data indicated the rocket broke apart at an altitude of 503 miles (810 kilometers) at approximately 4:10 pm EDT (20:10 UTC) on Tuesday, around 13-and-a-half hours after it lifted off from northern China.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday August 10, 2024 03:00AM
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica:
The upper stage from a Chinese rocket that launched a batch of Internet satellites Tuesday has broken apart in space, creating a debris field of at least 700 objects in one of the most heavily-trafficked zones in low-Earth orbit. US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit with a network of radars and optical sensors, confirmed the rocket breakup Thursday. Space Command initially said the event created more than 300 pieces of trackable debris. The military's ground-based radars are capable of tracking objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches). Later Thursday, LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket. The number of debris fragments could rise to more than 900, LeoLabs said. The culprit is the second stage of China's Long March 6A rocket, which lifted off Tuesday with the first batch of 18 satellites for a planned Chinese megaconstellation that could eventually number thousands of spacecraft. The Long March 6A's second stage apparently disintegrated after placing its payload of 18 satellites into a polar orbit.
The Long March 9 gets flaps and a reusable upper stage.
Eric Berger – Nov 4, 2024 8:28 AM
When Chinese space officials unveiled the design for the country's first super heavy lift rocket nearly a decade ago, it looked like a fairly conventional booster. The rocket was fully expendable, with three stages and solid motors strapped onto its sides.
Since then, the Asian country has been revising the design of this rocket, named Long March 9, in response to the development of reusable rockets by SpaceX. As of two years ago, China had recalibrated the design to have a reusable first stage.
Now, based on information released at a major airshow in Zhuhai, China, the design has morphed again. And this time, the plan for the Long March 9 rocket looks almost exactly like a clone of SpaceX's Starship rocket.
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday November 06, 2024 02:00AM
Ars Technica's Eric Berger reports:
When Chinese space officials unveiled the design for the country's first super heavy lift rocket nearly a decade ago, it looked like a fairly conventional booster. The rocket was fully expendable, with three stages and solid motors strapped onto its sides. Since then, the Asian country has been revising the design of this rocket, named Long March 9, in response to the development of reusable rockets by SpaceX. As of two years ago, China had recalibrated the design to have a reusable first stage. Now, based on information released at a major airshow in Zhuhai, China, the design has morphed again. And this time, the plan for the Long March 9 rocket looks almost exactly like a clone of SpaceX's Starship rocket.
Won't scare SpaceX as it's not reusable, but will help Beijing do things like launch broadband sats
Simon Sharwood - Mon 2 Dec 2024 01:33 UTC
China launched a new class of rocket on Saturday, and for the first time used a commercial spaceport for the mission.
The rocket is the Long March 12, and can carry payloads of 12 tons to low-Earth orbit or hoist half that to Sun-synchronous orbit. The two-stage launcher is a single-core affair powered by a quartet of liquid oxygen-kerosene engines and on this mission used a 3.8-meter payload faring.
China's government has touted innovations including sensors that allow diagnosis of its performance, liquid oxygen-compatible cold helium pressurization, and aluminum-lithium alloy tanks.
The rocket is not reusable, though an engine designed to make that possible is apparently on the drawing board. It has, however, been designed for fast launch preparation. It can also accommodate a faring with diameter of 4.2 or 5.2 meters, to allow missions to carry cargoes with greater volume.
The launch took place at the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Center, located on an island province at China's southernmost point. It's the first launch from the site, which China expects will be used by its growing private space industry.
The first Long March 12 went aloft carrying a pair of experimental satellites that reached their desired orbits.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/02/china_long_march_12_launch/
Depending on how you count them, China now has roughly 18 types of active space launchers.
Stephen Clark - Dec 2, 2024 11:13 AM
The first Long March 12 lifts off from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site on November 30, 2024 in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China. Credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
China's new Long March 12 rocket made a successful inaugural flight Saturday, placing two experimental satellites into orbit and testing uprated, higher-thrust engines that will allow a larger Chinese launcher in development to send astronauts to the Moon.
The 203-foot-tall (62-meter) Long March 12 rocket lifted off at 9:25 am EST (14:25 UTC) Saturday from the Wenchang commercial launch site on Hainan Island, China's southernmost province. This was also the first rocket launch from a new commercial spaceport at Wenchang, consisting of two launch sites a short distance from a pair of existing launch pads used by heavier rockets primarily geared for government missions.
The two-stage rocket delivered two technology demonstration satellites into a near-circular 50-degree-inclination orbit with an average altitude of nearly 650 miles (about 1,040 kilometers), according to US military tracking data.
The Long March 12 is the newest member of China's Long March rocket family, which has been flying since China launched its first satellite into orbit in 1970. The Long March rockets have significantly evolved since then and now include a range of launch vehicles of different sizes and designs.
Versions of the Long March 2, 3, and 4 rockets have been flying since the 1970s and 1980s, burning the same toxic mix of hypergolic propellants as China's early ICBMs. More recently, China debuted the Long March 5, 6, 7, and 8 rockets consuming the cleaner combination of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants. These new rockets provide China with a spectrum of small, medium, and heavy-lift launch capabilities.
China's inaugural Mars mission was scheduled to resume after a precautionary winter pause, but controllers can't seem to make contact with the rover or orbiter.
Passant Rabie - 9 January 2023 2:10PM
China’s Zhurong rover went into hibernation mode in May 2022 to avoid the harsh winter season on Mars, but communication issues, both with the rover and orbiter, suggest something’s now very wrong with the mission.
The six-wheeled Martian rover was scheduled to wake up in late December, but it hasn’t been heard from since entering into its scheduled hibernation mode, unnamed sources told the South China Morning Post, as first reported by SpaceNews.
https://gizmodo.com/china-zhurong-mars-rover-tianwen-1-orbiter-trouble-1849965007
The Zhurong rover was scheduled to wake up from its hibernation in December, but has remained idle on the same Martian spot for nearly a year.
Passant Rabie - 25 April 2023
About a year ago, China’s Zhurong rover hunkered down on the Martian surface to avoid the harsh winter season on the dusty planet. Regrettably, Zhurong has so far failed to revive itself from hibernation mode. A mission designer recently revealed that an accumulation of dust on the rover’s solar panels may be the reason for its unresponsive state.
“We have not had any communication from the rover since it entered hibernation,” Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China’s Mars exploration program, told China’s state-owned CCTV, as reported by Reuters. “We are monitoring it every day and believe it has not woken up because the sunlight has not yet reached the minimum level for power generation.”
https://gizmodo.com/china-opens-up-malfunctioning-zhurong-mars-rover-1850372770
Posted by BeauHD on Friday February 28, 2025 11:00PM
Chinese scientists are developing a lightweight Mars drone capable of both rolling on the ground and flying using contra-rotating coaxial rotors. Space.com reports:
The air-ground dual-purpose unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) weighs only 10.6 ounces (300 grams), equivalent to the weight of an apple. The development team is at the School of Astronautics (SoA) of the Harbin Institute of Technology. Seen as showing promising potential in future Mars science work, the UAV can take off at any time, traverse obstacles, and boasts superb endurance, reports state-owned China Central Television (CCTV).
“On the ground, it mainly rolls by shifting its center of gravity,” said Zhu Yimin, a Ph.D candidate at SoA. “In the air, it relies on a pair of contra-rotating coaxial rotors, controlled by a steering engine to adjust the forward direction, to control torque and force, ultimately achieving stable flight,” Zhu told CCTV. The UAV work entails multiple models of air-ground dual-mode robots with different configurations, CCTV reports. These robots move by rolling close to the ground, which reduces energy consumption, and can achieve a flight endurance time of more than six times that of traditional drones of the same size.
According to Zhang Lixian, a professor within the SoA, the hope is that the aerial vehicle can show off its long endurance and observational abilities on Mars. “Our second goal is for such machines to be suitable for construction in many underground spaces and for exploring unknown underground spaces. We also need robotic means for inspection and environmental detection. We have now materialized all these functions,” said Zhang.
A video of the drone can be found here (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=600097986193696).
Long marches into space will now complete their journey back on Earth.
Eric Berger - 11/9/2022, 11:16 AM
When China started to get serious about sending its astronauts to the Moon in the middle of the last decade, the country's senior rocket scientists began to plan a large booster to do the job.
In 2016 the country's state-owned rocket developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, began designing the “Long March 9” rocket. It looked more or less like the large heavy lifter NASA was designing at the time, the Space Launch System. Like NASA's large rocket, the Long March 9 had a core stage and boosters and was intended to be fully expendable.
There were some key differences, particularly in propellants—the Long March 9 would use kerosene, instead of liquid hydrogen—but the general idea was the same. China would build a single-use, super heavy lift rocket to launch its astronauts to the Moon. The country set a goal of flying the rocket by 2030.
The wayward booster left not one but two impact craters on the lunar surface, suggesting there was something undisclosed on the Chang'e 5-T1 mission.
Passant Rabie - 16 November 2023
The surface of the Moon is littered with defunct hardware from past missions that are now buried amongst the lunar regolith. A recent crash site left a distinct and curious mark, creating two impact craters of equal size. Scientists examining the collision believe that there may have been an undisclosed object that crashed on the Moon, the origins of which will remain a mystery.
On March 4, 2022, a wayward rocket booster slammed onto the Moon’s surface. Prior to impact, it was believed to belong to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was left in high orbit in 2015, but further investigation revealed that it was actually a booster launched by China in 2014 as part of its lunar exploration program. That said, the space mystery continued as the booster created two craters upon impact, causing scientists to question what exactly crashed on the Moon that day.
https://gizmodo.com/chinese-rockets-moon-collision-in-2022-carried-mystery-1851028844
We come in peace, or rather, pieces
Katyanna Quach - Fri 17 Nov 2023 23:25 UTC
Last year, not one but two craters unexpectedly appeared on the Moon, leaving us all to wonder: what could have caused that?
According to a study published this week, the craters were created by a spent Chinese rocket booster - with a possible additional payload - crashing into the lunar surface.
In March, 2022, astronomers warned that a piece of space junk was on course to hit the Moon. Some speculated the object was a leftover part from the Chinese National Space Administration's Long March 3C rocket that sent the Chang'e 5-T1 spacecraft around the Moon in 2014.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, rebuffed claims that the debris was its rocket, and said the mission's upper stage had disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere. Confusingly, the representative, Wang Wenbin, turned out to be referring to another rocket that launched the Chang'e-5, a different probe.
It was difficult to confirm what had struck the Moon exactly, as space agencies don't usually monitor debris drifting beyond certain altitudes. Some thought it may have been a chunk from one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. Astronomers were left even more puzzled when images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showed the impact had punched two holes into the lunar surface.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/chinese_rocket_moon_crash/
Chang'e 6 just kicked off its 53-day journey to the Moon and back, in what's poised to be a historic mission.
Passant Rabie - 3 May 2024
A Chinese probe is on its way to the far side of the Moon to collect samples and drop them off at Earth in what would be a historic first. The Chang’e-6 mission launched from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 5:30 a.m. ET on Friday. The lunar probe was riding on board China’s largest rocket, the 57-meter-tall Long March-5.
With its latest mission to the Moon, China is hoping to become the first nation to return rock and dust from the lunar far side. The far side of the Moon is the hemisphere facing away from Earth and has also been known as the “dark side,” referring to how little we know about it rather than it actually being dark. Unlike the lunar hemisphere facing Earth, the far side is more densely populated with impact craters while largely missing the large, dark seas of cooled lava that dominate the Moon’s near side.
https://gizmodo.com/china-launch-mission-return-first-samples-moon-far-side-1851454398
The recent test is part of an ongoing effort by rocket startups in China to mimic SpaceX's success.
Passant Rabie - September 23, 2024
A space startup in China almost pulled off a vertical landing test of its prototype rocket, but the launch vehicle experienced an anomaly at the very last moment, causing it to crash onto the landing pad and erupt in flames.
Deep Blue Aerospace launched its Nebula-1 rocket for its first high-altitude recovery test flight on Sunday, and attempted to land it back at the Ejin Banner Spaceport in Inner Mongolia. The rocket lifted off to an altitude of around 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the ground but it fumbled the landing, leading the company to declare the test mission as “not completely successful,” according to a statement by Deep Blue Aerospace.
A drone captured the test flight in vivid detail, resulting in a cinematic, two-minute video filled with incredible views of the launch. The video sadly ends with Nebula-1 hitting the landing pad and going up in flames, but even its failure looks pretty cool, so it wasn’t a total loss. The dramatic video brings to mind SpaceX’s early attempts to test the reusability of its rockets, in which even explosions were seen as partial victories. It seems Deep Blue Aerospace may be drawing from SpaceX’s playbook, using these fiery displays for publicity while taking a different path than what we typically see from Chinese space companies.
Deep Blue Aerospace is just one of several Chinese companies working on vertical landing.
Eric Berger - 9/23/2024, 6:04 AM
A Chinese space startup conducted what it called a “high-altitude” test flight of its Nebula-1 rocket on Sunday, launching the vehicle to an altitude of about 5 km or so before attempting to land it back at the Ejin Banner Spaceport in Inner Mongolia.
The test flight went well for about two and a half minutes before the vehicle experienced a problem just before landing and erupted into a fireball.
This is not the first vertical rocket landing test by a Chinese company, but what sets Deep Blue Aerospace apart from its competitors is its transparency. Within hours the company released a detailed statement about the test flight, its objectives, and a preliminary review of what went wrong.
Andrew Jones - June 27, 2025
HELSINKI — Two Chinese astronauts conducted an extravehicular activity outside the Tiangong space station Thursday, marking their second spacewalk in five weeks.
Astronaut Chen Zhongrui opened the Wentian module hatch at 3:04 a.m. Eastern (0704 UTC) June 26, beginning activities, ascending to the tip of Tiangong’s robotic arm. Mission commander Chen Dong, wearing a Feitian EVA suit with blue stripes, joined his colleague two hours later. Wang Jie, formerly an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), assisted operations from within Tiangong.
During the EVA, Chen Dong and Chen Zhongrui, a former air force pilot on his first visit to orbit, installed debris protective shielding outside of Tiangong, while also inspecting and installing extravehicular equipment and interfaces out the space station. Newly installed automated foot restraint adapters and interface adapters on Tiangong’s robotic arm platform used for spacewalks mean that subsequent EVAs are expected to be shortened by approximately 40 minutes, according to CMSEO.
“In the previous spacewalks, astronauts had to install foot limiter and operation platform on the robotic arm’s end effector before and after exiting the module, and then rely on the arm to transport them to the work site,” Li Xuedong, lead designer of the space station system at the CASC, told CCTV.
The pair completed the almost 6.5-hour spacewalk at 9:29 a.m. Eastern (1329 UTC), the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) announced in a statement. CMSEO had stated a day earlier that the extravehicular activity (EVA) would take place “in the near future.”
The launch of the experimental spacecraft was highly classified.
Passant Rabie - 16 August 2022 2:15PM
China recently launched a secretive reusable spaceplane, and the mysterious spacecraft is still flying around with no information on when it is meant to land. The experimental spaceplane missed an opportunity to land early Monday as it flew right over its landing site, and has now flown higher and longer than before.
It’s been nearly two weeks since China launched a reusable spacecraft experiment onboard a Long March 2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, state media reported at the time. Details on the spacecraft were scarce, with the Chinese government stating that it would remain in orbit for a vague “period of time.” This was China’s second attempt to launch a reusable spaceplane to orbit, with the first test spacecraft taking off in September 2020 with a similarly secretive liftoff.
The experimental mission to test China's reusable spaceplane continues to unfold in unexpected ways.
Passant Rabie - 25 October 2022 2:00PM
It’s been nearly eight weeks since we last heard from China’s spaceplane, which launched from the the Gobi Desert in early August. But things are happening, as the spaceplane recently fired its thrusters to ascend to a higher and more circular orbit, but for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.
The reusable spacecraft took off onboard a Long March 2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on August 4. As China’s second attempt to launch a spaceplane, the experimental vehicle flew at a higher altitude and for a longer period of time than its predecessor.
https://gizmodo.com/china-spaceplane-raises-orbit-1849699601
China's inaugural spaceplane mission in 2020 lasted for only two days, but this one just keeps on going.
Passant Rabie - 2 November 2022 3:20PM
The saga of China’s spaceplane continues as the experimental vehicle just released a mystery object that’s now closely trailing behind in low Earth orbit.
On Monday, the United States Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron tracked an object in a similar orbit to the spaceplane, SpaceNews first reported. The object appeared to be very close to the spaceplane. So close, in fact, that the Space Force unit had to make sure it was a separate object before it was entered into the database as such. The object may have been ejected earlier from the spaceplane, perhaps between October 24 to 30, but it got added to the database on October 31, according to a tweet by Robert Christy from Orbital Focus.
https://gizmodo.com/china-mysterious-spaceplane-ejects-unknown-object-1849733129
The experimental spacecraft secretly launched to space last summer, but very little has been shared about its mission, which appears to have ended.
Passant Rabie - 8 May 2023
The long, drawn-out saga of China’s latest spaceplane mission has come to an end, with the reusable vehicle completing a second secretive mission that lasted much longer than its first flight.
China’s spacecraft landed on Monday at the Jiuquan launch centre, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The uncrewed spaceplane returned to its launch site in northwest China after spending 276 days parked in Earth’s orbit. Chinese state-run media has dubbed the mission a success, with CGTN writing that the spaceplane’s recent flight marks an “important breakthrough in reusable spacecraft technology research.”
https://gizmodo.com/china-lands-mysterious-spaceplane-276-days-orbit-1850414765
The spaceplane landed this week after spending 276 days in orbit.
Passant Rabie - 11 May 2023
The Chinese spaceplane finally returned to Earth earlier this week, but we’re still learning more about its time in orbit. The spacecraft caught and released an unidentified object several times during its flight, performing a series of maneuvers that were captured by orbital radars, according to California-based LeoLabs. The company released its observational data, saying in a tweet that the data shows there were at least two capture and docking operations performed by the spacecraft.
The experimental launch vehicle took off from the Jiuquan Launch Center on August 5 as a classified payload on board a Long March 2F carrier rocket. This was the reusable spacecraft’s second time to fly, with its first launch taking place in 2020. The spaceplane only stayed in orbit for four days during its inaugural flight but far outdid itself the second time around.
https://gizmodo.com/chinas-spaceplane-conducted-multiple-maneuvers-with-a-m-1850428473
Expert Reviews
EurAsian Times Desk - May 13, 2023
On May 8, a mysterious reusable Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth after staying in orbit for 276 days. On the face of it, it seems like a mere technological development. But, from a military perspective, it has far-reaching consequences.
A highly maneuverable spacecraft like this could be used to “surveil, disrupt and outright attack an opponent’s space-based assets” or conversely can “retrieve or otherwise interact with friendly ones.”
Private space services company LeoLabs revealed on its Twitter handle that the Chinese reusable space vehicle “docked with or captured a separate object on multiple occasions” during the orbit.
The Chinese state-run China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has not provided many details about its time in orbit.
Highly maneuverable reusable space vehicles that can manipulate other objects in orbit could be used for research and development. But they can also act as a weapon and become “satellite killers” that can attack other objects in space.
https://eurasiantimes.com/china-could-soon-become-the-global-leader-in-space/
Launched five days ago, the reusable spaceplane has deployed several objects, some of which appear to be transmitting signals.
George Dvorsky - 19 December 2023
China’s Shenlong robotic spaceplane, on its third mission, has added a new layer of intrigue to its space activities by deploying six unidentified objects into Earth’s orbit.
Shenlong, meaning “Divine Dragon,” embarked on its third mission on December 14, successfully deploying six objects into orbit shortly afterward. These objects are currently being tracked by both the U.S. Space Force and amateur observers. The items, which appear to be emitting various signals, have been designated OBJECT A, B, C, D, E, and F by the U.S. Department of Defense (the official NORAD TLE designations are 58573 through to 58577, and 58581).
Scott Tilley, an amateur astronomer and satellite tracker has been closely analyzing these objects and reported his findings to Space.com. OBJECT A, in particular, has been emitting signals reminiscent of “wingman” emissions from past Chinese spaceplane missions. These signals, characterized by limited data modulation, suggest a possible connection to China’s earlier space activities. Interestingly, OBJECTs D and E have been emitting idle “placeholder” signals devoid of data. What’s more, these signals tend to be intermittent and don’t stay on for very long, according to Tilley.
https://gizmodo.com/china-shenlong-space-plane-6-mystery-objects-in-orbit-1851111929
There's been very little information shared about the orbital vehicle, which launched in December 2023 for its third secretive mission.
Passant Rabie - 28 May 2024
China’s curious spaceplane is at it again, releasing an unidentified object into orbit that could signal the end of its mysterious mission.
The U.S. Space Force is currently tracking the mystery object, which the reusable spaceplane appears to have released on May 24 at around 3 p.m. ET, Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, noted on X. “This object could be a subsatellite deployment, or it could be a piece of hardware ejected prior to end of mission and deorbit (the spaceplane’s first flight did something similar)“ he wrote. “Will be interesting to see if the plane maneuvers or lands soon.”
https://gizmodo.com/china-spaceplane-releases-mystery-object-third-mission-1851504734
During its time in orbit, the reusable spacecraft released mystery objects that appeared to emit some sort of signal.
Passant Rabie - September 6, 2024
The Chinese spaceplane completed its third flight, spending 268 days in orbit on a secretive mission likely focused on developing the experimental vehicle. During its time in orbit, the reusable spaceplane released several objects and raised its altitude to 372 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth, in what was an eventful mission.
China’s spaceplane, named Shenlong, touched down late Thursday (Friday in Bejing) at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, according to local media reports. The spacecraft passed over its designated landing site, a dried-up lakebed in the southeastern portion of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region known as Lop Nur, around 9:10 p.m. ET, astrophysicist and space tracker Jonathan McDowell wrote on X.
The 268-day mission, the third for Shenlong, was a test of the spacecraft’s reusable technology and for conducting space-based science experiments, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua
Posted by msmash on Tuesday November 29, 2022 10:11AM
Tall as a 20-story building, a rocket carrying the Shenzhou 15 mission roared into the night sky of the Gobi Desert on Tuesday, carrying three astronauts toward a rendezvous with China's just-completed space station. From a report:
The rocket launch was a split-screen event for China, the latest in a long series of technological achievements for the country, even as many of its citizens have been angrily lashing out in the streets against stringent pandemic controls.The air shook as the huge white rocket leaped into a starry, bitterly cold night sky shortly before the setting of a waxing crescent moon. The expedition to the new space station is a milestone for China's rapidly advancing space program. It is the first time a team of three astronauts already aboard the Tiangong outpost will be met by a crew arriving from Earth. The Chinese space station will now be continuously occupied, like the International Space Station, another marker laid down by China in its race to catch up with the United States and surpass it as the dominant power in space.
The Chinese space agency revealed plans to launch a new module and host international astronauts on board its nascent space station.
Passant Rabie - 1 March 2023
Construction of the Tiangong Space Station was only completed late last year, but China already has big plans to expand on its low Earth orbit project.
During an exhibition at the National Museum of China, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) revealed plans to launch a new module to add to the Tiangong Space Station, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday. The expansion module will attach to the three modules already in low Earth orbit, turning the T-shaped space station into a cross.
The plan is for the multi-functional module to have six docking ports, allowing more spacecraft to dock with the space station. China had previously announced that it would allow space tourists to travel to Tiangong, so the extra ports will come in handy.
https://gizmodo.com/china-make-brand-new-space-station-even-bigger-1850173974
Launching Wednesday, the crew will conduct research and repair parts of the station damaged by space debris.
Passant Rabie - 25 October 2023
Three astronauts are gearing up to launch to China’s space station in low Earth orbit, where they will spend six months carrying out a variety of experiments.
The Shenzhou-17 mission is set for launch on Wednesday at 11:14 p.m. ET (11:14 a.m. on Thursday Bejing time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The three-person crew will ride on board a Long March 2F rocket and will reach the Tiangong space station around 6.5 hours after launch.
Shenzhou-17 is the sixth crewed mission to China’s Tiangong space station, and it includes astronauts Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie, and Jiang Xinlin. This is Tang’s second mission on board the space station, having already spent time on Tiangong as part of China’s first crew to launch to Earth orbit in June 2021 as part of Shenzhou-12.
https://gizmodo.com/china-gears-up-to-launch-its-sixth-space-station-crew-1850959151
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday June 10, 2023 12:00AM
China is planning to deploy a constellation of satellites in orbit around the moon to create a radio telescope that would enable the study of radio waves longer than 33 feet, providing insights into the “Dark Ages” of the universe. Space.com reports:
The array would consist of one “mother” satellite and eight mini “daughter” craft. The mother would process data and communicate with Earth, and the daughters would detect radio signals from the farthest reaches of the cosmos, Xuelei Chen, an astronomer at the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said at the Astronomy From the Moon conference held earlier this year in London. Putting such an array in orbit around the moon would be technically more feasible than building a telescope directly on the lunar surface, a venture that NASA and other space agencies are currently considering as one of the next big steps in astronomy.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday August 21, 2021 12:00AM
China is preparing to launch an uncrewed cargo ship to its Tiangong “Heavenly palace” space station in preparation for the arrival of its second human crew this autumn. The Guardian reports:
The Long March 7 rocket was delivered to the Wenchang space launch site in Hainan on 16 August, where it will undergo final assembly and testing. It will carry the Tianzhou 3 cargo ship into orbit sometime in mid to late September. Simultaneously, at the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in the Gobi desert, the Shenzhou 13 mission is being readied to transport the crew of three astronauts. A launch is planned for October and the astronauts are expected to stay in orbit until April 2022. The flight plan of a cargo ship followed by an astronaut vehicle matches the pattern of the first crew from earlier this year. Those three astronauts are still on Tiangong. They arrived in June and are expected to return to Earth in September.
Tiangong could now outlive the older, larger International Space Station.
Stephen Clark - 11/29/2023, 6:10 AM
China released new pictures of its Tiangong space station Tuesday as Chinese astronauts and space officials made a public relations visit to Hong Kong. These images, taken about a month ago, show the Tiangong complex in its fully assembled configuration with three modules staffed by three crew members.
A departing crew of three astronauts captured the new panoramic views of the Tiangong station in low-Earth orbit October 30, shortly after departing the outpost to head for Earth at the end of a six-month mission. These are the first views showing the Tiangong station after China completed assembling its three main modules last year.
The Tianhe core module is at the center of the complex. It launched in April 2021 with crew accommodations and life support systems for astronauts. Two experiment modules, named Wentian and Mengtian, launched in 2022. The first team of Chinese astronauts arrived at the station in June 2021, and Tiangong has been permanently staffed by rotating three-person crews since June 2022.
One of these crews closed out their six-month stint on the Tiangong station October 30. Their Shenzhou 16 ferry ship backed away from Tiangong, then autonomously flew a circle around the outpost as the astronauts floated near windows on their spacecraft with cameras “to complete a panoramic image of the space station assembly with the Earth as the background,” the China Manned Space Agency said.
China's Tiangong space station partially lost power after its solar panels were struck by an unidentified object late last year.
Passant Rabie - 25 April 2024
China’s space station crew carried out two spacewalks this past winter to repair the solar wings attached to the core module, which had been damaged by space debris.
The Tiangong space station’s core module, Tianhe, suffered a partial loss of power due to the impact, leading China to dispatch its astronauts on a pair of spacewalks for orbital repairs. The recent spacewalks were historic, marking the first time China’s astronauts had to conduct repair work in orbit. As the state-run media outlet Xinhua now reports, these repairs were successful, fixing the core module’s solar wings.
The Shenzhou 17 crew members—astronauts Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie, and Jiang Xinlin—spent nearly 16 hours tethered to the space station during the two spacewalks, the first on December 1, 2023, and the second on March 1, 2024, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). The space station’s solar arrays are now fully functional, according to Xinhua, noting that the damage resulted from the “impact of space debris on the solar wing’s power cables.”
https://gizmodo.com/chinese-astronauts-space-station-repairs-debris-impact-1851434957
Tianwen-2 will first return samples from an asteroid, then explore a mysterious comet-like object.
Stephen Clark – May 28, 2025 6:47 PM
A Chinese spacecraft built to collect specimens from an unexplored asteroid and return them to Earth successfully launched Wednesday from a military-run spaceport in the country's mountainous interior.
Liftoff aboard a Long March 3B rocket at 1:31 pm EDT (17:31 UTC) from the Xichang launch base kicked off the second mission in a series of Chinese probes to explore the Solar System. This mission, designated Tianwen-2, follows the Tianwen-1 mission, which became the first Chinese spacecraft to land on Mars in 2021.
Chinese officials confirmed the 2.1-metric ton Tianwen-2 spacecraft unfurled its fan-shaped solar arrays shortly after launch, marking an auspicious start to a decade-long tour of the Solar System.
China's objectives for Tianwen-2 are two-fold. First, Tianwen-2 will fly to a near-Earth asteroid designated 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, or 2016 HO3. Once there, the spacecraft will retrieve a rocky sample from the asteroid's surface and bring the material back to Earth in late 2027 for analysis in labs. After the spacecraft releases its sample carrier to land on Earth, Tianwen-2 will change course and head to a mysterious comet-like object found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Tianwen-2 will become the first Chinese spacecraft to bring home celestial material from beyond the Moon, where China has landed two previous sample retrieval missions. China's exploits at the Moon have made its space program the world leader in 21st century lunar exploration, at least for now.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday July 13, 2023 12:00AM
A private Chinese company launched into orbit on Wednesday the world's first methane-liquid oxygen rocket, beating U.S. rivals in sending what could become the next generation of launch vehicles into space. Reuters reports:
The Zhuque-2 carrier rocket blasted off at 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China and completed its flight according to plan, state media reported. It was the second attempt by Beijing-based LandSpace, one of the earliest firms in China's commercial launch sector, to launch the Zhuque-2. A first attempt in December failed.
An ‘anomaly’ meant a fireball arrived at the recovery zone instead of a spent first stage
Richard Speed - Wed 3 Dec 2025 18:30 UTC
There's good news and bad news for the Chinese commercial launch industry. The good news is that LandSpace's ZhuQue-3 launched successfully on its maiden flight. The bad news is that a hoped-for recovery of the first stage ended in a fireball.
The rocket launched on December 3, 2025, and successfully reached orbit. ZhuQue-3 is a two-stage rocket capable of lofting slightly more than 18 metric tons if the first stage is recovered (the figure is slightly higher if no recovery is attempted).
We're sure that any similarities with SpaceX's Falcon 9 are purely coincidental. Nine Tianque-12A engines power the ZhuQue-3 first stage, and the plan is for the booster to land vertically. Each booster should be good for at least 20 reuses, making it handy for building a satellite constellation (and the payload means plenty of satellites can be carried on a single launch).
There is also plenty of stainless steel used in the rocket's construction. SpaceX's Starship is famously made out of the stuff.
The mission itself went well. The first and second stages separated successfully, the fairing was discarded, and the second stage coasted in flight before restarting its Tianque-15A vacuum engine. The first stage should have returned to make a soft landing following stage separation, but things didn't quite turn out that way.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/03/chinas_reusable_rocket_orbit/
“China’s first rocket recovery attempt achieved its expected technical objectives.”
Stephen Clark – Dec 3, 2025 9:40 AM
China’s first attempt to land an orbital-class rocket may have ended in a fiery crash, but the company responsible for the mission had a lot to celebrate with the first flight of its new methane-fueled launcher.
LandSpace, a decade-old company based in Beijing, launched its new Zhuque-3 rocket for the first time at 11 pm EST Tuesday (04:0 UTC Wednesday), or noon local time at the Jiuquan launch site in northwestern China.
Powered by nine methane-fueled engines, the Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird-3) rocket climbed away from its launch pad with more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust. The 216-foot-tall (66-meter) launcher headed southeast, soaring through clear skies before releasing its first stage booster about two minutes into the flight.
The rocket’s upper stage fired a single engine to continue accelerating into orbit. LandSpace confirmed the upper stage “achieved the target orbit” and declared success for the rocket’s “orbital launch mission.” This alone is a remarkable accomplishment for a brand new rocket.
Chinese space agency emits footage of Red Planet bot
Katyanna Quach - Mon 28 Jun 2021 / 21:49 UTC
Videos The China National Space Administration has released videos and pictures of its first Mars rover scooting around on the surface of the Red Planet.
Plonking a robot in one piece on Mars is no easy feat. China is only the second Earth nation to successfully pull it off after the United States. The Middle Kingdom's Zhurong rover separated from its mothership Tianwen-1 and landed last month.
The 530-pound, six-wheeled vehicle landed in Utopia Planitia on May 14.
George Dvorsky - 6/28/21 3:55PM
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released new footage of the ongoing Tianwen-1 mission, which includes sounds of the rover in action.
Released by CNSA on Sunday, June 27, the footage shows the parachute deployment, descent, and landing, the deployment of the Zhurong rover to the surface, as well as a sweet shot of the six-wheeled vehicle backing away from its wireless camera. Launched in July 2020, the Tianwen-1 mission—China’s first to the Red Planet—arrived in orbit around Mars on February 10, 2021.
https://gizmodo.com/china-s-zhurong-rover-captures-remarkable-sights-and-so-1847187836
Hopes it might wake during the Martian solstice, but not with much confidence
Laura Dobberstein - Thu 27 Apr 2023 05:32 UTC
China has finally confirmed that its Zhurong Mars rover is inoperable, and may never again roll across the red planet.
The rover's chief designer, Zhang Rongqiao said in an interview with Chinese state media on Tuesday that a pile-up of dust had likely affected the vehicle's ability to generate power. He did not speculate whether this represents a final end for Zhurong.
Zhang said if dust accumulation exceeds 40 percent, the rover is designed to go into a dormant state.
It has been pointed out that active cleaning measures could revive the rover when the summer solstice arrives in July.
The six-wheeled explorer was thought to have failed since at least December 2022 when it didn't wake from the sleep mode it entered in May. Zhurong's slumber was intended to preserve power as winter arrived and the sun's rays on its solar panels weakened.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/27/china_zhurong_rover_dust_trouble/
Hydrated dunes suggest water can persist on some parts of the Martian surface, according to data from China's troubled Zhurong rover.
Isaac Schultz - 28 April 2023 2:00PM
China’s Zhurong rover has found evidence of liquid water on present-day Mars, according to a team that reviewed data from the rover’s cameras.
To be clear, the team claims they’ve collected evidence of liquid water on Mars—not the liquid water itself. Water was once plentiful on Mars. NASA, the European Space Agency, and others have found a plethora of evidence for ancient water on the planet; it’s proving the recent presence of water that’s trickier.
The (currently malfunctioning) Zhurong rover is sitting on the southern edge of Utopia Planitia, a vast series of volcanic plains on Mars. The rover landed there in May 2021. The recent team of researchers used three of the rover’s instruments—two of its cameras and its surface composition detector (MarSCoDe) to analyze the makeup of the dunes in the immediate vicinity of the rover’s landing site. Their research is published today in Science Advances.
https://gizmodo.com/zhurong-rover-evidence-liquid-water-mars-china-1850386772
Within the last million years or so, melted snow might have dampened Mars' sands.
Elizabeth Rayne - 5/11/2023, 3:02 PM
Most of Mars appears to be an endless expanse of alien desert, without a river or lake in sight. However, liquid water definitely existed in the planet’s distant past. A new paper has also suggested that it's also possible small quantities of water still might exist in places that otherwise appear barren.
Before China’s Zhurong (also known as Phoenix) rover went into hibernation mode last May, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered something unexpected. Zhurong was exploring the Utopia Planitia region, which is near the planet’s equator. No liquid water was thought to exist at those latitudes. Yet when the rover beamed back data from its Multispectral Camera (MSCam), Navigation and Terrain Camera (NaTeCam), and Mars Surface Composition Detector (MarSCoDe), there was possible evidence for liquid water having been present less than half a million years ago.
“[Our findings] suggest [features] associated with the activity of saline water, indicating the existence of water process on the low-latitude region of Mars,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Science Advances.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/surprise-finding-recent-liquid-water-near-mars-equator/
The design for a 36 mile long spacecraft, called Chrysalis, includes libraries, tropical forests and structural manufacturing facilities, all supported by artificial gravity.
Perri Thaler - 7 August 2025
Engineers have designed a spacecraft that could take up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to our own. The craft, called Chrysalis, could make the 25 trillion mile (40 trillion kilometer) journey in around 400 years, the engineers say in their project brief, meaning many of its potential passengers would only know life on the craft.
Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.
The project won first place in the Project Hyperion Design Competition, a challenge that requires teams to design hypothetical multigenerational ships for interstellar travel.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 09, 2025 11:34AM
They haven't built a spacecraft for travelling to our nearest star system. But “Engineers have designed a spacecraft that could take up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri,” reports LiveScience:
The craft, called Chrysalis, could make the 25 trillion mile (40 trillion kilometer) journey in around 400 years, the engineers say in their project brief, meaning many of its potential passengers would only know life on the craft. Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.
The project won first place in the Project Hyperion Design Competition, a challenge that requires teams to design hypothetical multigenerational ships for interstellar travel.
“The data is in, perfect performance from the reused engine.”
Eric Berger - 8/24/2023, 10:09 AM
Rocket Lab launched its 40th Electron mission this week and achieved an important milestone in its quest to reuse orbital rockets. As part of the mission, the launch company reused a previously flown Rutherford engine on its first stage for the first time.
In terms of orbital rockets, only NASA's space shuttle and SpaceX's Falcon 9 vehicles have demonstrated the capability of re-flying an engine. With Rutherford, Rocket Lab has now also flown a rocket engine that landed in the ocean for the first time.
Shortly after the Electron mission, which launched a satellite for Capella Space on Thursday morning from New Zealand, Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck confirmed that the Rutherford engine performed well in its second flight. “The data is in, perfect performance from the reused engine and the stage,” Beck said on X, the social networking site formerly known as Twitter.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/rocket-lab-joins-spacex-in-re-flying-a-rocket-engine-to-space/
“Starship will not eradicate Ariane 6 at all.”
Eric Berger - 6/26/2024, 10:18 AM
There was a panel discussion at a space conference in Singapore 11 years ago that has since become legendary in certain corners of the space industry for what it reveals about European attitudes toward upstart SpaceX.
The panel included representatives from a handful of launch enterprises, including Europe-based Arianespace, and the US launch company SpaceX. At one point during the discussion, the host asked the Arianespace representative—its chief of sales in Southeast Asia, Richard Bowles—how the institutional European company would respond to SpaceX's promise of lower launch costs and reuse with the Falcon 9 rocket.
“What I'm discovering in the market is that SpaceX primarily seems to be selling a dream, which is good. We should all dream,” Bowles replied. “I think a $5 million launch or a $15 million launch is a bit of a dream. Personally, I think reusability is a dream. How am I going to respond to a dream? My answer to respond to a dream is, first of all, you don't wake people up.”
Europe takes another step toward fostering competition in a stagnant launch market.
Stephen Clark – Jul 9, 2025 5:48 AM
The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent's incumbent launch service provider.
The five companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar's Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March.
None of these companies is guaranteed an ESA contract or funding. Over the next several months, the European Space Agency and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA's ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency's budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.
In a press release, ESA referred to the five companies as “preselected challengers” in a competition for ESA support in the form of launch contracts and an ESA-sponsored demonstration to showcase upgraded launch vehicles to heave heavier payloads into orbit. So far, all five of the challengers are focusing on small rockets.
Earlier this year, ESA released a request for proposals to European industry for bids to compete in the European Launch Challenge. ESA received 12 proposals from European companies and selected five to move on to the next phase of the challenge.
Solar arrays are massive… but it's the transistors onlookers are really worried about
Richard Speed - Fri 13 Sep 2024 16:15 UTC
NASA's Europa Clipper is now less than a month from its October 10 launch, and the US space agency has shown off the spacecraft's giant solar arrays. However, concerns persist over how well the probe's electronics will fare in the harsh Jovian environment.
Each of the Europa Clipper's arrays measure 14.2 meters (46.5 feet) long and 4.1 meters (13.5 feet) high.
Indeed, the probe is a beast of a spacecraft. According to NASA, it is the largest the agency has ever created for a planetary mission, spanning more than 30.5 meters (100 feet) with its arrays deployed, and with a dry mass of 3,241 kg (7,145 pounds).
Those arrays need to be huge. The spacecraft is set to perform multiple flybys of Jupiter's moon Europa, where it will receive only three to four percent of the sunlight that reaches Earth. There is, after all, a reason why many probes sent to distant parts of the solar system use Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG).
Together, the arrays will produce approximately 700 watts of electricity at Jupiter, or just enough to operate a small microwave oven.
Engineers deployed and tested the arrays in August and confirmed they were ready to launch. However, there might be other issues within Clipper that could yet cause problems when the probe explores Europa in the hope of discovering conditions that could support life.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/13/the_europa_clipper_stretches_its/
Salsa's final act: Reminding us it was the humans all along
Richard Speed - Mon 9 Sep 2024 15:15 UTC
The European Space Agency (ESA) has bid farewell to the Cluster II spacecraft with a final set of commands to show that engineers are indeed human.
The four spacecraft have long been set for reentry, starting with Satellite 2, aka Salsa. The reentry occurred on Sunday, September 8, as planned. However, the mission controllers had time to upload one final command sequence before Salsa was destroyed in the Earth's atmosphere.
Former ESA Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration Mark McCaughrean shared the final moments in a post on Mastodon: “As a final action, a series of dummy commands were uplinked to Salsa, each containing the name of one of the active mission operations team.
“The spacecraft responded to each command, acknowledging receipt. Minutes later, it was gone, burned up in a blaze of glory in Earth’s atmosphere, 24 years after launch.”
McCaughrean included images of the request and the current Cluster team, some of whom were likely still in full-time education when the mission launched.
Cluster, or Cluster II as it was known following the loss of the original spacecraft, was launched as two pairs of satellites on two Soyuz rockets from Baikonur. The first of the four was destroyed in the failure of the inaugural launch of the Ariane 5.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/esa_cluster_salsa_farewell/
Launched this past summer, the space observatory’s commissioning hasn’t been perfect, but the team remains optimistic.
Isaac Schultz - 29 September 2023
The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope launched from Earth on July 1 and has since been getting set up to begin its investigation of the dark universe. But the instrument commissioning hasn’t been rainbows and butterflies, as the telescope’s engineers and scientists have worked to untangle several issues that have come up in the process.
You can read all about the Euclid mission here; in short, the telescope will study the dark universe—the parts of our cosmos made up of dark energy and dark matter, about 95% of everything. Euclid is equipped with a visible light camera (VIS), a near-infrared camera, and spectrometer (NISP) to make its observations. Its current issues are threefold: the telescope’s fine guidance sensors are occasionally losing track of stars, stray sunlight is sneaking into the telescope’s early images, and, X-rays are reaching Euclid’s detectors as a result of that unwanted sunlight, spoiling some of the images.
https://gizmodo.com/euclid-space-telescope-faltering-start-1850888158
05/10/2023 - ESA
For a few months, ESA’s dark Universe detective wasn’t quite right. It arrived smoothly at Lagrange point 2, focussed its telescope mirror and captured its first mesmerising test images. It soon became clear, however, that the mission was experiencing some hiccups.
Probe goes loopy after mistaking solar rays for stars
Katyanna Quach - Wed 11 Oct 2023 06:22 UTC
The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope is back to normal and will resume its mission, thanks to a software update that was required after its navigation sensors mistakenly identified solar ray signals as stars.
Launched in July, the billion-euro observatory designed to study dark energy and dark matter, successfully reached its target destination, a region 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from Earth, to enter a stable orbit following our planet around the Sun.
But shortly after its instruments were deployed and it snapped a first picture a month later, mission control discovered the telescope was failing to focus on stars. Squiggly lines and circles captured in another image revealed that Euclid was looping around and struggling to lock onto distant stars to keep it steady during its observations.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/11/euclid_software_patch/
Warm water and a scraper not an option when you're 1.5 million kilometers from home
Richard Speed - Wed 20 Mar 2024 12:30 UTC
Less than 12 months into its six-year survey mission, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid telescope is experiencing optical issues that require European teams to devise a de-icing procedure.
ESA described the problem as common – water absorbed from the air during assembly is being released now that the spacecraft is in the vacuum of space.
The ice layers are currently only the width of a strand of DNA, but they are disrupting Euclid's observations, meaning teams need to come up with a new procedure to de-ice the optics.
So what to do? Typically, engineers would turn on the heaters and spend a few days increasing the spacecraft's temperature from approximately -140°C to -3°C. However, while this would clear the optics, there is also the risk that Euclid's optical alignment could be affected as the spacecraft cools back down.
ESA said: “This won't do for such a sensitive mission where effects can be noticed on the optics from a temperature change of just a fraction of a degree, requiring at least several weeks of fine recalibration.”
The plan is to individually heat low-risk parts of the spacecraft and check for improvements in the optics. The challenge lies in identifying the specific surfaces where ice formation occurs, hence the careful approach that should pinpoint the affected area. Once spotted, engineers can warm up that part of the spacecraft in the future when needed.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/20/euclid_space_telescope_deicing/
The Euclid telescope had been gradually losing its vision as layers of water molecules accumulated on its mirrors.
Passant Rabie - 23 March 2024
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid telescope is back in action after an experimental procedure restored its ability to see the light in the cold, dark depths of space.
After noticing a gradual dip in the amount of light measured by Euclid from its surrounding stars, the team behind the mission devised a plan to heat parts of the spacecraft to get rid of frozen water molecules that had accumulated on the telescope’s mirrors. The plan was risky and not guaranteed to work, but things are looking good for Euclid so far.
Mission control de-iced the first two mirrors and, sure enough, more light began creeping in through Euclid’s optical instruments. Euclid’s coldest mirror was heated from -232 to -171 degrees Fahrenheit (-147 to -113 Celsius).
https://gizmodo.com/euclid-dark-matter-telescope-vision-restored-de-ice-1851366070
Knud Jahnke - 2024-03-26
Every space mission starts on Earth, in humid air and warm temperatures. After launch all satellites are then exposed to the vacuum of space, all air just rushes out, and everything cools down fast, to freezing temperatures of -150°C in the case of the Euclid space telescope. Once in space all that is left is the metal and Silicon Carbide and other materials that the instruments are made of. And a bit of water – which has consequences if it ends up as a thin layer on mirrors or lenses. Euclid just successfully removed ice and gained 15% of light transmission.
Water is unavoidable in satellites and space telescopes. All construction on Earth is taking place in laboratories and clean-rooms that require a certain humidity, around 50% relative humidity of the air, to prevent sparks in electronics. Humidity can actually enter some of the materials, especially plastic thermal and light insulation sheets called “multi-layer insulation”. These shield Euclid and other space missions from the cold of space, or light and heat of the Sun. They consist of many layers of very thin aluminised plastic sheets and this plastic can absorb up to 1% of its mass in water.
This water can then outgass over time as has been seen in previous missions like ESA’s GAIA satellite, and was also expected for Euclid’s telescope and instruments. Their design already took this into account, to minimise the amount of water that could out-gas, but there were also “decontamination” plans made. These would use heaters that are distributed across Euclid’s instrument bay and the telescope’s mirrors, to warm up different parts, allowing potential ice layers to evaporate. It was just the question: how much ice buildup would Euclid see and how quickly would it happen?
https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-successfully-de-iced-gains-15-sensitivity/
Thursday, 23 May 2024 - University of Nottingham
The first scientific pictures from the Euclid satellite mission have revealed more than 1,500 billion orphan stars scattered throughout the Perseus cluster of galaxies.
Led by astronomers from the University of Nottingham, this discovery sheds light on the origins of these celestial wanderers.
The Perseus cluster, located 240 million light-years away from Earth, is one of the Universe's most massive structures, boasting thousands of galaxies. However, amidst this cosmic ensemble, the Euclid satellite captured faint ghostly light - the orphan stars - drifting between the cluster's galaxies.
Stars naturally form within galaxies, so the presence of orphan stars outside these structures raised intriguing questions about their origins.
The structure is nearly 600 million light-years from Earth and is an early display of the nascent dark matter telescope's power.
Isaac Schultz - February 10, 2025
The $1.4 billion Euclid Space Telescope captured an Einstein Ring in one of its early test images, according to a team of scientists who recently studied the imagery.
The ring sits in the galaxy NGC 6505, which is about 590 million light-years from Earth. It is formed by the fortuitous distortion of light by gravitational fields as that light travels across the universe. Euclid’s high-resolution imaging made the distant (albeit nearby in universal terms) ring remarkably well-resolved, and showcases the telescope’s power. The team’s description of the ring is published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically,” said Conor O’Riordan, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and lead author of the research, in an ESA release. “This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful.”
https://gizmodo.com/euclid-telescope-spots-einstein-ring-wrapped-around-a-galaxy-2000561575
Posted by msmash on Monday February 10, 2025 07:20AM
Europe's Euclid space telescope has captured a rare “Einstein ring,” showing light from a distant galaxy bent into a perfect circle by the gravity of another galaxy sitting between Earth and the source, the European Space Agency said.
The phenomenon, spotted around galaxy NGC 6505 some 590 million light-years from Earth, reveals the warping of space predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. The background galaxy, located 4.42 billion light-years away, appears as a complete ring of light around NGC 6505.
“An Einstein ring as perfect as this is extremely rare,” said Open University astronomer Stephen Serjeant. Analysis shows NGC 6505 contains about 11% dark matter, a key focus of Euclid's mission to map the universe.
Launched in December 2013, ESA’s Gaia spacecraft is on a mission to map the locations and motions of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way with extreme precision.
But it’s not easy being a satellite: space is a dangerous place. In recent months, hyper-velocity space dust and the strongest solar storm in 20 years have threatened Gaia’s ability to carry out the precise measurements for which it is famous.
17/07/2024 - ESA / Enabling & Support / Operations
In April, a tiny particle smaller than a grain of sand struck Gaia at high speed. Known as a micrometeoroid, millions of these particles burn up in Earth’s atmosphere every day.
But Gaia is located 1.5 million km from Earth at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2). Out here, far from our planet’s protective atmosphere, Gaia is often struck by particles like this. Impacts are expected, and the spacecraft was designed to withstand them.
This object, however, struck Gaia at a very high speed and at just the wrong angle, damaging the spacecraft’s protective cover.
The impact created a little gap that allowed stray sunlight – around one billionth of the intensity of direct sunlight felt on Earth – to occasionally disrupt Gaia’s very sensitive sensors.
Gaia’s engineers were in the middle of dealing with this issue when they were faced with another problem.
27/03/2025 - ESA / Enabling & Support / Operations
The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy.
On 27 March 2025, Gaia’s control team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre carefully switched off the spacecraft’s subsystems and sent it into a ‘retirement orbit’ around the Sun.
Though the spacecraft’s operations are now over, the scientific exploitation of Gaia’s data has just begun.
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Farewell_Gaia!_Spacecraft_operations_come_to_an_end
2025-03-21
On 4 March, astronomer Zhuo-Xiao Wang captured this view of the sudden disappearance of ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. After more than 11 years in space mapping the motions and properties of billions of stars, the spacecraft’s operations are coming to an end. Gaia will be switched off on 27 March 2025. During a series of final test operations, flight controllers at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre rotated Gaia, causing its sunshield to reflect more light towards Earth. As a result, Gaia appeared much brighter than usual and was observed by several citizen astronomers around the world. Gaia is seen here moving across the sky, initially brightening before vanishing as the spacecraft quickly rotates back to its typical orientation. This was the final time that Gaia will appear so bright to astronomers on Earth. The spacecraft will now remain ‘dark’ forever. The Gaia mission, however, will continue and culminate in two major data releases that are in preparation for 2026 and 2030.
Two Vega rocket tanks vanished and were later found damaged and unusable.
George Dvorsky - 5 December 2023
The final mission of the European Space Agency’s Vega rocket has encountered a bizarre setback. Key propellant tanks required for its last flight were found damaged in a landfill, jeopardizing the scheduled 2024 launch.
It’s common for wallets to go missing. Same for car keys and mobile phones. It happens. But for two propellant tanks belonging to a 98-foot-tall rocket to go missing? That’s super strange.
The two tanks belong to a set of four, and they’re needed to power the Vega AVUM fourth stage. Avio, the Italy-based company responsible for assembling the Vega rocket, lost track of the pieces in October, according to European Spaceflight. The tanks were later found crushed and unusable in a landfill, presenting a unusual and unwelcome challenge in getting the rocket ready for its final flight.
The AVUM fourth stage is powered by a Ukraine-built liquid-fueled engine, which relies on four spherical tanks for its propellant. They’re normally stored in Avio’s production department in Colleferro, which recently underwent renovations. For some reason, the missing tanks were not recorded in Avio’s company-wide asset management system, making recovery efforts particularly challenging, European Spaceflight reports.
https://gizmodo.com/esa-avio-vega-rocket-missing-tanks-landfill-biomass-1851073802
9th Dec 2023
Update 14th December:
ESA has confirmed to Andrew Parsonson that “there is an issue” with the tanks for ESA’s last Vega-C flight. A workaround solution to the missing tanks is in process.
https://orbitaltoday.com/2023/12/09/avio-fuel-tanks-theft-or-asymmetric-warfare/
Latest nozzle redesign means a late 2024 launch is on the cards
Richard Speed - Thu 30 May 2024 15:59 UTC
The European Space Agency (ESA) is getting closer to returning its Vega-C rocket to flight following a successful test by the prime contractor, Avio, at its Italian test facility.
The Vega-C was grounded following a mishap in December 2022. In 2023, ESA announced the cause: a gradual deterioration in the nozzle of the Zefiro-40 solid rocket motor used for the second stage of the Vega-C.
The failure, coupled with the retirement of the Ariane 5, has meant ESA has had to use other vendors, such as SpaceX, to launch its spacecraft in the absence of a domestic capability.
One last flight of an earlier iteration of the Vega, which doesn't use the Zefiro-40 rocket, remains. In December it was announced that a pair of fuel tanks for the rocket had been misplaced, but managers are now confident of a launch in late summer.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/30/esas_vegac_gets_closer_to/
The larger Vega-C will take over, primarily to launch European government satellites.
Stephen Clark - 9/4/2024, 5:25 PM
The final flight of Europe's Vega rocket is scheduled for liftoff Wednesday night from French Guiana, carrying an important environmental monitoring satellite for the European Union's flagship Copernicus program.
The launch is set for 9:50 pm EDT Wednesday (01:50 UTC Thursday) from the European-run spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The 98-foot-tall (30-meter) Vega rocket will head north from the launch pad on the coast of South America, aiming for a polar orbit about 480 miles (775 kilometers) above the Earth.
The sole payload is Sentinel-2C, a remote sensing platform set to join Europe's fleet of Copernicus environmental satellites. The multibillion-dollar Copernicus system is the world's most comprehensive space-based Earth observation network, with satellites fitted with different kinds of instruments monitoring land surfaces, oceans, and the atmosphere.
Sentinel-2C will replace Sentinel-2A, which launched on a Vega rocket in 2015 and is nearing the end of its life. An identical satellite named Sentinel-2B has been in orbit since 2017 and will be replaced by Sentinel-2D in 2028.
The spacecraft in Europe's Sentinel-2 series are similar to the US government's Landsat satellites, providing wide-angle optical views of crops, forests, and urban areas to track changes season to season and year to year. The European Commission—the European Union's executive arm—shares all the Copernicus data free of charge to users worldwide.
The Vega launcher is powered by three solid-fueled rocket motors, firing one after the other, and a liquid-fueled upper stage called the AVUM (the Attitude Vernier Upper Module) that ignites its engine multiple times to place satellites into slightly different orbits. Vega can deliver up to 3,300 pounds (1,500 kilograms) of payload mass into a 435-mile-high (700-kilometer) orbit.
The European rocket lifted off for the first time in 2022, but a troubling motor issue led to a mission failure.
Passant Rabie - December 4, 2024
Europe’s much-needed launch vehicle Vega-C had a less-than-ideal inaugural flight, prompting a two-year hiatus to allow a redesign of the rocket’s motor nozzle. Today, Vega-C is finally ready for its highly-anticipated comeback.
Update: December 4, 4:15 p.m. ET: Wednesday’s launch was scrubbed due to “a mechanical issue preventing the withdrawal of the mobile gantry and the launch chronology was stopped,” ESA wrote on X. A second liftoff opportunity is scheduled for Thursday at 4:20 p.m. ET.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is gearing up for Vega-C’s return to flight on Wednesday at 4:20 p.m. ET. The lightweight rocket will lift off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite to a Sun-synchronous orbit. The launch will be streamed live on ESA Web TV, with the broadcast set to begin at 4 p.m. ET.
This mission marks Vega-C’s third flight, and the first since the rocket suffered a mission failure that led to the loss of its payload. The 114-foot-tall (35 meters) rocket lifted off for the first time in July 2022, delivering the Italian Space Agency’s LARES-2 as its primary payload for a flawless debut. Its second time flying, however, did not go as well. In December 2022, Vega-C launched for its second mission, carrying the Neo 5 and Neo 6 satellites for Airbus’ Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging constellation. About two minutes and 27 seconds after launch, the rocket’s second stage, Zefiro 40, suffered a decrease in pressure and the mission was terminated.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-vega-c-rocket-make-a-long-awaited-return-after-2022-disaster-2000534150
Nozzle woes in the past for continent's new launcher
Richard Speed - Wed 4 Dec 2024 18:00 UTC
Arianespace's Vega C is set to make a return to flight this evening, almost two years to the day after a second-stage failure doomed its previous launch.
The Vega C is an expendable, small-lift vehicle operated by Arianespace. It managed only one successful launch, in July 2022, before the failure in December last year and a stand-down while engineers resolved the problems that led to the loss. It was a nozzle failure in 2023 that pushed the return to flight until 2024.
The failed launch left the European Space Agency (ESA) in a tight spot. The Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket has long-since been retired, and its follow-up, the Ariane 6, suffered significant development delays. The Ariane 6 eventually made its maiden flight in July 2024, but suffered an anomaly that prevented an engine restart while in orbit.
Thirty-five meters in height, Vega C is capable of launching 3,300 kg to a low Earth orbit, or 2,500 kg to a polar orbit.
With the Russian Soyuz launcher unavailable due to the conflict in Ukraine, ESA has had to grit its teeth and turn to the likes of SpaceX for launches in the absence of the Vega C and Ariane 6.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/04/arianespace_vega_c_launch/
Euro rocket stuck on the ground for another day
Richard Speed - Thu 5 Dec 2024 15:24 UTC
The return to flight of Arianespace's Vega C has been delayed due to a “mechanical issue” with the mobile gantry.
The countdown was stopped when it became clear that the mobile gantry could not be withdrawn for the Vega C launch. Arianespace posted: “Due to a mechanical issue preventing the withdrawal of the mobile gantry, the launch chronology has been stopped.”
The launch has been rescheduled for December 5 at 2120 UTC.
Due to the postponement, Vega C is now expected to depart after the rescheduled Proba-3 mission on a PSLV-XL rocket from India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
Proba-3 consists of a pair of spacecraft that will fly in formation and perform studies of the Sun's corona by creating prolonged solar eclipses on demand (hence the requirement for precise formation flying). The Indian rocket was delayed after an anomaly was detected in the redundant propulsion system of the Coronagraph spacecraft.
According to ESA boss Josef Aschbacher, a software fix was being evaluated to permit a launch at 1034 UTC.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/05/arianespace_vega_c_delay/
Return to flight almost two years since the previous endeavor failed
Richard Speed - Fri 6 Dec 2024 15:25 UTC
Arianespace has finally managed to return the Vega-C to flight carrying a Sentinel payload for the European Space Agency (ESA).
After repeated delays, the third Vega-C lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America at 2120 UTC on December 5, almost two years to the day after the second launch attempt of the rocket failed due to a second-stage issue.
This time, all went according to plan, and the payload, Sentinel-1C, a radar satellite for ESA's Copernicus program, was placed into a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) at an altitude of 700 km. The spacecraft separated 1 hour and 43 minutes after liftoff.
The arrival of Sentinel-1C is not a moment too soon. The nominal mission for the Sentinel-1 program is to have two satellites flying in the same orbit, but 180 degrees apart, to maximize global coverage. Sentinel-1A is still operational, but Sentinel-1B failed at the end of 2021 and was declared a loss by ESA in 2022.
“The satellite has been successfully de-orbited and will reenter Earth’s atmosphere within 25 years,” according to ESA.
Sentinel-1A is due to be replaced by Sentinel-1D in 2025.
The European Space Agency is inviting proposals from the private sector for spacecraft capable of transporting cargo to the ISS.
Passant Rabie - 5 June 2023
The European space industry, lagging behind other industry players, is now seeking its own commercial vehicles that can transport cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and future low Earth orbit destinations.
The European Space Agency (ESA) sent out a call for private European space companies to develop ideas for cargo transport vehicles that can travel to low Earth orbit, the space agency recently announced. “ESA and its Member States are preparing for when the International Space Station is retired: an environment where space agencies are customers rather than owners of space infrastructure,” Frank De Winne, ESA’s ISS manager, said in a statement.
Companies are being asked to submit proposals for commercial cargo transportation vehicles that can carry up to 4,400 pounds (2 metric tons) of pressurized cargo to the ISS by late 2028 for a test mission, later returning back to Earth with at least 2,200 pounds (1 metric ton) of cargo, ESA wrote.
https://gizmodo.com/europe-seeks-spacex-style-cargo-missions-orbit-1850506252
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 07, 2021 02:00AM
European space company ArianeGroup will develop a reusable mini-launcher to compete with the likes of Elon Musk's SpaceX, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Monday. Reuters reports:
The launcher “must be able to be operational in 2026,” Le Maire said during a trip to the ArianeGroup site at Vernon in Normandy, where the engines of Ariane rockets are tested. “For the first time Europe…will have access to a reusable launcher. In other words, we will have our SpaceX, we will have our Falcon 9. We will make up for a bad strategic choice made 10 years ago,” Le Maire said.
“It's a real break from French strategy, and clearly inspired by the USA.”
Eric Berger - 12/7/2021, 6:04 AM
On Monday French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced a plan for Europe to compete more effectively with SpaceX by developing a reusable rocket on a more rapid timeline.
“For the first time Europe … will have access to a reusable launcher,” Le Maire said, according to Reuters. “In other words, we will have our SpaceX, we will have our Falcon 9. We will make up for a bad strategic choice made 10 years ago.”
The new plan calls for the large, France-based rocket firm ArianeGroup to develop a new small-lift rocket called Maïa by the year 2026. This is four years ahead of a timeline previously set by the European Space Agency for the development of a significantly larger, reusable rocket.
With its first launch, Gilmour Space is “looking for 10 to 20 seconds of stable flight.”
Stephen Clark – May 14, 2025 12:33 PM
Gilmour Space, a venture-backed startup based in Australia, is about to launch a small rocket from its privately owned spaceport on a remote stretch of the country's northeastern coastline.
It's the first time anyone has attempted to reach orbit with a rocket designed and built in Australia. Gilmour's three-stage rocket, named Eris, could launch at any time during a 10-hour window as soon as Friday, local time. In the United States, the launch window runs from 5:30 pm EDT Thursday until 3:30 am EDT Friday.
This comes after a 24-hour delay due to an “issue in the ground support system” for the launch, Gilmour said Wednesday.
The debut launch of Gilmour's Eris rocket is purely a test flight. Gilmour has tested the rocket's engines and rehearsed the countdown last year, loading propellant and getting within 10 seconds of launch. But Gilmour cautioned in a post on LinkedIn early Wednesday that “test launches are complex.” Gilmour added on social media that “weather, systems checks, or technical issues may delay the flight—sometimes by hours, days, or longer.”
Gilmour, based in Gold Coast, Australia, was founded in 2012 by two brothers—Adam and James Gilmour—who came to the space industry after careers in banking and marketing. Today, Gilmour employs more than 200 people, mostly engineers and technicians. Most are recent engineering graduates in their 20s, along with a handful of space industry veterans with experience at companies like Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, Avio, and Airbus.
A fair dinkum disaster
Richard Speed - Mon 19 May 2025 18:23 UTC
Australia's first homegrown rocket launch has been delayed after the vehicle's fairing unexpectedly deployed on the launchpad.
The maiden launch of the Queensland-based Gilmour Space's Eris-1 rocket had already been scrubbed once last week, owing to “an issue in the ground support system,” but it was all systems go for another try on Friday.
Except it wasn't: “During final checks, an unexpected issue triggered the rocket's payload fairing.”
The fairing enshrouds the rocket's payload during ascent and is usually jettisoned once the atmosphere is thin enough that there is no risk to the payload. That typically happens much higher up than the launchpad.
According to Gilmour Space, it appears that an electrical fault was to blame. While an initial assessment indicated the vehicle and ground systems were undamaged, a new fairing had to be shipped from the company's Gold Coast factory.
The incident occurred prior to fueling, and there were no injuries. Company boss Adam Gilmour said: “Our team encountered the issue before fueling and liftoff, which is exactly what ground testing is meant to do.
“The good news is our team and rocket are both fine. While we're disappointed by the delay, we're already working through a resolution and expect to be back on the pad soon.”
The surprise announcement marks a significant milestone toward the Japanese car manufacturer's goal of achieving suborbital spaceflight by 2029.
Ellyn Lapointe - June 17, 2025
In a bizarre twist, Honda, the Japanese car manufacturer, has taken its engineering off-road—and into space. The company launched and landed a prototype reusable rocket on Tuesday, June 17, marking a key milestone toward its newfound goal of achieving suborbital spaceflight by 2029.
In the surprise announcement, Honda R&D—the company’s research arm—said it successfully completed the first launch and landing test of its 20.6-foot (6.3-meter) experimental reusable launch vehicle after reaching an altitude of 889 feet (271 meters) at its test facility in Taiki, a town in northern Japan known for space research. The test aimed to demonstrate technologies essential for rocket reusability, such as flight stability during ascent and descent, as well as landing capability, according to the company statement.
“Although Honda rocket research is still in the fundamental research phase, and no decisions have been made regarding commercialization of these rocket technologies, Honda will continue making progress in the fundamental research with a technology development goal of realizing technological capability to enable a suborbital launch by 2029,” the statement reads.
Jun 17, 2025
TOKYO, Japan, June 17, 2025 – Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a research and development subsidiary of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., today conducted a launch and landing test of an experimental reusable rocket*1 (6.3 m in length, 85 cm in diameter, 900 kg dry weight/1,312 kg wet weight) developed independently by Honda. The test was completed successfully, the first time Honda landed a rocket after reaching an altitude of 300 meters.
This test marked the first launch and landing test conducted by Honda with an aim to demonstrate key technologies essential for rocket reusability, such as flight stability during ascent and descent, as well as landing capability. Through this successful test, Honda achieved its intended rocket behaviors for the launch and landing (reaching an altitude of 271.4 m, and landing at 37cm of the target touchdown point, flight duration 56.6 sec), while obtaining data during the ascent and descent.
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday June 17, 2025 01:50PM
Honda has successfully conducted a surprise launch and landing test of its prototype reusable rocket as part of its plan to achieve suborbital spaceflight by 2029. Reuters reports:
Honda R&D, the research arm of Japan's second-biggest carmaker, successfully landed its 6.3-meter (20.6-foot) experimental reusable launch vehicle after reaching an altitude of 271 meters (889 feet) at its test facility in northern Japan's space town Taiki, according to the company. While “no decisions have been made regarding commercialization of these rocket technologies, Honda will continue making progress in the fundamental research with a technology development goal of realizing technological capability to enable a suborbital launch by 2029,” it said in a statement.
Honda in 2021 said it was studying space technologies such as reusable rockets, but it has not previously announced the details of the launch test. A suborbital launch may touch the verge of outer space but does not enter orbit. Studying launch vehicles “has the potential to contribute more to people's daily lives by launching satellites with its own rockets, that could lead to various services that are also compatible with other Honda business,” the company added.
Car companies aren't accustomed to making vehicles that can only be used once.
Stephen Clark – Jun 18, 2025 5:42 AM
An experimental reusable rocket developed by the research and development arm of Honda Motor Company flew to an altitude of nearly 900 feet Tuesday, then landed with pinpoint precision at the carmaker's test facility in northern Japan.
The accomplishment may not sound like much, but it's important to put it into perspective. Honda's hopper is the first prototype rocket outside of the United States and China to complete a flight of this kind, demonstrating vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology that could underpin the development of a reusable launch vehicle.
While Tuesday's announcement by Honda was unexpected, the company has talked about rockets before. In 2021, Honda officials revealed they had been working on a rocket engine for at least two years. At the time, officials said a small satellite launch vehicle was part of Honda's roadmap.
The rocket Honda talked about in 2021 could put a payload of up to 1 metric ton into low-Earth orbit. It's unclear whether Honda is still targeting this sector of the launch market. Company officials then committed to supporting internal development work until about 2025 or 2026, when it would make a “go” or “no go” decision on whether to finish the project and field an operational rocket.
Peter Lyon - Jun 22, 2025, 03:26am EDT / Updated Jun 22, 2025, 11:17am EDT
Honda is well-known in industry circles as one of the few carmakers who produces a multitude of non-car products including motorcycles, ATVs, power equipment such as generators, lawnmowers, outboard motors and snowploughs, the HondaJet and robots such as ASIMO. Now it’s entered rocket research and development in earnest.
Japan’s second-biggest carmaker has just successfully conducted a launch and landing test of its experimental reusable rocket in northern Japan. And given that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has just recorded its fourth failed rocket launch in a row, they will no doubt be paying attention to how Honda approaches its launches.
Honda’s rocket flew for 57 seconds and then landed
At Honda’s test facility in Taiki Town located in Hokkaido, Japan’s northern-most island, the company launched a reusable rocket that flew for almost a minute to an altitude of 890 feet and then landed with pinpoint accuracy just 15 inches from where it took off, according to Honda.
ISRO Reusable Launch Vehicle: “We are looking at the climate. Climate is still not good. So, we are waiting for the wind and other systems to become benign. We will do that,” Mr Somanath, also Secretary in the Department of Space, told Press Trust of India.
India NewsPress Trust of India - November 08, 2022 7:49 pm IST
Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation is set for the first runway landing experiment (RLV-LEX) of its made-in-India Reusable Launch Vehicle - Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) from aeronautical test range in Karnataka's Chitradurga district, with its Chairman S Somanath indicating that weather is being monitored.
“We are looking at the climate. Climate is still not good. So, we are waiting for the wind and other systems to become benign. We will do that,” Mr Somanath, also Secretary in the Department of Space, told Press Trust of India.
The diminutive launch vehicle failed during its inaugural flight last year, but India is now celebrating a successful mission after the rocket's second flight.
Kevin Hurler - 10 February 2023 4:15PM
The Indian Space Research Organization successfully injected three satellites into orbit with a launch of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle. It marked ISRO’s second attempt at launching the rocket, which ran into serious difficulties during its inaugural mission.
This most recent launch of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, or SSLV, occurred February 10 at 9:18 a.m. Indian Standard Time (February 9 at 10:48 p.m. ET) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The SSLV is a three-stage rocket standing 111 feet (34 meters) tall and with the capacity to lift upwards of 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) to low Earth orbit. According to the ISRO, SSLV successfully deployed its three-satellite payload.
https://gizmodo.com/india-sslv-rocket-do-over-launch-succeeds-1850099805
Details of a potential US-Indian partnership in human spaceflight remain murky.
Stephen Clark - 7/5/2023, 5:23 PM
When India’s ambassador to the US signed up his country to the Artemis Accords last month, it signaled the world’s most populous nation—with a growing prowess in spaceflight—could be turning toward the United States as a partner in space exploration.
India became the 27th country to sign the Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles among like-minded nations guiding a vision for peaceful and transparent exploration of space. The accords cover the international registration of human-made space objects, the open release of scientific data, and an agreement for nations not to claim territory on the Moon or other planetary bodies, among other tenets.
The Artemis Accords started under the Trump administration, an effort spearheaded by former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Mike Gold, an attorney and longtime space industry official. Bill Nelson, the NASA chief under President Biden, has embraced the accords. He said the principles are “just common sense.”
“You come to somebody’s aid in distress … You try to have commonality of parts, you respect each other’s territory,” Nelson said.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/india-a-growing-space-power-is-forging-closer-ties-with-nasa/
Posted by BeauHD on Friday July 07, 2023 12:00AM
Stephen Clark writes via Ars Technica:
When India's ambassador to the US signed up his country to the Artemis Accords last month, it signaled the world's most populous nation – with a growing prowess in spaceflight – could be turning toward the United States as a partner in space exploration. India became the 27th country to sign the Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles among like-minded nations guiding a vision for peaceful and transparent exploration of space. The accords cover the international registration of human-made space objects, the open release of scientific data, and an agreement for nations not to claim territory on the Moon or other planetary bodies, among other tenets.
These images from the Moon are a crowning achievement for India's space program.
Stephen Clark - 8/31/2023, 5:32 PM
It's been more than a week since India's Chandrayaan 3 mission landed on the Moon, and it's a good time to assess where the world's most populous nation stands relative to other global space powers.
The successful arrival of the Chandrayaan 3 mission's Vikram lander on the Moon made India the first country besides China to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface since 1976, following a series of failed landings by private organizations and India itself four years ago. And it made India just the fourth nation overall to achieve this feat.
Since the landing of Chandrayaan 3 on August 23, India has released some early findings from the lander and its mobile rover, named Pragyan, along with photos of the vehicles exploring the Moon's alien charcoal-color landscape.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/where-does-indias-space-program-rank-among-global-powers/
India now credibly has the third most advanced deep-space program in the world.
Eric Berger - 12/5/2023, 6:56 AM
A little more than three months ago the Indian space agency, ISRO, achieved a major success by putting its Vikram lander safely down on the surface of the Moon. In doing so India became the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, and this further ignited the country's interest in space exploration.
But it turns out that is not the end of the story for the Chandrayaan 3 mission. In a surprise announcement made Monday, ISRO announced that it has successfully returned the propulsion module used by the spacecraft into a high orbit around Earth. This experimental phase of the mission, the agency said in a statement, tested key capabilities needed for future lunar missions, including the potential for returning lunar rocks to Earth.
“We are at the threshold of fulfilling the immense scientific potential NASA and ISRO envisioned.”
Eric Berger – Jul 30, 2025 10:18 AM
After more than a decade of development, NASA's science leadership traveled to India this week for the launch of the world's most expensive Earth-observation satellite.
The $1.5 billion synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, a joint project between NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO, successfully launched into orbit on Wednesday aboard that nation's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, a medium-lift rocket.
The mission, named NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), was subsequently deployed into its intended orbit 464 miles (747 km) above the Earth's surface. From this Sun-synchronous orbit, it will collect data about the planet's land and ice surfaces two times every 12 days, including the infrequently visited polar regions in the Southern Hemisphere.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/07/india-safely-launches-a-1-5-billion-satellite-for-nasa/
NISAR will scan nearly all of Earth's land and ice surface twice every 12 days.
Passant Rabie - August 18, 2025
A first-of-its-kind satellite recently launched into orbit to monitor Earth’s changing surfaces, detecting movement of the planet’s crust down to fractions of an inch. The satellite packed a giant radar antenna, folded like an umbrella, and it just unfurled the massive, drum-shaped structure through an intricate process that brought it to full bloom.
The NISAR mission, a joint effort between NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO, launched on July 30 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. More than two weeks later, the satellite deployed its antenna reflector, which spans 39 feet (12 meters) wide—the largest ever used on a NASA mission. The team behind the mission began the process on August 9, unfolding the satellite’s boom one joint at a time and then firing a series of explosive bolts so that it could be deployed and locked into place in space.
“We were of course eager to see the deployment go well. It’s a critical part of the NISAR Earth science mission and has taken years to design, develop, and test to be ready for this big day,” Phil Barela, NISAR project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. “Now that we’ve launched, we are focusing on fine-tuning it to begin delivering transformative science by late fall of this year.”
u/GeneralArmadillo72 - 16 July 2023
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1515q3w/found_on_a_beach_in_western_australia/
Suspected to be an Indian rocket part, the odd cylindrical object that washed ashore last weekend is yet to be confirmed by the country’s space agency, ISRO.
George Dvorsky - 19 July 2023
The provenance of a large metallic object that washed ashore near Jurien Bay in Western Australia this past weekend remains unknown, despite rampant speculation about it hailing from an Indian PSLV launch vehicle.
Local residents reported the sudden appearance of the canister-like object on Sunday, July 16, prompting both local and federal authorities to investigate. Measuring around 8 feet wide (2.5 meters), the copper-toned object appears damaged and ocean-worn; barnacles and other marine organisms attached to its base suggest it may have been underwater for months, even years.
An LVM3 rocket belonging to the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, that launched to space on July 14 as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon was quickly ruled out, as was its connection to any aircraft, including the Boeing 777 that went missing nine years ago during flight MH370. The Australian Space Agency said the “object could be from a foreign space launch vehicle” and that it’s “liaising with global counterparts who may be able to provide more information.”
https://gizmodo.com/australia-mystery-object-indian-rocket-officials-1850654678
Kathryn Armstrong in London & Geeta Pandey in Delhi, BBC News - 31 July 2023
India has confirmed that an object that washed up on a Western Australian beach recently was from one of its rockets.
The giant metal dome was found at Green Head beach, about 250km (155 miles) north of Perth, in mid-July - prompting speculation about its origins.
India's space agency spokesman told the BBC on Monday it was from one of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV).
Sudhir Kumar added that it would be up to Australia to decide what to do with the object. He did not comment further.
His comments came after the Australian Space Agency (ASA) on Wednesday said that the object was “most likely” the third stage of a PSLV, which are used by India to launch satellites into orbit.
Countries often plan for debris from their launches to land in oceans to prevent them damaging people and property.
Dr Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist and Associate Professor at Australia's Flinders University, said that while there are often serial numbers on components, it was also possible to identify debris based on appearance.
The ASA said it was working with India's space agency to “determine next steps, including considering obligations under the United Nations space treaties”.
Australian officials are claiming to have traced the likely origin of the peculiar cylindrical object found on Western Australia’s coast earlier this month.
George Dvorsky - 31 July 2023
As suspected, the canister-like object that washed ashore in Green Head, Western Australia, in mid-July likely belongs to a discarded third stage from an Indian rocket, the Australian Space Agency announced over the weekend.
More specifically, the third stage came from a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), a medium-lift rocket that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launches on a regular basis. The PSLV third stage is a “solid rocket motor that provides the upper stages high thrust after the atmospheric phase of the launch,” according to ISRO.
In its tweet, the Australian Space Agency said it’s “most likely debris” from an expended PSLV, so it’s still not the ironclad confirmation we were expecting.
https://gizmodo.com/asa-says-mystery-seashore-object-is-space-debris-1850691438
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday August 03, 2023 03:00AM
India has confirmed that an object that washed up on a Western Australian beach recently was from one of its rockets. The BBC reports:
The giant metal dome was found at Green Head beach, about 250km (155 miles) north of Perth, in mid-July – prompting speculation about its origins. India's space agency spokesman told the BBC on Monday it was from one of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV). Sudhir Kumar added that it would be up to Australia to decide what to do with the object. He did not comment further. His comments came after the Australian Space Agency (ASA) on Wednesday said that the object was “most likely” the third stage of a PSLV, which are used by India to launch satellites into orbit.
Jagmeet Singh - 1 September 2023
India has successfully launched its first space-based solar observatory mission — just 10 days after the landing of its spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar south pole.
Called Aditya-L1, the spacecraft, weighing over 3,264 pounds, blasted off from the spaceport Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India’s Sriharikota using the 44.4-meter tall polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-XL) at the targeted time of 11:50am local time on Saturday. It will cover a distance of 932,000 miles and spend 125 days (or over four months) to reach its destination: a halo orbit around one of five Lagrangian points, which lie between the sun and Earth and allows spacecraft to track solar activities continuously, without any occultation and eclipse.
India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has installed seven payloads on the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, four for remote sensing and three for on-site experiments. Onboard instruments include a visible emission line coronagraph, solar ultraviolet imaging telescope, X-ray spectrometer, solar wind particle analyzer, plasma analyzer package and tri-axial high-resolution digital magnetometers, all equipped to collect the necessary data and observations. The overall purpose of the mission, codenamed PSLV-C57, is to observe solar activities and their effect on space weather in real time.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/01/india-aditya-l1-launch-solar-mission-sun/
Jagmeet Singh - 6 July 2023
India will launch its latest moon lander mission Chandrayaan-3, a follow-on almost four years after the crash of its previous iteration in 2019, on July 14, the country’s space agency has announced.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will launch the next Chandrayaan (Sanskrit for “moon vehicle”) mission using its Launch Vehicle Mark-III from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India’s Sriharikota island at 2:35 p.m. IST (2:05 a.m. PDT) on July 14, the space agency said in a tweet posted on Thursday. Codenamed LVM3 M4, the mission will comprise a lander, propulsion module and a rover — which aims to land safely and softly on the lunar surface, rove and conduct on-site scientific experiments.
The landing of Chandrayaan-3 will take place in August. If successful, India’s mission will make it the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft landing on the moon, following in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/06/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-lander-mission-launch-date/
On a shoestring budget, Chandrayaan-3 aims to observe Luna, Earth, even exoplanets
Laura Dobberstein - Fri 7 Jul 2023 03:56 UTC
India's Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will next week launch Chandrayaan-3, a mission that aims to land on the moon and deploy a rover.
ISRO yesterday announced that Chandrayaan-3 had been tucked into its capsule and mated with the (LVM-3) launcher that will take it into space. Liftoff from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre has been scheduled for July 14 at 2:35pm IST (09:05 Friday UTC).
The ridiculously economical $74.5 million mission aims to land near Luna's south pole in August. From a ramped compartment, the lander will deploy a 26 kilogram rover outfitted with instruments including an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS).
The lander contains an accelerometer, Ka-band and laser altimeters, Doppler velocimeter, star sensors, inclinometer, touchdown sensor, and cameras for hazard avoidance and positional knowledge.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/07/india_chandrayaan_3_moon_mission/
India has developed the Chandrayaan-3 mission on a shoestring budget.
Eric Berger - 7/14/2023, 8:15 AM
India took the first step toward its second attempt to land on the Moon on Friday with the launch of its Chandrayaan-3 mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the southeastern part of the country.
The spacecraft launched on the LVM-3 rocket, the heaviest lift vehicle in India's fleet. Liftoff came nearly three years to the date of the launch of the Chandrayaan-2 mission to the Moon. That launch successfully placed a spacecraft into lunar orbit, but a landing attempt was unsuccessful. The Indian space agency, ISRO, lost communication with its Vikram lander at about 2 kilometers above the lunar surface due to a software problem. It subsequently crashed into the Moon.
So the Indian space agency decided to learn from its mistakes and try again. The Chandrayaan-3 mission has eschewed the lunar orbiter, as the Indian spacecraft remains operational after three years. So this launch consisted of a propulsion module, a new Vikram lander, and a small rover named Pragyan.
Jagmeet Singh - 13 July 2023
Chandrayaan-3, India’s third mission to the moon, has taken off successfully — almost four years after its predecessor failed to touch down on the lunar surface in 2019.
On Friday, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its “Launch Vehicle Mark-III” rocket carrying the next Chandrayaan (Sanskrit for “moon vehicle”) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India’s Sriharikota island. The launch happened at 2:35 p.m. IST (2:05 a.m. PDT), the target time that was announced last week.
“Chandrayaan-3 has started its journey towards [the] moon,” said ISRO chairman S. Somanath at the Mission Control Center following the spacecraft’s successful launch. “Our dear LVM-3 has already put Chandrayaan-3 craft into the precise orbit around Earth — 170×36,500 kilometers was its intended target orbit, and it is precisely there now. Let us wish all the best for the Chandrayaan-3 craft to make its farther orbit-raising maneuvers and travel toward [the] moon in the coming days.”
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/14/india-chandrayaan-3-launch/
The Chandrayaan-3 mission marks the country's second attempt to land on the Moon nearly four years after a devastating crash.
Passant Rabie - 7 August 2023
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is getting closer to the Moon, gradually reducing its altitude above the celestial body’s cratered surface after entering lunar orbit.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that its third mission to the Moon entered lunar orbit on Saturday after firing its propulsion system to guide it towards an elliptical path around Earth’s natural satellite. ISRO is targeting August 23 for the Chandrayaan-3 touchdown on the Moon’s South Polar region, hoping that the space agency’s second attempt to achieve lunar touchdown is a success.
Chandrayaan-3 launched on July 14 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on board India’s Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3) rocket. Its launch revived India’s dreams of landing on the lunar surface and joining a small group of countries who have been able to accomplish that goal: the Soviet Union, the U.S., and China.
https://gizmodo.com/indias-moon-mission-enters-lunar-orbit-ahead-of-histori-1850712611
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday August 08, 2023 12:00AM
Long-time Slashdot reader William Robinson shares a report from the BBC:
India's space agency has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday. The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer. Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover are due to reach the surface on August 23. If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled “soft landing” near the south pole. It will also become only the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled for touchdown on Wednesday, marking India's second attempt to land on the lunar surface.
Passant Rabie - 22 August 2023
India’s space agency is gearing up for a lunar touchdown, hoping to stick the landing this time after a failed first attempt nearly four years ago.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission got its first glimpse of the lunar far side as it inches its way closer to the Moon’s dusty surface. The spacecraft is scheduled to land on the Moon on Wednesday at 8:34 a.m. ET (6:04 p.m. local time). If it succeeds in its soft landing attempt, India will join a small group of countries that have managed to accomplish the same feat: the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China.
https://gizmodo.com/indias-lunar-mission-captures-images-of-far-side-of-the-1850762459
The craft will attempt to touch down on the lunar south pole early Wednesday morning.
Will Shanklin, Contributing Reporter - Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 1:00 PM PDT
We’ll soon learn if India will be the first nation to nail a soft landing on the moon’s south pole. The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 mission, which launched on July 14th and entered lunar orbit on August 5th, will attempt to touch down on Wednesday at around 8:34AM EDT. It follows Russia’s attempt to beat India to the punch that ended badly. The ISRO’s live telecast (watch below) is scheduled to begin at 3:50AM EDT.
The Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander will try to touch down near the Moon’s south pole, which is believed to contain water ice. It could provide crucial water, oxygen and fuel for future lunar missions and bases. However, touching down could prove challenging as the region is known for rugged terrain and shadowy craters. This mission’s immediate predecessor, the Chandrayaan-2, crashed in 2019 as it descended to the lunar south pole.
Chandrayaan 3 landed closer to the Moon's south pole than any previous mission.
Stephen Clark - 8/23/2023, 10:03 AM
A robotic landing craft from India successfully touched down in the southern polar region of the Moon on Wednesday, making the rising space power the fourth nation to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.
The Vikram lander from India's Chandrayaan 3 mission landed at approximately 8:33 am EDT (12:33 UTC) after a nail-biting final descent broadcast to the world by India's space agency.
Confirmation of the successful landing triggered a celebration across India, both inside and outside the mission control center in Bangalore. Chandrayaan 3 ends a 47-year drought in successful lunar landings by any country outside China, which has placed three probes on the Moon's surface, including one on the lunar far side, since 2013.
“We have achieved a soft landing on the Moon,” said Sreedhara Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO. “India is on the Moon!”
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is also the first lander to touch down on the Moon's south pole.
Passant Rabie - 23 August 2023
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed on the Moon on Wednesday, marking a huge feat for the nation’s growing space program.
The Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover touched down on the lunar surface at 8:34 a.m. ET (6:04 p.m. local time in India), adding India to a short list of countries who have been able to achieve a soft landing on the Moon. It’s now the fourth country to have landed on the Moon following the Soviet Union, the U.S., and China, and the first to land on the lunar south pole.
“India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone … this success belongs to all of humanity,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) livestream of the landing. “We can all aspire for the moon and beyond.”
https://gizmodo.com/chandrayaan-3-india-lands-on-moon-south-pole-1850765533
The Vikram lander achieved a soft landing around the same region that Russia’s Luna 25 spacecraft crashed into on August 19th.
Jess Weatherbed - Aug 23, 2023, 5:40 AM PDT
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission has made space travel history today by successfully achieving a soft landing near the south pole of Earth’s Moon, just days after Russia’s Luna 25 spacecraft crashed while trying to land in the same region. India is now the fourth nation to achieve a soft Moon landing and the first to have successfully touched down on the lunar south pole — a little-explored area of the Moon that’s believed to contain water ice.
Three other nations — the US, China, and the former Soviet Union — have all previously achieved a soft landing near the Moon’s equator, a safer region with (comparatively) amiable temperatures and terrain and reliable sunlight to recharge solar-powered instruments. During a live stream of the lander’s touchdown, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the successful outcome of this mission sets the country up for future human spaceflight.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission touched down on Wednesday at 8:34 a.m. ET.
Passant Rabie - 23 August 2023
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is aiming for a landing spot on the lunar south pole, hoping to make history as the nation’s first successful touchdown on the cratered surface.
Update: August 23, 8:40 a.m. ET: The Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully touched down on the lunar surface at 8:34 a.m. ET.
https://gizmodo.com/india-moon-landing-chandrayaan-3-how-to-watch-1850763531
Jagmeet Singh - 23 August 2023
Chandrayaan-3, the latest iteration of India’s ambitious mission to the moon, has successfully landed on the lunar surface — making history after its predecessor failed in 2019.
The landing, which took place at the targeted time of 5:34 am PT (6:04 pm IST) on Wednesday over a month after the spacecraft’s launch, has made India the fourth nation globally to make a soft landing on the moon, after the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China, and the first country to land on the lunar south pole, which remains an unexplored area that is anticipated to aid in the understanding of the moon’s atmosphere and pave the way for future space exploration programs.
Earlier this month, Russia attempted to take the achievement from India by launching Luna-25, which was due to make a soft landing on the south pole before India’s Chandrayaan-3. However, the Russian spacecraft crashed into the moon on Saturday after losing contact with Roscosmos, the country’s space agency.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/23/india-chandrayaan-3-landing-moon/
Posted by msmash on Wednesday August 23, 2023 07:00AM
India has become the first country to land a spacecraft on the moon's south pole. It launched Chandrayaan-3 in mid-July, with the spacecraft entering the moon's orbit on Aug. 5. Earlier this week, Russia crashed its Luna-25 rocket in the same lunar region. From a report:
It's notoriously difficult to land a rover on the moon. Russia's Luna-25 crashed while making an attempt just this week, while Japanese company ispace failed to land an unmanned lander in April.â 1 Since the moon has no atmosphere, landers can't just softly touch down on the lunar surface. And, without GPS capabilities, scientists rely on the lander's computers to accurately identify where the spacecraft will touch down. India is only the fourth country to pull off a moon landing, behind the U.S., China, and Russia. The nation's lunar aspirations are part of a push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to garner investments for private space exploration and satellite launches. Speaking at the rocket's launch in July, Modi heralded a “new chapter” in India's space program.
Chandrayaan-3 is also India's first successful Moon lander.
Jon Fingas - Updated Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 11:07 AM PDT
India just made spaceflight history in more ways than one. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft's Vikram lander has successfully touched down on the Moon, marking the country's first successful landing on the lunar surface. It's just the fourth country to do so after the Soviet Union, US and China. More importantly, it's the first country to land near the Moon's south pole — a difficult target given the rough terrain, but important for attempts to find water ice. Other nations have only landed near the equator.
The landing comes four years after Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander effectively crashed. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) designed the follow-up with a “failure-based design” that includes more backup systems, a wider landing area and software updates.
https://www.engadget.com/india-is-the-first-country-to-land-at-the-moons-south-pole-133322596.html
Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi - 23 August 2023
India has made history as its Moon mission becomes the first to land in the lunar south pole region.
With this, India joins an elite club of countries to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
The Vikram lander from Chandrayaan-3 successfully touched down as planned at 18:04 local time (12:34 GMT).
Celebrations have broken out across the country, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying “India is now on the Moon”.
“We have reached where no other country could. It's a joyous occasion,” he added. Mr Modi was watching the event live from South Africa where he is attending the Brics summit.
Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said the successful landing “is not our work alone, this is the work of a generation of Isro scientists”.
August 31, 2023 - ScienceSwitch
India recently achieved a space exploration milestone by becoming the first nation to land a rover on the Moon’s mysterious south pole. The ambitious Chandrayaan-3 mission’s rover Pragyan has begun using its onboard instruments to study this unexplored frontier up close. Early results reveal the rover’s groundbreaking capabilities to analyze lunar soil composition, with potential implications for discovering frozen water.
Pragyan’s instruments are unlocking clues about the elemental makeup of the lunar surface near the south pole. A specialized Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) tool became the first equipment to ever perform in-situ measurements of this region’s composition. By shooting intense laser pulses at the soil, LIBS can induce plasma emissions that identify elemental signatures.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 03, 2023 09:34AM
To complete one full rotation around its axis it takes the moon 655 hours. So a single “lunar day” is 13.64 earth days.
But sunset has finally come for India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and its Pragyan rover, writes long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis , and the rover has switched off for the coming 655-hour night:
With luck from the moon gods, it will wake up with the sunrise in 14 days. But, even if not, mission accomplished! It was designed for fourteen days of operation, the daylight period. In that time the rover accomplished just over a hundred meters (American units: one football field) of traverse, examining and chemically analyzing the surface.
The lander and rover duo entered their scheduled sleep mode as the Sun set on the lunar south pole.
Passant Rabie - 5 September 2023
Following an eventful lunar day, India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission has been put to sleep to wait out the dreadful darkness of the Moon’s nighttime.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) set its Vikram lander to sleep mode on Sunday at 10:30 p.m. ET, switching off its payloads while keeping its receivers on, the space agency announced on X, formerly Twitter. The lander’s companion on the Moon, the Pragyan rover, “will fall asleep next to Pragyan once the solar power is depleted and the battery is drained,” ISRO wrote on X.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed on the Moon on August 23, making India the fourth country to achieve such feat after the Soviet Union, the U.S., and China. The mission was designed to last for the duration of a lunar day, with the lander’s solar panels converting sunlight into electricity. A lunar day and night each last about 14 Earth days, with the daytime experiencing extreme heat and brightness, while nighttime plunges into frigid darkness. Now that the Sun has set on the lunar south pole, Vikram and Pragyan are enjoying some downtime, but ISRO hopes to wake the pair up on September 22 when a new lunar day begins.
https://gizmodo.com/india-moon-lander-chandrayaan-3-hop-sleep-mode-1850804101
22 September 2023
New Delhi, Sep 22 (EFE).- The Indian space agency reported on Friday that it tried, without success so far, to re-establish communication with the probe it sent a month ago to the south pole of the Moon, ending the hope that the vehicle could withstand the low temperatures of the lunar night.
“Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition. As of now, no signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Last month, ISRO became the first country to successfully make a soft landing on the south pole of the Moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission, which successfully achieved its objectives during the initial 14 Earth days, equivalent to half a lunar day, on the Moon’s surface.
The mission’s Vikram lander and Pragyan explorer were put to sleep on Sep. 4 as night dawned on the region it operated on the Moon.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 23, 2023 09:34AM
“As the sun rose on Friday over the lunar plateau where India's Vikram lander and Pragyan rover sit, the robotic explorers remained silent,” writes the New York Times:
The Indian Space Research Organization, India's equivalent of NASA, said on Friday that mission controllers on the ground had sent a wake-up message to Vikram. The lander, as expected, did not reply. Efforts will continue over the next few days, but this could well be the conclusion of Chandrayaan-3, India's first successful space mission to the surface of another world…
The hope was that when sunlight again warmed the solar panels, the spacecraft would recharge and revive. But that was wishful thinking. Neither Vikram nor Pragyan were designed to survive a long, frigid lunar night when temperatures plunge to more than a hundred degrees below zero, far colder than the electronic components were designed for. The spacecraft designers could have added heaters or used more resilient components, but that would have added cost, weight and complexity…
In July, the launch time of Chandrayaan-3 was pushed back by four seconds to avoid a few space objects in the way.
Passant Rabie - 6 October 2023
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission launched on July 14, headed towards a historic touchdown on the lunar surface. But before the lunar lander took off, it had to wait a few seconds until its path to orbit was clear.
During the 74th International Astronautical Congress held in Baku, Azerbaijan, Anil Kumar, chief general manager of safe and sustainable space operations at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), revealed that the nominal launch time of Chandrayaan-3 was changed after analyzing the orbits of tracked space objects, SpaceNews reported. The lunar mission had to delay its launch on board India’s Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3) rocket by four seconds to avoid the possibility of colliding with other objects.
https://gizmodo.com/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-delay-in-space-collisions-1850908125
The country's space agency successfully docked spacecraft in orbit, marking a significant milestone in India's extraterrestrial ambitions.
Isaac Schultz - January 16, 2025
ISRO—India’s space agency—successfully completed the docking of two spacecraft in orbit, a major accomplishment that makes the agency just the fourth to manage the feat.
The dramatic docking between two satellites occurred late yesterday about 295 miles (475 kilometers) above Earth. The accomplishment is significant; besides the fact that India is now just the fourth country to dock spacecraft in orbit, it is a milestone in the country’s ambitious space program.
According to SpaceNews, the two spacecraft—launched on December 30—were supposed to dock on January 7, but drift in the satellites’ position delayed the maneuver. ISRO announced the docking’s success on X yesterday, and noted that undocking and power transfer checks on the spacecraft will occur in the coming days.
As the ESA celebrates planned break-up of its solar blotter-spotter
Simon Sharwood - Thu 16 Jan 2025 07:30 UTC
India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully docked a pair of satellites, making the nation the fourth to achieve the feat.
The Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) commenced on December 30, 2024, when India launched a pair of satellites equipped with docking equipment. The mission plan called for the two to be separated after launch, with one designated as the target and the other as the chaser
Once re-united, the two sats transfer power and enter a mode under which they could be controlled as a single entity. India plans to later split the sats and operate them independently, so they can each deploy their payloads.
Between January 7th and 15th ISRO made three attempts to dock the sats. The first was postponed after ground control decided it needed to revise abort procedures. The second abandoned after one of the sats was moved but drifted further than anticipated.
The third attempt saw the orbiting machines close to within 15 meters, and then to three meters. Those two steps are part of the docking procedure but ISRO decided to back off and check the quality of sensor data. The sats were sent further apart again.
Thursday’s fourth attempt succeeded
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/16/isro_spadex_satellite_docking_succeeds/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:33 PM PST•November 8, 2022
Spaceflight startup Skyroot wants to make history by launching India’s first privately developed rocket, and it’s aiming to do so as early as next week.
The company said Tuesday that the first launch of the Vikram-S suborbital rocket could occur as early as November 12, with a launch window that extends until November 16. The launch will take place from the Indian Space Research Organization’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The final date is dependent on weather conditions.
Vikram-S is a suborbital, single-stage launch vehicle. For this demonstration mission, named Prarambh, or “the beginning” in Sanskrit, the rocket will carry three customer payloads. Details on the payloads were not announced. The Hyderabad-based Skyroot is developing a series of Vikram launch vehicles, so named after the founder of India’s space program, Vikram Sarabhai. Naga Bharath Daka, Skyroot COO and co-founder, said in a statement that the Vikram-S suborbital rocket will be used to test and validate the technologies used in the series.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/skyroot-kickstart-india-launch/
Jagmeet Singh / 10:12 PM PST November 17, 2022
India’s space agency has successfully launched the Vikram-S after much anticipation and years-long work in a boost to the private sector of the nation’s space industry.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) kicked off the suborbital rocket at 11:30 a.m. local time Friday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.
The Vikram-S, developed by four-year-old startup Skyroot Aerospace, is a single-stage, spin-stabilized solid-propellant rocket with a mass of around 550 kilograms. It carries three customer payloads, including one from a customer outside India. Made of all-carbon fibre core structure, the six-meter-long rocket was developed in two years.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/india-private-rocket-vikram-s-launch-skyroot/
Posted by msmash on Friday November 18, 2022 06:51AM
India launched its first rocket developed by a startup into space on Friday, with the aim of testing the company's technology that will be used to design three orbital vehicles. From a report:
The Vikram-S rocket, developed by Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace, took off at 11:30 a.m. local time from Sriharikota, an island near Chennai in southeastern India. The rocket reached an altitude of 89.5 kilometers (56 miles) and all systems worked as planned, Pawan Goenka, head of an industry space body said.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 21 December 2023
Intuitive Machines is pushing back the mission of its first lunar lander to mid-February in coordination with launch provider SpaceX, the company said earlier this week.
The Houston, Texas-based company said that the new launch window “comes after unfavorable weather conditions resulted in shifts in the SpaceX launch manifest.”
The new launch target date, which is a full month after the original January 12-16 window, is due to the mission profile: Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C spacecraft is aiming to land near the lunar south pole, requiring specific lighting conditions that are only present a handful of days each month.
The company is further constrained by launch infrastructure availability. The lunar lander must launch from a specific launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Launch Complex 39A, because it needs to be fueled with oxygen and methane propellants prior to launch. That pad is the only one equipped with a tower to make the lander accessible for fueling.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 13 February 2024
Intuitive Machines is looking to succeed where past ventures have failed with its inaugural lunar lander mission, which would mark the first time a private company has landed a spacecraft on the moon — ever.
The mission is poised to lift off on a SpaceX rocket at 12:57 a.m. EST tomorrow from the launch company’s pad at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Should the launch be delayed, SpaceX will have additional opportunities on February 15 and 16.
Should everything go to plan, after a roughly seven-day journey the spacecraft will enter lunar orbit. Around 24 hours later, on February 22, the Nova-C lander will make a soft touchdown on the moon’s surface. The lander is targeting an area near a crater called Malapert A near the lunar south pole, an area that is suspected to be home to plentiful frozen water.
The two companies announced they were a “go” for launch on Monday, saying in a statement that it had completed analysis of data from the final lunar lander fueling tests. Those tests were critical because of Nova-C lander’s unique propellant system: It is using liquid oxygen and methane propellants that must be loaded while the lander is encapsulated in the Falcon 9. (Usually spacecraft are fueled before being loaded onto the rocket.)
“We’re trying to create a marketplace where a marketplace does not exist.”
Eric Berger - 2/14/2024, 7:41 AM
Are you ready for round two of the lunar lottery?
As early as Thursday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a privately developed lunar lander may launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The vehicle, built by a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines, will be the second US-made lunar lander to launch from Florida in a little more than a month.
The renaissance in American lunar landers represents the vanguard of NASA's program to return humans to the Moon and establish a more permanent presence. (No US-built vehicle has made a soft landing on the Moon in more than half a century.) Part of that is finding lower-cost transportation services, which is what these privately built lunar landers are all about.
“We’re trying to create a marketplace where a marketplace does not exist,” Trent Martin, vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said of the Moon during a teleconference this week. “To do that, we have to do it in a cost-conscious way.”
They also have to successfully reach the Moon. The first commercial US lander, Astrobotic's Peregrine vehicle, launched on January 8 aboard a Vulcan rocket. It sustained a serious blow when one of its propulsion tanks ruptured after the launch. At NASA's request, Astrobotic sent its spacecraft plunging back into Earth's atmosphere so it could be disposed of safely. It was not “the outcome we were hoping for,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said afterward.
Touchdown with no topple? Company aims for third time lucky
Richard Speed - Wed 14 May 2025 19:35 UTC
Intuitive Machines has blamed poor lighting, a problematic altimeter, and difficulties spotting craters for the company's second lunar lander tipping over.
Landing on the Moon isn't easy. Intuitive Machines has tried twice and experienced problems on both occasions. Its first mission, using a lander dubbed Odysseus, descended too quickly and broke a leg. Odysseus tipped over and suffered a truncated mission as its batteries ran down.
A second mission in March 2025 also made it to the surface. However, “yet again,” according to Intuitive Machines, the lander tipped over. This time, the lander fell in a crater due to landing in terrain that was more rugged than expected.
During an earnings call this week, CEO Steve Altemus blamed “signal noise and distortion,” which reduced the accuracy of the altimeter during the final phase of descent. He then cited “long shadows and dim lighting conditions” that played havoc with the precision landing.
Finally, there was crater recognition. “Our optical navigation used imagery from LRO at a hundred kilometers from the lunar surface that could not accurately account for how craters appear at lower altitudes, with South Pole lighting conditions as you approach the landing site.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/14/intuitive_machines_postmortem/
Akash Sriram - February 26, 20241:59 PM PST
Feb 26 (Reuters) - Shares of Intuitive Machines opens new tab slumped on Monday after the space exploration firm said communications with its Odysseus moon lander, which had fallen onto its side, are expected to cease on Tuesday. In an update on the status of the mission, the company said that flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning, which will effectively cut short its mission five days after touchdown.
The Houston-based company, which became the first private company to land on the moon and the first from the United States since 1972, said all but one of its six NASA science and technology payloads were facing upwards and receptive to communications.
The payload that had tipped sideways contains an art piece comprising miniature stainless steel sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, Intuitive Machines said, adding that the rest of the payloads are expected to carry out their scientific objectives.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 15, 2025 06:34PM
“For the first time in history, a privately operated lunar lander has captured images of a total eclipse from the Moon's surface,” reports Daily Galaxy.
While the Athena lunar lander tipped over and ended its mission, elsewhere on the moon Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander “continues to beam home incredible imagery,” writes Space.com, and since its landing on March 2 “has been sending us stunning photos and videos…” A new video of Blue Ghost's moon-side view captures the eerie red light on the moon (caused by sunlight refracting through the atmosphere over the edges of the earth). “Blue Ghost turns red!” Firefly writes on their mission updates page.
A SpaceX photographer also captured the eclipse as it happened over a Falcon 9 rocket waiting to launch to the International Space Station, in a remarkable time-lapse photograph.
And Space.com collects more interesting lunar-eclipse photos taken from around the world, including Appin, Scotland; Canberra, Australia; and Palm Springs, California…
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday March 15, 2025 12:00AM
From a Space.com article:
Athena, the second lunar lander from Houston company Intuitive Machines, tipped over during its touchdown on March 6, ending up on its side within a small crater near the moon's south pole. This orientation prevented the lander's solar panels from capturing enough sunlight, and Intuitive Machines declared Athena dead on March 7. (The company's first moon lander, named Odysseus, also tipped over during its historic February 2024 touchdown but was able to operate for longer on the lunar surface.)
Athena beamed home a few shots of its surroundings before giving up the ghost. And we now have views of the lander and its crater grave from on high, courtesy of NASA's sharp-eyed Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). On March 7, LRO captured a gorgeous oblique photo of Athena and its landing site – the Mons Mouton region, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole. Then, three days later, the probe snapped another pic, which provided a closer look at Athena on the shadowed floor of a 65-foot-wide (20 meters) crater.
Space is hard. Hopefully not so hard the three rovers on this spaceship are lost
Iain Thomson - Fri 7 Mar 2025 03:04 UTC
For the second time this week, a privately operated spacecraft has touched down on the Moon – but this one landed badly.
The Athena lander, built by Texas startup Intuitive Machines, set down at 1730 UTC Thursday in the Mons Mouton region just 160 km (100 miles) from the South Pole of the Moon. The spacecraft's internal sensors indicated that it may horizontal, and not vertical as intended.
“We had a seven-day transit to the surface and we think that we've been very successful to this point,” CEO Steve Altemus said at a press conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“However I do have to tell you that we don't believe we're on the correct attitude on the surface, yet again. I don't have all the data yet to say exactly what the attitude of the vehicle is - we're collecting photos now.”
That “yet again” refers to the fate of Intuitive Machines' first lander, Odysseus, which last year landed on the Moon but tipped over after descending too quickly and breaking a leg. Unable to charge its solar panels, the spacecraft shut down.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/07/intuitive_machines_landing/
Sean O'Kane - 2:17 PM PST March 6, 2025
Intuitive Machines has landed a second spacecraft on the moon, just one year after accomplishing the feat for the first time ever. Unfortunately, much like that first attempt, it seems the company’s spacecraft may have tipped on its side.
The lunar lander, called Athena, touched down on the moon’s surface at around 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. It’s the second private spacecraft to land on the moon this week, after Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost touched down on March 2.
Intuitive Machines’ chief technology officer said in a post-landing press conference that Athena is somewhere inside the 50-meter landing zone on Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain on the moon’s south pole. But he said the company was still working on determining where, exactly, Athena touched down.
CEO Steve Altemus added during the conference that the company doesn’t think Athena is at the “correct attitude” — spaceflight speak for “it probably tipped over.”
“I would like to get more data before we can determine the orientation.”
Eric Berger – Mar 6, 2025 4:56 PM
Inside a small control room, during the middle of the day on Thursday local time in Texas, about a dozen white-knuckled engineers at a space startup named Intuitive Machines started to get worried. Their spacecraft, a lander named Athena, was beginning its final descent down to the lunar surface.
A little more than a year had passed since the company's first attempt to land on the Moon with a similarly built vehicle, Odysseus. Due to problems with that spacecraft's laser rangefinder, it skidded into the Moon's surface and toppled over.
So engineers at Intuitive Machines had checked, and re-checked the laser-based altimeters on Athena. When the lander got down within about 30 km of the lunar surface, they tested the rangefinders again. Worryingly, there was some noise in the readings as the laser bounced off the Moon. However, the engineers had reason to believe that, maybe, the readings would improve as the spacecraft got nearer to the surface.
“Our hope was that the signal to noise would improve as we got closer to the Moon,” said Tim Crain, chief technology officer for Intuitive Machines, speaking to reporters afterward.
It didn't. The noise remained. And so, to some extent, Athena went down to the Moon blind. The spacecraft's propulsion system, based on liquid oxygen and methane, and designed in-house, worked beautifully. But in the final moments, the spacecraft did not quite know where it was relative to the surface.
Athena got to the lunar surface Thursday afternoon, but the spacecraft's exact position is not yet clear.
Passant Rabie - Updated March 6, 2025
After becoming the first private company to touch down on the lunar surface last year, Intuitive Machines is gearing up for a second Moon landing near the satellite’s south pole. Hopefully this time, the lander will stay upright.
Update: Thursday, March 6, 4:14 p.m. ET: “We don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude on the surface of the Moon yet again,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said during a press briefing on Thursday. “I don’t have all the data yet to say exactly what the attitude of the vehicle is.” The company will work with NASA to determine how the mission will proceed, but it will be off-nominal, according to Altemus.
Update: Thursday, March 6, 12:55 p.m. ET: Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander is on the surface of the Moon, but the company is still working to figure out the orientation of the vehicle.
Sean O'Kane - 12:28 PM PST March 7, 2025
Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander is dead, just one day after it touched down at the moon’s south pole and tipped over. Luckily, the company says it was able to “accelerate several program and payload milestones” and deploy a few of the experiments that were riding shotgun before Athena’s lander ran out of juice.
The quick end to the Athena mission marks the second time in a row that Intuitive Machines has landed a spacecraft on the moon only to have the mission go quite literally sideways. The company’s Odysseus spacecraft touched down and then tipped over last February.
The troublesome Athena mission comes months after NASA tapped Intuitive Machines to help develop a lunar communications system in a contract that could be worth as much as $4.8 billion (though just $150 million of that is guaranteed).
The company said that the orientation of Athena’s solar panels, combined with the direction of the sun and the extreme cold temperatures of the crater where it landed, means the spacecraft cannot recharge its batteries. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission,” the company wrote in an update Friday.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/intuitive-machines-second-moon-lander-is-dead/
The Athena lander will not be able to recharge its batteries due to the orientation of its solar panels.
Passant Rabie - March 7, 2025
Less than a day after Intuitive Machines landed on the Moon, the company declared an early end to its mission after its Athena spacecraft would up lying sideways on the lunar surface.
Athena touched down on the Moon on Thursday around 12:30 p.m. ET. Its landing was less than ideal, however, as the lander ended up 250 meters away from its targeted landing site in Mons Mouton, located in the southern pole region of the Moon. Images downlinked from the mission confirmed that Athena was on its side inside a crater and its batteries had died.
“With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge,” the company wrote in an update on Friday. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
This is the second time a lander by Intuitive Machines toppled sideways and represents a blow to the company’s goal of launching payloads to the Moon on a regular basis.
Robotic private spacecraft touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site on Thursday
Richard Luscombe - Fri 7 Mar 2025 12.26 EST
A robotic private spacecraft designed to provide crucial data for returning humans to the moon toppled over as it landed on the lunar surface, bringing an immediate and premature end to the mission, its operators said on Friday.
Athena, a probe launched by the Texas-based company Intuitive Machines (IM) last month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Initially at least, it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as engineers worked to make sense of data showing an “incorrect attitude”.
On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead.
“With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge,” it said in a statement confirming that the 15ft (4.6 meter) spacecraft was on its side.
“The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/07/athena-spacecraft-mission-dead
It looks like the Athena lander has toppled sideways on the lunar surface.
Lawrence Bonk - Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 8:26 AM PST·2 min read
The second lunar lander by Intuitive Machines has made its way to the Moon, but not without incident. The Athena vehicle may not be upright, which is what happened to the company’s Odysseus lander upon touchdown back in February. CEO Steve Altemus said during the post-landing news conference that he doesn’t believe that Athena is “in the correct attitude on the surface of the Moon yet again.”
Altemus said that the company will know for sure in the coming days once the team gets “a picture from the lunar reconnaissance orbital camera from above.” Data from the lander’s inertial measurement unit does seem to indicate a sideways orientation. We do know that Athena has touched down approximately 100 miles from the lunar south pole, which is where it's supposed to be.
“The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected.”
Eric Berger – Mar 7, 2025 8:01 AM
Intuitive Machines announced on Friday morning that its Athena mission to the surface of the Moon, which landed on its side, has ended.
“With the direction of the Sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge,” the company said in a statement. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
Athena, a commercially developed lander, touched down on the lunar surface on Thursday at 11:28 am local time in Houston (17:28 UTC). The probe landed within 250 meters of its targeted landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the Moon. This is the southernmost location that any probe has landed on the Moon, within a few degrees of the lunar south pole.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/after-less-than-a-day-the-athena-lander-is-dead-on-the-moon/
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday March 08, 2025 12:00AM
The Athena lunar lander from Intuitive Machines has prematurely ended its mission after tipping onto its side shortly after touching down near the moon's south pole, failing to fully accomplish its planned water-searching objectives. From a report:
Athena was expected to operate for about 10 days before powering down as lunar night fell over the spacecraft's landing site at Mons Mouton, a plateau that lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. But photographs delivered by the lander before it powered down confirmed the vehicle is lying on its side. “With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge,” the company said in a statement. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
Intuitive Machines, however, highlighted that, although Athena did not operate as intended, the lander was able to briefly operate and transmit data after touchdown. That made the mission the “southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved.” Intuitive Machines also said that Athena was “able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA's PRIME-1 suite, before the lander's batteries depleted.” PRIME-1, which includes a drill that was expected to dig into the lunar surface to hunt for water, was able to move, according to a statement from NASA that states the device “demonstrated the hardware's full range of motion in the harsh environment of space.”
“You lose it, and then what do you do? You don't give up. You go back in.”
Eric Berger – Mar 13, 2025 1:55 PM
The Athena spacecraft was not exactly flying blind as it approached the lunar surface one week ago. The software on board did a credible job of recognizing nearby craters, even with elongated shadows over the terrain. However, the lander's altimeter had failed.
So while Athena knew where it was relative to the surface of the Moon, the lander did not know how far it was above the surface.
An important detail, that. As a result, the privately built spacecraft struck the lunar surface on a plateau, toppled over, and began to skid across the surface. As it did so, the lander rotated at least once or twice before coming to a stop in a small, shadowed crater.
“The landing was kind of like sliding into second base,” Steve Altemus, chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines, which built the lander, said in an interview Thursday.
A new 360-degree image captures the craft's unfortunate descent toward the Moon.
Passant Rabie - March 14, 2025
Space can be an unforgiving place. Last week, a lunar lander skidded across the surface of the Moon and ended up in a cold, dark crater, ending its mission before it began. Now, details newly revealed by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines relay its Athena lander’s final moments and how the spacecraft briefly sputtered to life after powering down.
Athena touched down on the lunar surface on Thursday, March 6, following a week-long journey to the Moon. The lander ended up on its side in a shallow crater in the Moon’s Mons Mouton region, 820 feet (250 meters) from its targeted landing site. Less than a day after its touchdown, Athena was declared dead. But now, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus has revealed that the company’s lunar lander wasn’t dead on arrival, and that the “mission pressed forward” before its untimely end.
Intuitive Machines also released a 360-degree image of Athena’s descent that was stitched together using the lander’s four on-board cameras.
https://gizmodo.com/ill-fated-moon-lander-unexpectedly-woke-up-and-sent-one-last-message-2000576241
Intuitive Machines is hoping to become the first private company to touchdown on the lunar surface after several recent failures.
Passant Rabie - 13 February 2024
A new mission is headed towards the Moon, with hopes of touching down on the lunar surface for a chance at a historic landing. But given the recent string of failures, we’re understandably nervous.
On Wednesday, Intuitive Machine is set to launch its Nova-C lander on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The liftoff is scheduled for 12:57 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Houston-based company is hoping to be the first to put a privately-owned lander on the lunar surface after a series of failed attempts by others.
If it succeeds, this will certainly be a mission for the books as it will mark the beginning of a new era for the lunar economy. You can watch the long-anticipated launch live on NASA Television or the space agency’s website. Coverage of the launch is set to begin at 12:15 a.m. ET. SpaceX is also hosting its own livestream of the launch on the company’s account on X. You can also tune in through the feed below.
https://gizmodo.com/intuitive-machines-launch-spacex-odysseus-lunar-lander-1851253423
Taking Disaster Recovery as a Service to lunar extremes
Richard Speed - Thu 15 Feb 2024 17:01 UTC
NASA is taking another crack at a commercial mission to the Moon with the launch of the Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission this morning.
The mission, using a Space Falcon 9 rocket, was due to launch on February 14, but the lift-off was scrubbed due to “off-nominal methane temperatures prior to stepping into methane load,” according to SpaceX.
The lunar lander uses a combination of liquid methane and liquid oxygen.
The launch into a lunar transfer orbit went ahead at 0605 UTC on February 15 from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the 18th flight of the first stage Falcon 9 booster, previous missions of which included 12 Starlink launches.
The IM-1 mission, which uses Intuitive Machines' Nova-C class lunar lander, was launched on a direct trajectory to the Moon and is expected to land within nine days. If it manages a soft landing planned for the south pole of the Moon, the lander, dubbed Odysseus, is expected to survive seven days before the lunar night sets, after which it will be inoperable.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/intuitive_machines_im1_moon/
Intuitive Machines aims to be the first private company to land on the Moon, but it must navigate a series of critical and precise steps to achieve success.
George Dvorsky - 15 February 2024
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander has begun its eight-day voyage to the Moon. The mission is fraught with peril, as every previous attempt by private companies to land softly on the Moon has ended in failure. Here’s what needs to go right for this Houston-based company to enter into the history books.
In the latest effort to return the United States to the lunar surface, Intuitive Machines, under an $118 million contract with NASA, launched its Nova-C class lunar lander, Odysseus, early Thursday morning aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch marks the second mission of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, following Astrobotic’s Peregrine’s failed attempt due to a valve issue. Through CLPS, NASA seeks to facilitate a steady stream of cargo deliveries to the Moon for both governmental and commercial purposes. The Falcon 9, with Odie on board, launching from Kennedy Space Center on February 15, 2024.
https://gizmodo.com/odysseus-moon-mission-intuitive-machines-launch-2024-1851260385
The spacecraft is on track to make a landing attempt on February 22.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 11:42 AM PST
Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander is well on its way to the moon after launching without a hitch on Thursday, but it managed to snap a few incredible images of Earth while it was still close to home. The company shared the first batch of images from the IM-1 mission on X today after confirming in an earlier post that the spacecraft is “in excellent health.” Along with a view of Earth and some partial selfies of the Nova-C lander, nicknamed Odysseus, you can even see the SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage falling away in the distance after separation.
Odysseus is on track to make its moon landing attempt on February 22, and so far appears to be performing well. The team posted a series of updates on X at the end of the week confirming the lander has passed some key milestones ahead of its touchdown, including engine firing. This marked “the first-ever in-space ignition of a liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine,” according to Intuitive Machines.
The commercial lunar lander is targeting a Thursday touchdown on the Moon, hoping to break a streak of failures.
Passant Rabi - 20 February 2024
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus is gearing up for its attempt at a potentially historic landing on the Moon’s surface later this week. Things are looking good so far for the lunar lander, which beamed back breathtaking views of Earth from space.
The IM-1 mission recently transmitted the first batch of photos that were captured shortly after launch, revealing a series of selfies that show parts of the spacecraft with Earth’s familiar blue as an iconic backdrop.The images were taken on Thursday, February 15 after Odysseus separated from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, according to Intuitive Machines.
https://gizmodo.com/odysseus-lander-first-photos-moon-intuitive-machines-1851270366
The Odysseus lunar lander is set for a Thursday touchdown, as Intuitive Machines aims to become the first private company to pull off a soft landing.
Passant Rabie - 21 February 2024
After an eight-day journey through space, Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission is ready to attempt a potentially historic landing on the surface of the Moon. Odysseus will try for a lunar touchdown on Thursday at 5:49 p.m. ET near the Malapert A crater in the Moon’s South Pole region.
Intuitive Machines will host a live stream of the landing on its website, and NASA will also air its own live coverage through the space agency’s website and NASA TV. You can also tune in through the stream below. The live coverage will begin at 4:15 p.m. ET, and NASA will host a news conference afterwards.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-moon-landing-odysseus-intuitive-machines-1851274807
Steve Gorman and Joey Roulette - February 22, 20244:51 PM PST
Feb 22 (Reuters) - A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the south pole of the moon on Thursday, the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector.
The uncrewed six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines' mission operations center in Houston.
The landing capped a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a problem surfaced with the spacecraft's autonomous navigation system that required engineers on the ground to employ an untested work-around at the 11th hour. It also took some time after an anticipated radio blackout to re-establish communications with the spacecraft and determine its fate some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 22 February 2024
Intuitive Machines has landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface, in a historic first for a private company.
Flight controllers confirmed the landing at 5:23 p.m. CST, though the exact condition of the spacecraft is unclear as engineers work to refine their signal with the lander.
“What we can confirm without a doubt is that our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting,” mission director and Intuitive Machines CTO Tim Crain said. “So congratulations IM team, we’ll see how much more we can get from that.”
“Houston, Odysseus has found its new home,” he added.
“What an outstanding effort,” CEO Steve Altemus said after the landing. “I know this was a nail biter but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday February 22, 2024 04:25PM
The first privately built spacecraft has successfully landed on the lunar surface on Thursday. “We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. “Welcome to the moon.” From a report:
As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting in several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately 15 minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft. “A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. “Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon.”
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/0020215/us-lands-unmanned-odysseus-spacecraft-on-moon
The Intuitive Machines spacecraft is the first American lunar lander since Apollo.
Passant Rabie - 22 February 2024
Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the Moon on Thursday at 6:23 p.m. ET, becoming the first private company to pull off a soft landing on the lunar surface.
The IM-1 mission delivered 12 payloads near the Malapert A crater in the Moon’s South Pole region following an eight-day journey through space. The lander was originally scheduled for a touchdown at 4:24 p.m., but flight controllers decided to have it go around the Moon for an additional orbit before starting the landing sequence, to try to resolve an issue with an onboard laser instrument. The laser is designed to assess the Moon’s terrain to identify a safe landing spot. Instead, NASA repurposed a sensor on another onboard instruments to help the lander during its descent.
It was looking tense for a few minutes before Intuitive Machines announced that its lander had safely touched down. “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said during a live webcast. “Welcome to the Moon.”
https://gizmodo.com/odysseus-lander-touches-down-on-moon-intuitive-machines-1851279376
Intuitive Machines is the first private company to reach the lunar surface,
Karissa Bell, Senior Editor - Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 5:00 PM PST
The Odysseus spacecraft made by Houston-based Intuitive Machines has successfully landed on the surface of the moon. It marks the first time a spacecraft from a private company has landed on the lunar surface, and it’s the first US-made craft to reach the moon since the Apollo missions.
Odysseus was carrying NASA instruments, which the space agency said would be used to help prepare for future crewed missions to the moon under the Artemis program. NASA confirmed the landing happened at 6:23 PM ET on February 22. The lander launched from Earth on February 15, with the help of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
“We’re not dead yet.”
Eric Berger - 2/22/2024, 5:23 PM
For the first time in more than half a century, a US-built spacecraft has made a soft landing on the Moon.
There was high drama and plenty of intrigue on Thursday evening as Intuitive Machines attempted to land its Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not all that far from the south pole of the Moon. About 20 minutes after touchdown, NASA declared success, but some questions remained about the health of the lander and its orientation. Why? Because while Odysseus was phoning home, its signal was weak.
But after what the spacecraft and its developer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, went through earlier on Thursday, it was a miracle that Odysseus made it at all.
'Farewell' snap revealed by Intuitive Machines amid hope solar-powered craft may one day spring to life again
Katyanna Quach - Sat 2 Mar 2024 00:30 UTC
With it battery depleted and the lunar night approaching, the private-built Moon lander Odysseus has shut down quite possibly for good.
There's a possibility the solar-powered lander, nicknamed Odie by its engineers, could come to life again if it gets enough sunlight come lunar daybreak, though chances are slim. The probe was able to beam back, as its operators put it, a “farewell” snap from the surface, showing the Sun and Earth up above.
Created by Texas-based Intuitive Machines, Odysseus arrived at the lunar South Pole on February 22 having lifted off on February 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a collection of private payloads and NASA instruments. Those payloads are listed here, and range from an experimental device that uses radio waves to measure how much propellant is left in a tank, to an NFT art project.
Marcia Smith - May 13, 2025 11:54 pm ET / Updated May 13, 2025 11:59 pm ET
Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander, IM-2, landed on its side near the Moon’s South Pole because of altimeter interference and lighting conditions according to the company’s president and CEO. During an earnings call this morning, Steve Altemus expressed confidence that the next mission, IM-3, will land upright and ready to operate.
Intuitive Machines or IM is one of several companies building lunar landers to deliver payloads to the Moon for NASA through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Instead of building landers itself, NASA purchases services from companies like IM. The companies are expected to find non-NASA customers to close their business cases.
IM’s first CLPS lander, IM-1, tipped over after landing in February 2024 because the laser altimeter didn’t work properly and it was going too fast when it reached the surface, breaking one of the legs. Nevertheless, some of the payloads operated for several days and IM and NASA consider it a success.
Hopes were high for IM-2, which launched on February 26, 2025. Eight days later it landed, but on its side like IM-1. This time it operated for only about 12 hours before the batteries died because of how the solar panels faced the Sun. IM and NASA still consider it successful because some instruments turned on, albeit briefly. NASA actually argues that every CLPS mission is a success regardless of the outcome because lessons are learned that advance the overall goal of helping American companies establish a lunar economy.
Don't worry, pictures from the moon's surface are coming soon.
Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor - Sat, Feb 24, 2024, 9:45 AM PST
It turns out Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft didn’t land upright after all. In a press conference with NASA Friday evening, the company revealed the lander is laying on its side after coming in a little faster than expected, likely catching its foot on the surface at the moment of landing. Fortunately, Odysseus is positioned in such a way that its solar panels are still getting enough light from the sun to keep it charged, and the team has been able to communicate with it. Pictures from the surface should be coming soon.
While the initial assessment was that Odysseus had landed properly, further analysis indicated otherwise. Intuitive Machines CEO and co-founder Steve Altemus said “stale telemetry” was to blame for the earlier reading.
During its descent toward the south polar region, one of the lander's legs may have been caught on the surface, Intuitive Machines said.
Passant Rabie - 23 February 2024
Intuitive Machines’ private lander stumbled on its way down to the lunar surface and is possibly leaning over on a rock on the Moon. The vehicle is still operational and flight engineers are working to gather more data on its less-than-ideal position, the company said.
Odysseus landed on the Moon on Thursday, overcoming a glitch that jeopardized its ability to safely touch down. Although it made it to the surface, Odie’s landing was not so smooth, with the vehicle getting one of its legs caught, causing it to tip over on its side and possibly end up laying on a rock, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus revealed during a press conference on Friday.
https://gizmodo.com/the-odysseus-lander-is-tipped-over-on-its-side-on-the-m-1851283177
Posted by BeauHD on Friday February 23, 2024 11:00PM
On Thursday, the Odysseus Moon lander made history by becoming the first ever privately built and operated robot to complete a soft lunar touchdown. While the lander is “alive and well,” the CEO of Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander, said it tipped over during its final descent, coming up to rest propped up sideways on a rock. The BBC reports:
Its owner, Texan firm Intuitive Machines, says Odysseus has plenty of power and is communicating with Earth. Controllers are trying to retrieve pictures from the robot. Steve Altemus, the CEO and co-founder of IM, said it wasn't totally clear what happened but the data suggested the robot caught a foot on the surface and then fell because it still had some lateral motion at the moment of landing. All the scientific instruments that planned to take observations on the Moon are on the side of Odysseus that should still allow them to do some work. The only payload likely on the “wrong side” of the lander, pointing down at the lunar surface, is an art project.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/24/007214/odysseus-moon-lander-tipped-over-on-touchdown
So what are we to make of this? Is Odysseus a success or a failure?
Eric Berger - 2/26/2024, 10:45 AM
Time is running out for the historic Odysseus lander that made a soft touchdown on the Moon last Thursday evening.
In an update posted on Monday morning, the company that built the spacecraft, Intuitive Machines, said, ”[W]e believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning.” This is because the lander, which is tipped over on its side, will only be able to collect solar energy for a limited period of time.
Originally, the company had hoped to operate its privately developed lunar lander on the surface for a week or longer. But now, that will no longer be possible due to the limited ability of Odysseus to gather solar energy and remain powered on. As the Sun dips closer to the horizon, and with the two-week-long lunar night coming, the spacecraft will, effectively, freeze to death.
Aria Alamalhodae - 27 February 2024
Intuitive Machines’ first moon mission will come to a premature end due to the spacecraft landing on its side, which altered how the solar panels are positioned in relation to the sun, the company said in an update Tuesday morning.
Flight controllers were still working to determine the battery’s remaining life, which could be between 10-20 hours. The spacecraft, which landed on the moon five days ago, was expected to operate for 7-10 days.
Intuitive Machines made history when it landed its spacecraft, called Odysseus, near the lunar south pole last week. The lander is the first American hardware to touch the lunar surface since NASA’s final crewed Apollo mission in 1972. It’s also the first privately built and operated spacecraft to land on the moon — ever – and the closest a lander has ever come to the lunar south pole.
“Hours after we got off the launch pad, we almost lost the spacecraft.”
Eric Berger - 2/27/2024, 1:33 PM
Steve Altemus beamed with pride on Tuesday morning as he led me into Mission Control for the Odysseus lander, which is currently operating on the Moon and returning valuable scientific data to Earth. A team of about a dozen operators sat behind consoles, attempting to reset a visual processing unit onboard the lunar lander, one of their last, best chances to deploy a small camera that would snap a photo of Odysseus in action.
“I just wanted you to see the team,” he said.
The founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, which for a few days this month has been the epicenter of the spaceflight universe after landing the first commercial vehicle on the Moon, invited me to the company's nerve center in Houston to set some things straight.
“You can say whatever you want to say,” Altemus said. “But from my perspective, this is an absolute success of a mission. Holy crap. The things that you go through to fly to the Moon. The learning, just every step of the way, is tremendous.”
“We hit harder than expected and skidded along the way.”
Eric Berger - 2/28/2024, 2:48 PM
After six days and the public release of new images, engineers have finally pieced together the moments before, during, and after the Odysseus lander touched down on the Moon.
During a news conference on Wednesday, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, described what his company has learned about what happened last Thursday evening as Odysseus made its powered descent down to the Moon.
From their control room in Houston, the mission operators watched with fraying nerves, as their range finders had failed. A last-minute effort to use altitude data from a NASA payload on board failed because the flight computer on board Odysseus could not ingest it in time. So the lander was, in essence, coming down to the Moon without any real-time altimetry data.
The last communication the operators received appeared to show that Odysseus had touched down on the Moon and was upright. But then, to their horror, all telemetry from the spacecraft ceased. The data on the flight controllers' consoles in Houston froze. They feared the worst.
As the lunar sunset dims its solar arrays, Intuitive Machines' lander is set to power down, with a slim possibility of revival in about three weeks.
Passant Rabie - 28 February 2024
After a nail-biting touchdown on the lunar surface that left Odysseus bent over on its side, the lander is ready for its nap. Intuitive Machines is getting ready to power down its lunar lander, with hopes that Odie may wake up once the Sun illuminates its functioning solar array again.
The Houston-based company held a press conference on Wednesday to give an update on its IM-1 mission, which landed on the Moon on February 22. The Odysseus lander had some trouble making it to the lunar surface due to an issue with its navigation system and ended up slightly tipped over on its side. In its less than ideal position, Odysseus can only receive sunlight on its horizontal solar panel.
https://gizmodo.com/odysseus-lander-historic-us-mission-lunar-night-end-1851294915
The company behind Odysseus said the landing gear did what it was supposed to do and “protected the lander as it landed on the surface.”
Jody Serrano - 29 February 2024
A new photo of Odysseus released by NASA illustrates just how rough the lander’s journey to the Moon has been, shining a light on its spunky resilience against all odds.
Taken on February 22, the day the lander touched down on the Moon, the photo shows Odysseus, affectionately called “Odie,” with a clearly broken leg on the lunar surface. While the photo might not look all that encouraging, Intuitive Machines explained that a perfect storm of events managed to work in Odie’s favor. Not only did Odysseus’ legs absorb the impact of the landing, but its liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine happened to still be throttling, which provided the lander with stability.
https://gizmodo.com/odysseus-broken-leg-moon-photo-tipped-over-nasa-1851296693
“Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch.”
Stephen Clark – Mar 31, 2025 9:26 AM
The first flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket didn't last long on Sunday. The booster's nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea.
If officials at Isar Aerospace were able to pick the outcome of their first test flight, it wouldn't be this. However, the result has precedent. The first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 ended in similar fashion.
“Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch,” Daniel Metzler, Isar's co-founder and CEO, wrote on X early Monday. “Can't beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now.”
Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, is the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. If all went according to plan, Isar's Spectrum rocket would have arced to the north from Andøya Spaceport in Norway and reached a polar orbit.
But officials knew there was only a low chance of reaching orbit on the first flight. For this reason, Isar did not fly any customer payloads on the Spectrum rocket, designed to deliver up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit.
The German startup behind the rocket referred to the test flight as a great success.
Passant Rabie - March 31, 2025
The European market’s first attempt at playing catch-up with the satellite launch industry ended in a gigantic explosion off the Norwegian coast, where a German-made rocket crashed and burned.
German startup Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from the Andøya spaceport on Sunday at 6:30 a.m. ET for its first test flight. The rocket successfully lifted off from its launchpad and spent around 30 seconds in the air before it started falling back down toward the Arctic Ocean, creating a massive fireball over the water.
The company later revealed that the flight was terminated shortly after liftoff, and the launch vehicle fell into the sea in a controlled manner. “Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success,”Daniel Metzler, CEO and co-founder of Isar Aerospace, said in an emailed statement. “We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System. We demonstrated that we can not only design and build but also launch rockets.”
What counts as failure in New Space?
Richard Speed - Tue 1 Apr 2025 10:45 UTC
Comment Yet another rocket exploded over the weekend and – you guessed it – its CEO called the test flight “a great success.” This raises the question: what even counts as failure anymore in the world of so-called “New Space” – the VC-fueled and risk-friendly private rocket sector?
Andoya, Lofoten Islands, Norway - The entrance to Andoya Space Center area is adorned with a dummy of a rocket Uhryn Larysa / Shutterstock.com
The rocket in question was Isar Aerospace's Spectrum, the first test launch of which lifted off from the Andøya Spaceport, an island off Norway's northern coast, on March 30 at 1130 UTC. The launch was billed as the first orbital attempt by a commercial company based in continental Europe, and it had suffered multiple delays due to weather throughout the preceding week.
The two-stage Spectrum will be able to carry a payload of up to 1,000 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and its arrival has become increasingly crucial for European operators in light of recent uncertainty surrounding EU-US relations.
Unfortunately, the first launch failed. As the saying goes, “space is hard.”
After approximately 20 seconds, the rocket appeared to lose attitude control and began to tumble mid-flight. Video footage suggests the rocket flipped, its engines shut down, and it plummeted into the sea near the launchpad, exploding on impact.
The precise cause of the anomaly hasn't been confirmed, though the vehicle's Flight Termination System - the standard kill switch for when rockets go rogue - was triggered as designed.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/01/failure_in_new_space/
Posted by BeauHD on Monday March 31, 2025 @08:30PM from the practice-makes-perfect dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
The first flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket didn't last long on Sunday. The booster's nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea. If officials at Isar Aerospace were able to pick the outcome of their first test flight, it wouldn't be this. However, the result has precedent. The first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 ended in similar fashion. “Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch,” Daniel Metzler, Isar's co-founder and CEO, wrote on X early Monday. “Can't beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now.”
Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, is the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. If all went according to plan, Isar's Spectrum rocket would have arced to the north from Andoya Spaceport in Norway and reached a polar orbit. But officials knew there was only a low chance of reaching orbit on the first flight. For this reason, Isar did not fly any customer payloads on the Spectrum rocket, designed to deliver up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. […] Isar declared the launch a success in its public statements, but was it? […] Metzler, Isar's chief executive, was asked last year what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum. “For me, the first flight will be a success if we don't blow up the launch site,” he said at the Handelsblatt innovation conference. “That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.”
The space agency will reprimand astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, who led the research team, but he's still going to the space station next year.
Passant Rabie - 28 November 2022
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) says a team of researchers fabricated the results of an experiment, led by one of its astronauts, that sought to simulate daily life on board the International Space Station (ISS).
JAXA stated that it would subject astronaut Satoshi Furukawa to disciplinary action over data tampering, Japanese media reported. The experiment in question, conducted between 2016 and 2017, involved 40 participants who were confined to closed environments to simulate what astronauts experience during spaceflight.
https://gizmodo.com/japanese-researchers-faked-data-iss-simulation-1849827303
This launcher would replace the H3 rocket, which hasn't yet become operational.
Stephen Clark - 10/4/2023, 5:13 PM
Japan debuted the new flagship H3 rocket in March, capping a decade-long, nearly $1.5 billion development effort to replace a launch vehicle that has been in service for more than 20 years. The H3's upper stage failed to ignite a few minutes after liftoff, causing the rocket and its Earth observation payload to crash into the Pacific Ocean.
Officials in the Japanese government are already plotting the replacement for the H3 rocket, which had a goal of cutting in half the cost per launch of the H-2A launcher, a workhorse for Japan's space program. But the H3 is based on a single-use expendable design, like nearly all legacy rockets. The H3 design aims to achieve these cost savings through modernized manufacturing techniques and commonality in hardware with Japan's smaller Epsilon rocket family.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-reusable-rocket-is-on-japans-road-map-for-space-development/
The company's End of Life Services aims to reduce the amount of space junk in Earth orbit.
Passant Rabie - 14 June 2023
Low Earth orbit is littered with defunct satellites floating without purpose. A Japanese company is developing a satellite able to stalk those dead satellites, capture and release them towards a fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, thereby putting an end to their misery.
Tokyo-based Astroscale released a video detailing its End of Life Services mission, designed to capture and deorbit decommissioned satellites as a way to alleviate space congestion.
More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris are currently being tracked by the Department of Defense’s global Space Surveillance Network, with lots of smaller pieces also floating around undetected. As more spacecraft are delivered to Earth orbit, the issue of space junk will only get worse over time.
https://gizmodo.com/japans-astroscale-will-toss-satellites-to-their-death-1850540128
ADRAS-J is a precursor to future missions servicing satellites and clearing space junk.
Stephen Clark - 2/20/2024, 7:31 AM
Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, is preparing a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space.
This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit Sunday by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm's reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).
These maneuvers are complex, but they're nothing new for spacecraft visiting the International Space Station. Military satellites from the United States, Russia, and China also have capabilities for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), but as far as we know, these spacecraft have only maneuvered in ultra-close range around so-called “cooperative” objects designed to receive them.
The difference here is the H-IIA rocket is uncontrolled, likely spinning and in a slow tumble, and was never designed to accommodate any visitors. Japan left it in orbit in January 2009 following the launch of a climate monitoring satellite and didn't look back.
Couldn't reach out and touch it, but still happy as this attempt was out of mission scope
Laura Dobberstein - Fri 13 Dec 2024 03:01 UTC
Japanese orbital janitor Astroscale says it has completed the closest ever approach by a commercial operator to space junk when it came within 15 meters of a defunct upper stage rocket.
The Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J) spacecraft was selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for Phase I of its Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration – an initiative focused on demonstrating the ability to approach and perform detailed observations of the organization's H-IIA rocket.
But on Wednesday, Astroscale clarified that a November 30 approach to the uppers stage was not a part of JAXA mission requirements, but rather “an ambitious goal independently designed by Astroscale.”
“The objective was to demonstrate highly precise and complex close-range RPO [Rendezvous and Proximity Operations] capabilities by advancing to the Capture Initiation Point (CIP), where future debris removal missions start robotic capture operations,” the biz explained.
Those robotic capture operations are a part of Phase II of the project. Astroscale was also awarded that initiative under a ¥12 billion ($81.4 million) five-year contract that it’s hoped will serve as a proof of concept for commercial space junk disposal services.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/13/astroscale_15m_space_junk/
This success lays the foundation for future missions to dock with out-of-control satellites.
Stephen Clark – Feb 27, 2025 5:06 PM
There's a scene in the film Interstellar where Matthew McConaughey's character flies his spaceplane up to meet a mothership spinning out of control. The protagonist rises to the challenge with a polished piece of piloting and successfully links up with his objective.
Real life, of course, isn't quite this dramatic. Slow down that spin to a tranquil tumble, and replace McConaughey's hand on the joystick with the autonomous wits of a computer, and you'll arrive at an approximation of what a Japanese company Astroscale has accomplished within the last year.
Still, it's an impressive feat of engineering and orbital dynamics. Astroscale's ADRAS-J mission became the first spacecraft (at least in the unclassified world) to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit. This particular object, a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket, has been in orbit since 2009. It's one of about 2,000 spent rocket bodies circling the Earth and one of more than 45,000 objects in orbit tracked by US Space Command.
“This is the world's first technology that allows any object orbiting the Earth at high speeds to be safely approached from the ground,” said Nobu Okada, founder and CEO of Tokyo-based Astroscale. “It has great potential.”
Devin Coldewey - 17 January 2024
Orbital operations company Astroscale has revealed new details about its approach to refueling satellites in space, as part of a $25.5 million project exploring the concept with the Space Force. Their solution is a bit like a AAA truck traveling at 25,000 MPH.
The concept of on-orbit servicing and repair is attractive to anyone who doesn’t want to see a $100 million investment literally burn up. Many satellites are perfectly functional after years in space, but simply lack the fuel to keep safely to their assigned altitude and trajectory, and must be allowed to deorbit instead.
You could put up another $100 million satellite — or perhaps, as companies like Astroscale and OrbitFab have proposed, you could spend a tenth of that to do a gas run from the surface to geosynchronous orbit.
Known as the Astroscale Prototype Servicer for Refueling, the maneuverable in-space fuel tanker could be ready for launch in two years.
George Dvorsky - 18 January 2024
Zipping far above Earth, it’s not exactly easy for satellites to find a corner gas station when the fuel gauge gets low. To tackle this cosmic conundrum, a Space Force-funded initiative is working on an innovative solution to refuel distant satellites on-the-fly.
On Wednesday, Space Force awarded Astroscale a $25.5 million contract to design and construct an orbital transfer vehicle, also known as a space tug. The vehicle, dubbed the Astroscale Prototype Servicer for Refueling (APS-R), needs to be ready for launch by 2026. Operating in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), this maneuverable satellite will specialize in refueling other compatible satellites, thereby enhancing the longevity and functionality of these orbital assets.
https://gizmodo.com/space-force-purchases-25-million-fuel-truck-for-sate-1851175849
A jealous planet guards its secrets closely?
Eric Berger - 5/29/2024, 7:02 AM
JAXA, the Japanese space agency, confirmed Wednesday that it has lost communication with its Akatsuki spacecraft in orbit around Venus.
In its update, the space agency said it failed to establish communications in late April after the spacecraft had difficulty maintaining its attitude. This likely means there is some sort of thruster issue on the spacecraft that is preventing it from being able to orient itself back toward Earth.
“Since then, we have implemented various measures to restore service, but communication has not yet been restored,” the agency stated. “We are currently working on restoring communication.” JAXA added that it will announce further actions, if any, as soon as they've been decided upon.
The potential loss of the Akatsuki spacecraft, a relatively small 320 kg probe with a mass a little larger than a consumer dishwasher, would be notable for a couple of reasons. First, it would mark the end of a plucky mission that overcame a significant failure a decade ago to enter orbit around Venus. Second, it would mean losing humanity's only spacecraft presently orbiting Venus.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/our-only-mission-at-venus-may-have-just-gone-dark/
The Japanese mission has been orbiting the planet for nearly a decade to study its weather patterns.
Passant Rabie - 31 May 2024
For nearly 10 years, there’s been only one spacecraft able to keep its cool above the hellish landscape of Venus. The Japanese Akatsuki probe was sent to Earth’s neighboring planet to observe its atmospheric dynamics, but the lone Venusian mission has suddenly gone quiet.
Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) has lost contact with its Venus spacecraft following a maneuver in late April, the research organization announced on X. The spacecraft was in “an extended period of low attitude stability control mode” before it went silent, ISAS wrote.
ISAS is currently trying to reestablish contact with its Venus probe. “We will inform you about future plans once they are fixed,” the institute wrote on X.
https://gizmodo.com/venus-probe-falls-silent-japan-akatsuki-1851511749
A second stage engine meant for an Epsilon S rocket exploded one minute into the two-minute ground test.
Passant Rabie - 14 July 2023
A second stage engine destined for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Epsilon S rocket exploded during a test on Friday, spewing fire and smoke, and severely damaging the test facility, located in Noshiro, Akita Prefecture, in northeastern Japan. It’s yet another setback for Japan’s suddenly-floundering spaceflight industry.
The explosion occurred at JAXA’s testing site, Reuters reported based on a statement by an official at Japan’s Education, Science and Technology Ministry. The catastrophic failure occurred approximately one minute into what was intended to be a two-minute test of the rocket’s second-stage engine. Television footage captured the ensuing scene, showing flames billowing from the test facility, followed by a dense cloud of smoke that swallowed the entire facility.
https://gizmodo.com/explosion-rocket-engine-test-setback-japan-jaxa-1850640515
Destroyed after second stage failed to ignite, making the mission impossible
Simon Sharwood - Tue 7 Mar 2023 03:59 UTC
Japan’s space exploration agency (JAXA) has destroyed the first of its next-gen H3 boosters after it went off course during its maiden test flight.
The craft launched today from the Tanegashima spaceport and performed nominally for the first few minutes of its flight, with the rocket’s first stage performing as planned and separating on schedule. But not long afterwards commentators on JAXA’s livestream mentioned that the signal to ignite the second stage was not received, and reported that while the H3 continued to ascend, its speed had decreased.
JAXA then stopped streaming live telemetry and commentators said they had not been told that second stage ignition had taken place.
Not long afterwards came news that a signal to destroy the rocket had been sent, as JAXA determined it would not be possible to reach the intended orbit.
The rocket’s sole payload, a Japanese land observation satellite, was presumably destroyed along with the rocket.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/jaxa_h3_test_flight_failed/
Ground controllers were forced to destroy the vehicle after its second stage engines failed to ignite.
George Dvorsky - 6 March 2023
Space is hard—even in 2023. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, instead of celebrating the launch of its new H3 rocket, is now trying to figure out what went wrong during today’s failed flight.
The two-stage H3 rocket left the pad on schedule, rising into the sky at 8:37 p.m. ET from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. It was only after first stage separation that things started to go wrong, with ground controllers saying they weren’t able to confirm second stage engine ignition. Controllers then made the decision to engage the rocket’s flight termination system, saying “there was no possibility of achieving the mission.”
Aboard the rocket was the ALOS-3 advanced Earth observation satellite, also known as “DAICHI-3,” which was presumably destroyed as a result of the self-destruct. Beyond this, it’s not entirely clear what went wrong, but JAXA did say it’s launching an investigation.
https://gizmodo.com/japans-h3-rocket-forced-tself-destruct-during-launch-1850195538
Second test flight for failed H3 booster after a run of bad luck
Simon Sharwood - Mon 12 Feb 2024 06:31 UTC
Japan will on Wednesday try to reboot its space program with a second test flight for its H3 booster.
The H3 has been a decade in the making and can launch under its own power, or with the assistance of two or four external boosters. The craft's payload capabilities don't vastly exceed the workhorse H-IIA that Japan has successfully launched almost 50 times, but it is cheaper to operate. Japan's space exploration agency (JAXA) hopes the H3 will therefore allow it to launch more of its own payloads and win business. The launcher will also help JAXA's contributions to the International Space Station.
Sadly, March 2023's debut H3 launch did not go well. At the time, JAXA thought the command to ignite its second stage was not received. After observing telemetry suggesting the rocket had worryingly slowed its ascent, JAXA sent an instruction to self-destruct. That message was received and executed, sending the H3 and the land observation satellite it carried to their doom.
A subsequent investigation found the ignition command was probably received, but a minor short circuit in equipment used to ignite the second stage was the reason for the failure. The investigation found that short could be avoided with extra insulation and closer inspection of the rocket during assembly.
Japan's H3 rocket is set for a pivotal launch this week, aiming to reignite the nation’s space ambitions.
George Dvorsky - 12 February 2024
The H3 rocket—11 years in the making—is set for its second launch, following a flubbed debut in March 2023. Japan urgently needs the rocket to succeed, with a second failure risking further delays and monumental headaches for Japan’s space program.
H3 is ready to fly again after its botched maiden launch last year, with Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) targeting Wednesday, February 14 at 7:22 p.m. ET (Thursday, February 15 at 9:22 a.m. JST). The two-stage rocket, assisted by two side boosters, will blast off from Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center with a dummy payload and two small satellites on board.
The liquid-fueled H3 rocket flew for just 15 minutes on March 6, 2023, before mission controllers were forced to issue the dreaded self-destruct command. The first stage worked like a charm, but the same could not be said for the second stage, which failed to alight due to an electrical glitch. This came as a big surprise to the space agency; unlike the H3’s first stage, which features newer, more advanced technologies and innovations, the second stage relies on proven, established technologies that had been used in previous Japanese rockets, like the H-2 series.
https://gizmodo.com/after-an-explosive-first-attempt-japan-will-try-again-1851248287
ispace is seeking to become the first private company to successfully land on the Moon.
Eric Berger - 11/30/2022, 9:49 AM
It has been a busy second half of the year for the Moon. Since late June, three US rockets have launched payloads to the Moon, and one more is set for early Friday morning.
Across these four launches—two on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, one on Rocket Lab's Electron, and one on NASA's Space Launch System—there have been a total of 15 spacecraft sent to fly by the Moon, enter orbit, or land there. The most notable of these, of course, is NASA's Orion spacecraft, which is due to return to Earth on December 11.
This represents a remarkable renaissance in lunar exploration. Consider that, from 1973 to 2022, NASA and the United States sent a total of 15 spacecraft to the Moon over a period of five decades. Now, thanks to a mix of commercial, academic, and government payloads, US rockets will launch 15 spacecraft to the Moon in about five months.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-set-to-launch-two-spacecraft-to-the-moon-tonight/
Lift-off postponed for 'additional pre-flight checkouts'
Katyanna Quach - Wed 30 Nov 2022 22:30 UTC
SpaceX postponed the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a lunar lander and rover built by a private Japanese aerospace company and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency rover to the Moon, by one day.
The medium-lift launch vehicle, originally scheduled to fly at 0339 ET (0839 UTC) on Wednesday 30 November, is now expected to launch on Thursday 1 December at 0337 (0837 UTC). SpaceX announced the decision to push back the initial launch hours before Falcon 9 was due to take off, citing the need to perform “additional pre-flight checkouts” on Twitter.
The HAKUTO-R Mission 1, led by ispace, a private company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan will attempt the first commercial landing of a spacecraft on the Moon. ispace's Series 1 Lander will be tasked with lowering Rashid, a rover built by the UAE Space Agency, safely into the Atlas Crater, an 87-kilometre-wide structure formed by an ancient impact event, located in the Northeastern region.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/30/spacex_falcon_moon_landing/
Japan's Hakuto-R spacecraft is slowly winding its way to the Moon, and in doing so is charting into completely new territory as a private mission.
Passant Rabie - 1 March 2023
The Hakuto-R spacecraft won’t land on the Moon until April, but the private mission is already in the record books.
Tokyo-based company ispace developed the lunar spacecraft and lander with the aim of becoming the first private mission to successfully land on the Moon. During its long journey to the Moon, Hakuto-R got as far as 855,000 miles (1.376 million kilometers) away from Earth on January 20. That distance made the Japanese lunar spacecraft the “farthest privately funded, commercially operating spacecraft to travel into space,” the company said in its statement.
The lunar probe CAPSTONE, which is operated by private company Advanced Space, reached a further distance of 951,908 miles (1,531,948 km) from Earth on its way to the Moon, according to Space.com. However, the spacecraft was funded by NASA so it does not qualify as a purely commercial effort.
https://gizmodo.com/hakuto-r-lander-travels-farther-private-spacecraft-1850172703
Japan's science minister said the failure was “extremely regrettable.”
Eric Berger - 3/7/2023, 6:30 AM
The launch of Japan's H3 rocket on Tuesday morning, local time in Tanegashima, failed after the vehicle's second-stage engine did not ignite.
In a terse statement on the failure, Japanese space agency JAXA said, “A destruct command has been transmitted to H3 around 10:52 am (Japan Standard Time), because there was no possibility of achieving the mission. We are confirming the situation.”
The Japanese space agency, in concert with the rocket's manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has spent about $1.5 billion developing the H3 rocket over the last decade. Much of the challenge in building the new rocket involved development of a new LE-9 engine, which is fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, to power the first stage. This appeared to perform flawlessly. The second-stage engine that failed, the LE-5B, was a more established engine.
Jackie Wattles - Updated 2:25 PM EDT, Tue April 25, 2023
A Japanese lunar lander, carrying a rover developed in the United Arab Emirates, attempted to find its footing on the moon’s surface Tuesday — and potentially mark the world’s first lunar landing for a commercially developed spacecraft. But flight controllers on the ground were not immediately able to regain contact, prompting the company to presume the spacecraft was lost.
The lander, built by Japanese firm Ispace, launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on December 11. The spacecraft then made a three-month trek to enter orbit around the moon, which lies about 239,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) from Earth, using a low-energy trajectory. Overall, the journey took the lander about 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) through space.
Touchdown was expected to occur Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. ET, which is Wednesday at 1:40 a.m. Japan Standard Time.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/25/world/lunar-lander-japan-uae-hakuto-r-scn/index.html
Posted by msmash on Tuesday April 25, 2023 11:40AM
Japanese startup ispace assumed failure in its attempt to make the first private moon landing on Tuesday as engineers struggled to regain contact with the company's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander long after it was due for a lunar touchdown. From a report:
“We lost the communication, so we have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said on a company live stream, as mission control engineers in Tokyo continued to try regaining contact with the lander. The M1 lander appeared set to touch down around 12:40 p.m. Eastern time (1640 GMT Tuesday) after coming as close as 295 feet from the lunar surface, a live animation of the lander's telemtry showed.
Aria Alamalhodaei & Devin Coldewey - 25 April 2023
Japanese company ispace lost communication with its Hakuto-R lander just moments before it was supposed to touch down on the lunar surface.
“At this moment, we have not been able to confirm successful landing on the lunar surface,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said on the company’s livestream. “Currently, we have not confirmed the communication from the lander. […] We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface. ”
He said that ispace engineers will continue to assess the situation and provide an update once that investigation is complete.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Hakamada said that while it is possible that the lander is safe and intact on the surface, there is no data to support that yet and it’s unclear whether imagery from a lunar orbiter could shed light on the situation either.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/25/ispace-loses-contact-with-lunar-lander-seconds-before-landing/
Tokyo-based ispace was hoping to become the first commercial venture to safely place a lander on the lunar surface.
Passant Rabie - 25 April 2023
Tokyo-based company ispace appears to have failed in its attempt to land its lunar lander on the surface of the Moon, which would have made it the first private mission to land on the dusty lunar surface.
The Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander was scheduled to land on the lunar surface on Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. ET. The lander was targeting a landing site at the Moon’s Atlas crater in the far northern hemisphere called Mare Frigoris, also known as the Sea of Cold.
The spacecraft began its landing sequence about an hour before the scheduled touchdown. Following its cruise phase, the spacecraft emerged from the far side of the Moon at an altitude of around 15 miles (25 kilometers) above the lunar surface. The M1 lander hovered above the lunar surface, slowing down to smoothly touch down after an engine cut-off. Mission control lost contact with the lander minutes before its landing time, which was expected, but ispace controllers could not reestablish contact with M1 after the expected landing time.
https://gizmodo.com/japans-private-hakuto-r-lander-appears-crashed-moon-1850373730
Comms lost to Hakuto-R after apparent crash landing
Katyanna Quach - Tue 25 Apr 2023 21:01 UTC
A private company's first attempt to land a spacecraft on the Moon ended in apparent failure on Tuesday.
Japanese aerospace biz ispace's Hakuto-R lunar lander was supposed to touchdown on Earth's natural satellite today, though its mission control lost contact with the unmanned craft, and it is feared lost.
Launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on December 11, the lander spent months travelling toward the Moon and entered lunar orbit in March to prepare for landing. Carrying the United Arab Emirates' Rashid rover, the goal was to release the robot onto the lunar surface for scientific research.
The landing event was broadcast live from ispace's mission control centre (MCC) in Tokyo, Japan. You can replay the livestream below.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/25/ispace_hakutor_lunar_lander_crash/
Tokyo-based ispace has not been able to reestablish communications with its M1 lander since performing a landing attempt yesterday.
Passant Rabie - 26 April 2023
Following Tuesday’s failed attempt to land on the surface of the Moon, Japan’s ispace said its lunar lander may have unexpectedly accelerated on its way down before crashing on the lunar surface.
The Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander (M1) was scheduled to touchdown on the Moon on April 25 at 12:40 p.m. ET. “Shortly after the scheduled landing time, no data was received indicating a touchdown,” ispace wrote in a statement. “ispace engineers monitored the estimated remaining propellant reached at the lower threshold and shortly afterward the descent speed rapidly increased.”
Tokyo-based ispace officially declared its first mission a failure, although engineers are still analyzing the data collected before communication with the spacecraft was lost. Based on the data acquired so far, however, the company believes M1's altitude measurement system miscalculated the distance to the surface during its landing attempt. As a result, the lander may have failed to reduce its speed during its descent towards the lunar surface.
https://gizmodo.com/moon-lander-accelerated-before-crashing-moon-1850377581
The spacecraft likely 'made a hard landing on the moon's surface.'
Mariella Moon - April 26, 2023 7:05 AM
ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1 was poised to make history. It was going to be the first successful moon landing by a private company and the first Japanese lunar landing overall. But shortly before the spacecraft was supposed to touch down on the lunar surface, ispace lost contact with it. Now, the Japanese company has announced that there was a “high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the moon's surface.” It didn't use the word “crash,” but the spacecraft is clearly not in a condition that would allow the company to proceed with the mission.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on the moon on April 26th at 1:40 AM Japan time (April 25th, 12:40PM Eastern time). ispace said it was able to confirm that the lander was in vertical position as it approached the surface and that its descent speed rapidly increased by the time its propellant was almost gone.
By 8AM Japan time, ispace has determined that “Success 9” of Hakuto-R's mission milestones, which is the completion of its lunar landing, was no longer achievable. The company has yet to detail what happened to the spacecraft and what the root cause of the failure was, but it's currently analyzing the telemetry data it had acquired and will announce its findings once it's done.
A Japanese-Made Moon Lander Crashed Because a Crater Confused Its Software
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday May 28, 2023 01:44PM
Last month Japanese startup ispace tried to become the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon — but in the crucial final moments lost contact with its vehicle.
Now the Associated Press reports that company officials are revealing what happened: while trying to land, their vehicle went into free-fall. Company officials blame a software issue, plus a decision in December to change the touchdown location to a crater.
The crater's steep sides apparently confused the onboard software, and the 7-foot (2-meter) spacecraft went into a free-fall from less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) up, slamming into the lunar surface. The estimated speed at impact was more than 300 feet (100 meters) per second, said the company's chief technology officer, Ryo Ujiie.
26 May, 2023
Landing Anomaly Identified for Future Mission Improvements
TOKYO—May 26, 2023—ispace, inc., (ispace) a global lunar exploration company, announced today that it has reviewed and completed the analysis of the flight data from its HAKUTO-R Mission 1 landing sequence on April 26, 2023. The flight data was obtained by operations specialists at ispace’s Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo.
The analysis reveals that the lander fully completed the entire planned deceleration process, slowing to the target speed of less than 1 m/s in a vertical position at an altitude of approximately 5 kms above the lunar surface. Although the lander did not complete a soft landing, the cause has been identified and improvements are being incorporated into Mission 2 and Mission 3.
The results of ispace's investigation into the failed mission shows that Hakuto-R wasn't where it thought it was.
Passant Rabie - 26 May 2023 12:00PM
Japanese company ispace finally knows what caused its beloved lunar lander to crash on the surface of the Moon. The unlikely culprit behind the lander’s free-fall appears to have been a large cliff, which caused Hakuto-R to miscalculate its distance to the surface.
A month after the Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Lunar Lander plummeted towards the Moon’s cratered surface, Tokyo-based ispace released the findings of its investigation into the failure of its inaugural mission. The company revealed that, during the lander’s descent to the lunar surface, Hakuto-R estimated that it was very close to zero altitude when in reality it was roughly 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the surface. As a result, the lander slowed down its speeds on its way down, eventually running out of fuel and free-falling onto the Moon.
https://gizmodo.com/why-japan-private-lunar-lander-crashed-moon-1850479198
The company is ditching the Series-2 design for the Apex 1.0, which will now launch in 2026.
Passant Rabie - 29 September 2023
From its new headquarters in the U.S., Tokyo-based startup ispace will develop its Apex 1.0 lunar lander to transport NASA payloads to the Moon in 2026.
During a media briefing held Thursday, ispace unveiled its new lander design which will be used to deliver payloads to the surface of the Moon. ispace also announced that it was establishing its U.S. headquarters in Denver, Colorado, so that it can better serve its American customers.
The company’s upcoming mission has been delayed by a year in order to make time for the development of the lunar lander, which will replace the company’s Series-2 lander. Compared to Series-2, Apex 1.0 has a larger payload capacity, with the ability to carry up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms) to the lunar surface.
https://gizmodo.com/japans-ispace-delays-lunar-lander-mission-for-nasa-desi-1850888168
“It’s not impossible, so how do we overcome our hurdles?”
Stephen Clark – Jun 6, 2025 10:30 AM
A robotic lander developed by a Japanese company named ispace plummeted to the Moon's surface Thursday, destroying a small rover and several experiments intended to demonstrate how future missions could mine and harvest lunar resources.
Ground teams at ispace's mission control center in Tokyo lost contact with the Resilience lunar lander moments before it was supposed to touch down in a region called Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of Cold, a basaltic plain in the Moon's northern hemisphere.
A few hours later, ispace officials confirmed what many observers suspected. The mission was lost. It's the second time ispace has failed to land on the Moon in as many tries.
“We wanted to make Mission 2 a success, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to land,“ said Takeshi Hakamada, the company's founder and CEO.
Ryo Ujiie, ispace's chief technology officer, said the final data received from the Resilience lander—assuming it was correct—showed it at an altitude of approximately 630 feet (192 meters) and descending too fast for a safe landing. “The deceleration was not enough. That was a fact,” Ujiie told reporters in a press conference. “We failed to land, and we have to analyze the reasons.”
The company said in a press release that a laser rangefinder used to measure the lander's altitude “experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values.” The downward-facing laser fires light pulses toward the Moon during descent, and clocks the time it takes to receive a reflection. This time delay at light speed tells the lander's guidance system how far it is above the lunar surface. But something went wrong in the altitude measurement system on Thursday.
The Resilience lander was carrying a tiny rover, a miniature Swedish cottage, and several science payloads when it crashed onto the lunar surface. Ellyn Lapointe - June 6, 2025
A private Japanese spacecraft crashed into the Moon while attempting the country’s first commercial lunar landing on Thursday, June 5, the company has confirmed. This is the second failed moon mission for Tokyo-based ispace, which launched the Resilience lander aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in January.
ispace lost communication with Resilience less than two minutes before its scheduled landing on the Moon, the Associated Press reports. In a statement released this morning, the company explained that the spacecraft’s descent initially went smoothly. But once it reached an altitude of roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) above the lunar surface, mission control lost telemetry with the lander. After trying and failing to regain contact, ispace concluded that Resilience had most likely crash landed on the lunar surface, ending the mission.
“Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause,” said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, in the statement.
Rangefinder broke during descent so lander didn't slow down
Iain Thomson - Thu 5 Jun 2025 23:50 UTC
UPDATED Japanese firm ispace’s latest attempt to land a craft on the Moon appears to have failed, after its Hakuto-R lander, dubbed Reliance, went dark while approaching the lunar surface.
In a livestreamed event, ispace showed telemetry detailing the probe’s speed and altitude on its landing run towards the Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold). 102 seconds before scheduled touchdown, however, telemetry stopped reporting speed but did deliver an altitude of negative 233 meters (732 feet), which is clearly a glitch. You can watch the critical moments of the mission below.
According to one witness in the control room, there was silence after the signal was lost, then ispace switched to prerecorded film about the spacecraft and its instruments. The company says it can't communicate with the spacecraft and promised to reveal more info at a press conference promised to take place at 0000 UTC.
ispace has big dreams for lunar development, including a proposed 1,000-person self-sustaining city on the Moon, with over 10,000 tourists visiting a year. Its plans to have this built by 2040 look rather optimistic, given its troubles landing on the moon so far.
Ground controllers ordered the destruct command 10 minutes into the mission, once it became clear that the rocket was straying off course.
Passant Rabie -12 October 2022 12:00PM
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, destroyed its Epsilon-6 rocket mid-flight on Tuesday, resulting in the loss of eight commercial satellites that were included in the rideshare mission, local media reported.
JAXA sent out the self-destruct command to the solid-fuel rocket after space agency officials noted that the rocket was deviating from its proper trajectory and would not complete its mission. It’s the first time the small launch vehicle hasn’t reached orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/japans-epsilon-6-rocket-forced-to-self-destruct-with-8-1849647166
This is not why this mission was dubbed the 'Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration'
Simon Sharwood - Fri 14 Oct 2022 04:57 UTC
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is in damage control mode after a launch of its Epsilon rocket was terminated with a self-destruct command on Wednesday.
Epsilon is Japan’s small, cheap, launch platform. The solid-fuel powered craft can carry payloads totalling 590kg into orbit. It's designed for low-cost operations and an ability to carry several small satellites on each launch, thereby making space more accessible.
The Wednesday launch was Epsilon 6, and eight satellites came along for the ride – two of them commercial payloads.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/14/epsilon_6_mission_fail/
Yuri Kageyama - 7 September 2023
Japan launched a rocket Thursday carrying an X-ray telescope that will explore the origins of the universe as well as a small lunar lander.
The launch of the HII-A rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan was shown on live video by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, known as JAXA.
“We have a liftoff,” the narrator at JAXA said as the rocket flew up in a burst of smoke then flew over the Pacific.
Thirteen minutes after the launch, the rocket put into orbit around Earth a satellite called the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, which will measure the speed and makeup of what lies between galaxies.
That information helps in studying how celestial objects were formed, and hopefully can lead to solving the mystery of how the universe was created, JAXA says.
In cooperation with NASA, JAXA will look at the strength of light at different wavelengths, the temperature of things in space and their shapes and brightness.
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-japan-rocket-lunar-lander-x-ray.html
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will also contribute components to lunar Gateway in support of NASA's Artemis program.
Passant Rabie - 18 November 2022
NASA signed an arrangement with the Japanese government that extends Japan’s presence on the International Space Station (ISS) until 2030, in addition to contributing components for a future lunar outpost.
During a virtual meeting on Thursday, the two parties signed the Gateway Implementing Agreement, which entails Japan’s contribution to NASA’s lunar Gateway. The Gateway is a planned space station in orbit around the Moon to support the space agency’s Artemis program, which intends on establishing a sustainable presence of astronauts on the lunar surface.
https://gizmodo.com/japan-astronaut-gateway-lunar-space-station-jaxa-nasa-1849801758
Increase from 4 means Tokyo won't need to depend on U.S. system
SATOSHI KAWAHARA, Nikkei staff writer - May 8, 2023 03:36 JST
TOKYO – Japan intends to increase the number of satellites in its GPS-style system to 11 from four, letting users determine their precise location virtually anywhere in the country without relying on the American network.
Tokyo's space policy committee has set a goal to expand the Michibiki Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, a network of satellites in geosynchronous orbit above Japan and Australia.
Receiving signals from Michibiki as well as American GPS satellites allows users in the Asia-Oceania region to know their locations with an accuracy of several centimeters. GPS alone is said to be accurate to within several meters for civilian use.
The first Michibiki satellite was launched in 2010 on a Japanese H-IIA rocket. The system has operated with four satellites since 2018. Combining it with the American GPS lets users determine location information 24 hours a day.
Marcia Dunn - May 7, 2025
A private lunar lander from Japan is now circling the moon, with just another month to go before it attempts a touchdown.
Tokyo-based ispace said Wednesday morning its Resilience lander entered lunar orbit.
“The countdown to lunar landing has now officially begun,” the company said in a statement.
SpaceX launched Resilience with U.S-based Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander in January. Firefly got there first in March, becoming the first private outfit to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Another American company, Intuitive Machines, landed a spacecraft on the moon a few days later, but it ended up sideways in a crater.
Now it's ispace's turn. It's targeting the first week of June for Resilience's touchdown. The company's first lander crashed into the moon in 2023.
https://phys.org/news/2025-05-private-japanese-lunar-lander-orbit.html
As a result of the failure, Japan's private sector has yet to independently place a satellite in Earth orbit.
Passant Rabie - December 18, 2024
A Japanese startup’s second attempt to launch its solid-fuel rocket ended in chaos, with Kairos spiraling downwards a few minutes after lift off. The launch failure marks another setback for Japan’s private space industry after a series of explosive rocket attempts earlier this year.
Japan’s Space One launched its Kairos rocket on Wednesday from the company’s Spaceport Kii launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture. The rocket appeared to be flying normally at first, but things quickly started to fall apart. About two minutes after liftoff, Kairos appeared to lose attitude control, and began tumbling its way downwards. The rocket self-destructed after detecting abnormalities in the first-stage engine nozzle control and the rocket’s trajectory, Space One director Mamoru Endo told reporters during a post-launch briefing, according to Reuters.
Kairos was carrying five small satellites from the Taiwan Space Agency, and Japanese companies Lagrapo, Space Cubics, and Terra Space, as well as a fifth customer that wished to remain anonymous.
The piece of space debris is believed to be a separation ring from a rocket, according to Kenya's space agency.
Passant Rabie - January 2, 2025
A large metallic ring fell from the sky and crashed onto a village in Kenya. Early assessments of the fallen space debris suggested that it may have originated from a rocket, with the debris surviving reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.
The Kenya Space Agency is investigating an incident involving fragments of metal that fell onto Mukuku Village in Makueni County on Monday at 7 a.m. ET, according to a statement. There are no reported injuries, but the incident raises concern over the growing threat of space debris landing in populated areas.
https://gizmodo.com/unidentified-rocket-fragment-crashes-in-kenyan-village-2000544801
Wednesday, January 01, 2025 - Pius Maundu, Reporter, Nation Media Group
Two days after a mysterious metallic object fell from the sky and landed at Mukuku Village in Makueni County, fresh details about it have emerged.
The Kenya Space Agency, a government agency tasked with fostering responsible space activities, has identified the object as a separation ring from a rocket.
“Preliminary assessments indicate that the fallen object is a separation ring from a launch vehicle (rocket). Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans. This is an isolated case, which the agency will investigate and address using the established framework under the International Space law,” Kenya Space Agency said in a statement on Wednesday.
Kenya Space Agency says metal that landed in Makueni is a foreign object
“We want to assure the public that the object poses no immediate threat to safety. Our experts will analyse the object, use existing frameworks to identify the owner, and keep the public informed of the next steps and outcomes.”
The clarification came as a relief to a region whose holiday peace was disturbed by the metallic ring measuring about approximately 2.5 meters in diameter and weighing about 500 kilogrammes, according to the Kenya Space Agency.
The large ring weighs nearly half a ton and does not match a returning rocket.
Eric Berger – Jan 10, 2025 8:05 AM
It has been more than a week since reports first emerged about a “glowing ring of metal” that fell from the sky and crashed near a remote village in Kenya.
According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds (500 kg) and had a diameter of more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) when measured after it landed on December 30. A couple of days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris, saying it was a ring that separated from a rocket. “Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans,” the space agency told The New York Times.
Since those initial reports were published in Western media, a small band of dedicated space trackers have been using open source data to try to identify precisely which space object fell into Kenya. So far, they have not been able to identify the rocket launch to which the large ring can be attributed.
Now, some space trackers believe the object may not have come from space at all.
“It was suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is marginal.”
Passant Rabie - January 13, 2025
It’s been two weeks since a chunky metal ring crashed onto a village in Kenya, but authorities are still unable to pinpoint where it came from. The fallen object raises concern over how hard it is to trace space debris—and hold those responsible accountable.
The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) is still investigating the origin of a mysterious object that fell from the sky onto Mukuku Village in Makueni County during the early hours of Monday, December 30, 2024. As of today, however, the origin of the oval-shaped fragment remains a mystery. Although it was initially assumed that the ring was discarded space debris, there’s little evidence that ties it to a specific rocket or satellite.
The metallic ring is approximately 8 feet (2.5 meters) wide, and weighs about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms). Early assessment suggested that the object is a separation ring—a component used to connect payloads to rockets during launch, ensuring they are placed in orbit before the ring falls back to Earth. Separation rings are generally designed to burn up upon reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, or break up into smaller fragments that fall in uninhabited regions of the ocean.
The troubles with the long-in-development Angara A5 continue.
Eric Berger - 1/4/2022, 8:02 AM
The Russian space program has spent more than two decades developing the Angara family of rockets, and government officials have expressed high hopes for the Angara A5 heavy lift variant. It is hoped that the Angara A5 rocket can replace the venerable Proton booster, which is more than half a century old and in recent years has had reliability issues.
But the long-running development program has been slow. The Angara A5 finally made its debut in 2014, successfully lofting a 2-ton mass simulator into geosynchronous orbit. But then, six years passed before a second development flight in December 2020. This flight was again successful, with the rocket putting a 2.4-ton mass simulator into orbit.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/whats-going-on-with-russias-new-heavy-lift-rocket/
The upper stage spent nine days in a deteriorating orbit after a failed engine burn.
George Dvorsky - 7 January 2022
The Persei upper stage of a Russian Angara A5 rocket has fallen back to Earth after failing to reach its intended orbit, in what is another setback for this much-delayed project.
The impromptu piece of space junk performed its uncontrolled reentry over the Pacific ocean at 4:08 p.m. EST (21:08 UTC) on Wednesday, January 5, the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron confirmed in a tweet.
https://gizmodo.com/russian-rocket-section-makes-uncontrolled-reentry-over-1848320528
In space for nearly 15 years, the discarded object was like a “time bomb.”
Passant Rabie - 4 May 2022
An old Russian motor that’s been aimlessly floating through space for more than a decade has finally met its demise in a sudden explosion, producing at least 16 shards of orbital debris that now threaten satellites and other objects.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron confirmed through Twitter that a SOZ ullage motor exploded in space on April 15. At least 16 pieces of debris were created by the event, which the defense squadron is now tracking. The motor was used to launch three Russian GLONASS satellites in 2007, boosting them into the right orbit once they were in space. The motor had been orbiting idly in space since then, but with leftover high energy rocket propellant still packed inside.
“It’s sort of like a little bit of a time bomb, but without an actual timer,” astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Gizmodo.
https://gizmodo.com/russian-motor-spontaneously-explodes-in-orbit-creating-1848880566
Too much junk in the orbital trunk
Katyanna Quach - Wed 10 Aug 2022 07:30 UTC
Debris from a Russian anti-satellite missile is causing chaos in orbit, with shards of ex-spacecraft circling the Earth at perilous speeds.
Dan Oltrogge, chief scientist at space operations biz COMSPOC, explained how space junk generated from anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) are a “pressing threat to security and sustainability” at a talk during this week's annual Small Satellite Conference in Utah.
Debris from the 2021 destruction of Cosmos 1408, a 2,200kg offline signals intelligence satellite, has caused an uptick of close approaches – also known as “conjunction squalls” – with active spacecraft and satellites being launched into space.
“Conjunction squalls represent a step change in the number of conjunctions that a satellite or family of satellites experience with a fragmentation debris source,” Oltrogge told The Register.
A stray Moscow pup traveled into orbit in 1957 with one meal and only a seven-day oxygen supply
Alice George, Museums Correspondent - April 11, 2018
With a pounding heart and rapid breath, Laika rode a rocket into Earth orbit, 2,000 miles above Moscow streets she knew. Overheated, cramped, frightened, and probably hungry, the space dog gave her life for her country, involuntarily fulfilling a canine suicide mission.
Sad as this tale is, the stray husky-spitz mix became a part of history as the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Over the decades, the petite pioneer has repeatedly found new life in popular culture long after her death and the fiery demise of her Soviet ship, Sputnik 2, which smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere 60 years ago this month.
Soviet engineers planned Sputnik 2 hastily after Premier Nikita Khrushchev requested a flight to coincide with November 7, 1957, the 40th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. Using what they had learned from the unmanned and undogged Sputnik 1 and often working without blueprints, teams labored quickly to build a ship that included a pressurized compartment for a flying dog. Sputnik 1 had made history, becoming the first man-made object in Earth orbit October 4, 1957. Sputnik 2 would go into orbit with the final stage of the rocket attached, and engineers believed the ship’s 1,120-pound payload, six times as heavy as Sputnik 1, could be kept within limits by feeding its passenger only once.
Posted by msmash on Wednesday May 22, 2024 09:42AM
The United States has assessed that Russia launched what is likely a counter space weapon last week that's now in the same orbit as a U.S. government satellite, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed Tuesday. From a report:
“What I'm tracking here is on May 16, as you highlighted, Russia launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that we that we assess is likely a counter space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit,” Ryder said when questioned by ABC News about the information, which was made public earlier Tuesday by Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“Naming space as a warfighting domain was kind of forbidden, but that's changed.”
Stephen Clark - 5/23/2024, 4:08 PM
The launch of a classified Russian military satellite last week deployed a payload that US government officials say is likely a space weapon.
In a series of statements, US officials said the new military satellite, named Kosmos 2576, appears to be similar to two previous “inspector” spacecraft launched by Russia in 2019 and 2022.
“Just last week, on May 16, Russia launched a satellite into low-Earth orbit that the United States assesses is likely a counter-space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low-Earth orbit,” said Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations. “Russia deployed this new counter-space weapon into the same orbit as a US government satellite.”
Kosmos 2576 is flying in the same orbital plane as a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) spy satellite, meaning it can regularly approach the top-secret US reconnaissance platform. The launch of Kosmos 2576 from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome on a Soyuz rocket was precisely timed to happen when the Earth's rotation brought the launch site underneath the orbital path of the NRO spy satellite, officially designated USA 314.
The Soyuz rocket's Fregat upper stage released Kosmos 2576 into an orbit roughly 275 miles (445 km) above Earth at an inclination of 97.25 degrees to the equator.
Russia's heavy-lift Angara A5 rocket is about to launch on its fourth test flight.
Stephen Clark - 3/6/2024, 5:33 PM
By some measures, Russia's next-generation flagship rocket program—the Angara—is now three decades old. The Russian government approved the development of the Angara rocket in 1992, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a prolonged economic recession.
It has been nearly 10 years since Russia launched the first Angara test flights. The heaviest version of the Angara rocket family—the Angara A5—is about to make its fourth flight, and like the three launches before, this mission won't carry a real satellite.
This next launch will be a milestone for the beleaguered Angara rocket program because it will be the first Angara flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia's newest launch site in the country's far east. The previous Angara launches were based out of the military-run Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
Zaria Gorvett - 8th October 2023
Point Nemo has become the final resting place for hundreds of spacecraft. What will future archaeologists make of it?
In the middle of the South Pacific, around 2,688km (1,670 miles) from the nearest dry land, is a frigid patch of anonymous ocean – a deadly place of giant, ever-shifting swells, dramatic skies and storm-force winds. “The Southern Ocean is many shades of grey and can have huge waves… it's exciting and a little scary,” says Dee Caffari, a record-breaking British sailor and one of few people on the planet to visit this remote place.
In this distant spot, the furthest from any solid ground on Earth, there is little chance of rescue if you get into trouble. The only signs of life are triangular shark fin-like sails just above the water line in the distance – if you happen to visit at the same time as The Ocean Race, an annual round-the-world yachting competition. If not, you're out of luck.
The area is not routinely used for any other human activity, such as shipping or fishing – in fact, the nearest humans are often a very different kind of explorer: astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who are just 415km (258 miles) away when they pass overhead. This is known as the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, otherwise known as Point Nemo.
To find Point Nemo on a globe, you can simply look for the vast swathe of unbroken blue between New Zealand and southern Chile – it's roughly halfway. For a more exact location, triangulate between an uninhabited atoll, Ducie Island – part of the Pitcairn Islands – in the north, Antarctica's Maher Island in the south, the Chatham Islands in the west and Chile in the east. This is a place of superlatives: the most lonely, isolated and lifeless part of the ocean … even the seafloor is some 13,000ft (2.5 miles) from the surface.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231006-the-soviet-spacecraft-cemetery-in-the-pacific
Luna-24 returned to earth in 1976. With the launch of Luna-25, Russia hopes to enter the renewed race to the Moon.
Passant Rabie - 11 August 2023
Russia has successfully launched its Luna-25 mission to the Moon, which will attempt to land on the lunar south pole later this month. If it sticks the landing, Russia will become the first country to pull off a soft landing on the south polar region of the Moon.
Luna-25 launched on board a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket at 7:10 p.m. ET on Thursday (2:10 a.m. local time on Friday) from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia. It will take the spacecraft around five days to reach lunar orbit and another five days before its touchdown attempt, which is currently scheduled for August 21.
https://gizmodo.com/luna-25-russia-launches-first-moon-mission-in-47-years-1850728668
Luna 25 will attempt to land on the Moon the same week as India's Chandrayaan 3 probe.
Stephen Clark - 8/10/2023, 7:28 PM
Russia's space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country's first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976.
The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia's Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket propelled Luna 25 through an overcast cloud deck and into the stratosphere, then shed its four first-stage boosters about two minutes into the flight. A core stage engine fired a few minutes longer, and the Soyuz rocket jettisoned its payload shroud.
A third-stage engine fired next, then gave way to a Fregat upper-stage to place Luna 25 in orbit around Earth. The Fregat engine fired a second time to send the nearly 4,000-pound (1.8-metric ton) lunar probe on a roughly five-day trip toward the Moon. Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, declared the launch a success less than 90 minutes after liftoff, shortly after the Luna 25 spacecraft separated from the Fregat upper stage.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/russia-heads-back-to-the-moon-with-luna-25/
You can watch the liftoff here at 7:10 pm Eastern Time.
Will Shanklin - August 10, 2023 4:30 PM
Russia is heading back to the Moon as it tries to reassert itself as a significant world power in the wake of its war on Ukraine. A rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft will mark Russia’s first lunar mission since 1976. The expedition will attempt to land the exploration vehicle on the moon’s south pole, hoping to dig up water ice beneath the surface. You can tune in to watch the launch here.
The Soyuz 2.1v rocket carrying the lander is scheduled to lift off from the Vostochny spaceport in eastern Russia at 7:10 pm Eastern time. If successful, it would be the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole. NASA confirmed in 2020 the discovery of water molecules in sunlit parts of the Moon’s surface. Salvageable water could mark a breakthrough for lunar exploration, providing future human lunar missions with life support, fuel (through extracted hydrogen) and even potential agriculture.
https://www.engadget.com/russia-heads-to-the-moon-for-the-first-time-in-47-years-203057705.html
“The management team is currently analyzing the situation.”
Eric Berger - 8/19/2023, 12:06 PM
In a terse update posted on the social media network Telegram Saturday, the Russian space corporation Roscosmos said that an “emergency situation” had occurred on board its Luna 25 spacecraft.
The 1.2-ton lunar lander entered orbit around the Moon three days ago, and since that time Russian engineers have been sending commands for small engine burns to correct the spacecraft's orbit. Roscosmos sent another of these commands on Saturday to put Luna 25 into a “pre-landing orbit,” ahead of a landing that had been due to occur as soon as Monday.
However, during the maneuver at 14:10 Moscow time (11:10 UTC) on Saturday a problem occurred, which did not allow the operation to be carried out successfully. “The management team is currently analyzing the situation,” concluded the short statement from Roscosmos.
“There is no place for modernization, there is only the mission of survival.”
Eric Berger - 8/21/2023, 9:45 AM
On Saturday, the Russian space program lost the Luna 25 spacecraft, a relatively small vehicle that was due to land on the Moon this week. After a problem with the spacecraft's propulsion system, instead of entering a low orbit around the Moon, it crashed into the lunar surface.
The Russian mission to the Moon was one of several spacecraft that were to attempt a landing on the Moon in the next six months, alongside probes from Japan, India, and the United States. In this sense, Russia is just one of many nations participating in a second space race back to the Moon, alongside nations and private companies alike.
But unlike NASA, China, India, and several companies in the United States and Japan, the Luna 25 effort does not presage the coming of a golden era of exploration for Russia. Rather, it is more properly seen as the last gasp of a dying empire, an attempt by the modern state of Russia, and President Vladimir Putin, to revive old glories.
First lunar attempt since Soviet era ends in катастрофа
Simon Sharwood - Mon 21 Aug 2023 00:59 UTC
Russia’s rushed attempt to land a probe on the Moon has failed.
News that the mission was in trouble came on Saturday when national space agency Роскосмос (Roscosmos) used its Telegram account to reveal that the Luna 25 probe was instructed to enter its pre-landing orbit, but an emergency occurred, and the maneuver was not a success.
A subsequent post delivered the bad news: the botched burn missed its mark so badly that communication with Luna 25 was lost.
Attempts to reconnect on August 19 and 20 failed, and the space agency's analysis of the erroneous orbit Luna 25 entered saw it “switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/21/russia_moon_mission_luna25_fails/
The doomed Russian Luna 25 lander crashed on August 21, with its crater now discernable on the Moon’s surface.
George Dvorsky - 31 August 2023
NASA’s trusty Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images revealing a fresh crater on the Moon’s surface. This crater is suspected to be the impact site of the ill-fated Luna 25 mission, Russia’s first lunar attempt in nearly five decades.
The descent of the Luna 25 lander began on Saturday, August 19, but the mission went sour, with the vehicle crashing into the southwest rim of the Pontécoulant G crater. The crash was recorded at 7:58 a.m. ET on August 21. As noted in a NASA statement released earlier today, the newly formed crater spans about 32.8 feet (10 meters) in width, as confirmed by LROC imagery.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-probe-spots-crashed-russian-moon-lander-1850793784
All that's left of the Russian missile silo is a big hole in the ground.
Stephen Clark - 9/23/2024, 2:57 PM
Late last week, Russia's military planned to launch a Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on a test flight from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Imagery from commercial satellites captured over the weekend suggest the missile exploded before or during launch.
This is at least the second time an RS-28 Sarmat missile has failed in less than two years, dealing a blow to the country's nuclear forces days after the head of the Russian legislature issued a veiled threat to use the missile against Europe if Western allies approved Ukraine's use of long-range weapons against Russia.
Commercial satellite imagery collected by Maxar and Planet show before-and-after views of the Sarmat missile silo at Plesetsk, a military base about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow. The view from one of Maxar's imaging satellites Saturday revealed unmistakable damage at the launch site, with a large crater centered on the opening to the underground silo.
The crater is roughly 200 feet (62 meters) wide, according to George Barros, a Russia and geospatial intelligence analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “Extensive damage in and around the launch pad can be seen which suggests that the missile exploded shortly after ignition or launch,” Barros wrote on X.
“Additionally, small fires continue to burn in the forest to the east of the launch complex and four fire trucks can be seen near the destroyed silo,” Barros added.
After a total loss of power, many thought the Soviet's Salyut 7 space station was gone for good. But two bundled up cosmonauts gave it six more years of life.
Doug Adler - Friday, October 23, 2020
While most Western space enthusiasts remember the American Skylab space station, only some recall the long series of Soviet orbiting labs called the Salyut space stations. The last of these, Salyut 7, famously “died” in 1985, when a loss of power shut down all of its systems. But later that year, two cosmonauts risked their lives to revive the radio silent space station.
Salyut, variously translated as “salute” or “firework,” was a Soviet program that ran from 1971 to 1986 and included the world’s first space station, Salyut 1. The Salyut space stations had both military and civilian applications, but they were largely designed to pioneer the technology required to build modular space habitats.
https://astronomy.com/news/2020/10/the-forgotten-rescue-of-the-salyut-7-space-station
The R-7 family of rockets originated from an ICBM developed to carry nuclear weapons.
Eric Berger - Jan 2, 2025 7:24 AM
The Russian space program reached a significant milestone over the holidays with the 2,000th launch of a rocket from the “R-7” family of boosters. The launch took place on Christmas Day when an R-7 rocket lifted off, carrying a remote-sensing satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
This family of rockets has an incredible heritage dating back nearly six decades. The first R-7 vehicle was designed by the legendary Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev. It flew in 1957 and was the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Because the first Soviet nuclear warheads were massive, the R-7 vehicle was powerful enough to be converted into an orbital rocket.
A modified version of the R-7 rocket, therefore, launched the Sputnik satellite later in 1957. And the slightly more powerful “Vostok” version of the booster carried Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, opening the era of human spaceflight. The first Soyuz variant, a rocket that has been upgraded multiple times but remains similar to its original form, flew in 1966. Humans still fly on the Soyuz rocket today to the International Space Station.
“I wonder if gentle SpaceX is able to work in such conditions?”
Eric Berger - 12/21/2020, 5:57 AM
On Friday, a Soyuz 2.1b rocket launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, carrying its payload of 36 OneWeb satellites into space. Although Russia's newest spaceport is located in the far eastern part of the country, it still lies several hundred kilometers from the Pacific Ocean.
This means that as Soyuz rockets climb into space from this location, they drop their stages onto the sparsely populated Yakutia region below. With the Soyuz rocket, there are four boosters that serve as the rocket's “first stage,” and these drop away about two minutes after liftoff. Then, the “Blok A” second stage drops away later in the flight.
Although the Yakutia region is geographically rugged and sparsely populated, the Russian government does a reasonably good job of establishing drop zones for these stages and keeping them away from residential areas. This is what happened, as usual, with Friday's launch.
A swap arrangement is reportedly in the works between the Russian space agency and Arianespace.
Passant Rabie - 13 January 2023
The Russian space agency may be willing to return 36 satellites it’s been keeping hostage in Kazakhstan in exchange for parts of its Soyuz rockets that are being held in French Guiana.
According to a report by Russian Space Web, French aerospace company Arianespace might be looking into a deal with Roscosmos to swap components of the Russian Soyuz rocket for 36 OneWeb satellites that have been held at its Kazakhstan launch site since March. Roscosmos’s newly appointed head Yuri Borisov is reportedly open to negotiations with Arianespace, a source told Russian Space Web.
https://gizmodo.com/russia-trade-oneweb-satellites-soyuz-rocket-1849985034
Russia has spent nearly $1 billion on the development of the new Soyuz-5 rocket.
Eric Berger - 3/21/2023, 6:02 AM
The Soviet Union created the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1955 to serve as a test site for intercontinental ballistic missiles. A few years later it became the world's first spaceport with the launch of the historic Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1 missions. The sprawling cosmodrome was a mainstay of the Soviet space program.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia leased the spaceport from the government of Kazakhstan and currently has an agreement to use the facilities through the year 2050. Russia pays an annual lease fee of about $100 million. Neither country is particularly happy with the relationship; the Kazakh government feels like it is under-compensated, and the Russian government would like it to be in its own country, which is why it has moved in recent years to build a new launch site for most of its rockets in the Far East of Russia, at Vostochny.
The Soyuz booster and its launch systems are typically robust.
Eric Berger - 3/21/2024, 7:38 AM
On Thursday a crew of three people was due to launch on a Soyuz rocket, bound for the International Space Station.
However, the launch scrubbed at about 20 seconds before the planned liftoff time, just before the sequence to ignite the rocket's engines was initiated, due to unspecified issues. Shortly after the abort, there were unconfirmed reports of an issue with the ground systems supporting the Soyuz rocket.
The three people inside the Soyuz spacecraft, on top of the rocket, were NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus. This Soyuz MS-25 mission had been planned for liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 13:21 UTC (6:21 pm local time in Baikonur).
Such scrubs are rare. The Soyuz booster and its launch systems are typically robust, launching regardless of weather conditions—watching an orbital, liquid-fueled rocket launch during a snowstorm is quite a trip. And the Russians have plenty of experience with the booster. Since its debut in 1966, across a number of variants, the Soviet Union and Russia have launched more than 2,000 Soyuz rockets.
Marco Langbroek - Monday, May 16, 2022
Fifty years ago, on March 31, 1972, just days after the launch of Venera 8, the Soviet Union made an attempt to launch yet another Venera probe. While it was meant to fly to Venus, something went wrong and it got stuck in Earth orbit instead. It subsequently was post-designated Kosmos 482 by the Soviets. Half a century later, one object associated to this launch is still on orbit, but it won’t be for long anymore. This object is 1972-023E, the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft, ostensibly the landing module of the Venera in its approximately one-meter protective shell.
The identity and real size of this object have recently been put to discussion, with some arguing it is not just the lander but includes a substantially larger part of the original Venera bus. I will present evidence, both observational and modelled, that this object is in fact the landing module only, not a substantially larger part of Venera hardware. I model it to reenter some three to four years from now, around 2025–2026. Being designed to pass through the atmosphere of Venus, it will likely survive its reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
ABL's January rocket crash spilled 5,200 gallons of fuel onto Kodiak Island, in an accident that's fostering concern among some Alaska locals.
Lauren Leffer - 23 February 2023
When ABL Space System’s RS1 rocket exploded shortly after liftoff from the Pacific Spaceport Complex—Alaska on January 10, the resulting black mushroom cloud was visible from at least about 25 miles away. In a phone call with Gizmodo, one Kodiak Island resident, who requested anonymity for employment reasons, described the sight of the dark smoke pillar rising and expanding where they’d expected to watch a rocket shoot into the sky.
Nobody was injured in the incident, but the explosion and subsequent crash back to Earth destroyed ABL’s rocket and damaged the launch pad and other facilities, according to the company. It also spilled an estimated 5,200 gallons of Jet Fuel A into the surrounding environment—along with hydraulic, mineral, and lubricating oils, ash, burned batteries, and scraps of charred debris, according to Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation and a report from Alaska Aerospace Corporation, the private company that runs the launch site.
https://gizmodo.com/fuel-cleanup-underway-after-rocket-crash-alaska-1850146191
Aria Alamalhodaei - 9:44 AM PST November 15, 2024
Significant changes are coming to ABL Space Systems. The leader of the 7-year-old startup took to social media last night to make a big announcement: The company will no longer be focusing on the commercial launch market but will be turning instead to missile defense.
ABL had been developing a small launch vehicle called RS1 and a mobile ground system designed to fit inside a shipping container, with aspirations to bring truly portable, responsive launch to the market for the first time. To that end, the startup invested substantial capital into developing tech in-house, including a novel rocket engine, and in infrastructure; they had three test sites, two factories, and a launch site across three different states.
This growth has come at a considerable cost: In total, ABL Space has raised $461 million, with over half of that coming in via a $372 million Series B round in 2021 that valued the company at $2.4 billion.
But the startup encountered difficulties actually getting RS1 off the ground. During the first flight test in January 2023, the rocket’s nine engines spontaneously shut down shortly after liftoff, leading to it falling back to Earth, hitting the launchpad and being destroyed on impact. Prior to the second flight campaign this past July, ABL said the rocket suffered a serious anomaly during preflight testing that led to a loss of the vehicle.
“Our aircraft is a first stage because it actually contributes delta V.”
Eric Berger - 12/3/2020, 9:00 AM
An Alabama-based startup unveiled a launch system unlike any other on Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida.
The company is named Aevum, and until now it has largely operated in the background. But now, it's ready to show off some hardware, and it's starting with the “Ravn X” launch system's first stage. This autonomous aircraft and launch vehicle measures 24 meters long and has a wingspan of 18 meters. It has a gross takeoff mass of 25,000kg—massive for an uncrewed aerial vehicle.
Also, Ravn X looks really slick. Without a pilot on board, the drone can pull significantly higher g-loads and steeper ascent trajectories as it releases a rocket at altitudes between 10 and 20km.
“We claim that our aircraft is a first stage because it actually contributes delta V,” Jay Skylus, Aevum's founder and CEO, said in an interview with Ars.
Rocket Report: South Korea just misses orbit, Ariane 5 to set payload records
“We do not see any meaningful positive catalysts for the stock.”
Eric Berger - 10/22/2021, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 4.21 of the Rocket Report! Plenty of news this week across the realm of rockets, from a near-success in South Korea (better luck next time, Nuri rocket) to the long-awaited stacking of NASA's Space Launch System vehicle.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
“It would have been criminal not to do it.”
Eric Berger - 1/10/2022, 6:48 AM
There were two stunningly good pieces of news about the James Webb Space Telescope this past weekend. One was widely reported—that after an intricate, two-week process, the telescope completed its deployment without any difficulties. The next steps toward science operations are more conventional.
The other piece of news, less well-covered but still important, emerged during a news conference on Saturday. NASA's Mission Systems Engineer for the Webb telescope, Mike Menzel, said the agency had completed its analysis of how much “extra” fuel remained on board the telescope. Roughly speaking, Menzel said, Webb has enough propellant on board for 20 years of life.
“This is a source of challenge in every launcher development.”
Eric Berger - 6/16/2022, 12:04 PM
Europe's much-anticipated next-generation rocket, which has a roughly comparable lift capacity to SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, was originally due to launch before the end of 2020.
The Ariane 6 rocket has subsequently been delayed a few times, but before this week the European Space Agency had been holding to a debut launch date before the end of this year. However, during a BBC interview on Monday, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher said the rocket would not fly until sometime in 2023.
On Thursday, during a background call with reporters, a senior European Space Agency official provided more information about the reasons for the additional delay.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/europes-major-new-rocket-the-ariane-6-is-delayed-again/
For Arianespace, this is now the third failed launch of a Vega rocket in the last eight attempts.
Passant Rabie - 21 December 2022
Arianespace’s medium-lift Vega-C rocket failed to reach orbit on its second mission, resulting in the destruction of the two satellites on board.
The rocket, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), built by Italian company Avio, and operated by Arianespace, took off on Tuesday at 8:47 p.m. ET from the Kourou space base in French Guiana, carrying the Neo 5 and Neo 6 satellites for for Airbus’ Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging constellation.
https://gizmodo.com/vega-c-rocket-arianespace-second-launch-satellites-lost-1849918912
“A huge mistake would be that this focus on microlaunchers destabilizes Ariane 6 and Vega C.”
Eric Berger - 1/24/2023, 7:47 AM
The development of a commercial launch industry in Europe lags behind the United States by about 10 or 15 years, but there are now about a dozen startups in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France building small rockets sometimes referred to as “microlaunchers.”
The European Space Agency and several of these nations have provided a modicum of support to these companies, often in the form of launch contracts worth a few million dollars. But so far, European space institutions have stopped short of assisting these commercial companies more substantially, as NASA did with the commercial cargo and crew programs for the International Space Station.
Issue 5 Revision 1 - July 2011
https://www.arianespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Ariane5_users_manual_Issue5_July2011.pdf
Also on board, cubesat that dodges space debris with plasma braking technology
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 9 Oct 2023 18:02 UTC
Arianespace delivered 12 satellites into low earth orbit via a Vega rocket launch from Spaceport in French Guiana on Sunday night.
The rocket separated from Thailand's optical observation satellite, THEOS-2, and Taiwan's weather satellite, Triton, first. It followed up that maneuver 50 minutes later by releasing the ten remaining onboard cubesats from customers including the European Commission.
It was Arianespace's second attempt at launching the payload after an October 6 launch was canceled at the last minute. The scrub was thanks to a measurement coming in over the maximum threshold during the final countdown.
THEOS-2 was manufactured by Airbus for Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA). It operates in conjunction with the smaller THEOS-2A to provide information on water resources, weather, and land for the country's Ministry of Agriculture.
Triton is designed to collect information regarding wind fields over the ocean for Taiwan's Central Weather Administration to improve typhoon forecasts. The data will be shared with the global meteorology community.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/09/esa_vega_satellites_released/
It’s Tuesday, June 4th, 1996, and the European Space Agency is set to launch its new Ariane 5 rocket for the first time. This is the culmination of a decade of design, testing and a budget spending billions of euros
Michael Stroe - Feb 2, 2023
The goal of Ariane 5 is simple, but the stakes are high. It was designed to carry large, expensive payloads, both for scientific experiments and commercial purposes.
The rocket carried no astronauts. The first payload, the Cluster spacecraft, was made of four very expensive scientific satellites weighing 2,600 lbs each, to be delivered on an elliptical orbit.
Just 40 seconds after take-off, however, huge chunks of metal and burning fragments of Ariane Flight 501 are crashing down over the launch area. A shocking disaster for the ESA and a rough setback for the mission.
Arianespace Vega-C rocket failure sent two Airbus satellites into the Atlantic Ocean
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 6 Mar 2023 15:33 UTC
In December of last year, two of Airbus’ Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging satellites intended for a polar Sun-synchronous orbit aboard an Arianespace Vega C rocket ended up in the Atlantic Ocean instead.
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced the cause of the failure, as determined by an independent commission, last Friday: a gradual deterioration of the Zefiro 40 engine nozzle.
“More precisely, the Commission confirmed that the cause was an unexpected thermo-mechanical over-erosion of the carbon-carbon (C-C) throat insert of the nozzle, procured by Avio in Ukraine. Additional investigations led to the conclusion that this was likely due to a flaw in the homogeneity of the material,” said a prepared statement posted by both the ESA and Arianespace.
The commission concluded the design of the Zefiro 40 was fine, but the C-C material didn’t meet flightworthiness criteria and thus can no longer be used in the rockets. Instead, the rocket will use the Zefiro 40 design but with a different C-C material. That material is already in use in two different nozzles made by the same company, Avio, for Arianespace’s predecessor launcher, Vega.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/06/nozzle_material_determined_cause_of/
Launches of OneWeb satellites were suspended following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but the new deal with Arianespace offers hope for the SpaceX rival.
Passant Rabie - 14 September 2022 1:20PM
After having to cancel launches aboard Russian Soyuz rockets, British satellite company OneWeb has reached a settlement agreement with Arianespace that could see a resumption of the suspended launches.
Arianespace announced on Wednesday that it was “supporting OneWeb on its upcoming launches,” but did not disclose the terms of the agreement. OneWeb had been sending its internet satellites to orbit as part of a former agreement with Arianespace, which used Russia’s Soyuz rockets to launch 428 of OneWeb’s planned 648 broadband satellites. But the company’s agreement with the Russian space agency quickly deteriorated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forcing OneWeb to cancel its launches.
https://gizmodo.com/arianespace-oneweb-poised-resume-suspended-launches-1849534913
Independence Day launch will leave Europe dependent on the US for space missions
Iain Thomson - Tue 4 Jul 2023 16:04 UTC
On Tuesday July 4, the last Ariane 5 rocket will blast off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. As the rocket's red glare fades, Europe will be without a heavy-lift rocket for the first time in decades, with no reusable one in sight.
It will be quite an Independence Day for ArianeGroup, Europe's domestic rocketry business. It's going to have to buy launches from US-based SpaceX for a while, given the first Ariane 6 rocket – in development since 2014 – isn't expected before the end of the year. And it's likely to be delayed further – basic engine tests are still ongoing.
“Europe … finds itself today in an acute launcher crisis with a (albeit temporary) gap in its own access to space and no real launcher vision beyond 2030,” Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, warned in May.
The Ariane 5 has been the workhorse of European orbital delivery for nearly 30 years, albeit with some issues at first. The first launch, on June 4, 1996, had to be destroyed after faulty software caused it to veer off course. Since then, the rocket has a success rate of over 95 percent.
The venerable vehicle has had 111 successful launches from a total of 116. When the James Webb Space Telescope launched last Christmas, NASA told The Register that Ariane 5 was chosen as “a safe pair of hands,” for the instrument's delivery nearly a million miles from home.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/04/ariane_5_final_launch/
After nearly three decades, the Ariane 5 rocket reaches the end of the line.
Eric Berger - 7/3/2023, 7:22 AM
The Ariane 5 rocket has had a long run, with nearly three decades of service launching satellites and spacecraft. Over that time, the iconic rocket, with a liquid hydrogen-fueled core stage and solid rocket boosters, has come to symbolize Europe's guaranteed access to space.
But now, the road is ending for the Ariane 5. As soon as Tuesday evening, the final Ariane 5 rocket will lift off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. A 90-minute launch window opens at 5:30 pm ET (21:30 UTC). The launch will be webcast on ESA TV.
And after this? Europe's space agency faces some difficult questions.
Posted by msmash on Monday July 03, 2023 07:49AM
An anonymous reader shares a report:
The Ariane 5 rocket has had a long run, with nearly three decades of service launching satellites and spacecraft. Over that time, the iconic rocket, with a liquid hydrogen-fueled core stage and solid rocket boosters, has come to symbolize Europe's guaranteed access to space. But now, the road is coming to an end for the Ariane 5. As soon as Tuesday evening, the final Ariane 5 rocket will lift off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. A 90-minute launch window opens at 5:30 pm ET (21:30 UTC). The launch will be webcast on ESA TV. And after this? Europe's space agency faces some difficult questions.
The jumbo rocket will liftoff for the last time on Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. ET, ending nearly 30 years of dutiful service.
Passant Rabie - 5 July 2023
After nearly three decades of delivering precious payloads to space—including the Webb Telescope—the Ariane 5 rocket is set for retirement, and at a time when Europe is struggling to gain access to the final frontier.
French company Arianespace will launch its heavy-lift launch vehicle on Wednesday during a 90-minute launch window that opens at 6:00 p.m. ET. Ariane 5 will liftoff for the last time from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, and its bittersweet launch will be aired live. The broadcast will begin at 5:30 p.m. ET through Arianespace’s YouTube Channel and you can also tune in through the feed below.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-ariane-5-rocket-performs-final-flight-1850605708
Called SUSIE, the reusable spacecraft would be capable of delivering crews and cargo to space, and perform vertical landings when returning home.
Passant Rabie - 19 September 2022 3:10PM
French aerospace company ArianeGroup has revealed a concept for a reusable upper stage spacecraft that would be capable of delivering heavy payloads to space and carry out crewed missions before landing vertically back on Earth.
SUSIE, short for Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration, was introduced to the world at the International Astronautical Congress held in Paris from September 18 to 22. The fully reusable upper stage could eventually serve as an automated freighter and payload transporter, as well as a spacecraft for crewed missions carrying a crew of up to five astronauts. SUSIE remains a concept for now, but if realized, the spacecraft would support various European space endeavours for years to come.
https://gizmodo.com/arianegroup-concept-reusable-upper-state-spacecraft-1849553008
The European Space Agency is building a test model of Ariane 6's core stage ahead of the rocket's first flight, currently scheduled for 2023.
Kevin Hurler - 12 October 2022 3:10PM
The European Space Agency is gearing up to test a new rocket to add to its fleet. A test model of the Ariane 6, which is set to become ESA’s new vehicle for getting payloads into low Earth orbit, is undergoing assembly in French Guiana in anticipation of its first launch next year.
Ariane 6, the next generation of ESA rockets, will be replacing Ariane 5 as the agency’s choice method of getting payloads into geostationary transfer orbit and low Earth orbit. Ariane 6 is still a ways away from its scheduled 2023 launch, but in the meantime, ESA is prepping Ariane 6 for testing, as seen in a newly released time-lapse video captured at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
https://gizmodo.com/time-lapse-unique-horizontal-assembly-ariane-6-rocket-1849648085
The heavy-lift launch vehicle was originally slated for a 2020 liftoff, but the project has suffered from numerous delays.
Passant Rabie - 20 October 2022 9:55AM
The European Space Agency is now targeting late 2023 for the inaugural launch of its next-generation Ariane 6 rocket, in what is yet another delay for the debut of this heavy-lift launch vehicle.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher announced that Ariane 6's inaugural flight is now scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023, while cautioning that the date range is still not final.
https://gizmodo.com/first-launch-ariane-6-rocket-slips-late-2023-1849678513
Now the Ariane 6 rocket is failing even its most basic task.
Eric Berger - 4/18/2023, 8:02 AM
After much political wrangling among Germany, France, and Italy, the member governments of the European Space Agency formally decided to move ahead with development of the Ariane 6 rocket in December 2014.
A replacement rocket for the Ariane 5 was needed, European ministers decided, because of cost pressure from commercial upstarts like SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. With the design of the Ariane 6, they envisioned a modernized version of the previous rocket, optimized for cost. Because Ariane 6 would use a modified Vulcain engine and other components from previous Ariane rockets, it was anticipated that the new rocket would debut in 2020.
With further Ariane 6 delays, Europe has missed a huge opportunity.
Eric Berger - 5/12/2023, 7:53 AM
The European Space Agency posted an update Friday on the status of its flagship rocket, the Ariane 6 vehicle. While the space agency did not provide a concrete launch target for the rocket's debut flight, it shared information on key milestones to be completed, including a test firing of the rocket's first stage in French Guiana.
Even without an updated launch date, it can reasonably be inferred from the new information that the Ariane 6 rocket will not launch this year. The question now is how far the debut of the much-anticipated rocket will slip into 2024.
Here's why: During a news conference in October 2022, the director general of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, laid out the pathway for the Ariane 6 rocket to make its debut in 2023. “There are three very big milestones ahead of us that need to be accomplished by the first quarter of 2023 in order for the inaugural flight by the end of next year,” he said at the time.
The three milestones he cited were: two wet-dress rehearsals and a hot fire test of a non-flight version of the Ariane 6 first stage at the launch site in French Guiana; the initiation of a “unified qualification review” of the rocket and its ground systems; and completion of a campaign to test fire the rocket's upper stage in Germany.
Officials don't plan to broadcast a key Ariane 6 test-firing on its launch pad.
Stephen Clark - 8/2/2023, 2:57 PM
Last month, a full-scale test model of Europe's Ariane 6 was put to the test on its launch pad in the jungles of French Guiana. For the first time, the launch team at the tropical spaceport loaded cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the Ariane 6 over the course of a marathon 26-hour test campaign.
But it took a week for the European Space Agency, which is funding the 3.8 billion euro ($4.1 billion) development of Ariane 6, to release an update on the test. It turned out the launch team could not accomplish one of the main goals of the countdown rehearsal: A brief four-second ignition of the Ariane 6's main engine.
An ESA spokesperson described the test on July 18 as “very satisfactory” even though the engine didn't light. It's true that the simulated countdown checked off some key objectives. The launch team in French Guiana—consisting of membership from ESA, prime contractor ArianeGroup, and the French space agency CNES—supervised the loading of more than a half-million liters of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the 207-foot-tall (63-meter) Ariane 6.
“The price? It’s better to speak about them with our customers.”
Eric Berger - 9/5/2023, 9:29 AM
Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket is reaching its decisive phase of testing, officials said this week. This includes a short- and long-duration firing of the rocket's first stage at European launch facilities in French Guiana, tests that could occur today and about one month from now.
“They are really the decisive moments when we see how the engines operate under full throttle,” the director general of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, said during a press briefing on Monday.
Aschbacher declined to specify a launch target for the new medium-lift rocket, the development of which began in 2014 was originally due to make its debut in 2020. The European Space Agency and the rocket's prime contractor, ArianeGroup, are now working toward a launch in 2024.
The development of Ariane 6 has become critical due to these delays and the loss of access to the Russian Soyuz rocket after the onset of war in Ukraine. This has forced the European Space Agency to rely on launch competitors, particularly SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket, for getting some of its critical missions into space.
ESA officials are optimistic about announcing a launch date that's “not too late” in 2024, provided upcoming tests are successful.
Passant Rabie - 5 September 2023
Following numerous delays and technical hiccups, the Ariane 6 rocket is undergoing a series of tests that could finally determine a launch period for the heavy-lift launch vehicle at some point next year.
The European Space Agency (ESA) hopes to set a launch date for the long-delayed Ariane 6 rocket after it completes a series of tests in October. Ariane 6 completed a hot fire test on Friday at the German aerospace agency’s test centre in Lampoldshausen, Germany, ESA announced on Monday. During the test, engineers fired up the rocket’s Vinci upper stage engine, powered by a cryogenic mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, for 11 minutes and went through the sequence of operations that will take place during its first mission. The last of a series of tests is set to take place on October 3, after which ESA hopes to be able to announce a launch date for Ariane 6 that will likely take place in 2024.
https://gizmodo.com/ariane-6-rocket-european-space-agency-delays-1850805673
Europe is subsidizing the launch of Internet satellites for Jeff Bezos.
Eric Berger - 10/12/2023, 8:26 AM
Nearly a decade ago, the European Space Agency announced plans to develop the next generation of its Ariane rocket, the Ariane 6 booster. The goal was to bring a less costly workhorse rocket to market that could compete with the likes of SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster and begin flying by 2020.
It has been well documented that development of the Ariane 6 is running years behind—the vehicle is now unlikely to fly before the middle of 2024 and subject to further delays. For example, a critical long-duration hot fire of the vehicle's Vulcain 2.1 main engine had been scheduled for “early October,” but there have been no recent updates on when this key test will occur.
However, there are also increasing concerns that the Ariane 6 rocket will not meet its ambitious price targets. For years, European officials have said they would like to cut the price of launches by half with a rocket that is easier to manufacture and by flying an increased cadence of missions.
The price of Ariane rockets, for the public, has always been something of a black box. However, a reasonable estimate for a baseline Ariane 5 rocket is 150 million euros. Cutting that price in half, therefore, would be about 75 million euros. That is reasonably competitive with the Falcon 9 rocket, which has a base price of $67 million (63 million euros).
“I certainly expect a paradigm shift on the launcher sector.”
Eric Berger - 11/6/2023, 7:00 AM
European space officials will convene on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the future of space policy for the continent. The “Space Summit” gathering in Seville, Spain, will encompass several topics, including the future of launch.
“Seville will be a very decisive moment for space in Europe,” said the director general of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, on the eve of the summit. “On launchers and on exploration, I expect ministers to really make very bold decisions. I certainly expect a paradigm shift on the launcher sector.”
Aschbacher has previously described Europe's rocket predicament—the venerable Ariane 5 has retired, its replacement, Ariane 6, is not ready, and the smaller Vega C rocket is also having teething problems—as an acute crisis. Now, it's possible this crisis will lead to the breakup of a decades-long partnership in Europe, led by the nations of France, Germany, and Italy, to collaborate on the development of launch capabilities.
A new deal keeps the Ariane 6 rocket afloat while looking ahead to new launchers.
Stephen Clark - 11/7/2023, 7:19 AM
Representatives from 22 European countries reached an agreement Monday to change the way the continent's rockets are developed, moving from a government-driven approach to a commercial paradigm that appears to be modeled after how NASA and the US military do business.
This is a big moment for the European Space Agency and its member states, which have traditionally funded the lion's share of rocket development costs since the start of Europe's launcher programs more than half a century ago. Josef Aschbacher, a scientist who took over as director general of ESA in 2021, has argued that Europe is in an “acute launcher crisis” now that the continent lacks independent launch capability for most of its space missions.
Officials from ESA's 22 member states met Monday for a Space Summit in Seville, Spain, to decide on several priorities for the space agency. The rocket question was perhaps the most pressing among the topics up for discussion.
“I think it is fair to say today is a very successful day for space in Europe,” Aschbacher said Monday. “I would almost call it historic because we have made decisions which will have long implications for the future.”
Latest launch sim went off without a hitch. An upper stage test, not so much
Simon Sharwood - Wed 20 Dec 2023 07:32 UTC
The European Space Agency (ESA) has declared its Ariane 6 rocket is “ready to go” – at least in terms of its ability to launch the long - delayed rocket. But some concerns remain about the performance of its upper stage.
That mixed news came in a Tuesday post that detailed two recent tests of the rocket.
A December 7 test of the rocket's upper stage assumed a normal liftoff, but then introduced what the ESA described as “degraded conditions to assess the robustness of the stage and how it would behave in extreme and unexpected conditions.”
The test was aborted after sensors detected that some parameters had gone beyond predetermined thresholds. Engines were shut down and the upper stage test model placed in a safe condition.
This was not the result the ESA wanted. But it also wasn't disastrous, because the test didn't use a normal Ariane 6 flight profile or the configuration it will use on its first flight. Results of an investigation are due in January 2024, but the ESA stated it is “confident that these investigations will not impact the schedule to Ariane 6 inaugural flight.”
A test staged on December 15 went rather better.
Ariane 6 is key to Europe's space ambition, but the program has suffered a series of technical hiccups.
Passant Rabie - 12 April 2024 1:54PM
The highly anticipated first flight of Ariane 6 may finally take place this summer after years of delays. But before we can get too excited, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher is already setting the rocket up for failure without it even reaching the launchpad yet.
During a panel discussion at the 39th Space Symposium held this week, Aschbacher pointed out that heavy-lift rockets have a 47% chance of experiencing a major anomaly during their inaugural flights, European Spaceflight reported. Although he didn’t refer to Ariane 6 specifically, the statement puts a major damper on the upcoming debut of the long-awaited heavy-lift rocket.
Ariane 6 has been in development for more than a decade. The 197-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket is capable of lifting 10 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 4.5 metric tons to Sun synchronous orbital (SSO) altitudes reaching 500 miles (800 kilometers), and upwards of 10.5 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbits (GEO). French company Arianespace is developing the rocket on behalf of ESA, with Ariane 6 serving as a successor to the now-retired Ariane 5. The legendary rocket performed its final flight in July, ending a 27-year run.
https://gizmodo.com/long-awaited-ariane-6-rocket-faces-tough-odds-in-first-1851404717
Core and boosters are on the pad ahead of (maybe) June launch
Simon Sharwood - Mon 29 Apr 2024 04:02 UTC
The European Space Agency is ready to put together the first Ariane 6 rocket, and has declared the campaign to get it into orbit is under way.
A Friday post from the agency revealed that the central core and boosters of the first Ariane 6 are now on the launchpad at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
The core made the journey to the launch pad on April 24 atop the four automated guided vehicles that the ESA uses to move rockets to their last Earthly resting place. The vehicles trundle along at 3km/h, making for a gentle 16-minute journey across the 800 meters between the launcher assembly building and the pad.
The boosters were shipped on 25 and 26 April, aboard a truck specially designed to carry them.
In the next few days the ESA will raise the central core to move the boosters a few centimeters. Once that's done, the core will then be supported by the boosters. Rocket scientists and engineers will then make the necessary mechanical and electrical connections to get Ariane 6 ready to fly.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/ariane_6_campaign_begins/
Just a wet dress rehearsal left before debut launch
Richard Speed - Thu 6 Jun 2024 14:30 UTC
The much-delayed Ariane 6 rocket is scheduled to launch on July 9 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
The date was announced by European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher in Berlin this week.
Europe lost its domestic heavy-lift capability with the retirement of the Ariane 5. The plan for the Ariane 6 was to create something more flexible and cheaper than its predecessor – the launcher can carry more and heavier satellites than the Ariane 5 and features an upper-stage engine that can be relit multiple times.
However, ESA managers would be happy just to see an Ariane 6 get off the ground. A combination of delays in the development of the Ariane 6, the loss of the Soyuz launch capability due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the failure of the Vega-C has left the agency having to use alternative providers to get its spacecraft into orbit.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/06/july_9_ariane_6_launch/
Europe has been without its own launch vehicle for the last year after the retirement of Ariane 5.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Jul 7, 2024, 10:28 AM PDT
Ariane 6, the European Space Agency’s next-gen heavy-lift rocket, is expected to take its inaugural flight on July 9, ending a yearlong gap in Europe’s ability to access space on its own. The launch vehicle, made by ArianeGroup, replaces Ariane 5, which was retired last July following its 117th mission. The launch window opens at 2PM ET on Tuesday (8PM CEST).
Ariane 5 was in operation from 1996 to 2023 and was ESA’s main launch system. Ariane 6 was supposed to take over right away after its predecessor’s retirement, but years of delays in its development meant it ultimately wasn’t ready in time. As a result, ESA has had to rely on other launch providers, like SpaceX, to get science missions off the ground over the last year. If all goes smoothly with Ariane 6, Europe will be back in the game. “Ariane 6 marks a new era of autonomous, versatile European space travel,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in June, adding that it “will re-establish Europe’s independent access to space.”
Aria Alamalhodaei - 11:42 AM PDT July 8, 2024
urope’s next-generation launch vehicle, the Ariane 6, is poised to lift off for the first time tomorrow, as the continent looks to build out sovereign access to space and ensure European missions are launched by European rockets.
The heavy-lift rocket will launch from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, with a four-hour launch window that starts at 11 a.m. PST on July 9. This launch follows years of delays that left Europe without a capable launch vehicle when the workhorse Ariane 5 was retired last year.
That rocket once dominated global space launches, and even last year launched high-profile missions like the James Webb Space Telescope, though it’s been vastly outshone by SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets in recent years.
Ariane 6’s delays, combined with launch failures from a smaller European rocket called Vega C, have left the continent reliant on commercial launch providers like SpaceX. But European authorities have been uneasy about this lack of locally sourced launch options, and are pinning their hopes on Ariane 6 to return it.
Lucia Linares, head of space transportation strategy and institutional launches at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a press briefing last month that the rocket is “a true European public and industrial undertaking,” with 13 ESA member states and 600 European companies contributing to the launcher. While ESA architected the rocket, the building was done by the aerospace engineering giant ArianeGroup. CNES, France’s space agency, is responsible for the launch base and launch complex development.
Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, made its inaugural flight from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana at 16:00 local time on 9 July (20:00 BST, 21:00 CEST).
09/07/2024 - European Space Agency (ESA)
Ariane 6 is the latest in Europe's Ariane rocket series, taking over from Ariane 5, and featuring a modular and versatile design that can launch missions from low-Earth orbit and farther out into deep space.
“A completely new rocket is not launched often, and success is far from guaranteed. I am privileged to have witnessed this historic moment when Europe's new generation of the Ariane family lifted off – successfully – effectively reinstating European access to space,” said ESA's Director General Josef Aschbacher.
“An inaugural launch is a huge undertaking from thousands of people who have worked relentlessly for years. To see it perform wonderfully at the first attempt is testament to their dedication and a demonstration of European excellence in engineering and technology. Heartfelt thanks go to the teams at ESA, CNES, ArianeGroup and Arianespace for their hard work to get to this point. I also want to sincerely thank our Member States for having enabled and supported the Ariane 6 programme along the way. Not always easy, but the endurance shown has paid off handsomely today.”
Ariane 6 launched into orbit, but an upper stage problem kept it from completing the demo flight.
Stephen Clark - 7/9/2024, 11:22 PM
The first European Ariane 6 rocket fired off its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon rainforest and climbed into orbit Tuesday, an inaugural flight a decade in the making that restored Europe's ability to put its own large satellites into space.
The debut of the Ariane 6 rocket came almost exactly one year after Europe's previous workhorse rocket, the Ariane 5, flew for the final time. Running four years late, the Ariane 6 is set to become Europe's next flagship launcher. But delays in its development, combined with other factors, forced European governments to pay SpaceX to deliver several payloads to orbit.
With Tuesday's test flight, European space officials hope those days are behind them. The European Space Agency paid more than $4 billion to get the Ariane 6 rocket to this point, with the goal of replacing the Ariane 5 with a cheaper, more capable launcher. There are still pressing questions about Ariane 6's cost per launch, and whether the rocket will ever be able to meet its price target and compete with SpaceX and other companies in the commercial market.
As Ariane 6 transitions to commercial operations, ESA member states have agreed to continue propping up the program with hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies per year. The Ariane 6 rocket is expendable, and is one of only a few launchers of its size worldwide without at least a roadmap to evolve into a partially reusable vehicle.
“For this sovereignty, we must yield to the temptation of preferring SpaceX.”
Stephen Clark – Mar 6, 2025 1:19 PM
Europe's Ariane 6 rocket lifted off Thursday from French Guiana and deployed a high-resolution reconnaissance satellite into orbit for the French military, notching a success on its first operational flight.
The 184-foot-tall (56-meter) rocket lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 11:24 am EST (16:24 UTC). Twin solid-fueled boosters and a hydrogen-fueled core stage engine powered the Ariane 6 through thick clouds on an arcing trajectory north from the spaceport on South America's northeastern coast.
The rocket shed its strap-on boosters a little more than two minutes into the flight, then jettisoned its core stage nearly eight minutes after liftoff. The spent rocket parts fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The upper stage's Vinci engine ignited two times to reach a nearly circular polar orbit about 500 miles (800 kilometers) above the Earth. A little more than an hour after launch, the Ariane 6 upper stage deployed CSO-3, a sharp-eyed French military spy satellite, to begin a mission providing optical surveillance imagery to French intelligence agencies and military forces.
“This is an absolute pleasure for me today to announce that Ariane 6 has successfully placed into orbit the CSO-3 satellite,” said David Cavaillolès, who took over in January as CEO of Arianespace, the Ariane 6's commercial operator. “Today, here in Kourou, we can say that thanks to Ariane 6, Europe and France have their own autonomous access to space back, and this is great news.”
Ariane 6 - 06.03.2025
On March 6, 2025 at 1:24 p.m. local time in Kourou, French Guiana (4:24 p.m. UTC, 5:24 p.m. CET), Ariane 6, the new European heavy-lift launcher operated by Arianespace, lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport carrying the CSO-3 satellite on behalf of the French Defense Procurement Agency (DGA) and the French space agency (CNES), for the French Air and Space Force’s Space Command (CDE).
With this first commercial mission, Ariane 6 successfully placed CSO-3 into sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) at an altitude of 800 km. Spacecraft separation occurred 1 hour and 6 minutes after lift-off.
CSO-3 is the third satellite in the MUSIS (MUltinational Space-based Imaging System) program led by the DGA. This Earth observation system of three satellites is designed for defense and security purposes. They are equipped with the latest generation of optical sensors and guarantee the continuity of France’s optical Earth surveillance resources, transmitting very high resolution (VHR) images for France’s armed forces and its European partners. CSO-1 and CSO-2 were both successfully launched by Arianespace, in 2018 and 2020 respectively. Each satellite was developed by Airbus Defence and Space as prime contractor, with Thales Alenia Space prime contractor for the VHR optical instrument.
Two cubesats on Arianespace's Vega mission failed to deploy, marking the latest setback for the European space industry.
Passant Rabie - 19 October 2023 4:55PM
Arianespace’s latest Vega mission failed to deploy two of its payloads to orbit, likely due to a failure with the release mechanism with the rocket’s upper stage.
Vega VV23 lifted off on October 8 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 9:36 p.m. ET. The rocket was carrying an Earth observation satellite and a weather satellite, as well as 10 cubesats. Shortly after launch, Arianespace announced that its primary payloads, the Airbus Defense’s THEOS-2 and the Taiwan Space Agency’s FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON satellites, and eight of its secondary payloads were successfully deployed. The company noted, however, that the separation of two cubesats “is still to be confirmed.”
https://gizmodo.com/two-cubesats-likely-lost-in-latest-european-rocket-mish-1850941958
Also: Cygnus named for Columbia 'naut, and Space Shuttle Endeavour dressed up for launch
Thu 17 Sep 2020 / 09:15 UTC - Richard Speed
In brief “As we've always said, we expect it to take three flights to make it to orbit,” upstart launch vehicle outfit Astra bravely said as its imaginatively named Rocket 3.1 went phut shortly after lift-off last week.
Having conducted a pair of sub-orbital tests in 2018, the company emerged from the shadows in 2020 with plans to conduct an orbital launch as part of a DARPA challenge aimed at creating small, mobile launch services.
“It's a really nice Christmas present for the team.”
Eric Berger - 12/16/2020, 9:06 AM
If we're being honest, Astra's first orbital launch attempt in September was just not all that impressive. Within 10 or 15 seconds of launching, Rocket 3.1 began to veer off course, and it had to be commanded to shut down before it flew out of its safety corridor.
After the flight, Astra's leaders put a brave face on the short mission, saying they were “pretty pleased” with the rocket's performance, and they thought they were dealing with a software problem rather than a hardware one. Even so, it did not exactly instill confidence in the four-year-old company. The COVID-19 pandemic was starting to flare back up across the world, fundraising was tight in the industry, and it seemed like Astra may still have a very long way to go before getting into space.
Darrell Etherington / 4:49 AM PST•February 2, 2021
Rocket launch company Astra, which just reached space this past December with a test launch from Alaska, will be going public on the Nasdaq via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Holicity. The recent SPAC craze has already extended to the New Space sector, and Virgin Galactic was among those in this wave of a new path to public listing, so there is precedent for space launch in particular, but Astra will be the first to list on the Nasdaq.
The terms of the deal will result in an anticipated $500 million in cash for Astra, from a combined $300 million held by Holicity in trust and a $200 million injection via a PIPE (private investment in public equity) from funds under management by BlackRock. The arrangement sets a pro forma enterprise valuation of Astra at around $2.1 billion — the valuation of the company minus the $500 million in cash the SPAC merger brings in. Astra expects it to complete by the second quarter of this year, after which the company will trade under the ticker “ASTR.”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/02/rocket-startup-astra-is-going-public-vis-spac/
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 28, 2021 09:34PM
California Bay Area space startup Astra “attempted its third orbital test flight today, sending its two-stage Launch Vehicle 0006 skyward from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska's Kodiak Island at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT),” reports Space.com.
“The rocket suffered an anomaly about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, however, and the flight was terminated.”
Something appeared to be wrong from the beginning, as Launch Vehicle 0006 lurched sideways at the moment of liftoff rather than rise smoothly off the pad. But the rocket recovered and soared high into the Alaska sky, reaching an altitude of about 20.5 miles (33 kilometers) before shutting down, according to real-time data Astra provided during a webcast of the launch. The mission was terminated right around “max q,” the point when the mechanical stresses on a rocket are highest. A camera mounted on Launch Vehicle 0006 appeared to show a piece of the booster breaking loose around that time.
One engine failed a second into flight, but it still managed to reach 50km altitude
Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor - Mon 30 Aug 2021 / 04:59 UTC
Video Ever wondered what happens when one of an orbital class rocket's main engines fails a second into a flight?
US-based low-Earth orbit launch company named Astra found out on Saturday. The video below shows the fun, which starts from about 1:33:30 in the video below.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/30/astra_lv6000_failure/
“We're done. They're all sold.”
Eric Berger - 9/3/2021, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 4.14 of the Rocket Report! Lots of drama this week as Astra's launch suffered an engine failure during its most recent spaceflight, Virgin Galactic nearly had to abort its high-profile mission in July, and Firefly got its first Alpha rocket off the launch pad.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Darrell Etherington / 3:47 AM PST November 20, 2021
There’s another launch company newly able to count itself among the small (but growing) group that has reached orbit: Astra. The Alameda-based rocket startup notched that achievement late Friday night, taking off from its launch site in Kodiak, Alaska shortly after 9 PM local time (1 AM ET).
This was Astra’s ‘LV0007’ mission, the follow-up to its last try in August, which was ended short of reaching orbit after the rocket got off to a rocky start with a brief hover and sideways strafe movement just after liftoff. Astra then investigated the cause of the misfire (an early engine shutdown) before initially setting the LV0007 launch for the end of October. That was shifted due to weather.
Darrell Etherington - 6:21 AM PST December 6, 2021
Astra is set to expand its launch footprint, after exclusively flying its first few rockets from Kodiak, Alaska. The startup will fly a mission from Cape Canaveral in Florida for client NASA in January 2022, it announced on Monday morning.
The launch will take place at Space Launch Complex 46 on the sprawling Cape Canaveral Space Force Station grounds, which is a site that was previously used for missile testing before being subsequently deactivated until it was re-opened for commercial space operations in 1997. It saw sporadic use from then until its last mission in 2019.
Astra’s planned launch there is not only a big win for the company, but also for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45, a space launch support squadron that is instrumental to launches taking off from U.S. soil. The mission got its necessary approvals in just “months,” as compared to multiple years for all the sign-off required for prior space launches.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday June 12, 2022 03:34PM
“All appeared to be going smoothly,” reports CBS News, “when, about a minute before the second stage engine was expected to shut down, an onboard 'rocketcam' showed a flash in the engine's exhaust plume.
“The camera view them showed what appeared to be a tumble before video from the rocket cut off….” California-based Astra on Sunday launched two shoebox-size NASA satellites from Cape Canaveral in a modest mission to improve hurricane forecasts, but the second stage of the company's low-cost booster malfunctioned before reaching orbit and the payloads were lost.
Darrell Etherington - 3:04 AM PDT June 13, 2022
Rocket launch company Astra isn’t starting out with the best track record, after it’s latest mission for NASA ended in failure — just a few months after its last rocket carrying payloads for the agency failed to reach orbit.
The TROPICS mission included two cubesats intended to join NASA’s existing constellation by the same name. Astra Rocket 3.3 launch vehicle took off as planned from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Sunday, but despite what Astra characterized as good first stage performance, the second stage encountered a problem and shut down prior to delivering its payload to their intended orbit.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/13/astras-latest-launch-for-nasa-also-ends-in-failure/
Orbital success counter stuck at 2 as upper stage of rocket shuts down early and CubeSats lost
Richard Speed - Mon 13 Jun 2022 11:33 UTC
The first of NASA's TROPICS constellation launches came to an unscheduled end over the weekend as the Astra launch vehicle it was riding failed to deliver the cubesats to orbit.
It was all going so well. The two cubesats lifted off atop an Astra Rocket 3 from Space Launch Complex 46 at approximately 1343 EDT on June 12, 2022.
The initial flight seemed go swimmingly, but things went wrong after the first stage had completed. Viewers of video streaming live from the rocket saw what appeared to be the start of some tumbling before the feed was abruptly cut off. NASA's California-based commercial rocket-making partner Astra confirmed that the upper stage had shut down early, dooming the payload to a considerably earlier than planned rendezvous with Earth.
TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) requires six satellites to do its stuff and this was the first of three planned launches. The constellation of CubeSats, in three low-Earth orbital planes, is meant to to measure environmental and inner-core conditions for tropical cyclones with unprecedented detail and at a relatively low cost.
Another setback for a company that focuses on rapid development.
John Timmer - 6/13/2022, 10:39 AM
On Sunday, the launch of two CubeSats on an Astra rocket failed to go as planned, with the rocket's second stage cutting out prematurely. The loss cost NASA two CubeSats that were meant to be part of a small constellation that would track the development of tropical storms. The failure represents yet another setback for a rocket company that has emphasized rapid development and testing-by-launching.
The lost CubeSats were intended to be part of a six-satellite series called TROPICS. With six satellites in three different orbital planes, TROPICS was designed to provide detailed temporal and spatial imaging of precipitation in tropical storms. NASA's statement on the loss indicates that the agency will still be able to pursue the mission with just four satellites.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/astra-rockets-second-stage-fails-nasa-cubesats-lost/
The private space company has now completed just two successful orbital launches in seven attempts, which doesn't inspire confidence.
Passant Rabie - 13 June 2022 1:28PM
NASA lost two small satellites on Sunday after a rocket malfunctioned en route to orbit. The two TROPICS CubeSats were the first pair of a six-satellite constellation designed to study tropical cyclones, but the space agency is still hoping to launch the remaining four, pending an investigation of the failed delivery.
Private space company Astra’s Launch Vehicle 0010 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:43 p.m. ET, carrying a pair of shoebox-sized satellites. The launch was delayed by nearly two hours as ground teams worked to ensure that the liquid oxygen propellant was at the correct temperature. Shortly after launch, the upper stage of the rocket shut down prematurely, preventing it from delivering its cargo to Earth orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/astra-rocket-launch-failure-nasa-weather-satellites-1849052608
Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:19 PM PDT•September 28, 2022
Rocket launch company Astra will no longer send the remaining NASA TROPICS payloads to space, but instead will launch other “comparable” scientific missions for the agency, the company announced Wednesday. The change to the launch agreement comes a little over three months after Astra’s first TROPICS launch ended in failure after the upper stage shut down prior to delivering the payload to orbit.
NASA’s TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats) program includes a trio of launches aimed at sending a total of six earth science CubeSats to space. The TROPICS satellites will be used to measure variables like humidity and pressure inside storm systems — a need that’s especially prescient today, when Hurricane Ian made landfall on the west coast of Florida.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/28/astra-will-no-longer-launch-nasas-tropics-satellites/
During tests of the upper stage engine, streaks of molten metal could be seen pouring out from the nozzle—a telltale sign of a cooling issue.
Passant Rabie - 2 March 2023
Last summer, Astra’s Rocket 3.3 came crashing down after failing to reach orbit and deliver a pair of shoe-box sized satellites. Following a six-month investigation, the California-based startup identified the culprit: fuel injector blockage that resulted in combustion chamber burn-through.
Astra announced the conclusions from the investigation on Wednesday after receiving a formal closure letter from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Astra’s Launch Vehicle 0010 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on June 12, carrying NASA’s TROPICS cubesats on board. About four minutes after the rocket’s second stage fired its engine, it exhausted its fuel supply and was only able to reach about 80% of the required orbital velocity, according to Astra.
https://gizmodo.com/astra-investigation-uncovers-cause-failed-rocket-launch-1850179612
“We're reducing our expenses as much as we possibly can.”
Stephen Clark - 8/15/2023, 9:22 AM
Astra is running out of money.
It's been a year since Astra shelved its first orbital-class rocket after just two successful launches in seven flights. Chris Kemp, Astra's founder and CEO, last year unveiled a new rocket design he said would be more reliable and capable of carrying heavier cargo into orbit.
A year later, the development of Astra's new launch vehicle—named Rocket 4—appears to have slowed to a crawl. Astra has outfitted a new production line for Rocket 4 at the company's headquarters in Alameda, California, but the company doesn't have enough money to move forward on the program as quickly as it would like.
Rocket 4 won't be ready for its first test flights until next year, Kemp said Monday in a quarterly earnings call. When Rocket 4 might be ready for revenue-earning commercial launches is even less clear, hinging on the results of the test flights, he said.
But it's a fair question whether Astra will ever launch Rocket 4.
Astra's two co-founders have made an offer to take the company private.
Stephen Clark - 11/13/2023, 7:15 AM
Over the last two years, Astra has become one of just a handful of the dozens of startup launch companies to actually put something into orbit. This is a measure of the technical acumen of Astra engineers, who set out to execute on the vision of the company's co-founders, Chris Kemp and Adam London.
During the same period, Astra's financials have taken a nose dive. When Astra went public in mid-2021, it had a valuation of $2.6 billion. The company's market value is around $25 million, based on Astra's closing price on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
A week ago, Astra's market value was even lower. The number rose after Astra revealed Thursday that Kemp and London made an offer to take the company private in a bid to save the startup they established in 2016.
“We believe that Astra’s strategic objectives and business prospects will be best served as a private company,” Kemp and London wrote in a letter to Astra's board of directors. “Taking the company private while delivering a meaningful premium to current shareholders allows for the best interests of shareholders as well as the Company, its employees and its customers to be met.”
“If I have learned anything, it's that you just don't give up.”
Eric Berger – Oct 25, 2024 9:01 AM
On Wednesday morning, a surprising email popped into my inbox with the following subject line: “Astra announces Department of Defense contract valued up to $44 Million.”
I had to read it a second time to make sure I got it right. Astra, the launch company? Astra, whose valuation went from $2.6 billion to $25 million after a series of launch failures? Astra, the company that was taken private in July at 50 cents a share?
Yes, it was that Astra.
This was curious, indeed. To get some answers, I spoke with the cofounder of Astra, Chris Kemp, who remains the company's chief executive.
“If I have learned anything, it's that you just don't give up,” Kemp said. “You know, if you give up easily, this is not the place to be. Fortunately, I am surrounded by a team that has chosen not to give up.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/wait-is-the-astra-rocket-company-really-back-from-the-dead/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:16 PM PDT April 1, 2024
Footage obtained by TechCrunch shows the catastrophic ending that Astra’s Rocket 3.0 suffered during prelaunch testing in March 2020.
The explosion, which occurred at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex, was simply reported as an “anomaly” at the time, an industry term for pretty much any issue that deviates from the expected outcome.
“I can confirm we had an anomaly on the launch pad,” Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark Lester told local reporters at the time. “We are executing our emergency checklist. We request everyone stay clear of the area to allow our crew to address the situation.”
Meanwhile, Astra CEO Chris Kemp told TechCrunch at the time that the rocket “suffered an anomaly following an otherwise successful day of testing in Kodiak in preparation for a launch this week.” He added that the company’s hardware “was the only thing harmed.” He told a separate publication that the company would not be attempting a launch after that week, and that it would “wait until conditions with coronavirus improve before making another attempt” – when in actuality, there was no longer a rocket to launch.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/01/astra-rocket-explodes-2020-launch-failure-video-footage/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:01 PM PDT October 24, 2024
Don’t count out Astra Space just yet. The company, which was taken private again earlier this year for a sliver of its former value, has landed a new contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the development of a next-gen launch system for time-sensitive space missions.
The contract, which the DIU awarded under its Novel Responsive Space Delivery (NRSD) program, has a maximum value of $44 million. The money (however much of it is actually sent) will go toward the continued development of Astra’s Launch System 2, designed to perform rapid, ultra-low-cost launches.
The new funding is a sign that not everyone has lost faith in Astra, a startup that went public in 2021 at a $2.1 billion valuation with lofty ambitions of mass producing small, cheap rockets capable of executing hundreds of missions per year. But the company burned through cash as it struggled to materialize those statements, notching several failed launches (and two successful ones) before announcing the pivot to the 600-kilogram payload capacity Rocket 4.
The company spent a number of months searching — and failing to secure — enough financing to stay afloat on the public markets. The saga culminated in March when the company announced that the board had accepted an offer from cofounders Chris Kemp and Adam London to purchase the remaining Astra stock at a price of just $0.50 per share. Astra ceased trading on the Nasdaq in July.
Engineers are redesigning parts of the propulsion system on Astrobotic's next lunar lander.
Stephen Clark - 8/28/2024, 6:35 AM
Seven months after its first lunar lander fell short of reaching the Moon, Astrobotic announced Tuesday that the spacecraft was stricken by a valve failure that caused a propellant tank to burst in orbit. The company's next landing attempt, using a much larger spacecraft, will include fixes to prevent a similar failure.
Astrobotic's first Peregrine lander, which the company called Peregrine Mission One, launched on January 8 aboard United Launch Alliance's first Vulcan rocket. But soon after separating from the rocket in space, the lander ran into trouble as it stepped through an activation sequence to begin priming its propulsion system.
A review board determined “the most likely cause of the malfunction was a failure of a single helium pressure control valve called a PCV—pressure control valve 2, within the propulsion system,” said John Horack, a space industry veteran and professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at Ohio State University.
Helium was supposed to pressurize Peregrine's propulsion system and force fuel and oxidizer from the lander's onboard storage tanks into the spacecraft's small rocket engines to combust and generate thrust.
“PCV2 suffered a loss of seal capability that was most likely due to a mechanical failure in the valve caused by vibration-induced relaxation between some threaded components that are inside the valve, so a failure deep inside the valve itself,” said Horack, who chaired Astrobotic's investigation into the failure of the Peregrine lander.
“When VIPER was removed, that was definitely a setback. Our team felt that.”
Eric Berger - Feb 5, 2025 7:00 AM
Last year was not a good one for a lunar lander company based in Pittsburgh named Astrobotic.
In January, the company's first spacecraft finally launched after years of delays, carrying dozens of payloads, scientific instruments, and time capsules. But within hours of launch, the Peregrine spacecraft developed a propellant leak in its propulsion system. Although the Astrobotic engineering team fought valiantly, they could not control the leak long enough to attempt a lunar landing. Instead, operators returned it to Earth's atmosphere, where it burned up.
This immediately raised questions about Astrobotic's next mission. Its second spacecraft, Griffin, would be larger. The company had received a large “task order” from NASA to use this lander to deliver the VIPER robotic rover to the south pole of the Moon in 2025 worth more than $300 million. However, NASA officials were concerned that, after Peregrine's problems, the significantly more ambitious Griffin lander might fail.
So in September, citing rising costs for VIPER and uncertainty about Griffin's readiness, NASA canceled the mission. It was a huge blow to the lunar community, although in recent months there has been some effort to revive VIPER. Regardless, Griffin no longer had a payload.
“It was a tough year,” John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic, said in an interview. “Certainly the challenges we had with Peregrine were unexpected, and a big setback. Then of course when VIPER was removed, that was definitely a setback. Our team felt that.”
Aria Alamalhodaei - 23 June 2023
The International Space Station has a monopoly on in-space research, but the huge surge of interest in commercial space is starting to change that. Atmos Space Cargo, a German startup, is looking to open up the opportunities for life sciences research and manufacturing in orbit with its return capsules that will deliver cargo from space back to Earth.
The company calls the opportunity “microgravity on demand,” a nascent market segment that has huge potential. Atmos’ service is tailored specifically for life sciences, according to the startup’s website, which can include research into monoclonal antibodies, stem cells, artificially grown human tissue, and protein crystallization.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/23/atmos-space-cargo-return-capsules-for-in-space-research/
Troubled space capsule cost $195 million this quarter, bringing total losses on it since 2020 to $883m
Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 27 Oct 2022 17:30 UTC
The Starliner losses just keep adding up for Boeing, whose troubled crew capsule spacecraft is closing in on $900 million in cumulative losses for the aerospace giant.
Boeing's Q3 quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that it lost $195 million for the quarter, and $288 million for the year to date, thanks to Starliner, which has been beset by repeated hardware and software problems that have kept the craft grounded.
Combined with reported Starliner losses going back to late 2019, Boeing's total loss from the program has now reached $883 million. The biggest of these was a $410 million charge in Q4 2019 after two serious software bugs prevented Boeing's Starliner from docking with the International Space Station in December that year, putting the spacecraft at risk.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/27/starliner_losses_closing_in_on/
The official word is 'scheduling conflicts,' but NASA's safety panel has expressed concerns too Brandon Vigliarolo - Fri 4 Nov 2022 16:15 UTC
The first crewed launch of Boeing's Starliner has been delayed again, this time being pushed back to April 2023 from an earlier planned launch date of February.
The change came with little announcement from NASA, which tweeted out the new date as a scheduling update without any additional details. In an accompanying blog post, NASA said the change was being made to eliminate conflicts between “visiting spacecraft traffic at the space station,” but the agency didn't elaborate much beyond that.
Starliner has been a drag on Boeing since the company unveiled the capsule in 2010. According to Boeing's Q3 2022 filing, Starliner has lost the company $883 million since 2019.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/04/starliner_launch_delay/
Space Launch System project overspent, under-built, and is overdue, government probe finds
Iain Thomson - Fri 9 Aug 2024 01:31 UTC Boeing and NASA have come in for scathing criticism from federal investigators, who examined the next generation of Space Launch System rockets. A report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), released Thursday, considered progress of Space Launch System (SLS) version 1B – the rocket hoped to lift off in 2028 and carry the equipment needed to establish a base on the Moon. A key part of the craft is a new booster section, dubbed the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), which will boost the cargo capacity of the SLS by 40 percent. If Boeing can build it. After a two-year study of NASA's assembly facility in New Orleans, the inspectors found Boeing staff made numerous errors – including substandard welding on oxygen tanks, and metal and Teflon shavings left inside the liquid hydrogen tank. Those messes delayed the program by seven months. https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/nasa_boeing_sls/ ==== Lawsuit ==== === Starliner === == Lawsuit Accuses Boeing of Swindling Partner for NASA SLS Megarocket Project == Colorado-based Wilson Aerospace says Boeing abruptly severed communications after it developed hardware for the NASA contractor. Kevin Hurler - 8 June 2023 A lawsuit filed by Wilson Aerospace, an aerospace hardware company, alleges that Boeing has stolen ideas from the company for various projects, including those involving NASA and Boeing’s own 787 Dreamliner. The Colorado-based Wilson Aerospace was Boeing’s collaborator for two years, developing hardware to assist with the installation of Space Launch System (SLS) engines, according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Seattle—Boeing’s former HQ. According to Wilson’s lawsuit, Boeing sought the company’s expertise in 2014 to address the challenge of installing engines into the megarocket, given the limited and confined physical space available. However, after Wilson Aerospace designed a special version of its Fluid Fitting Torque Device, it says that Boeing abruptly cancelled its contract with the company in 2016, taking proprietary information with it. https://gizmodo.com/lawsuit-accuses-boeing-swindling-partner-nasa-rocket-1850518575 == Boeing hit with a lawsuit over alleged “theft” of SLS rocket tools == “Without the engines installed and fitted perfectly, the rocket could not launch.” Eric Berger - 6/7/2023, 4:28 PM A Colorado-based company, Wilson Aerospace, is suing Boeing for what it claims to be “theft” of its intellectual property. At issue is a specific tool, known as a Fluid Fitting Torque Device-3, that Wilson developed and Boeing said it needed to attach four main engines to the Space Launch System rocket. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in US District Court in Seattle, where Boeing was originally based. The lawsuit alleges that Boeing reached out to Wilson in March 2014 after learning that the company had created the special torque device, which can precisely install high-torque fittings and nuts in tightly confined spaces. The engine section at the bottom of the Space Launch System rocket, where four RS-25 engines are mated to the large core stage with its propellant and oxidizer tanks, is one such tight space. Boeing is the prime contractor for the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket, which launched NASA's uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon in November 2022. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/supplier-sues-boeing-over-alleged-theft-of-sls-rocket-tools/ === Virgin Galactic === == Boeing Demands Virgin Galactic Destroy All Data From Its Failed Space Tourism Partnership == The aerospace company is accusing Virgin Galactic of unlawfully using Boeing's proprietary information for a mothership design. Passant Rabie - 25 March 2024 There’s new drama in the space industry. Boeing filed a lawsuit against Virgin Galactic, accusing it of retaining trade secrets that the two companies had exchanged while working to develop a new mothership, which is still in development. On Friday, Boeing asked a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, to issue a court order blocking Virgin Galactic from further using proprietary data that was shared between the two companies as part of an agreement in 2022, according to the complaint. Boeing is accusing Virgin Galactic of “retaining, using, and threatening further use of trade secrets” that belong to the company and its Virginia-based subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, the complaint read. In July 2022, Virgin Galactic announced an agreement with Aurora to design and manufacture its next generation mothership. The mothership is used to carry a spaceplane and release it at an altitude of 44,500 feet (13,500 meters) above the ground. Virgin Galactic is in the process of developing a new generation spaceplane, called Delta, to carry space tourists to suborbital heights at a more frequent pace. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-virgin-galactic-lawsuit-destroy-data-venture-1851363137 == Boeing and subsidiary file trade secrets lawsuit against Virgin Galactic == Oh, and there's small matter of an alleged $26M in unpaid bills Richard Speed - Wed 27 Mar 2024 14:30 UTC Updated Boeing and its subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation have sued Virgin Galactic, alleging the space tourism company has misappropriated trade secrets. In addition, Boeing and Aurora noted that Virgin Galactic has failed to pay it almost $26 million for work on new craft. In 2022, Virgin Galactic selected Aurora to build new motherships for its spacecraft as replacements for the VMS Eve carrier aircraft. VMS Eve carries Virgin Galactic's Space Ship Unity to approximately 44,000 feet. That unit is then released so its engine can take occupants to sub-orbital space. At the time, Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said: “Our next-generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain, and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/boeing_aurora_virgin_galactic/ == Virgin Galactic Accuses Boeing of 'Shoddy' Work in Its Countersuit Over Failed Agreement == The two companies are dueling it out over proprietary information for a new mothership design. Passant Rabie - 5 April 2024 Virgin Galactic has responded to Boeing’s lawsuit, which accuses the company of retaining its trade secrets. In response, Virgin Galactic has filed a lawsuit of its own, blaming Boeing for repeated failures that ultimately led to the termination of their commercial partnership. Richard Branson’s private space venture is countersuing Boeing over an agreement to develop Virgin Galactic’s next generation mothership. The company filed its own lawsuit on Thursday in a Los Angeles federal court, nearly two weeks after Boeing asked a federal judge in Virginia to issue a court order blocking Virgin Galactic from further using proprietary data that was shared between the two companies as part of an agreement in 2022. https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-accuses-boeing-of-shoddy-work-in-its-co-1851391859 ==== Starliner ==== == Starliner delayed again, and its launch window may close soon == “We’re going to let the data lead our work.” Eric Berger - 8/4/2021, 6:30 AM For a week leading up to the much-anticipated launch of Boeing's Starliner test flight on Tuesday, officials with NASA and the aerospace company said the spacecraft and its Atlas V rocket were ready to go. Their big concern, they said, was weather, as there are frequent afternoon thunderstorms along Florida's east coast. On Tuesday morning, a few hours before the launch window opened, weather conditions along the coast looked pretty good. But Boeing had to scrub the launch attempt anyway, citing a problem with a valve in the spacecraft's reaction control system, which helps the vehicle maneuver in space. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/starliner-delayed-due-to-a-valve-issue-new-launch-date-uncertain/ == Engineers work to open Boeing Starliner's valves as schedule pressures mount == Is that the sound of hammering we can hear? Richard Speed - Tue 10 Aug 2021 / 17:45 UTC Boeing's Starliner CST 100 – aka the Calamity Capsule – continues to remain firmly wedded to Earth as engineers work to resolve a problem with valves in the spacecraft's thruster systems. The valves, which connect to thrusters used for aborts and manoeuvring in orbit, didn't open as designed during the 3 August launch attempt, resulting in an unscheduled trip to United Launch Alliance's Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) near Space Launch Complex (SLC) 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The worst-case scenario would require the de-stacking of the Starliner from its Atlas V carrier rocket, effectively killing off any hope of launching Boeing's second crack at a demonstration mission of its crew capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) in the near future. https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/cst_100_starliner_valves/ == Boeing to ground Starliner indefinitely until valve issue solved == “I know this is very, very hard on our NASA and Boeing teams.” Eric Berger - 8/13/2021, 2:39 PM Boeing said Friday that its Starliner spacecraft will be grounded indefinitely while it continues to investigate problems with the valves in the propulsion system. In the 10 days since Boeing and NASA scrubbed the launch in Florida, technicians and engineers have sought to open 13 valves that control the flow of dinitrogen tetroxide (NTO) oxidizer through the service module of the spacecraft. There are 24 oxidizer valves in the propulsion system, which is critical both for in-space travel as well as launch emergency escapes. Boeing has been able to open nine of the valves, said John Vollmer, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program. The other four remain stuck. As a result, the company plans to de-stack the Starliner spacecraft from its Atlas V rocket and move it to the nearby Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility for deeper troubleshooting. “We made the decision that we were just out of runway and we had to come back to the factory,” Vollmer said during a teleconference with reporters on Friday. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/boeing-to-ground-starliner-indefinitely-until-valve-issue-solved/ == Boeing Starliner Malfunction Potentially Caused by Florida's Humid Air, Investigators Say == The second uncrewed test of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner won’t happen for at least several months—if not longer. George Dvorsky - 13 August 2021 Engineers with Boeing and NASA are honing in on the root cause of a technical glitch that resulted in the cancelation of a Starliner test launch. A promising theory suggests moisture got into the spacecraft’s propulsion system, causing critical valves to get stuck. As to how this moisture got in, however, is now a question in need of an answer. “The time has come for us to bring Starliner back to the factory,” John Vollmer, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, solemnly explained during a NASA teleconference held today. The spacecraft will be taken down from the top of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and transported to Boeing’s factory at Kennedy Space Center, which once served as a Space Shuttle processing facility. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-malfunction-potentially-caused-by-flor-1847484438 == Leaky valve issue forces Boeing to swap out Starliner’s service module == “Ongoing investigation efforts continue to validate the most probable cause.” Eric Berger - 12/14/2021, 5:56 AM Nearly two years have now come and gone since Boeing's Starliner spacecraft made its unsuccessful debut test flight, launching on December 20, 2019. Now, finally, there is some clarity on when the vehicle may launch again and attempt to dock with the International Space Station. NASA and Boeing said Monday that they were working toward a launch of Starliner in May 2022. To accommodate this launch date for the “Orbital Flight-2” or OFT mission, Boeing will swap out a faulty service module—which provides power and propulsion to the Starliner capsule in flight—with a new one. Boeing initially tried to fly OFT-2 in August. However, with less than five hours remaining in the countdown to launch, during a routine procedure, 13 of the 24 valves that control the flow of dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer through the service module of the spacecraft would not cycle between closed and open. The launch was aborted. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/boeing-to-replace-starliner-service-module-make-mid-2022-launch-attempt/ == Watch Boeing’s make it or break it Starliner launch today == Aria Alamalhodaei - 6:00 AM PDT May 19, 2022 After years of setbacks and technical snafus, Boeing’s Starliner orbital spacecraft is returning to the launch pad. The aerospace giant will conduct a second test flight of the spacecraft on Thursday, as the company seeks to stay competitive in the growing space industry and loosen SpaceX’s emerging monopoly on crewed missions to the International Space Station. The CST-100 Starliner will launch aboard United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, taking off from NASA’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station later today at 6:54 PM EST. Starliner should reach its preliminary orbit 31 minutes after launch; if all goes to plan, it will dock with the ISS around 7:10 PM EST on Friday. The craft will be carrying more than 500 pounds of supplies for astronauts aboard the station, and will come back to Earth around five to eight days later with more than 600 pounds of return cargo. https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/watch-boeings-make-it-or-break-it-starliner-launch-today/ == Today’s the day when Boeing’s Starliner takes to the skies. Probably == “The teams are ready. Boeing is ready. ULA is ready.” Eric Berger - 5/19/2022, 6:17 AM Today's the day for Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to take to the skies. Unless it's not. Nearly 29 months have passed since the company's first attempt to demonstrate that Starliner could safely launch into orbit, fly up to the International Space Station and dock, and then return to Earth in a New Mexico desert beneath three parachutes. During that December 2019 test flight, of course, there were myriad software problems, and Starliner ended up lacking the fuel to rendezvous with the space station. As part of its fixed-price contract with NASA—the space agency is paying about $5.1 billion to Boeing to develop a crew transport system to the space station—the company agreed to redo the demonstration flight. Boeing thought it was ready for this repeat flight last August, but hours before launch more than a dozen valves in Starliner's propulsion system became stuck. The attempt was called off, so Boeing never got to test its revised software code. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/todays-the-day-when-boeings-starliner-takes-to-the-skies-probably/ == Boeing's Starliner CST-100 on its way to the ISS 2 years late == A couple of thruster failures shouldn't affect the Calamity Capsule's second attempt at reaching space station Richard Speed - Fri 20 May 2022 14:34 UTC Two and a half years after its first disastrous launch, Boeing has once again fired its CST-100 Starliner capsule at the International Space Station. This time it appeared to go well, launching at 18:54 ET from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. The RD-180 main engine and twin solid rocket boosters of the Atlas V performed as planned before Starliner was pushed to near orbital velocity by the Centaur upper stage. After separation from the Centaur, Starliner fired its own thrusters for orbital insertion and is on course for the ISS. Docking is scheduled for approximately 19:10 ET today (23:10 UTC). https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/20/boeing_starliner/ == Boeing's Starliner safely returns to Earth after second test flight == It passed a critical test towards crewed flights to the ISS. Kris Holt - May 26th, 2022 Boeing's Starliner has returned to Earth safely after docking with the International Space Station for the first time. The six-day Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 mission came to an end when the spacecraft landed at the US Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It's the first American capsule to touch down on land instead of in the ocean. Starliner undocked from the ISS at 2:36PM ET and by 6:05PM, it was firing its thrusters to drop out of orbit. https://www.engadget.com/boeing-starliner-return-earth-iss-020609150.html == Starliner returns to Earth after a successful first trip to ISS == Devin Coldewey - 3:57 PM PDT May 25, 2022 Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully touched down at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico after ferrying a load of supplies to the International Space Station — its first successful orbital mission. Though not everything went exactly to plan, this success may establish Boeing as a much-needed second provider of commercial ISS launch capabilities. The Starliner launched last Thursday and docked with the ISS Friday, staying for a long weekend while the crew unloaded the food and other necessaries from the capsule’s interior and performed in-person checks of its systems. It detached earlier today and descended to an orbit where it could initiate its descent with a reentry burn. After jettisoning the service module, which provides power and propulsion during flight, it oriented its heat shield to take the brunt of the atmosphere, hitting some 3,000 degrees during descent. https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/25/starliner-returns-to-earth-after-a-successful-first-trip-to-iss/ == NASA’s verdict on Starliner: “A great vehicle for crew transportation” == “That’s really what this commercial crew program has been all about.” Eric Berger - 5/26/2022, 7:43 AM Steve Stich is a buttoned-down NASA engineer who has worked at the space agency for decades, dating back to the space shuttle's heyday in the 1980s. But on Wednesday night, as he contemplated the success of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft after its six-day mission to the International Space Station, he said he had the chills. “I probably can’t express in words what it meant for me and the team to see the whole mission go well,” Stich said during a news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “That’s really what this commercial crew program has been all about. I’m getting goosebumps.” Stich has held a leadership position in NASA's commercial crew program to fly astronauts to the International Space Station for the last seven years. This was a bold bet by NASA, trusting private companies to build and fly new spacecraft with limited NASA oversight. Not everyone supported the initiative, and it has faced some technical challenges. But now NASA is close to its final aim, having two independent means of accessing low Earth orbit. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/nasas-verdict-on-starliner-a-great-vehicle-for-crew-transportation/ == Boeing's Starliner Has Landed, but Questions Remain After Imperfect Mission == Several issues emerged during the six-day test, including failed thrusters and a ring that didn't deploy during ISS docking. Passant Rabie - 26 May 2022 Boeing’s Starliner successfully touched down yesterday on the sandy surface of the New Mexico desert, marking the completion of the first uncrewed end-to-end test of the spacecraft. It was a picture-perfect landing, but the six-day mission was not without problems. The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft landed on Wednesday at 4:49 p.m. local time (6:49 p.m. EDT) at at White Sands Missile Range’s Space Harbor after spending six days in low Earth orbit. The spacecraft departed from the space station with more than 600 pounds (270 kilograms) of cargo, including three spent nitrogen oxygen reusable tanks that provided breathable air to ISS crew members. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-landing-problems-1848980163 == Yes, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft really could fly astronauts this year == Early data reviews of Starliner's first flight look good. Eric Berger - 7/1/2022, 8:34 AM Five weeks have passed since Boeing's Starliner spacecraft returned from a largely successful test flight to the International Space Station, and the company continues to review data from the mission alongside engineers from NASA. So far, there have been no showstoppers. In fact, sources say, the relatively clean performance of Starliner has increased the possibility that the vehicle could make its first crewed flight this year in December. This mission, called the Crew Flight Test, will likely carry two astronauts to the space station. If successful, it would clear the way for long-duration, operational missions to the space station in 2023 and give NASA a much-coveted second means of getting astronauts into space. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/yes-boeings-starliner-spacecraft-really-could-fly-astronauts-this-year/ == 'Guess Who's Still on the Ground?': NASA Administrator Taunts Boeing's Failure to Launch Starliner == Recent remarks suggest the former astronaut has shifted his position on commercial spaceflight. Passant Rabie - 20 September 2022 2:10PM NASA Administrator Bill Nelson seems to have come around to the private space industry. In an interview with Newsweek, Nelson praised SpaceX for its progress in the spacefaring realm while criticizing Boeing for its much-delayed Starliner spacecraft. “I think the private space industry is extremely beneficial,” Nelson told Newsweek in an article published last week. “Just look at what SpaceX has already accomplished.” https://gizmodo.com/nasa-administrator-criticism-boeing-delayed-starliner-1849558444 == NASA Pushes First Operational Boeing Starliner Mission to 2024 == NASA’s lack of confidence in Boeing, scheduling conflicts, and ongoing technical issues have led to further delays with the CST-100 Starliner project. George Dvorsky - 7 November 2022 12:20PM The first operational mission of Boeing’s Starliner CST-100 spacecraft to the International Space Station won’t happen until 2024 at the earliest, according to NASA’s updated flight manifest. The capsule, designed to carry crews to low Earth orbit, was originally supposed to fly in 2017 but has faced a series of delays. The first crewed test flight of Starliner will happen in April 2023 and not in February as planned, NASA announced late last week. The reason, says the space agency, is to avoid a scheduling conflict with the SpaceX Crew-6 mission to the ISS, which is planned for mid-February. “NASA and Boeing are currently working together to achieve flight readiness,” the space agency said. NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore have been assigned to the Boeing Crewed Flight Test (CFT). https://gizmodo.com/nasa-pushes-first-operational-boeing-starliner-mission-1849752030 == NASA and Boeing Are (Finally) Putting Astronauts on Starliner == Tim Fernholz - March 25, 2024 Starliner is finally ready for its maiden mission—seven years after the capsule was expected to make its first flight. NASA and Boeing officials shared their plans on Friday for the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which could become the second human-rated orbital vehicle operating in the US, and the fourth in the world, alongside SpaceX’s Dragon, Russia’s Soyuz, and China’s Shenzou. Mayday! The first crewed mission is expected on May 1, after traffic at the ISS delayed it from late April. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will put the Starliner through its manual maneuvering paces on the way to the ISS before spending eight days in orbit at the national lab, then returning to Earth with a few more demo exercises along the way. The original flight test was due in 2017, which gives you an idea of how Boeing has lost more than $1.5B on the Commercial Crew project once dubbed the space taxi. The long-delayed contract has been one of NASA’s most controversial public-private partnerships and prominent among Boeing’s list of troubled tech development programs. https://payloadspace.com/nasa-and-boeing-are-finally-putting-astronauts-on-starliner/ == Let's Look Back at Boeing's 10-Year Struggle to Launch Humans on Starliner == The embattled company has suffered numerous setbacks prior to reaching this stage, making us a bit nervous for Monday's crewed launch. Passant Rabie - 1 May 2024 After more than a decade of delays and failures, Boeing is finally ready to launch its first crew of NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Liftoff of the Starliner CST-100 spacecraft is scheduled for May 6—and it’s going to be a true nail-biter. Boeing’s Crewed Flight Test (CFT) will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS. The company’s Starliner spacecraft will ride atop the ULA (United Launch Alliance) Atlas V rocket, and launch is currently targeted for 10:34 p.m. ET on Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. https://gizmodo.com/review-boeing-nasa-starliner-program-1851448548 == Starliner Is Such a Disaster That Boeing May Cancel the Entire Project == It keeps getting worse. Aug 27, 2:15 PM EDT - Victor Tangermann Over the weekend, NASA finally announced its decision: Boeing's plagued Starliner is coming back empty-handed. Instead, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — who flew up on the troubled capsule — will get a ride on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon in February. It's an extremely unfortunate development for Boeing, a company that has been battling with Starliner's development for years now. Technical mishaps, supply chain issues, and many years of delays have resulted in a whopping $1.6 billion budget overrun since 2016, Reuters reports. But NASA is now focused just on getting Starliner back in one piece. “I am not sure the decision will ultimately be NASA's,” former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver told Reuters when asked if Boeing would stay in NASA's Commercial Crew program. “Boeing is going to have to foot much of this bill, as they have been.” And when we asked Boeing whether Starliner might get canceled, the company didn't exactly jump to defend the project. “Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft,” a spokesperson said. “We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.” https://futurism.com/starliner-failure-embarrassment-boeing == After Starliner, NASA has another big human spaceflight decision to make == “We still have a lot of work to do to close out the heat shield investigation.” Eric Berger - 9/4/2024, 3:01 PM Now that NASA has resolved the question of the Starliner spacecraft and its two crew members on the International Space Station, the agency faces another high-stakes human spaceflight decision. The choice concerns the Orion spacecraft's heat shield and whether NASA will make any changes before the Artemis II mission that will make a lunar flyby. Although Starliner has garnered a lot of media attention, this will be an even higher-profile decision for NASA, with higher consequences—four astronauts will be on board, and hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, will be watching humanity's first deep space mission in more than five decades. The issue is the safety of the heat shield, located at the base of the capsule, which protects Orion's crew during its return to Earth. During the Artemis I mission that sent Orion beyond the Moon in late 2022, without astronauts on board, chunks of charred material cracked and chipped away from Orion's heat shield during reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Once the spacecraft landed, engineers found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry damaged the heat shield. After assessing the issue for more than a year, NASA convened an “independent review team” to conduct its analysis of NASA's work. Initially, this review team's work was due to be completed in June, but its deliberations continued throughout much of the summer, and it only recently concluded. The team's findings are not public yet, but NASA essentially faces two choices with the heat shield: It can fly Artemis II with a similar heat shield that Orion used on Artemis I, or the agency can revamp the design and construct a new heat shield, likely delaying Artemis II from its September 2025 launch date for multiple years. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/after-starliner-nasa-has-another-big-human-spaceflight-decision-to-make/ == After another Boeing letdown, NASA isn’t ready to buy more Starliner missions == Boeing could earn nearly $2 billion more from NASA if it fully executes on the Starliner contract. Stephen Clark - 9/5/2024, 3:11 PM NASA is ready for Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, stricken with thruster problems and helium leaks, to leave the International Space Station as soon as Friday, wrapping up a disappointing test flight that has clouded the long-term future of the Starliner program. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard Starliner on June 5, closed the spacecraft's hatch Thursday in preparation for departure Friday. But it wasn't what they envisioned when they left Earth on Starliner three months ago. Instead of closing the hatch from a position in Starliner's cockpit, they latched the front door to the spacecraft from the space station's side of the docking port. The Starliner spacecraft is set to undock from the International Space Station at 6:04 pm EDT (22:04 UTC) Friday. If all goes according to plan, Starliner will ignite its braking rockets at 11:17 pm EDT (03:17 UTC) for a minute-long burn to target a parachute-assisted, airbag-cushioned landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, at 12:03 am EDT (04:03 UTC) Saturday. The Starliner mission set to conclude this weekend was the spacecraft's first test flight with astronauts, running seven years behind Boeing's original schedule. But due to technical problems with the spacecraft, it won't come home with the two astronauts who flew it into orbit back in June, leaving some of the test flight's objectives incomplete. This outcome is, without question, a setback for NASA and Boeing, which must resolve two major problems in Starliner's propulsion system—supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne—before the capsule can fly with people again. NASA officials haven't said whether they will require Boeing to launch another Starliner test flight before certifying the spacecraft for the first of up to six operational crew missions on Boeing's contract. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/after-another-boeing-letdown-nasa-isnt-ready-to-buy-more-starliner-missions/ == NASA Nearly Bet It All on Boeing’s Troubled Starliner—Here’s Why That Changed == Ten years ago, NASA nearly chose a single spacecraft provider, a decision that would have left SpaceX out of the picture, and set the stage for a disastrously limited future. Passant Rabie - September 27, 2024 It’s hard to imagine a more stressful version of the Boeing Starliner saga, but an insider’s look into a fateful meeting that took place 10 years ago reveals that things could have been much worse. NASA was reportedly considering going all in on Boeing, selecting the company’s Starliner as the only commercial spacecraft used to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), according to an excerpt from the book Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age by Ars Technica’s Eric Berger. In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program to develop spacecraft capable of carrying crew and cargo to the ISS. SpaceX excelled in its assignment; since November 2020, the company has transported eight crews to the orbiting space station. Meanwhile, while its counterpart had a disastrous first go at launching two NASA astronauts; on September 6, Boeing’s Starliner undocked from the ISS and returned to Earth, leaving its crew stranded due to multiple issues that deemed the spacecraft unfit to carry the astronauts back home. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-nearly-bet-it-all-on-boeings-troubled-starliner-heres-why-that-changed-2000504311 == NASA Freezes Starliner Missions After Boeing Leaves Astronauts Stranded == NASA is once again turning to its more trusted commercial partner SpaceX for crew flights in 2025. Passant Rabie - October 17, 2024 In light of Starliner’s test flight that left its crew stranded in space, NASA will use SpaceX’s Dragon for the upcoming crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS) while the space agency decides what to do with Boeing’s troubled spacecraft. This week, NASA announced that a Crew Dragon will launch its Crew-10 mission no earlier than February 2025, followed by the Crew-11 mission no earlier than July 2025, delaying Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner’s next chance at flying to the ISS. NASA had hoped that Starliner would launch its first operational mission by early next year but the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight proved to be a complete fiasco, leaving Boeing nowhere near its coveted certification. “The timing and configuration of Starliner’s next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established,” NASA wrote in its update. “This determination will include considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of final certification products, and operational readiness.” https://gizmodo.com/nasa-freezes-starliner-missions-after-boeing-leaves-astronauts-stranded-2000512963 == What is happening with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft? == Among the options NASA and Boeing are considering: A Starliner cargo flight. Eric Berger - Nov 1, 2024 4:15 AM Boeing's Starliner spacecraft backs away from the International Space Station on September 6 without its crew. Credit: NASA Boeing's Starliner spacecraft safely landed empty in the New Mexico desert about eight weeks ago, marking a hollow end to the company's historic first human spaceflight. The vehicle's passengers during its upward flight to the International Space Station earlier this summer, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, remain in space, awaiting a ride home on SpaceX's Crew Dragon. Boeing has been steadfastly silent about the fate of Starliner since then. Two senior officials, including Boeing's leader of human spaceflight, John Shannon, were originally due to attend a post-landing news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. However, just minutes before the news conference was to begin, two seats were removed—the Boeing officials were no-shows. In lieu of speaking publicly, Boeing issued a terse statement early on the morning of September 8, attributing it to Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing's commercial crew program. “We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program,” Nappi said, in part. And since then? Nothing. Requests for comment from Boeing have gone unanswered. The simple explanation is that the storied aviation company, which has a new chief executive named Kelly Ortberg, remains in the midst of evaluating Boeing's various lines of business. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/nearly-two-months-after-starliners-return-boeing-remains-mum-on-its-future/ == Boeing's Starliner future uncertain as NASA weighs next steps == Fix testing to stretch into the summer. When will aerospace giant decide enough is enough? Richard Speed - Thu 20 Mar 2025 14:47 UTC The return of Crew-9 from the International Space Station (ISS) in a Crew Dragon has raised the question of what the future holds for Boeing's Calamity Capsule, also known as the CST-100 Starliner. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore had journeyed to the ISS on board the Boeing Starliner as part of the vehicle's first crewed test flight. It did not go well. While the duo managed to dock with the ISS, various concerns with Starliner – notably around the thrusters – ended with Williams and Wilmore becoming part of Crew-9 and Starliner returning to Earth empty. More than six months later, the future of Starliner is unclear. During the post-splashdown news conference for Crew-9, the manager of NASA's commercial crew program, Steve Stich, said that Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, remained “committed to Starliner.” However, longstanding problems dog the project. Boeing has incurred enormous losses due to Starliner's difficulties. As of February's financial results, the company has bled over $2 billion, which is unlikely to stop until the spacecraft finally becomes operational. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/20/boeing_starliner_whats_next/ == The ISS is nearing retirement, so why is NASA still gung-ho about Starliner? == NASA is doing all it can to ensure Boeing doesn't abandon the Starliner program. Stephen Clark – Jul 16, 2025 4:00 AM After so many delays, difficulties, and disappointments, you might be inclined to think that NASA wants to wash its hands of Boeing's troubled Starliner spacecraft. But that's not the case. The manager of NASA's commercial crew program, Steve Stich, told reporters Thursday that Boeing and its propulsion supplier, Aerojet Rocketdyne, are moving forward with several changes to the Starliner spacecraft to resolve problems that bedeviled a test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) last year. These changes include new seals to plug helium leaks and thermal shunts and barriers to keep the spacecraft's thrusters from overheating. Boeing, now more than $2 billion in the hole to pay for all Starliner's delays, is still more than a year away from executing on its multibillion-dollar NASA contract and beginning crew rotation flights to the ISS. But NASA officials say Boeing remains committed to Starliner. “We really are working toward a flight as soon as early next year with Starliner, and then ultimately, our goal is to get into crew rotation flights with Starliner,” Stich said. “And those would start no earlier than the second crew rotation slot at the end of next year.” That would be 11 years after Boeing officials anticipated the spacecraft would enter operational service for NASA when they announced the Starliner program in 2010. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/07/despite-chronic-letdowns-nasa-just-cant-quit-boeings-starliner/ ==== Launch 2023 July ==== == Boeing Delays Starliner Launch Again After Discovering Two Serious Problems == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday June 03, 2023 08:34AM “A Boeing official said Thursday that the company was 'standing down' from an attempt to launch the Starliner spacecraft on July 21,” reports Ars Technica, “to focus on recently discovered issues with the vehicle.” Starliner's program manager said they'd spent last weekend investigating the problems, and “after internal discussions that included Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun, the company decided to delay the test flight” carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. <blockquote> The issues seem rather serious to have been discovered weeks before Starliner was due to launch on an Atlas V rocket. The first involves “soft links” in the lines that run from Starliner to its parachutes. Boeing discovered that these were not as strong as previously believed. During a normal flight, these substandard links would not be an issue. But Starliner's parachute system is designed to land a crew safely in case one of the three parachutes fails. However, due to the lower failure load limit with these soft links, if one parachute fails, it's possible the lines between the spacecraft and its remaining two parachutes would snap due to the extra strain. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/06/03/0147209/boeing-delays-starliner-launch-again-after-discovering-two-serious-problems == This ain't Boeing very well: Starliner's first crewed flight canceled yet again == Flammable tape and unreliable parachutes ground craft this time around Brandon Vigliarolo - Fri 2 Jun 2023 19:58 UTC Days after saying it remained on track for the first crewed Starliner flight next month, NASA and Boeing have scrapped their July launch plan to give them “time to address recent emerging issues.” The grounding is due to tape Boeing used on Starliner to protect wires from chafing and its flammability risk, as well as trouble with the spacecraft's rather important parachute system, NASA and Boeing officials shared in a briefing yesterday. The tape wasn't tested for flammability until “late in the process,” officials said, while linkage points where the parachutes connect to the spacecraft broke in recent tests, leaving engineers under confident in their strength. Both issues were singled out in NASA's note earlier in the week about the current state of the Starliner program, and it appears both were too serious to resolve by the time preparing for the flight. “We're disappointed because it means a delay, but the team's proud that we're making the right [safety] choices,” Boeing VP for the Starliner project, Mark Nappi, said at the briefing. https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/02/boeing_starliner_crewed_flight_delay/ == To keep Starliner flying, Boeing must make some hard choices == “I think if they look back on it, they wouldn't do it again.” Eric Berger - 6/2/2023, 11:31 AM In September 2009, Boeing announced that it would participate in NASA's new “commercial crew” program. The aerospace industry leader vowed to bring its long experience in supporting the space agency and leverage its human spaceflight experience to make the program successful. “Boeing has a lot to offer NASA in this new field of commercial crew transportation services,” Keith Reiley, then the Boeing program manager for the project, said at the time. “To show our commitment, we are willing to make a substantial investment in research and development.” This was a consequential moment for the new program, which lacked widespread support from Congress. The commercial initiative had only been created because the Obama administration tucked $50 million into its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for a new program start. In recent years, both of the two top leaders of NASA in 2009—former Administrator Charlie Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver—have pointed to Boeing's entry into the commercial crew program as essential to its long-term success. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/to-keep-starliner-flying-boeing-must-make-some-hard-choices/ == Boeing Calls Off Its First Crewed Starliner Flight Due to Major Safety Issues == The highly-anticipated test flight was scheduled for July 21 but is now delayed indefinitely. It's a bad situation that's now become considerably worse. Passant Rabie - 2 June 2023 11:25AM Just when you thought the saga of Boeing’s Starliner program couldn’t get any worse, it just did. The first crewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has been delayed indefinitely due to two serious issues with the crew vehicle meant to transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Following numerous delays, Starliner was finally scheduled for launch on July 21, carrying NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore to low Earth orbit. During a media briefing on Thursday, however, NASA and Boeing announced that they have decided to stand down from the launch attempt to address recently discovered issues with the CST-100 Starliner crew vehicle. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-cancels-first-crewed-starliner-flight-safety-rea-1850499550 == Boeing finds two serious problems with Starliner just weeks before launch == “Safety is always our top priority, and that drives this decision.” Eric Berger - 6/1/2023, 3:55 PM A Boeing official said Thursday that the company was “standing down” from an attempt to launch the Starliner spacecraft on July 21 to focus on recently discovered issues with the vehicle. Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager for Starliner, said two spacecraft problems were discovered before Memorial Day weekend and that the company spent the holiday investigating them. After internal discussions that included Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun, the company decided to delay the test flight that would carry NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station. “Safety is always our top priority, and that drives this decision,” Nappi said during a teleconference with reporters. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/boeing-stands-down-from-starliner-launch-to-address-recently-found-problems/ == Boeing abandons plans for crewed Starliner flight in 2023 == The calamity capsule won't be ready to fly until March 2024, and even then a launch date hasn't been ironed out Brandon Vigliarolo - Tue 8 Aug 2023 18:46 UTC Boeing has thrown in the towel on trying to launch Starliner to the International Space Station this year, and is now targeting the first half of 2024 for the calamity capsule's first crewed flight. This latest delay is due to continued fallout from issues identified in June, namely the flammability risk of some of the tape used to protect wires on Starliner from chafing as well as issues with the parachute system. During a press conference yesterday, NASA and Boeing said tape removal is ongoing, and the redesigned parachute system wouldn't be ready until December. A parachute drop test will be performed late in the year, Boeing officials said at the press conference. If that all goes according to plan (a big IF given Starliner's performance to date) then the craft should be ready for flight in March 2024, with a launch date some time in the first half of the year that is yet to be determined, a Boeing spokesperson told The Register. “We expect the spacecraft to be ready in March [and] we are working with NASA currently to secure a launch date during the first half of next year,” Deborah VanNierop, Boeing senior media relations manager, told us. https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/08/boeing_abandons_plans_for_crewed/ ==== Launch 2024 March ==== == Boeing's Starliner could be ready for crewed flights by next March == The company's launch efforts this year were thrown off by a pair of lengthy technical delays. Andrew Tarantola - August 7, 2023 5:02 PM Boeing has rediscovered just how hard space can be in recent months, as its ambitious Starliner program has been repeatedly sidelined by lingering technical issues. However, the company announced at a press conference Monday that it is confident that it will have those issues ironed out by next March and will be ready to test its reusable crew capsule with live NASA astronauts aboard. “Based on the current plans, we’re anticipating that we’re going to be ready with the spacecraft in early March. That does not mean we have a launch date in early March,” Boeing VP and Starliner manager Mark Nappi stressed during the event, per CNBC. “We’re now working with NASA – Commercial Crew program and [International Space Station] – and ULA on potential launch dates based on our readiness … we’ll work throughout the next several weeks and see where we can get fit in and then then we’ll set a launch date.” The Starliner has been in development for nearly fifteen years now, first being unveiled in 2010. It's Boeing's entry into the reusable crew capsule race, which is currently being dominated by SpaceX with its Dragon 2. https://www.engadget.com/boeings-starliner-could-be-ready-for-crewed-flights-by-next-march-210222245.html ==== Launch 2024 April/May ==== == Boeing’s Starliner Faces Further Delays, Now Eyeing April 2024 Launch == The first crewed flight of Starliner is postponed again, while the first operational mission slides to 2025. George Dvorsky - 13 October 2023 11:56AM When it comes to the inaugural crewed launch of Starliner, it increasingly feels as though Boeing and NASA are chasing the proverbial carrot on a stick. The latest delay pushes the earliest available launch date to April 2024, a month later than planned, in what’s a seemingly never-ending succession of postponements. In another step in its stilted journey, Boeing’s first crewed CST-100 Starliner spacecraft launch is now delayed to no earlier than mid-April 2024, NASA announced in a press release. Although specifics behind the latest delay remain undisclosed, it’s an altogether familiar tale, as the Starliner program refuses to get on track. This recent postponement is likely related to recent concerns having to do with the spacecraft’s parachute system and the discovery of flammable tape within the vehicle. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-first-crewed-launch-delay-april-2024-1850924885 == Boeing's Starliner Set for First Astronaut Flight After Engineers Remove a Mile of Flammable Tape == Boeing also fixed a nagging parachute issue and is now aiming for a May launch with astronauts aboard. Passant Rabie - 22 March 2024 The Starliner spacecraft is finally ready for launch, targeting a liftoff date in May. It’s been a struggle to get to this point for Boeing’s crew vehicle, which suffered from a series of unfortunate delays over the years, the last of which had to do with two major safety hazards discovered on the spacecraft. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is set to carry NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore to the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than the first day of May. During a press briefing on Friday, representatives from the company reaffirmed their confidence in Starliner’s parachutes and protective tape, which had caused the last of several delays of the spacecraft’s launch. Starliner was originally supposed to launch the crew on July 21, 2023. A few weeks before liftoff, however, the company announced that it was standing down from the launch attempt to address newfound issues with the crew vehicle. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-astronaut-flight-flammable-tape-nasa-1851359764 == Boeing’s Starliner set to fly astronauts for the first time on May 6 == Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:06 PM PDT April 25, 2024 Boeing’s Starliner is a go for launch. Leaders from NASA and Boeing told reporters that the first crewed Starliner mission, which will see the capsule carry two astronauts to the International Space Station, is moving ahead toward its historic May 6 launch date. NASA and Boeing concluded that the capsule is ready for launch after completing a critical flight test review on Thursday. Barring no issues, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will board Starliner on the evening of May 6 and take their ride on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to space. Around 24 hours later, the two astronauts will arrive at the ISS, where they’ll stay for about a week. Starliner will stay docked with the station; the duo will use it to return to Earth. A total of five parachutes will slow Starliner from ultra-fast orbital speeds to enable a soft landing somewhere in the western U.S. This will mark Starliner’s second flight to the ISS: The first, an uncrewed mission called Orbital Flight Test-2, took place in May 2022. If Boeing and NASA are unable to meet the May 6 date, there are additional launch opportunities on May 7, 10 and 11. https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/25/boeings-starliner-set-to-fly-astronauts-for-the-first-time-on-may-6/ == Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft may finally take its first crewed flight next week == Better late than never? Cheyenne MacDonald - Fri, May 3, 2024, 7:00 AM PDT Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, which has been plagued by years of setbacks and cost overruns amounting to roughly $1.5 billion, is about to take its first flight with humans on board. Boeing was chosen 10 years ago alongside SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that could ferry astronauts from US soil to the International Space Station (ISS), thus allowing NASA to end its reliance on Russia for crewed flights. The companies were each awarded a fixed-price contract under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program: $4.2 billion to Boeing for its CST-100 (Starliner) and $2.6 billion for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Their initial deadline of 2017 proved to be a bit too ambitious. SpaceX managed its first crewed flight in 2020 — and about a dozen since — while Boeing has struggled to get its Starliner capsule off the ground. But as soon as May 6, it’ll finally have a crewed flight under its belt. Starliner is now at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex-41 attached to the ULA Atlas V rocket that’ll send it on its way to the ISS. Liftoff is planned for 10:34PM ET on Monday, May 6. The capsule will be carrying two NASA astronauts: Butch Wilmore, the mission’s commander, and Suni Williams, who will serve as pilot. https://www.engadget.com/boeings-starliner-spacecraft-may-finally-take-its-first-crewed-flight-next-week-140056150.html == The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all == “The structural inefficiency was a huge deal.” Eric Berger - 5/6/2024, 4:00 AM NASA's senior leaders in human spaceflight gathered for a momentous meeting at the agency's headquarters in Washington, DC, almost exactly 10 years ago. These were the people who, for decades, had developed and flown the Space Shuttle. They oversaw the construction of the International Space Station. Now, with the shuttle's retirement, these princely figures in the human spaceflight community were tasked with selecting a replacement vehicle to send astronauts to the orbiting laboratory. Boeing was the easy favorite. The majority of engineers and other participants in the meeting argued that Boeing alone should win a contract worth billions of dollars to develop a crew capsule. Only toward the end did a few voices speak up in favor of a second contender, SpaceX. At the meeting's conclusion, NASA's chief of human spaceflight at the time, William Gerstenmaier, decided to hold off on making a final decision. A few months later, NASA publicly announced its choice. Boeing would receive $4.2 billion to develop a “commercial crew” transportation system, and SpaceX would get $2.6 billion. It was not a total victory for Boeing, which had lobbied hard to win all of the funding. But the company still walked away with nearly two-thirds of the money and the widespread presumption that it would easily beat SpaceX to the space station. The sense of triumph would prove to be fleeting. Boeing decisively lost the commercial crew space race, and it proved to be a very costly affair. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/ == Boeing Starliner's First Crewed Mission Scrubbed == Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday May 07, 2024 12:00AM “Out of an abundance of caution,” Boeing says its historic Starliner launch has been postponed, citing an issue with the oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket's upper stage. It was expected to launch tonight at 10:34 p.m. ET. TechCrunch reports: <blockquote> There are backup launch opportunities on May 7, 10 and 11. After years of delays and over $1 billion in cost overruns, the mission is set to be Boeing's first attempt to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. Once the issue is resolved with the upper stage, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V will carry the CST-100 Starliner capsule to orbit along with the two onboard astronauts – Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams – from Florida's Cape Canaveral at 10:34 PM local time Monday evening. The mission also marks the first time ULA's Atlas will carry crew. The rocket boasts a success rate of 100% across 99 missions. (ULA is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.) </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/05/07/0212231/boeing-starliners-first-crewed-mission-scrubbed == Boeing's First Crewed Starliner Launch Delayed Over Valve Issue == This is the latest in a series of delays that have marred the maiden test flight of a crewed Starliner spacecraft. Passant Rabie - 7 May 2024 NASA and Boeing were forced to stand down from a launch attempt of the Starliner spacecraft on Monday due to a faulty valve that ground teams discovered just hours before liftoff. Starliner’s Crew Flight Test is now scheduled for launch on Friday, May 10, pending the resolution of the recently discovered anomaly, NASA announced in a news conference held on Monday night. To be clear, this is an issue with Centaur rocket, and not with the Starliner capsule itself. For its test flight, the crew capsule was fitted atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, to carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) and back. A few hours before its scheduled liftoff on Monday, ULA announced that the launch had been scrubbed “due to an observation on a liquid oxygen self-regulating solenoid relief valve on the Centaur upper stage.” The valve regulates the flow and pressure of liquid oxygen in the rocket’s upper stage. It employs a solenoid—a kind of electromagnet—to open and close as necessary, ensuring the safe release of excess pressure. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-first-crewed-starliner-launch-delayed-valve-1851460337 == Faulty valve scuttles Starliner’s first crew launch == The soonest opportunity for Atlas V and Starliner to launch is Friday night. Stephen Clark - 5/7/2024, 5:55 AM Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams climbed into their seats inside Boeing's Starliner spacecraft Monday night in Florida, but trouble with the capsule's Atlas V rocket kept the commercial ship's long-delayed crew test flight on the ground. Around two hours before launch time, shortly after 8:30 pm EDT (00:30 UTC), United Launch Alliance's launch team stopped the countdown. “The engineering team has evaluated, the vehicle is not in a configuration where we can proceed with flight today,” said Doug Lebo, ULA's launch conductor. The culprit was a misbehaving valve on the rocket's Centaur upper stage, which has two RL10 engines fed by super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. “We saw a self-regulating valve on the LOX (liquid oxygen) side had a bit of a buzz; it was moving in a strange behavior,” said Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager. “The flight rules had been laid out for this flight ahead of time. With the crew at the launch pad, the proper action was to scrub.” The next opportunity to launch Starliner on its first crew test flight will be Friday night at 9 pm EDT (01:00 UTC Saturday). NASA announced overnight that officials decided to skip a launch opportunity Tuesday night to allow engineers more time to study the valve problem and decide whether they need to replace it. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/faulty-valve-scuttles-starliners-first-crew-launch/ == Valve vexation: Boeing's Starliner grounded again == Problems with Centaur rocket keeps first crewed flight on terra firma Richard Speed - Tue 7 May 2024 14:00 UTC Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crewed launch, which was scheduled for today, has been postponed yet again, this time due to a valve problem on the Centaur upper stage. Managers pushed back the next attempt to no earlier than May 10. It is the closest Boeing has come to launching a crew in the Starliner capsule. The countdown was approaching the two-hour mark before the scrub call came in as managers worried about “anomalous behavior by the pressure regulation valve in the liquid oxygen tank of the Centaur upper stage of the ULA Atlas V launch vehicle,” according to Boeing. United Launch Alliance, responsible for the Atlas V that will launch Boeing's Starliner, said: “Out of an abundance of caution for the safety of the flight and pad crew, we scrubbed the Crew Flight Test (CFT) launch attempt today due to an observation on a liquid oxygen self-regulating solenoid relief valve on the Centaur upper stage. “The team needs additional time to complete a full assessment, so we are targeting the next launch attempt no earlier than Friday, May 10.” https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/07/boeing_starliner_delay/ == Boeing’s Cursed Starliner Mission Delayed Due to ‘Small Helium Leak’ == Teams replaced a faulty valve that led to the initial launch delay, but a new issue with the Starliner spacecraft has postponed liftoff for a second time. Passant Rabie - 14 May 2024 It’s deja vu all over again. Boeing’s long-anticipated Starliner mission has been postponed for a second time due to a newly discovered issue with the spacecraft’s service module. On Tuesday, Boeing announced that liftoff for the first crewed test flight of its Starliner spacecraft is now targeted for May 21 at 4:43 p.m. ET. The company was originally targeting May 6 for the liftoff of Starliner on board United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rocket, but a last minute anomaly with one of the rocket’s pressure valves delayed the crewed test flight to May 17. ULA’s team successfully replaced the valve on Saturday, but now a new problem has arisen to push back the flight once again. “Starliner teams are working to resolve a small helium leak detected in the spacecraft’s service module traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster,” Boeing wrote in a statement. “NASA and Boeing are developing spacecraft testing and operational solutions to address the issue.” https://gizmodo.com/boeing-s-cursed-starliner-mission-delayed-due-to-small-1851476306 == Another week, another leak for Boeing's Starliner crew capsule == This bird isn't going to space for a while Richard Speed - Mon 20 May 2024 15:30 UTC Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule will spend a little longer on Earth than planned following the discovery of a leak in one of the spacecraft's reaction control thrusters. For context, a few weeks' delay is nothing compared to the years it has taken Boeing to reach this point. The first crewed launch had been set for May 6. However, problems with a pressure regulation valve on the liquid oxygen tank of the Atlas V rocket's Centaur upper stage scrubbed the launch. Managers initially pushed the launch back to no earlier than (NET) May 10, then May 17, following a decision to replace the troublesome valve. The launch was then delayed to NET May 21 after technicians discovered the helium leak. The schedule has since slipped further, and the current launch date and time is NET 3:09 pm EDT on May 25. The leak itself is not serious. It has been traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster. According to NASA, the leak is stable and “would not pose a risk at that level during the flight.” Engineers performed pressure testing on the system, which “indicated the rest of the thruster system is sealed effectively across the entire service module.” https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/starliner_launch_delayed_again/ == Starliner’s first crew mission gets pushed back yet again, this time with no new launch date == Engineers have been working to resolve a helium leak in the propulsion system. Cheyenne MacDonald - Updated Wed, May 22, 2024, 9:30 AM PDT The first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule still hasn’t launched more than two weeks after its originally scheduled liftoff date, and as of right now, there’s no telling when it will. In a statement emailed to members of the press late on Tuesday, NASA announced it was calling off the launch attempt set for May 25. Starliner’s maiden crew mission has already been rescheduled multiple times, but in this instance, NASA hasn’t set a new launch date. “NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward,” the agency said in its statement, per SpaceNews. The first attempt at the beginning of the month was scrubbed due to the discovery of a faulty oxygen relief valve on the ULA Atlas V rocket carrying Starliner. Engineers replaced the valve and Starliner was slated to fly later that week, but that attempt was postponed, too. On May 14, NASA revealed that engineers were working to resolve a helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. In an update a few days later, NASA said the leak was “stable and would not pose a risk at that level during the flight.” A new targeted launch date was set at that time and ultimately rescheduled once more, but it seems the problems are ongoing. https://www.engadget.com/starliners-first-crew-mission-gets-pushed-back-yet-again-this-time-with-no-new-launch-date-163020007.html == Boeing, NASA indefinitely delay crewed Starliner launch == Aria Alamalhodaei - 7:53 AM PDT May 22, 2024 If you’ve been looking forward to seeing Boeing’s Starliner capsule carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The mission, which has already been beset by issues with both the rocket and helium tanks, is now delayed indefinitely, NASA said in a statement late Tuesday. The agency had been targeting a May 25 launch date. “The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy,” the space agency said. “There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed. NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward.” There is little else to go on at the moment other than that statement, so it’s unclear whether the helium leak issue in the spacecraft’s propulsion system — which was identified a few days before the CST-100 Starliner was due to launch on May 17 — is the sole cause for the ongoing delay. https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/22/boeing-nasa-indefinitely-delay-crewed-starliner-launch/ == Boeing's Calamity Capsule launch date slides into the future == Starliner or Padstayer? Richard Speed - Wed 22 May 2024 15:45 UTC Boeing's Starliner, aka the Calamity Capsule, has suffered another setback after a hoped-for May 25 launch date has been dropped as engineers work to deal with a helium leak in the spacecraft's propulsion system. NASA has reportedly dropped the not earlier than (NET) date to give engineers more time to evaluate the issue. “The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy,” the US space agency said. “There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed. “NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward.” The Register contacted NASA for more details and will update should it respond. The leak was traced to a flange on a single reaction control thruster. Starliner has 28 reaction control thrusters on the service module, which is where the problem lies. The thrusters are used for spacecraft attitude and small course corrections. Helium, an inert gas, is used to pressurize the system. A helium leak on the ground would not pose a safety issue, certainly not when compared to the far more explosive and toxic fuels used by spacecraft. In NASA's earlier announcement on the matter in recent days, it said the leak was stable and “would not pose a risk at that level during the flight.” https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/22/boeings_calamity_capsule_launch_date/ == The first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is on hold indefinitely == “NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward.” Stephen Clark - 5/21/2024, 11:15 PM The first crewed test flight of Boeing's long-delayed Starliner spacecraft won't take off as planned Saturday and could face a longer postponement as engineers evaluate a stubborn leak of helium from the capsule's propulsion system. NASA announced the latest delay of the Starliner test flight late Tuesday. Officials will take more time to consider their options for how to proceed with the mission after discovering the small helium leak on the spacecraft's service module. The space agency did not describe what options are on the table, but sources said they range from flying the spacecraft “as is” with a thorough understanding of the leak and confidence it won't become more significant in flight, to removing the capsule from its Atlas V rocket and taking it back to a hangar for repairs. Theoretically, the former option could permit a launch attempt as soon as next week. The latter alternative could delay the launch until at least late summer. “The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy,” NASA said in a statement Tuesday night. “There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed. NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward.” https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-first-crew-launch-of-boeings-starliner-capsule-is-on-hold-indefinitely/ == The First Crew Launch of Boeing's Starliner Capsule Is On Hold Indefinitely == Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday May 22, 2024 03:40PM Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: <blockquote> The first crewed test flight of Boeing's long-delayed Starliner spacecraft won't take off as planned Saturday and could face a longer postponement as engineers evaluate a stubborn leak of helium from the capsule's propulsion system. NASA announced the latest delay of the Starliner test flight late Tuesday. Officials will take more time to consider their options for how to proceed with the mission after discovering the small helium leak on the spacecraft's service module. The space agency did not describe what options are on the table, but sources said they range from flying the spacecraft “as is” with a thorough understanding of the leak and confidence it won't become more significant in flight, to removing the capsule from its Atlas V rocket and taking it back to a hangar for repairs. Theoretically, the former option could permit a launch attempt as soon as next week. The latter alternative could delay the launch until at least late summer. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/05/22/2021226/the-first-crew-launch-of-boeings-starliner-capsule-is-on-hold-indefinitely == The Morning After: Starliner’s launch pushed back again == Plus, OpenAI says it didn’t use a ScarJo soundalike. Daniel Cooper - Thu, May 23, 2024, 4:15 AM PDT Starliner, the Boeing-made vehicle intended to carry the next generation of astronauts, has had its launch scrubbed once again. NASA called off the maiden crewed launch after a number of key engineering faults were discovered, and has declined to announce a new test date. Until then, the two personnel expected to soar into the heavens will just have to standby and hope that engineers are able to address the flaws with the Boeing-made craft. https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-starliners-launch-pushed-back-again-111527644.html ==== Launch 2024 June ==== == NASA finds more issues with Boeing’s Starliner, but crew launch set for June 1 == Fixing the helium leak would delay Starliner crew test flight for months. Stephen Clark - 5/24/2024, 8:34 PM Senior managers from NASA and Boeing told reporters on Friday that they plan to launch the first crew test flight of the Starliner spacecraft as soon as June 1, following several weeks of detailed analysis of a helium leak and a “design vulnerability” with the ship's propulsion system. Extensive data reviews over the last two-and-a-half weeks settled on a likely cause of the leak, which officials described as small and stable. During these reviews, engineers also built confidence that even if the leak worsened, it would not add any unacceptable risk for the Starliner test flight to the International Space Station, officials said. But engineers also found that an unlikely mix of technical failures in Starliner's propulsion system—representing 0.77 percent of all possible failure modes, according to Boeing's program manager—could prevent the spacecraft from conducting a deorbit burn at the end of the mission. “As we studied the helium leak, we also looked across the rest of the propulsion system, just to make sure we didn't have any other things that we should be concerned about,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, which awarded a $4.2 billion contract to Boeing in 2014 for development of the Starliner spacecraft. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/nasa-and-boeing-are-getting-comfortable-launching-starliner-with-a-known-leak/ == Boeing’s Starliner capsule poised for second try at first astronaut flight == “It is safe, and that is why we determined that we can fly with what we have.” Stephen Clark - 5/31/2024, 5:08 PM NASA and Boeing officials are ready for a second attempt to launch the first crew test flight on the Starliner spacecraft Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Liftoff of Boeing's Starliner capsuled atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is set for 12:25 pm EDT (16:25 UTC). NASA commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, both veteran astronauts, will take the Starliner spacecraft on its first trip into low-Earth orbit with a crew on board. You can watch NASA TV's live coverage of the countdown and launch below. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/boeings-starliner-capsule-poised-for-second-try-at-first-astronaut-flight/ == Starliner’s first crewed flight gets scrubbed just before launch == An automatic hold was issued by the ground launch sequencer minutes before liftoff. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sat, Jun 1, 2024, 10:10 AM PDT The first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule has once again been called off, this time after an automatic hold was issued by the ground launch sequencer less than four minutes before liftoff. As a launch commentator explained during NASA’s livestream, the ground launch sequencer is the computer that takes over the terminal count and essentially launches the rocket. “The reason for that hold is not known at this time,” he said. Starliner’s next chance to fly is tomorrow at 12:03PM ET, but whether it does will depend on the outcome of the team’s investigation into today’s issue. In a brief update, NASA said the launch was scrubbed “due to the computer ground launch sequencer not loading into the correct operational configuration after proceeding into terminal count.” Why this happened, though, remains unclear. “The ULA team is working to understand the cause,” NASA said. https://www.engadget.com/starliners-first-crewed-flight-gets-scrubbed-just-before-launch-171045016.html == Boeing, NASA say investigation into Starliner malfunction is underway, preparing for Sunday launch attempt == Michael Sheetz - Sat, Jun 1 2024 11:29 AM EDT / Updated Sat, Jun 1 2024 5:07 PM EDT Boeing’s first Starliner flight with astronauts on board was called off in the final minutes on Saturday. The company was targeting a June 1 launch at 12:25 p.m. ET of its capsule, which is carrying astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in a final major test of the system. Leaders from Boeing, NASA and the United Launch Alliance, or ULA, held a press conference later Saturday afternoon to provide updates on the malfunction and the status of the next launch attempt. “The disappointment lasts for about three seconds,” said Mark Nappi, Vice President and Program Manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program. “And then you just immediately get busy and do your job.” Boeing already has backup launch dates, including Sunday at 12:03 p.m. EDT. Depending on the cause of the launch scrub, Boeing and NASA can reschedule the launch for another attempt 24 hours later, or target alternative launch dates of June 5th or June 6th. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/01/boeings-starliner-first-launch-with-nasa-astronauts.html == Boeing’s Starliner has two more chances this week to make its first crewed flight == Its next shot will be Wednesday at the earliest. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Jun 2, 2024, 11:47 AM PDT After yesterday’s launch of the first crewed Starliner mission was scrubbed, NASA, Boeing and ULA made the decision to wait a few days before making another attempt. Starliner was scheduled to finally lift off on Saturday afternoon after a series of delays, but this attempt was aborted due to a last-minute issue with a ground computer system that plays a key role in launching the rocket. While NASA and partners discussed possibly flying today following their assessment of the issue, they’ve decided to hold off until the next opportunities, either on June 5 or 6. Saturday’s launch wasn’t scrubbed due to a problem with the Starliner craft itself, but because an automatic hold was issued by the ground launch sequencer for a then-unknown reason. In a press conference later on Saturday, Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA explained that it came down to a problem in verifying the launch sequencer’s redundancy. There are three large computers in this system, all of which are the same so it’s “triple redundant,” Bruno said. During the system health check in the minutes before launch, one of the computers came up slow, triggering an automatic hold. https://www.engadget.com/boeings-starliner-has-two-more-chances-this-week-to-make-its-first-crewed-flight-184739763.html == Boeing Starliner Launched Scrubbed Until at Least Wednesday After Redundant Computer Issue == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday June 01, 2024 06:34PM “The seemingly star-cross Boeing Starliner — within minutes of its long-delayed blastoff on the spacecraft's first piloted test flight — was grounded again Saturday,” writes CBS News, “when one of three redundant computers managing the countdown from the base of the launch pad ran into a problem, triggering a last-minute scrub.” More details from NPR: <blockquote> With 3:50 left in the countdown, the rocket's computer initiated a hold. The next launch attempt won't happen until at least Wednesday, NASA said. An issue with one of the three redundant computer systems at the base of the launch pad that are responsible for initiating the launch sequence prompted the automatic halt, said Tory Bruno, the head of United Launch Alliance, the government contractor trying to launch the Starliner. “We do require all three systems to be running — triple redundancy,” ULA President and CEO Bruno said at a Saturday afternoon press briefing. “Those three big computers do a health check. … Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up, and that tripped a red line that created an automatic hold.” ULA engineers don't know why the computer halted, and will troubleshoot ground support equipment overnight, NASA said in an update on Saturday evening. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/06/02/0030200/boeing-starliner-launched-scrubbed-until-at-least-wednesday-after-redundant-computer-issue == Boeing’s Starliner test flight scrubbed again after hold in final countdown == The ground launch sequencer computer called a hold at T-minus 3 minutes, 50 seconds. Stephen Clark - 6/1/2024, 3:47 PM A computer controlling the Atlas V rocket's countdown triggered an automatic hold less than four minutes prior to liftoff of Boeing's commercial Starliner spacecraft Saturday, keeping the crew test flight on the ground at least a few more days. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were already aboard the spacecraft when the countdown stopped due to a problem with a ground computer. “Hold. Hold. Hold,” a member of Atlas V launch team called out on an audio feed. With the hold, the mission missed an instantaneous launch opportunity at 12:25 pm EDT (16:25 UTC), and later Saturday, NASA announced teams will forego a launch opportunity Sunday. The next chance to send Starliner into orbit will be 10:52 am EDT (14:52 UTC) Wednesday. The mission has one launch opportunity every one-to-two days, when the International Space Station's orbital track moves back into proper alignment with the Atlas V rocket's launch pad in Florida. Wilmore and Williams will take the Starliner spacecraft on its first crew flight into low-Earth orbit. The capsule will dock with the International Space Station around a day after launch, spend at least a week there, then return to a parachute-assisted landing at one of two landing zones in New Mexico or Arizona. Once operational, Boeing's Starliner will join SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule to give NASA two independent human-rated spacecraft for transporting astronauts to and from the space station. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/boeings-starliner-test-flight-scrubbed-again-after-hold-in-final-countdown/ == Boeing's Starliner finds yet another way to not reach space == 'Unfortunately a power supply generally does not fail … until it does' Richard Speed - Mon 3 Jun 2024 12:29 UTC Boeing's Starliner has failed to launch once again, this time due to a faulty power supply in a ground computer chassis. Unreliable power supplies are the bane of many an administrator, and it appears that the space program is not immune to their vagaries. The launch, from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, was scheduled for 12:25 EDT on June 1. It made it past the T-4 minute mark before controllers called a scrub and returned the crew access arm to the capsule to extract the pair of astronauts on board. At the time, the issue was attributed to “the computer ground launch sequencer not loading into the correct operational configuration after proceeding into terminal count,” and managers optimistically looked to the backup date of June 2. However, it soon became apparent that more time was needed to deal with whatever had gone wrong this time round. NASA, Boeing, and ULA (United Launch Alliance) opted to forgo the June 2 opportunity in favor of June 5. There is one final opportunity, on June 6, after which batteries onboard the Atlas will require replacing. The trouble was caused by a single ground power supply within one of three redundant chassis. This supply provides power to computer cards that control various system functions, “including the card responsible for the stable replenishment topping valves for the Centaur upper stage.” https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/03/boeing_starliner_launch_scrubbed/ == Boeing’s Starliner finally soars, but mission control reports more helium leaks == Despite new leaks, mission control says Starliner can still dock with the space station. Stephen Clark - 6/5/2024, 11:39 PM After years of delays, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft finally rocketed into orbit from Florida on Wednesday, sending two veteran NASA astronauts on a long-delayed shakedown cruise to the International Space Station. The Starliner capsule lifted off at 10:52 am EDT (14:52 UTC) on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Fifteen minutes later, after shedding two strap-on boosters and a core stage powered by a Russian RD-180 engine, the Atlas V's Centaur upper stage released Starliner right on target to begin a nearly 26-hour pursuit of the space station. Docking at the space station is set for 12:15 pm EDT (16:15 UTC) Thursday, where NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will spend at least a week before coming back to Earth. In remarks shortly after Wednesday's launch, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Wilmore and Williams, both former US Navy pilots, will “test this thing from izzard to gizzard” to ensure Boeing's Starliner is ready for operational six-month crew rotation missions to the ISS. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/after-a-successful-launch-boeings-starliner-runs-into-more-helium-leaks/ == Boeing Spacecraft Carrying Two Astronauts Lifts Off On Historic Maiden Voyage == Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday June 05, 2024 04:30PM Slashdot readers destinyland and LazarusQLong share a report from CNN: <blockquote> The third attempt was the charm for Boeing's Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that has been a decade in the making. The new spacecraft's maiden voyage with humans on board lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are riding aboard the Starliner capsule on a journey that takes them to the International Space Station. The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing's efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States' options for ferrying astronauts to the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency's initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/06/05/2025216/boeing-spacecraft-carrying-two-astronauts-lifts-off-on-historic-maiden-voyage == Boeing's Starliner makes it into orbit at long last – with human crew aboard == Let's get that brave duo to the ISS and then home to Earth safely Richard Speed - Wed 5 Jun 2024 18:28 UTC Boeing's NASA-backed Starliner crew capsule, at long last, successfully blasted off from a Florida launch pad today with two brave humans onboard. This comes after years of delays over faults that have left the US aerospace giant Boeing lagging well behind Elon Musk's SpaceX. The Starliner manned spacecraft launched into Earth's orbit from Cape Canaveral at 1452 UTC, ending a lengthy run of unfortunate events that had resulted in repeated delays before liftoff. You can replay the whole thing below; the one-minute countdown to blast off starts at the 4 hour, 9 minute, 16 second mark. https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/05/boeing_starliner_launch_success/ == Boeing’s Starliner astronaut capsule is en route to the ISS == Aria Alamalhodaei - 8:18 AM PDT June 5, 2024 Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is officially on its way to the International Space Station, marking an historic first for the long-delayed astronaut transportation program. Inside the spacecraft are two NASA astronauts — spaceflight veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — who are set to arrive to the station on Thursday. The spacecraft lifted off at 10:55 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture). The liftoff comes after a string of delays that pushed the mission back by nearly a month, first due to issues with the Atlas rocket and later due to a problem with one of the three ground computers responsible for the launch countdown. https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/05/boeings-starliner-astronaut-capsule-en-route-to-the-iss/ == Boeing's first crewed Starliner mission is finally heading to the ISS == The spacecraft successfully blasted off after a series of delays. Mariella Moon - Wed, Jun 5, 2024, 8:10 AM PDT Boeing's first Starliner flight with a human crew onboard has successfully blasted off to space on top of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket, almost a month after it was originally scheduled to launch. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams entered the Starliner capsule and completed necessary checks by 10:08AM ET. Less than 30 minutes after the astronauts entered the capsule, the CEO ULA tweeted that the company was “working an issue with topping valves on the ground side” and that it was running the fix through its Software Integration Lab (SIL) before it's executed. In the end, ULA was able to implement a workaround, and the spacecraft lifted off at 10:52am ET. Back on May 6, the companies scrubbed the flight two hours after it was originally scheduled to launch after their ground teams detected “anomalous behavior by the pressure regulation valve in the liquid oxygen tank of the Centaur upper stage of the ULA Atlas V launch vehicle.” The valve was replaced and the Starliner teams were ready to make another launch attempt when they encountered another issue: They found a “small helium leak” in the spacecraft's service module. https://www.engadget.com/boeings-first-crewed-starliner-mission-is-finally-heading-to-the-iss-151053557.html == Countdown begins for third try launching Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule == Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been in prelaunch quarantine for six weeks. Stephen Clark - 6/5/2024, 5:43 AM Fresh off repairs at the launch pad in Florida, United Launch Alliance engineers restarted the countdown overnight for the third attempt to send an Atlas V rocket and Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on a test flight to the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were expected to awake early Wednesday, put on their blue pressure suits, and head to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to board the Starliner capsule on top of the 172-foot-tall Atlas V rocket. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/countdown-begins-for-third-try-launching-boeings-starliner-crew-capsule/ == Boeing's Starliner Docks at ISS After Five Thrusters Unexpectedly Shut Off == Controllers scrambled to restore four of the five thrusters, causing Starliner to dock more than an hour later than planned. Passant Rabie - 6 June 2024 After back-to-back failed launch attempts, a crewed Starliner capsule finally launched on Wednesday to deliver two NASA astronauts to low Earth orbit. Boeing is testing its capsule’s ability to transport crews to the International Space Station (ISS), with Starliner set to dock to the orbital lab on Thursday. Update: June 6, 1:45 p.m. ET: Starliner missed its first docking opportunity at 12:15 p.m. ET due to technical issues, prompting NASA to target another docking window starting at around 1:30 p.m. ET. Five of the spacecraft thrusters failed during its approach, and four were subsequently recovered. As a result, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore had to assume manual control of the crew capsule for a while before it went back into its autonomous mode. The capsule finally docked with the ISS at 1:34 p.m. ET following a nail-biting journey. Update: June 6, 1:27 p.m. ET: Starliner’s docking has not gone smoothly, the spacecraft developed trouble with its reaction control system thrusters. https://gizmodo.com/watch-boeing-starliner-dock-iss-astronauts-1851521917 == Boeing’s Starliner overcomes last-second problems to dock with the ISS == “Nice to be attached to the big city in the sky.” Will Shanklin - Updated Thu, Jun 6, 2024, 12:48 PM PDT Boeing’s Starliner has successfully docked with the ISS — but not without some last-minute problems. The company’s first crewed test flight to the space station linked up at 1:34 PM ET after missing its first shot due to several thrusters malfunctioning. Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams plan to spend the next eight days onboard the ISS before returning to Earth. The capsule docked with the ISS in an orbit about 260 miles over the Indian Ocean. The pair is now circling the planet at around 17,500 mph. “Nice to be attached to the big city in the sky,” Wilmore spoke over comms to mission control in Houston after the successful docking. The capsule carries 760 pounds of cargo, including about 300 pounds of food and other supplies requested by the four US astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts onboard. https://www.engadget.com/boeings-starliner-overcomes-last-second-problems-to-dock-with-the-iss-194801249.html == Boeing’s Starliner overcomes leaks and engine trouble to dock with ‘the big city in the sky’ == Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:04 PM PDT June 6, 2024 Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station, a key milestone in the aerospace giant’s quest to certify the capsule for regular crewed missions. Starliner safely docked at 10:34 AM Pacific Time. After taking some time to equalize pressure between Starliner and the station, the hatch opened at around 12:46 PM. The astronauts, spaceflight veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, entered the ISS to cheers and hugs from the seven crew members already aboard. This is their third time each visiting the station, but the first time any human has done so using a Boeing Starliner capsule. Boeing and NASA are currently in the middle of what will end up being a roughly 10-day test mission of the Starliner spacecraft, which has been beset by numerous delays and technical issues. The two astronauts will spend eight days on the ISS before re-boarding Starliner and returning home for a parachute-assisted landing somewhere in the southwestern United States. https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/06/boeings-starliner-overcomes-leaks-and-engine-trouble-to-dock-with-the-big-city-in-the-sky/ == Boeing Starliner Docks With ISS == Posted by BeauHD on Friday June 07, 2024 12:00AM Longtime Slashdot reader destinyland shared a story from Space.com reporting on Boeing's missed opportunity to dock with the International Space Station, after five of the 28 thrusters that help control Starliner's movement in space stopped operating. NASA has since been able to recover four of the thrusters to successfully dock Boeing's Starliner capsule with the ISS. From the report: <blockquote> There are now two U.S.-built crew spacecraft docked with the ISS for the first time. Boeing's Starliner joined SpaceX's Dragon capsule “Endeavour,” which arrived in March. Boeing's Starliner launched successfully on Wednesday to begin the crew flight test. The mission represents a final major step before NASA certifies Boeing to fly crew on operational missions. […] NASA flight controllers called off a previously scheduled approach to resolve issues with Starliner's propulsion system. Starliner has 28 jets, known as its reaction control system, or RCS, engines, that help the spacecraft make small movements in orbit. The crew on Starliner, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were told by NASA capsule communicator, or CAPCOM, Neal Nagata, that the 12:15 p.m. docking attempt had to be called off to resolve the spacecraft's propulsion issue. CAPCOM Nagata noted that the ISS has a zero fault tolerance for a spacecraft control problem. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/06/06/2030223/boeing-starliner-docks-with-iss == After a drama-filled day, Boeing’s Starliner finally finds its way == “I think we’re missing something fundamental that’s going on inside the thrusters.” Eric Berger - 6/6/2024, 5:14 PM A little more than a day after launching into space, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft flew up to the International Space Station and docked with the orbiting laboratory on Thursday. The journey through space was not always easy. In the immediate hours after launch on Wednesday, the spacecraft was beset by two helium leaks in its propulsion system. Then, on Thursday, several of Starliner's spacecraft thrusters went offline for a time. Far more often than originally planned, spacecraft commander Butch Wilmore had to take manual control of Starliner while engineers on the ground worked on these and other issues. However, at 1:34 pm ET on Thursday, Wilmore and the mission's other crew member, Suni Williams, successfully docked with the space station. A couple of hours later, they floated through the hatch, making a triumphant entry onto the station—and making history. With Thursday's success, Boeing became only the second private company to build and fly a human orbital spacecraft, joining an elite club of just three nations: Russia, the United States, and China, alongside SpaceX. For the first time in history, three different crewed vehicles, Starliner, SpaceX's Dragon, and Russia's Soyuz, were all simultaneously docked at the station. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/after-a-drama-filled-day-boeings-starliner-finally-finds-its-way/ == Boeing’s Starliner Now Has 5 Leaks While Parked Outside the ISS == Starliner teams detected a helium leak before launch, two more after liftoff, and now a fourth and fifth leak with the vehicle docked at the ISS. Oh my. Passant Rabie - June 12, 2024 Following an iffy docking at the International Space Station last week, Boeing managed to deliver a pair of NASA astronauts to the orbital lab. The stressful Starliner saga continues as the crew capsule developed more leaks in its service module. NASA is currently evaluating its ability to return the duo back to Earth. In an update shared on Monday, NASA revealed that the Starliner teams are assessing the impact that five helium leaks would have on the remainder of the mission. “While Starliner is docked, all the manifolds are closed per normal mission operations preventing helium loss from the tanks,” the space agency wrote. If you’ve been keeping track, there were three leaks on the Starliner spacecraft the last time we checked. Starliner teams had identified two new leaks on the spacecraft after it launched on June 5, in addition to a helium leak that was detected prior to liftoff. The team took some time to assess the issue before launching the capsule, but eventually Boeing and NASA decided to proceed with flying the crew on the leaky Starliner spacecraft without resolving the problem. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-spacecraft-fifth-helium-leak-iss-nasa-1851534977 == NASA delays Starliner return a few more days to study data == “I would not characterize it as frustration. I would characterize it as learning.” ERIC BERGER - 6/18/2024, 11:46 AM NASA and Boeing will take an additional four days to review all available data about the performance of the Starliner spacecraft before clearing the vehicle to return to Earth, officials said Tuesday. Based on the new schedule, which remains pending ahead of final review meetings later this week, Starliner would undock at 10:10 pm ET on Tuesday, June 25, from the International Space Station (02:10 UTC on June 26). This would set up a landing at 4:51 ET on June 26 (08:51 UTC) at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. During a news conference on Tuesday, the program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich, said the four-day delay in the spacecraft's return would “give our team a little bit more time to look at the data, do some analysis, and make sure we're really ready to come home.” https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-delays-starliner-return-a-few-more-days-to-study-data/ == A Weird Final Test for Boeing’s Starliner Uncovered the Likely Cause of Several Recently-Failed Thrusters == Sometimes you got to push against a million-pound structure in space. Doris Elín Urrutia - June 19, 2024 On Saturday, the Boeing Starliner pushed ever so slightly against the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a test to evaluate several recently-failed thrusters. During the final phase of the Starliner’s docking rendezvous two weeks ago, as the vehicle was in the final stretch to deliver the project’s first-ever passengers to the ISS for Boeing’s Crew Flight Test mission, five thrusters on the Starliner failed. One thruster called B1A3 showed a strange signature. That day, it showed only 11 percent thrust during one firing, and nothing on a second firing. The team decided to deselect it. It will not be used for the remainder of Starliner’s flight. But the other four were still in need of evaluation on Saturday June 15, during a hot fire test. Starliner is a week away from attempting to undock from the ISS, when it will navigate into prime position in low-Earth orbit, then careen through the atmosphere to touchdown on land in White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico before sunrise on June 26. https://www.inverse.com/science/boeing-starliner-thrusts-against-the-space-station == NASA indefinitely delays return of Starliner to review propulsion data == “We are letting the data drive our decision.” ERIC BERGER - 6/21/2024, 6:27 PM In an update released late Friday evening, NASA said it was “adjusting” the date of the Starliner spacecraft's return to Earth from June 26 to an unspecified time in July. The announcement followed two days of long meetings to review the readiness of the spacecraft, developed by Boeing, to fly NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth. According to sources, these meetings included high-level participation from senior leaders at the agency, including Associate Administrator Jim Free. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-indefinitely-delays-return-of-starliner-to-review-propulsion-data/ == Starliner to remain docked to the ISS into July – with no new departure date == If it's Boeing, it isn't going joke gets a bit real for 'nauts Richard Speed - Mon 24 Jun 2024 14:01 UTC Boeing's Starliner will remain docked at the International Space Station (ISS) for a while longer as engineers analyze data from the vehicle's propulsion system. After repeated delays, the spacecraft was set to leave the outpost on June 25 and land at White Sands, New Mexico. However, at the end of last week, mission managers opted to postpone the undocking once again without specifying a new date. Two spacewalks from the ISS are planned for June 24 and July 2, meaning the next departure date could be in July or even slip as far back as August. According to NASA: “The crew is not pressed for time to leave the station since there are plenty of supplies in orbit, and the station’s schedule is relatively open through mid-August.” The Starliner will need to depart the ISS before August without some additional engineering analysis. During the post-docking news conference, Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, gave a figure of 45 days for the docked duration, meaning a docking would have to occur during the latter half of July at the very latest. The delay will remove any potential conflict with the upcoming spacewalks and give engineers more time to review data from the Starliner's propulsion system. The vehicle has been bedeviled by helium leaks and thruster problems. Once the Starliner commences its return to Earth, the service module where the problematic hardware is located will be discarded, depriving engineers of an avenue of investigation. https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/24/starliner_to_remain_docked_to/ == Starliner To Remain Docked To ISS With No New Departure Date == Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday June 25, 2024 12:00AM While NASA engineers review propulsion system data, Boeing's Starliner will remain docked at the ISS longer than planned, with a new departure date yet to be specified due to upcoming spacewalks and ongoing engineering reviews. “After repeated delays, the spacecraft was set to leave the outpost on June 25 and land at White Sands, New Mexico,” notes The Register. NASA has stated that the crew is not in a hurry to leave, with sufficient supplies available, and the delay will allow more time to address helium leaks and thruster issues observed during docking. From the report: <blockquote> The Starliner will need to depart the ISS before August without some additional engineering analysis. During the post-docking news conference, Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, gave a figure of 45 days for the docked duration, meaning a docking would have to occur during the latter half of July at the very latest. The delay will remove any potential conflict with the upcoming spacewalks and give engineers more time to review data from the Starliner's propulsion system. The vehicle has been bedeviled by helium leaks and thruster problems. Once the Starliner commences its return to Earth, the service module where the problematic hardware is located will be discarded, depriving engineers of an avenue of investigation. </blockquote> https://slashdot.org/story/24/06/24/2336238/starliner-to-remain-docked-to-iss-with-no-new-departure-date == NASA and Boeing deny Starliner crew is ‘stranded’: “We’re not in any rush to come home” == Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:25 PM PDT June 28, 2024 NASA and Boeing officials pushed back against recent reporting that the two astronauts brought to the ISS on Starliner are stranded on board. The companies said in a press conference Friday that they are using “the luxury of time” to learn as much about the capsule as possible before it returns to Earth. The two astronauts will be there for a few more weeks while the company and NASA perform more tests from the ground — meaning yet another extension to their stay, though officials declined to provide a new target date for their return. “I want to make it real clear that we’re not in any rush to come home,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said during the press conference. “The station is a nice, safe place to stop and take our time to work through the vehicle and make sure we’re ready to come home.” https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/28/nasa-and-boeing-deny-starliner-crew-is-stranded-were-not-in-any-rush-to-come-home/ == NASA and Boeing deny Starliner crew is ‘stranded’: “We’re not in any rush to come home” == Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:25 PM PDT June 28, 2024 NASA and Boeing officials pushed back against recent reporting that the two astronauts brought to the ISS on Starliner are stranded on board. The companies said in a press conference Friday that they are using “the luxury of time” to learn as much about the capsule as possible before it returns to Earth. The two astronauts will be there for a few more weeks while the company and NASA perform more tests from the ground — meaning yet another extension to their stay, though officials declined to provide a new target date for their return. “I want to make it real clear that we’re not in any rush to come home,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said during the press conference. “The station is a nice, safe place to stop and take our time to work through the vehicle and make sure we’re ready to come home.” In the interim, engineers from Boeing and NASA will head to New Mexico’s White Sands Test Facility to conduct a series of remote tests on the spacecraft’s thrusters. There are 28 thrusters on Starliner, responsible for making minute changes to the spacecraft’s movements in orbit, and they’re critical for safe docking and undocking from the ISS. That docking process was halted on approach when five malfunctioned on orbit, but engineers were able to bring four of those thrusters back online, which allowed docking to proceed. https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/28/nasa-and-boeing-deny-starliner-crew-is-stranded-were-not-in-any-rush-to-come-home/ == NASA and Boeing say Starliner astronauts ‘are not stranded,’ but will be on the ISS for a few more weeks == Engineers are set to begin tests on the ground to investigate Starliner's thruster issues. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sat, Jun 29, 2024, 8:44 AM PDT NASA and Boeing plan to spend the next few weeks conducting tests on the ground in order to better understand issues with the Starliner spacecraft’s thrusters before giving its crew the go-ahead to fly back to Earth. But, officials insisted in a press conference Friday afternoon, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are not “stranded” on the International Space Station. “We’re not in a rush to come home,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Starliner has been docked with the ISS since June 6 for what was meant to be a 10-day flight test all in all. During its approach of the orbiting lab, however, the craft experienced problems with five of its thrusters, and a known helium leak appeared to worsen. NASA and Boeing have been working together to evaluate the issues ever since. On Friday, representatives for the two said they aren’t yet setting a date for the return flight, and will instead wait until the ground tests have been completed and all analyses run. The first thruster tests, which will be conducted at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, are expected to begin as soon as Tuesday. https://www.engadget.com/nasa-and-boeing-say-starliner-astronauts-are-not-stranded-but-will-be-on-the-iss-for-a-few-more-weeks-154407704.html == Boeing Would Like Everyone to Please Stop Saying the Starliner ISS Test Is a Bust == NASA and its commercial partner insist the Starliner crew is not stranded in space, while openly expressing frustration with the media's negative coverage. Passant Rabie - 2 July 2024 Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been docked to the International Space Station (ISS) for nearly a month, with NASA and its commercial partner repeatedly delaying the departure of the crew on board the capsule. Despite indefinitely postponing Starliner’s return flight, NASA and Boeing insist that the spacecraft is fully operational, capable of returning to Earth at any point, and that the two astronauts aboard are not stranded in space. Boeing officials have described news coverage of the mission thus far as “pretty painful,” highlighting that this is a test mission with the main purpose being to collect as much data as possible. That may be true. However, there have been concerning signs to suggest that perhaps things aren’t as smooth as NASA and Boeing are claiming. Considering all the additional tests the spacecraft has had to undergo while docked to the ISS, it’s also not clear how the program will advance once the test flight comes to an end. Starliner’s first crewed flight has exposed several issues with the spacecraft that need resolving. Will NASA require Boeing to spend more time fixing its capsule, and will a second test flight be necessary? These are issues that NASA and its partner have yet to address amidst a wave of bad press and public ridicule. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-would-like-everyone-to-please-stop-saying-the-st-1851572824 == NASA update on Starliner thruster issues: This is fine == “What we want to know is that the thrusters can perform,” Starliner's pilot says. Stephen Clark - 7/10/2024, 5:30 PM Before clearing Boeing's Starliner crew capsule to depart the International Space Station and head for Earth, NASA managers want to ensure the spacecraft's problematic control thrusters can help guide the ship's two-person crew home. The two astronauts who launched June 5 on the Starliner spacecraft's first crew test flight agree with the managers, although they said Wednesday that they're comfortable with flying the capsule back to Earth if there's any emergency that might require evacuation of the space station. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to return to Earth weeks ago, but managers are keeping them at the station as engineers continue probing thruster problems and helium leaks that have plagued the mission since its launch. “This is a tough business that we’re in,” Wilmore, Starliner's commander, told reporters Wednesday in a news conference from the space station. “Human spaceflight is not easy in any regime, and there have been multiple issues with any spacecraft that’s ever been designed, and that’s the nature of what we do.” Five of the 28 reaction control system thrusters on Starliner's service module dropped offline as the spacecraft approached the space station last month. Starliner's flight software disabled the five control jets when they started overheating and losing thrust. Four of the thrusters were later recovered, although some couldn't reach their full power levels as Starliner came in for docking. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/starliner-still-doesnt-have-a-return-date-as-nasa-tests-overheating-thrusters/ == Boeing Starliner crew get their ISS sleepover extended == Bosses regret talking up mission duration as Capsule's lifetime extended to 90 days Richard Speed - Fri 26 Jul 2024 14:24 UTC The crew of the Boeing Starliner will spend the summer aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as NASA and Boeing refused to set a return date for the craft. During a briefing on July 25, Mark Nappi, Vice President and Program Manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program, commented on the emphasis placed on the eight-day mission duration. “It's my regret that we didn't just say we're going to stay up there until we get everything done that we want to,” he said. The mission has breezed past that eight-day duration and might exceed ten times that before managers finally decide to bring the Starliner crew back to Earth. NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said that a battery waiver to extend the duration Starliner could remain in space had been approved, doubling the time to 90 days. “That gives us a life, if we need it, all the way out through the early September time frame.” The team has been trying to understand the thruster issues experienced during the docking of the Starliner to the ISS and has been executing tests on the ground to get to the bottom of the problems. Over the weekend, Stich said that the ground team planned to fire 27 of Starliner's thrusters in pulses to check performance is as expected. During the briefing, Stich noted that the team had identified manual maneuvering as putting additional stress on the thrusters. As such, plans to perform manual flying of the Starliner between undocking and deorbit had been ditched. https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/26/starliner_stay_onboard_iss/ == NASA says it is “evaluating all options” for the safe return of Starliner crew == SpaceX is actively working on a plan to fly Starliner's crew home. Eric Berger - 8/1/2024, 3:59 PM It has now been eight weeks since Boeing's Starliner spacecraft launched into orbit on an Atlas V rocket, bound for the International Space Station. At the time NASA officials said the two crew members, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, could return to Earth as soon as June 14, just eight days later. Yes, there had been some problems on Starliner's ride to the space station that involved helium leaks and failing thrusters. But officials said they were relatively minor and sought to downplay them. “Those are pretty small, really, issues to deal with,” Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program, said during a post-docking news conference. “We’ll figure them out for the next mission. I don’t see these as significant at all.” But days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months as NASA and Boeing continued to study the two technical problems. Of these issues, the more pressing concern was the failure of multiple reaction control system thrusters that are essential to steering Starliner during its departure from the space station and setting up a critical engine burn to enter Earth's atmosphere. In the last few weeks, ground teams from NASA and Boeing completed testing of a thruster on a test stand at White Sands, New Mexico. Then, last weekend, Boeing and NASA fired the spacecraft's thrusters in orbit to check their performance while docked at the space station. NASA has said preliminary results from these tests were helpful. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/yes-nasa-really-could-bring-starliners-astronauts-back-on-crew-dragon/ == It's Sounding Like Boeing's Starliner May Have Completely Failed == Sounds pretty bad up there. Aug 2, 12:52 PM EDT - Sharon Adarlo It looks like NASA officials might be seeing the writing on the wall for the very troubled Boeing Starliner, which has marooned two astronauts up in space for almost two months due to technical issues. An unnamed “informed” source told Ars Technica that there's a greater than 50 percent probability that the stranded astronauts will end up leaving the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, with another unnamed person telling the news outlet that the scenario is highly likely. NASA officials are more cagey about what's happening on the record, a marked contrast from previous weeks when they expressed confidence in the Starliner's ability to safely bring back the astronauts. “NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars. “No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.” https://futurism.com/the-byte/signs-boeing-starliner-completely-failed == NASA Says Boeing Starliner Astronauts May Fly Home On SpaceX In 2025 == Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday August 07, 2024 01:42PM An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: <blockquote> For weeks, NASA has downplayed problems experienced by Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft that took two astronauts to the International Space Station in June. But on Wednesday, NASA officials admitted that the problems with the spacecraft were more serious than first thought and that the astronauts may not travel home on the Boeing vehicle, after all. The agency is exploring a backup option for the astronauts, Suni Wiliams and Butch Wilmore, to hitch a ride back to Earth on a vehicle built by Boeing's competitor SpaceX instead. Their stay in orbit, which was to be as short as eight days, may extend into next year. “We could take either path,” Ken Bowersox, NASA's associate administrator for the space operations mission directorate, said during a news conference on Wednesday. “And reasonable people could pick either path.” </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/08/07/2040203/nasa-says-boeing-starliner-astronauts-may-fly-home-on-spacex-in-2025 == NASA chief will make the final decision on how Starliner crew flies home == “I especially have confidence since I have the final decision.” Eric Berger - 8/6/2024, 2:45 PM NASA on Tuesday confirmed that it is delaying the launch of its next astronaut mission to the International Space Station, Crew 9, until at least September 24. This is a significant slip from the previous date of August 18. The space agency said the delay was necessary for “operational flexibility” as it continues to deliberate on the viability of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. In the release, NASA stated, “This adjustment allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test currently docked to the orbiting laboratory.” NASA also cited other reasons for the delay, including a deconfliction of traffic at the space station, such as a Soyuz launch scheduled for mid-September. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-confirms-slip-of-crew-9-launch-to-late-september-for-flexibility/ == ISS astronauts on eight-day mission may be stuck until 2025, Nasa says == Two astronauts who left Earth in June remain at International Space Station after issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule Lauren Aratani and agencies - Thu 8 Aug 2024 00.43 EDT Two US astronauts who blasted into space for an eight-day mission in June may be stuck on the International Space Station until next year if their Boeing Starliner cannot be repaired for them to return home, Nasa has said. Nasa officials on Wednesday said astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner capsule, could return on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in February 2025 if Starliner is still deemed unsafe to return to Earth. The US space agency has been discussing potential plans with SpaceX to leave two seats empty on an upcoming Crew Dragon launch, which itself was delayed by a month on Tuesday, as Nasa and Boeing work out how to bring the astronauts home. The astronauts’ test mission on 5 June, initially expected to last about eight days on the station, has been drawn out by issues on Starliner’s propulsion system that have increasingly called into question the spacecraft’s ability to safely return them to Earth as planned. A Boeing spokesperson said if Nasa decides to change Starliner’s mission, the company “will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/07/spacex-delay-international-space-station-boeing-nasa == Boeing Starliner Could Brick ISS Docking Port If Crew Abandons It == NASA fears Boeing autonomous software update for Starliner could render ISS docking port inoperable Ryan Erik King - 7 August 2024 12:05PM NASA is contemplating bringing astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams home from the International Space Station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon and flying the Boeing Starliner back empty. There’s just one problem: Boeing removed the Starliner’s autonomous undocking feature from its software. The aerospace manufacturer wants to push a software update to the spacecraft in orbit, but NASA fears it could do more damage. https://jalopnik.com/boeing-starliner-could-brick-iss-docking-port-if-crew-a-1851615463 == NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation == Three Starliner mission managers had key roles on Columbia's ill-fated final flight. Stephen Clark - 8/12/2024, 7:35 AM As soon as this week, NASA officials will make perhaps the agency's most consequential safety decision in human spaceflight in 21 years. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are nearly 10 weeks into a test flight that was originally set to last a little more than one week. The two retired US Navy test pilots were the first people to fly into orbit on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft when it launched on June 5. Now, NASA officials aren't sure Starliner is safe enough to bring the astronauts home. Three of the managers at the center of the pending decision, Ken Bowersox and Steve Stich from NASA and Boeing's LeRoy Cain, either had key roles in the ill-fated final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 or felt the consequences of the accident. At that time, officials misjudged the risk. Seven astronauts died, and the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas. Bowersox, Stich, and Cain weren't the people making the call on the health of Columbia's heat shield in 2003, but they had front-row seats to the consequences. Bowersox was an astronaut on the International Space Station when NASA lost Columbia. He and his crewmates were waiting to hitch a ride home on the next Space Shuttle mission, which was delayed two-and-a-half years in the wake of the Columbia accident. Instead, Bowersox's crew came back to Earth later that year on a Russian Soyuz capsule. After retiring from the astronaut corps, Bowersox worked at SpaceX and is now the head of NASA's spaceflight operations directorate. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-is-about-to-make-its-most-important-safety-decision-in-nearly-a-generation/ == I trust NASA’s safety culture this time around, and so should you == “The lessons of Columbia have not been forgotten.” Eric Berger - 8/12/2024, 8:14 AM My first real taste of space journalism came on the morning of February 1, 2003. An editor at the Houston Chronicle telephoned me at home on a Saturday morning and asked me to hurry to Johnson Space Center to help cover the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia. At the time, I did not realize this tragedy would set the course for the rest of my professional life, that of thinking and writing about spaceflight. This would become the consuming passion of my career. I've naturally been thinking a lot about Columbia in recent weeks. While the parallels between that Space Shuttle mission and the first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft are not exact, there are similarities. Most significantly, after the Space Shuttle launched, there were questions about the safety of the vehicle's return home due to foam striking the leading edge of the spacecraft's wing. Two decades later, there are many more questions, both in public and private, about the viability of Starliner's propulsion system after irregularities during the vehicle's flight to the space station in June. NASA officials made the wrong decision during the Columbia accident. So, facing another hugely consequential decision now, is there any reason to believe they'll make the correct call with the lives of Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the line? https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/with-starliner-stuck-in-space-has-nasas-safety-culture-changed-since-columbia/ == NASA pushes decision on bringing crew back in Starliner to the end of August == When is a mishap not really a mishap? Richard Speed - Thu 15 Aug 2024 14:40 UTC NASA has continued to twist itself into a pretzel over whether Boeing's CST-100 Starliner – now two months past its original return date – can be used to bring back its crew to Earth and whether a failure to do so would be classed as a mishap. The briefing, which did not feature any Boeing personnel, hinted at the turmoil behind the scenes at the US space agency as staffers grapple with the problem of Starliner's problematic thrusters amid the knowledge that a proven and operational spacecraft, in the form of the Crew Dragon, could be pressed into service. The question for engineers and managers is which option would pose less risk for the crew. The wrangling means a decision on the transport method that the Starliner crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni William, will take for their trip back to Earth has been delayed once again, likely to the week after next. During the briefing, it was noted that factors including docking port availability and the use of International Space Station (ISS) consumables meant that the last week of August would be the point where a decision – whether Wilmore and Williams become part of Crew-9 or return on Starliner -would have to be made. For context, Boeing's Starliner has been cleared for crew return in an emergency. However, NASA is still weighing up whether it would be riskier to use it for a nominal return or simply wait for the next Crew Dragon. Returning the Starliner crew on the Crew-8 capsule, currently docked to the ISS, hasn't been seriously considered as part of a nominal flight plan. However, NASA did explain that should a contingency event happen after Starliner left the ISS in uncrewed mode and before the Crew-9 spacecraft arrived, Wilmore and Williams would have to return to Earth unsuited. While the suits are, in theory, not required should the capsule maintain pressure during reentry, it is one more risk for NASA to balance. https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/15/nasa_starliner_decision_end_august/ == NASA acknowledges it cannot quantify risk of Starliner propulsion issues == “We don’t have enough insight and data to make some sort of simple black-and-white calculation.” Stephen Clark - 8/15/2024, 6:20 AM With no consensus on the safety of the Starliner crew capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday they need another week or two before deciding whether to bring two astronauts back to Earth on Boeing's spacecraft or extend their stay on the International Space Station until next year. Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, stricken by suspect thrusters and helium leaks, is taking up a valuable parking spot at the space station. It needs to depart the orbiting research complex, with or without its two-person crew, before the launch of SpaceX's next Dragon crew mission to the station, scheduled for September 24. “We can juggle things and make things work if we need to extend, but it’s getting a lot harder,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA's spaceflight operations directorate. “With the consumables we’re using, with the need for the use of the ports for cargo missions, those types of things, we’re reaching a point where that last week in August, we really should be making a call, if not sooner.” Last week, NASA officials said they expected to make a decision in mid-August—presumably this week—but Bowersox said Wednesday NASA probably won't make the final call on what to do with the Starliner spacecraft until the end of next week, or the beginning of the week of August 26. “We’ve got time available before we bring Starliner home and we want to use that time wisely,” Bowersox said. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-acknowledges-it-cannot-quantify-risk-of-starliner-propulsion-issues/ == NASA will fly Boeing Starliner crew home with SpaceX, Calamity Capsule deemed too risky == Eight days going on eight months for pilots stuck on orbiting space station Richard Speed - Sun 25 Aug 2024 19:29 UTC NASA has decided the Boeing Starliner pilots stuck on the International Space Station will return to Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon pod next year – after the US agency's engineers could not clear the Starliner's thrusters for the return trip. To recap: Boeing flew its Starliner capsule with two pilots onboard to the orbiting space station in June for what was expected to be a mission lasting about a week. The pair of astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were supposed to return home in that capsule. They were expected to be back by now. But their journey home was put on hold by NASA due to concerns over the Calamity Capsule's thrusters and helium leaks, leaving the duo stuck on the ISS with its other crew. After much deliberation, with Boeing insisting its equipment was safe enough, the official plan now, announced over the weekend by NASA, is to return the Starliner pod without its crew to Earth in early September. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will arrive shortly after, more or less as planned, in a mission dubbed Crew-9. That mission was supposed to bring four more astronauts to the space station, though now it will only bring two, and the Starliner 'nauts will then become part of Crew-9. https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/25/nasa_spacex_starliner/ == NASA’s Starliner decision was the right one, but it’s a crushing blow for Boeing == It's unlikely Boeing can fly all six of its Starliner missions before retirement of the ISS in 2030. Stephen Clark - 8/24/2024, 7:16 PM Ten years ago next month NASA announced that Boeing, one of the agency's most experienced contractors, won the lion's share of government money available to end the agency's sole reliance on Russia to ferry its astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. At the time, Boeing won $4.2 billion from NASA to complete development of the Starliner spacecraft and fly a minimum of two, and potentially up to six, operational crew flights to rotate crews between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX won a $2.6 billion contract for essentially the same scope of work. A decade later the Starliner program finds itself at a crossroads after Boeing learned it will not complete the spacecraft's first Crew Flight Test with astronauts onboard. NASA formally decided Saturday that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on the Starliner capsule June 5, will instead return to Earth inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Put simply, NASA isn't confident enough in Boeing's spacecraft after it suffered multiple thrusters failures and helium leaks on the way to the ISS. So where does this leave Boeing with its multibillion contract? Can the company fulfill the breadth of its commercial crew contract with NASA before the space station's scheduled retirement in 2030? It now seems that there is little chance of Boeing flying six more Starliner missions without a life extension for the ISS. Tellingly, perhaps, NASA has only placed firm orders with Boeing for three Starliner flights once the agency certifies the spacecraft for operational use. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/after-latest-starliner-setback-will-boeing-ever-deliver-on-its-crew-contract/ == Starliner will return to Earth uncrewed, astronauts staying on ISS until February == Aria Alamalhodaei & Anthony Ha - 10:32 AM PDT August 24, 2024 Boeing’s Starliner mission is coming back to Earth — empty. After months of data analysis and internal deliberation, NASA leadership announced today that Starliner will be coming back to Earth in September, without a crew. Meanwhile, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will remain on-board the International Space Station until February 2025, when they will return on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft as part of the Crew-9 mission. NASA noted that while the astronauts’ eight-month stay on the ISS will be longer than expected, others have remained on the ISS for as long as 12 months. While there, Wilmore and Williams will be involved in research, station maintenance, and potentially a few spacewalks. Boeing launched the first crewed Starliner mission — a test mission — on June 5, with issues starting around 24 hours later. In the final phase of approach to the ISS, five of the 28 thrusters on Starliner went offline, and several helium leaks sprung up in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Since then, NASA and Boeing engineers have been engaged in a root cause analysis, conducting tests of the thrusters onboard the spacecraft and testing a replica engine here on Earth. https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/24/starliner-will-return-to-earth-uncrewed-astronauts-staying-on-iss-until-february/ == NASA Says SpaceX Will Bring Boeing's Starliner Astronauts Back to Earth - in February == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 24, 2024 12:34PM Boeing “will return its Starliner capsule from the International Space Station without the NASA astronauts,” reports CNBC. Though they've been on the space station since early June, the plan is to have them stay “for about six more months before flying home in February on SpaceX's Crew-9 vehicle. “The test flight was originally intended to last about nine days.” <blockquote> The decision to bring Starliner back from the ISS empty marks a dramatic about-face for NASA and Boeing, as the organizations were previously adamant that the capsule was the primary choice for returning the crew. But Starliner's crew flight test, which had been seen as the final major milestone in the spacecraft's development, faced problems — most notably with its propulsion system. “Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference with top NASA officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. “We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS.” </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/08/24/1919225/nasa-says-spacex-will-bring-boeings-starliner-astronauts-back-to-earth---in-february == NASA not comfortable with Starliner thrusters, so crew will fly home on Dragon == “I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise.” Eric Berger - 8/24/2024, 2:16 PM Following weeks of speculation, NASA finally made it official on Saturday: Two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in June will not return home on that vehicle. Instead, the agency has asked SpaceX to use its Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth. “NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the outset of a news conference on Saturday afternoon at Johnson Space Center. In a sign of the gravity surrounding the agency's decision, both Nelson and NASA's deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, attended a Flight Readiness Review meeting held Saturday in Houston. During that gathering of the agency's senior officials, an informal “go/no go” poll was taken. Those present voted unanimously for Wilmore and Williams to return to Earth on Crew Dragon. The official recommendation of the Commercial Crew Program was the same, and Nelson accepted it. Therefore, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will undock from the station early next month—the tentative date, according to a source, is September 6—and attempt to make an autonomous return to Earth and land in a desert in the southwestern United States. Then, no earlier than September 24, a Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch with two astronauts (NASA has not named the two crew members yet) to the space station with two empty seats. Wilmore and Williams will join these two Crew-9 astronauts for their previously scheduled six-month increment on the space station. All four will then return to Earth on the Crew Dragon vehicle. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/its-official-nasa-calls-on-crew-dragon-to-rescue-the-starliner-astronauts/ == NASA Says SpaceX Will Bring Boeing's Starliner Astronauts Back to Earth - in February == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 24, 2024 12:34PM Boeing “will return its Starliner capsule from the International Space Station without the NASA astronauts,” reports CNBC. Though they've been on the space station since early June, the plan is to have them stay “for about six more months before flying home in February on SpaceX's Crew-9 vehicle. “The test flight was originally intended to last about nine days.” <blockquote> The decision to bring Starliner back from the ISS empty marks a dramatic about-face for NASA and Boeing, as the organizations were previously adamant that the capsule was the primary choice for returning the crew. But Starliner's crew flight test, which had been seen as the final major milestone in the spacecraft's development, faced problems — most notably with its propulsion system. “Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference with top NASA officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. “We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS.” </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/08/24/1919225/nasa-says-spacex-will-bring-boeings-starliner-astronauts-back-to-earth---in-february == NASA not comfortable with Starliner thrusters, so crew will fly home on Dragon == “I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise.” Eric Berger - 8/24/2024, 2:16 PM Following weeks of speculation, NASA finally made it official on Saturday: Two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in June will not return home on that vehicle. Instead, the agency has asked SpaceX to use its Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth. “NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the outset of a news conference on Saturday afternoon at Johnson Space Center. In a sign of the gravity surrounding the agency's decision, both Nelson and NASA's deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, attended a Flight Readiness Review meeting held Saturday in Houston. During that gathering of the agency's senior officials, an informal “go/no go” poll was taken. Those present voted unanimously for Wilmore and Williams to return to Earth on Crew Dragon. The official recommendation of the Commercial Crew Program was the same, and Nelson accepted it. Therefore, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will undock from the station early next month—the tentative date, according to a source, is September 6—and attempt to make an autonomous return to Earth and land in a desert in the southwestern United States. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/its-official-nasa-calls-on-crew-dragon-to-rescue-the-starliner-astronauts/ == Nasa says astronauts stuck in orbit to return with SpaceX crew in February, not on Boeing Starliner == Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore have been on the International Space Station since 6 June Maya Yang - Sat 24 Aug 2024 14.23 EDT Nasa has decided that the two astronauts currently stuck on the International Space Station will return next February on a SpaceX-crewed Dragon flight where two seats have been made available for Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore. Space agency officials said there was “too much uncertainty” for the astronauts to return on the craft that brought them to the space station, Boeing’s Starliner, which has had problems after the capsule sprang small leaks and some of its thrusters failed. The announcement comes after an “agency-level review” on Saturday that included Bill Nelson, the agency administrator. “Nasa has decided that Butch and Suni will return with [SpaceX’s] Crew-9 next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed,” Nelson said in a press conference on Saturday. “I want you to know that Boeing has worked very hard with Nasa to get the necessary data to make this decision. We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS,” he added. https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/24/nasa-astronauts-return-february-spacex == TechCrunch Minute: Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is returning home empty == Amanda Silberling - 9:00 AM PDT August 27, 2024 Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are stuck aboard the International Space Station (ISS) after their test flight on Boeing’s Starliner went awry. This weekend, NASA announced that these astronauts will remain aboard the ISS until February, when SpaceX’s Dragon will retrieve them as part of the Crew-9 mission. Eight months is a long time to be in space, especially since the astronauts were only supposed to be on board the ISS for eight days. But this length of time away from our home planet isn’t totally unprecedented. Some astronauts have stayed aboard the ISS for as long as a year. So, until February — when eight months will have passed since the initial test flight — Wilmore and Williams will do research aboard the ISS, help with space station maintenance and maybe take a few space walks. https://techcrunch.com/video/techcrunch-minute-boeings-starliner-spacecraft-is-returning-home-empty/ == Boeing will try to fly its troubled Starliner capsule back to Earth next week == The two astronauts who launched on Starliner will stay behind on the International Space Station. Stephen Clark - 8/30/2024, 12:28 PM NASA and Boeing are proceeding with final preparations to undock the Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station next Friday, September 6, to head for landing at White Sands Space Harbor in southern New Mexico. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were supposed to return to Earth inside Starliner, will remain behind on the space station after NASA decided last week to conclude the Boeing test flight without its crew on board. NASA officials decided it was too risky to put the astronauts on Starliner after the spacecraft suffered thruster failures during its flight to the space station in early June. Instead, Wilmore and Williams will come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule no earlier than February, extending their planned stay on the space station from eight days to eight months. Flying on autopilot, the Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to depart the station at approximately 6:04 pm EDT (22:04 UTC) on September 6. The capsule will fire its engines to drop out of orbit and target a parachute-assisted landing in New Mexico at 12:03 am EDT (04:03 UTC) on September 7, NASA said in a statement Thursday. NASA officials completed the second part of a two-day Flight Readiness Review on Thursday to clear the Starliner spacecraft for undocking and landing. However, there are strict weather rules for landing a Starliner spacecraft, so NASA and Boeing managers will decide next week whether to proceed with the return next Friday night or wait for better conditions at the White Sands landing zone. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/boeing-will-try-to-fly-its-troubled-starliner-capsule-back-to-earth-next-week/ == Boeing's Starliner is coming back without a crew on September 6 == Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be flying back on a SpaceX vehicle next year. Mariella Moon - Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 7:00 AM PDT The Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and to make its way back to Earth at 6:04PM Eastern time on September 6 at the earliest. If the weather cooperates and the spacecraft leaves the ISS as planned, it will be landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico with the help of parachutes to slow its descent and inflated airbags at around 12:03AM ET on September 7. While the ground teams at Starliner Mission Control in Houston and at Boeing Mission Control Center in Florida can control the spacecraft remotely if needed, it will be an uncrewed, fully autonomous flight for the Starliner. NASA recently announced that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts that headed to the ISS aboard the Starliner for its first crewed flight, will be coming home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon instead. Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June and were only supposed to spend a little more than a week on the orbiting laboratory. On the way there, however, five of the spacecraft's maneuvering thrusters had failed, and its helium leak problem that previously caused its launch to be pushed back had worsened. Engineers on the ground conducted tests with help from the astronauts on the ISS to determine whether the Starliner was safe for the crew to ride back to Earth. In the end, NASA decided that it's safer for Wilmore and Williams to come home on a SpaceX vehicle, because “there was too much uncertainty” around the Starliner's thrusters. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-coming-back-without-a-crew-on-september-6-140023545.html == Boeing’s Troubled Starliner Will Perform a ‘Breakout Burn’ as It Returns to Earth Without Astronauts == The spacecraft is set to leave the ISS on Friday, using a modified maneuver designed to ensure a quicker and safer departure from the space station. Passant Rabie - September 4, 2024 NASA is preparing for the uncrewed return of Starliner, leaving behind the two-astronaut crew that traveled on board the troublesome spacecraft to reach the International Space Station (ISS). To ensure a safe departure, the space agency has devised a quicker way for Starliner to move away from the ISS before it makes its way home. Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner mission is finally coming to an end, returning empty to Earth while its crew waits for a ride home on board SpaceX’s Dragon. Starliner is scheduled to autonomously undock from the ISS on Friday at 6:04 p.m. ET, and is set to land at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on Saturday at 12:03 a.m. ET. The spacecraft had a less-than-ideal journey to the ISS, and mission teams have devised a modified departure for Starliner to avoid any risk from its faulty thrusters. Shortly after undocking from the space station’s Harmony module, Starliner will execute a breakout burn that will take the spacecraft up, over, and back behind the ISS. “This alternate approach…it just helps us to get Starliner away from ISS more quickly,” Dana Weigel, ISS program manager, said during a press conference on Wednesday. https://gizmodo.com/boeings-troubled-starliner-will-perform-a-breakout-burn-as-it-returns-to-earth-without-astronauts-2000494784 == Boeing and NASA prepare to bring Starliner home without its crew on Friday == Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:37 PM PDT September 4, 2024 NASA officials expressed confidence that Starliner will have a safe and successful return to Earth late Friday evening, though they had enough reservations about the spacecraft’s performance to conclude that the trip should be undertaken without humans on board. The high-stakes mission is now set to officially conclude on Friday, with Starliner making its undocking attempt around 6:04 p.m. EST. Should all go to plan, the spacecraft will land at New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor approximately six hours later. These final maneuvers will bring to a close a troubled first crewed mission for the Boeing-made Starliner. It was meant to be the final certification mission before the vehicle could enter operation as a regular transporter for astronauts traveling to and from the International Space Station. But technical problems, including issues with several of the spacecraft’s thrusters and a handful of helium leaks in the propulsion systems, cropped up shortly before the vehicle attempted to dock with the station on June 6. The two astronauts onboard, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, ended up boarding the ISS safely. But the issues ultimately extended the mission by several months as NASA and Boeing engineers worked to try to determine the root cause of the anomalies. After weeks of testing, both on the ground using replica hardware and on orbit, NASA ultimately decided on August 24 that Starliner should return to Earth empty, and Wilmore and Williams will come home using a SpaceX capsule in February 2025 instead. https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/04/boeing-and-nasa-prepare-to-bring-starliner-home-without-its-crew-on-friday/ == Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew == What now for these pod people? Richard Speed - Sat 7 Sep 2024 16:36 UTC Boeing's Calamity Capsule has returned to Earth, bringing to an end a test mission that did not go entirely according to plan. Not least because the Starliner's crew had to stay behind aboard the International Space Station. New to the Starliner drama? We recapped it here for you. That Boeing's CST-100 Starliner's return to Earth was relatively uneventful and, according to NASA's commercial crew manager Steve Stich, ended with a “bullseye landing” in New Mexico, will be scant comfort to the engineers dealing with the fact that this commercial crew-carrying spacecraft was deemed unfit to carry a crew. That's not to say the Starliner's re-entry was without incident. During a post-landing news conference, Stich noted that one of the 12 thrusters on the Boeing podule didn't perform as expected, and a redundant thruster was able to take over. The navigation system also temporarily had difficulty acquiring a GPS signal as the spacecraft came out of the plasma generated by reentry. https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/07/boeing_starliner_returns/ == Boeing’s Starliner performs flawless touchdown without on-board crew, program’s future remains uncertain == Aria Alamalhodaei - 10:02 AM PDT September 7, 2024 After months of delays and uncertainty, Boeing’s Starliner capsule has returned from the International Space Station, touching down in White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, just after midnight on Saturday. The capsule returned autonomously to Earth without its two crew members, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will remain aboard the station until next February. The space agency determined late last month that the pair will make their journey back to Earth onboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, after Starliner experienced technical issues early in the mission. At a post-flight press conference on Saturday, NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich called the flight “darn near flawless.” He added that the successful mission provoked mixed feelings among staff. “From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it,” he said. “We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni onboard.” https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/07/boeings-starliner-performs-flawless-touchdown-without-on-board-crew-programs-future-remains-uncertain/ == Boeing's Starliner is back without the astronauts it flew to the ISS == Even so, NASA officials said they learned a lot from the mission. Mariella Moon - Sat, Sep 7, 2024, 4:00 AM PDT Boeing's Starliner capsule has undocked from the ISS at 6:04PM Eastern time on September 6 and has safely and gently landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:01AM on September 7. Calypso, as the capsule is called, didn't have a crew onboard despite flying to the ISS with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. NASA decided in late August that the astronauts will come home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February for safety reasons. Wilmore and Williams merely provided support for the capsule's trip back home and watched the coverage of its re-entry and landing. “You have got this. We have your backs, and you've got this. Bring her back to Earth,” Williams told ground control. The astronauts flew on the Starliner as part of its first crewed flight meant to prove that the spacecraft is ready to regularly ferry humans to the ISS alongside the SpaceX Crew Dragon. They were only supposed to stay on the orbiting laboratory for eight days, but the spacecraft's service module started leaking helium on their way there. Some of the module's thrusters had malfunctioned, as well. The Starliner uses helium to pressurize its fuel tanks and to push propellant to its thrusters that maneuver the spacecraft. Over the past three months, engineers on the ground conducted tests on Starliner with help from the astronauts, but NASA ultimately decided to have the Starliner fly back home uncrewed because it didn't have confidence with the certainty of the thrusters' performance. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeings-starliner-is-back-without-the-astronauts-it-flew-to-the-iss-110013469.html == Boeing's Starliner Makes 'Picture Perfect' Landing - Without Its Crew == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 07, 2024 03:00AM Boeing's “beleaguered” Starliner spacecraft “successfully landed in New Mexico just after midnight Eastern time,” reports NPR: <blockquote> After Starliner made a picture-perfect landing, Stich told reporters that the spacecraft did well during its return flight. “It was a bullseye landing,” he said. “It's really great to get the spacecraft back….” He said while he and others on the team felt happy about the successful landing, “there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would've been the way we had planned it” with astronauts on board when it landed… Now that Starliner is back on the ground, Boeing and NASA will further analyze the thrusters to see if modifying the spacecraft or how it's flown could keep the thrusters from overheating in the future. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/07/0921242/boeings-starliner-makes-picture-perfect-landing---without-its-crew == The future of Boeing’s crewed spaceflight program is muddy after Starliner’s return == “The final chapter on Starliner has not been written yet.” Eric Berger - 9/11/2024, 8:01 AM Nearly a decade ago to the day, I stood in the international terminal of Houston's main airport checking my phone. As I waited to board a flight for Moscow, an announcement from NASA was imminent, with the agency due to make its selections for private companies that would transport astronauts to the International Space Station. Then, just before boarding the direct flight to Moscow, a news release from NASA popped into my inbox about its Commercial Crew Program. The space agency, under a fixed price agreement, agreed to pay Boeing $4.2 billion to develop the Starliner spacecraft; SpaceX would receive $2.6 billion for the development of its Crew Dragon vehicle. At the time, the Space Shuttle had been retired for three years, and NASA's astronauts had to fly to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. “Today, we are one step closer to launching our astronauts from US soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in the release. I knew this only too well. As the space reporter for the Houston Chronicle, I was traveling with NASA officials to Russia to visit Star City, where astronauts train, and see Roscosmos' mission control facilities. From there, we flew to Kazakhstan to tour the spaceport in Baikonur and observe the launch of the Expedition 41 crew to the space station. The mission included two Russian astronauts and NASA's Butch Wilmore. I wrote about this as the fifth part of my Adrift series on the state of America's space program. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/the-future-of-boeings-crewed-spaceflight-program-is-muddy-after-starliners-return/ == Boeing Starliner astronaut: ‘We found some things that we just could not get comfortable with’ == Jackie Wattles - Updated 5:41 PM EDT, Fri September 13, 2024 The two NASA astronauts who piloted the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule — and were left behind on the space station as the beleaguered spacecraft returned to Earth — took questions on Friday for the first time in weeks. Butch Wilmore, a Tennessee native and former Navy test pilot, said during the conversation that he and crewmate Suni Williams were “very fortunate” to have the ability to stay on the International Space Station a few more months and come home using a back-up option: hitching a ride on a SpaceX-made Crew Dragon vehicle. “There’s many cases in the past where there have not been other options,” Wilmore said. However, he added, he believes that the astronauts and NASA and Boeing teams on the ground could have eventually reached a consensus in their analysis of Starliner’s issues given more time. “I think the data could have gotten there. We could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner,” he said. “But we just simply ran out of time.” Wilmore added that time constraints are a fact of life aboard the space station, which keeps to a busy schedule as visiting spacecraft drop off rotating crews of astronauts and cargo ships. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/science/boeing-starliner-astronauts-suni-williams-butch-wilmore/index.html == Navy captains don’t like abandoning ship—but with Starliner, the ship left them == “As the commander or pilot of your spacecraft, you don’t want to see it go off without you.” Stephen Clark - 9/13/2024, 3:40 PM NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are no strangers to time away from their families. Both are retired captains in the US Navy, served in war zones, and are veterans of previous six-month stays on the International Space Station. When they launched to the space station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on June 5, the astronauts expected to be home in a few weeks, or perhaps a month, at most. Their minimum mission duration was eight days, but NASA was always likely to approve a short extension. Wilmore and Williams were the first astronauts to soar into orbit on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, a milestone achieved some seven years later than originally envisioned by Boeing and NASA. However, the test flight fell short of all of its objectives. Wilmore and Williams are now a little more than three months into what has become an eight-month mission on the station. The Starliner spacecraft was beset by problems, culminating in a decision last month by NASA officials to send the capsules back to Earth without the two astronauts. Rather than coming home on Starliner, Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth in February on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/navy-captains-dont-like-abandoning-ship-but-with-starliner-the-ship-left-them/ == Stranded Astronauts Make First Public Statement Since Being Left Behind On ISS == Posted by BeauHD on Friday September 13, 2024 08:30PM An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: <blockquote> Stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said Friday it was hard to watch their Boeing capsule return to Earth without them. It was their first public comments since last week's return of the Boeing Starliner capsule that took them to the International Space Station in June. They remained behind after NASA determined the problem-plagued capsule posed too much risk for them to ride back in. “That's how it goes in this business,” said Williams, adding that “you have to turn the page and look at the next opportunity.” Wilmore and Williams are now full-fledged station crew members, chipping in on routine maintenance and experiments. They, along with seven others on board, welcomed a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American earlier this week, temporarily raising the station population to 12, a near record. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams spoke to the press on Friday for the first time since their Boeing Starliner capsule returned to Earth without them. The two, who have been on the International Space Station since June 6, said they are taking the mission's unexpected extension into 2025 in stride – even if it means they've had to change their voting plans. The transition to station life was “not that hard” since both had previous stints there, said Williams, who will soon take over as station commander. “This is my happy place. I love being up here in space,” she said. </blockquote> https://slashdot.org/story/24/09/13/2158239/stranded-astronauts-make-first-public-statement-since-being-left-behind-on-iss == SpaceX Brings Home Astronauts After Boeing's Starliner Delays Extend ISS Mission == Posted by msmash on Friday October 25, 2024 07:01AM Four astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday after their record ISS mission stretched to eight months due to Boeing capsule malfunctions and hurricane disruptions. The SpaceX Dragon capsule landed off Florida's coast before dawn, carrying NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. Technical issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule in September, followed by Hurricane Milton and persistent rough seas, delayed their planned return by two months. The crew launched in March as part of NASA's commercial crew program. Their replacements include Boeing Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose mission expanded from eight days to eight months, alongside two SpaceX-launched astronauts. The new crew will remain aboard the station until February. https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/10/25/1213246/spacex-brings-home-astronauts-after-boeings-starliner-delays-extend-iss-mission == Boeing’s Stranded Astronauts Will Have to Stay on the ISS for Even Longer == The crew launched to the ISS in June for a week-long mission but will end up spending an unplanned nine months in space. Passant Rabie - December 18, 2024 The two NASA astronauts who launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on board Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will have to wait even longer to return home. NASA delayed the launch of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, designated as the Starliner astronauts’ ride home. Originally set for liftoff in February 2025, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 will launch no earlier than late March 2025 to “complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission,” the space agency wrote in an update. The new Dragon spacecraft will arrive at SpaceX’s processing facility in Florida in early January. “Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. After launching to the ISS with the Crew-10 astronauts, the Dragon spacecraft will be used to transport the SpaceX Crew-9 mission back to Earth. That includes NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. https://gizmodo.com/boeings-stranded-astronauts-will-have-to-stay-on-the-iss-for-even-longer-2000540224 == Astronauts Who Flew To Space Aboard Starliner Face Additional Delay == Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:00PM NASA has delayed the launch of SpaceX Crew-10 to late March 2025 to allow time for processing a new Dragon spacecraft, extending the stay of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the ISS to about nine months. CNN reports: <blockqoute> Williams and Wilmore launched to space in June, piloting the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Their trip, expected to last about a week, ballooned into a monthslong assignment after their vehicle experienced technical issues en route to the space station and NASA determined it would be too risky to bring them home aboard the Starliner. The astronauts have since joined Crew-9, a routine space station mission originally slated to return to Earth no earlier than February after a handoff period with Crew-10. Now, Crew-10 will get off the ground at least a month later than expected because NASA and SpaceX teams need “time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission,” according to the space agency. </blockqoute> “NASA and SpaceX assessed various options for managing the next crewed handover, including using another Dragon spacecraft,” NASA noted in a blog post on Tuesday. “After careful consideration, the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, following completion of the new Dragon spacecraft, was the best option for meeting NASA's requirements and achieving space station objectives for 2025.” https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/12/19/0044237/astronauts-who-flew-to-space-aboard-starliner-face-additional-delay == Boeing's 'Starliner' Also Experienced an Issue on Its Return to Earth == Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday February 09, 2025 12:44AM Friday the Orlando Sentinel covered NASA's 2024 mission-safety report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (formed in 1968). The report “commended the agency's handling of last year's beleaguered Boeing's Starliner mission [prioritizing astronaut safety], but revealed yet another issue found during the flight and questioned the agency's needs for the spacecraft in the future…” <blockquote> [The report] stated that it was unclear how a decision was made to waive a failure tolerance requirement on some of the thrusters without flight or qualification data to justify the decision. “These examples illustrate the panel's concern that, absent role clarity, risk management choices could unintentionally devolve to contractors, whose interests may not fully align with NASA's,” the report warned… It also revealed that in addition to the thruster and leak issues on the propulsion module driving the decision to fly home without astronauts, Starliner had a new issue as it made its way back to Earth. “Overall, Starliner performed well across all major systems in the undock, deorbit, and landing sequences; however, an additional mono propellant thruster failure was discovered in the crew module — distinct from the failures in the service module experienced during orbit,” the report stated. “Had the crew been aboard, this would have significantly increased the risk during reentry, confirming the wisdom of the decision.” </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/09/0322226/boeings-starliner-also-experienced-an-issue-on-its-return-to-earth == Starliner Astronauts Refuse to Play Into Trump, Musk’s Ploy to Politicize ‘Rescue’ Mission == The president is trying to pull a political stunt by claiming to rescue the two astronauts, but the Starliner crew shut it down. Passant Rabie - March 5, 2025 The Starliner saga is nearing its end with the planned return of the crew later this month, but the controversy surrounding the troubled mission is still ongoing. Following statements by Donald Trump that falsely claimed the Starliner crew was abandoned by the previous administration, the two astronauts refrained from yes-anding their president and turning the botched mission into a political tool. During a live broadcast from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore dismissed recent attempts by Trump and his billionaire friend Elon Musk to politicize the Starliner mission. “The words they said, well, that’s politics. I mean, that’s part of life,” Wilmore told reporters. “From my standpoint, politics has not played into this at all.” NASA astronauts Wilmore and Suni Williams launched to the ISS on board Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on June 5, 2024. The mission was originally slotted for eight days in space but issues with the spacecraft’s thrusters forced NASA to return an empty Starliner back from the ISS, deeming it unsafe to transport the crew to Earth. Instead, Williams and Wilmore are set to come home on board a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft later this month. https://gizmodo.com/starliner-astronauts-refuse-to-play-into-trump-musks-ploy-to-politicize-rescue-mission-2000572032 == Starliner astronauts' stay drags on as Crew-10 launch scrubs == Hydraulic problems stop the countdown clock at T-44 minutes Richard Speed - Thu 13 Mar 2025 16:25 UTC The launch of the next crew to the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed to no earlier than Friday, March 14, due to a hydraulic issue with a group support clamp arm for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during March 12's countdown. The four Crew-10 astronauts were already strapped into the Crew Dragon capsule when the launch was called off. The hydraulic problem had been identified early in the process, and mission controllers worked to resolve it throughout the countdown. The decision to scrub the launch came before the crew access arm was retracted and the vehicle was fueled. Initially, mission managers aimed for a 24-hour turnaround following the scrubbed launch. However, due to high winds and precipitation along the Crew Dragon's flight path, the launch has been rescheduled to 1903 EDT on Friday, March 14. The delay also gives workers more time to deal with the hydraulic issue. Crew-10 is perceived by some as a “rescue mission” for Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been aboard the ISS since June 2024 as part of Boeing's Crew Flight Test. The first crewed flight of the Starliner capsule faced multiple technical issues, including thruster malfunctions. This led NASA to extend Wilmore and Williams' stay on the station, which was originally planned for about a week but has now lasted nine months. As a result, Starliner returned to Earth uncrewed in September 2024. At the end of January, US President Donald Trump instructed SpaceX boss Elon Musk to “go get” the Starliner duo. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/13/starliner_duo_get_bonus_days/ == You can watch the Starliner astronauts return to Earth after an unplanned nine-month visit == The crew was originally meant to stay on board the ISS for a week. Lawrence Bonk - Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 11:53 AM PDT Those stranded Starliner astronauts are finally coming back to Earth, with a touchdown expected on Tuesday evening. Coverage begins on Monday night at around 10:45PM ET, with streams available on NASA’s website and via the NASA+ app. Monday night’s stream will focus on the hatch closing and the undocking procedure. The stream will go dark until 4:45PM ET on Tuesday as the crew approaches splashdown. The arrival is scheduled for around 5:57PM ET and a live press conference is set for 7:30PM ET. The two NASA astronauts returning (Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore) were part of Boeing’s Starliner crew to the ISS. This was supposed to be a one-week stay but, just like Gilligan and the rest, was extended to nine months when the ship was deemed unfit for a crewed return to Earth. Five of the thrusters failed enroute. This is forcing the pair to hitch a ride on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX also ran into a delay, as this mission was originally scheduled for February. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/you-can-watch-the-starliner-astronauts-return-to-earth-after-an-unplanned-nine-month-visit-185308418.html == Watch Live as Starliner Astronauts Finally Return Home After Being Stuck in Space for 9 Months == The Starliner crew was originally meant to stay on board the ISS for a week, but issues with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft severely delayed their return to Earth. Passant Rabie - March 17, 2025 Two NASA astronauts are finally going home after having spent more than nine months on board the International Space Station (ISS) for what was meant to be a week-long mission. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission will depart from the ISS on Tuesday around 1:05 a.m. ET. The crew includes NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who journeyed to the ISS on board Boeing’s Starliner CST-100 spacecraft on June 5, 2024. The troubled spacecraft was deemed unfit to return the pair to Earth, forcing Williams and Wilmore to travel back to Earth on board a SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft months after their original return date. Live coverage of the Dragon hatch closing will begin on Monday at 10:45 p.m. ET on NASA’s website and NASA+. A live stream of Dragon’s undocking procedure will begin on Tuesday at 12:45 a.m. ET, and splashdown of the crew vehicle is expected around 5:57 p.m. ET. NASA will resume live coverage of Dragon’s return at 4:45 p.m. ET, and a press conference will be held at 7:30 p.m. ET. https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-as-starliner-astronauts-hitch-a-ride-home-after-being-stuck-in-space-for-9-months-2000576814 == Boeing Starliner astronauts finally head home, nine months later == The President and Elon Musk turned a fairly routine mission into a political circus. ASSOCIATED PRESS, Swapna Krishna - Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 11:45 AM PDT Eight days. That’s how long Boeing Starliner’s mission — its first flight test with crew aboard — was supposed to last. But this mission has been singular in almost every way, and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have instead spent the past nine and a half months aboard the International Space Station. Now, finally, they're headed home. Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is slated to begin undocking from the ISS at 1:05 am ET Tuesday and is scheduled for splashdown at 5:57 pm ET, according to NASA's timetable. (Portions of the mission will stream live on the agency's website.) The Starliner crew was never truly stranded, to be clear. They always had a way off the space station in an emergency. But if this mission's foibles taught us one thing, it was to expect the unexpected. Even now, six months after the troubled spacecraft autonomously undocked from the ISS and landed at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, leaving its crew behind and effectively ending the flight test, the mission is still making headlines. Boeing Starliner CFT went from a symbol of the myriad struggles in Boeing’s aviation business to a political punching bag, courtesy of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Why did it take so long to bring the astronauts home? And did NASA cave to political pressure in setting the return date? Lets take a look at how we got here and what the evidence suggests. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeing-starliner-astronauts-finally-head-home-nine-months-later-184546850.html == NASA astronauts return from long Space Station stay prompted by Boeing problems == Sean O'Kane - 3:01 PM PDT March 18, 2025 Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the International Space Station — a trip that lasted far longer than originally planned thanks to leaks and thruster problems on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they used to get there. Williams and Wilmore splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico in a SpaceX Dragon capsule at 5:57 p.m. ET on Tuesday, after a 17-hour return journey from the ISS. Their return marks the end of one of the stranger chapters in recent spaceflight history, thanks to the problems that Boeing’s Starliner experienced and the way that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has politicized the astronauts’ return. Williams and Wilmore initially launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024 as part of a mission that was crucial to Boeing’s attempt to compete against SpaceX. The aviation behemoth won a contract alongside SpaceX in 2014 to send astronauts to the ISS for NASA with an eye on eventually carrying them even further out into the solar system. SpaceX performed its first crewed flight with its Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2020 — during the early days of the covid pandemic. Boeing’s Starliner project, meanwhile, was dragged down by cost overruns and delays. https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/18/nasa-astronauts-return-from-long-space-station-stay-prompted-by-boeing-problems/ == Crew-9 splashes down while NASA floats along with Trump and Musk nonsense == Elements within the US space agency have elected to toe the party line Richard Speed - Wed 19 Mar 2025 13:47 UTC Comment The Crew-9 mission has safely returned to Earth, marking the end of Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore's extended time in space and possibly NASA's bipartisan leanings. NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov successfully splashed down off the coast of Florida last night, concluding a 286-day stint in space for Williams and Wilmore. The duo arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in June, 2024, on the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, but after issues with the Calamity Capsule, mission management elected to return the capsule to Earth empty, and have the pair become part of Crew-9. Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the ISS on September 29, 2024, to join Williams and Wilmore. The four departed the ISS in the Crew-9 capsule on March 18, before making a successful splashdown. If only it had been that simple. US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rivals Boeing, elected to use the mission as a means to berate the previous administration, beginning with a January post claiming that Musk had been instructed to “go get” the “virtually abandoned” astronauts. The astronauts were already scheduled to return to Earth as part of the Crew-9/Crew-10 rotation using a SpaceX Crew Dragon. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/19/crew9_mission_misinformation/ == Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought == “Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in.” Eric Berger – Apr 1, 2025 10:26 AM As it flew up toward the International Space Station last summer, the Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters. A NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, had to take manual control of the vehicle. But as Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go. He and his fellow astronaut, Suni Williams, knew where they wanted to go. Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor, if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules. In such an instance, they were supposed to turn around and come back to Earth. Approaching the station was deemed too risky for Wilmore and Williams, aboard Starliner, as well as for the astronauts on the $100 billion space station. But what if it was not safe to come home, either? “I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point,” Wilmore said in an interview. “I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't.” https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/ == Starliner's Space Station Flight Was 'Wilder' Than We Thought == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday April 05, 2025 09:34PM The Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters while approaching the International Space Station last summer. NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore took manual control, remembers Ars Technica, “But as Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go…” <blockquote> Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor, if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules. In such an instance, they were supposed to turn around and come back to Earth. Approaching the station was deemed too risky for Wilmore and Williams, aboard Starliner, as well as for the astronauts on the $100 billion space station. But what if it was not safe to come home, either? “I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point,” Wilmore said in an interview. “I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't.” </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/04/06/0136232/starliners-space-station-flight-was-wilder-than-we-thought ==== Launch 2025 May? ==== == NASA to put Starliner’s thrusters through an extensive workout before next launch == “We’ll continue to work through certification toward the end of this year.” Eric Berger – Mar 28, 2025 11:47 AM More than half a year after an empty Starliner spacecraft safely landed in a New Mexico desert, NASA and Boeing still have not decided whether the vehicle's next flight will carry any astronauts. In an update this week, the US space agency said it is still working through the process to certify Starliner for human missions. Whether it carries cargo or humans, Starliner's next flight will not occur until late this year or, more likely, sometime in 2026. Two things stand out in the new information provided by NASA. First, there remains a lot of work left to do this year before Starliner will fly again, including extensive testing of the vehicle's propulsion system. And secondly, it is becoming clear that Starliner will only ever fly a handful of missions to the space station, if that, before the orbiting laboratory is retired. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/nasa-to-put-starliners-thrusters-through-an-extensive-workout-before-next-launch/ == Boeing's Starliner may fly again, pending fixes to literally everything == More than 70 percent of anomalies closed out, but those pesky thrusters are still a problem Richard Speed - Fri 28 Mar 2025 17:26 UTC Updated NASA says Boeing's Starliner – dubbed the Calamity Capsule – could fly again, but not before the end of 2025 or start of 2026. The CST-100 Starliner capsule returned to Earth last year with its tail between its legs. It was the capsule's first crewed mission, but the flight was dogged with issues, including problems with thrusters. Managers eventually decided that the safest course of action was to leave the crew on the International Space Station (ISS). The vehicle made a successful landing without a crew, and in the months since, NASA and Boeing tried to work out what went wrong and how to fix it. According to NASA, “more than 70 percent of flight observations and flight anomalies” have been closed. However, the space agency noted that “the major in-flight propulsion system anomalies Starliner experienced in orbit are expected to remain open further into 2025.” https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/28/boeing_starliner_fixes/ ==== Launch 2026 ==== == Nasa delays next flight of Boeing’s alternative to SpaceX Dragon == Sana Pashankar / Bloomberg - 07 Jun 2025, 10:28 am Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2024. (June 7): Nasa is delaying the earliest potential next flight of Boeing Co’s troubled Starliner spacecraft to 2026, pushing back a key milestone for a vehicle meant to serve as an alternative to the Dragon spacecraft owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The agency had previously said that Starliner’s next flight to the International Space Station (ISS) could occur as early as the end of this year. Nasa said it is still evaluating whether the next flight would carry astronauts on board or only cargo. Musk, who has been engaged in a high-profile feud with US President Donald Trump, on Thursday threatened to decommission the Dragon before later saying the spacecraft would stay in operation. The delay of Starliner, the only US alternative for getting crew to the ISS, highlight Nasa’s reliance on SpaceX and Musk. After suffering a botched test flight in 2024 that left two astronauts on the ISS for more than nine months, the Boeing vehicle has still not been certified for carrying astronauts. Because of engine issues with Starliner, Nasa turned to SpaceX to bringing home the astronauts on a Dragon craft. https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/758199 ==== Crew ==== == NASA Selects Two Daring Astronauts to Fly on Boeing's First Crewed Starliner Test Flight == The astronauts will launch to the International Space Station on a two-week mission. Passant Rabie - 17 June 2022 In anticipation of Boeing’s first crewed test flight of Starliner, NASA has chosen two astronauts to fly on board the troubled spacecraft, in a mission that could launch later this year. On Friday, NASA announced that veteran astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will fly on board the Crew Flight Test (CFT), the launch date of which will be determined by end of July, according to the space agency. Following the completion of the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) in May, which launched the spacecraft to the ISS and back, Boeing is ready to test Starliner with a two-person crew strapped inside. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-nasa-starliner-astronauts-1849078090 == All the pieces are in place for the first crew flight of Boeing’s Starliner == “This is a test flight, and a complicated one at that.” Stephen Clark - 4/18/2024, 5:26 AM Ground teams on Florida's Space Coast hoisted Boeing's Starliner spacecraft atop its United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket this week, putting all the pieces in place for liftoff next month with two veteran NASA astronauts on a test flight to the International Space Station. This will be the first time astronauts fly on Boeing's Starliner crew capsule, following two test flights without crew members in 2019 and 2022. The Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) next month will wrap up a decade and a half of development and, if all goes well, will pave the way for operational Starliner missions to ferry crews to and from the space station. Starliner is running years behind schedule and over budget. SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft has flown all of NASA's crew rotation missions to the station since its first astronaut flight in 2020. But NASA wants to get Boeing's spacecraft up and running to have a backup to SpaceX. It would then alternate between Starliner and Crew Dragon for six-month expeditions to the station beginning next year. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/all-the-pieces-are-in-place-for-the-first-crew-flight-of-boeings-starliner/ ==== Employees ==== == A new report finds Boeing’s rockets are built with an unqualified work force == NASA declines to penalize Boeing for the deficiencies. Eric Berger - 8/8/2024, 9:25 AM The NASA program to develop a new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket is seven years behind schedule and significantly over budget, a new report from the space agency's inspector general finds. However, beyond these headline numbers, there is also some eye-opening information about the project's prime contractor, Boeing, and its poor quality control practices. The new Exploration Upper Stage, a more powerful second stage for the SLS rocket that made its debut in late 2022, is viewed by NASA as a key piece of its Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. The current plan calls for the use of this new upper stage beginning with the second lunar landing, the Artemis IV mission, currently scheduled for 2028. In NASA parlance, the upgraded version of the SLS rocket is known as Block 1B. However, for many reasons—including the readiness of lunar landers, Lunar Gateway hardware, a new mobile launch tower, and more—NASA is unlikely to hold that date. Now, based on information in this new report, we can probably add the Exploration Upper Stage to the list. “We found an array of issues that could hinder SLS Block 1B’s readiness for Artemis IV including Boeing’s inadequate quality management system, escalating costs and schedules, and inadequate visibility into the Block 1B’s projected costs,” states the report, signed by NASA's deputy inspector general, George A. Scott. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/a-new-report-finds-boeings-rockets-are-built-with-an-unqualified-work-force/ == The CEO of Boeing’s satellite maker, Millennium Space, has quietly left the company == Aria Alamalhodaei - 8:59 AM PDT August 28, 2024 Boeing’s satellite maker Millennium Space Systems will soon have a new CEO. Jason Kim, the executive who held the position for nearly four years, has departed the company, TechCrunch has learned. Boeing acquired Millennium Space Systems in 2018. Since that point, the company has scored mega-deals with the U.S. Department of Defense to build satellites to help warfighters track missiles and other threats. Millennium also successfully executed a “responsive space” mission for the U.S. Space Force; that mission, called Victus Nox, sought to establish a new record for the time it takes to put a defense payload into orbit. Millennium and its partner for the mission, Firefly Space, accomplished just that: Last September, the two firms were able to integrate the Millennium-built satellite with Firefly’s launch vehicle after 58 hours. The satellite was operational just 37 hours after launch. “We are grateful to Jason for his leadership, growing the portfolio and evolving the company to a workforce of nearly 1,000, and wish him the best in the next phase of his career,” a Millennium spokesperson said in a comment. “We anticipate announcing a CEO in the near term who can carry forward Millennium Space Systems’ spirit and culture of rapid delivery. Millennium Space Systems’ mission has not changed, and the team continues their unwavering focus on customer commitments.” https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/28/the-ceo-of-boeings-satellite-maker-millennium-space-has-quietly-left-the-company/ ==== Financials ==== == Boeing has now lost $1.1 billion on Starliner, with no crew flight in sight == “We're not really ready to talk about a launch opportunity yet.” Eric Berger - 7/26/2023, 8:26 AM A difficult summer for the Starliner program continued this week, with Boeing reporting additional losses on the vehicle's development and NASA saying it's too early to discuss potential launch dates for the crewed spacecraft. Throughout this spring, NASA and Boeing had been working toward a July launch date of the spacecraft, which will carry two astronauts for the first time. However, just weeks before this launch was due to occur, Boeing announced on June 1 that there were two serious issues with Starliner. One of these involved the “soft links” in the lines that connect the Starliner capsule to its parachutes, and the second problem came with hundreds of feet of P-213 glass cloth tape inside the spacecraft found to be flammable. On Wednesday, as a part of its quarterly earnings update, Boeing announced that the Starliner program had taken a loss of $257 million “primarily due to the impacts of the previously announced launch delay.” This brings the company's total write-down of losses on the Starliner program to more than $1.1 billion. Partly because of this, Boeing's Defense, Space, & Security division reported a loss of $527 million during the second quarter of this year. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/boeing-has-now-lost-1-1-billion-on-starliner-with-no-crew-flight-in-sight/ == Boeing’s Starliner Program Reaches Staggering $1.1 Billion in Losses == The CST-100 Starliner program continues to flounder, with the latest launch delay casting a stark shadow on Boeing’s finances. George Dvorsky - 27 July 2023 It’s a sad story that just keeps getting sadder. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner program, in development for NASA since 2014, has now crossed a grim threshold, with total losses now in excess of $1 billion. On Wednesday, the company announced further losses to the beleaguered program, as revealed in its second quarter 2023 financial earnings statement. The company has taken an additional $257 million hit, adding to the existing $883 million in charges against earnings attributed to previous problems dating back to December 2019. Consequently, Boeing’s total losses now amount to a staggering $1.14 billion for the Starliner program. The impact of these setbacks is evident in the company’s Defense, Space, and Security division, which reported a significant loss of $527 million during the second quarter, with the Starliner project accounting for a substantial portion of this downturn, according to Ars Technica. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-program-has-1-billion-in-losses-1850682078 == Boeing bleeds another $125M on Starliner program, bringing total losses to $1.6B == Aria Alamalhodaei - 8:15 AM PDT August 1, 2024 Boeing has lost another $125 million on its Starliner astronaut capsule program due to delays in its first crewed flight test, which was supposed to last just eight days — and has now been on orbit for almost two months. The aerospace giant has lost $1.6 billion on Starliner, including the $125 million, which was reported to regulators in a quarterly filing. While the company was awarded a massive $4.2 billion contract to accelerate Starliner development in 2014, it was structured as a “fixed-price” model. That means any cost overruns are solely the contractor’s responsibility. SpaceX was also awarded a fixed-price contract for astronaut transportation services for $2.6 billion at the same time and has been fulfilling its contracted obligations for the space agency with the Crew Dragon capsule since 2020. But while SpaceX’s crewed services have soared — to include missions for both NASA and private customers — Boeing has struggled. Under the two contracts, NASA said it would buy six crewed launches each from Boeing and SpaceX, but due to Starliner delays, NASA has purchased an additional eight missions from SpaceX. The Elon Musk-led company is now the only provider of astronaut transportation services for the space agency. https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/01/boeing-bleeds-another-125m-on-starliner-program-bringing-total-losses-to-1-6b/ == Boeing eats another $125 million loss over Starliner woes == The Starliner doesn't have a return date from the ISS yet. Mariella Moon - Thu, Aug 1, 2024, 6:00 AM PDT Boeing has revealed that it has taken another $125 million in losses as a result of its Starliner spacecraft's delayed return from the ISS. As SpaceNews reports, the company has revealed the losses in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, along with more details about its earnings for the second quarter of the year. The company already posted $288 million in losses “primarily as a result of delaying” the Crew Flight Test mission in 2023. The first crewed Starliner flight took off in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams on board. Boeing's spacecraft was only supposed to stay docked to the ISS for eight days before ferrying the astronauts back to Earth, but issues with its hardware prevented the mission from sticking to its original timeline. The company had to examine and find what caused the Starliner's degraded maneuvering thrusters while it was approaching the ISS. In addition, the helium leak that caused several delays to the spacecraft's launch seemed to have worsened, as well. Since June, the company has been putting the spacecraft through a series of tests. Just a few days ago, on July 27, it completed a hot fire test of the Starliner's reaction control system jets and made sure that the vehicle's helium leak rates remain within the acceptable margin. The tests were conducted with Williams and Wilmore onboard, because they're part of the preparations for the spacecraft's flight back home. https://www.engadget.com/boeing-eats-another-125-million-loss-over-starliner-woes-130027376.html == Boeing's Starliner proves better at torching cash than reaching orbit == Perhaps those thrusters actually burn dollars after all Richard Speed - Fri 2 Aug 2024 15:10 UTC Lurking in Boeing's woeful Q2 financials is an admission that while its Starliner spacecraft might be struggling when it comes to burning fuel, it has no problem whatsoever setting fire to dollar bills. The Calamity Capsule is currently attached to the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers scrutinize test results and finalize procedures for bringing the Boeing spacecraft – and its two crew members – back to Earth. The word “calamity” might equally apply to the impact of the project on Boeing's finances. The troubled aerospace titan's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed it would be increasing its “reach-forward loss on the [Starliner] program” by another $125 million. The losses incurred by Boeing thanks to Starliner have comfortably breezed past $1 billion, and will likely surpass $1.6 billion before long. “Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods,” Boeing observed. It is now almost ten years since NASA handed Boeing a contract to develop a vehicle to transport crew to and from the ISS. John Mulholland, then Boeing VP and Program Manager for Commercial Crew and now Boeing's Program Manager for the ISS, said: “We're on track to fly in 2017, and this critical milestone moves us another step closer in fully maturing the CST-100 design.” https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/02/boeing_starliner_losses/ == Boeing is still bleeding money on the Starliner commercial crew program == “We signed up to some things that are problematic.” Stephen Clark - Oct 24, 2024 2:58 PM Sometimes, it's worth noting when something goes unsaid. On Wednesday, Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, participated in his first quarterly conference call with investment analysts. Under fire from labor groups and regulators, Boeing logged a nearly $6.2 billion loss for the last three months, while the new boss pledged a turnaround for the troubled aerospace company. What Ortberg didn't mention in the call was the Starliner program. Starliner is a relatively small portion of Boeing's overall business, but it's a high-profile and unprofitable one. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/boeing-is-still-bleeding-money-on-the-starliner-commercial-crew-program/ == Losses on Boeing’s Starliner Program Hit a Staggering $1.85 Billion == The company is not giving up on its troubled spacecraft yet, but the cost of its failures keeps adding up. Passant Rabie - October 24, 2024 Boeing’s Starliner is the little spacecraft that couldn’t, and the company is being forced to pay a hefty price for its delayed program. Following the failed test flight from a few months ago, Boeing is taking another $250 million charge for the commercial crew program, adding up to a total of $1.85 billion that the company has had to spend from its own money to cover Starliner’s cost overruns. During an earnings call on Wednesday, Boeing’s newly appointed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, revealed a total loss of $6 billion in the third quarter, including an additional charge against earnings to pay for its Starliner program, SpacePolicyOnline reported. The latest charge is in addition to $125 million that the company was forced to pay in the third quarter to cover additional costs for its public-private partnership with NASA. https://gizmodo.com/losses-on-boeings-starliner-program-hit-a-staggering-1-85-billion-2000515962 == Boeing May Sell Starliner After Fumbling Its First Crewed Flight to Space == The company is struggling to meet its end of a $4.3 billion contract with NASA. Passant Rabie - October 28, 2024 It might be time for Boeing to give up on its space endeavors. The Starliner spacecraft’s first crewed test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) was marred by delays and technical glitches, prompting Boeing to consider selling its troubled program altogether. Boeing is reportedly exploring the option of selling its NASA-related business, according to the Wall Street Journal. The publication cites sources familiar with the matter who said that the company wants to sell some parts of its space business, including the Starliner spacecraft, while keeping the components being built for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. Boeing’s newly appointed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, hinted at the possibility of Boeing parting ways with its space-related business during a recent earnings call, in which the company revealed an additional charge of $250 million to cover cost overruns for Starliner. “We’re better off doing less and doing it better, than doing more and not doing it well,” Ortberg is quoted as saying during the earnings call. “Clearly, our core of commercial airplanes and defense systems are going to stay with the Boeing company for the long run, but there’s probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with, or that just distract us from our main goal here.” https://gizmodo.com/boeing-may-sell-starliner-after-fumbling-its-first-crewed-flight-to-space-2000517505 == Boeing’s Starliner Fiasco Has Now Burned Through $2 Billion == The company may sell parts of its space business as it struggles to meet its end of a $4.3 billion contract with NASA. Passant Rabie - February 4, 2025 Nearly five months after an uncrewed Starliner undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), Boeing announced that it lost an additional half a billion dollars from its troubled spacecraft as the fate of its contract with NASA remains unclear. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Boeing reported a total of $523 million in losses from the Starliner Commercial Crew Program in 2024. That brings the total amount of losses from the ill-fated program to a whopping $2 billion in cost overruns. Boeing cited “highly complex designs and technical challenges,” as well as “schedule delays and cost impacts,” that increased the cost estimates for its programs. Under its $4.2 billion contract with NASA, Boeing retains full ownership of the Starliner spacecraft while NASA acts as a customer. Following Starliner’s failed crewed test to the ISS, the company reported $250 million in losses for the third quarter, covering cost overruns out of its own pocket. That’s on top of the $125 million it lost in the second quarter. Boeing had forewarned that more losses were coming during the fourth quarter of 2024, and it turned out to be the heftiest bill of the entire year. https://gizmodo.com/boeings-starliner-fiasco-has-now-burned-through-2-billion-2000558988 == Boeing's Starliner Losses Top $2 Billion == Posted by BeauHD on Friday February 07, 2025 02:00AM After a $523 million charge on its CST-100 Starliner program in 2024, Boeing's total losses on the commercial crew vehicle now exceed $2 billion – and there's still no clear timeline for its next flight. SpaceNews reports: <blockquote> In the company's 10-K annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 3, Boeing said it took $523 million in charges on Starliner in 2024. The company blamed the losses on “schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs as well as higher costs for post certification missions.” The company had reported a $125 million charge in the second quarter and a $250 million charge in the third quarter. The company warned Jan. 23 it would take an additional loss in the fourth quarter but did not disclose a figure when it released its financial results five days later. The annual loss implies a $148 million loss in the fourth quarter. The $523 million in charges is the most Boeing has recorded in a single year on Starliner, exceeding $489 million it reported in 2019. The company's cumulative charges on Starliner are now just over $2 billion. “Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods,” the company stated in the 10-K filing. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/07/0058237/boeings-starliner-losses-top-2-billion ==== Noise ==== == The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises == “I don't know what's making it.” Eric Berger - 9/1/2024, 7:13 AM On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft. “I've got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There's a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don't know what's making it.” Wilmore said he was not sure if there was some oddity in the connection between the station and the spacecraft causing the noise, or something else. He asked the flight controllers in Houston to see if they could listen to the audio inside the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Mission Control radioed back that they were linked via “hardline” to listen to audio inside Starliner, which has now been docked to the International Space Station for nearly three months. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/starliners-speaker-began-emitting-strange-sonar-noises-on-saturday/ == Now there’s a creepy, sonar-like sound coming through one of Starliner’s speakers == Astronaut Butch Wilmore radioed Mission Control on Saturday for help figuring out the source of a pulsing noise. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Sep 1, 2024, 11:47 AM PDT Starliner is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station and make its return trip to Earth uncrewed in just a matter of days, but it apparently still has a few new mysteries left in it to throw at the team before it departs. On Saturday, astronaut Butch Wilmore alerted NASA’s Mission Control about an unexplained “strange noise” coming from a speaker in the spacecraft, which you can hear in an audio clip of the conversation shared on a NASASpaceflight forum by meteorologist Rob Dale (spotted by Ars Technica). It starts at around the 45-second mark, ringing out on a steady beat. “I don’t know what’s making it,” Wilmore said. After confirming they could hear the sound too, once Wilmore brought his mic over to the speaker, the flight controller in Houston said, “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.” Wilmore then lets it play for about 20 seconds more before wrapping up the call. “Just to make sure I’m on the same page, this is emanating from the speaker in Starliner,” Mission Control asked, “you don’t notice anything else, any other noises, any weird configs in there?” The astronaut notes that everything else seems normal. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/now-theres-a-creepy-sonar-like-sound-coming-through-one-of-starliners-speakers-184751210.html ==== Spacesuit ==== == Our First Glimpse of Boeing's Upcoming Starliner Spacesuit == The replica spacesuit was put together by Mythbusters host Adam Savage, with the real version expected in 2023. Passant Rabie - 17 June 2022 9:45AM In a rare sneak preview, Boeing revealed its brand new Starliner spacesuit to be worn by astronauts on board the company’s commercial spacecraft Starliner. The spacesuit replica was unveiled to the public on Wednesday at NASA’s latest exhibit, Gateway: The Deep Space Complex, which is hosted at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. The new exhibit explores the latest innovations in spaceflight for NASA and its commercial partners. The replica suit stands proudly in its display case, showing off Boeing’s signature blue color and providing visitors a first look at the cosmic threads. https://gizmodo.com/boeing-starliner-spacesuits-1849075329 == Incompatible Starliner Spacesuits Could Stall Astronauts' Return From the ISS == Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday August 20, 2024 12:00AM NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are facing challenges returning to Earth due to compatibility issues between their Boeing-designed spacesuits and SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Inc. Magazine reports: <blockquote> The space suits in question are the “intra-vehicular activity” outfits now worn by astronauts. They're simpler than the bulky extra-vehicular space suits used on space walks, and are designed to keep astronauts safe in the capsule in the very unlikely case there's a problem that causes the capsule's atmosphere to be lost. The problem is simple: Should Butch and Suni need to fly back aboard SpaceX's vehicle, their suits won't fit in Dragon's seats. […] Boeing and SpaceX suits evolved under totally different design sensibilities. If Boeing and NASA deem Starliner unsafe for humans to fly home in, Butch and Suni must head earthward aboard a SpaceX Dragon, but their suits won't be able to plug into Dragon's systems. Like trying to plug an essentially outdated USB A socket into an iPhone's charge port, the suit connectors have different shapes, styles, and functions. The suits themselves have different systems that integrate with their own capsules for purposes like air leak checks during pre-flight testing. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/08/20/0515214/incompatible-starliner-spacesuits-could-stall-astronauts-return-from-the-iss ==== Spacecraft ==== == NASA, Boeing delay the first crewed flight test of the Starliner capsule…again == Aria Alamalhodaei - 1 June 2023 Boeing and NASA said Thursday that the first crewed flight test of the Starliner capsule would be further delayed due to a new crop of technical issues with the spacecraft. The first crewed mission was scheduled to fly two NASA astronauts on July 21 after being pushed back from an earlier April launch date. Officials did not provide a new launch date during a media briefing, though Boeing’s VP of commercial crew, Mark Nappi, said leadership would spend the next week or so figuring out a plan to ensure the capsule is safe for flight. Nappi said Boeing engineers discovered two new issues with Starliner: one related to the parachute systems and another with the tape that wraps around wire harnesses in the spacecraft. He said that data on the parachutes’ load limits was recorded incorrectly, leading engineers to discover that some sections of the parachute had a lower failure load limit than was previously identified. Separately, engineers discovered that the aforementioned tape was flammable. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/01/nasa-boeing-delay-the-first-crewed-flight-test-of-the-starliner-capsuleagain/ ===== Blue Origin ===== == Blue Origin’s human lunar lander team delivers full-scale engineering mock-up to NASA == Darrell Etherington / 8:28 am PDT•August 20, 2020 Blue Origin and the members of its “national team” — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper — have delivered a full-scale engineering prototype of their human lunar lander to NASA for the agency to examine and review as it readies to build the real thing for eventual use in NASA’s Artemis program moon missions. The Blew Origin crew lander is now ready to undergo testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. This mock-up is not a functional version of the lander, but it does include full-sized components of the planned lander system, including the descent element that will be built by Blue Origin, and the ascent element that partner Lockheed Martin will be producing. Overall, the entire mock-up article measures just under 40-feet high. https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/20/blue-origins-human-lunar-lander-team-delivers-full-scale-engineering-mockup-to-nasa == Blue Origin eyes international expansion == Aria Alamalhodaei - 5 July 2023 Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is looking to expand into international markets, with the company in the early stages of eyeing up a launch site outside of the United States, CEO Bob Smith said earlier this week. Blue Origin is also actively looking for partnerships and acquisitions “in Europe and beyond” to further grow its launch and space services businesses, according to reporting from the Financial Times. Europe could prove to be fertile ground for the company, as that continent faces constricting launch availability due to the imminent retirement of the Ariane 5 rocket. That leaves just two rockets available for launch from Europe — Ariane 6, which has yet to fly, and Vega-C. Europe’s launch situation was no doubt made more desperate by the spectacular implosion of Virgin Orbit earlier this year. While there are numerous European launch startups vying to fill this gap — including Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar Aerospace and Orbex — none have yet to fly a rocket. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/blue-origin-eyes-international-expansion/ == Jeff Bezos Says Blue Origin Needs To Be 'Much Faster' == Posted by msmash on Friday December 15, 2023 07:20AM In an interview with Lex Fridman, Jeff Bezos candidly acknowledged Blue Origin's slow progress (compared to SpaceX). From a report: <blockquote> “Blue Origin needs to be much faster, and it's one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago,” he said. “I wanted to come in, and Blue Origin needs me right now. Adding some energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster. And we're going to.” How is Blue Origin going to speed up? </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/15/1450216/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-needs-to-be-much-faster == Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft == Company seeks: “Experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems?” Eric Berger - 3/4/2024, 7:10 AM The space company named Blue Origin is having a big year. New chief executive Dave Limp, who arrived in December, is working to instill a more productive culture at the firm owned by Jeff Bezos. In January, the company's powerful BE-4 rocket engine performed very well on the debut launch of the Vulcan booster. And later this year, possibly as soon as August, Blue Origin's own heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn, will take flight. But wait, there's more. The company has also been hard at work developing hardware that will fly on New Glenn, such as the Blue Ring transfer vehicle that will be used to ferry satellites into precise orbits. In addition, work continues on a private space station called Orbital Reef. One of the key questions about that space station is how astronauts will get there. The only current means of US crew transportation to low-Earth orbit is via Blue Origin's direct competitor, SpaceX, with its Dragon vehicle. This is likely unpalatable for Bezos. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/blue-origin-staffing-up-to-build-a-human-spacecraft/ == For the first time, Blue Origin has ignited an orbital rocket stage == Monday's test checked an important box for Blue Origin. Eric Berger - 9/24/2024, 6:07 AM Twenty days after it rolled out to Blue Origin's launch site in Florida, the second stage of the massive New Glenn rocket underwent a successful hot-fire test on Monday. The second stage—known as GS2 for Glenn stage 2—ignited for 15 seconds as part of the “risk reduction” hot-fire test, the company said. The two BE-3U engines, fueled by liquid oxygen and hydrogen and each producing 173,000 pounds of thrust, burned with a nearly transparent flame that approached a temperature of 6,000° Fahrenheit. This marked the first time that Blue Origin, a space company founded by Jeff Bezos more than two decades ago, has integrated and fired an orbital rocket stage. After the test, Blue Origin said it is still tracking toward a November launch of the New Glenn rocket. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/blue-origin-completes-second-stage-hot-fire-test-of-large-new-rocket/ ==== 2022 September Anomaly ==== == Blue Origin Booster Suffers Fiery Anomaly During Uncrewed Orbital Launch == No passengers were inside the capsule, but the malfunction now raises questions about the safety of Jeff Bezos’ space tourism offering. George Dvorsky - 12 September 2022 An uncrewed flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket ended in failure shortly after liftoff on Monday morning from Launch Site One in West Texas. The capsule, packed with scientific and technological payloads, managed to survive an apparent booster malfunction, with the launch escape system successfully working as designed. The booster anomaly happened just over one minute after the rocket launched today at 10:27 a.m. ET. Blue Origin’s live feed showed the rocket during MaxQ—the moment of maximum aerodynamic stress for a rocket—but the flight deteriorated quickly after that, with the booster becoming enveloped in flames. The camera then switched to a close-up view of the capsule, which ejected from the booster as a result of the anomaly (my guess is this was an automatic camera switch, as Blue Origin probably doesn’t want us watching its booster rockets exploding mid-flight). https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-anomaly-booster-1849525222 == After Blue Origin’s rocket explodes, its spacecraft makes a dramatic escape == There were no passengers on board this flight carrying scientific instruments. Eric Berger - 9/12/2022, 8:39 AM An anomaly occurred during an uncrewed flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard launch system on Monday morning. As the mission carrying three dozen scientific payloads ascended to about 9,000 meters, the New Shepard capsule's solid rocket motor-powered escape system suddenly fired, safely pulling the capsule away from the rocket. This happened 1 minute and 4 seconds after launch. Blue Origin's webcast did not explain the anomaly, but it appeared that the rocket's flight termination system was activated. This happened after the rocket had passed through max Q, the point at which the vehicle faces maximum dynamic pressure during ascent, and its BE-3 rocket engine was throttling back up to continue climbing on its suborbital trajectory. Suddenly, there was a large, anomalous plume of fire from the rocket's engine, and the escape motor on board the spacecraft fired. This was the ninth flight of this booster, which is one half of the launch system that also includes a capsule. The emergency escape system performed as intended, rapidly pulling the spacecraft away from an exploding rocket. Had a crew been on board this flight, they would have experienced a significant jolt and some high gravitational forces before landing safely in the West Texas desert. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/blue-origin-rocket-explodes-on-ascent-but-spacecraft-escape-system-works-well/ == Blue Origin launch aborted after mid-flight anomaly == Darrell Etherington - 7:42 AM PDT September 12, 2022 Blue Origin launched its 23rd New Shepard rocket mission this morning, featuring science payloads designed for experimentation. The mission needed early, however, after it was aborted during the first ascent stage of the rocket, prompting the abort process to take over and firing the parachutes on the capsule, which drifted back to Earth shortly after take-off. This was not a crewed mission, so there was no one on board the capsule, though it is the same vehicle that the company uses for its private spaceflight tourist missions. This marks the first time ever that Blue Origin has encountered a problem with the New Shepard spacecraft during a flight, in nearly two dozen missions. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/12/blue-origin-launch-aborted-after-mid-flight-anomaly/ == Uncrewed Blue Origin capsule lands safely after New Shepard rocket failure == NS-23 was carrying research equipment. Igor Bonifacic - September 12, 2022 11:22 PM Blue Origin’s recent NS-23 flight didn’t go according to plan. On Monday morning, the private space firm was forced to abort the uncrewed mission after one of its New Shepard rockets suffered an unspecified “booster failure.” The problem came up about a minute after the flight took off from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site at 10:26AM ET. You can see the entire incident unfold in the video the company shared on Twitter. “It appears we have experienced an anomaly with today’s flight,” a commentator said during the NS-23 livestream. “This was unplanned and we don't have any details yet. But our crew capsule was able to escape successfully, we’ll follow its progress through landing. As you can see, the drogues have deployed, and the mains are going to be pulled out next.” https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-ns-23-032202728.html == Bezos Rocket Crashes After Liftoff, Only Experiments Aboard == Posted by msmash on Monday September 12, 2022 01:05PM A rocket crashed back to Earth shortly after liftoff Monday in the first launch accident for Jeff Bezos' space travel company, but the capsule carrying experiments managed to parachute to safety. From a report: <blockquote>No one was aboard the Blue Origin flight, which used the same kind of rocket as the one that sends paying customers to the edge of space. The rockets are now grounded pending the outcome of an investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration said.</blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/09/12/1940221/bezos-rocket-crashes-after-liftoff-only-experiments-aboard == FAA Grounds Bezos After New Shepard Booster Goes Up in Flames == Early speculation suggests there’s something wrong with the rocket’s BE-3 engine, which would spell bad news for Blue Origin. George Dvorsky - 14 September 2022 2:23PM Suborbital flights of Blue Origin’s space tourism rocket are suspended pending a Federal Aviation Administration review of Monday’s in-flight anomaly. No passengers were aboard at the time, but the apparent booster failure triggered the vehicle’s capsule escape system. The apparent booster failure happened 65 seconds into Blue Origin’s NS-23 mission, which blasted off from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 10:27 a.m. ET on Monday. The anomaly caused the rocket’s abort system to engage, shooting the uncrewed capsule away from the fiery booster. The capsule made a successful parachute-assisted landing, but the booster crashed to the ground instead of performing its usual vertical landing. https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-faa-new-shepard-booster-failure-1849535838 == Congress Requests More Transparency Into Probe of Blue Origin Rocket Mishap == One Senator said on “a different day with a different mission, this vehicle’s anomaly could have put human lives in danger.” George Dvorsky - 16 September 2022 3:35PM House science committee leaders are asking the FAA to disclose more details as the agency investigates a recent incident involving the failed launch of an uncrewed Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology appears to have taken a vested interest in the Federal Aviation Administration’s investigation of the recent New Shepard booster failure. In a September 15 letter written to the FAA, committee chair Donald Beyer, writing on behalf of the House panel, asked that the agency be more open in its probe and that it brief the subcommittee within the next 10 days. https://gizmodo.com/congress-wants-info-on-probe-of-blue-origin-rocket-1849545922 == After a failure 4 months ago, the New Shepard spacecraft remains in limbo == Blue Origin has said nothing publicly about the September failure of New Shepard. Eric Berger - 1/30/2023, 5:55 AM More than four months have passed since the launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket ended in failure. No humans were onboard the vehicle because it was conducting a suborbital scientific research mission, but the failure has grounded the New Shepard fleet ever since. The rocket's single main engine failed about one minute into the flight, at an altitude of around 9 km, as it was throttling back up after passing through the period of maximum dynamic pressure. At that point a large fire erupted in the BE-3 engine, and the New Shepard capsule's solid rocket motor-powered escape system fired as intended, pulling the capsule away from the exploding rocket. The capsule experienced high G-forces during this return but appeared to make a safe landing. Three days after this accident with the New Shepard-23 mission, the bipartisan leadership of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, calling for a thorough investigation. In an interview with Ars later that month, the chair of the subcommittee, US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), urged Blue Origin to be transparent. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/blue-origin-may-restart-new-shepard-flights-in-april-or-may-or-not/ == After a Failure 4 Months Ago, the New Shepard Spacecraft Remains In Limbo == Posted by BeauHD on Monday January 30, 2023 11:00PM schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: <blockquote> More than four months have passed since the launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket ended in failure. No humans were onboard the vehicle because it was conducting a suborbital scientific research mission, but the failure has grounded the New Shepard fleet ever since. The rocket's single main engine failed about one minute into the flight, at an altitude of around 9 km, as it was throttling back up after passing through the period of maximum dynamic pressure. At that point a large fire erupted in the BE-3 engine, and the New Shepard capsule's solid rocket motor-powered escape system fired as intended, pulling the capsule away from the exploding rocket. The capsule experienced high G-forces during this return but appeared to make a safe landing. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/31/051233/after-a-failure-4-months-ago-the-new-shepard-spacecraft-remains-in-limbo ==== 2023 June Explosion ==== == Blue Origin is investigating why a rocket engine exploded during testing == The engine was destined for a ULA rocket. Jon Fingas - July 11, 2023 5:00 PM Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is still running into technical problems. The company has confirmed that a BE-4 engine exploded roughly 10 seconds into a firing test in Texas on June 30th. No one was hurt during the incident, but CNBC understands the engine was supposed to be sent to United Launch Alliance (ULA) for use in its second Vulcan rocket flight. An investigation is still underway. Blue Origin says it has a “proximate cause” for the explosion, and is working on unspecified “remedial actions.” The company will keep testing rockets and expects to meet its customers' engine demands, according to a spokesperson. The explosion comes several months after a New Shepard rocket failure that was ultimately pinned on a bad engine nozzle. ULA has had its own share of trouble. A rocket's upper stage exploded in March, prompting an investigation and fixes that include thicker steel walls on the stage. https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-is-investigating-why-a-rocket-engine-exploded-during-testing-210049055.html == Potential Setback for Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin as Rocket Engine Explodes in Test == The company's BE-4 engine is meant to power ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket, the inaugural flight of which has already been delayed several times. Passant Rabie - 12 July 2023 11:30AM During a test firing in late June, a Blue Origin rocket engine exploded at the company’s West Texas facility in what could be another major setback for the launch of the Vulcan Centaur rocket. Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine exploded about 10 seconds into the test on June 30, destroying the engine and heavily damaging the test stand infrastructure, CNBC reported based on anonymous sources familiar with the matter. “No personnel were injured and we are currently assessing root cause,” a Blue Origin spokesperson is quoted as saying in CNBC, confirming the anonymous reports. “We already have proximate cause and are working on remedial actions.” https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-rocket-engine-explodes-test-1850631196 ==== 2023 December ==== == Bezos’ Blue Origin aiming to make long-awaited return to launch next week == Aria Alamalhodaei - 12 December 2023 Blue Origin is aiming to finally conclude a more than 15-month pause in operations of its New Shepard suborbital rocket, with the company announcing today that it will fly an uncrewed mission as early as December 18. The company confirmed the launch on its social media account following a Bloomberg report of an internal email on the new targeted date. The mission, called NS-24, will carry 33 science and research payloads and other cargo. New Shepard has been grounded since September 2022, when an issue with an engine nozzle triggered an auto-abort, which released the uncrewed capsule from the booster. The capsule landed safely; the booster was destroyed when it crashed back to Earth. (That mission was also uncrewed.) The Federal Aviation Administration formally concluded its investigation into the mishap in September, instructing Blue Origin to implement 21 corrective actions, including redesigning the engine and nozzle components as well as “organizational changes.” https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/12/bezos-blue-origin-aiming-to-make-long-awaited-return-to-launch-next-week/ == After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again == Taking some science and some postcards for a ride. Eric Berger - 12/12/2023, 10:36 AM Blue Origin is finally returning to flight. On Tuesday the company announced, via the social media site X, that its New Shepard spacecraft would launch no earlier than next Monday. “We’re targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission,” the company stated. ”#NS24 will carry 33 science and research payloads as well as 38,000 @clubforfuture postcards to space.” The uncrewed New Shepard 24 test flight will refly the science payloads that were aboard the New Shepard 23 flight, which experienced an engine nozzle failure at 1 minute and 4 seconds following liftoff in September 2022. The capsule's emergency escape system performed as intended, rapidly pulling the spacecraft away from the disintegrating rocket and allowing Blue Origin to recover the payloads flown for NASA and other customers. Blue Origin finished its accident analysis this spring and implemented a fix to the problem, including design changes to the BE-3 engine combustion chamber. In May, the company said it planned to return to flight “soon.” Then, in September, the Federal Aviation Administration closed its mishap investigation. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/after-15-months-blue-origins-new-shepard-spacecraft-will-finally-fly-again/ == Blue Origin returns to form with a successful rocket launch after being grounded for over a year == The Jeff Bezos-backed agency recovered its New Shepard booster and unmanned crew capsule. Lawrence Bonk - Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 11:39 AM PST Blue Origin’s 24th mission is officially a success. The New Shepard rocket took off as planned this morning and the booster and crew capsule safely separated mid-flight and landed back on this great blue marble we call Earth. This was an uncrewed mission, but it carried 33 science payloads into low orbit, more than half of them from NASA. The launch allowed for a few minutes of zero gravity in which researchers conducted remote studies on these payloads. For instance, a payload from Honeybee Robotics studied the strength of planetary soils under differing gravity conditions. The manifest also included 38,000 student postcards from the Club for the Future initiative. https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-returns-to-form-with-a-successful-rocket-launch-after-being-grounded-for-over-a-year-193948312.html == Blue Origin’s New Shepard makes triumphant return flight == Aria Alamalhodaei - 19 December 2023 Blue Origin’s New Shepard is officially back in action, with the company today successfully launching the suborbital rocket for the first time in more than 15 months. The rocket lifted off from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas at around 10:42 a.m. local time. The mission, dubbed NS-24 to mark the 24th launch of the vehicle, carried 33 payloads for a swathe of customers, including NASA, Honeybee Robotics and non-profit research and engineering firm Draper. The mission successfully concluded after a period of 10 minutes, when the capsule safely returned to Earth after a brief suborbital flight. The company was originally targeting Monday for the mission but scrubbed the launch due to a “ground system issue.” Blue Origin did not elaborate further on the specific issue. https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/19/blue-origins-new-shepard-makes-triumphant-return-flight/ == Watch Blue Origin's first launch in 15 months here at 11:37AM ET == The uncrewed mission has 33 science payloads. Kris Holt, Contributing Reporter - Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 8:00 AM PST Blue Origin is taking another stab at its first launch in 15 months as New Shepard's 24th mission is scheduled to take flight on Tuesday. The company had to scrub a planned launch on Monday due to a ground system issue. Today's launch window opens at 11:37AM ET and the webcast starts 20 minutes beforehand. You can watch the launch below. The uncrewed science mission has 33 payloads, more than half of which were developed by NASA, Blue Origin says. The other payloads are from K-12 schools, universities and STEAM-centric organizations. The manifest also includes 38,000 student postcards from the Club for the Future initiative. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded New Shepard after an uncrewed launch attempt in September 2022 didn't go as planned. The booster failed after takeoff but it was able to separate successfully from the capsule. Although the capsule made a safe parachute landing, the booster was destroyed when it hit the ground in a designated hazard area. https://www.engadget.com/watch-blue-origins-first-launch-in-15-months-here-at-1137am-et-160030131.html == Blue Origin Rebounds With New Shepard's Successful Launch After Previous Mission Failure == The NS-24 mission carried 33 payloads to suborbital heights during an uncrewed flight on Monday. Passant Rabie - 19 December 2023 After over a year of being grounded, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket embarked on its first cargo mission since a fiery anomaly led to a mission failure in September 2022. New Shepard lifted off at 11:43 a.m. ET on Tuesday from Launch Site One in West Texas. The reusable rocket reached a maximum altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers), with the booster touching down at the 7:26 mark of the mission, and the capsule landing safely just over the ten minute mark. Blue Origin’s NS-24 mission carried 33 research payloads (no humans), more than half of which were “developed and flown with support from NASA,” the company wrote. The mission also packed 38,000 digital postcards for Club for the Future, the company’s nonprofit that aims to spark young people’s interest in space. https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-resume-successful-mission-ns-24-1851107379 == Blue Origin's Suborbital Rocket Flies For First Time In 15 Months == Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 19, 2023 07:30PM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: <blockquote> With redesigned engine components, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket took off from West Texas and flew to the edge of space on Tuesday with a package of scientific research and technology demonstration experiments. This was the first flight of Blue Origin's 60-foot-tall (18-meter) New Shepard rocket since September 12, 2022, when an engine failure destroyed the booster and triggered an in-flight abort for the vehicle's pressurized capsule. There were no passengers aboard for that mission, and the capsule safely separated from the failed booster and parachuted to a controlled landing. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/19/233206/blue-origins-suborbital-rocket-flies-for-first-time-in-15-months == Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket flies for first time in 15 months == An engine failure destroyed a New Shepard rocket on its previous flight. Stephen Clark - 12/19/2023, 2:21 PM With redesigned engine components, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket took off from West Texas and flew to the edge of space on Tuesday with a package of scientific research and technology demonstration experiments. This was the first flight of Blue Origin's 60-foot-tall (18-meter) New Shepard rocket since September 12, 2022, when an engine failure destroyed the booster and triggered an in-flight abort for the vehicle's pressurized capsule. There were no passengers aboard for that mission, and the capsule safely separated from the failed booster and parachuted to a controlled landing. The flight on Tuesday also didn't carry people. Instead, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, lofted 33 payloads for NASA, research institutions, and commercial companies. Some of these payloads were flown again on Tuesday's launch after failing to reach space on the failed New Shepard mission last year. Among these payloads were an experiment to demonstrate hydrogen fuel cell technology in microgravity and an investigation studying the strength of planetary soils under different gravity conditions. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/blue-origins-suborbital-rocket-flies-for-first-time-in-15-months/ ==== 2024 May Launch ==== == Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024 == Does Jeff Bezos's heavy-lift rocket really have a shot at launching next year? Stephen Clark - 12/12/2023, 6:25 PM For the first time, it's starting to feel like Jeff Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, might have a shot at launching its long-delayed New Glenn rocket within the next 12 months. Of course, there's a lot for Blue Origin to test and validate before New Glenn is ready to fly. First, the company's engineers need to fully assemble a New Glenn rocket and raise it on the company's sprawling seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. There's a good chance of this happening in the coming months as Blue Origin readies for a series of tanking tests and simulated countdowns at the launch site. It's tempting to invoke Berger's Law, the guideline championed by my Ars colleague which states that if a launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of a calendar year—and if it is at least six months away—the launch will delay into the next year. Given Blue Origin's history of New Glenn delays, that's probably the safer bet. New Glenn's inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for 2024. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/blue-origin-sure-seems-confident-it-will-launch-new-glenn-in-2024/ == Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard launches on May 19 == Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:37 PM PDT May 14, 2024 Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will take a crew to suborbital space for the first time in nearly two years later this month, the company announced on Tuesday. The NS-25 mission will launch from Blue’s launch site in West Texas on May 19. The launch window opens at 8:30 a.m. The six-person crew includes Ed Dwight, the first Black astronaut candidate (but for whom this would be the first visit to space), along with investor Mason Angel, who founded the space- and defense-focused Industrious Ventures. This launch comes after a nearly two-year interlude following the NS-22 mission in August 2022. The long pause in launches came after a cargo-only mission a month after NS-22 experienced an anomaly, which triggered the capsule’s abort system around a minute after lift-off. While the capsule parachuted to safety, the booster was lost. After such mishaps, it’s common practice for the Federal Aviation Administration to open an investigation. (These investigations are merely overseen by the FAA, but conducted by the company.) In March 2023, Blue Origin said the anomaly was due to the rocket’s BE-3PM engine running hotter than anticipated; that led to catastrophic thermal damage to the engine nozzle. https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/14/blue-origin-to-resume-crewed-new-shepard-launches-on-may-19/ == Bezos' Space Tourism Venture Set for Restart After Explosion Forced 2-Year Hiatus == Blue Origin will launch its first crew of astronauts since a liftoff malfunction grounded its New Shepard rocket in 2022. Passant Rabie - 18 May 2024 Blue Origin is preparing to send a crew of private astronauts to suborbital space, finally resuming its space tourism program on New Shepard after nearly two years of it being grounded. The New Shepard rocket is set to liftoff on Sunday from Launch Site One in West Texas during a launch window that begins at 9:30 a.m. ET, according to Blue Origin. The NS-25 mission will carry a six-person crew, including 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who was selected in 1961 as the first Black astronaut candidate but never got to fly to space. The launch will be broadcast live through Blue Origin’s website. Jeff Bezos’ space company had paused its suborbital tourism program following a liftoff malfunction of the New Shepard rocket. In September 2022, an uncrewed flight of New Shepard ended in flames around a minute after liftoff. https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-tourism-venture-restart-1851485006 == Blue Origin Successfully Launches Six Passengers to the Edge of Space == Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday May 19, 2024 01:39PM “Blue Origin's tourism rocket has launched passengers to the edge of space for the first time in nearly two years,” reports CNN, “ending a hiatus prompted by a failed uncrewed test flight.” <blockquote> The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 a.m. CT (10:36 a.m. ET) from Blue Origin's facilities on a private ranch in West Texas. NS-25, Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight to date, carried six customers aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be the nation's first Black astronaut candidate… Dwight completed that challenge and reached the edge of space at the age of 90, making him the oldest person to venture to such heights, according to a spokesperson from Blue Origin… </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/05/19/2037247/blue-origin-successfully-launches-six-passengers-to-the-edge-of-space == First Black astronaut candidate, now 90, reaches space in Blue Origin flight == Ex-air force captain Ed Dwight, passed over by Nasa in 1961, now oldest person to reach edge of space with Jeff Bezo’s space firm Maya Yang - Sun 19 May 2024 14.02 EDT Sixty-one years since he was selected but ultimately passed over to become the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight finally reached space in a Blue Origin rocket – and set a different record. At 10.37am on Sunday, Jeff Bezos’s space company launched its NS-25 mission from west Texas, marking Blue Origin’s first crewed spaceflight since 2022 when its New Shepard rocket was grounded due to a mid-flight failure. On board were six crew members, including Dwight, a retired US air force captain who at 90 years old now becomes the oldest person to reach the edge of space. In 1961, Dwight was chosen by President John F Kennedy to train as an astronaut at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, but was ultimately not selected for the Nasa Astronaut Corps. Since entering private life in 1966, Dwight spent a decade as an entrepreneur, before turning to sculpture to honor Black history, Blue Origin said on its website. Dwight has created large-scale monuments of various major Black figures including Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, and has more than 130 of his public works installed in museums and public spaces across the US and Canada. https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/19/ed-dwight-blue-origin-first-black-astronaut-candidate == Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022 == Anthony Ha - 7:47 AM PDT May 19, 2024 Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of space, including artist and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight. In 1961, Dwight was selected by President John F. Kennedy to be the country’s first Black astronaut candidate, but he never made to space until today. Other passengers include software engineer and entrepreneur Ken Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; Sylvain Chiron, founder of brewery Brasserie Mont Blanc; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and venture capitalist Mason Angel of Industrious Ventures. “I thought the whole idea of going to space with Blue Origin was a fascinating last chapter,” Dwight said in a Blue Origin promotional video. “I really, really want to do this because each person who goes up there all of a sudden has a totally different perspective of this little place here.” https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/19/blue-origin-successfully-launches-its-first-crewed-mission-since-2022/ == Blue Origin successfully sends tourists to the edge of space again after a long hiatus == This was Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, May 19, 2024, 7:47 AM PDT Blue Origin is back in the space tourism game. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company successfully flew six paying customers to the edge of space and back this morning, breaking its nearly two-year-long hiatus from crewed missions. This was Blue Origin’s seventh trip with humans on board. The mission — a quick jaunt to cross the Kármán line, or the boundary of space, about 62 miles above Earth — lifted off from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas shortly after 10:30AM ET. The six people inside the New Shepard crew capsule included 90-year-old Ed Dwight, a former Air Force Captain who was the first Black astronaut candidate when he was picked for the training program in 1961. He went through training but ultimately wasn’t selected for NASA’s Astronaut Corps, and never made it to space until now. Also on board were Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller and Gopi Thotakura. They were briefly able to unbuckle their seatbelts and experience zero gravity. https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-successfully-sends-tourists-to-the-edge-of-space-again-after-a-long-hiatus-144745261.html == Blue Origin resumes human flights to suborbital space, but it wasn’t perfect == Blue Origin's space capsule safely landed despite a problem with one of its parachutes. Stephen Clark - 5/20/2024, 10:16 AM More than 60 years after he was denied an opportunity to become America's first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight finally traveled into space Sunday with five other passengers on a 10-minute flight inside a Blue Origin capsule. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain and test pilot, had a chance to become the first African American astronaut. He was one of 26 pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but the agency didn't select him. It took another 20 years for America's first Black astronaut, Guion Bluford, to fly in space in 1983. “Everything they did, I did, and I did it well,” Dwight said in a video released by Blue Origin. “If politics had changed, I would have gone to space in some kind of capacity.” At the age of 90, Dwight finally entered the record books Sunday, becoming the oldest person to reach space, displacing the previous record-holder, actor William Shatner, who flew on a similar Blue Origin launch to the edge of space in 2021. “I thought I didn’t need it in my life,” Dwight said after Sunday's fight. “But I lied!” Since retiring from the Air Force, Dwight became an accomplished sculptor. His works, which focus on Black history, are installed at memorials and monuments across the country. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/blue-origin-resumes-human-flights-to-suborbital-space-but-it-wasnt-perfect/ == A Parachute Failed to Deploy During Jeff Bezos' Space Tourism Comeback Mission == On May 19, during its first crewed flight in two years, one of the parachutes on the New Shepard capsule failed to fully inflate, prompting an investigation. Passant Rabie - 4 June 2024 Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has launched an investigation following an incident during its first crewed flight in two years, in which one of the parachutes on the New Shepard capsule failed to fully inflate. The company’s New Shepard rocket launched on May 19 carrying a six-person crew to suborbital space. The NS-25 mission saw the crew capsule land to conclude the flight, but only two of its three parachutes were fully inflated, SpaceNews reported. Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, recently revealed the issue during a briefing on the upcoming Boeing Starliner crewed test flight. Blue Origin had not made the issue with its parachute public, but instead briefed NASA officials regarding the anomaly since vehicles like Boeing’s Starliner use similar components. https://gizmodo.com/bezos-blue-origin-parachute-issue-new-shepard-capsule-1851516993 ==== 2024 October Launch ==== == Blue Origin targets mid-October for New Glenn’s inaugural flight and launch of NASA’s Escapade Mars mission == The company said New Glenn will lift off for the first time no earlier than October 13. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 3:46 PM PDT Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket and its Mars-bound NASA payload now have a tentative launch date. The company said on Friday that the inaugural flight will take place no earlier than October 13, carrying two probes built by Rocket Lab to help NASA study the effects of solar wind on Mars’ atmosphere. This will be the first time New Glenn flies after years of delays in its development, and the date cuts well into the window of opportunity for travel to Mars, which occurs roughly every two years based on the planetary alignments. That launch period opens on September 29 and extends to mid-October, per Ars Technica. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origin-targets-mid-october-for-new-glenns-inaugural-flight-and-launch-of-nasas-escapade-mars-mission-224611923.html ==== 2025 January Launch ==== == After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly == Also on Friday, the company obtained a launch license for New Glenn launch attempts. Eric Berger - Dec 27, 2024 6:20 PM After a long day of stops and starts that stretched well into the evening, and on what appeared to be the company's fifth attempt Friday, Blue Origin successfully ignited the seven main engines on its massive New Glenn rocket. The test firing came as fog built over the Florida coast, and it marks the final major step in the rocket company's campaign to bring the New Glenn rocket—a privately developed, super-heavy lift vehicle—to launch readiness. Blue Origin said it fired the vehicle's engines for a duration of 24 seconds. They fired at full thrust for 13 of those seconds. “This is a monumental milestone and a glimpse of what’s just around the corner for New Glenn’s first launch,” said Jarrett Jones, senior vice president of the New Glenn program, in a news release. “Today’s success proves that our rigorous approach to testing—combined with our incredible tooling and design engineering–is working as intended.” https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/blue-origin-hot-fires-new-glenn-rocket-setting-up-a-launch-early-next-year/ == Bezos’ Big Rocket Is Finally Ready for Liftoff This Week == The debut of the partially reusable New Glenn rocket could give SpaceX a run for its money. Passant Rabie - January 7, 2025 After years of delays, the launch of Blue Origin’s long-anticipated New Glenn rocket is set for this week, beginning a new era of competition between two rocket billionaires. New Glenn is scheduled for liftoff no earlier than Friday, January 10 during a three-hour launch window that opens at 1 a.m. ET, Blue Origin announced on Monday. The rocket will take off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder for its first test flight. New Glenn’s inaugural launch will double as the rocket’s certification flight, paving the way for it to carry national security payloads on future missions. “This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, senior vice president of New Glenn, said in a statement. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.“ https://gizmodo.com/bezos-big-rocket-is-finally-ready-for-liftoff-this-week-2000546869 == First launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket slated for January 10 == Bezos booster finally ready for action Richard Speed - Tue 7 Jan 2025 14:00 UTC Blue Origin has named the date for the first launch of its New Glenn rocket – January 10. It wasn't quite the end of 2024 as originally envisioned, but there won't be many rocket fanciers grumbling about a slip of a few more days if it means the launch has a greater chance of success. The inaugural launch is scheduled for no earlier than January 10 from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The three-hour launch window opens at 0600 UTC, and the mission, named NG-1, will be the first National Security Space Launch certification flight. The primary goal of the mission is to reach orbit. The rocket's payload is the Blue Ring Pathfinder, intended to demonstrate some of the Blue Ring spacecraft systems. The original plan was to have launched NASA's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) expedition to Mars. However, with the fueling of the ESCAPADE spacecraft looming in September, the US space agency opted to postpone the trip – a decision that, considering the delays with New Glenn, seems wise in retrospect. Blue Origin will also attempt to retrieve the first stage via its sea-based landing platform, Jacklyn. It said: “We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious – but we're going for it.” https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/07/new_glenn_launch_date/ == Blue Origin postpones New Glenn's maiden flight to January 12 == Now set for the day before SpaceX's next Starship test Richard Speed - Fri 10 Jan 2025 16:31 UTC Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin has postponed the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket to January 12, the day before SpaceX hopes to launch another Starship test flight. According to Blue Origin's team, the shift to a three-hour window opening at 0600 UTC on January 12 is due to unfavorable conditions in the Atlantic, where it hopes to land the first stage on a barge. The landing isn't the primary goal of the first New Glenn launch. Earlier today, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp described it as a “bonus,” but a shift of a few days to improve the chances of success seems sensible. The mission's primary objective is for the much-delayed rocket to finally reach orbit. SpaceX has been landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 booster on floating platforms for years, demonstrating that the technique is feasible and making what seemed almost impossible a few decades ago routine. However, it took a few Falcon 9 launches before the company managed its first landing on a platform at sea. https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/blue_origin_new_glenn/ == New Glenn rocket is at the launch pad, waiting for calm seas to land == “Landing our booster offshore is ambitious—but we’re going for it.” Eric Berger – Updated Jan 11, 2025 9:31 AM COCOA BEACH, Fla.—As it so often does in the final days before the debut of a new rocket, it all comes down to weather. Accordingly, Blue Origin is only awaiting clear skies and fair seas for its massive New Glenn vehicle to lift off from Florida. After the company completed integration of the rocket this week, and rolled the super heavy lift rocket to its launch site at Cape Canaveral, the focus turned toward the weather. Conditions at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base have been favorable during the early morning launch windows available to the rocket, but there have been complications offshore. That's because Blue Origin aims to recover the first stage of the New Glenn rocket, and sea states in the Atlantic Ocean have been unsuitable for an initial attempt to catch the first stage booster on a drone ship. The company has already waived one launch attempt set for 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Friday, January 10. Conditions have improved a bit since then, but on Saturday evening the company's launch officials canceled a second attempt planned for 1 am ET on Sunday. The new launch time is now 1 am ET on Monday, January 13, when better sea states are expected. There is a three-hour launch window. The company will provide a webcast of proceedings at this link beginning one hour before liftoff. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/new-glenn-rocket-is-at-the-launch-pad-waiting-for-calm-seas-to-land/ == Although it’s ‘insane’ to try and land New Glenn, Bezos said it’s important to try == “There are some things that can only be tested in flight.” Eric Berger – Jan 12, 2025 4:30 PM Understandably, the main building of Blue Origin's sprawling campus in Florida buzzed with activity on Sunday evening as the final hours ticked down toward the company's historic, first orbital launch. The time had come to celebrate a moment long awaited. On one side of the large foyer, a multi-story print of the New Glenn rocket lit up on its launch pad hung from the wall. The striking image had been taken a day after Christmas, and put up in the lobby two days earlier. On the other side a massive replica of the company's “Mk. 1” lunar lander towered over caterers bustling through. My escort and I took the elevators to the upper floor, where a walkway overlooks the factory where Blue Origin builds the first and second stages of its New Glenn rocket. There I met the chief executive of the company, Dave Limp, as well as the person responsible for all of this activity. https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2025/01/bezos-on-eve-of-new-glenn-launch-if-something-goes-wrong-well-pick-ourselves-up/ == How to watch Blue Origin’s inaugural New Glenn launch == The flight will carry a prototype of the company’s Blue Ring Pathfinder. Will Shanklin - Sun, Jan 12, 2025, 5:30 PM PST Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is ready for liftoff. After some weather-related delays over the weekend, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company said that the $2.5 billion reusable rocket, which has been in development for nearly 13 years, will target its first launch no earlier than Monday, January 13. Its three-hour launch window kicks off at 1AM ET. The webcast will begin an hour before launch, and you can watch New Glenn take flight on Blue Origin’s website, X or the company’s YouTube channel. New Glenn’s inaugural mission (NG-1) will serve as its first Space Force national security certification flight, necessary to compete against the likes of SpaceX for Department of Defense and national intelligence contracts. Its reusable first stage is designed for at least 25 flights. Blue Origin has several New Glenn vehicles in production. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/how-to-watch-blue-origins-inaugural-new-glenn-launch-013009830.html == Blue Origin delays launch of New Glenn mega-rocket == Sean O'Kane - 7:58 AM PST January 13, 2025 Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin postponed the inaugural launch of its first orbital rocket, New Glenn, early Monday morning after experiencing an unspecified issue with one of the vehicle’s subsystems. While delays like this happen all the time in spaceflight, this one once again puts the timing of the much-anticipated launch in question. According to Eric Berger at Ars Technica, the company got deep enough into the countdown that Blue Origin would likely need at least 48 hours to reset the rocket for launch. On top of that, conditions in the Atlantic Ocean are expected to worsen this week, and Blue Origin is trying to land New Glenn’s booster on a drone ship — similar to how Elon Musk’s SpaceX often recovers the core of its Falcon 9 rockets. New Glenn’s success is crucial to Blue Origin, as the company is trying to enter a heavy-lift market currently dominated by SpaceX. Up until now, Blue Origin has been primarily focused on launching tourists and science experiments to sub-orbital space in its much smaller New Shepard rocket. New Glenn is supposed to help unlock new business for Blue Origin, which already has contracts to deliver payloads to space with NASA, the Space Force, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and more. Blue Origin has been preparing to launch New Glenn for a few weeks now, and finally rolled the 320-foot-tall rocket out to its launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 9. At that point, the company was targeting a launch on January 12. But over the weekend, the company pushed that target date back one day in order to increase the odds of successfully landing New Glenn’s booster. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/13/blue-origin-delays-launch-of-new-glenn-mega-rocket/ == An icy vent line may have caused Blue Origin to scrub debut launch of New Glenn == Such issues are totally expected and normal with large, new rockets. Eric Berger - Jan 13, 2025 12:45 AM New Glenn rocket undergoes a hot-fire test in Florida in late December. Credit: Blue Origin COCOA BEACH, Fla.—With 45 minutes left in a three-hour launch window, Blue Origin scrubbed its first attempt to launch the massive New Glenn rocket early on Monday morning. Throughout the window, which opened at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC), the company continued to reset the countdown clock as launch engineers worked out technical issues with the rocket. Officially, both on its live webcast as well as on social media following the scrub, Blue Origin was vague about the cause of the delayed launch attempt. “We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” the company said. “We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.” According to sources, the primary problem was likely ice clogging one of the vent lines that carry pressurized gas away from the vehicle. Several attempts were made to melt the ice, but these efforts were not successful, necessitating the scrub. Hopefully Blue Origin will provide more information about the cause of the scrub in the coming days. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/an-icy-vent-line-may-have-caused-blue-origin-to-scrub-debut-launch-of-new-glenn/ == Blue Origin Livestreams - But Postpones - Its First Orbital Rocket Launch == Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 10:30PM “We're standing down on today's launch attempt,” Blue Origin posted late last night, “to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.” But soon Blue Origin will again attempt its very first orbital flight. And they'll also attempt to land their reusable Stage 1 on a drone in the Atlantic ocean… Several hours Sunday night their rocket was fueled on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, awaiting ignition. Its three-hour launch window had just opened. And Blue Origin was webcasting it all live on their web page… But whatever happened, Ars Technica's senior space editor Eric Berger got to talk to an “affable and anxious” Jeff Bezos: <blockquote> “It's pretty exciting, isn't it?” Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, said by way of greeting… I asked what his expectations were for the launch of New Glenn, which has a three-hour window that opens at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Monday, January 13… “We would certainly like to achieve orbit, and get the Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit,” Bezos said. “Landing the booster would be gravy on top of that. It's kind of insane to try and land the booster. A more sane approach would probably be to try to land it into ocean. But we're gonna go for it.” </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/13/0627230/blue-origin-livestreams-whats-potentially-its-first-orbital-rocket-launch == Blue Origin gives up on New Glenn lift-off, 2 hours into launch window == Vehicle subsystem concerns blamed for scrub Richard Speed - Mon 13 Jan 2025 12:04 UTC Blue Origin has given up on today's lift-off attempt for its New Glenn rocket, confirming that it was standing down a little more than two hours into the vehicle's launch window. Rocket fanciers who were up at 0600 UTC for the opening of the launch window saw repeated resets of the countdown clock before Jeff Besoz's company eventually threw in the towel, citing problems with a subsystem. In a post on X, Blue Origin said: “We're standing down on today's launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.” https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/blue_origin_gives_up_on/ == Blue Origin reaches orbit on first flight of its titanic New Glenn rocket == Bypassing engine chill issues and a wayward boat, Blue Origin got to T-0. Eric Berger – Jan 15, 2025 11:51 PM Early on Thursday morning, a Saturn V-sized rocket ignited its seven main engines, a prelude to lifting off from Earth. But then, the New Glenn rocket didn't move. And still, the engines produced their blue flame, furiously burning away methane. The thrust-to-weight ratio of the rocket must have been in the vicinity of 1.0 to 1.2, so the booster had to burn a little liquid methane and oxygen before it could begin to climb appreciably. But finally, seconds into the mission, New Glenn began to climb. It was slow, ever so slow. But it flew true. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/blue-origin-reaches-orbit-on-first-flight-of-its-titanic-new-glenn-rocket/ == Blue Origin reaches orbit with New Glenn, fumbles first-stage recovery == Jeff Bezos' space company achieves milestone with payload delivered Richard Speed - Thu 16 Jan 2025 11:30 UTC Jeff Bezos joined the orbital elite with the launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket this morning. The flight, dubbed NG-1, was beset by delays right up to the launch window opening at 0600 UTC on January 16, 2025. As it was, the T-0 time ended up being 0703 UTC, and the New Glenn rose from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station under the power of its seven BE-4 engines. The primary goal of the mission was to reach orbit. Recovering the first stage would have been a bonus, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. Stage separation occurred approximately three minutes after lift-off, with a pair of BE-3U engines continuing the ascent of the upper stage. An excited commentator confirmed that three of the first stage's seven BE-4 engines had relit for the descent, but telemetry from the vehicle froze shortly after, and it was later confirmed that the stage had been lost, although the company did not provide any details. https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/16/new_glenn_reaches_orbit/ == Blue Origin successfully launches New Glenn rocket into space == Sean O'Kane - 3:47 AM PST January 16, 2025 Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company Blue Origin on Thursday launched its new mega-rocket, called New Glenn, into orbit for the first time. The rocket lifted off at 2:03 a.m. ET on January 16 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and crossed the official boundary into space a few minutes later. Shortly after, a second-stage burn placed the rocket’s upper section into orbit around the Earth. While it was the rocket’s inaugural launch, a number of things went right, and the company had said that reaching orbit safely was its main objective. However, the rocket’s first stage exploded on the way back down to Earth as Blue Origin attempted to land that section on a drone ship at sea. The company hopes to launch again this spring, and plans as many as eight New Glenn launches this year. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/16/blue-origin-successfully-launches-new-glenn-rocket-into-space/ == Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launches into orbit on its maiden flight == The rocket has been in development for over a decade. Mariella Moon - Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 11:34 PM PST Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has successfully made it to space for its maiden flight, a few days after its planned January 13 launch was scrubbed. The vehicle passed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, shortly after 2AM Eastern time on January 16. New Glenn's booster separated from the rest of the rocket to make its way back to Earth towards a landing platform in the ocean by 2:10 AM, while its second stage and payload went on to reach orbit. The company has just announced on its live feed that it failed to land New Glenn's booster, but it was never the launch's primary purpose. Dave Limp, the company's CEO, previously stressed that the mission's objective is to reach orbit. “Anything beyond that is a bonus,” he wrote in a tweet. He said that landing the booster was “ambitious” but that Blue Origin is still going for it and expects to “learn a lot” from the effort. Notably, it took SpaceX three years of landing tests before it was successfully able to land Falcon 9's first stage on a drone ship in the ocean. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-launches-into-orbit-on-its-maiden-flight-073451555.html == SpaceX and Blue Origin must investigate this week’s big rocket tests, FAA says == Sean O'Kane - 10:44 AM PST January 17, 2025 The Federal Aviation Administration is requiring Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to investigate what went wrong on their respective mega-rocket test flights this week. The regulator said both companies must perform what’s known as a “mishap investigation.” These probes involve the companies and the FAA working together to understand what went wrong, why it went wrong, and take corrective action. In both cases, the regulator will have to sign off on the companies before those rockets can fly again. It’s not immediately clear how long that will take. In SpaceX’s case, there was an explosion during the seventh test-flight of its Starship rocket system, which launched from Boca Chica, Texas on Thursday. Musk wrote on X that the Starship itself became over-pressurized due to excess gas as it ascended into space, and it ultimately exploded. The company’s official explanation on its website says the inside of the ship caught fire. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/17/spacex-and-blue-origin-must-investigate-this-weeks-big-rocket-tests-faa-says/ ==== 2025 April Launch ==== == Blue Origin’s Upcoming Launch Is by Far the Most Annoying Private Mission Yet == Does Katy Perry even like space? Passant Rabie - March 27, 2025 Private spaceflight is entering its peak cringe era with the upcoming launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, sending a crew that includes a fallen-off pop star and Jeff Bezos’ partner to the edge of space. Blue Origin has set a date for its next private mission, which will launch a crew of six private astronauts on board the company’s New Shepard rocket. NS-31, Blue Origin’s 11th crewed mission, is set for liftoff on Monday, April 14 from Launch Site One in West Texas, the company announced on Thursday. The mission will launch an all-female crew that includes singer Katy Perry, TV personality and Oprah’s bestie, Gayle King, and Bezos’s fiancée, Lauren Sánchez. Also on board will be former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. While some of the crew members make sense, the rest are flashy add-ons to a rather expensive trip to suborbital heights where, spoiler alert, they’re just going to float around for about two minutes, with the whole thing lasting no more than 11 minutes. https://gizmodo.com/blue-origins-upcoming-launch-is-by-far-the-most-annoying-private-mission-so-far-2000581758 ==== Blue Glenn ==== == NASA will launch a Mars mission on Blue Origin’s New Glenn == Devin Coldewey - 4:09 PM PST•February 9, 2023 NASA is planning a science mission to Mars that will ride up aboard a New Glenn — Blue Origin’s first big government contract for the as-yet-untested launch vehicle. New Glenn is the much, much larger sibling of the suborbital New Shepard rocket that so many celebrities and rich folks have gone to the edge of space in. Announced in 2016, the launch vehicle would compete with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and other heavy-lift options. But 6 years later, we have yet to see a New Glenn in one piece, let alone ready to launch a Mars mission. The first flight for New Glenn was scheduled for late 2021, but that date was “refined” earlier that year, purportedly because a contract with the Pentagon had fallen through. Q4 of 2022 was the next window, but obviously that’s come and gone. I’ve asked for updated timing. https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/09/nasa-will-launch-a-mars-mission-on-blue-origins-new-glenn/ ==== Culture ==== == Blue Origin has a toxic culture, former and current employees say == “Professional dissent at Blue Origin is actively stifled.” Eric Berger - 9/30/2021, 12:07 PM A former communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees have written a blistering essay about the company's culture, citing safety concerns, sexist attitudes, and a lack of commitment to the planet's future. “In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs,” the essay authors write. “That’s not the world we should be creating here on Earth, and certainly not as our springboard to a better one.” Published Thursday on the Lioness website, the essay is signed publicly by only Alexandra Abrams, who led employee communications for the company until she was terminated in 2019. The other signatories, a majority of whom were engineers, declined to publicly disclose their names because they did not want to jeopardize employment at Blue Origin or harm their prospects in the aerospace industry for other jobs. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/former-blue-origin-employees-decry-safety-and-sexist-culture-at-the-company/ == Blue Origin is a ‘toxic environment,' current and ex-employees say == They claim the company 'turns a blind eye to sexism' and 'is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns.' Kris Holt - September 30th, 2021 A group of former and current Blue Origin employees have accused the company of fostering a “toxic environment.” In an essay written by former head of employee communications Alexandra Abrams and 20 co-authors, the group claims some senior leaders at Blue Origin “have been known to be consistently inappropriate with women.” The essay states that one executive has been reported to human resources multiple times for sexual harassment. Another former exec used condescending language to women and inappropriately enquired about their personal lives. The group says that person had a “close personal relationship” with Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and was only removed from the company after groping a female subordinate. https://www.engadget.com/blue-origin-toxic-workplace-employee-letter-181051514.html == Blue Origin has a toxic culture, former and current employees say == “Professional dissent at Blue Origin is actively stifled.” Eric Berger - 9/30/2021, 12:07 PM A former communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees have written a blistering essay about the company's culture, citing safety concerns, sexist attitudes, and a lack of commitment to the planet's future. “In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs,” the essay authors write. “That’s not the world we should be creating here on Earth, and certainly not as our springboard to a better one.” Published Thursday on the Lioness website, the essay is signed publicly by only Alexandra Abrams, who led employee communications for the company until she was terminated in 2019. The other signatories, a majority of whom were engineers, declined to publicly disclose their names because they did not want to jeopardize employment at Blue Origin or harm their prospects in the aerospace industry for other jobs. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/former-blue-origin-employees-decry-safety-and-sexist-culture-at-the-company/ ==== Employees ==== == Former Blue Origin rocket engine manager alleges wrongful termination for whistleblowing on safety == Aria Alamalhodaei - 30 November 2023 The former program manager of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging whistleblower retaliation after he spoke up about safety issues. The complaint was filed on Monday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It includes a detailed narrative about program manager Craig Stoker’s efforts over seven months to escalate his concerns about safety and a hostile work environment at Blue Origin. Allegedly, Stoker told two VPs in May 2022 that then-CEO Bob Smith’s behavior caused employees “to frequently violate safety procedures and processes in order to meet unreasonable deadlines.” Smith would “explode” when issues would arise, generating a hostile work environment, the complaint says. Stoker sent a follow-up email to the two VPs — Linda Cova, VP of the engines business unit, and Mary Plunkett, senior VP of human resources — that included a formal complaint against Smith. https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/30/former-blue-origin-rocket-engine-manager-alleges-wrongful-termination-for-whistleblowing-on-safety/ == Blue Origin cuts 10% of staff one month after first successful New Glenn launch == 7:24 AM PST February 13, 2025 - Sean O'Kane Blue Origin is laying off 10% of its workforce, according to Reuters, just one month after the successful first launch of its New Glenn mega-rocket. The company reportedly has more than 10,000 employees, meaning the cut could affect around 1,000 people. CEO Dave Limp told employees in an all-hands meeting Thursday morning the company is not “set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” which he said was a “painful conclusion,” according to Reuters reporter Joey Roulette. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/13/blue-origin-cuts-10-of-staff-one-month-after-first-successful-new-glenn-launch/ == Citing too much “bureaucracy,” Blue Origin to cut 10 percent of its workforce == “We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years.” Eric Berger - Feb 13, 2025 7:41 AM A little less than a month after the successful debut of its New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin's workforce will be trimmed by 10 percent. The cuts were announced during an all-hands meeting on Thursday morning led by the rocket company's chief executive, Dave Limp. During the gathering, Limp cited “business strategy” as the rationale for making the cuts to a workforce of more than 10,000 people. Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, and he continues to provide an estimated $2 billion in funding annually to support its operations. In a follow-up email to employees on Thursday morning under the subject “Difficult Org News,” Limp said the decision was the result of the company's planning for 2025 and need for sustainable growth. Blue's primary goal for the coming year is to scale up its manufacturing output and launch cadence of the New Glenn rocket. Limp cited the scramble to complete the development of New Glenn and get the rocket into orbit as rationale for the cuts. “We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,” Limp wrote. “It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities.” https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/citing-too-much-bureaucracy-blue-origin-to-cut-10-percent-of-its-workforce/ == Bezos’ Blue Origin to layoff about 10% across its space, launch business == Reuters / CNBC - Thu, Feb 13 2025 11:03 AM EST The CEO of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced in an all-hands call on Thursday company-wide layoffs of “about 10 percent” of its employees, a sweeping readjustment as it aims to cut costs and ramp up rocket launches. The layoffs affect roughly 1,400 of the company’s nearly 14,000 employees — mostly concentrated in Florida, Texas and Washington — and comes as Blue Origin starts production of its giant New Glenn rocket, which had its first long-awaited debut launch last month. “There’s no easy way to communicate this,” Dave Limp told employees in the meeting, which was scheduled the night prior and lasted about 10 minutes. “There’s no question that we’ve had a lot of successes over the last few months.” “But that being said, when you look at the foundation of the company and what we need to get to over the next three to five years, we just came to the painful conclusion that we aren’t set up for the kind of success that we really wanted to have,” Limp said. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/bezos-blue-origin-to-layoff-about-10percent-across-its-space-launch-business-.html == Bezos’ Blue Origin Cuts 10% of Jobs to Ramp Up Rocket Launches == The company recently debuted its New Glenn rocket, which could rival SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. Passant Rabie - February 14, 2025 Blue Origin is reportedly planning on letting go of approximately 10% of its workforce—about 1,000 employees—nearly a month after the inaugural liftoff of New Glenn. The company is hoping to focus on growth over the next few years, increasing the production and launch cadence of its new giant rocket. In an email sent to employees on Thursday, Blue Origin CEO David Limp announced the layoffs that will affect “positions in engineering, (research and development), and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management,” according to a copy of the email obtained by CNN. After years of delays, Blue Origin finally debuted its New Glenn rocket on January 16. The heavy-lift launch vehicle blasted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, marking the first time a Blue Origin rocket reached orbit (the company’s New Shepard rocket, used for space tourism purposes, is suborbital). New Glenn’s second stage reached its target orbit following a pair of successful burns of the BE-3U engines, while its booster was lost during descent. The company was hoping to carry out a soft landing of the booster on an ocean-based platform, but alas, that didn’t happen. Still, the rocket’s inaugural flight was a major success. https://gizmodo.com/bezos-blue-origin-cuts-10-of-jobs-to-ramp-up-rocket-launches-2000564132 ==== New Glenn ==== == Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket finally makes an appearance on the launch pad == Blue Origin plans a tanking test at Cape Canaveral, then a hotfire on the launch pad. Stephen Clark - 2/22/2024, 3:59 PM Anyone who has tracked the development of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has been waiting for signs of progress from the usually secretive space company. On Wednesday, engineers rolled a full-scale New Glenn rocket, partially made up of flight hardware, to a launch pad in Florida for ground testing. The first New Glenn launch is almost certainly at least six months away, and it may not even happen this year. In the last few years, observers inside and outside the space industry have become accustomed to the nearly annual ritual of another New Glenn launch delay. New Glenn's inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for later this year. But it feels different now. Blue Origin is obviously moving closer to finally launching a rocket into orbit. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/big-year-ahead-says-jeff-bezos-as-new-glenn-rocket-rolls-to-launch-pad/ == Ahead of testing, Blue Origin raises New Glenn on the launch pad for first time == Aria Alamalhodaei - 22 February 2024 Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin raised a test version of its massive orbital rocket on its launch pad for the first time Wednesday, inaugurating the start of a major test campaign ahead of the first launch later this year. The test version of the rocket is all Blue Origin hardware, but not all of it will necessarily end up going to space. The second stage and the payload fairing that sits at the top of the vehicle are both stand-ins during testing; the rocket also doesn’t have any BE-4 engines, as they’re not needed for the upcoming suite of tests. Those engines, which are also made by Blue Origin, are undergoing their own test campaign at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the company’s facilities in West Texas. The upcoming tests with this launch vehicle will let teams practice vehicle integration and transportation to and from the launch pad, and what’s called an integrated tanking test. For that test, the booster will be fueled with liquid nitrogen (which is not used during an actual launch) to verify that the fluid systems function properly. Tests are anticipated to take at least a week, Blue Origin CEO David Limp said on LinkedIn. https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/ahead-of-testing-blue-origin-raises-new-glenn-on-the-launch-pad-for-first-time/ == In a not-so-subtle signal to regulators, Blue Origin says New Glenn is ready == Blue Origin needs to fly the New Glenn rocket to identify where the vehicle has margin. Eric Berger - Dec 10, 2024 6:02 AM Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff. The company published an image of the “Blue Ring” pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket's payload fairing. “There is a growing demand to quickly move and position equipment and infrastructure in multiple orbits,” the company's chief executive, Dave Limp, said on LinkedIn. “Blue Ring has advanced propulsion and communication capabilities for government and commercial customers to handle these maneuvers precisely and efficiently.” This week's announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products, but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/intrigue-swirls-as-blue-origin-races-toward-year-end-deadline-for-new-glenn/ == Blue Origin's New Glenn will launch any day now – but it better hurry up == 2025 looming large as Blue Ring pathfinder prepped for liftoff Richard Speed - Wed 11 Dec 2024 07:30 UTC Blue Origin has confirmed its New Glenn rocket is on track for launch before the end of 2024. The company made the announcement alongside confirmation that the Blue Ring payload – which replaced the initially manifested NASA ESCAPADE mission to Mars earlier this year – was ready to launch. The plan is that New Glenn's first mission, NG-1, will lift off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, although the company did not give a launch date. On December 8, boss Dave Limp said that Blue Origin was waiting for regulatory approval for its hotfire and launch. Time is getting short, with mere weeks remaining before 2025 arrives and Blue Origin misses another deadline. It was originally supposed to launch NASA's ESCAPADE mission in October, but as the date neared, the US space agency blinked and opted to shift the mission to 2025. https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/11/blue_origin_new_glenn/ == Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket completes final test for its first flight == Its maiden flight could take place in the next few days. Mariella Moon - Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 6:00 AM PST Blue Origin's New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle is now ready for its first flight. The company has conducted — and successfully completed — a wet dress rehearsal or a full run-through of the rocket's launch countdown. As The New York Times reports, Blue Origin had to attempt the countdown several times over a few hours, but the company managed to ignite and fire New Glenn's seven engines for 24 seconds in the end. New Glenn's tanks were filled with fuel and the rocket was fitted with a 45,000-pound payload mass simulator as if it truly was heading to space. Blue Origin says this is the first time it operated the vehicle as an integrated system, with New Glenn SVP Jarrett Jones calling the test's completion a “monumental milestone.” The Federal Aviation Administration has also granted the company a launch license for New Glenn, which means it's now truly ready to go. The company describes New Glenn as a “giant, reusable rocket built for bigger things.” It also said that it was “engineered with the safety and redundancy required to fly humans,” though its inaugural flight will be uncrewed. Its first flight was supposed to take place in October carrying two NASA satellites heading to Mars, but it had to be scrapped because the rocket wasn't ready by then. New Glenn will now fly for the first time with the company's Blue Ring Pathfinder, part of its Blue Ring platform that will offer spacecraft services to clients like the Pentagon, instead. While Blue Origin didn't announce a new launch date for the rocket, it's expected to be the company's first flight for 2025 and could take place as early as January 6. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-completes-final-test-for-its-first-flight-140049935.html == Blue Origin Delays New Glenn Again—and It’s a Bigger Setback Than It Seems == Amazon is racing to launch its internet satellites before a looming deadline, or it risks losing its license. Passant Rabie - June 12, 2025 After gaining momentum last year, Jeff Bezos’ rocket venture has hit another snag. The second flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn slipped from early spring to late August, messing with the company’s original plan to launch its giant rocket eight times in 2025. Beyond missing launch targets, New Glenn’s recent delay also puts Project Kuiper—the internet satellites owned by Amazon—at risk of losing a critical operations license. This week, Dave Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, announced that New Glenn’s second mission is targeting no earlier than August 15 for launch. The heavy-lift rocket blasted off for the first time on January 16, and while New Glenn’s second stage reached its target orbit, its booster exploded during descent (it was supposed to perform a controlled landing). New Glenn’s debut was a long time in the making, not just to compete with industry rival SpaceX, but to eventually deliver Project Kuiper satellites to orbit. Bezos’ other venture, Amazon, must launch 50% of its internet satellites by 2026, or the company will lose its license. With the recent delay to New Glenn’s schedule, the company is pressed for time. Amazon launched the first batch of its internet satellites to low Earth orbit in April, tucked inside the fairing of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The same rocket is scheduled to launch the second fleet for Project Kuiper on June 16, but the company needs a total of 83 launches to form its internet constellation of 3,200 satellites and not all of them will board Atlas V. Amazon is planning to use ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which suffered a malfunction during its second mission in October 2024, and Arianespace’s Ariane 6, as well as Blue Origin’s New Glenn. https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-delays-new-glenn-again-and-its-a-bigger-setback-than-it-seems-2000614832 == The second launch of New Glenn will aim for Mars == The payload likely to spark the most interest is the Blue Moon MK1 lander. Eric Berger – Jun 30, 2025 7:15 AM Blue Origin is making steady progress toward the second launch of its New Glenn rocket, which could occur sometime this fall. The company already ignited the second stage of this rocket, in a pre-launch test, in April. And two sources say the first stage for this launch is in the final stages of preparation at the company's facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Publicly, the company has said this second launch will take place no earlier than August 15. This is now off the table. One source told Ars that a mid- to late-September launch date was “realistic,” but another person said late October or November was more likely. Blue Origin has been mum about the payload that will fly on this rocket, but multiple people have told Ars that the current plan is to launch NASA's ESCAPADE mission on the second launch of New Glenn. This mission encompasses a pair of small spacecraft that will be sent to Mars to study the red planet's magnetosphere. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/06/the-second-launch-of-new-glenn-will-aim-for-mars/ ==== New Shepard ==== == What’s the Deal With Bezos’s Grounded Rocket? == It’s been six months since Blue Origin’s New Shepard failed during launch, yet virtually nothing is known about the anomaly or when the rocket might fly again. George Dvorsky - 1 March 2023 Blue Origin’s chief architect, Gary Lai, provided an update Tuesday on the investigation into the failed launch of the company’s New Shepard rocket in September of last year. Troublingly, it’s what he didn’t say about the ongoing investigation that’s giving us cause for concern. I’d like to be able to tell you the reason for the September 12 launch failure and when Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket will fly again, but I can’t. “We are investigating that anomaly now, the cause of it,” Lai told reporters after completing his talk at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference being held in Broomfield, Colorado, SpaceNews reports. “We will get to the bottom of it.” To which he added: “I can’t talk about specific timelines or plans for when we will resolve that situation other than to say that we fully intend to be back in business as soon as we are ready.” https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-rocket-grounded-investigation-1850172386 == A year after New Shepard’s accident, Blue Origin may return to flight next month == New Shepard is scheduled to launch in early October on its return-to-flight mission. Eric Berger - 9/12/2023, 5:55 AM One year ago today, a Blue Origin-built rocket carrying a spacecraft exploded above the West Texas desert in dramatic fashion. There were no passengers aboard the New Shepard capsule, which was able to push powerfully away from the rocket with its escape system and land safely under a parachute in the desert. The failure of the New Shepard-23 mission happened at 1 minute and 4 seconds into the flight. The vehicle had already passed through max Q, the point at which the launch system faces maximum dynamic pressure during ascent, and its BE-3 rocket engine was throttling back up to continue climbing on its suborbital trajectory. Half a year after this failure, Blue Origin provided an update on the accident investigation it had conducted with assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board. According to this update, the mishap team noted “hot streaks” on the rocket engine's nozzle and determined that it was operating at higher temperatures than it was designed for. Although the summary did not explicitly say so, it appears that at some point in the flight campaign of this booster, design changes were made that allowed for these hotter temperatures to be present. This was the ninth flight of this booster, which is one half of the launch system that also includes a capsule. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/a-year-after-new-shepards-accident-blue-origin-may-return-to-flight-next-month/ == Regulators close investigation into Blue Origin’s New Shepard anomaly == Aria Alamalhodaei - 27 September 2023 The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has closed the investigation into a mishap that occurred last September during a launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, with the regulator saying that Blue must implement 21 corrective actions before it can fly New Shepard again. New Shepard was grounded after a September 2022 launch ended with an abort about a minute after liftoff. The vehicle’s capsule, which was not filled with people, had to conduct an emergency parachute landing to clear the booster. It landed safely while the propulsion module was destroyed on impact with the ground. There were no injuries to Blue Origin personnel. In an emailed statement, a representative for the FAA said the anomaly was caused by a “structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher than expected engine operating temperatures.” Among the 21 corrective actions includes redesigning the engine and nozzle components as well as “organizational changes.” https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/regulators-close-investigation-into-blue-origins-new-shepard-anomaly/ == FAA Sets 21 Tasks for Bezos's Blue Origin Before New Shepard Can Fly Again == After a year-long investigation into the liftoff malfunction, Jeff Bezos's space tourism rocket remains grounded and barred from suborbital flights. Passant Rabie - 28 September 2023 The Federal Aviation Administration has closed its investigation into Blue Origin’s New Shepard failed launch in September 2022, but the suborbital rocket remains grounded. In a statement released Wednesday, the FAA announced that it had closed the mishap investigation on September 12, 2022, pinpointing “the structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher than expected engine operating temperature,” as the cause of the launch failure. The FAA requires Blue Origin to implement 21 corrective actions, including the redesign of the engine and nozzle components on its New Shepard rocket, before the launch vehicle can resume its launches. https://gizmodo.com/faa-blue-origin-new-shepard-rocket-relaunch-1850882101 == How long will Jeff Bezos continue to subsidize his New Shepard rocket? == “It's definitely a money loser. Always has been.” Eric Berger - 11/3/2023, 9:06 AM Virgin Galactic smoothly completed its sixth human spaceflight in six months on Thursday, continuing an impressive cadence of missions with its VSS Unity spacecraft. This performance has made the company the clear leader in suborbital space tourism. A key question is where this leaves the other company with a launch system capable of carrying private astronauts above the atmosphere: Blue Origin. That company's New Shepard rocket and spacecraft have been grounded since an engine failure nearly 14 months ago. During that uncrewed flight, the rocket broke apart, but the capsule safely parachuted to the West Texas desert. Blue Origin finished its accident analysis this spring and implemented a fix to the issue, including design changes to the BE-3 engine combustion chamber. In May, the company said it planned to return to flight “soon.” Then, in September, the Federal Aviation Administration closed its mishap investigation. So where is New Shepard? https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/as-virgin-galactic-soars-blue-origins-new-shepard-remains-grounded/ == Blue Origin Finally Ready to Launch New Shepard Rocket After Last Year's Fiery Anomaly == Jeff Bezos' space company is targeting a Monday launch window for a cargo mission. Passant Rabie - 13 December 2023 Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ private space venture, is ready to fly its New Shepard rocket again after over a year of being grounded. The company this week announced the rocket’s first cargo mission since its booster went up in flames in a liftoff malfunction back in September 2022. On Tuesday, Blue Origin revealed that it’s targeting a launch window that opens on Monday, December 18, for New Shepard’s liftoff. The NS-24 mission will carry 33 science and research payloads as part of the, the company posted on X. In September, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it had closed its investigation into New Shepard’s failed 2022 launch, handing Blue Origin a list of 21 corrective actions to implement before the rocket can resume launches. https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-ns24-launch-window-jeff-bezos-1851095615 == Blue Origin spins up lunar gravity for New Shepard flight == Bezos' rocketeers tout capability as useful for NASA and other tech providers Richard Speed - Wed 5 Feb 2025 17:33 UTC Blue Origin has sent its reusable New Shepard rocket on another suborbital lob, this time simulating lunar gravity for capsule payloads. The rocket launched this week following delays due to thick clouds and vehicle avionics issues. Liftoff occurred at 1600 UTC, and the capsule reached 105 km above sea level before returning to Earth. One of the capsule's three parachutes failed to deploy correctly, although this did not affect the landing. The 29th New Shepard flight was the 14th payload mission for the suborbital rocket, carrying 30 payloads from NASA, commercial companies, and research institutions. Twenty-nine payloads were loaded into the capsule, and one was attached to the booster. The capsule's reaction control system spun the vehicle for about two minutes to simulate lunar gravity. The spin reached approximately 11 revolutions per minute, which simulated one-sixth of Earth's gravity at the midpoint of the crew capsule lockers. https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/05/new_shepard_lunar_gravity/ ==== Lunar Lander ==== == Sore Loser Bezos Is Hoping for a Second Chance to Build NASA's Lunar Lander == The Blue Origin founder sued NASA after losing its original bid to SpaceX, but there's still a chance for the billionaire to build an alternative Moon lander. Passant Rabie - 7 December 2022 Blue Origin is once again making a pitch to build a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. The space company is partnering with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Astrobotic Technology, Honeybee Robotics, and Draper in hopes of building a second lander, Blue Origin announced on Tuesday. Earlier this year, NASA formally announced its intention to procure a second lunar lander for its Artemis program, so it comes as little surprise to learn that Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is once again hoping to snag a deal. https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-nasa-artemis-lunar-lander-1849864006 == NASA Picks Blue Origin to Build Second Moon Lander for Artemis Missions == Under the $3.4 billion contract, the Blue Origin-led team will design, develop, and test the crewed lander, dubbed Blue Moon. George Dvorsky - 19 May 2023 Jeff Bezos’s dream has finally come true, as his aerospace company Blue Origin has been chosen by NASA to build a human landing system for Artemis 5 and subsequent missions to the lunar surface. The space agency made the announcement Friday at a press event held at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. SpaceX is currently under contract to develop human landing systems (HLS) for Artemis 3 and Artemis 4, but NASA sought to issue a second lander award for an “additional, different lander,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, told reporters. “We want more competition—we want two landers—and that’s better, and it means that you have reliability, you have back-ups,” he explained. “It benefits NASA and it benefits the American people.” This is the “the new way that we go to the Moon,” Nelson said, adding that: “We’re going back to the Moon in order to go to Mars and beyond—this is a major part of it.” https://gizmodo.com/nasa-blue-origin-second-lunar-lander-artemis-moon-1850455075 ==== Military Lauches ==== == Someone new will join the US military’s roster of launch contractors == Will Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin finally join the ranks of ULA and SpaceX? Stephen Clark - 7/20/2023, 10:23 AM The US Space Force, long content with using just one or two contractors to carry the military’s most vital satellites into orbit, has announced it will seek a third provider for national security launch services in its next multibillion-dollar round of rocket procurement. This is good news for Blue Origin, which has long sought to join the ranks of United Launch Alliance and SpaceX as the military’s preferred launch contractors. The Space Force has spent the last few months refining how it will purchase launch services for military satellites and National Reconnaissance Office spy payloads in the late 2020s and early 2030s. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/someone-new-will-join-the-us-militarys-roster-of-launch-contractors/ ==== Project Jarvis ==== == First images of Blue Origin’s “Project Jarvis” test tank == “The reason I like vertical landing is because it scales so well.” Eric Berger - 8/24/2021, 10:44 AM On Tuesday, Blue Origin used a modular transport to roll its first stainless steel test tank to Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This tank is part of the company's efforts—under the codename “Project Jarvis”—to develop a fully reusable upper stage for Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. Ars revealed the existence of this effort last month, and we are now publishing the first photos of the tank prototype. A source at Blue Origin said this tank could start to undergo a series of tests to determine its strength and ability to hold pressurized propellants as soon as next month. Although Blue Origin has not publicly discussed this effort to build a reusable upper stage for the New Glenn rocket, sources said the company's primary goal is to bring down the overall launch cost of the New Glenn rocket. The vehicle's large upper stage, which has a 7-meter diameter and two BE-3U engines, is costly. Making New Glenn fully reusable is necessary for Blue Origin to compete with SpaceX's Starship launch system. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/first-images-of-blue-origins-project-jarvis-test-tank/ ==== Space Station ==== == Blue Origin announces plans for a commercial space station == It plans to start operating in the second half of this decade. Nicole Lee - October 25th, 2021 Blue Origin has more ambitious plans than simply space tourism. Today, the spaceflight company owned by Jeff Bezos announced that it is working on creating its very own space station as well. Called Orbital Reef, it promises to be something of an industrial and commercial hub, and is meant to start operating in the second half of this decade. It will be developed, owned and operated in partnership with Sierra Space, a subsidiary of the Sierra Nevada corporation. Sierra Space is perhaps better known for Dream Chaser, a spacecraft that’s set to begin operating in 2022 and carry cargo to the International Space Station. Orbital Reef is also backed by Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions and Arizona State University. The company hopes to use Boeing’s Starliner and Sierra Space’s aforementioned Dream Chaser to ferry both cargo and passengers to Orbital Reef. https://www.engadget.com/orbital-reef-200848765.html ==== Space Tug ==== == Blue Origin Announces Next-Gen Space Tug for In-Space Deliveries == The orbital delivery platform, named Blue Ring, underscores Jeff Bezos’s ongoing ambitions in space. George Dvorsky - 17 October 2023 Blue Origin revealed plans for a new spacecraft platform with the potential to reshape in-space logistics, offering unprecedented maneuverability and a host of advanced capabilities. In an effort to expand its presence and capabilities in space, Blue Origin announced on Monday that it’s developing Blue Ring—an advanced spacecraft platform designed for orbital logistics and delivery, according to the company press release. With Blue Ring, the company is hoping to woo both commercial and government customers. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, also took the opportunity to announce the formation of a business unit dubbed In-Space Systems. https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-ring-space-tug-in-space-systems-jeff-bezos-1850933780 ===== Chang'e ===== == China’s Chang’e-5 lunar lander successfully lands on the moon == Darrell Etherington / 7:47 AM PST•December 1, 2020 Chinese state news agencies are reporting a successful landing of the Chang’e-5 lunar robotic lander, which will seek to return lunar rock samples back to Earth. The launch took off on November 23, and attained lunar orbit on November 28. It launched the lander vehicle on November 30, and the reports today from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) says that at shortly after 10 AM EST it achieved its goal of touching down on the moon’s surface intact. China’s Chang’e-5 mission will be the third ever to bring back soil or rock samples from the moon — only the U.S. and the former Soviet Union have accomplished that so far. The mission landed on the side of the moon closest to the Earth (which is always the same side, since the moon is locked in its orientation during its orbit around our planet). https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/chinas-change-5-lunar-lander-successfully-lands-on-the-moon/ ===== Gama ===== == Newly Launched Solar Sail Is on Track to Unfurl in Low Earth Orbit == A new solar sail belonging to French aerospace startup Gama reached space on Tuesday and is expected to deploy its wings in the coming weeks. Passant Rabie - 5 January 2023 A new spacecraft could soon be soaring through Earth’s orbit while gently being pushed by photons emitted from the Sun. French aerospace company Gama launched its Gama Alpha solar sail mission to test out photonic propulsion technology, which keeps spacecraft in orbit without the need for fuel. The Gama Alpha cubesat was loaded on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and lifted off on Tuesday morning from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. https://gizmodo.com/gama-alpha-solar-sail-unfurl-earth-orbit-1849953476 ===== Firefly ===== == On eve of first launch, Firefly revamps board of directors, may go public == Out: Max Polyakov. In: Two senior US government officials. Eric Berger - 2/3/2021, 6:05 AM As Firefly Aerospace nears the debut of its Alpha rocket, with a first launch attempt expected in mid-March from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the company's chief executive is looking ahead to the future. “The company is at an inflection point now where we've been in this hardcore development mode for Alpha,” said Tom Markusic, chief executive of Firefly, in an interview. “Our goals going forward are to transition from a development company to an operating company. And we're also of course interested in the next growth phase of the company, which is to expand beyond launch vehicles and put increasing emphasis on spacecraft.” To that end the company is moving to aggressively raise new funding and is shaking up its board of directors. Gone is investor Max Polyakov, and in are two senior members of the US government community. All of this comes as Firefly is expected to roll its completed rocket out to its launch site in California in two weeks and perform one or more hotfire tests. The company is projecting a launch between March 15 and 22. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/on-eve-of-first-launch-firefly-revamps-board-of-directors-may-go-public/ == Alpha adds to tally of exploding rockets, takes out space sail prototype with it == Firefly Aerospace rounds out a wobbly week for rocket fanciers Richard Speed and Katyanna Quach - Fri 3 Sep 2021 / 21:34 UTC The sudden and explosive end of Firefly Aerospace's first test flight of its Alpha rocket rounded out a hat-trick of woe for rocket fans this week. The Alpha, which Firefly has pitched as being able to loft 1,000kg to low earth orbit (LEO), finally left its pad at California's Vandenberg Space Force Base at 01:59 UTC on 3 September, only to tumble and explode around two-and-a-half minutes into the flight of the booster. https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/03/firefly_aeospace_test_flight_disaster/ == Firefly launches its first rocket, but loses the launch craft in mid-flight explosion == Darrell Etherington / 7:11 PM PDT•September 2, 2021 Firefly launched its first rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and on board it carried a number of payloads with an intended destination of low Earth orbit. The rocket took off as planned, and seemed to be doing fairly well during the initial portion of the launch, before experiencing “an anomaly” that clearly resulted in an explosion and the total loss of the vehicle prior to reaching space. The rocket that flew today is Firefly’s Alpha launch vehicle, its first, and this was its first launch attempt ever of the spacecraft. Actually getting off the pad on the first try is in itself an accomplishment, and the loss of the vehicle looks to have taken place some time after what’s known as ‘max q,’ or the time when the spacecraft is experiencing the most aerodynamic stress prior to leaving Earth’s atmosphere. Firefly issued a statement via Twitter shortly after the explosion was broadcast on a live stream hosted by Everyday Astronaut, which included official audio and video provided by the company. It added that the ground staff had cleared the pad and surrounding areas in order to minimize risk and in adherence with safety protocols. https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/02/firefly-launches-its-first-rocket-but-loses-the-launch-craft-to-an-explosion-mid-flight/ == After failing to make it to orbit, Firefly Aerospace asserts it has 'arrived' == 'Arrived' back on the planet quite a bit sooner than expected, sure Richard Speed - Mon 6 Sep 2021 / 15:47 UTC Firefly Aerospace has confirmed that one of its Reaver engines shut down shortly after its Alpha rocket left the pad last week, resulting in the destruction of the vehicle in spectacular fashion just after reaching supersonic velocity. In a sequence of tweets in which Firefly bravely asserted it had “arrived” as a company “capable of building and launching rockets” if not quite one that can deliver a payload to orbit, the team ticked off its achievements. The rocket left the pad as planned: check. There was no unwanted tipping or rotation as it picked up speed: check. All four engines burned as planned: Well… kind of. For 15 seconds. At around the 15-second mark, engine number two on the first stage performed what the company called “an uneventful shutdown.” Uneventful for the engine, maybe. Not so much for the rest of the mission, which continued with only three of the four engines running and a marked drop in the rate of climb. https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/firefly_engine_shutdown/ == After 9 difficult months, Firefly is set to take its next shot at orbit == The launch company is targeting mid-July for Alpha's next launch. Eric Berger - 6/2/2022, 7:08 AM Nine months have passed since Firefly's Alpha rocket launched for the first time, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Unfortunately, one of the rocket's four main engines failed about 15 seconds into the flight, and the rocket was lost about two minutes later. The period since then has been a difficult one for the company and its founder, Tom Markusic. In addition to dissecting the cause of the Alpha failure, Firefly also ran afoul of rules set by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS. In December, the Air Force blocked Firefly from working at the Vandenberg launch site due to these CFIUS complications with the company's primary investor, Ukrainian Max Polyakov. Eventually, the issue was resolved this spring after Polyakov sold his interest in Firefly, and Firefly regained access to the launch site. But it was a messy and distracting situation at a time when Firefly needed to focus on reaching orbit. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/after-9-difficult-months-firefly-is-set-to-take-its-next-shot-at-orbit/ == Northrop Grumman taps Firefly Aerospace to upgrade its Antares rocket to American-built engines == Stefanie Waldek - 12:18 PM PDT•August 8, 2022 Chalk one up for the American broomsticks. Northrop Grumman has announced that it will partner with startup Firefly Aerospace to build an all-American version of its workhorse Antares rocket, which currently flies with Russian-built RD-181 engines. Due to the continuing war in Ukraine, Russia halted all sales of its rocket engines to the United States in March this year. (The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency famously quipped at the time: “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”) “Through our collaboration, we will first develop a fully domestic version of our Antares rocket, the Antares 330, for Cygnus space station commercial resupply services, followed by an entirely new medium class launch vehicle,” Scott Lehr, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager of launch and missile defense systems, said in a press release. “Northrop Grumman and Firefly have been working on a combined strategy and technical development plan to meet current and future launch requirements.” Those requirements include Cygnus cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station for NASA. https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/08/northrop-grumman-taps-firefly-aerospace-to-upgrade-its-antares-rocket-to-american-built-engines/ == Northrop Grumman to use Firefly Aerospace tech in its de-Russianized Antares == SpaceX to pick up the slack while the rocket is updated yet again Richard Speed - Tue 9 Aug 2022 17:30 UTC Russia's invasion of Ukraine is being felt at Northrop Grumman, forcing it to make alternative plans that now include asking Firefly Aerospace to build the first stage of its Antares rocket. The Antares' maiden flight was in 2013 with a first stage powered by a pair of Aerojet AJ26 rocket engines. Those engines, refurbished NK-33s originally built in the Soviet Union 40 years previously then imported to the US by new owner Aerojet in the 1990s, failed during testing, followed by a launch failure in 2014. The AJ26s were then retired, and Northrop Grumman switched to RD-181 engines supplied by Russia's NPO Energomash. This might have seemed a splendid idea in the previous decade, but having a first stage manufactured in Ukraine and powered by Russian engines does not make for a stable supply chain in 2022 – for obvious reasons. While Northrop Grumman has enough first stages for two more launches, it will have to look elsewhere in order to launch its Cygnus freighter to the International Space Station (ISS). The company had said it was considering alternatives, and here we are. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/09/antares_firefly/ == Northrop Grumman Partners With Firefly to Replace Russian Rocket Engines == This latest development shows how the U.S. commercial space sector is adapting to sanctions imposed on Russia. Passant Rabie - 10 August 2022 5:45PM Northrop Grumman and Firefly Aerospace are teaming up to build a new first stage for Northrop’s Antares rocket, as well as a new medium lift booster. The newly announced partnership means that Northrop will no longer have to rely on Russia and Ukraine for Antares, and will instead turn to building an all-American version for future launches. “Through our collaboration, we will first develop a fully domestic version of our Antares rocket, the Antares 330, for Cygnus space station commercial resupply services,” Scott Lehr, vice president and general manager of launch and missile defense systems at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement on Monday. https://gizmodo.com/northrop-grumman-partners-with-firefly-1849395715 == How to Watch Firefly's Second Attempt to Launch Its Alpha Rocket == The rocket's first test flight last year ended in flames. Passant Rabie - 12 September 2022 12:03PM Firefly Aerospace is gearing up for another go at launching its Alpha rocket, hoping that the small-lift launch vehicle makes it to orbit this time after a fiery first attempt last year. The Texas-based company is aiming for an orbital launch attempt on Monday at 6 p.m. ET, and the test flight will be streamed live. You can tune in to watch the liftoff through Firefly’s website or via the feed below. https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-firefly-alpha-rocket-second-launch-attempt-1849524385 == Firefly Launches Alpha Rocket To Orbit == Posted by BeauHD on Saturday October 01, 2022 02:21PM techmage writes: <blockquote>Early this morning, Firefly Aerospace succeeded in launching their Alpha rocket to Low Earth Orbit. This marks one of a handful of companies who have reached space with that few attempts (Virgin Orbit and RocketLab are just some of the others). Shameless plug – I had the pleasure of building the Serenity satellite, a 3U CubeSat that flew on the mission. Check out the video of the launch and deployment. It is quite something to watch </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/10/01/1959249/firefly-launches-alpha-rocket-to-orbit == Firefly Aerospace reaches orbit for the first time == Darrell Etherington - 4:36 AM PDT October 1, 2022 There’s another space-proven private launch company in the club — Firefly Aerospace. The company’s small payload Alpha rocket reached orbit successfully early on Saturday morning after taking of from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This is a major achievement for Firefly, which has been a lot to get here: The company originally began operations as Firefly Space Systems, which went bankrupt and was then reborn as Firefly Aerospace after its assets were acquired by Max Polyakov’s Noosphere ventures in 2017. Tom Markusic, who founded the company and led it as CEO, also departed the post in June. Markusic shifted into a technical advisory and full-time board member role, but his departure was preceded by the very public leaving of Max Polyakov, who in February shared a post pointing the finger at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the Air Force and other U.S. agencies for his forced exit. Polyakov is a U.K. citizen but was born in Ukraine. https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/01/firefly-aerospace-reaches-orbit-for-the-first-time/ == With orbital launch, Firefly takes an early lead in the 1-ton rocket race == “Firefly is at the point where the only thing holding them back is execution.” Eric Berger - 10/3/2022, 6:09 AM Since SpaceX reached orbit for the first time in 2008 with the Falcon 1 rocket, a handful of other companies such as Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit have developed and successfully launched small, liquid-fueled rockets. But all of these boosters, including the Falcon 1, could lift, at most, a few hundred kilograms into low Earth orbit. A newer generation of companies, however, has decided that their first rockets should be larger, capable of lifting about 1 metric ton, or a little bit more, to orbit. Officials with these companies have said that, in their view of the market, the micro-launchers just don't have enough lift capacity to meet the needs of today's satellite customers. So these companies—such as Firefly Aerospace, Relativity Space, ABL Space Systems in the United States, and Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg in Europe—have pushed to develop a larger rocket as their first vehicle. And this weekend, the first of these companies, Firefly, reached orbit with its Alpha rocket. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/with-orbital-launch-firefly-takes-an-early-lead-in-the-1-ton-rocket-race/ == Firefly Sends Alpha Rocket to Orbit, One Year After Explosive Launch Attempt == The company is just the fifth private U.S. company to launch a rocket to orbit. It now hopes to launch the two-stage vehicle at least once a month. Passant Rabie - 3 October 2022 5:45PM Private space company Firefly finally reached orbit with its Alpha rocket, joining a short list of U.S. commercial rocket builders that have successfully launched a vehicle to orbit amidst a growing space industry. Alpha lifted off on Saturday at 3:01 a.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. About eight minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage reached orbit. The upper stage then deployed three payloads about an hour later following a circularization burn, according to Firefly. “With the success of this flight, Firefly has announced to the world there is a new orbital launch vehicle, available today, with a capacity that is pivotal to our commercial and government customers,” Bill Weber, Firefly CEO, said in a statement. https://gizmodo.com/firefly-alpha-rocket-reaches-orbit-second-flight-1849611021 == Firefly's Alpha Rocket Finally Reached Orbit but Its Payload Didn't Stay There == With Alpha reaching orbit earlier this month, Firefly became the fifth U.S. company to launch a rocket to orbit. Passant Rabie - 11 October 2022 2:10PM Private aerospace company Firefly declared its “To the Black” mission a success with the inaugural launch of its Alpha rocket despite the majority of the rocket’s payload having reentered through the atmosphere. Firefly’s small satellite rocket took off on October 1 at 3:01 a.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Two days later, the company announced “100% mission success” on Twitter after Alpha delivered three payloads to orbit. However, the rocket seemingly dropped off the payloads at a lower orbit than planned, causing their orbit to decay over time, SpaceNews first reported. Firefly did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment. https://gizmodo.com/firefly-alpha-rocket-space-1849643265 == The US military just proved it can get satellites into space super fast == Alpha becomes the first of the US 1-ton rockets to reach its target orbit. Eric Berger - 9/15/2023, 6:27 AM As part of its efforts to be more nimble in space, the US military has been pushing satellite and launch companies to become more “responsive” in their ability to put spacecraft into space. Essentially, the military is concerned about other nations damaging or destroying its assets in orbit during a conflict. Military officials believe one way to guard against this would be to have the capability to rapidly replace those satellites—whether they're for spying, communications, or other purposes. The US Space Force took a step toward this goal two years ago with a mission called Tactically Responsive Launch-2, or TacRL-2. This small satellite was built in less than a year by taking existing components and putting them together to create a space domain awareness satellite. The mission was then launched within 21 days, on June 13, 2021, by a solid-fueled Pegasus rocket built by Northrop Grumman. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/firefly-and-space-force-demonstrate-ability-to-rapidly-launch-a-satellite/ == Firefly Aerospace Sets Launch Speed Record For US Space Force == Posted by BeauHD on Saturday September 16, 2023 06:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: <blockquote> Firefly Aerospace just set a new responsive-launch record. The company's Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday (Sept. 14) at 10:28 p.m. EDT (7:28 p.m. local California time; 0228 GMT on Sept. 15), kicking off a mission for the U.S. Space Force called Victus Nox. The rocket roared off the pad just 27 hours after the U.S. Space Force gave the order – less time than on any previous national security mission. The wheels for Victus Nox (Latin for “conquer the night”) began turning in September 2022, when the Space Force awarded contracts to Texas-based Firefly and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary headquartered in the Los Angeles area that built the mission's payload. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/09/15/2140223/firefly-aerospace-sets-launch-speed-record-for-us-space-force ==== Acquisition ==== == Firefly buys Spaceflight Inc. to boost on-orbit services == Aria Alamalhodaei - 8 June 2023 Firefly Aerospace has acquired launch and in-space transportation service provider Spaceflight Inc. in a bid to expand its on-orbit capabilities for customers. Firefly did not disclose the terms of the deal, but a company spokesperson confirmed that the transaction has closed. The spokesperson added that the entire Spaceflight team, including CEO Tiphaine Louradour, will be absorbed into Firefly and that the company “will be assessing talent and roles and responsibilities in the coming months.” “Spaceflight’s flight-proven orbital vehicles, facilities, and mission management expertise will support Firefly’s rapid growth, provide a robust roadmap for investors, and meet the high demand for our on-orbit and responsive space services,” Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly Aerospace, said in a statement. “The acquisition further accelerates Firefly’s timeline to support end-to-end missions with launch, lunar, and in-space services.” https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/08/firefly-buys-spaceflight-inc-to-boost-on-orbit-services/ ==== Anomaly 2023 December ==== == Firefly's Alpha Rocket Put a Satellite in the Wrong Orbit == A Lockheed Martin satellite never reached its destination after an anomaly during last week's mission. Passant Rabie - 26 December 2023 Following a successful liftoff, Firefly’s Alpha rocket seems to have misplaced its payload due to a second stage anomaly. The small rocket launched on Friday, December 22, at 12:32 p.m. ET from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission, called “Fly the Lightning,” was carrying a satellite developed by Lockheed Martin to test an electronically steerable antenna. Alpha reached orbit, and the rocket’s second stage separated and its engine shut off as planned. Around 40 minutes after launch, however, the rocket’s second stage burn failed, and Alpha did not deliver the payload to its precise target orbit, Firefly wrote in a statement. “We will rapidly and continuously innovate to find a solution and ensure complete resolution of any anomaly we see during flight,” the company wrote. “We will work with our customer and government partners to investigate the stage two performance and determine the root cause.” https://gizmodo.com/firefly-alpha-lockheed-martin-satellite-wrong-orbit-1851124483 ==== Anomaly 2025 April ==== == Firefly’s rocket suffers one of the strangest launch failures we’ve ever seen == The rocket's first stage may have exploded moments after it separated from the upper stage. Stephen Clark – Apr 29, 2025 12:10 PM Firefly Aerospace launched its two-stage Alpha rocket from California early Tuesday, but something went wrong about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, rendering the rocket unable to deploy an experimental satellite into orbit for Lockheed Martin. The Alpha rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles at 6:37 am PDT (9:37 am EDT; 13:37 UTC), one day after Firefly called off a launch attempt due to a technical problem with ground support equipment. Everything appeared to go well with the rocket's first-stage booster, powered by four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines, as the launcher ascended through fog and arced on a southerly trajectory over the Pacific Ocean. The booster stage jettisoned from Alpha's upper stage two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, and that's when things went awry. https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/fireflys-rocket-suffers-one-of-the-strangest-launch-failures-weve-ever-seen/ == Firefly’s Alpha Rocket Crashes Into Pacific Ocean After Failing to Reach Orbit == The failure resulted in the loss of a Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite. Passant Rabie - April 30, 2025 A Firefly Aerospace rocket failed to deliver its payload to orbit on Tuesday, creating a cloud of debris in the sky before falling back down toward an ocean crash. Firefly launched its Alpha rocket on April 29 at 9:37 a.m. ET, a day later than its initial launch date due to an issue with ground support equipment. Shortly after liftoff, a mishap during the separation of the rocket’s first stage damaged an engine nozzle, severely reducing the rocket’s thrust, according to a statement by Firefly. As a result, the rocket’s upper stage failed to reach its orbital velocity and deliver the satellite to its designated orbit. The rocket reached an altitude of around 198 miles (320 kilometers) before crashing down in the Pacific Ocean in a cleared zone north of Antarctica. The company is still investigating the root cause of the anomaly and will carry out an investigation into the launch mishap. Firefly’s Alpha rocket was carrying a technology demonstration satellite for Lockheed Martin, which was designed to test its capabilities in orbit using its SmartSat software. The launch of the mission had been delayed from an initial liftoff date in mid-March due to a lack of range availability at its launch site at the Vandenberg Space Force Base, SpaceNews reported. Firefly then scheduled liftoff of its Alpha rocket on Monday, but ended up scrubbing the launch “due to an issue with ground support equipment.” https://gizmodo.com/fireflys-alpha-rocket-crashes-into-pacific-ocean-after-failing-to-reach-orbit-2000596376 == Firefly Aerospace's Alpha Rocket Fails, Sends Satellite Falling Into Ocean == Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday April 30, 2025 03:00AM Firefly Aerospace's sixth Alpha rocket launch failed on April 29, 2025, after an upper-stage anomaly prevented a Lockheed Martin satellite demo from reaching orbit. Both the stage and payload fell into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. Space.com reports: <blockquote> The two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6 meters) Alpha lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base this morning (April 29), carrying a technology demonstration for aerospace giant Lockheed Martin toward low Earth orbit (LEO). But the payload never got there. Alpha suffered an anomaly shortly after its two stages separated, which led to the loss of the nozzle extension for the upper stage's single Lightning engine. This significantly reduced the engine's thrust, dooming the mission, Firefly said in an update several hours after launch. Today's mission, which Firefly called “Message in a Booster,” was the first of up to 25 that the company will conduct for Lockheed Martin over the next five years. The flight aimed to send a satellite technology demonstrator to LEO. This demo payload “was specifically built to showcase the company's pathfinding efforts for its LM 400 mid-sized, multi-mission satellite bus, and to demonstrate the space vehicle's operational capabilities on orbit for potential customers,” Firefly wrote in a prelaunch mission description. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/2350236/firefly-aerospaces-alpha-rocket-fails-sends-satellite-falling-into-ocean ==== Blue Ghost ==== == Firefly’s Lunar Lander Captures Haunting Earth Eclipse From Space == The Blue Ghost lander had an exciting start to its mission, bidding farewell to its home planet in style. Passant Rabie - January 24, 2025 Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander began its journey to the Moon a little over a week ago, and the mission has already beamed back stellar snapshots from space. In addition to checking off a list of critical milestones, Blue Ghost also captured a classic photo of Earth and caught a brief moment of darkness as Earth eclipsed the Sun. Blue Ghost launched on Wednesday, January 15, on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, headed from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida toward the Moon. The mission, named “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” will spend 45 days traveling through space before attempting a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. https://gizmodo.com/fireflys-lunar-lander-captures-haunting-earth-eclipse-from-space-2000554677 == Highlights: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon == Jackie Wattles, CNN - Updated 12:15 PM EST, Sun March 2, 2025 Here's what lies ahead for the rest of Blue Ghost's 14-day mission From CNN's Jackie Wattles Perhaps the most difficult, nail-biting stretch of Blue Ghost’s mission is over with. The vehicle is sitting on the moon’s near side, within an ancient crater filled with volcanic material. Here’s what still lies ahead: Blue Ghost will unfurl its X-band antenna, which can beam troves of data and video down from the moon. That should be happening right now. NASA and Firefly will verify all 10 science and tech demonstrations are in working order. Over the next two weeks, mission teams will collect information on everything from how the lunar soil behaved during descent to studying the heat flow from the moon’s interior. Blue Ghost will experience an eclipse on March 14 as Earth casts a shadow on the landing site. Just before lunar nightfall, Blue Ghost will aim to capture photos of a “lunar horizon glow,” a phenomenon during which moon dust will briefly levitate. About 14 days into the mission, Blue Ghost’s landing site will be plunged into lunar night. The lander will then need to rely on battery power as the company aims to keep it functioning in temperatures as cold as minus 250°F (minus 130°C). At the end of its operations, Blue Ghost will stay put, destined to remain on the moon’s surface indefinitely. https://www.cnn.com/science/live-news/moon-landing-blue-ghost-03-02-25/index.html == Watch 'Blue Ghost' Attempt Its Landing on the Moon == Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 01, 2025 11:20PM Watch the “Blue Ghost” lunar lander attempt its moon landing. The actual landing is scheduled to happen at 3:34 a.m. Eastern time, according to CNN, while “The first images from the mission should be delivered about a half hour after…” <blockquote> Success is not guaranteed… [B]roadly speaking, about half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure. Jason Kim, Firefly's CEO, told CNN in December that his company's experience building rockets has given him a high degree of confidence in Blue Ghost's propulsion systems. “We're using (reaction control system) thrusters that we've built, developed in-house, that are designed by the same people that design our rocket engines. That reduces risk,” Kim said. “All that gives us high confidence when we have people that do rocket engines really, really well — some of the best in the world.” </blockquote> But the New York Times notes that Blue Ghost, built by Austin, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, is just one of three robotic spacecraft “in space right now that are aiming to set down on the moon's surface.” <blockquote> Blue Ghost has performed nearly perfectly. For the first 25 days, it circled Earth as the company turned on and checked the spacecraft's systems. It then fired its engine on a four-day journey toward the moon, entering orbit on February 13. The spacecraft's cameras have recorded close-up views of the moon's cratered surface… On the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Blue Ghost to orbit was Resilience, a lunar lander built by Ispace of Japan. The two missions are separate, but Ispace, seeking a cheaper ride to space, had asked SpaceX for a rideshare, that is, hitching a ride as a secondary payload… Although Resilience launched at the same time as Blue Ghost, it is taking a longer, more fuel-efficient route to the moon and is expected to enter orbit around the moon in early May. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/02/0425256/watch-blue-ghost-attempt-its-landing-on-the-moon == Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the moon == And it landed upright. Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Mar 2, 2025, 7:57 AM PST Firefly Aerospace’s first attempt at landing on the moon was a success. The company, which is working with NASA under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, announced early Sunday morning that its Blue Ghost lander softly touched down on the moon, and it’s upright and communicating with the team back home. Blue Ghost landed at 3:34AM ET in a region known as Mare Crisium. While Firefly’s lander isn’t the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon, it is the first to land properly — Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus ended up on its side last year after a faster-than-planned descent. Blue Ghost and the NASA instruments it’s carrying are expected to remain in operation for about 14 Earth days. After that, lunar night will begin. If all goes as planned, the lander will capture images in the leadup to lunar night and a few hours after darkness falls, getting high-definition imagery of a total eclipse, the lunar sunset and other moments to document the behaviour of levitating lunar dust. NASA is also testing instruments that can drill and collect samples from the surface. https://www.engadget.com/science/space/fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-successfully-touched-down-on-the-moon-155728834.html == Firefly Aerospace Becomes First Commercial Company to Successfully Land on the Moon == Firefly - March 2, 2025 Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander softly touched down in Mare Crisium carrying 10 NASA instruments Cedar Park, Texas, March 2, 2025 – Firefly Aerospace, the leader in end-to-end responsive space services, today announced its Blue Ghost lunar lander softly touched down on the Moon’s surface in an upright, stable configuration on the company’s first attempt. As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, sets the tone for the future of exploration across cislunar space as the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful soft-landing on the Moon. “Firefly is literally and figuratively over the Moon,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. “Our Blue Ghost lunar lander now has a permanent home on the lunar surface with 10 NASA payloads and a plaque with every Firefly employee’s name. This bold, unstoppable team has proven we’re well equipped to deliver reliable, affordable access to the Moon, and we won’t stop there. With annual lunar missions, Firefly is paving the way for a lasting lunar presence that will help unlock access to the rest of the solar system for our nation, our partners, and the world.” https://fireflyspace.com/news/firefly-aerospace-becomes-first-commercial-company-to-successfully-land-on-the-moon/ == Firefly’s picture-perfect Moon landing shows the way for lunar exploration == “Every single thing was clockwork… We got some Moon dust on our boots.” Stephen Clark – Mar 3, 2025 5:36 AM Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to make a picture-perfect landing on the Moon early Sunday, touching down on an ancient basaltic plain, named Mare Crisium, to fulfill a $101 million contract with NASA. The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon's surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A few dozen engineers in Firefly's mission control room monitored real-time data streaming down from a quarter-million miles away. “Y’all stuck the landing, we’re on the Moon!” announced Will Coogan, the lander's chief engineer, to the Firefly team gathered in Leander, Texas, a suburb north of Austin. Down the street, at a middle-of-the-night event for Firefly employees, their families, and VIPs, the crowd erupted in applause and toasted champagne. “They’re just fired up right now in the mission control room,” said Jason Kim, Firefly's CEO. “They were all just pent up, holding it all in because they were calm, collected, and cool the whole time. Every single thing was clockwork, even when we landed. After we saw everything was stable and upright, they were fired up.” Firefly's Blue Ghost, named for a species of firefly, became the second commercial company to put a spacecraft on the Moon, and the first to make a trouble-free landing. Intuitive Machines—also working under contract to NASA—landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the Moon in February 2024, but the lander snapped one of its legs and tipped over. Odysseus returned images and some scientific data from the lunar surface for a week, but the off-kilter landing cut short the mission. Intuitive Machines, like Firefly, is headquartered in Texas. So America's first two commercial Moon landers come from the Lone Star State. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/fireflys-ghostly-landing-proves-a-scrappy-company-can-shoot-for-the-moon/ == Watch Firefly’s Blue Ghost Tear a Hole in the Lunar Surface == Blue Ghost is in the midst of spending an entire lunar day on the surface of the Moon, or the equivalent of 14 days on Earth. Passant Rabie - March 11, 2025 Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander has been parked on the Moon for a little over a week, probing the lunar surface for traces of water and other resources. A new video captures a glimpse of Blue Ghost’s surface operations as it deploys its space toolbox to gather material and data. Firefly Aerospace shared a brief, 30-second clip of Blue Ghost drilling onto the lunar surface earlier this week. In the video, NASA’s Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) payload is seen in action, digging into the Moon while bits of its interior fly off and land on the surface. https://gizmodo.com/watch-fireflys-blue-ghost-tear-a-hole-in-the-lunar-surface-2000574547 == Firefly Bids Farewell to Its Lunar Lander After 14 Days on the Moon == Following the success of its first mission, the company is planning on launching a lunar lander every year. Passant Rabie - March 17, 2025 Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander went gently into the lunar night after spending a full lunar day on the Moon, gathering data and beaming it back to Earth as part of the company’s first commercial drop-off mission. Blue Ghost sent its final transmission on Sunday at 7:15 p.m. ET, wrapping up the longest private mission on the Moon to date. Firefly’s lander touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday, March 2, landing in an ancient impact site known as Mare Crisium. After pulling off a flawless touchdown, Blue Ghost got to work on the Moon’s dusty surface. The lander completed 14 days of surface operations, deploying its various payloads and transmitting more than 119 gigabytes of data back to Earth. This was the longest the mission could last, as Blue Ghost is not built to survive the frigid lunar night. “There is no such thing as an easy Moon landing, especially on your first attempt,” Will Coogan, chief engineer of the Blue Ghost mission at Firefly Aerospace, said in a statement. “We battle tested every system on the lander and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point.” https://gizmodo.com/firefly-bids-farewell-to-its-lunar-lander-after-spending-14-days-on-the-moon-2000576992 == Here’s the secret to how Firefly was able to nail its first lunar landing == Darkness fell over Mare Crisium, ending a daily dose of dazzling images from the Moon. Stephen Clark – Mar 18, 2025 4:00 AM Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon's surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface. These are all important achievements, gathering data that could shed light on the Moon's formation and evolution, demonstrating new ways of collecting samples on other planets, and revealing the remarkable reach of the US military's GPS satellite network. But the pièce de résistance for Firefly's first Moon mission might be the daily dose of imagery that streamed down from the Blue Ghost spacecraft. A suite of cameras recorded the cloud of dust created as the lander's engine plume blew away the uppermost layer of lunar soil as it touched down March 2 in Mare Crisium, or the Sea of Crises. This location is in a flat basin situated on the upper right quadrant of the side of the Moon always facing the Earth. Other images from Firefly's lander showed the craft shooting tethered electrodes out onto the lunar surface, like a baseball outfielder trying to throw out a runner at home plate. Firefly's cameras also showed the lander's drill as it began to probe several meters into the Moon's crust. https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/heres-the-secret-to-how-firefly-was-able-to-nail-its-very-first-lunar-landing/ == Blue Ghost lander captures stunning sunset shots on the moon before falling silent == Marcia Dunn - March 19, 2025 A private lunar lander has captured the first high-definition sunset pictures from the moon. Firefly Aerospace and NASA released the stunning photos Tuesday, taken before the Blue Ghost lander fell silent over the weekend. One shot included Venus in the distance. Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon on March 2, the first private spacecraft to touch down upright and perform its entire mission. It kept taking pictures and collecting science data five hours into the lunar night before it died for lack of solar energy. NASA's Joel Kearns said Blue Ghost's series of sunset shots are the first high-resolution images from Earth's neighbor. Scientists will need to analyze them in depth, he noted, before making any determination about the horizon glow captured in at least one of the photos and whether it was created by levitating dust. That theory was put forth more than a half-century ago by Apollo 17's Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon. “What we've got is a really beautiful, aesthetic image showing some really unusual features,” Kearns said at a news conference. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-blue-ghost-lander-captures-stunning.html ==== Moon ==== == NASA Taps Firefly for Lunar Far Side Delivery Mission == Under the $112 million contract, Firefly will attempt to place a lander on the Moon's far side and deploy a European satellite. Passant Rabie - 15 March 2023 Texas-based Firefly has been tasked with placing a lunar lander on the far side of the Moon, where it will drop off a pair of communications experiments. NASA selected Firefly Aerospace to deliver multiple lunar payloads in 2026 under a $112 million contract, Firefly announced on Wednesday. The company will use its Blue Ghost spacecraft to place a European communications satellite in lunar orbit before delivering the two NASA payloads on the far side of the Moon as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Initiative. “Looking ahead, Firefly’s evolving line of launch vehicles and spacecraft allows us to support more advanced missions over the next 5 to 10 years,” Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly Aerospace, said in an emailed statement. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-firefly-lunar-far-side-delivery-mission-esa-1850227872 == Firefly gets nod from NASA to deliver Lunar Pathfinder to the Moon == LuSEE in the sky with … data Brandon Vigliarolo - Wed 15 Mar 2023 14:40 UTC Firefly Aerospace has won a second NASA contract to take hardware to the Moon – including the hotly anticipated Lunar Pathfinder satellite that will serve as a communication relay between future Lunarians and Earthlings. The award, worth just under $112 million, will see Firefly deliver the Lunar Pathfinder into the Moon's orbit, as well as dropping a couple of experiments off on the far side of the Moon, when it launches in 2026. Firefly's contribution to the mission will be “end to end,” Firefly said, and will involve the outfit's Blue Ghost spacecraft in a two-stage configuration that will launch the Lunar Pathfinder and then send a lander to the surface of the Moon to deliver its experimental payload. The first of those experiments, the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night), will make radio observations to take a look at the period in universal history known as the “dark ages,” a period that began around 370,000 years after the Big Bang and lasted until the first stars formed. https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/15/firefly_gets_nod_from_nasa/ == NASA-Funded Mission to the Moon's Far Side Is Starting to Look Pretty Cool == Firefly Aerospace's upcoming visit to the Moon's far side will now include SPIDER—a device for probing the lunar subsurface. Passant Rabie - 8 November 2023 A new payload has been added to Firefly’s upcoming mission to the far side of the Moon, one that will explore the lunar subsurface to find out if it can support future infrastructure. Australia’s Fleet Space Technologies is launching its SPIDER (Seismic Payload for Interplanetary Discovery, Exploration, and Research) on board Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, which is scheduled to liftoff to the lunar far side in 2026, the company announced on Wednesday. SPIDER will travel alongside payloads belonging to NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). SPIDER is designed to capture seismic data from the lunar surface for up to 14 days. Using this data, scientists will be able to learn more about the geological properties of the Moon’s subsurface, as well as the presence of water ice beneath the surface, which could support future infrastructure as part of upcoming missions to Earth’s satellite. https://gizmodo.com/firefly-lander-nasa-lunar-far-side-spider-mission-1851004490 == Satnav systems built for Earth used by Blue Ghost lander as it approached the Moon == No, your car can't navigate in space. But perhaps colonies can find their way without dedicated lunar GPS Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 6 Mar 2025 07:12 UTC An experimental module attached to Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Moon lander successfully used Earth's orbiting satnav systems, a feat that suggests a specialized lunar positioning system may not be needed. The module is called the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, aka LuGRE, which landed on the surface of the Moon Sunday aboard Blue Ghost, the first privately-built-and-operated spacecraft to successfully touch down on Earth's natural satellite. On Monday, LuGRE picked up signals from both America's Global Positioning System (GPS) and the EU's Galileo satnav constellations. The instrument then managed to acquire a navigational fix on the lunar surface using those signals, some 225,000 miles from Earth. That's gotta involve some very cool mathematics to achieve that. By doing so, it demonstrated that Terran satellite-navigation signals designed to aid earthly roaming can also work on Luna. That’s good news because GPS and Galileo are two of several so-called global navigation satellite systems, or GNSS, orbiting our home planet. China, India, and Russia also operate such constellations, meaning there are plenty of satellites for future Moon missions to tap. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/06/blue_ghost_lugre_module_acquires/ == Firefly Aerospace Selects Blue Origin Unit To Explore Volcanic Formations On Moon == Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday March 25, 2025 03:00AM Firefly Aerospace has teamed up with Blue Origin's Honeybee Robotics unit to deploy a rover on its 2028 lunar mission to study the Gruithuisen Domes – rare volcanic formations that may reveal insights into the moon's geology and potential resources. The announcement follows Firefly's successful Blue Ghost Mission 1, which outlasted all prior commercial lunar landings. Reuters reports: <blockquote> The Gruithuisen Domes, located on the moon's near side, are unusual volcanic formations believed to be rich in silica – a composition rare on the lunar surface – and studying them could unlock clues about the moon's geological history and potential resources for future human missions. […] The upcoming mission, part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, will use Firefly's Blue Ghost lander and Elytra Dark orbital vehicle, alongside the Honeybee Robotics rover, to explore the domes, building on the success of its debut effort, Firefly said. </blockquote> https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/25/013236/firefly-aerospace-selects-blue-origin-unit-to-explore-volcanic-formations-on-moon ==== Space Force Mission ==== == Firefly and Millennium enter ‘hot standby phase’ for high-stakes Space Force mission == Aria Alamalhodaei - 30 August 2023 The clock is ticking for Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems, with the two companies announcing today that they have entered the “hot standby phase” for an orbital mission for the U.S. Space Force. The exact launch date of the Victus Nox mission, Firefly’s third mission using the Alpha rocket, is unknown. This is by design: The mission is part of the U.S. Space Force’s initiative to solicit rapid launch capabilities from commercial industry. The two companies will have virtually no notice and very short windows to get a satellite to the launch site and into space. The mission, translated from the Latin for “conquer the night,” is aptly named. At some intentionally unknown time in the next six months, Space Force officials will issue an alert notification to the two teams. From there, Boeing subsidiary Millennium, which built the satellite for the mission, will have 60 hours to transport the spacecraft from Los Angeles to Vandenberg Space Force Base and integrate it with Alpha’s payload adaptor. https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/30/firefly-and-millenium-enter-hot-standby-phase-for-high-stakes-space-force-mission/ ==== 2023 December Launch ==== == Firefly software snafu sends Lockheed satellite on short-lived space safari == IF (orbit == wrong) THEN oops; Richard Speed - Wed 21 Feb 2024 17:00 UTC A software error on the part of Firefly Aerospace doomed Lockheed Martin's Electronic Steerable Antenna (ESA) demonstrator to a shorter-than-expected orbital life following a botched Alpha launch. According to Firefly's mission update, the error was in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) software algorithm, preventing the system from sending the necessary pulse commands to the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters before the relight of the second stage. The result was that Lockheed's payload was left in the wrong orbit, and Firefly's engineers were left scratching their heads. The launch on December 22, 2023 – dubbed “Fly the Lightning” – seemed to go well at first. It was the fourth for the Alpha, and after Firefly finally registered a successful launch a few months earlier in September, initial indications looked good. However, a burn of the second stage to circularize the orbit did not go to plan, and Lockheed's satellite was left in the wrong orbit, with little more than weeks remaining until it re-entered the atmosphere. https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/firefly_lockheed_satellite/ == Firefly Software Snafu Sends Lockheed Satellite on Short-Lived Space Safari == Posted by msmash on Wednesday February 21, 2024 11:19AM A software error on the part of Firefly Aerospace doomed Lockheed Martin's Electronic Steerable Antenna (ESA) demonstrator to a shorter-than-expected orbital life following a botched Alpha launch. From a report: <blockquote> According to Firefly's mission update, the error was in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) software algorithm, preventing the system from sending the necessary pulse commands to the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters before the relight of the second stage. The result was that Lockheed's payload was left in the wrong orbit, and Firefly's engineers were left scratching their heads.</blockquote> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/02/21/1919211/firefly-software-snafu-sends-lockheed-satellite-on-short-lived-space-safari ===== Hawkeye ===== == ‘Irreparable’ thrusters and solar activity push 3 HawkEye 360 satellites to lower orbits == Aria Alamalhodaei - 9 August 2023 Remote-sensing satellite operator HawkEye 360 is the latest to experience problems in orbit, due to an “irreparable” failure of propulsion systems made by Austria-based Enpulsion, compounded by high solar activity. While HawkEye declined to name its propulsion provider to TechCrunch, an April 2022 letter from HawkEye to the FCC states that the affected satellites are equipped with Enpulsion’s IFM Nano Thruster propulsion system. HawkEye requested temporary permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to operate three of its satellites, called Cluster 4, at a lower altitude on July 24. In a separate filing, the company requested permanent authority to operate its constellation at orbital altitudes of 400-615 kilometers, given the propulsion failures. https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/09/irreparable-thrusters-and-solar-activity-push-3-hawkeye-360-satellites-to-lower-orbits/ ===== Impulse Space ===== == Impulse Space is flying high with new funding led by RTX Ventures == Aria Alamalhodaei - 23 July 2023 Impulse Space, the space logistics startup headed by founding SpaceX employee Tom Mueller, has closed a new tranche of funding to further develop its line of orbital transportation vehicles. The oversubscribed $45 million Series A was led by RTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), and included participation from existing investors Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Airbus Ventures and Space Capital. Founders Fund led Impulse’s $20 million seed round in early 2022, while Lux Capital previously supported the company with a $10 million funding deal last summer. Mueller is understood to be one of the preeminent experts in propulsion alive today, and it’s a reputation he earned: as employee No. 1 at SpaceX, he led the development of the Merlin and Draco engines, which power the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft, respectively. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/impulse-space-is-flying-high-with-new-funding-led-by-rtx-ventures/ ===== Launcher ===== == Launcher’s Orbiter glitches in orbit, forcing emergency deployment of space startups’ payloads == Aria Alamalhodaei - 21 June 2023 Launcher’s Orbiter spacecraft experienced an anomaly after reaching orbit that will likely result in the premature end of its customers’ missions, including Starfish Space’s Otter Pup demonstration mission. Launcher and its customer Starfish Space released a joint statement Wednesday detailing what happened in the hours after the Orbiter spacecraft lifted off on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 mission earlier this month. While the spacecraft successfully separated from the launch vehicle, it experienced a software-related issue that induced a high rate of rotation. This issue, in addition to critically low fuel and battery levels, forced Launcher to make the “emergency decision” to deploy customer payloads earlier than anticipated. As a result of the early deployment, Starfish’s Otter Pup demo satellite also started experiencing high rotation. While Starfish confirmed that its satellite is alive, the mission — in which Otter Pup was going to attempt to rendezvous and dock with Orbiter — will not be able to continue until the satellite is stabilized in orbit. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/21/launchers-orbiter-glitches-in-orbit-forcing-emergency-deployment-of-space-startups-payloads/ ===== Neumann Space ===== == Neumann Drive == THE NEW STANDARD FOR IN-SPACE PROPULSION https://neumannspace.com/neumann-drive/ ===== Northrop Grumman ===== ==== Cygnus ==== == Cygnus Cargo Spacecraft Fails to Deploy Solar Array Shortly After Launch == Northrop Grumman says the expendable freighter, with one of two arrays deployed, should have enough power to rendezvous with the ISS on Wednesday. Passant Rabie - 7 November 2022 4:50PM The Cygnus cargo spacecraft has run into some trouble on its way to the International Space Station (ISS), as one of its two solar arrays is refusing to deploy. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft had an early launch on Monday, November 7 at 5:32 a.m. ET from Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Port. The expendable freighter is carrying 8,200 pounds of cargo to the ISS and is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting space station on Wednesday. https://gizmodo.com/cygnus-cargo-spacecraft-fails-deploy-solar-array-1849754041 == Cygnus Freighter Reaches ISS With Only One Functioning Solar Array == Northrop Grumman's spacecraft, carrying 8,200 pounds of cargo, was able to draw enough power and reach the orbiting station despite the anomaly. Passant Rabie - 9 November 2022 12:00PM The S.S. Sally Ride has safely docked at the International Space Station following a nail-biting journey in which one of its two solar arrays failed to deploy. Northrop Grumman’s expendable freighter launched on Monday, November 7, carrying 8,200 pounds of cargo to the ISS. On its way to the orbiting space station, however, the Cygnus capsule failed to deploy one of its two solar arrays, which collects power for its trip through space. “Northrop Grumman is gathering data on the second array deployment and is working closely with NASA,” the space agency wrote in a blog post on Monday. https://gizmodo.com/cygnus-spacecraft-iss-malfunction-solar-array-1849761767 == Cygnus cargo ship makes it to ISS with blanketed solar panel == 'Acoustic blanket' cuts power by 50 percent Katyanna Quach - Thu 10 Nov 2022 05:45 UTC An Cygnus cargo ship has successfully made it to the International Space Station despite the failure of half its solar panel array. The Cygnus vehicle, built by Northrop Grumman and named S.S. Sally Ride – after the late physicist and first American woman to fly to space in 1983 – was launched atop the company's Antares 230+ rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia on Monday. Mission Control later discovered one of its two solar panels did not deploy properly. Engineers gave up trying to correct the issue and said the spacecraft had enough power to reach the ISS in its less than ideal state. Thankfully they were right, and as it got closer astronaut Nicole Mann brought it in using the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm on Wednesday at 0520 ET (1020 UTC). “During a rocket stage separation event, debris from an Antares acoustic blanket became lodged in one of the Cygnus solar array mechanisms, preventing it from opening,” Cyrus Dhalla, vice president and general manager, Tactical Space Systems at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement. “Successful berthing was achieved thanks to Cygnus's robust design and the resilience and ingenuity of the NASA and Northrop Grumman teams.” https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/cygnus_iss_solar_docking/ === NG-22 === == After a spacecraft was damaged en route to launch, NASA says it won’t launch == “Following initial evaluation, there also is damage to the cargo module.” Eric Berger – Mar 26, 2025 2:34 PM Three weeks ago, NASA revealed that a shipping container protecting a Cygnus spacecraft sustained “damage” while traveling to the launch site in Florida. Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for June. As part of its statement in early March, the space agency said it was evaluating the NG-22 Cygnus cargo supply mission along with Northrop. On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the near term. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/nasa-sidelines-cygnus-spacecraft-after-damage-in-transit-to-launch-site/ == ISS resupply and trash pickup craft postponed indefinitely after Cygnus container crunch == All eyes on SpaceX's April cargo mission to the orbital outpost Richard Speed - Thu 27 Mar 2025 15:38 UTC Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo freighter, the NG-22, is being delayed indefinitely after engineers confirmed the Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) had sustained damage in its shipping container. The damage was caused by heavy equipment striking the container during shipment. Northrop Grumman notified NASA of the issue earlier in March. When the container was opened and the module within inspected, engineers confirmed it had not survived the trip unscathed. According to a spokesperson from the US space agency: “NASA and Northrop Grumman are adjusting planning for the company's next commercial resupply launch to the International Space Station. Northrop Grumman's Commercial Resupply Services-23 now will be the company's next flight to the International Space Station for NASA, targeted to launch no earlier than fall 2025.” All of this means that SpaceX's next resupply flight in April is increasingly critical. The International Space Station (ISS) is running low on consumables, and Elon Musk's rocketeers are now the only option for launching supplies from US soil in the short term. “NASA previously announced plans to adjust the cargo manifest on the agency's next resupply mission on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in April and add more consumable supplies and food to help ensure sufficient reserves of supplies aboard the station,” the spokesperson added. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/27/cygnus_freighter_damaged/ == Damaged Spacecraft Forces NASA to Cancel ISS Cargo Mission == The Cygnus spacecraft sustained damage on its way to the launch site and was deemed unfit to fly. Passant Rabie - March 27, 2025 NASA is adding more food and consumable supplies to an upcoming cargo dropoff to the International Space Station (ISS) to sustain the crew after canceling a resupply mission slated to launch in June. A Cygnus spacecraft that was due to launch to the ISS in June sustained damage while traveling to the launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and is no longer fit to fly. NASA was forced to cancel the Cygnus cargo mission, which was due to carry water, food, experiments, and other supplies for the ISS crew, SpaceNews reported. Instead, the space agency will adjust the cargo manifest for SpaceX’s upcoming resupply mission, which is due to take off in April. The Northrop Grumman-built spacecraft is one of two cargo vehicles used to send supplies to the ISS on a regular basis, the other being SpaceX’s Dragon. This particular spacecraft was to be used for the NG-22 mission, scheduled for June. On its way to the launch site, however, the shipping container for the spacecraft’s pressurized cargo module sustained damage. NASA was left to assess the damage and how it may impact the upcoming mission. https://gizmodo.com/damaged-spacecraft-forces-nasa-to-cancel-iss-cargo-mission-2000581557 ===== OneWeb ===== == After Fallout With Russia, SpaceX Rival Launches 36 Satellites Aboard India's Big Rocket == OneWeb cancelled launches aboard Russia's Soyuz rocket following the country's invasion of Ukraine. Passant Rabie - 24 October 2022 2:00PM British company OneWeb has resumed its plans of building an internet constellation in low Earth orbit despite suffering a frustrating setback earlier this year. After having to cancel its launches aboard Russia’s Soyuz rocket, the British company launched 36 of its internet satellites on Saturday using India’s heaviest rocket. The Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) GSLV Mark III rocket took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India at 2:37 p.m. ET. The launch marked the first commercial payload for the 143-foot-tall (43.5 meter) rocket, according to India’s Economic Times. https://gizmodo.com/oneweb-launches-internet-satellites-indias-big-rocket-1849693795 == After bankruptcy and war, OneWeb turns to a competitor for help == OneWeb, as ever, is doing what it needs to do to survive. Eric Berger - 12/2/2022, 7:06 AM There's one thing that can be definitively said about broadband communications company OneWeb: It's a survivor. The company has persisted through several different owners, a bankruptcy, having its satellites taken as hostages amid a regional war, and nearly completing a satellite Internet constellation in low-Earth orbit. Now, the London-based company is set to take the next step in its meandering but persistent journey toward success. As early as Tuesday, December 6, a batch of 40 satellites is due to launch on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. SpaceX, of course, is a competitor in satellite broadband Internet. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/oneweb-sets-a-launch-date-for-next-week-on-a-falcon-9-rocket/ ===== OSIRIS-APEX ===== == NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX Brushes the Sun on Its Way to New Asteroid Target == After dropping off samples from asteroid Bennu to Earth, the newly rebranded mission is headed to asteroid Apophis to stir up its surface. Passant Rabie - 3 January 2024 New mission, who dis? The spacecraft formerly known as OSIRIS-REx had an impromptu close encounter with the Sun as it follows a newly crafted route to a second asteroid, using one of its solar arrays for shade. You may remember NASA’s diligent spacecraft that snagged a sample from an asteroid and dropped it off in the Utah desert in September 2023. That same spacecraft is on a bonus mission to a different asteroid, but in order to get there, it’ll need to fly 25 million miles closer to the Sun than it was originally designed to do. On Tuesday, January 2, the mission, now known as OSIRIS-APEX, carried out the first of six close flybys of the Sun, coming to within an unprecedented 46.5 million miles of our host star, exposing the spacecraft to much higher temperatures than it was meant to endure, NASA wrote in a blog post. Tuesday’s flyby was the first major test for OSIRIS-APEX (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Apophis Explorer) as it heads toward its new target: asteroid Apophis. Gizmodo reached out to NASA to check in on the status of the spacecraft following this first solar flyby, but the space agency had not yet responded at time of publishing. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-apophis-sun-osiris-apex-asteroid-sample-return-1851137275 ===== OSIRIS-REx ===== == NASA confirms OSIRIS-REx has secured its asteroid sample == The asteroid sampling mission grabbed so many rocks they were leaking out, but now they're stowed away. Richard Lawler - 29 October2020 After a process that took a couple of days, the OSIRIS-REx mission has stowed away the sample of regolith that it snatched from an asteroid last week. Shortly after ,the team discovered that small particles appeared to be leaking from the collector head, and adjusted their plans to stow the sample within the spacecraft ahead of schedule. Now they’ve confirmed that the Sample Return Capsule is securely closed, as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission makes its way back to Earth. It’s scheduled to depart the area in March, and deliver the sample to Earth on September 24th, 2023. https://www.engadget.com/nasa-asteroid-collection-secure-222451521.html == NASA's Earth-Bound Asteroid Probe Successfully Performs First Course Correction Maneuver == OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to drop off samples of asteroid Bennu's surface in less than a year. Passant Rabie - 17 October 2022 3:35PM NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has a special package for Earth: rocky samples from one of the most ancient objects in the universe. The probe snagged a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020 and has been making its way for an Earth drop-off ever since. To keep it on track, NASA recently executed the spacecraft’s first course correction maneuver by altering its trajectory towards our planet. The OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to deliver samples from asteroid Bennu on September 24, 2023. The plan is for the spacecraft to drop off its precious cargo during the scheduled flyby, after which time the capsule containing the asteroid samples will perform a parachute-assisted landing at the Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range in the Great Salt Lake Desert. https://gizmodo.com/nasa-osiris-rex-first-course-correction-maneuver-1849667219 == After bopping an asteroid 3 years ago, NASA will finally see the results == “Every sample here has a story to tell.” Eric Berger - 7/24/2023, 2:13 PM Christmas Day for scientists who study asteroids is coming in just two months when a small spacecraft carrying material from a distant rubble pile will land in a Utah desert. The return of the OSIRIS-REx sample container on September 24 will cap the primary mission to capture material from an asteroid—in this case, the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid Bennu—and return some of its pebbles and dust to Earth. It has been a long time coming. This mission launched seven years ago and has been in the planning and development phase for over a decade. To say the scientists who have fought for and executed this mission are anxious and excited is an understatement. But there is an additional frisson with OSIRIS-REx, as scientists are not entirely sure what they've been able to pull away from the asteroid. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/christmas-is-coming-for-asteroid-scientists-just-2-months-from-today/ == Telescope Spots a Sample-Laden OSIRIS-REx Returning From Asteroid Bennu == The NASA spacecraft will return a sample from the distant asteroid to Earth on September 24. Isaac Schultz - 21 September 2023 NASA’s $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission launched to space in September 2016 with a simple, albeit ambitious, objective: travel to a distant asteroid and bring back a sample of it. The spacecraft is now nearly home, and scientists spotted the it for the first time last week as it made its return. The asteroid in question is Bennu, a rubble-pile asteroid that scientists believe broke off a larger asteroid between 700 million and 2 billion years ago, according to NASA. Bennu averages an orbit of about 105 million miles from the Sun, and completes its orbit every 1.2 years. The asteroid was about 200 million miles (322 million kilometers) away when OSIRIS-REx got there to retrieve a chunk of it. https://gizmodo.com/osiris-rex-nasa-bennu-asteroid-telescope-spotted-1850862587 == NASA spacecraft returns to Earth with pieces of an asteroid == Breathe easy, there's a bounty from Bennu inside. Stephen Clark - 9/24/2023, 12:26 PM A small capsule carrying pristine specimens from an asteroid parachuted to landing in the Utah desert Sunday, capping a seven-year voyage through the Solar System to bring home samples for eager scientists seeking clues about the origins of life. NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission brought back the largest unspoiled sample of material ever returned to Earth from beyond the Moon, probably on the order of about 250 grams, or roughly 8 ounces, according to estimates. The spacecraft collected the samples from asteroid Bennu, a loosely-bound rocky world about the size of a small mountain, during a touch-and-go landing in October 2020. It's the third asteroid sampling mission in history, and the first for the United States, following two Japanese spacecraft that returned a smaller quantity of asteroid specimens to Earth in 2010 and 2020. OSIRIS-REx was tinged with suspense and drama from start to finish. The project's original lead scientist died in 2011, months after NASA selected his mission concept for funding. In 2016, the spacecraft was stacked on top of its United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket awaiting liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded during a ground test barely a mile away. That sent thick plumes of black smoke over the Atlas V launch pad and briefly knocked offline an air conditioning system needed to keep OSIRIS-REx safe before launch. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/nasa-spacecraft-returns-to-earth-with-pieces-of-an-asteroid/ == After Delivery to Earth, What's Next for NASA's Asteroid Sample? == Over the weekend, the OSIRIS-REx probe successfully delivered rocky samples from asteroid Bennu, which could hold clues to the origins of life on Earth. Passant Rabie - 25 September 2023 Earth just got a special delivery: Pieces of an ancient asteroid that were snagged straight from the source and dropped off in the western Utah desert. After traveling through space for nearly three years, the journey is just beginning for the precious rock samples, which could help scientists figure out the story of life. On Sunday, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx dropped off a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City. The collected pieces from the asteroid are being prepped to undergo extensive analysis by scientists around the world, all aiming to better understand the origin of organics and water that led to life on Earth. Bennu is also a near-Earth potentially hazardous asteroid, therefore studying it closely can help us learn more about its potential threats to our planet. https://gizmodo.com/after-delivery-to-earth-whats-next-for-nasas-asteroid-1850870118 == OSIRIS-REx used a Tesla-esque navigation system to capture 4.5 billion-year-old regolith == In this case, NASA too eschewed LiDAR in favor of visible-spectrum cameras. Andrew Tarantola, Senior Editor - Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 12:21 PM PDT NASA's pioneering OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully returned from its journey to the asteroid Bennu. The robotic spacecraft briefly set down on the celestial body in a first-of-its-kind attempt (by an American space agency) to collect pristine rock samples, before alighting and heading back to Earth on a three-year roundtrip journey. The samples impacted safely on Sunday in the desert at the DoD’s Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Grounds. Even more impressive, the spacecraft performed its Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) maneuver autonomously through the craft’s onboard Natural Feature Tracking (NFT) visual navigation system — another first! Engadget recently sat down with Guidance Navigation and Control Manager at Lockheed Martin Dr. Ryan Olds, who helped develop the NFT system, to discuss how the groundbreaking AI was built and where in the galaxy it might be heading next. https://www.engadget.com/osiris-rex-used-a-tesla-esque-navigation-system-to-capture-45-billion-year-old-regolith-192132417.html == OSIRIS-REx succesfully delivers NASA's first asteroid sample == Laura Dobberstein - Mon 25 Sep 2023 06:31 UTC
NASA's first asteroid sample return mission delivered on Sunday, when the OSIRIS-REx capsule touched down in the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.
OSIRIS-REx – full name Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer – flew by the Earth on Sunday and released the sample-carrying capsule from a distance of around 63,000 miles (102,000km).
The capsule plummeted through space for four hours and entered the atmosphere at a speed of around 27,650 miles per hour (44,500km/h) over California. Dual parachutes helped slow it to 11mph (18km/h) before it reached terra firma.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/25/osirisrex_sample_return_success/
Recovery specialists opened the lid of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample canister and discovered some extra bits of the asteroid on the avionics deck.
Passant Rabie - 27 September 2023
Following a nearly three-year journey through space, the canister containing samples from asteroid Bennu has finally been opened.
The OSIRIS-REx mission team removed the initial lid of the sample canister, which was placed inside a glovebox to keep out contaminants, on Tuesday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the space agency announced. Once the aluminum lid was removed, scientists found black dust and debris on the avionics deck of the canister. Although NASA didn’t elaborate on the source of the debris, it most likely came from Bennu itself when the spacecraft landed on the asteroid and snagged its rocky sample in October 2020.
https://gizmodo.com/osiris-rex-asteroid-bennu-sample-canister-debris-dust-1850878146
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday September 30, 2023 12:00AM
Mike Wall writes via Space.com:
OSIRIS-REx's asteroid-sample canister just creaked open for the first time in more than seven years. Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston lifted the canister's outer lid on Tuesday (Sept. 26), two days after OSIRIS-REx's return capsule landed in the desert of northern Utah. “Scientists gasped as the lid was lifted,” NASA's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division, which is based at JSC, wrote Tuesday in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The operation revealed “dark powder and sand-sized particles on the inside of the lid and base,” they added.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/09/29/2051233/nasa-opens-osiris-rexs-asteroid-sample-canister
OSIRIS-REx's return from Bennu comes with a twist, as scientists face delays in disassembling the canister due to an abundance of material on the exterior.
Passant Rabie - 3 October 2023
Scientists working to open up the sample canister containing rock and dust from asteroid Bennu have run into a problem: there’s just too much of it.
The process of disassembling the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head is taking longer than anticipated due to the abundance of material found when the canister lid was removed last week, NASA wrote in a blog post. But that’s not a bad problem to have.
In October 2020, OSIRIS-REx landed on near-Earth asteroid Bennu and snagged a sample from its surface. Scientists expected to find extra bits of the asteroid in the canister outside the TAGSAM, an articulated arm on the spacecraft with a round sampler head at the end used to grab the sample. This assumption arose when they observed particles slowly escaping the head before it was stowed, according to NASA. Not only was this assumption correct, but there were also significantly more dark particles coating the inside of the canister lid and base surrounding TAGSAM than anticipated.
https://gizmodo.com/osiris-rex-asteroid-sample-return-excess-materials-1850894913
NASA has released a new video capturing the moment when its OSIRIS-REx probe released a canister containing materials from asteroid Bennu.
Passant Rabie - 5 October 2023
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft had been carrying precious cargo for nearly three years before dropping it off in the Utah desert. As it bid farewell to its rock and dust samples from asteroid Bennu, the spacecraft captured a departing shot of its Earth-bound package as it headed off to another asteroid.
This week, NASA released a black and white sequence of the return capsule as it descended towards its fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere on September 24. The brief snapshot was captured by TAGCAMS’s (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) NavCam 1 just moments after the capsule’s release from the spacecraft.
https://gizmodo.com/video-osiris-rex-nasa-asteroid-bennu-samples-1850902612
The space agency has scheduled a livestream for 11 AM ET to give a first look at the asteroid sample.
Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor - Fri, Oct 6, 2023, 2:36 PM PDT
NASA will give the public a look at the asteroid sample brought back to Earth by its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft next week. A livestream of the reveal is set for 11 AM ET on Wednesday, October 11. The capsule containing rocks and dust taken from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid “Bennu” touched down at a Department of Defense training site in the Utah desert on September 24, and scientists have since been at work making their initial analyses.
OSIRIS-REx grabbed its sample from Bennu back in 2020 and spent the subsequent year-and-a-half observing the asteroid from above, before starting to make its way back toward Earth in May 2021. After its dropoff last month, the canister was brought to Houston, Texas to be opened at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. OSIRIS-REx, on the other hand, is still in space, now heading to an asteroid called Apophis under a new mission name, OSIRIS-APEX.
“Boy, did we really nail it.”
Eric Berger - 10/11/2023, 1:42 PM
HNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas—As they unveiled the first samples recovered from an asteroid on Wednesday, scientists were giddy at the prospects of what this material will tell us about the origin of our planet and possibly even ourselves.
After seven years in space, a small spacecraft carrying samples from the asteroid Bennu landed in a Utah desert in late September. Following carefully choreographed procedures to prevent the contamination of the asteroid dust and rocks from life on Earth, the samples were transferred to a clean room at Johnson Space Center in Houston two weeks ago. Since then, scientists have examined some of the material that was collected outside of the primary container to glean some initial insights. They revealed some of their first data during an event at the center on Wednesday.
“Boy, did we really nail it,” said Dante Lauretta, a scientist from the University of Arizona who is the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission.
Scientists have not even opened the main container yet, a process that will unfold in the coming weeks as cataloging all of this material begins. Before the launch of this mission, scientists said the recovery of 60 grams of material would be considered a success. While the effort to determine the overall mass is ongoing, Lauretta said early estimates are that the asteroid capture mission collected about 250 grams of pebbles and dust from the surface of Bennu.
A livestream is taking place on its Youtube channel.
Sarah Fielding - Wed, Oct 11, 2023, 7:30 AM PDT
NASA is ready to share its findings of a sample taken from the 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu with the masses during a livestream at 11 AM ET today, October 11, on its YouTube channel. The reveal comes less than three weeks after the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft parachuted a capsule of Bennu's fragments into a Utah-based Department of Defense training site. NASA then transferred the sample to its Johnson Space Center in Houston for a complete analysis.
OSIRIS-REx set off on its $1.2 billion mission in September 2016, reaching the 1,650-foot wide asteroid two years later. In 2020, the spacecraft burrowed into Bennu much deeper than expected, collecting the largest asteroid surface sample to date. The goal was to bring at least 2.1 ounces back, and initial estimates put the collection at around 8.8 ounces. NASA should reveal the exact specifications and the quality of the substance during its livestream, as well as other interesting tidbits uncovered.
https://www.engadget.com/watch-nasa-reveal-its-bennu-asteroid-samples-at-11am-et-143009980.html
There be water in those space rocks!
Lawrence Bonk, Contributing Reporter - Wed, Oct 11, 2023, 9:15 AM PDT
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought back samples from the asteroid Bennu and, in a livestream earlier today, NASA scientists showed us what it found hanging out in the great vastness of the cosmos. Simply put, the agency brought back a fairly large sample collection of various-sized rocks, dust particles and intermediate-sized particles.
The big news here is that samples from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid contain not only carbon, which is to be expected, but also water. These are the building blocks of life on Earth and, likely, everywhere else, so this is a big deal.
https://www.engadget.com/heres-what-nasa-brought-back-from-the-asteroid-bennu-161531204.html
Abbey A. Donaldson - Oct 11, 2023
Initial studies of the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu sample collected in space and brought to Earth by NASA show evidence of high-carbon content and water, which together could indicate the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock. NASA made the news Wednesday from its Johnson Space Center in Houston where leadership and scientists showed off the asteroid material for the first time since it landed in September.
This finding was part of a preliminary assessment of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) science team.
“The OSIRIS-REx sample is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever delivered to Earth and will help scientists investigate the origins of life on our own planet for generations to come,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Almost everything we do at NASA seeks to answer questions about who we are and where we come from. NASA missions like OSIRIS-REx will improve our understanding of asteroids that could threaten Earth while giving us a glimpse into what lies beyond. The sample has made it back to Earth, but there is still so much science to come – science like we’ve never seen before.”
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-bennu-asteroid-sample-contains-carbon-water/
Scientists have collected rock and dust from outside the canister, but the bulk of the sample remains stuck inside.
Passant Rabie - 23 October 2023
About a month ago, pristine samples from an asteroid landed on Earth while enclosed within a tight capsule. The sample canister was designed to keep the main chunk of the asteroid safe during its journey through space, but now teams at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) are struggling to open it to get at the space rocks.
For the past week, the curation team for the OSIRIS-REx mission has been having a hard time opening the TAGSAM head, a round sampler head at the end of an articulated arm on the spacecraft that was used to grab the sample from the asteroid. The TAGSAM head (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) is where the bulk of the asteroid sample is, and it is therefore being carefully handled by members of the team through a specialized glovebox under the flow of nitrogen to prevent contamination.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-struggling-open-asteroid-sample-container-1850951047
Screw it… no wait, unscrew it, cry boffins
Katyanna Quach - Wed 1 Nov 2023 00:05 UTC
NASA's first-ever asteroid sample-collecting spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has had its mission extended – and will next visit Apophis, a near-Earth object expected to fly as close as 20,000 miles to our home planet in 2029.
The 340-metre-wide space rock was discovered in 2004 and made headlines after astronomers predicted it could strike Earth at the end of the decade.
Further calculations saw doomsday pushed back to 2036, then again 2068. Scientists now believe the asteroid won’t potentially trouble Earth for at least another hundred years.
But Apophis remains of interest because it will make a very close flyby in five and a half years, when it will come closer to Earth than some artificial satellites and come ten times closer to our planet than the Moon. Close encounters with asteroids as large as Apophis reportedly occur just once in 7,500 years.
Dani DellaGiustina, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona in the US, was deputy principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx as it collected samples from asteroid Bennu; that out-of-this-world material was sent to Earth and arrived here the other month to be studied. Now that the mission and craft has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX, and the probe is off to Apophis, DellaGiustina will be principal investigator for this latest phase of the project.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/01/osirisapex_spacecraft_apophis_target/
Serena Cesareo, Senior Researcher - Friday 27 October 2023
The team behind Nasa’s Osiris-REx mission is struggling to open fully the container holding the bulk of the sample from asteroid Bennu. Since the 4.5 billion year-old sample landed in the Utah desert earlier this month, scientists have already managed to collect 70.3 grams of rocks and dust lying on the outside of the container, as well as some from inside the sampler head. But last week they realised that two of the 35 fasteners on the head could not be removed with the current tools approved for use in the Osiris-REx glovebox – where the work is performed under a flow of nitrogen to prevent contamination through exposure to Earth’s atmosphere. Nasa said the team is working on finding a new procedure to extract the remaining material. This might delay the process by a few weeks. Not too bad for a seven-year mission that might help explain the origins of life on Earth.
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2023/10/27/nasa-cant-open-its-asteroid-capsule/
“I was trying to mentally prepare myself to deal with a crashed capsule in the desert.”
Stephen Clark - 12/6/2023, 3:08 PM
This was the moment Dante Lauretta had waited for nearly 20 years to see. A small robotic capsule was on the way back to Earth with rocks scooped from an asteroid, and Lauretta was eager to get his hands on the samples.
Led by Lauretta, scientists carefully designed the billion-dollar mission to bring home pieces of a carbon-rich asteroid thought to contain organic molecules, the building blocks necessary for life to take hold. This NASA mission, known by the acronym OSIRIS-REx, launched from Earth in 2016, collected samples from a roughly 1,600-foot-wide (500-meter) asteroid named Bennu in 2020, then set a course for return to Earth.
On September 24, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft released the canister containing the asteroid samples to plunge into the Earth's atmosphere, while the mothership steered onto a course to take it safely back into deep space for a follow-up mission to explore a different asteroid at the end of the 2020s.
Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx's principal investigator from the University of Arizona, was a passenger in a US military helicopter circling the capsule's landing zone in the Utah desert. A heat shield protected the capsule from temperatures that built up to more than 5,000° Fahrenheit during reentry.
Then, a small drogue parachute was supposed to open to stabilize the 32-inch-wide (81-centimeter) sample return craft. About five minutes later, a larger main chute would open to slow the capsule for a gentle landing while protecting the precious asteroid material sealed inside.
At least, that was the plan. While OSIRIS-REx safely returned its asteroid sample to Earth, there were moments of high drama.
The OSIRIS-REx mission narrowly avoided a parachute failure, with an investigation revealing the cause and stressing the need for clear instructions.
Isaac Schultz - 6 December 2023
Inconsistent labels in the OSIRIS-REx landing plans are what caused the out-of-order parachute deployment during the return capsule’s descent to Earth on September 24, NASA stated in a release yesterday.
OSIRIS-REx carried samples of the asteroid Bennu to Earth in late September—an “astrobiologist’s dream,” as Gizmodo previously reported. Bennu is a relic of the solar system’s formation, so scrutiny of its composition will offer hints at the primordial ingredients of life, but also the components of our early solar system. The sample canister from the asteroid contains a greater quantity of asteroid fragments than anticipated, which is a boon to scientists. However, these extra materials were discovered on the canister’s outside; recovery teams are facing difficulties in opening the canister, which contains the bulk of the samples.
The sample return was parachuted down to Earth—specifically alighted on the desert in Utah—on September 24, and since then, NASA’s been carefully working to get the canister opened.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-asteroid-sample-parachute-anomaly-root-cause-1851076738
'Inconsistent wiring label definitions' resulted in drogue being cut before it was deployed
Richard Speed - Wed 6 Dec 2023 14:00 UTC
NASA has revealed how a wiring mix-up resulted in a parachute problem on its otherwise successful OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.
The release triggers for the parachutes could have been wired incorrectly, resulting in the signals designed to trigger the drogue parachute – a small parachute used to provide some control and stability before the main parachute is deployed – being fired out of order.
This meant that rather than deploy at an altitude of 100,000 feet, the drogue actually deployed at 9,000 feet. Worse, the signal triggered the system to cut the drogue free while it was still in the capsule, meaning that it was immediately released when the drogue was deployed.
The main parachute deployed as expected and, fortunately for the scientists eagerly awaiting the samples of asteroid Bennu collected by the mission, it had enough redundancy in the design to both slow and stabilize the capsule for a safe landing. The upshot was that the landing took place more than a minute earlier than expected, but there was no negative impact to the sample.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/06/osiris_rex_parachute_wiring/
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday January 13, 2024 08:34AM
“For months, bits of an asteroid collected by a U.S. probe during a billion-mile trek were out of reach to scientists,” reports Space.com, “locked inside a return capsule in a NASA facility with two stuck fasteners preventing access to the rocky space treasure.
“This week, NASA won its battle against those fasteners.”
NASA shared an image of what's inside the TAGSAM after finally getting the lid off last week.
Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor - Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 8:13 AM PST
Who doesn’t love showing off their collection of cool rocks? NASA was finally able to get into the asteroid Bennu sample container last week after struggling with it for a couple of months, and now, it’s sharing a look at what’s inside. The space agency published a high-resolution image of the newly opened Touch-and-Go-Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) on Friday, revealing all the dust and rocks OSIRIS-REx scraped off the asteroid’s surface.
The image is massive, so you can zoom in to see even the finer details of the sample. Check out the full-sized version on NASA’s website. There’s an abundance of material for scientists to work with, and as OSIRIS-REx team member Lindsay Keller said back in September, they plan to make the most of microanalytical techniques to “really tear it apart, almost down to the atomic scale.” Asteroid Bennu, estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old, may hold clues into the formation of our solar system and how the building blocks of life first came to Earth.
Johnson Space Center scientists pry open remaining samples of 4.6bn-year-old asteroid Bennu collected by Osiris-Rex mission
Edward Helmore - Sun 21 Jan 2024 14.28 EST
Curators at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have said they are “overjoyed” to have finally got a canister of asteroid dust open, four months after it parachuted down through the Earth’s atmosphere into the Utah desert.
The space administration announced Friday that it had successfully removed two stuck fasteners that had prevented some of the samples collected in 2020 from the 4.6bn-year-old asteroid Bennu, which is classified as a “potentially hazardous” because it has one in 1,750 chance of crashing into Earth by 2300.
Most of the rock samples collected by Nasa’s Osiris-Rex mission were retrieved soon after the canister landed in September, but additional material remaining inside a sampler head that proved difficult to access.
After months of wrestling with the last two of 35 fasteners, scientists in Houston managed to get them dislodged. “It’s open! It’s open!” Nasa’s planetary science division posted on Twitter/X. The division also posted a photograph of dust and small rocks inside the canister.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the team designed custom tools made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel to pry it open – all without the samples being contaminated by Earthly air. Nasa said it will now analyze the 9-ounce sample.
“These are some of the oldest materials formed in our solar system,” Ashley King of London’s Natural History Museum said last year.
After months of struggling to get to the bulk of the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample, the space agency has unveiled a treasure trove of ancient rocks and dust.
Passant Rabie - 22 January 2024
The aluminum canister containing bits of an ancient space rock has finally been opened, revealing the bulk of the asteroid Bennu sample in all its glory.
Earlier this month, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx team managed to crack open the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head after developing new tools to deal with two stuck fasteners that stood in the way of the asteroid sample. With the sampler head finally open, NASA revealed the remainder of the unseen samples—and whoa is there ever a whole lot of asteroid inside. That’s great news for science teams around the world who are waiting to receive a piece that may contain clues about the origin of the solar system.
The photograph below was captured by the creative lead for the Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA), Erika Blumenfeld, and the project lead, Joe Aebersold, using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure, according to NASA.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-osiris-rex-canister-reveal-asteroid-sample-trove-1851184737
Surprise! Rocks and dust.
Mat Smith, Bureau Chief, UK - Mon, Jan 22, 2024, 4:15 AM PST
In a very relatable moment, NASA struggled for three months to get the lid off its asteroid sample container, having sent it into deep(ish) space and back. Same, NASA, same: I’ve struggled with jars of pickles.
The space agency was finally able to get into the asteroid Bennu sample container last week and published a high-resolution image of its Touch-and-Go-Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) on Friday, revealing a delightful array of dust and rocks, scraped off Bennu by spacecraft OSIRIS-REx.
The TAGSAM lives in a special glove compartment to prevent the sample from being contaminated, and only certain tools are approved for use with it. The team eventually had to develop new tools to open the fasteners. Tapping it on the side of the kitchen counter did not work.
NASA Finally Unlocks Canister of Dust From 4.6 Billion-Year-Old Asteroid
Posted by BeauHD on Monday January 22, 2024 11:00PM
NASA announced Friday that it finally got a canister of asteroid dust open, four months after it parachuted down through the Earth's atmosphere into the Utah desert. The Guardian reports:
The space administration announced Friday that it had successfully removed two stuck fasteners that had prevented some of the samples collected in 2020 from the 4.6bn-year-old asteroid Bennu, which is classified as a “potentially hazardous” because it has one in 1,750 chance of crashing into Earth by 2300. Most of the rock samples collected by Nasa's Osiris-Rex mission were retrieved soon after the canister landed in September, but additional material remaining inside a sampler head that proved difficult to access.
After months of wrestling with the last two of 35 fasteners, scientists in Houston managed to get them dislodged. “It's open! It's open!” Nasa's planetary science division posted on Twitter/X. The division also posted a photograph of dust and small rocks inside the canister. According to the Los Angeles Times, the team designed custom tools made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel to pry it open – all without the samples being contaminated by Earthly air. Nasa said it will now analyze the nine-ounce sample.
Invents new tools just to get that precious dust
Katyanna Quach - Tue 23 Jan 2024 19:54 UTC
PIC After struggling for months, NASA has finally cracked open the canister storing its dirt sample scooped off the surface of the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample.
Launched in September 2016, the spacecraft flew to its target, the asteroid Bennu, and spent a couple of years studying its surface. Scientists eventually found a perfect spot to sample the regolith from its surface, and directed OSIRIS-REx to extend its 3.4-meter-long robotic arm and ejected a puff of air to capture loose material that was stuffed into its Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head
When the probe finally dropped its sample capsule in a desert in Utah in September 2023, NASA immediately began trying to pry it open, but couldn't loosen two out of the 35 fasteners preventing them from opening the canister for months. Now, they have finally managed to solve the issue using new multi-part tools made out of non-magnetic stainless steel to finish the job.
“Our engineers and scientists have worked tirelessly behind the scenes for months to not only process the more than 70 grams of material we were able to access previously, but also design, develop, and test new tools that allowed us to move past this hurdle,” Eileen Stansbery, division chief for Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science at NASA, previously said in a statement.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/osirisrex_asteroid_sample/
The asteroid Bennu, touched by a spacecraft in 2020, could have a spectacular history.
Isaac Schultz - 7 February 2024
After months of frustration, NASA finally got the Bennu asteroid sample container open in January, revealing the large amounts of asteroid scooped up by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Now, a top member of the mission says the distant hunk of space rock may be a planetesimal—a planet’s building block—that once belonged to an ocean world.
Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and principal investigator on the OSIRIS-REx mission, told New Scientist that “my working hypothesis is that this was an ancient ocean world.”
While “highly speculative,” as Lauretta told Space.com, that’s what the high levels of phosphates in the Bennu samples are suggesting. Phosphorus is a building block of life and was found last year being spat up by the subsurface oceans on Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. Because water is a prerequisite for life as we know it, these ocean worlds are a main target of missions with an eye toward astrobiology, the search for life beyond Earth.
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-asteroid-samples-may-be-crumbs-from-an-ancient-oc-1851234881
121 grams is the largest such sample secured, but NASA won't blow it all at once
Katyanna Quach - Fri 16 Feb 2024 15:30 UTC
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft snagged 121.6 grams of material from asteroid Bennu – the largest quantity ever retrieved by such a mission.
NASA's goal was to collect at least 60 grams from Bennu. It had deemed that amount sufficient for the needs of its own scientists with some left over to share with others.
Mission control had an inkling that the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft exceeded expectations when, in October 2020, it successfully grazed the surface of Bennu and captured so much material that it began leaking particles.
NASA scientists began working to access the sample after the probe dropped its capsule in the Utah desert in September 2023, seven years after its launch.
But opening the capsule device wasn't easy. To avoid contamination, it was stored in a sealed box and could only be manipulated by researchers wearing gloves. Scientists struggled to get in, and NASA fell behind its scheduled timeline.
Last month, the agency created a multi-part tool made of non-magnetic stainless steel that helped unlock the canister to access the sample. They poured the space stuff into containers and weighed it.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/16/osiris_rex_asteroid_sample/
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday February 15, 2024 11:00PM
According to NASA, the OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully collected 121.6 grams, or almost 4.3 ounces, of rock and dust from the asteroid Bennu. Universe Today reports:
These samples have been a long time coming. The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) was approved by NASA back in 2011 and launched in September 2016. It reached its target, the carbonaceous Apollo group asteroid 101955 Bennu, in December 2018. After spending months studying the asteroid and reconnoitring for a suitable sampling location, it selected one in December 2019. After two sampling rehearsals, the spacecraft gathered its sample on October 20th, 2020. In September 2023, the sample finally returned to Earth.
Engineers struggled to open the sample canister for months, but it was all worth it for twice the amount of asteroid they thought they were getting.
Passant Rabie - 15 February 2024
After opening up that stubborn sample canister, NASA was finally able to weigh the full amount of asteroid bits snagged by its spacecraft more than three years ago. As it turns out, there is plenty of space rock that made its way to Earth.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft delivered a total of 4.29 ounces (121.6 grams) of material from asteroid Bennu, which is over twice the mission’s goal, NASA revealed on Thursday.
The space agency had already collected black dust and debris on the avionics deck of the canister, as well as some of the material from inside the canister with tweezers or a scoop, which added up to 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams). After removing the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head, where the bulk of the asteroid sample is stored, the rest of the sample was poured into wedge-shaped containers and weighed in at 1.81 ounces (51.2 grams). Combined together, plus additional particles collected outside of the pour, the total weight is more than double the 60 grams of material needed to meet the mission’s requirements.
https://gizmodo.com/how-much-nasa-osiris-rex-collected-asteroid-space-1851261317
The conditions for life to emerge existed in the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
Anna Washenko - Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 2:35 PM PST
NASA and its partners have published the first wave of information about the samples collected in the OSIRIS-REx mission. “The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons,” NASA said in a press release.
The OSIRIS-REx mission used some pretty fascinating tech to autonomously acquire rocks and dust from an asteroid called Bennu. Asteroids can act as time capsules, and Bennu reflects what was happening in the solar system roughly 4.5 billion years ago. After a total journey of 3.9 billion miles, the capsule returned safely to Earth on September 24, 2023.
One paper about Bennu, appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy, revealed that the samples contained 14 amino acids and five nucleobases also found in life forms on Earth. They also uncovered high levels of ammonia in the Bennu samples, as well as formaldehyde; when those two combine in the proper conditions, they can form complex molecules such as amino acids.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 8 March 2023
Relativity Space called off the first launch attempt of the Terran 1 rocket a little over a half hour before the close of the launch window, joining every other space company in history in not launching their vehicle on the first attempt.
The company has a backup launch window tomorrow, though it’s unclear if they’ll attempt the launch again. (Update: Shortly after concluding the launch livestream, the company said on Twitter that the next launch attempt will be “a few days from now.”) Relativity ended their livestream without disclosing further details as to the cause of the scrub. (Update 2: Relativity later said the launch was called off due to exceeding criteria limits for the thermal conditions of propellant on the second stage.)
Relativity Space is the brain child of Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone, who suspected that they could dramatically decrease launch costs by using innovative 3D-printing techniques and using those techniques to manufacture as many rocket parts as possible.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/08/relativity-scrubs-first-terran-1-launch-attempt/
Watch this one because there won't be many Terran 1 launches.
Eric Berger - 3/22/2023, 7:20 AM
Relativity Space, the ambitious company that aims to additively manufacture the majority of its rockets, will try again to make the debut launch of its Terran 1 vehicle on Wednesday evening from Florida.
The California-based company has a three-hour launch window that opens at 10 pm local time at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (02:00 UTC on Thursday). The current forecast for the launch attempt is splendid, with a 95 percent chance of acceptable conditions, according to the US Space Force officials operating the range.
If recent history is any guide, Wednesday's launch attempt may consume most of the three-hour window. Relativity's first attempt to launch Terran 1, on March 8, was scrubbed near the end of the window due to problems with a fuel-temperature sensor on the second stage. A second attempt three days later did not get off the ground due to an array of issues, including last-second aborts, weather concerns, and a boat in the protected area around the launch site.
Watch live: The third launch attempt of Terran 1 is slated for Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. ET.
George Dvorsky - 22 March 2023
A rocket built primarily from 3D-printed parts could finally take flight today, with Relativity Space targeting a late evening launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. You can catch the action live right here.
Update: 10:33 p.m. ET: A boat—yes a boat—was spotted in the launch range, resulting in a slight delay. Relativity is now targeting a T-0 time of 11:05 p.m. ET.
Update: 9:47 p.m. ET: Relativity is now targeting a T-0 time of 10:38 p.m. ET.
Original article follows.
For California-based Relativity Space, the number of the day is three.
Three, as in 3D-printed rocket, and three, as in the third launch attempt of Terran 1. And should the 9.3-metric-ton rocket successfully reach orbit, the company will take claim to three new records: Relativity Space would become the first private company to deliver its own rocket to orbit on its first flight, while Terran 1 would become the first 3D-printed rocket to reach space and become the first methane-fueled launch vehicle to enter Earth orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/relativity-space-terran-third-launch-attempt-3d-printed-1850252285
Mission named 'Good Luck Have Fun' needed more of both, but launch outfit insists it's a win
Katyanna Quach - Thu 23 Mar 2023 23:00 UTC
The world's 3D-printed rocket, Terran 1, blasted off into the sky but failed to make orbit during its maiden voyage on Wednesday.
Terran 1, built by Relativity Space, flew from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2035 EST (0025 GMT). Plumes of orange and blue flames billowed from the rocket as it ascended on a mission dubbed “Good Luck Have Fun”.
The first few minutes of the flight were fun as the launch launch vehicle made it all the way to main engine cutoff and stage 1 separation.
But then its luck ran out and mission control confirmed a flight anomaly occurred when Terran 1 tried to execute its stage 2 separation, leading to propulsion issues that prevented the rocket from reaching the speed required to reach orbital velocity.
Posted by BeauHD on Friday March 24, 2023 12:00AM
Longtime Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from Space.com:
The Relativity Space rocket, called Terran 1, lifted off from Launch Complex 16 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:25 p.m. EST (0025 GMT on March 23), kicking off a test flight called “Good Luck, Have Fun” (GLHF). Terran 1 performed well initially. For example, it survived Max-Q – the part of flight during which the structural loads are highest on a rocket – and its first and second stages separated successfully. But something went wrong shortly thereafter, at around three minutes into the flight, when the rocket failed to reach orbit.
Terran 1 did notch some important milestones on its first-ever launch, however.
Mike Wall - 23 March 2023
The world's first 3D-printed rocket didn't earn its wings during its launch debut late Wednesday (March 22), but it did notch some important milestones.
The Relativity Space rocket, called Terran 1, lifted off from Launch Complex 16 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:25 p.m. EST (0025 GMT on March 23), kicking off a test flight called “Good Luck, Have Fun” (GLHF).
Terran 1 performed well initially. For example, it survived Max-Q — the part of flight during which the structural loads are highest on a rocket — and its first and second stages separated successfully. But something went wrong shortly thereafter, at around three minutes into the flight, when the rocket failed to reach orbit.
“No one's ever attempted to launch a 3D-printed rocket into orbit, and, while we didn't make it all the way today, we gathered enough data to show that flying 3D-printed rockets is viable,” Relativity Space's Arwa Tizani Kelly said during the company's launch webcast on Wednesday night.
https://www.space.com/relativity-space-terran-1-test-launch-failure
“We were aware of the higher risks attached to this approach.”
Stephen Clark - 8/20/2024, 7:19 AM
The first stage of Rocket Factory Augsburg's first orbital launcher was destroyed in a fireball during a test-firing Monday evening at a spaceport in Scotland, the company said.
The German launch startup aimed to send its first rocket into space later this year and appeared to be running ahead of several competitors in Europe's commercial launch industry that are also developing rockets to deploy small satellites in orbit.
Within the last few months, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) delivered all three stages of its first rocket, named RFA One, to its launch site at SaxaVord Spaceport, located on Unst, one of the Shetland Islands and the northernmost inhabited island in the United Kingdom. The company is based in Augsburg, Germany.
In July, RFA reported it completed acceptance and qualification testing on the rocket's second and third stages, but the first stage had one more major test campaign ahead of it. The first stage fired four of its engines on the launch pad at SaxaVord in May, and over the summer, RFA engineers installed the booster's full complement of nine engines for a full-power test-firing.
Rocket Factory Augsburg says ‘anomaly’ led to ‘the loss of the stage’, adding that there were no injuries
Nadeem Badshah - Mon 19 Aug 2024 19.00 EDT
A rocket company has vowed to return to regular operations “as soon as possible” after an explosion during a test at the UK’s new spaceport in Shetland.
The test was carried out by German company Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) which hopes to make the first UK vertical rocket launch into orbit.
Monday’s nine-engine test, which took place at SaxaVord Spaceport on the island of Unst, was one of the trials due to be carried out before progressing to launch.
RFA said an “anomaly” had led to “the loss of the stage” but there were no injuries.
“The launch pad has been saved and is secured, the situation is under control, and any immediate danger has been mitigated.”
RFA, which is based in Augsburg, Germany, said it was working with the spaceport and authorities to find the cause of the failure.
The company’s spokesperson said: “We develop iteratively with an emphasis on real testing.
It's the first launch since a failure in July.
Steve Dent - 30 August 2020
Rocket Lab has made a successful return to flight following a failure last month. The company’s Electron rocket launched a 100 kg (220 pound) Earth observation satellite from its facility on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand at 11:05 PM EDT on August 30th. That marks the first flight since the company’s failed launch on July 4th, when it lost seven satellites including one from Canon.
The earlier failure was caused by a single faulty electrical connection that ultimately led to the engine’s shutdown a few minutes into the second stage burn. Rocket Lab was able to “reliably replicate” the issue and determined how to avoid a similar problem in future launches.
It can now operate freely from its LC-2 pad in Virginia.
Steve Dent, 2 September 2020
Rocket Lab is on a roll this week. After successfully returning to launch following a failure in July, the company announced that it has received FAA clearance to launch small satellites from its Electron rockets in the US. So far, all its missions have flown from the Launch Complex 1 (LC-1) facility in New Zealand, but it can now officially operate from its LC-2 pad at Wallops Island, Virginia.
Rocket Lab unveiled the Wallops site late in 2018 and had the opening ceremony towards the end of last year. The company also built a third launch complex in New Zealand, all to serve its goal of eventually launching up to 130 Electron rockets per year. It hopes a lot of those will be for US government customers, so the FAA permit is a big step to “streamline the path to orbit and enable responsive space access from US soil,” the company wrote in a press release.
https://www.engadget.com/rocket-lab-gains-faa-approval-to-launch-missions-from-the-us-085515709.html
“Photon” has its own propulsion system and can carry cameras and other instruments.
Steve Dent - 4 September 2020
Rocket Lab recently made a successful return to flight and launched a client satellite from its Electron Rocket, but that’s not all that happened on the mission. The company also secretly launched its own satellite, called Photon, that could one day fly ambitious deep space missions.
Photon is based on Rocket Lab’s “Kick Stage,” which is a mini rocket designed to boost satellite payloads into their final circular orbit once Electron has brought them to space. However, rather than just packing a propulsion system, Photon will carry additional electronics, orientation sensors, power generation units and instruments like cameras. That means that Photon can act as a satellite itself so that clients don’t need to contract third-party providers to design and build them.
“Our team has already started working on upgrades for future recovery missions.”
Eric Berger - 12/1/2020, 3:30 AM
Rocket Lab successfully launched its “Return to Sender” mission 10 days ago. Then, for the first time, the company attempted to recover the Electron booster's first stage from the ocean after this launch, and now Rocket Lab has provided a preliminary assessment of the vehicle's condition.
In summary, the company said in an update on its website, “We couldn't have asked for a better outcome of our first recovery attempt and the team is thrilled.” The rocket came back in such good condition, the company added, “We will re-qualify and re-fly some components.”
Darrell Etherington / 4:07 AM PST•March 1, 2021
The SPAC run is on for space startups, which have been relatively slow in their overall exit pace before the current special purpose acquisitions company merger craze got underway. Rocket Lab is the latest, and likely the most notable to jump on the trend, with a deal that will see it combine with a SPAC called Vector and subsequently list on the Nasdaq under the ticker RKLB, with the transaction expected to close in the second quarter of this year.
Rocket Lab, which got its start in New Zealand, and which still launches rockets there with its HQ now shifted to LA, will have a pro forma enterprise value of $4.1 billion via the transaction, with a total cash balance of $750 million once the deal goes through thanks to a PIPE of $470 million with funds invested via Vector, BlackRock and others. At close, existing Rocket Lab shareholders will retain 82% of the total equity in the combined company.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/01/rocket-lab-to-go-public-via-spac-at-valuation-of-4-1-billion/
Darrell Etherington / 4:23 AM PST•March 1, 2021
Because news of its SPAC-fueled public market debut wasn’t enough, Rocket Lab also unveiled a new class of rocket it has in development on Monday. The launch vehicle, called Neutron, will be able to carry eight metric tons (around 18,000 lbs.) to orbit, far exceeding the cargo capacity of Rocket Lab’s current Electron vehicle, which can host only around 660 lbs. Neutron will also have a fully reusable first-stage, designed to launch on an ocean landing platform, not unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster.
Rocket Lab says that Neutron will be designed to service increased demand from customers launching large multi-satellite constellations. The heavier lift will mean that it can take more small satellites up at one time to get those constellations in orbit more quickly. Its cargo rating also means it should be able to deliver up to 98% of all currently forecasted spacecraft launching through 2029, according to Rocket Lab, and provide resupply services to the International Space Station. Rocket Lab also says it’ll be capable of human spaceflight missions, indicating an ambition to make it the company’s first human-rated spacecraft.
by Jeff Foust — May 15, 2021
Updated 9:30 a.m. Eastern with company statement.
WASHINGTON — A Rocket Lab Electron rocket failed to reach orbit May 15 when its second stage engine shut down seconds after ignition, the second launch failure in less than a year for the company.
The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 7:11 a.m. Eastern. The liftoff was delayed by a little more than an hour because of upper-level winds.
The first stage of the vehicle appeared to perform as expected. The second stage then separated and ignited its single Rutherford engine. However, video from the rocket broadcast on the company’s webcast of the mission showed that engine shutting down seconds later. Telemetry from the launch indicated the vehicle was slowing down before that telemetry was removed from the webcast.
Aria Alamalhodaei / 11:21 AM PDT•May 17, 2021
Rocket Lab may have experienced mission failure and total payload loss during the company’s 20th planned mission on May 15, but it wasn’t all bad news, the company said in an update Monday.
Importantly, the Electron rocket’s first stage — which contains nine Rutherford engines — performed as designed and did not contribute to the flight failure. Rocket Lab further said the first stage completed a successful ocean splashdown using a parachute and that the company was able to retrieve it and bring it back to its production complex.
Rocket Lab was also testing on this mission a redesigned heat shield made out of stainless steel, rather than aluminum, and that also seemed to function well. Testing these reusability system elements was a secondary objective here, as the primary goal is always to deliver the payloads of paying customers, but ultimately reusability could be absolutely crucial to the company’s long-term business.
“We deeply regret the loss of BlackSky's payload.”
Eric Berger - 5/17/2021, 11:49 AM
Rocket Lab said Monday that it is continuing to review data from the flight of its 20th Electron launch, which failed to reach orbit after lifting off on Saturday, May 15.
In a news release on its website, the US-based company said the rocket experienced an anomaly “almost three minutes” into the launch of two BlackSky Global satellites, after the rocket's first and second stages had separated.
“Preliminary data reviews suggest an engine computer detected an issue shortly after stage two engine ignition, causing the computer to command a safe shutdown as it is designed to do,” the company said. “The behavior had not been observed previously during Rocket Lab's extensive ground testing operations, which include multiple engine hot fires and full mission duration stage tests prior to flight.”
Devin Coldewey - 3:15 PM PST February 28, 2022
Rocket Lab has announced the latest expansion of its growing empire of rocket building and launching facilities. While its existing pads in New Zealand and the U.S. will continue to field the company’s smaller Electron rockets, a fresh facility will be built in Virginia to house and eventually launch the much larger Neutron launch vehicle.
The new Neutron Production Complex will be located right inside NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, on a 28-acre plot hosting approximately 250,000 square feet of interior space. It’s a lot of space, but of course rockets are big, and Rocket Lab plans to make quite a lot of them.
Not only will the vehicle assembly take place there, but the specialized carbon composites that make it up will be manufactured on site. Rolls of the stuff will be available fresh from the composites equivalent of a warm oven, ready to wrap around Neutron’s 23-foot girth.
The ambitious mission, happening this month, is part of a plan to develop a reusable orbital launch vehicle.
Kris Holt - April 5th, 2022
Rocket Lab is developing Electron as a reusable orbital launch vehicle and it has revealed details about the next step of the program. After the rocket’s 26th launch, which is scheduled for later this month, the company will attempt to snatch the first stage out of mid-air with a helicopter.
The mission has a 14-day launch window starting on April 19th. Electron is scheduled to lift off from a launchpad in New Zealand and will carry satellites for a number of companies.
Around an hour before launch, the helicopter will move into position approximately 150 miles off the coast. Two and a half minutes after lift off, the first and second stages of the rocket will separate, with the latter carrying the payload to orbit. The first stage will descend back to Earth. It will deploy a drogue parachute at an altitude of 13 km (8.3 miles) and its main parachute at an altitude of roughly 6 km (3.7 miles).
https://www.engadget.com/rocket-lab-electron-mid-air-retreival-helicopter-182512992.html
Rocket Lab’s first-of-its-kind recovery attempt could rescue boosters from watery graves, if successful
Ned Potter - 18 April 2022
The longest journey begins with a single step, and that step gets expensive when you’re in the space business. Take, for example, the Electron booster made by Rocket Lab, a company with two launch pads on the New Zealand coast and another awaiting use in Virginia. Earth’s gravity is so stubborn that, by necessity, two-thirds of the rocket is its first stage—and it has historically ended up as trash on the ocean floor after less than 3 minutes of flight.
Making those boosters reusable—saving them from a saltwater grave, and therefore saving a lot of money—has been a goal of aerospace engineers since the early space age. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has famously been landing its Falcon 9 boosters on drone ships off the Florida coast—mind-bending to watch but very hard to pull off.
Rocket Lab says it has another way. If all goes well, its next flight, currently targeted for 22 April, will carry 34 commercial satellites—and instead of being dropped in the Pacific, the spent first stage will be snared in midair by a helicopter as it descends by parachute. The helicopter will then fly it back to base, seared by the heat of reentry but inwardly intact, for possible refurbishment and reuse.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 4:23 PM PDT September 21, 2022
Rocket Lab is a U.S.-based company, but until now the bulk of its activities have been conducted in New Zealand. While the company has been public about its plans to expand to both hemispheres for a while, executives released a slew of updates on Wednesday detailing their goal to make the U.S. home to even a greater share of launches, testing and manufacturing.
The company shared the news with investors and the general public during Rocket Lab’s Investor Day. While the event livestream hit a technical snafu, Rocket Lab shared all the updates in a long tweet thread concurrent with the event (read it here). Here are a few of the biggest takeaways.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:45 PM PDT November 3, 2022
Rocket Lab is gearing up for a second attempt to catch a rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter, a technique the company is hoping to perfect after a partially successful recovery earlier this year.
The mission, playfully dubbed “Catch Me If You Can,” is scheduled to take place no earlier than November 4 from the company’s launch site on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. The 75-minute launch window opens at 1:15 PM EST. It will be the 32nd Electron launch to date.
The company aims to carry a single science research satellite for the Swedish National Space Agency, provided by OHB Sweden, to sun synchronous orbit. The Mesopheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy satellite will be used to study atmospheric waves and their relationship to wind and weather patterns in different parts of the atmosphere.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/rocket-lab-helicopter-recovery/
The company lost communication with the descending Electron booster and opted to pull its helicopter away from the recovery zone.
Passant Rabie - 4 November 2022 3:27PM
Rocket Lab gave it a second go at its dangerous stunt: catching a rocket mid-air using a large helicopter. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned.
Update 3:20 p.m. ET: Rocket Lab lost communication with its Electron rocket upon its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the company wrote on Twitter. Although there was no helicopter catch attempt, the mission did successfully deploy its payload in orbit and the booster was recovered from the ocean by a vessel.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-helicopter-catch-a-falling-rocket-booster-1849740163
And it should know – having just failed to catch one
Simon Sharwood - Mon 7 Nov 2022 08:45 UTC
Private launch outfit Rocket Lab has again failed to catch one of its Electron launcher's first stages with a helicopter as it floated back to Earth.
“Bringing a rocket back from space is a challenging task and capturing it mid-air with a helicopter is as complex as it sounds,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “The chances for success are much smaller than those for failure because many complex factors must perfectly align.”
Rocket Lab's Electron can carry 300kg to low Earth orbit and has over 30 successful launches to its name. But the craft is not re-usable because its first stage either splashes down into the ocean – which rather makes a mess of its engines – or burns up on re-entry. Rocket Lab has recovered Electron boosters, and has successfully recovered and restored one engine for terrestrial firing tests.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/rocketlab_helicopter_catch_aborted/
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 20, 2022 11:00PM
Aria Alamalhodaei writes via TechCrunch:
We're going to have to wait a little longer for Rocket Lab's American debut. The company, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, was due to launch a trio of satellites for radio-frequency analytics customer HawkEye 360 to orbit from the company's new site at Virginia Space's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. It would've marked the first time a Rocket Lab vehicle has taken off from U.S. soil. But the company said late yesterday that strong upper-levels winds made today – the final day in the launch window – a no-go, pushing the launch to January.
In order to send NASA's ESCAPADE mission to Mars, Blue Origin must launch in September or October.
Stephen Clark - 8/19/2024, 10:16 AM
Two NASA spacecraft built by Rocket Lab are on the road from California to Florida this weekend to begin preparations for launch on Blue Origin's first New Glenn rocket.
These two science probes must launch between late September and mid-October to take advantage of a planetary alignment between Earth and Mars that only happens once every 26 months. NASA tapped Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission with a $20 million contract.
Last November, the space agency confirmed the $79 million ESCAPADE mission will launch on the inaugural flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. With this piece of information, the opaque schedule for Blue Origin's long-delayed first New Glenn mission suddenly became more clear.
The launch period opens on September 29. The two identical Mars-bound spacecraft for the ESCAPADE mission, nicknamed Blue and Gold, are now complete. Rocket Lab announced Friday that its manufacturing team packed the satellites and shipped them from their factory in Long Beach, California. Over the weekend, they arrived at a clean room facility just outside the gates of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians will perform final checkups and load hydrazine fuel into both spacecraft, each a little more than a half-ton in mass.
Then, if Blue Origin is ready, ground teams will connect the ESCAPADE spacecraft with the New Glenn's launch adapter, encapsulate the probes inside the payload fairing, and mount them on top of the rocket.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 11:00 PM PDT•June 27, 2022
fter repeated delays, the microwave oven-sized CubeSat known as CAPSTONE may finally start its long journey to the moon. With this launch, NASA aims to begin the first chapter of its ambitious Artemis program, and lay the groundwork for what would be a first in human history: an orbiting crewed platform around the moon.
Before the crewed platform, which the agency is calling “Gateway,” can launch, NASA is first testing a unique, highly elliptical orbit around the moon. That’s where CAPSTONE, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, comes in. The CubeSat will travel along that exact orbit (called a near-rectilinear halo orbit) for six months, gathering important data for NASA scientists.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/27/watch-rocket-lab-launch-nasas-capstone-mission-to-the-moon-live/
The lunar spacecraft had gone dark for nearly a full day.
Andrew Tarantola - July 6, 2022 11:54 AM
It's been a wild few days for NASA's CAPSTONE mission. Following the lunar satellite's successful launch from Rocket Lab's site on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula, ground control lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after it escaped Earth's gravity well and separated from its Electron rocket carrier on Monday. But after nearly a full day in the dark, NASA announced on Wednesday that its engineers have managed to reopen a line to the 55-pound satellite.
The Moon-bound spacecraft is apparently healthy and gearing up for its first trajectory correction maneuver.
Passant Rabie - 7 July 2022 11:20AM
After going MIA for nearly 24 hours, NASA’s CAPSTONE probe finally reestablished contact with ground controllers. The microwave-sized satellite is currently en route to the Moon where it will test a unique orbital configuration for an upcoming lunar space station.
Ground controllers successfully restored communication with the spacecraft on Wednesday at 9:26 a.m. ET, when the operations team began receiving signals from CAPSTONE, according to Advanced Space, the Colorado-based company which operates the mission for NASA. Approximately one hour later, the team was able to confirm that the spacecraft was healthy and functioning normally. While it was silent, CAPSTONE autonomously performed some tasks, such as maintaining its battery charge, staying pointed in the right direction, and even performing a maneuver to get rid of excess momentum.
https://gizmodo.com/capstone-communications-restored-1849151808
The 55-pound probe entered safe mode during a trajectory correction maneuver on September 8.
George Dvorsky - 12 September 2022 10:41AM
NASA’s CAPSTONE probe has nearly completed its four-month-long journey to the Moon, where it will test a unique halo orbit in preparation for a future space station. Late last week, however, as the probe was performing a course correction maneuver, CAPSTONE entered into safe mode from which it has yet to emerge.
CAPSTONE entered into safe mode during the evening of Thursday, September 8, just as the probe was completing a trajectory correction maneuver. CAPSTONE’s mission team “has good knowledge of the state and status of the spacecraft,” NASA said in a painfully brief statement. “The mission operations team is in contact with the spacecraft and working towards a solution with support from the Deep Space Network. Additional updates will be provided as available.” No further updates have been provided since the statement was published on September 10.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-moonbound-capstone-probe-is-stuck-in-safe-mode-1849524447
The $30 million spacecraft is currently tumbling and in safe mode after a course correction maneuver on September 8.
George Dvorsky - 13 September 2022 11:37AM
Controllers with the CAPSTONE mission are attempting to regain control of the Moon-bound probe, which is currently tumbling, experiencing temperature issues, and unable to use its solar panels to fully recharge its batteries.
In an update issued on Monday, Advanced Space described it as a “dynamic operational situation.” The company is managing the project for NASA, in which the 55-pound (25-kilogram) cubesat will evaluate a unique halo orbit around the Moon in advance of a lunar space station. CAPSTONE, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, launched on June 28 and is in the midst of a four-month journey to the Moon.
https://gizmodo.com/capstone-moon-spacecraft-tumbling-nasa-1849529736
The cubesat is on a mission to test a promising lunar orbit, but it’s been stuck in safe mode and tumbling since late last week.
George Dvorsky - 15 September 2022 4:40PM
A series of technical issues following a third successful course correction maneuver are threatening to sideline NASA’s CAPSTONE mission. Controllers say they’re making progress with the tiny cubesat, but they’re not ready to attempt a recovery operation just yet.
The 55-pound (25-kilogram) satellite ran into difficulties either during or after its third course correction maneuver, which it successfully performed on September 8. CAPSTONE remains on its planned course to a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the Moon, but an unknown technical glitch caused it to enter into a tumble. The probe launched on June 28 and is nearing the end of its four-month journey to the Moon.
https://gizmodo.com/capstone-nasa-moon-nhro-artemis-space-probe-1849541825
Pinging something missing on a network is frustrating enough, imagine if it's out in space
Katyanna Quach - Tue 11 Oct 2022 07:26 UTC
NASA is back in control of its CAPSTONE spacecraft after the lunar orbiter lost power and communications and spent weeks powered down in safe mode while tumbling through the void.
Early last month, soon after the craft completed a trajectory correction maneuver on its way to orbit the Moon, ground control realized the cubesat was now spinning at a rate that its on-board reaction wheels couldn't get in check. It had lost full three-axis attitude control.
Communications-wise, the bird went silent for 24 hours until some telemetry finally got through to Earth. At that point, engineers knew the spacecraft was spinning through space, had lost or was losing power, and was repeatedly rebooting itself. The twirling probe was still pretty much on course for the Moon but had to be brought back to normal working order.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/11/nasa_capstone_moon_satellite/
The NASA-funded probe, following a scary incident several weeks ago, is expected to reach a unique lunar orbit on November 13.
George Dvorsky - 1 November 2022 12:35PM
NASA’s CAPSTONE performed its fourth of six planned trajectory correction maneuvers on Thursday, October 27, setting the stage for the spacecraft’s arrival to an elliptical halo lunar orbit in less than two weeks.
The 55-pound cubesat fired its propulsion system for 220 seconds during the planned maneuver, Advanced Space, the private company managing the mission for NASA, explained in an update. The mission’s fourth trajectory correction maneuver transpired late last week, moving CAPSTONE ever closer to its ultimate destination: the lunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). The probe is expected to reach its operational orbit on November 13.
https://gizmodo.com/capstone-lunar-orbit-course-correction-1849727854
Artemis orbit tester back in the pipe, five by five
Katyanna Quach - Thu 3 Nov 2022 07:32 UTC
NASA has corrected the trajectory of the CAPSTONE cubesat, which is now set to reach lunar orbit on November 13.
Launched in June, the microwave-oven-sized satellite was on course to enter a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon before the spacecraft suffered a glitch that forced it to enter safe mode.
Now that the craft is on track, scientists can test their belief that the lunar NRHO is sufficiently stable to support the future Lunar Gateway lab for astronauts, and CAPSTONE's job is to spend six months taking measurements and probing the orbital mechanics to verify that hypothesis.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/03/nasas_capstone_moon_orbit/
Ongoing glitches aren't preventing the indefatigable probe from laying important groundwork for future lunar missions.
George Dvorsky - 9 February 2023
The NASA-funded CAPSTONE probe has been working in a unique lunar orbit since November 13, 2022, where it’s setting the stage for a future space station and related space-based technologies. The $33 million cubesat appears to be getting the job done—no small miracle, given the endless issues that continue to plague the mission.
Advanced Space, the owner and operator of CAPSTONE, issued a mission update yesterday, highlighting recent achievements and frustrations. Short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, the tiny cubesat has hit a number of key mission objectives since reaching space last June. CAPSTONE’s operational orbit, known as a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), is of interest to NASA and its international partners, as it’s an ideal place for the planned Gateway space station.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-capstone-moon-probe-problems-progress-1850093917
Aria Alamalhodaei - 9 November 2023
Rocket Lab is waiting until Neutron is more technically mature before signing launch contracts with customers, CEO Peter Beck told investors on Wednesday.
The statements provided an inside look on how the space company is thinking about bringing the Neutron next-gen launch vehicle to market – and the lessons learned from selling its first rocket, Electron.
“Until a vehicle is proven and flying, any launch contract that you can sign is basically worthless,” Beck said during a third quarter earnings call. “We can go and sign a launch contract tomorrow with a number of customers, but it will be like, some thousand dollars down and cancellable anytime. But that really doesn’t mean anything.”
Rocket Lab had to offer “really low introductory pricing” with its Electron vehicle when it was unproven, prior to its first commercial flight in 2018.
After two failed attempts last year, the company may just try to recover its reusable rockets from the ocean.
Passant Rabie - 2 March 2023
In a disappointing turn of events, Rocket Lab is reconsidering its daredevil method of trying to catch and recover its Electron boosters mid-air using a helicopter.
During an earnings call on Tuesday, Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck revealed that the company is now thinking about recovering its Electron booster straight from the ocean rather than trying to snag it before it hits the water, SpaceNews reported.
Rocket Lab has been testing out a daring way to recover its rocket’s first stage. As the Electron rocket falls back to Earth with the help of a parachute to slow down its speed, a customized helicopter will be ready to catch it mid-air by hooking onto its parachute line.
The California-based company attempted its mid-air booster catch twice last year. In May, the helicopter managed to catch the booster when it was about 6,500 feet above the Pacific Ocean. The helicopter was then meant to safely transport the booster to shore, but ended up dropping it in the ocean after the pilots noticed different load characteristics than earlier test flights. For the second attempt in November, the company opted to abort the helicopter catch altogether due to a momentary loss of telemetry from the booster.
https://gizmodo.com/rocket-lab-may-bail-using-helicopters-catch-rockets-1850180622
The company's first launch from US soil was pretty—and pretty important.
John Timmer - 1/25/2023, 1:01 PM
Wallops Flight Center, VA – Off in the southwest, the last colors of sunset lit up the rim of the sky, as a crescent Moon and two planets lined up above. It was a gorgeous scene, but one that everyone was ignoring. Instead, all eyes were focused on a bright patch of artificial light on a barrier island a couple of miles away. The lights there were focused on a small, slender needle—small enough to be hauled to the launch pad by a pickup truck.
For years, the Electron rocket and the company behind it had been stuck in limbo at the Virginia launch site, waiting on various approvals—for regulatory agencies to share enough paperwork with each other to convince everyone that the launch was safe. Then weather and the end-of-year holidays kept pushing the launch back. But on Tuesday, everything went as smoothly as it is possible to imagine, and the Electron shot to orbit almost as soon as the launch window opened.
The launch is critical for Rocket Lab, which in some ways invested the future of the company in its Virginia operations. But it's also critical for the launch site, which is billed as a spaceport but hasn't seen much traffic leaving Earth.
The company is no stranger to mystery, secretly launching a few undisclosed payloads in the past.
Passant Rabie - 15 June 2023
NASA’s launch facility in Virginia has been prepped for an upcoming Rocket Lab launch, the details of which are under tight wraps.
Rocket Lab is gearing up for its mystery launch, which is scheduled to take place sometime between June 15 to 20 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. “There is no live stream planned for launch and the Wallops Visitor Center will not be open for launch,” NASA Wallops wrote on Twitter.
The California-based company has not disclosed any information regarding its upcoming launch, although it’s presumed that Rocket Lab will be flying its suborbital testbed rocket for the first time, Space.com first reported.
Rocket Lab’s HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) launch vehicle is set to make its debut in the first half of 2023 for a “confidential customer,” the company had announced earlier in April. HASTE, derived from the company’s Electron rocket, is designed to test hypersonic technologies for vehicles that are capable of traveling at more than five times the speed of sound.
https://gizmodo.com/what-we-know-about-rocket-lab-upcoming-secret-launch-1850544002
Aria Alamalhodaei - 22 June 2023
Rocket Lab’s next Electron mission will include another marine recovery attempt of the rocket’s booster, the latest step by the company to advance its reusability program.
The mission, called “Baby Come Back,” will take off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. The launch window opens no earlier than July 14. As part of the mission, the Electron rocket will carry several customer payloads to space, include a 4 CubeSat mission for NASA; two radio frequency satellites for Spire Global; and a demonstration satellite for Space Flight Laboratory.
The mission for NASA, dubbed Starling, will test “swarm” satellite technologies, including autonomous maneuvering and onboard relative navigation between spacecraft.
Rocket Lab's Electron rocket experienced an anomaly shortly after stage separation, leading to a mission failure and a 20% drop in the company's stock value.
Passant Rabie - 19 September 2023
Rocket Lab’s 41st mission, named “We Will Never Desert You,” ended in failure after its Electron rocket suffered an unspecified anomaly two and a half minutes after launch.
The company’s two-stage launch vehicle lifted off on Tuesday at 2:55 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, carrying a radar imaging satellite by Capella Space. The rocket cleared Max-Q (the moment of most aerodynamic stress), and pulled off a first stage burn and stage separation. Around two minutes and 30 seconds after its launch, however, Electron experienced an issue that resulted in the mission failure, Rocket Lab announced.
https://gizmodo.com/rocket-lab-spacex-competitor-electron-anomaly-capella-1850852196
Electron rocket was lost when reusable first stage separated early this morning
Brandon Vigliarolo - Tue 19 Sep 2023 16:32 UTC
It's back to zero days without incident at Rocket Lab, whose 41st launch ended in failure this morning, breaking a streak that had been going since 2021.
It's not entirely clear what happened from the launch livestream nor a press release confirming the failure, but we know when it happened: around two and a half minutes into launch, as the reusable first stage of the Electron rocket separated from the payload-bearing second stage.
The video feed from the rocket froze followed by silence in the control room. “All stations, we have experienced some anomaly. Remain on station and we will investigate,” a voice said on the intercom, adding that the team was moving to “action B” – its anomaly plan.
Beyond that, it's unknown what went wrong in the early hours of this morning on New Zealand's Māhia Peninsula, only that the rocket's payload, belonging to San Francisco-based Capella Space, was lost.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/19/rocket_lab_mission_failure/
The Electron rocket now has a 90 percent success rate.
Stephen Clark - 9/19/2023, 9:06 AM
Rocket Lab's string of 20 consecutive successful launches ended Tuesday when the company's Electron rocket failed to deliver a small commercial radar imaging satellite into orbit.
The problem occurred on the upper stage of the Electron rocket about two and a half minutes after liftoff from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. This was the fourth time a Rocket Lab mission has failed in 41 flights.
In a statement, Rocket Lab said it is “working closely” with the Federal Aviation Administration and supporting agencies as the company begins an investigation into the cause of the failure. While Rocket Lab launches most of its missions from New Zealand, the company is headquartered in the United States, giving the FAA regulatory oversight authority over failure investigations.
SpaceX rival Rocket Lab is ready for its latest Electron mission, targeting a launch window opening on Thursday, three months after a previous launch failure.
Passant Rabie - 14 December 2023
Despite an unfortunate anomaly nearly three months ago, Rocket Lab is ready to see its Electron rocket fly once again with a new mission slated for launch on Friday.
The California-based company announced that it will launch a new Electron mission no earlier than December 14 during a daily two-hour launch window that opens at 11:00 p.m. ET (December 15 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. NZDT). The rocket is set for liftoff from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand.
Rocket Lab will stream the launch live on its website with the broadcast set to begin 20 minutes before liftoff.
The mission will mark Electron’s comeback following an in-flight anomaly that took place in September. During its last mission, the rocket cleared Max-Q (the moment of most aerodynamic stress) and pulled off a first stage burn and stage separation. Around two minutes and 30 seconds after its launch, however, Electron experienced an issue that resulted in the mission failure and loss of a radar imaging satellite on board.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-rocket-lab-s-next-launch-as-it-seeks-to-re-1851099139
The company's Electron rocket launched four satellites that will monitor orbital traffic to avoid collisions in space.
Passant Rabie - 31 January 2024
Rocket Lab kicked off the year with the launch and recovery of its Electron rocket as part of the company’s continued efforts to reuse its small launch vehicle’s first stage.
Electron lifted off on Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. ET from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula, carrying the first four Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites for NorthStar. The rocket deployed the satellites to a 329 mile (530 kilometer) circular Earth orbit, from which they are designed to keep track of objects in space and deliver collision avoidance, navigation, and proximity alert.
https://gizmodo.com/rocket-lab-electron-reusability-satellite-launch-1851213493
NASA is in desperate need of an alternative plan for its Mars Sample Return, and is hoping the private industry can salvage its ambitious mission.
Passant Rabie - October 7, 2024
For more than three years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been roaming the Martian landscape, collecting bits and pieces of rocks to be probed by scientists here on Earth. The space agency had come up with an elaborate plan to fly those samples from the Red Planet to Earth using a fleet of robots, but it later became obvious that NASA was having trouble executing the return part of its mission. Now, NASA is turning to space company Rocket Lab for ideas on how to bring back rock samples from Mars with a more cost-effective and timely plan.
NASA selected Rocket Lab, the space industry’s rising star, to offer an alternative way to retrieve rock samples from the Martian surface and bring them to Earth. The company has been assigned with the task of developing an end-to-end mission concept for a fraction of the projected cost of NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission that can be completed several years earlier than the space agency’s current timeline, Rocket Lab announced.
https://gizmodo.com/can-rocket-lab-save-nasas-mission-to-bring-pieces-of-mars-to-earth-2000508381
Devin Coldewey - 4:12 PM PST•December 1, 2022
Launch provider Rocket Lab is establishing a subsidiary to handle its sensitive U.S. government business, like launching spysats and experimental military spacecraft. Rocket Lab National Security LLC will handle most of the Defense Department stuff going forward to save the rest of the company a bit of grief.
The main arm of Rocket Lab, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it the body, has done plenty of business with the U.S. government already, putting tests from DARPA and the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit. It’s kind of inevitable if you’re a launch provider — governments in general are big customers, and the U.S. in particular.
But wow, you want to talk about picky? Try getting a contract to launch a top-secret satellite that costs $200 million! There are all kinds of hoops you have to jump through. But when they want to launch right away, price is no object — as if you’ve just got rockets lying around!
Is there still a path to Vulcan flying a national security mission in 2023?
Eric Berger - 3/24/2023, 6:40 AM
The long-awaited debut of a winged space plane will have to wait a little longer. This week NASA updated its internal schedule to show that Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spacecraft will now dock to the International Space Station no earlier than December 17, 2023.
Previously, Sierra Space had been publicly targeting a launch of Dream Chaser in August, on board United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket.
In a statement to Ars, Sierra Space confirmed the delay. “Sierra Space’s plan is to complete the first launch of Dream Chaser by the end of the 4th quarter this year,” the company said.
The latest delay will cause mild concern for NASA, as it means that beginning this summer the US segment of the space station will be reliant on the Falcon 9 rocket alone for cargo supply missions. This is because in addition to ferrying SpaceX's Cargo Dragon to the station, Northrop Grumman's cargo-carrying Cygnus will start launching on the Falcon 9 later this year.
Sierra Space's Dream Chaser vehicle just completed a vital test ahead of its much-anticipated debut.
Passant Rabie - 1 June 2023
Sierra Space fired up its spaceplane in its assembly facility for the first time, signifying that the Dream Chaser shuttle could soon be ready for its first mission to low Earth orbit.
The Colorado-based company announced on Wednesday that it had successfully completed the first power-up of its Dream Chaser spaceplane. During the test, engineers simulated the power that would otherwise be generated by Dream Chaser’s solar arrays once the spaceplane is in orbit and its systems are turned on.
“This is a milestone that points to the future and is a key moment in a long journey for Dream Chaser.” Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space, said in the company’s statement. “With this significant achievement, our Dream Chaser spaceplane is poised to redefine commercial space travel, opening up new possibilities for scientific research, technological advancements, and economic opportunities in space.”
https://gizmodo.com/we-ve-got-power-dream-chaser-spaceplane-aces-critical-1850495336
Spaceplane to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center for launch on a Vulcan Centaur
Richard Speed - Fri 10 May 2024 17:05 UTC
The Dream Chaser spaceplane, named Tenacity, and its Shooting Star cargo companion, is to be shipped to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for a final round of checks before integration ahead of its inaugural launch atop ULA's second Vulcan Centaur rocket.
It's been a while coming. The spaceplane was one of a trio of vehicles selected for NASA's $14 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) contract in 2016. The others, SpaceX's Dragon and the Cygnus from Orbital ATK (acquired in 2018 by Northrop Grumman), were already operational by then, but this will be the first launch into space for Tenacity.
Dream Chaser is a reusable, uncrewed cargo freighter capable of gliding back to a runway landing. It is accompanied by an expendable Shooting Star module to carry additional pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). The Shooting Star can also be loaded with waste to burn up in the atmosphere.
Sierra Space harbors hope that the Dream Chaser will evolve into a crewed spacecraft, but its immediate task is dealing with the ISS resupply missions for which it has been contracted. A second spaceplane, named Reverence, is currently in production.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/10/dream_chaser_set_to_take/
The next-generation vehicle has been a long time in the making, but it likely won't meet its launch deadline in 2025.
Passant Rabie - August 5, 2025
The highly anticipated launch of the Dream Chaser spaceplane may be delayed yet again as Sierra Space continues to test its experimental vehicle.
The inaugural Dream Chaser, named Tenacity, is slated for a launch date in 2025. However, recent comments by a NASA official revealed that there’s a lot more work to be done before the spaceplane is ready to fly to the International Space Station and that it’s highly unlikely to meet its deadline.
“We still have some of our integrated safety reviews to do, and we’re in the process with updating both of our schedules to try to understand where does that really put us,” Dana Weigel, the program manager for the ISS, said during a recent media briefing, according to Aerospace America. “Sierra’s working on that, and so I need to wait and just get information back from them to see where they think some of that work lines out.”
Dream Chaser has been years in the making. NASA awarded Sierra Space a Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract in 2016 to provide at least seven cargo deliveries to the ISS. The Colorado-based company originally intended for Dream Chaser’s inaugural flight to take place in 2020, but the spaceplane suffered several delays due to technical issues and certification hurdles. Although its 2025 launch date still appears on NASA’s schedule, Weigel’s recent comments don’t sound too promising.
https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-first-commercial-spaceplane-wont-be-launching-anytime-soon-2000639097
Sierra Space's Ghost delivery platform is now in beta testing.
George Dvorsky - 18 April 2024
Back in the 1980s, FedEx had a great tagline: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” Well, in situations like ground conflicts and disaster scenarios, that’s not good enough. Recognizing the need for an ultra-fast delivery service, Colorado-based Sierra Space is currently developing a system to deliver supplies to virtually any spot on Earth in just 90 minutes.
Sierra Space has a bunch of cool projects on the go right now, including its Dream Chaser spaceplane and a planned commercial space station. Last week, the company caught the industry by surprise when it announced yet another ambitious project—a new platform called Ghost. The “revolutionary new logistics spacecraft,” the company claims, will serve as a “cutting-edge thermal protection system tailored for the safe return of small payloads from space.” The space logistics project is designed to provide on-demand courier services for a variety of clients, including national security operations and aid during natural disasters.
https://gizmodo.com/sierra-space-ghost-delivery-platform-90-minutes-1851420007
Darrell Etherington / 4:25 am PDT•August 31, 2020
SpaceX performed a milestone first polar orbit launch of a satellite from its East Coast launch facility at Cape Canaveral on Sunday. The Falcon 9 mission carried three payloads, including a SAOCOM-1B synthetic aperture radar satellite which was flown on behalf of the Argentine space agency, and two small satellites for clients Tyvack and PlanetiQ.
The launch took place at 7:18 PM EDT from Florida, and used a first-stage booster that SpaceX previously flew on two separate commercial resupply missions on behalf of NASA for the international Space Station, as well as one of SpaceX’s recent Starlink internet satellite launches. SpaceX also recovered the booster again with a controlled landing back at their landing site at Cape Canaveral.
Darrell Etherington / 5:09 am PDT•October 6, 2020
SpaceX has launched yet another flight of 60 of its Starlink broadband internet satellites. The launch took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:29 AM EDT (4:29 AM PDT) this morning, after having been delayed three times earlier due to scrubs – twice because of weather, and one because of an unusual sensor reading. This is the 12 Starlink mission to date, and it means that over 700 of the SpaceX satellites have now been launched.
The mission included reuse of a Falcon 9 booster stage that had previously flown on two separate missions, including the Crew Dragon Demo-2 launch that carried SpaceX’s first human crew – NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. SpaceX successfully recovered the booster with a controlled landing on its ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ drone ship at sea for this mission, too. A recovery of the fairing halves using different recovery ships was also attempted – with one half caught by a ship as planned, while the second missed and fell into the Ocean, but SpaceX will also attempt to fish that part out.
Darrell Etherington / 3:46 PM PST•November 5, 2020
Tesla has launched a GPS III satellite on behalf of customer the U.S. Space Force, the second GPS III generation satellite it has launched for the U.S. military this year. The first took off in June, and was the third overall GPS III put in orbit by SpaceX . This is the fourth, and will provide improved GPS navigation capabilities to the U.S., including improved jamming technology to protect against interference.
SpaceX used a brand new Falcon 9 first-stage on this launch, and successfully recovered that rocket booster using a controlled landing on its drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The company also confirmed that its payload achieved good orbit, and it’s now in the process of making its way to the deployment point where it can release the GPS spacecraft for its final orbital insertion.
Weather currently is expected to be 60 percent favorable for a launch.
Eric Berger - 11/5/2020, 4:04 PM
Update 6:50pm EST : Right at the top of its launch window, a brand-new Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida on Thursday evening. The rocket appeared to soar through its first-stage flight without any issues, dropping its GPS III payload into a parking orbit. The first stage then returned to Earth and safely landed on a drone ship. This was SpaceX's 20th launch of 2020.
Pending a review of engine data from this launch, it is likely that NASA and SpaceX will clear the Falcon 9 for flight and press ahead with the Crew-1 mission on November 14.
The Block 5 variant has been a true workhorse.
Eric Berger - 12/7/2020, 7:54 AM
On Sunday, a thrice-flown rocket took to the skies for the fourth time, lofting a Dragon spacecraft that will ferry a few tons of cargo toward the International Space Station.
This particular Falcon 9 rocket first stage had only made its first flight on May 30, with the historic launch of NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. Six months later, this booster, numbered B1058, was already making its fourth flight into space. A few minutes after launching, the first stage made a successful landing on a drone ship and will likely fly again early next year.
March 2020 - Revision 1.0
SpaceX successfully launched and flew the spacecraft before it exploded while landing.
Richard Lawler - 9 December 2020
SpaceX is finally close to performing a high-altitude test flight for a prototype of its Starship vehicle, after yesterday’s attempt was scrubbed by an auto-abort from its Raptor engines. The company is ready to try again today, and came within a couple of minutes of launching earlier before pausing the countdown and restarting.
Now the SpaceX live stream says it’s targeting a launch time of 5:40 PM ET, and if everything goes well then we will see Starship SN8 fly to an altitude of 12.5 km (41,000 feet) and attempt a record-setting “landing flip maneuver” on its way back to the base in Boca Chica, TX. For a more detailed way to follow the action, the enthusiasts at NASA Spaceflight also have a live feed that broadcasts from multiple angles with live commentary.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-starship-test-flight-223637824.html
Darrell Etherington / 2:56 PM PST•December 9, 2020
SpaceX is one step closer to replacing its Falcon line of active duty spacecraft: Its Starship prototype “SN8” achieved a major milestone in the ongoing spacecraft’s development program, flying to a height of around 40,000 feet at SpaceX’s development facility in southern Texas.
One of the Starship’s three Raptor engines cut off around two minutes into flight, but the prototype rocket continued its ascent. Then at around three minutes, another extinguished, leaving just one lit and firing. The rocket continued to climb, oriented upward, but it was hard to tell from the feed exactly how high it reached. The third flared out at around 4:30 into the mission, and the Starship oriented into a horizontal position, angling back toward Earth but effectively flat on its belly, gliding.
“Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!”
Eric Berger - 12/9/2020, 4:19 PM
As the Sun sunk toward the South Texas horizon, a fantastical-looking spaceship rose into the reddening sky.
It was, in a word, epic.
Powered by three Raptor rocket engines, SpaceX's 50-meter-tall Starship vehicle climbed out over the Gulf of Mexico. After a couple of minutes, one by one, the Raptor engines blinked off by design. It was not immediately clear how high Starship reached, but the craft appeared to come close to the 12.5km ceiling on the flight test.
At this apogee, Starship faced what may have been its most critical test—using reaction control thrusters to perform was has become known as a “belly flop” so the vehicle can return to Earth at an angle of attack of about 70 degrees. This maneuver is critical for a Starship returning from orbit, both to bleed off velocity as well as ensure its reusability without a massive heat shield. Starship nailed this move, smooth as soft butter.
Today may determine the fate of SN8.
Eric Berger - 12/8/2020, 7:01 AM
5:45pm EST Update: SpaceX counted down toward the first high-altitude launch of its Starship vehicle on Tuesday, but its main engines aborted the attempt at T-1.3 seconds. It is not clear whether there was an issue with one or more of the Raptor engines or if a sensor detected some problem elsewhere in the rocket to automatically trigger the abort.
If this issue can be diagnosed and addressed, SpaceX has a back-up opportunity on Wednesday, during the daylight hours in Texas, to try again. The window runs from 8am CT (14:00 UTC) to 5pm (23:00 UTC). Fortunately, weather appears to be exceptional on Wednesday.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/spacex-says-it-will-attempt-starships-big-hop-on-tuesday/
Test flight took candidate Mars trip rocket to new heights
Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor - Thu 10 Dec 2020 / 05:57 UTC
Videos SpaceX has conducted a test of the Starship it plans to use for crewed flights to Mars, and while the experiment ended badly, the trip was judged a success.
Wednesday's flight used just the Starship – the second stage of SpaceX's planned heavy lifter. Previous flights had seen the craft ascend to around 500 feet. This time around the goal was a high-altitude test that would take it to 41,000 feet, before returning to terra firma to prove its reusability.
As the video below shows, the vehicle lifted off (at around 1:48:00) and then came down belly-first before pivoting for landing (1:53:00).
https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/spacex_starship_launch_fiery_end/
Posted by EditorDavid on Monday February 01, 2021 12:34AM
The Verge reports that SpaceX's first high-altitude test flight of its Starship rocket, “which launched successfully but exploded in a botched landing attempt in December, violated the terms of its Federal Aviation Administration test license, according to two people familiar with the incident.”
Both the landing explosion and license violation prompted a formal investigation by the FAA, driving regulators to put extra scrutiny on Elon Musk's hasty Mars rocket test campaign. The so-called mishap investigation was opened that week, focusing not only on the explosive landing but on SpaceX's refusal to stick to the terms of what the FAA authorized, the two people said. It was unclear what part of the test flight violated the FAA license, and an FAA spokesman declined to specify in a statement to The Verge.
It's time to see if SN9 can stick the landing in South Texas.
Eric Berger - 2/2/2021, 10:30 AM
4pm ET Update: SpaceX's SN9 prototype took off from its launch site on Tuesday afternoon and made what appeared to be a nominal flight to an altitude of 10km. The rocket then executed its belly flop maneuver before nearing the ground. However, it seems that one of the two Raptor rocket engines required for the landing did not relight, so the rocket crashed.
The next prototype on a launch stand nearby, SN10, was not harmed. It will probably fly a similar mission in a few weeks to see if SpaceX can stick the landing this time.
George Dvorsky - Feb 4, 2021 1:00PM
The explosive crash of a SpaceX prototype Starship rocket this week has prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to oversee an investigation into the incident. The news follows recent reports that SpaceX violated federal safety regulations late last year.
An FAA spokesperson told CNN through a statement that the investigation will “identify the root cause” of the “mishap” and explore “possible opportunities to further enhance safety as the program develops.”
https://gizmodo.com/faa-to-oversee-investigation-of-crashed-spacex-starship-1846197618
The SN8 case ended in a settlement.
Jon Fingas - 02.21.21
The regulatory drama around SpaceX's recent Starship launches has simmered down. CNN's Jackie Wattles and The Verge have learned that the FAA ended its investigations into the SN8 and SN9 launches. SpaceX and the FAA “settled” concerns over the license for SN8, Wattles said. Officials ended the SN9 investigation after determining that the rocket's fiery death occurred “within the bounds” of the FAA's safety criteria and didn't threaten the public.
The FAA's SN9 investigation was a routine response to a failure, Wattles added. Officials are also looking into the botched Falcon 9 landing from the latest Starlink mission, but that won't necessarily lead to trouble for SpaceX.
https://www.engadget.com/faa-ends-spacex-starship-sn8-sn9-investiations-220025441.html
Alyse Stanley - Sunday, 21 February 2021 8:10PM
The Federal Aviation Administration has ended its investigations into SpaceX’s last two Starship prototype tests, dubbed SN8 and SN9, according to CNN’s Jackie Wattles. News of the federal probes threw the launch of SpaceX’s SN10 prototype into legal limbo, but on Sunday CEO Elon Musk seemed confident that the matter has been resolved, tweeting that there’s a “good chance of flying this week!”
Last month, news surfaced that SpaceX violated its launch license with its SN8 high-altitude test flight in December, which prompted a formal investigation by the FAA. The agency denied SpaceX’s proposed updates to its license and didn’t greenlight the launch, but the company went ahead with it anyway, CNET reported. The rocket launched successfully but then exploded during a landing attempt. An FAA spokesperson now says the SN8 matter—i.e., their investigation into the license breaking, they were apparently fine with the whole explosion part—has since been settled, according to a tweet from Wattles this week.
https://gizmodo.com/faa-ends-investigations-into-crashed-spacex-starship-pr-1846322101
Darrell Etherington / 3:24 PM PST•March 3, 2021
SpaceX has launched SN10 — the tenth iteration of its current prototype series of Starship, the heavy-lift reusable spacecraft it’s developing. Starship SN10 took off from Boca Chica, Texas, where SpaceX is developing the vehicle. It flew to a height of roughly 10 km, or 32,000 feet, before performing a maneuver to re-orient itself for a friction-assisted landing descent.
Unlike the last two Starship prototypes to fly this high, however, the roughly six-minute flight did not end in a fireball [UPDATE: Well, not immediately. The rocket did blow up while stationary on the landing pad a few minutes after landing, potentially due to a leak]. Instead, it completed its landing flip maneuver as intended and slowed itself for a soft touchdown, with the rocket remaining vertical and intact afterwards.
Dishes will be modified for vehicles, vessels, and aircraft, SpaceX tells FCC.
Jon Brodkin - 3/8/2021, 1:47 PM
Update 6 pm EST: Although a SpaceX filing said that Starlink terminals could be deployed “on passenger cars,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk indicated on Twitter today that passenger cars are not in the plan. “Not connecting Tesla cars to Starlink, as our terminal is much too big. This is for aircraft, ships, large trucks & RVs,” he wrote.
Original story 4:47 pm EST (with some edits to reflect Musk's tweet):
SpaceX on Friday asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to deploy Starlink satellite broadband to moving vehicles.
The application describes SpaceX's plans for Earth Stations in Motion (ESIMs) for automobiles, ships, and aircraft. SpaceX said it is “seek[ing] authority to deploy and operate these earth stations… throughout the United States and its territories… in the territorial waters of the United States and throughout international waters worldwide, and… on US-registered aircraft operating worldwide and non-US-registered aircraft operating in US airspace.”
“Granting this application would serve the public interest by authorizing a new class of ground-based components for SpaceX's satellite system that will expand the range of broadband capabilities available to moving vehicles throughout the United States and to moving vessels and aircraft worldwide,” SpaceX told the FCC. Internet users are no longer “willing to forego connectivity while on the move, whether driving a truck across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a US port, or while on a domestic or international flight,” SpaceX said.
The company will have two orbital, and two suborbital launch pads.
Eric Berger - 3/8/2021, 6:40 AM
As part of a federal review process for its plans in South Texas, details of SpaceX's proposed spaceport have been made public. They were posted late last week in a public notice from the US Army Corps of engineers, which is soliciting public comments on the changes.
Most notably, the new documents include a detailed architectural drawing of the multi-acre site at the southern tip of Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico. The major hardware that exists or will be built includes:
What is striking about this architectural drawing is its compact nature, largely because SpaceX has limited land to work with at the facility and must include stormwater ponds to mitigate against flooding. All of these facilities will be concentrated within a couple dozen acres, which is in stark contrast to more expansive launch sites in Florida at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Page: Sats.Falcon9 - Last Modified : Tue, 16 Mar 21
S-band downlink signal spectrum
The Falcon 9 has come to dominate commercial satellite launches.
Eric Berger - 3/22/2021, 8:24 AM
A little more than a week ago, the European Space Agency announced an initiative to study “future space transportation solutions.” Basically, the agency provided about $600,000, each, to three companies—ArianeGroup, Avio, and Rocket Factory Augsburg—to study competitive launch systems from 2030 onward.
This initiative would allow Europe to understand and prepare for the future of space launch, said Daniel Neuenschwander, director of space transportation for the space agency. It “lays the foundations that enable us to prepare the future beyond Ariane 6 and Vega-C,” he said. “These system concept studies will include services that prioritize the future needs of Europe’s space programs but also allow us to address global market needs.”
This was the company's fourth attempt to land a full-size Starship.
Eric Berger - 3/30/2021, 7:12 AM
Despite a thickly fogged launch site in South Texas, SpaceX let its SN11 Starship prototype fly on Tuesday morning at 8 am local time.
An onboard camera showed the vehicle making a nominal ascent to about 10 km, shutting off its three Raptor rocket engines in turn. As the vehicle ascended, it cleared the low cloud deck into blue skies. Starship then hovered before beginning its return to Earth.
The camera attached to the Starship vehicle's exterior provided imagery during the descent, which appeared to be fairly smooth as the vehicle “flopped” over and oriented itself to come back through the thickening atmosphere. During three previous high-altitude flights, Starship prototypes have performed this graceful maneuver without much apparent difficulty.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday April 03, 2021 06:34PM
180 miles east of Seattle, “A pressure vessel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage fell on a man's farm in Washington State last week,” reports the Verge, “leaving a '4-inch dent in the soil,' the local sheriff's office said Friday.”
Space.com reports:
Although Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered 60 Starlink satellites to orbit last month, the rocket's second stage didn't deorbit properly after completing the mission. The second stage is the smaller, upper part of the Falcon 9 rocket that separates from the main booster to take satellites to their intended orbit. While the main booster returns to Earth for a landing (so SpaceX can refurbish and reuse it on future launches), once the second stage has completed its role in the mission, it is either intentionally destroyed or left to linger in orbit.
Darrell Etherington / 5:32 am PDT•August 17, 2020
SpaceX is preparing for yet another launch of Starlink satellites on Tuesday — its tenth launch of production versions of the satellites to date. In addition to 58 Starlink satellites, the Falcon 9 flying the mission will also carry three Planet satellites — and it’ll be the sixth time this particular rocket booster has made the trip, marking a record-breaking achievement for SpaceX.
The first-stage booster used on Tuesday’s mission has flown on three previous SpaceX Starlink missions, as well as two other launches to carry satellites for SpaceX customers Telstar and Iridium . SpaceX will also be attempting to land the booster in order to recover it again, which would be another record-breaking achievement for the company.
This booster's career began nearly two years ago.
Eric Berger - 8/18/2020, 6:09 AM
11am ET Update: Right on schedule, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida on Tuesday morning at 10:31am local time. As this first stage made its sixth flight, a record for liquid-fueled first stages, all appeared nominal with the mission. A few minutes later the Falcon 9 first stage touched down on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket's upper stage has already deployed three small satellites for Planet, and is now en route to drop off 58 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.
Original post: Let's spare a moment of thought for B1049, a Falcon 9 first-stage booster that made its debut in September 2018 by launching the Telstar 18V commercial mission. Then, in January 2019, the core launched another commercial mission, sending a passel of Iridium satellites into space.
Darrell Etherington / 7:41 am PDT•August 18, 2020
SpaceX has successfully launched 58 more Starlink satellites for its growing internet broadband constellation. This is the eleventh batch of Starlink satellites to go up, bringing the total on orbit to well over 600. Today’s mission also carried three Planet satellites, and used a Falcon 9 first-stage booster that broke a record by flying for the sixth time.
The launch took place at 10:31 AM EDT (7:31 AM PDT) from SpaceX’s launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It also included a recovery attempt for the record-setting reused booster, which performed a sixth landing (also record setting) at sea on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” floating drone landing barge. That successful recovery means that the booster can potentially be used yet again, breaking its own record set today.
The Ariane 6 was designed to be more cost effective to fly.
Eric Berger - 11/2/2020, 7:24 AM
European space officials announced late last week that the debut of the Ariane 6 rocket will be delayed again—this time until the second quarter of 2022.
This large rocket, which has a roughly comparable lift capacity to SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, was originally due to launch before the end of 2020. In May of this year, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Space Agency acknowledged the debut launch would slip into 2021.
Now, during a teleconference with reporters, European officials said they're targeting the period of April through June 2022 for the first Ariane 6 flight. Again, they cited the global pandemic that has affected both activities at development facilities in Europe and the rocket's launch site in French Guiana. “We can say today that COVID-19 has led to an extension of activities on the critical path,” said Daniel Neuenschwander, the director of space transportation at the European Space Agency
Charter also wins big; FCC fund will bring service to 5.2M homes and businesses.
Jon Brodkin - 12/7/2020, 10:43 AM
SpaceX has been awarded $885.51 million by the Federal Communications Commission to provide Starlink broadband to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. The satellite provider was one of the biggest winners in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, the results of which were released today. Funding is distributed over 10 years, so SpaceX's haul will amount to a little over $88.5 million per year.
Charter Communications, the second-largest US cable company after Comcast, did even better. Charter is set to receive $1.22 billion over 10 years to bring service to 1.06 million homes and businesses in 24 states.
By Iqtidar Ali - January 25, 2021
Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Port Sation, Florida — SpaceX made history again by sending a record number of 143 satellites on a single mission to the lower Earth orbit yesterday. The record was previously held by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with 103 satellites on a single launch.
Among these were 10 SpaceX Starlink satellites that are deployed to the Polar Orbit (see animation below for explanation). This will make high-speed internet available in the most remote polar locations of our planet.
https://www.teslaoracle.com/2021/01/25/spacx-record-143-satellites-laser-starlinks/
“All of the resistance, that is going to be gradually disappearing.”
Eric Berger - 4/9/2021, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 3.40 of the Rocket Report! There were fewer announcements in the realm of launch this week, but that doesn't mean we lack stories for this report. These include interesting developments on the international front, from the closure of a Russian space tourism company to some fairly serious ethical issues surrounding development of a spaceport in Brazil.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Darrell Etherington / 11:35 AM PDT•April 29, 2021
SpaceX is continuing its Starship spacecraft testing and development program apace, and as of this afternoon it has authorization from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct its next three test flights from its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. Approvals for prior launch tests have been one-offs, but the FAA said in a statement that it’s approving these in a batch because “SpaceX is making few changes to the launch vehicle and relied on the FAA’s approved methodology to calculate the risk to the public.”
SpaceX is set to launch its SN15 test Starship as early as this week, with the condition that an FAA inspector be present at the time of the launch at the facility in Boca Chica. The regulator says that it has sent an inspector, who is expected to arrive today, which could pave the way for a potential launch attempt in the next couple of days.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/29/faa-authorizes-spacexs-next-three-starship-test-launches/
Darrell Etherington / 12:32 PM PDT•May 4, 2021
SpaceX has launched 60 more of its Starlink internet broadband satellites — on “Star Wars Day,” no less, and only five days after it launched the last batch. The company has now delivered 420 Starlink satellites since the beginning of March, a sum that the SpaceX CEO and founder must not be aware of because he definitely would’ve tweeted about it by now if he was.
This launch took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 3:01 PM ET (12:01 PM PT), and used a re-used Falcon 9 booster that has flown eight times previously. That booster also landed back on SpaceX’s floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, tying the record for SpaceX’s reusable flight program in terms of flying resumed boosters, which it just set in March. This is the company’s 115th Falcon 9 launch so far.
No explosions so far.
Richard Lawler - May 5th, 2021
It appears that SpaceX has managed its first successful launch and landing sequence of a Starship prototype, as SN15 took off Wednesday afternoon and returned to the pad in Boca Chica, TX. It landed in one piece and as the official live stream ended there's still a small methane fire at the base, but so far has remained intact.
Elon Musk tweeted “Starship landing nominal” as he prepares for his appearance on Saturday Night Live, and a stream from observers in the area shows that SN15 continues to stand on the pad.
Given that it's meant to be the basis for a lunar lander, landing it is good.
John Timmer - 5/5/2021, 3:55 PM
By now, many readers are familiar with SpaceX's Starship tests. The rocket makes its way skyward and performs maneuvers that seem like impossibilities to a generation raised on rockets that simply shot things to orbit. These maneuvers are followed by an ungainly looking float toward the Earth below, which ends in a sudden lurch as the rocket struggles to a vertical orientation and tries to lose speed.
In general, this has been followed by a dramatic explosion as one aspect or another of the incredibly complex series of events required doesn't work quite right. The biggest exception was one case where that explosion waited for several minutes after the rocket's landing.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/spacex-successfully-lands-a-starship-test-flight/
“This bill, in the main, is not supposed to be about space.”
Eric Berger - 5/13/2021, 7:44 AM
On Wednesday, a US senator added an amendment to unrelated science legislation that would impose significant restrictions on NASA and its plans to return to the Moon.
The amendment (see document) was spurred by NASA's decision in April to select SpaceX as its sole provider of a human landing system for the Artemis Program. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from the state of Washington, where Blue Origin is based, authored the legislation. Owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin led a lunar lander bid that was rejected by NASA.
The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation passed the amendment without any debate, adding the NASA changes to the Endless Frontier Act, a bill to keep US scientific and technology innovation competitive with China and other countries.
George Dvorsky - 17 May 2021 1:44PM
SpaceX has demonstrated its ability to land Starship, but the company still needs to send the prototype rocket into space and have it survive reentry. Here’s how SpaceX envisions the first orbital test of its futuristic system—and what could go wrong.
With the successful vertical landing of the SN15 prototype on May 5, SpaceX is now looking ahead to the next testing milestone: space itself. On May 13, the company submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission for a communications license to support an “experimental orbital demo” and “recovery test” of the Starship vehicle following a launch from the SpaceX test facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-lays-out-plan-for-first-starship-orbital-test-fl-1846909480
Aria Alamalhodaei / 9:49 AM PDT•August 9, 2021
SpaceX will be acquiring satellite connectivity startup Swarm Technologies, the first such deal for the 19-year-old space company headed by Elon Musk.
Swarm operates a constellation of 120 sandwich-sized satellites as well as a ground station network. The deal would transfer control of Swarm’s ground and space licenses to SpaceX, in addition to any licenses pending before the commission. If the transaction is approved, the startup would become a “direct wholly-owned subsidiary” of the larger company.
The acquisition, which was reported in under-the-radar filings with the Federal Communications Commission, marks a sharp departure from the launch giant’s established strategy of internally developing its tech.
The deal was reportedly reached between the two companies on July 16. The FCC filings do not disclose any financial details or terms of the transaction. Neither SpaceX nor Swarm could be reached for comment.
September 1, 2021 - Stephen Clark
The four private citizens who will fly into orbit later this month on a chartered SpaceX capsule visited their spaceship at Cape Canaveral this week for fit checks.
On Wednesday, officials released the first pictures of the cupola window attached to the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, a new addition that will offer the crew expansive views of planet Earth from an altitude of more than 350 miles.
The four-person crew, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman, put on their SpaceX-made flight suits and strapped into the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft Monday inside SpaceX’s Dragon processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The mission is called Inspiration4, and it will be the first fully commercial human spaceflight to orbit Earth, without a professional government-employed astronaut on-board. The mission is the centerpiece of a charity-focused project designed in part to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a nonprofit institution devoted to treating children with cancer and other pediatric diseases.
Starship might eventually be cheaper to run than Falcon 9, too.
Jon Fingas - November 18th, 2021
SpaceX's hopes for a timely Starship orbital flight haven't gone according to plan, to put it mildly, but there might be hope on the horizon. According to TechCrunch, Elon Musk told a joint meeting of space research boards that his company is aiming for the first Starship orbital flight in January 2022. The chief executive was quick to admit there was a “lot of risk” and that SpaceX might not succeed, but he figured the team would at least make “a lot of progress.”
There could be around a dozen further launches in 2022, Musk added. The timing also hinges on an FAA environmental impact review of SpaceX's Boca Chica launch facility. The agency intends to finish its review before the end of 2021, but a delay might push back upcoming Starship launches.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-starship-orbital-flight-january-144550856.html
Musk advised employees to work over the weekend after reading Raptor engine production issues were far worse than previously thought.
Mack DeGeurin - 30 November 2021 5:40PM
SpaceX employees received a nightmare email over the holiday weekend from CEO Elon Musk, warning them of a brewing crisis with its Raptor engine production that, if unsolved, could result in the company’s bankruptcy. The email, obtained by SpaceExplored, CNBC, and The Verge, urged employees to work over the weekend in a desperate attempt to increase production of the engine meant to power its next-generation Starship launch vehicle.
“Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk reportedly wrote. “As we have dug into the issues following exiting prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.”
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-frantically-warns-employees-of-potential-spac-1848139856
“NASA commends Boeing for its ongoing investigation.”
Eric Berger - 12/6/2021, 6:08 AM
NASA has announced that it will purchase three additional flights for its astronauts to the International Space Station on SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle.
The announcement, posted on the space agency's website late on Friday afternoon, follows a “request for information” issued by NASA in October seeking the additional transportation to keep “uninterrupted” US access to the space station.
The blog post contained the following rationale for selecting SpaceX to provide these three crewed flights while not selecting the other potential provider, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft:
“After a thorough review of the near-term certified capabilities and responses from American industry, NASA’s assessment is that the SpaceX crew transportation system is the only one certified to meet NASA’s safety requirements to transport crew to the space station and to maintain the agency’s obligation to its international partners in the needed timeframe,” the agency said.
The assessment won't be completed until March 28th.
Mariella Moon - February 15th, 2022
SpaceX has to wait until March 28th to find out if the Federal Aviation Administration is giving it clearance to launch Starship flights out of its facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The agency is conducting an environmental assessment of the company's plans to launch the massive reusable vehicle out of the facility and looking into whether it will have significant environmental impact on the area. This isn't the first time the agency has moved its target date for completion either: It previously pushed back its original target date of December 31st, 2021 to February 28th, 2022.
Now, the FAA has updated the project page to reflect the new target date and explained that the delay is “to account for further comment review and ongoing interagency consultations.” The agency received over 19,000 public comments on the draft version of the review published in September last year.
https://www.engadget.com/faa-delays-spacex-environmental-review-boca-chica-124042660.html
That's assuming there isn't yet another delay.
Jon Fingas - March 21st, 2022
SpaceX's long-delayed Starship orbital test flight might finally be close. As CNBC notes, Elon Musk now believes SpaceX will launch Starship into orbit this May. The company plans to have 39 “flightworthy” engines ready by April, and will take about a month to integrate them.
The launch will depend on the newer Raptor 2 engines as they're “much more capable” and reliable than the older models, according to Musk. SpaceX started producing Raptor 2 in December 2021 and says the design costs half as much as its predecessor while delivering more power and using fewer parts. They're expected to power both Starship and its Super Heavy booster, and should be key to SpaceX's plans for both the Moon and Mars.
The launch hinges on more than just technical progress, however. SpaceX still needs an FAA license for the flight, and will finish an important environmental review on March 28th. Any regulatory flags could stall the launch.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-starship-orbital-test-flight-211052728.html
“We were surprised to learn of it on Friday.”
Eric Berger - 3/25/2022, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 4.36 of the Rocket Report! As I took last week off for Spring Break, there is quite a bit of news to get to this week, including positive steps forward for some US small launch companies and SpaceX reaching another milestone with its Falcon 9 rocket.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below. (The form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site.) Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
“We will need additional missions from SpaceX to implement our strategy.”
Eric Berger - 6/2/2022, 2:02 PM
NASA said this week that it plans to purchase five additional Crew Dragon missions from SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
Although the space agency's news release does not specifically say so, these may be the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. As of now, there is no signed international agreement to keep the station flying until then, but this new procurement sends a strong signal that the space agency expects the orbital outpost to keep flying that long.
“We will need additional missions from SpaceX to implement our strategy.”
Eric Berger - 6/2/2022, 2:02 PM
NASA said this week that it plans to purchase five additional Crew Dragon missions from SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
Although the space agency's news release does not specifically say so, these may be the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. As of now, there is no signed international agreement to keep the station flying until then, but this new procurement sends a strong signal that the space agency expects the orbital outpost to keep flying that long.
The agency arranged enough SpaceX flights to keep the ISS crewed through 2030.
Jon Fingas - June 3rd, 2022
NASA might not have to lean on Russia again to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Ars Technica notes the agency has bought five extra crewed ISS flights from SpaceX, or enough to maintain “uninterrupted” US staffing aboard the station until its expected 2030 demise. While NASA still intends to use Boeing's Starliner, the new SpaceX missions will be necessary to fulfill plans for alternating between the two companies once both are an option.
The extra flights could be used as soon as 2026. They'll help with redundancy and keep the ISS operating safely if any problems prevent Boeing or SpaceX from launching in a timely fashion, NASA said. At present, SpaceX is the only private company certified to fly astronauts. Boeing isn't expected to fly its first operational mission until 2023.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-secures-spacex-flights-until-iss-dies-143534115.html
The space agency had little choice, given the sorry state of the much-delayed Boeing Starliner program.
George Dvorsky - 9 June 2022
The partnership between NASA and SpaceX is poised to get even stronger, as the space agency recently announced its intention to purchase five additional Crew Dragon flights to the International Space Station.
NASA announced its intent to purchase the extra Crew Dragon missions in a procurement notice released on June 1. The pending contract extension with SpaceX was in part prompted by Boeing’s inability to deliver its own commercial crew vehicle, the CST-100 Starliner, on schedule.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-slated-to-be-nasas-orbital-taxi-for-at-least-ano-1849040405
Aria Alamalhodaei - 11:57 AM PDT•June 13, 2022
The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday published its highly anticipated environmental assessment of SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, and the Starship launch program, with the agency finding that SpaceX’s plans would not result in significant impacts to the environment — but requiring the company to implement a number of mitigation measures before it can start conducting test flights.
The FAA’s Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA), which comes in at 183 pages, lays out the potential consequences of SpaceX’s Starbase complex and Starship launch program on everything from noise pollution due to sonic booms, to light pollution on local sea turtle populations. Overall, SpaceX will need to take over 75 mitigatory actions to comply with the assessment, the FAA said in a press release.
Changes to SpaceX's original plan plus new conditions add up to an acceptance.
John Timmer - 6/13/2022, 1:30 PM
On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave SpaceX one of several approvals that will be needed before the company can launch its Starship from the Boca Chica site in South Texas. The environmental approval comes in part because technology developments have allowed the company to eliminate some of the facilities initially planned for the location, greatly reducing its footprint and impacts.
Still, the company will face restrictions within the site and timing of the launches; it will also be expected to support some environmental and historical interests. The company will still need the FAA's approval regarding safety and risks before it can begin operations.
The Starbase launch facility needs to address a number of environmental concerns.
Amrita Khalid - June 14th, 2022
The FAA wants SpaceX to address a number of environmental concerns before it approves an expansion of the Starbase launch facility, located on Texas’s Gulf Coast. The agency asked SpaceX to make more than 75 changes — according to an environmental impact assessment released today — before the company can use the South Texas site to launch flights to the Moon and Mars. Located near Boca Chica, Texas, the launch site has been the center of controversy after SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed his plans to incorporate the surrounding area to support lunar missions.
As Space News noted, this seems to be more of a “yellow light” than a “red light” from the FAA. The agency issued a “Finding of No Significant Impact” for SpaceX’s plans to conduct orbital launches with its Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket. In a nutshell, the agency found there would be no significant environmental consequences — but is asking SpaceX to take some steps to mitigate environmental harms before it is officially cleared.
Be a good neighbor to folks and the environment, and we'll think that permit over
Katyanna Quach - Tue 14 Jun 2022 02:11 UTC
SpaceX is one step closer to securing a permit to launch not just its first rocket from Boca Chica, Texas but its reusable super-heavy lifter at that.
And by one step closer, we mean: the US Federal Aviation Administration has issued more than 75 requirements for SpaceX to fulfill, which are aimed at minimizing the environmental impact of its launches on residents and wildlife.
Those requirements [PDF], made public Monday by the watchdog, list a series of concerns and actions SpaceX needs to take before it can hope to get the green light to use Boca Chica as intended. The FAA wants SpaceX to complete this environmental review and mitigate the effects of repeatedly launching and landing its giant reusable 120-metre Starship on the air, water, climate, peace and quiet, and land around the launchpad.
The propellant leak and ensuing investigation has resulted in a one-month delay to the CRS-25 cargo mission.
Passant Rabie - 14 June 2022 12:40PM
A SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station has been pushed back to no earlier than July 11 after teams discovered elevated vapor levels of propellant. The mission was originally scheduled for launch on June 10, but ground teams noticed a potential hydrazine leak while loading cargo.
On Monday, officials with NASA met with SpaceX to discuss the findings of an investigation into the problematic vapor leak. Following additional inspections and testing of the Dragon spacecraft, the investigators managed to identify the source of the leak as being a faulty Draco thruster valve inlet joint, which controls the flow of propellant. The Dragon spacecraft has 16 Draco thrusters that maneuver it in orbit, and each thruster has two valve inlet joints used for fuel.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-nasa-crew-dragon-cargo-1849058549
Will play nicely in Earth orbit
Richard Speed - Wed 15 Jun 2022 18:00 UTC
A letter has been filed with America's communications watchdog confirming that SpaceX and OneWeb, which are building mega-constellations of broadband satellites, are content to play nicely.
The letter sweeps all the unpleasantness between the two neatly under the rug “after extensive good-faith coordination discussions.” Despite what could charitably be described as snarky remarks about each other to the FCC over the years, the duo have agreed that their first-generation broadband satellite services can, after all, co-exist.
“Their respective second-round systems can also efficiently coexist with each other while protecting their respective first-round systems,” the memo, dated June 13 and shared by Reuters' journo Joey Roulette today, reads.
32 launches and counting
Loren Grush - Jul 22, 2022, 2:56pm EDT
This afternoon, SpaceX successfully launched its 32nd Falcon 9 mission of 2022, officially breaking the company’s own record for orbital launches conducted in a single year. And since it’s only July, there’s still plenty of year left to push that record even higher.
SpaceX has been steadily increasing its launch cadence each year — aside from a dip in 2019. For 2021, the company pulled off 31 launches, the most it had ever done, which also made SpaceX the most prolific American launch provider by far.
At the beginning of 2022, SpaceX set an incredibly ambitious goal of launching 52 missions over the course of the year. That number was revealed by a NASA safety advisory panel in January, with a word of caution that SpaceX should still strive to maintain safety amid the increased pace. “NASA and SpaceX will have to be watchful during 2022 that they’re not victims of their success,” Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during the January meeting.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/22/23273077/spacex-falcon-9-launch-record-2022-32-high-cadence
Posted by BeauHD on Friday October 14, 2022 03:40PM
SpaceX returned its fourth operational crew mission from the International Space Station on Friday, with the quartet of astronauts splashing down in the company's capsule off the coast of Florida. CNBC reports:
The company's Crew Dragon spacecraft “Freedom” undocked from the ISS at around noon ET to begin the trip back to Earth, with splashdown happening around 5 p.m. ET. “Welcome home – thanks for flying SpaceX,” the company's mission control told the crew shortly after landing. “Thank you for an incredible ride to orbit, and an incredible ride home,” Crew-4 commander Kjell Lindgren said in response.
“Thank you for an incredible ride up to orbit and an incredible ride home.”
Eric Berger - 10/14/2022, 2:57 PM
After 170 days in space, four astronauts splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, bringing an end to a successful NASA-SpaceX mission to the International Space Station.
Following two days of weather delays, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom returned to Earth off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, beneath clear blue skies and into mild seas. The spacecraft's descent through Earth's atmosphere appeared to be nominal, with two drogue parachutes deploying on schedule, followed by four clean main parachutes, allowing Dragon to splash down at about 25 km per hour.
Posted by msmash on Monday October 17, 2022 07:41AM
After 170 days in space, four astronauts splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, bringing an end to a successful NASA-SpaceX mission to the International Space Station. From a report:
Following two days of weather delays, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom returned to Earth off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, beneath clear blue skies and into mild seas. The spacecraft's descent through Earth's atmosphere appeared to be nominal, with two drogue parachutes deploying on schedule, followed by four clean main parachutes, allowing Dragon to splash down at about 25 km per hour. “SpaceX, from Freedom, thank you for an incredible ride up to orbit and an incredible ride home,” Kjell Lindgren, the NASA commander of the spacecraft, said after landing.
The company was weirdly vague about today's mission, leaving doubts as to which type of Starlink satellite was tossed to low Earth orbit.
Passant Rabie - 28 December 2022 2:10PM
With only a small handful of days left in the year, SpaceX achieved a major milestone by pulling off its 60th orbital launch of the year—a goal that CEO Elon Musk had been targeting for the space company.
A Falcon 9 rocket launched during the early hours of Wednesday morning, lifting off at 4:34 a.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket carried 54 Starlink satellites, which may have been the first batch of SpaceX’s next generation satellites under a newly acquired license.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-60th-orbital-launch-2022-achieving-goal-falcon-9-1849933950
Posted by msmash on Wednesday December 28, 2022 09:32AM
SpaceX launched the first batch of a new generation of Starlink satellites into orbit early Wednesday (Dec. 28) and nailed a rocket landing at sea to mark a record 60th flight of the year. From a report:
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 54 upgraded Starlink internet satellites – the first generation 2 (Gen2) versions of the SpaceX fleet – lit up the predawn sky with a smooth launch at 4:34 a.m. EST (0934 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. “Under our new license, we are now able to deploy satellites to new orbits that will add even more capacity to the network,” Jesse Anderson, a SpaceX production and engineering manager, said during live launch commentary. “Ultimately, this enables us to add more customers and provide faster service, particularly in areas that are currently oversubscribed.”
With Vega-C grounded and Ariane 6 not ready, the European Commission is considering agreements with U.S. companies to “exceptionally launch” its satellites.
Passant Rabie - 18 April 2023
Europe’s navigation satellites are in desperate need of a ride to space, so much so that the European government is seeking to forge deals with U.S. companies to provide much-needed orbital access.
The European Commission is reportedly requesting approval to negotiate deals with private space companies like SpaceX to launch the Galileo satellites, Politico reported based on a copy of the draft request sent to European Union countries. The request stated that it would be an “ad-hoc security agreement” to “exceptionally launch” the next-generation satellites.
Galileo is a fleet of Europe’s own global navigation satellite system designed to rival GPS in the United States. The first operational satellite launched to space in 2011 and 26 Galileo satellites are currently in orbit. The European Union Agency for the Space Program was betting on the next-generation Ariane 6 rocket to transport its satellites to orbit, booking the rocket for three launches in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
https://gizmodo.com/europe-looks-spacex-rocket-woes-continue-1850348711
“SpaceX could itself become a large commercial LEO destination.”
Stephen Clark - 7/24/2023, 2:41 PM
You've probably heard about SpaceX's plans to use its giant new Starship vehicle to land people on the Moon and Mars, send numerous Starlink satellites or large telescopes into space, or perhaps even serve as a high-speed point-to-point terrestrial transport for equipment or people.
There's another application for SpaceX's Starship architecture that the company is studying, and NASA is on board to lend expertise. Though still in a nascent phase of tech development, the effort could result in repurposing Starship into a commercial space station, something NASA has a keen interest in because there are no plans for a government-owned research lab in low-Earth orbit after the International Space Station is decommissioned after 2030.
The space agency announced last month a new round of agreements with seven commercial companies, including SpaceX. The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) program is an effort established to advance private sector development of emerging products and services that could be available to customers—including NASA—in approximately five to seven years.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/could-spacex-turn-starship-into-a-space-station/
“You basically had this really awesome algorithm, this crazy automation.”
Eric Berger - 8/30/2023, 8:29 AM
Amid much fanfare, SpaceX started landing its Falcon 9 rockets in 2015, and it began reusing them less than two years later. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, with nine engines and the bulk of the mass, accounts for about half of the cost of manufacturing a rocket, so this represents a considerable savings in time and money for SpaceX.
However, as with most other boosters, there are two other main components of the Falcon 9 rocket. There is the second stage, which boosts a payload into orbit, and, for most missions, a payload fairing that protects the satellite during its transit through the atmosphere. SpaceX briefly studied recovering the second stage of the Falcon 9 but concluded it was not feasible without major modifications that would have greatly reduced the rocket's payload capacity.
But what about the payload fairing? These are built in two pieces through a laborious process of laying down composite materials, not dissimilar to papier-mâché. The manufacture of fairings is time-consuming, and it costs about $6 million to produce both halves.
SpaceX aims to ramp up to a dozen launches per month next year.
Stephen Clark - 9/7/2023, 2:24 PM
It probably seems like SpaceX is launching almost every day, and that's not far from the case. It also might seem like SpaceX is regularly breaking one of its records, whether it's in the number of launches, turnaround time, or reusing Falcon 9 boosters. It's also true.
SpaceX blew past one of those records over Labor Day weekend when the company launched a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This mission was SpaceX's 62nd launch of the year using its Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket, or 63rd if you count the test flight of the Starship mega-rocket in April.
SpaceX has launched 83 Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy missions over the past 12 months.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, says the launch cadence will only ramp up over the coming months.
“Aiming for 10 Falcon flights in a month by end of this year, then 12 per month next year,” Musk posted on X, his social media platform. SpaceX has already strung together 10 Falcon launches within a 30-day period. That will soon become the norm if SpaceX achieves its goal.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/spacex-broke-its-record-for-number-of-launches-in-a-year/
MARCIA DUNN - Updated 1:10 PM PDT, September 28, 2024
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a downsized crew to bring them home but not until next year.
The capsule rocketed into orbit to fetch the test pilots whose Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier this month because of safety concerns. The switch in rides left it to NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
Because NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams won’t return until late February. Officials said there wasn’t a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.
By the time they return, the pair will have logged more than eight months in space. They expected to be gone just a week when they signed up for Boeing’s first astronaut flight that launched in June.
NASA ultimately decided that Boeing’s Starliner was too risky after a cascade of thruster troubles and helium leaks marred its trip to the orbiting complex. The space agency cut two astronauts from this SpaceX launch to make room on the Dragon capsule’s return leg for Wilmore and Williams.
Scott Shambaugh - 20 October 2024
No. But they don’t need to.
In preparation for the 5th test flight of Starship, SpaceX announced that they would try to catch the booster using “Mechazilla’s chopsticks.” Later during pre-launch discussions, SpaceX VP Bill Gerstenmaier claimed that they were confident of success since they had landed the booster in the ocean during Flight 4 with “half a centimeter accuracy.” And then last Sunday they went for the landing and nailed it!
But did they really nail it to within half a centimeter? That number sounds too good to be true, and it sparked quite a bit of skepticism from industry observers. What can SpaceX really expect for their landing accuracy?
My background: I am an aerospace engineer who has designed guidance, navigation, & control (GNC) systems for successful orbital launch vehicles, worked with RTK precision GPS systems on the ground, and implemented GNSS systems on satellite constellations. Standard disclaimer that I am only speaking for myself, and am only using public non-ITAR information. I don’t know what SpaceX is using to estimate the position and orientation on their rockets or their exact control schemes, and I might be missing some information that they’ve made public, but I am well versed in what goes into the design space and can hopefully make some good guesses. Please comment if I’m missing or misinterpreting anything. Also this post isn’t meant as a “gotcha” against Bill for the half a centimeter number – that quote is really just the hook and makes for a good excuse to dive into the cool engineering behind catching the rocket!
https://theshamblog.com/can-spacex-land-a-rocket-with-1-2-cm-accuracy/
To keep its FCC license, the company must launch half of its 3,236 Project Kuiper satellites by 2026.
Passant Rabie - 28 October 2022 2:05PM
Amazon is on a tight schedule to launch its internet satellites to orbit, so the company may have to turn to its competitor SpaceX for rides.
During a live interview with the Washington Post, Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp expressed the company’s openness to use SpaceX’s heavy lift rockets to deploy its Project Kuiper internet satellites. “We are open to talking to SpaceX, you’d be crazy not given their track record here,” Limp said.
https://gizmodo.com/amazon-spacex-rival-project-kuiper-satellite-launches-1849715511
A booster landing would be a calculated risk to SpaceX's launch tower infrastructure.
Eric Berger - 7/5/2024, 10:29 AM
In a short video released Thursday, possibly to celebrate the US Fourth of July holiday with the biggest rocket's red glare of them all, SpaceX provided new footage of the most recent test of its Starship launch vehicle.
This test, the fourth of the experimental rocket that NASA is counting on to land its astronauts on the Moon, and which one day may launch humans to Mars, took place on June 6. During the flight, the first stage of the rocket performed well during ascent and, after separating from the upper stage, made a controlled reentry into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship upper stage appeared to make a nominal flight through space before making a controlled—if fiery—landing in the Indian Ocean.
The new video focuses mostly on the “Super Heavy” booster stage and its entry into the Gulf. There is new footage from a camera on top of the 71-meter-tall first stage as well as a nearby buoy at water level. The video from the buoy, in particular, shows the first stage making an upright landing into the ocean.
Shotwell says letter made employees “uncomfortable,” tells staff to avoid activism.
Jon Brodkin - 6/17/2022, 7:45 AM
SpaceX has reportedly fired at least five employees who circulated a letter that urged company executives to condemn CEO Elon Musk's public behavior.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell explained the firings in an email to staff, according to a New York Times article. “The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views,” Shotwell wrote, according to the NYT. “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.”
Shotwell's email to staff also said, “Blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable.” Shotwell urged employees to “stay focused on the SpaceX mission, and use your time to do your best work. This is how we will get to Mars.”
Darrell Etherington - 4:05 AM PDT June 17, 2022
SpaceX moved quickly to terminate at least some of the employees involved in the open letter circulated through the company’s internal communications system this past Wednesday, The New York Times reports. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also circulated an email to the company outlining the logic behind the terminations and generally denouncing the letter, which took issue with Elon Musk’s Twitter use and its reflection on the company, among other things.
Asked for equitable treatment and a boss that doesn't embarrass them
Brandon Vigliarolo - Fri 17 Jun 2022 13:45 UTC
SpaceX has reportedly reacted to an open letter requesting accountability for Elon Musk by firing those involved.
The alleged dismissals come just two days after an open letter to SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell began circulating in a SpaceX Teams channel. The missive from employees said Musk's recent actions have been a source of distraction and embarrassment for SpaceX staff.
The letter asked for the company to “swiftly and explicitly separate itself” from Musk's personal brand, hold all leadership accountable for their actions, and asked that SpaceX clearly define what behaviors it considers unacceptable. The authors also said the company failed to apply its stated diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, “resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo.”
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/17/spacex_employees_reportedly_fired_over_letter/
The Beluga is one of the largest cargo aircraft in operation today.
Brett Tingley - 19 October 2022
Satellites watched as an absolutely massive Airbus Beluga aircraft unloaded a satellite at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida ahead of a planned SpaceX launch.
The Airbus Beluga ST is one of the largest currently operational aircraft based on the volume of its cargo hold, making it even more impressive when viewed from space. The Beluga was delivering the Hotbird 13G satellite to KSC on behalf of telecommunications giant Eutelsat.
Images captured by an Earth observation satellite operated by France's National Center for Space Studies (CNES) show the whale of an aircraft completely dwarfing everything around it as it dropped off the satellite at on Saturday (Oct. 15).
https://www.space.com/airbus-beluga-seen-from-space-unloading-satellite
NASA obligated $2.04 billion to SpaceX in fiscal year 2022.
Eric Berger - 10/26/2022, 7:10 AM
NASA obligated $2.04 billion to SpaceX in fiscal year 2022, which ended last month, according to new federal procurement data.
For the first time, the amount paid by the space agency to SpaceX exceeds that paid to Boeing, which has long been the leading hardware provider to NASA. Boeing received $1.72 billion during the most recent fiscal year, based on data first reported by Aviation Week's Irene Klotz.
The California Institute of Technology, which manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory field center for NASA, remains the agency's No. 1 contractor, with $2.68 billion in funding. The academic institution is responsible for operating the California-based NASA field center and distributing funding for myriad robotic spacecraft missions such as Mars Perseverance and the Europa Clipper.
A former ‘hardcore’ engineer at SpaceX alleged ageism in the the way the company transferred work to younger employees who expected him to ‘retire or die.’
Kyle Barr - 30 November 2022
A former SpaceX employee said the company is rife with a kind of “frat bro mold” that has no place for any experienced person over 40 years old.
In a post on the whistleblower site Lioness, former SpaceX principal engineer John Johnson, now 62, said he was as “hardcore” as CEO Elon Musk claims he wants his employees to be. He also claimed he put in long hours—10 to 12 hours daily—and worked nights and weekends. He went on to say he continued working at the company facilities during the pandemic.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-elon-musk-lioness-ageism-1849837024
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday April 01, 2023 10:34AM
“SpaceX has its first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface,” says Jaret Matthews, the founder of the tiny startup Astrolab which makes a moon rover the size of a Jeep Wrangler. The New York Times reports:
On Friday, Astrolab announced that it had signed an agreement with SpaceX for its Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover, or FLEX, to be a payload on an uncrewed Starship cargo mission that is to take off as early as mid-2026….” SpaceX, which did not respond to requests for comment, has yet to announce that it is planning this commercial Starship mission to the moon's surface, headed to the south polar region. Astrolab would be just one of the customers sharing the voluminous cargo compartment of the Starship flight, Mr. Matthews said.
Mr. Matthews, an engineer who previously worked at SpaceX and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, founded Astrolab less than four years ago. Located a stone's throw from SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., it has about 20 full-time employees, he said…. Mr. Matthews declined to say how much it would cost to get FLEX to the moon or how much money Astrolab has raised. He said Astrolab would make money by lifting and deploying cargo for customers on the lunar surface. That could include scientific instruments. In the future, the rover could help build lunar infrastructure. “Essentially providing what I like to call last-mile mobility on the moon,” Mr. Matthews said. “You can kind of think of it like being U.P.S. for the moon. And in this analogy, Starship is the container ship crossing the ocean, and we're the local distribution solution….”
Resembling a gigantic bidet for rockets, the deluge system is meant to minimize damage at the pad when Starship takes flight.
George Dvorsky - 18 July 2023
On April 20, SpaceX wantonly launched its Starship megarocket without the benefit of a flame diverter or water deluge system, resulting in significant damage to the launch pad and hurtling dust and debris into the surrounding areas. Looking to prevent a recurrence, the company is building a powerful deluge system, which underwent its first test yesterday.
The limited test took place at 2:22 p.m. ET on July 17 at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Video from NASASpaceflight shows thousands of gallons of water shooting up from the orbital launch mount (OLM) with tremendous force. The sound of the water blasting upwards was surprisingly intense. More powerful tests are likely, as SpaceX works towards the next static fire test of Starship, the date of which has not yet been announced. The video below provides multiple shots of the test.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-tests-overdue-starship-water-deluge-system-1850651605
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday October 21, 2023 03:00AM
Stephen Clark reports via Ars Technica:
Earlier this week, SpaceX launched for the 75th time this year, continuing a flight cadence that should see the company come close to 100 missions by the end of December. SpaceX plans to kick its launch rate into a higher gear in 2024. This will be largely driven by launches of upgraded Starlink satellites with the ability to connect directly with consumer cell phones, a service SpaceX calls “Starlink Direct to Cell,” a company official told Ars this week. The goal next year is 12 launches per month, for a total of 144 Falcon rocket flights. Like this year, most of those missions will be primarily devoted to launching Starlink broadband satellites. So far in 2023, more than 60 percent of SpaceX's launches have delivered the company's own Starlink satellites into orbit.
“We want to make it cheap and easy to get anywhere in the Solar System.”
Eric Berger - 11/13/2023, 2:07 PM
SpaceX launched its ninth “Transporter” mission on Saturday from California, carrying dozens of small- and medium-sized satellites into low-Earth orbit.
The upside of these launches for customers is that they can rely on regular, low-cost access to space aboard the reliable Falcon 9 rocket. The downside is that the satellites are all released into a basic orbit, and if they want to reach a different altitude or inclination, they have to bring their own propulsion along for the ride.
This has led to the advent of “last mile” services from various companies offering small add-on spacecraft capable of providing in-space propulsion. One of the most intriguing of these is Impulse Space, a company founded two years ago by rocket scientist Tom Mueller, who was a founding employee at SpaceX before leaving in 2020.
During Saturday's launch, Mueller's career completed something of a full circle when a Falcon 9 rocket launched Impulse Space's first vehicle, the Mira spacecraft, on a test flight. After the launch, the Mira “LEO Express 1” mission phoned home, and it relayed that all was well. So, the mission is off to a promising start.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/impulse-space-appears-to-succeed-with-its-first-spacecraft/
The aerospace company launched more Falcon 9s this year than ever before, yet was still unable to hit a lofty target set by its CEO.
George Dvorsky - 21 December 2023
With just 11 days left in the year, it’s clear that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will not reach his stated goal of achieving 100 Falcon 9 launches in 2023. Nonetheless, the company’s achievements during the calendar year are damn impressive, with 2024 poised to be even more remarkable.
On Monday, December 18, a Falcon 9 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with 23 Starlink V2-mini satellites on board. The mission represented SpaceX’s 88th Falcon 9 launch for 2023, and it also marked the 254th continuous successful flight for the exceptionally dependable rocket.
The only quirk having to do with this launch was that it happened 11 days after the previous Falcon 9 mission, marking the lengthiest interval between Falcon 9 launches in 2023, according to SpaceNews. That prior mission, launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, launched on December 8, delivering another batch of Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-falcon-9-launches-2023-goal-1851117847
There were 200 successful orbital launches before the end of the year, and SpaceX alone was responsible for 92.
Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor - Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 7:30 AM PST
It’s been a busy year for spaceflight — the busiest ever, in fact. This fall, space companies once again broke the record for successful orbital launches in a single year with 2023’s 180th flight — Starlink satellites sent up by SpaceX on November 22, according to Ars Technica. The number has since climbed to 200.
That pace has been driven in no small part by Elon Musk’s aerospace venture, which set a goal of hitting 100 launches in 2023 and is nearly there, with 92 as of December 7. Private companies have become key players in the new space race, not only vying to serve as launch providers for science and communications missions but also ushering in the era of space tourism (for anyone rich enough to nab a ticket). But spaceflight is hard, especially if you’re trying to change the game with design innovations, and for all the wins in 2023, there have been plenty of hiccups. Here’s a look at how some of the leading private space companies made out this year.
This was the shortest time between orbital launches at Cape Canaveral since 1966.
Stephen Clark - 12/29/2023, 3:10 PM
It seems like SpaceX did everything this year but launch 100 times.
On Thursday night, the launch company sent two more rockets into orbit from Florida. One was a Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket in commercial service, carrying the US military's X-37B spaceplane from a launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 8:07 pm EST (01:07 UTC). Less than three hours later, at 11:01 pm EST (04:01 UTC), SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 launcher took off a few miles to the south with a payload of 23 Starlink Internet satellites.
The Falcon Heavy's two side boosters and the Falcon 9's first stage landed back on Earth for reuse.
These were SpaceX's final launches of 2023. SpaceX ends the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets, and two test launches of the giant new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, set a goal of 100 launches this year, up from the company's previous record of 61 in 2022. For a while, it looked like SpaceX was on track to accomplish the feat, but a spate of bad weather and technical problems with the final Falcon Heavy launch of the year kept the company short of 100 flights.
Posted by BeauHD on Friday December 29, 2023 11:00PM
SpaceX on Thursday launched two rockets into orbit, only three hours apart, bringing its total number of launches to 98 in 2023. Space.com reports:
The first SpaceX mission to take to the skies Thursday (Dec. 28) was a Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the U.S. military's secretive X-37B space plane, designed mission USSF-52. That blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:07 p.m. EST (0107 GMT on Dec. 29). This marked the second Falcon Heavy flight of 2023. Second up on the launch docket for Thursday, hours later, was a Falcon 9 liftoff carrying 23 SpaceX Starlink units to low Earth orbit from nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This launch took place at 11:01 p.m. EST (0401 GMT on Dec. 29). This was SpaceX's 98th and final launch of 2023, and the 96th flight for a Falcon 9 rocket this year.
The rocket company is suing the NLRB after it accused SpaceX of firing employees who were critical of founder Elon Musk.
Passant Rabie - 5 January 2024
SpaceX is clearly not open to criticism. After receiving a complaint from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for allegedly firing employees who dared to criticize Elon Musk’s behavior, SpaceX decided to double down by suing the labor board behind the complaint.
Billionaire Musk’s rocket company filed a lawsuit against the NLRB on Thursday, claiming that the structure of the independent federal agency violates the U.S. constitution.
On Wednesday, NLRB filed a complaint against SpaceX for allegedly firing eight employees for writing and distributing an open letter that referred to Musk’s public behavior as “distraction and embarrassment” for the company. The complaint claims that the employees were fired for activities that are protected under the National Labor Relations Act, and a hearing is scheduled for March 5 before an administrative law judge of the NLRB.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-elon-musk-sues-federal-labor-regulator-1851143219
Remember when Microsoft said that about FTC (and then walked it back)?
Jude Karabus - Fri 5 Jan 2024 15:23 UTC
SpaceX has sued America's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency responsible for protecting private sector employees' rights, just 24 hours after the body accused Elon Musk's company of treating employees unfairly.
In a complaint [PDF] filed yesterday, SpaceX claimed the NLRB was “regulated by administrative officials who are shielded by unconstitutional removal protections.”
Musk's company claims the agency has inherent structural flaws that it outlined in the complaint, which make it unsuited to oversee its work holding private employers to account when they break labor laws.
Among other things, SpaceX claims that because the NLRB's president can't freely remove members of the board nor agency judges, its “constitutionally required degree of control is lacking.” The argument goes that the board acts both as prosecutor “by charging SpaceX with violations of federal labor law before an Article III tribunal,” and adjudicator – as “the same NLRB Members would then issue the agency's ultimate order on whether SpaceX has violated federal labor law.”
Julie Bort - 2:45 PM PDT May 7, 2025
SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, is directly benefiting from the Trump administration’s tariff trade war, according to leaked State Department memos obtained by the Washington Post.
The memos show the U.S. pushing countries to adopt Starlink. Some show that countries believe that doing so could help lubricate their U.S. trade and tariff negotiations. One memo about the tiny African nation of Lesotho, which the U.S. imposed a 50% tariff against, flat-out said so about its new 10-year deal with Starlink, the Post reported.
Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX and one of the Trump administration’s closest advisers. A White House spokesperson told the Post there was no conflict of interest. The State Department described the work of pushing deals for an American satellite company as “patriotic” in light of competition from China. SpaceX did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:00 PM PDT September 23, 2024
SpaceX’s fight against regulators kicked up a notch last week. First, the FAA announced it was seeking two fines, totaling $633,009, from the company for alleged launch license violations on two occasions that took place over a year ago.
While this is no doubt just a rounding error for SpaceX, the company hit back hard against the allegations in a letter sent to top congressional leaders. The company asserts that the inability of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) to process “relatively minor” license updates is further proof that the agency is unable to keep pace with the space industry’s — but chiefly SpaceX’s — rapid growth.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/23/techcrunch-space-spacex-calls-out-systematic-challenges-with-faa/
SpaceX has 30 days to respond to the FAA's enforcement letter.
Ashley Belanger - 2/17/2023, 12:52 PM
Before launching 53 Starlink satellites from Florida last August, it seems that SpaceX failed to submit required data to the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Now, the FAA has proposed a $175,000 fine to SpaceX for not sharing that data within at least seven days of its launch.
According to the FAA, the missing SpaceX data is critical because it’s used to “assess the probability of the launch vehicle colliding with one of the thousands of tracked objects orbiting the Earth.”
The FAA and SpaceX did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.
SpaceX has 30 days to respond to the FAA's enforcement notice.
The FAA has previously clashed with SpaceX over seemingly reckless launches. In 2021, for example, SpaceX applied for an FAA waiver, asking for permission to “exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal safety regulations” while launching a prototype spacecraft, The Washington Post reported. After the FAA denied the waiver, SpaceX moved forward with the launch anyway, resulting in an investigation and temporary suspension of operations at one of SpaceX's launch sites.
A pathetic fine of $175,000 is all SpaceX is likely to receive after failing to provide the FAA with pre-launch data for a flight last year.
George Dvorsky - 17 February 2023
In August 2022, SpaceX violated a Federal Aviation Administration safety rule that’s meant to prevent collisions in low Earth orbit, but the proposed fine of $175,000 will hardly serve as a deterrent for a company owned by one of the richest people on Earth.
And it’s not as if SpaceX violated something trivial in nature. The company failed to submit launch collision analysis trajectory data to the FAA before launching its Falcon 9 rocket on August 19, 2022, according to a February 17 statement.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-faa-fine-safety-rule-falcon-9-launch-1850129945
Tuesday, September 17, 2024 - FAA
WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposes $633,009 in civil penalties against Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) for allegedly failing to follow its license requirements during two launches in 2023, in accordance with statutorily-set civil penalty guidelines.
“Safety drives everything we do at the FAA, including a legal responsibility for the safety oversight of companies with commercial space transportation licenses,” said FAA Chief Counsel Marc Nichols. “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences.”
In May 2023, SpaceX submitted a request to revise its communications plan related to its license to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The proposed revisions included adding a new launch control room at Hangar X and removing the T-2 hour readiness poll from its procedures. On June 18, 2023, SpaceX used the unapproved launch control room for the PSN SATRIA mission and did not conduct the required T-2 hour poll. The FAA is proposing $350,000 in civil penalties ($175,000 for each alleged violation).
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-proposes-633009-civil-penalties-against-spacex
Some good news for Elon – 2,500 planes to be Starlink Wi-Fi ready as United joins the party
Brandon Vigliarolo - Tue 17 Sep 2024 17:30 UTC
Elon Musk's impatience has led to the US Federal Aviation Administration proposing $633,009 in civil penalties against his SpaceX operation for allegedly violating its launch licenses last year.
The proposed penalties are for two incidents a couple of months apart that, from what the FAA's press release suggests, make it look like Musk just didn't want to wait for FAA approval to use new launch facilities, so SpaceX used them without the okay to do so.
In one instance, the June launch of an Indonesian communications satellite was handled from a launch control room at Hangar X, which SpaceX had requested FAA approval for only a month earlier. However, the FAA had not granted approval by the June 18 launch date.
Additionally, SpaceX informed the FAA it intended to skip the mandatory T-minus 2-hour readiness poll in its launch preparations and proceeded without conducting it, despite this being an FAA requirement. These two violations together resulted in a $350,000 penalty, according to the agency.
The other incident, involving the July launch of the EchoStar XXIV satellite, saw SpaceX employ a similar apply-but-don't-wait tactic. This time, the issue was a newly constructed rocket propellant farm at Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX had submitted a request to revise its explosive site plan in July but went ahead and used the unapproved propellant farm for the EchoStar XXIV launch on July 28. For this violation, the administration is proposing a $283,009 fine.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/17/faa_spacex_fine_proposed/
The company has gotten a number of penalties in recent years, but it all amounts to pocket change for Elon Musk.
Adam Kovac - September 17, 2024
SpaceX is facing over $600,000 in fines for Federal Aviation Administration violations during two 2023 launches.
On September 17, the FAA said the agency is seeking $633,009 in civil penalties, accusing the private space firm of failing to meet multiple licensing requirements, but still proceeding with the launches.
The first launch cited by the FAA took place on June 18, 2023, when an Indonesian communications satellite called Satria was sent into orbit atop one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. The FAA alleges that, a month earlier, SpaceX submitted a request to revise its communications plan, which is linked to the company’s license to use the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for launches.
In the requested revision, SpaceX asked to add a new launch control room and to do away with the required readiness check two hours before launch. According to the FAA, when SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 using its new control room—without the readiness check—the agency had not yet approved either request. The FAA is requesting a $175,000 fine for each of the two violations.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-may-face-633009-penalty-for-alleged-faa-safety-infractions-2000499907
Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:07 PM PDT September 19, 2024
SpaceX sent a letter to top congressional leaders on Wednesday denying allegations that it violated its launch licenses on two separate occasions last year, which has resulted in regulators seeking $633,009 in penalties from the company.
Instead, the company asserts that the inability of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) to process “relatively minor” license updates is further proof that the agency is unable to keep pace with the space industry’s — but chiefly SpaceX’s — rapid growth.
The FAA announced that it was proposing the fines against SpaceX after the company allegedly failed to follow requirements set out in its launch license on two separate occasions in 2023. In the first instance, the FAA said that SpaceX executed a launch using a new control room and without conducting a launch readiness poll two hours before liftoff; in the second instance, during a Falcon Heavy launch, the FAA alleges that the company used an unapproved rocket propellant farm to fuel the launch vehicle.
These changes require amendments to the company’s launch licenses, which the FAA did not approve prior to the launches taking place, the agency says. The combined fines are the largest civil penalty yet levied by the agency against a commercial launch provider.
The company is facing over $600,000 in fines for violating regulations during two launches last year.
Passant Rabie - September 20, 2024
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is coming after SpaceX for allegedly violating its regulations, but the company is not having it. In a letter to Congress, SpaceX fired back at the FAA, criticizing its inability to keep up with the growing space industry and suggesting that its decision was political.
SpaceX released a copy of the letter it sent to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, in which it objected to the FAA’s proposed $633,009 in civil penalties for license violations. The letter accused the FAA of moving too slowly on approving minor license updates, and that it lacks the resources to be able to review licensing material in a timely manner.
“For nearly two years, SpaceX has voiced its concerns with the FAA’s inability to keep pace with the commercial spaceflight industry,” the company wrote on X. “It is clear that the Agency lacks the resources to timely review licensing materials, but also focuses its limited resources on areas unrelated to public safety.”
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-hits-back-at-faa-over-launch-penalties-and-delays-2000501320
SpaceX is trying to acquire 43 new acres, but the land it's offering in return is already protected. This means Texans won't see any new conserved land areas.
Passant Rabie - 9 February 2024
Details about SpaceX’s proposed land swap deal with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission (TPWC) keep getting uglier. After an overwhelming majority voted against the land exchange, the decision was delayed to March. Recent reports, however, suggest that the acres in question were already set aside for preservation and that an oil billionaire in Texas is helping Elon Musk seal the deal.
TPWC is considering a land swap deal with SpaceX, acquiring around 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge Bahia Grande Unit, and in exchange giving SpaceX approximately 43 acres from Boca Chica State Park. The decision was scheduled for a vote on January 25, but has now been delayed to March after the agency received more than 1,039 comments against the land exchange and 263 that were for it, according to the Texas Standard.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-elon-musk-boca-chica-land-swap-hildebrand-1851242563
The world's richest man is done with Delaware after being at risk of losing his $55.8 billion pay package at Tesla.
Passant Rabie - 15 February 2024
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is so done with Delaware, packing up his business incorporations from the mid-Atlantic state after a judge came for his paycheck.
Musk’s rocket company has filed to move its incorporation location from Delaware to Texas, according to a Wednesday filing to the Texas Secretary of State. “If your company is still incorporated in Delaware, I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible,” Musk wrote on X.
The move comes shortly after a Delaware state judge ruled in favor of a Tesla shareholder who had filed a lawsuit in 2018 challenging the terms of Musk’s pay. As a result, Musk’s $55.8 billion pay package at Tesla remains in jeopardy, risking his position as the richest person in the world. Musk is expected to appeal against the ruling.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-spacex-moves-state-of-incorporation-texas-1851260354
Elon Musk is set on leaving Delaware after a judge in the state tossed out his $56 billion Tesla pay package.
Mariella Moon, Contributing Reporter - Wed, Feb 14, 2024, 11:32 PM PST
Elon Musk has started moving his businesses away from Delaware, following a judge's decision in the state to invalidate his $56 billion Tesla pay package. In a post on X, Musk has announced that SpaceX has moved its corporate home from Delaware to Texas, along with a copy of the certificate of conversion it received from the Texas Secretary of State. “If your company is still incorporated in Delaware, I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible,” the executive added.
As Bloomberg notes, he also moved Neuralink's business from Delaware to Nevada on February 8, shortly after he revealed that the company implanted its brain chip into a human patient for the first time. With that change in location, Neuralink joined another company Musk controls in the state: X, which he also moved from Delaware, when he changed its name from Twitter in 2023.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-moves-its-legal-home-to-texas-from-delaware-073217793.html
“They're looking at a pretty aggressive launch schedule this year.”
Eric Berger - 2/22/2024, 8:09 AM
As SpaceX nears its first Starship launch of 2024—possibly as soon as within three weeks—from its Starbase facility in South Texas, the company is pressing regulators to increase its cadence of flights.
During a press availability this week, the administrator for Commercial Space Transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, Kelvin Coleman, said the agency is working with the company to try to facilitate the Starship launch-licensing process.
“They're looking at a pretty aggressive launch schedule this year,” he said. “They're looking at, I believe, at least nine launches this year. That's a lot of launches. If you're doing modifications and doing them one by one, that's a lot of work. We've been talking to SpaceX constantly around the clock, coming together and trying to figure out how do we do this. We're invested with the company, and so we'll work with them to get them back going as soon as they can.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/spacex-seeks-to-launch-starship-at-least-nine-times-this-year/
The farmer who found the giant piece of burned metal is looking to sell it to help build a hockey rink in his hometown.
Passant Rabie - 16 May 2024
It’s raining space junk. Just one month after NASA admitted that a piece of trash tossed from the International Space Station (ISS) crash-landed through a home in Florida, a massive piece of space debris ended up on a farm in Canada.
A farmer in Saskatchewan, Canada discovered an 88-pound (40 kilograms) heavy piece of charred metal in his fields, and suspected it was space debris from the multiple layers of burned composite fibres and webbing, CBC reported. “But I had no idea. I don’t build spaceships for a living. I farm,” Barry Sawchuk told CBC.
Local reports of the possible space junk reached a group of astronomy professors, who traced the burned fragments to the reentry of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked from the ISS over the Pacific Ocean, west of Ecuador on February 7, and returned a crew of astronauts to Earth following a splashdown off the coast of Daytona, Florida, on February 9.
https://gizmodo.com/space-junk-debris-canadian-farm-spacex-crew-dragon-1851482651
12:32 PM PST January 14, 2025 - Margaux MacColl
The airline Qantas has been forced to delay several flights to South Africa due to last minute warnings about SpaceX rocket debris falling from the sky, the airline told The Guardian this week.
SpaceX chose the southern Indian Ocean as its reentry zone because of its remote location. But the location is very relevant to Qantas: It falls within its route from Sydney to Johannesburg. Head of Qantas’ operation center, Ben Holland, said the airline is often given very little advanced notice about the debris, leading to delays.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/14/flights-delayed-by-spacexs-falling-rocket-debris/
Australian airline Qantas delayed some flights by up to six hours to avoid potential rocket debris over the Indian Ocean.
Todd Feathers - January 16, 2025
Qantas airlines has delayed multiple flights between Australia and South Africa in recent weeks—sometimes by up to six hours—due to warnings about potential falling debris from SpaceX rocket re-entries.
Ben Holland, the head of Qantas’s operations center said in an email that his company received warnings from U.S. authorities that covered a large portion of the Indian Ocean with little advance notice, forcing delays for flights between Sydney and Johannesburg. Flights from South African Airways have also been affected by warnings of incoming SpaceX debris, according to The Guardian.
“While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we’ve had to delay some flights just prior to departure. Our teams notify customers of changes to their flight as soon as we know it will be impacted,” Holland said, adding “We’re in contact with SpaceX to see if they can refine the areas and time windows for the rocket re-entries to minimise future disruption to our passengers on the route.”
It will be the first crew flight using a recycled Falcon and Dragon craft.
Saqib Shah - April 16th, 2021
NASA has given SpaceX the green light to transport four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) next week after completing a formal Flight Readiness Review. Liftoff will take place as planned on April 22nd at 6:11 AM ET at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The upcoming Crew Dragon launch notably marks a couple of firsts for Elon Musk's space venture. Not only is it the first crew flight using a recycled Falcon and Dragon craft, according to Phys.org, but it's also the first with two international partners. The Falcon 9 rocket features the same first stage that launched astronauts to the ISS back in November, while the capsule (named Endeavour) carried NASA's Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to and from the space station last Spring.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-go-ahead-crew-dragon-launch-iss-115826838.html
Aria Alamalhodaei - 8:55 AM PDT March 28, 2022
SpaceX will no longer be making new Crew Dragons, the spacecraft that ferries astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and will instead focus on reusing the fleet of four already in existence, Reuters reported Monday.
SpaceX is planning to continue manufacturing Crew Dragon components for refurbishment and will be able to manufacture more of the astronaut capsules if needed, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters.
Crew Dragon is SpaceX’s first crewed spacecraft, borrowing its design from the Dragon cargo capsule that’s used for resupply services to the ISS. Crew Dragon capsules have taken humans to space in five separate missions since its debut in 2020, including Inspiration4, a private crewed mission financed by billionaire Jared Isaacman.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/28/spacex-will-not-be-making-any-more-new-crew-dragon-capsules/
SpaceX and NASA officials are watching for wear and tear on Crew Dragon Endeavour.
Stephen Clark - Updated 3/3/2024, 8:58 PM
SpaceX's oldest Crew Dragon spacecraft launched Sunday night on its fifth mission to the International Space Station, and engineers are crunching data to see if the fleet of Dragons can safely fly as many as 15 times.
It has been five years since SpaceX launched the first Crew Dragon spacecraft on an unpiloted test flight to the space station and nearly four years since SpaceX's first astronaut mission took off in May 2020. Since then, SpaceX has put its clan of Dragons to use ferrying astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.
Now, it's already time to talk about extending the life of the Dragon spaceships. SpaceX and NASA, which shared the cost of developing the Crew Dragon, initially certified each capsule for five flights. Crew Dragon Endeavour, the first in the Dragon fleet to carry astronauts, is now flying for the fifth time.
This ship has spent 466 days in orbit, longer than any spacecraft designed to transport people to and from Earth. It will add roughly 180 days to its flight log with this mission.
Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 10:53 pm EST Sunday (03:53 UTC Monday), following a three-day delay due to poor weather conditions across the Atlantic Ocean, where the capsule would ditch into the sea in the event of a rocket failure during the climb into orbit.
Typically, most of the ISS propulsion comes from the Russian segment of the space station.
Eric Berger – Nov 5, 2024 9:16 AM
A Cargo Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station on Tuesday morning, less than a day after lifting off from Florida.
As space missions go, this one was fairly routine, ferrying about 6,000 pounds (2,700 kg) of cargo and science experiments to the space station. Over the course of nearly a dozen years, this was the 31st cargo supply mission that SpaceX has flown for NASA to the orbiting laboratory.
However, there is one characteristic of this flight that may prove significant for NASA and the future of the space station. As early as Friday, NASA and SpaceX have scheduled a “reboost and attitude control demonstration,” during which the Dragon spacecraft will use some of the thrusters at the base of the capsule. This is the first time the Dragon spacecraft will be used to move the space station.
Are the woes of the Calamity Capsule catching?
Richard Speed - Mon 5 Aug 2024 16:37 UTC
NASA's latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has encountered problems on its way to the orbiting outpost.
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1502 UTC on August 4. It was the second of three Falcon 9 launches booked by Northrop Grumman while a new engine is developed for its Antares rocket.
The Falcon 9 first stage landed successfully, and the uncrewed Cygnus freighter, named for Francis R “Dick” Scobee, a NASA astronaut who perished in the Challenger accident, was inserted into orbit.
However, things then began to go a little awry. According to NASA, the spacecraft missed its first burn, the “Targeted Altitude Burn” or TB1, “due to a late entry to burn sequencing.” The burn was rescheduled for 50 minutes later “but aborted the maneuver shortly after the engine ignited due to a slightly low initial pressure state.”
NASA said in its statement on the matter that: “There is no indication the engine itself has any problem at this time.” This suggests that the issue might lie in some sensors or somewhere within the software responsible for controlling the burns.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/05/freighter_bound_for_iss_engine_abort/
The primary reason for the delay is rather surprising.
Eric Berger - 8/5/2024, 8:37 AM
NASA is planning to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station due to ongoing concerns about the Starliner spacecraft currently attached to the station.
While the space agency has not said anything publicly, sources say NASA should announce the decision this week. Officials are contemplating moving the Crew-9 mission from its current date of August 18 to September 24, a significant slip.
Nominally, this Crew Dragon mission will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, spacecraft commander; Nick Hague, pilot; and Stephanie Wilson, mission specialist; as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, for a six-month journey to the space station. However, NASA has been considering alternatives to the crew lineup—possibly launching with two astronauts instead of four—due to ongoing discussions about the viability of Starliner to safely return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth.
As of late last week, NASA still had not decided whether the Starliner vehicle, which is built and operated by Boeing, should be used to fly its two crew members home. During its launch and ascent to the space station two months ago, five small thrusters on the Starliner spacecraft failed. After extensive ground testing of the thrusters, as well as some brief in-space firings, NASA had planned to make a decision last week on whether to return Starliner with crew. However, a Flight Readiness Review planned for last Thursday was delayed after internal disagreements at NASA about the safety of Starliner.
According to a Reuters investigation, Elon Musk's company prioritizes the race to Mars over adhering to safety regulations to meet aggressive deadlines.
Passant Rabie - 10 November 2023
SpaceX has undoubtedly cemented its position as a leader in the emerging space industry, but that may have come at a painful price. A shocking new investigation by Reuters documents 600 workplace injuries and one death at Elon Musk’s rocket company, highlighting a dangerous disregard for safety practices for the sake of SpaceX’s ambitious goals.
In its report, Reuters talked to more than a dozen current and former employees and reviewed medical and worker compensation records. The records included reports of more than 100 workers suffering cuts or lacerations, 29 with broken bones or dislocations, 17 whose hands or fingers were “crushed,” and nine with head injuries, including one skull fracture, four concussions and one traumatic brain injury, according to Reuters. The reports also indicated five burns, five electrocutions, eight accidents that led to amputations, and seven eye injuries.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-elon-musk-safety-lapses-severe-employee-injuries-1851012184
Amanda Silberling - 3 January 2024
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint alleging that SpaceX illegally fired eight employees who wrote and distributed an open letter with workplace concerns.
Circulated in June 2022, the open letter called out how SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk’s public behavior was harming the company’s reputation. At the time, Business Insider alleged that SpaceX paid a $250,000 settlement to a flight attendant that Elon Musk sexually harassed.
An excerpt from the open letter reads:
Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.
The NLRB also alleges that SpaceX interrogated, surveilled and threatened workers. As a result of its complaint, the NLRB regional director in Los Angeles will seek to arrive at a settlement with SpaceX. If SpaceX doesn’t settle, the company will face a hearing before an administrative law judge in March.
SpaceX fired workers after open letter called Musk's behavior an “embarrassment.”
Jon Brodkin - 1/3/2024, 1:57 PM
SpaceX illegally fired eight employees who criticized CEO Elon Musk in an open letter, a National Labor Relations Board regional director alleged in a complaint filed against the company today.
“Today, the NLRB Regional Director in Region 31 (Los Angeles) issued a consolidated complaint against SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA, covering eight unfair practice charges,” the NLRB said in a statement provided to Ars. “The complaint alleges that the employer unlawfully discharged eight employees who drafted and distributed an open letter detailing workplace concerns.”
A complaint is not a board decision, the statement noted. It means the regional office investigated the charges and found merit in them. The complaint and notice of hearing is confirmed on the NLRB website, and you can read the complaint here.
The NLRB said the complaint seeks reinstatement of the employees, back pay, and letters of apology to the fired employees. If SpaceX doesn't settle the charges, there will be a hearing with an NLRB administrative law judge starting on March 5.
In June 2022, SpaceX employees circulated a letter that urged company executives to condemn CEO Elon Musk's public behavior. The letter made a reference to a report of a sexual misconduct allegation, called out “Elon's harmful Twitter behavior,” and said that “SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon's personal brand.”
At SpaceX's manufacturing facility in Brownsville, Texas, the injury rate is more than seven times the industry average.
George Dvorsky - 24 April 2024
SpaceX, the world leader in rocket launches, is increasingly coming under scrutiny for its workplace practices. A recent safety review performed by Reuters highlights an upsetting trend at the aerospace company. For the second year in a row, injury rates at SpaceX far exceed the industry average. This is according to a Reuters review of 2023 safety data that the company filed to U.S. regulators, specifically the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Discouragingly, the injury rate worsened at SpaceX compared to the previous year.
A previous Reuters investigation found that the approximately 600 reported injuries in 2022 included crushed limbs, cuts, burns, eye injuries, electrocutions, amputations, and serious head injuries, according to the news outlet, which noted that data from prior years are either incomplete or non-existent.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-worker-injuries-workplace-safety-1851432112
The Falcon Heavy, currently the most powerful rocket in the world, is set to blast off on Tuesday at 9:41 a.m. ET.
George Dvorsky - 31 October 2022 4:40PM
SpaceX is scheduled to launch a classified payload for the U.S. military on Tuesday morning with a Falcon Heavy—a giant rocket that hasn’t flown in three years. Launches of Falcon Heavy are quite spectacular, and you can catch the action live right here.
The classified mission, named USSF-44, is slated to take flight on Tuesday, November 1 at 9:41 a.m. ET (1:41 p.m. UTC). The rocket is currently standing atop Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the weather is expected to be excellent at the time of launch. SpaceX has set Wednesday aside for a second launch attempt, should that be necessary. You can watch the launch at SpaceX or at the feed to be posted below.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-military-1849724889
Classified mission will █████████ for ████ in █████████ until ███████████ █████
Katyanna Quach - Tue 1 Nov 2022 22:30 UTC
The most powerful operational rocket flying today – SpaceX's Falcon Heavy – blasted multiple military satellites into orbit on a classified mission for the US Space Force on Tuesday, marking its fourth flight since 2019.
The 230-foot-tall vehicle launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 0941 ET (1341 UTC). The exact nature of the payloads is a secret, though we do know that the mission, USSF-44 [PDF], was for Space Force's Space Systems Command, which describes its job as “delivering lethal and resilient space capabilities to defend the nation in the contested space domain.”
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/01/spacex_falcon_heavy_military/
This was the first time SpaceX invited photographers to set Florida landing zone remotes.
Eric Berger - 11/1/2022, 1:53 PM
On Tuesday morning, a Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center, carrying a pair of satellites for the US Space Force to geostationary orbit.
This was the fourth overall launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, but it marked the first time that SpaceX invited a handful of photographers to set up remote cameras next to Landing Zone 2, which is located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This is one of two concrete pads where Falcon 9 rockets launched from Florida occasionally land.
Each of the circular landing pads, which measure 86 meters in diameter, was busy on Tuesday morning with the return of a pair of side-boosters from the Falcon Heavy launch. After separating from the core stage of the heavy rocket, these boosters then made a propulsive descent. The first touched down 8 minutes and 15 seconds after launch. The second followed five seconds later.
Darrell Etherington - 6:54 AM PDT November 1, 2022
SpaceX has launched its Falcon Heavy rocket on a mission for the U.S. Space Force. This is the fourth launch of the company’s heavy payload launch vehicle, which first flew in 2018. Today’s launch also marks SpaceX’s 50th in 2022.
The payload for today’s launch includes two U.S. Space Force satellites, including one used for “various prototype missions” in geosynchronous orbit, and another whose nature and purpose is classified for national defence purposes.
While SpaceX uses Falcon Heavy a lot less frequently than its Falcon 9 rocket (Heavy’s last launch was in 2019), it has a solid track record across its four flights. The Falcon Heavy uses three boosters for added thrust and lift capacity versus Falcon 9’s single core.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/01/spacex-successfully-launches-falcon-heavy-2022/
Posted by msmash on Tuesday November 01, 2022 06:59AM
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the world's most-powerful active rocket, lifted off for the first time in more than three years on Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral, with Elon Musk's company sending a group of satellites into orbit for the U.S. Space Force. From a report:
The rocket system, representing three Falcon 9 boosters strapped side-by-side, lifted off at a SpaceX launch pad. The rocket's two side boosters were due to land in synchrony on adjacent concrete slabs along Florida's east coast roughly eight minutes after liftoff.
The powerful rocket, packed with a classified military payload, is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on Saturday evening.
George Dvorsky - 12 January 2023
SpaceX’s military rideshare launch, designated USSF-67, appears ready to rock, with a static fire test successfully completed earlier in the week and pleasant weather conditions forecasted for Saturday. Here’s what you need to know about the private company’s second national security launch and the fifth flight of its powerful Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Falcon Heavy is unofficially scheduled to blast off on Saturday, January 14, at 5:51 p.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket will attempt to deliver a communications satellite for the U.S. Space Force, along with a batch of unspecified payloads hitching a ride to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). Weather is currently predicted as being 80% favorable for launch.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-second-space-force-mission-falcon-heavy-launch-1849979375
The majestic Falcon Heavy is expected to take flight on Saturday, January 14 at 5:51 p.m. ET.
George Dvorsky - 13 January 2023
The U.S. military is hitching a ride aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy—the most powerful commercial rocket currently in operation. Here’s how you can watch the classified USSF-67 mission take to Florida’s twilight skies.
The time has come for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to make its fifth flight, with launch of the USSF-67 mission expected on Saturday, January 14 at 5:51 p.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Sunset will have happened about five minutes prior, providing a spectacular twilight setting for rocket watchers, whether they’re located along the southeastern U.S. coast or intently observing online.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-spacex-falcon-heavy-space-force-launch-1849985465
A trickle of Falcon Heavy launches may soon turn into a flood.
Eric Berger - 1/15/2023, 1:00 PM
4pm ET Sunday Update: SpaceX delayed the launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket one day until Sunday evening, at 5:56pm ET (22:56 UTC), after preparations for an attempt Saturday fell behind schedule. But now the rocket and local weather in Florida are cooperating for an on-time liftoff of the triple-core booster.
The twilight launch attempt should look spectacular, and you can watch live beginning about 10 minutes before the launch window opens.
Original post: Nearly five years have passed since the massive Falcon Heavy rocket made its successful debut launch in February 2018. Since then, however, SpaceX's heavy lift rocket has flown just three additional times.
Why? It's partly because there is simply not all that much demand for a heavy lift rocket. Another factor is that SpaceX has increased the performance of its Falcon 9 rocket so much that it can complete a lot of the missions originally manifested on the Falcon Heavy. However the main reason for the low cadence has been due to a lack of readiness of payloads for the new rocket, particularly from the US Department of Defense.
But now this trickle of Falcon Heavy launches may turn into a flood. As early as Saturday, from Florida, the first of potentially five launches of the heavy lift rocket this year could take place.
“It’s an incredible capability for our nation. We’re fortunate to have it.”
Stephen Clark - 10/9/2023, 5:19 PM
You can consider this the start of NASA's Falcon Heavy era. The launch of the Psyche asteroid mission this week is the opening act among five launches the space agency has directly reserved on SpaceX's heavy-lift rocket over the next few years.
These Falcon Heavy flights will cut across NASA's portfolio of robotic space missions, dispatching probes deep into the Solar System, deploying a flagship-class astronomical observatory, sending up a weather satellite, and launching the keystone to NASA's Gateway mini-space station around the Moon.
The launch of the Psyche asteroid explorer, scheduled for Thursday from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, kicks it off. “We’ve been preparing for this for several years, and we’ve benefited from SpaceX's manifest. They’ve launched four Falcon Heavies since last November,” said Tim Dunn, a NASA launch director based at the Florida spaceport.
All told, we know of up to 10 Falcon Heavy missions on contract with SpaceX. Five of those are firm contracts with NASA's Launch Services Program, an office that procures launch services for the agency's robotic space missions, matching payloads with commercial rockets. Notable on this list is Europa Clipper, a $5 billion mission led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explore Jupiter's icy moon Europa, an ocean world that may harbor environments conducive to life.
Typically, a Falcon 9 rocket makes a more controlled return to Earth.
Eric Berger - 3/26/2021, 5:20 AM
A little more than three weeks ago, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center carrying a payload of 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. It was the first of four such missions flown this month by SpaceX.
The entire mission was nominal, except for a problem with the rocket's second stage. Typically, within an orbit or two of launching, the Falcon 9 rocket's Merlin vacuum engine will relight and nudge the second stage downward so that it harmlessly re-enters Earth's atmosphere into the Pacific Ocean.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/a-falcon-9-rockets-second-stage-just-burnt-up-over-seattle/
The company has rarely used such a “young” rocket for a Starlink mission.
Eric Berger - 5/26/2021, 10:31 AM
Update, 3:30 pm EDT: Under bright blue skies, the Falcon 9 rocket took off from Florida on Wednesday afternoon and promptly delivered its Starlink payload into orbit. This booster has truly become the workhorse of the global launch industry:
Original post, 1:31 pm EDT: SpaceX will attempt to launch another batch of 60 Starlink satellites today at 2:59 pm ET (18:59 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This marks the 28th overall launch of operational Starlink satellites.
The most notable aspect of today's mission is that it would be the 100th consecutive successful flight for the Falcon 9 rocket. This record dates back to June 2015, when the Falcon 9 rocket's second stage failed during the launch of a cargo supply mission to the International Space Station. The Dragon capsule was lost after the second stage broke apart and sank into the Atlantic Ocean.
Also, we enjoy more renderings of Chinese rockets that look like a Falcon 9.
Eric Berger - 1/28/2022, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 4.30 of the Rocket Report! There is plenty to discuss this week with NASA significantly expanding its support for the development of commercial rockets and a spicy new rocket tax proposal in the Land of Enchantment.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Will we soon hear about SpaceX's proposed launch site in South Texas?
Eric Berger - 6/9/2022, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 4.46 of the Rocket Report! This report is coming to you a day early because I'll be on vacation for a while—long enough that there may not be a newsletter next week. We'll see. In terms of happenings I'm likely to miss, look for the Federal Aviation Administration to finally decide on SpaceX's Starship launch site in South Texas by next Monday.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Three Falcon 9 launches; three booster landings; 36 hours. (Richard Angle/SpaceX)
Eric Ralph - June 19, 2022
SpaceX has successfully completed three Falcon 9 launches in just over 36 hours, highlighting the company’s continuous push towards ever-higher launch cadences in 2022.
In February, shortly after a NASA oversight panelist revealed that SpaceX was targeting 52 launches in 2022, CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company’s goal was for “Falcon [to] launch about once a week” throughout the year. In October 2020, continuing a tradition of extremely ambitious SpaceX launch cadence targets, Musk had also tweeted that “a lot of improvements” would need to be made to achieve his goal of 48 launches – an average of four launches per month – in 2021. Ultimately, SpaceX fell well short of that target, but did set a new annual record of 31 launches in one year, breaking its 2020 record of 26 launches by about 20%. However, perhaps even more important than the new record was the fact that SpaceX was able to complete six launches in four weeks at the end of 2021.
That impressive and unexpected achievement would turn out to be an explicit sign of things to come in 2022.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-three-falcon-9-rocket-launches-36-hours/
The private space company launched Starlink satellites, a military radar satellite, a satellite that takes pictures of Earth, and a mystery payload, perhaps.
Passant Rabie - 21 June 2022 1:47PM
It was a busy weekend for SpaceX, with the private space company launching three of its Falcon 9 rockets into orbit over a period of three days. SpaceX’s final launch may even have been carrying a classified government payload in addition to launching a spare satellite for low Earth orbit operator Globalstar.
The back-to-back launches kicked off Friday from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A, where a Falcon 9 rocket carried 53 Starlink satellites to orbit as part of the company’s growing broadband internet megaconstellation. The rocket’s first stage booster set a new record for SpaceX, marking the 13th flight and landing for the reusable booster.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-just-pulled-off-three-launches-in-36-hours-1849088799
The Space Force has approved the heavy-duty vehicle for top secret missions.
Jon Fingas - August 11, 2022 4:27 PM
SpaceX may soon handle some of the US government's highest-priority satellite missions. Bloomberg reports the Space Force has certified SpaceX to launch top secret spy satellites using Falcon Heavy rockets equipped with reusable boosters. The move gives SpaceX more high-profile government missions, of course, but also promises to save federal money by reducing the costs of ferrying these satellites to orbit. The Space Force has already saved over $64 million for GPS missions by using reusable Falcon 9 rockets, Space Systems Command's Falcon chief Walter Lauderdale said.
The Space Force issued the certification in June, but didn't disclose the approval until now. SpaceX can carry spy satellites aboard Falcon 9 rockets, but they don't always have the power needed for heavier payloads. The first Falcon Heavy-based launch is expected sometime between October and December, when SpaceX will deliver a National Reconnaissance Office satellite.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-approval-top-secret-satellites-202745650.html
The company's original intention was to have Starship do the heavy lifting, but the altered plan suggests Elon's jumbo rocket won't be ready any time soon.
Passant Rabie - 24 August 2022 11:10AM
The next generation of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites will be heavier and larger than their predecessors, which is why SpaceX has said they’ll need to launch aboard the upcoming Starship rocket. But the company now wants to use its existing Falcon 9 for Starlink 2.0 launches—a decision that will come at a cost.
It appears that SpaceX will be using its Falcon 9 rockets, as well as its upcoming Starship rocket, to launch Starlink 2.0 satellites to orbit. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on August 19, the company said it will downsize its next-gen internet satellites to make them fit into the Falcon 9 rocket despite earlier plans to launch Starlink 2.0 on the heavy lift Starship rocket.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-launch-future-starlinks-falcon-9-rockets-1849447613
A Falcon 9 carried a 38,360-pound payload to low Earth orbit on Thursday, in what is a new weight record for the trusty rocket.
George Dvorsky - 26 January 2023
SpaceX’s freakishly reliable Falcon 9 continues to impress. The rocket delivered 56 Starlink satellites to Earth orbit this morning, and with a collective weight around 17.4 metric tons, it’s now the heaviest payload ever lifted by a Falcon 9 rocket.
Blastoff occurred at 4:22 a.m. ET Thursday, with the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 taking flight from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage booster, partaking in its ninth launch, returned to Earth some nine minutes later, landing safely on the Just Read the Instructions droneship stationed northeast of the Bahamas. SpaceX later confirmed that the rocket was successful in deploying all 56 Starlink satellites.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-falcon-9-payload-weight-record-starlink-1850037136
A little less than seven years have passed since the company's last Falcon failure.
Eric Berger - 5/30/2023, 7:06 AM
Nearly seven years ago, on a steamy morning in Florida, a small team of SpaceX engineers was fueling a Falcon 9 rocket for a pre-launch firing test of its nine Merlin engines.
It had been a difficult but successful year for the California rocket company, which finally was starting to deliver on a long-promised increase in cadence of launches. A team of dozens of engineers and technicians at SpaceX's facilities in Cape Canaveral had suffered through grueling months of perfecting the “load-and-go” fueling process involved with the Falcon 9 rocket.
To maximize its payload capacity, the booster used super-chilled liquid oxygen to cram as much on board the rocket as possible. But once it was fueled, the rocket had to go quickly or the liquid oxygen would rapidly warm in the Florida heat. That summer the team of engineers had been pushing hard to compress the propellant loading time to launch with the coldest oxygen possible and max out the vehicle's performance.
That morning, to save a single day in the pre-launch preparation process, SpaceX had already affixed an Israeli satellite on top of the Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the static fire test. And the countdown was going smoothly on the morning of September 1, 2016, until it wasn't. Completely out of the blue, the rocket exploded violently, showering pieces of the vehicle into the swamplands for miles around. The $200 million satellite swan-dived to the ground, a total, fiery loss. The engineers had found the limit for how fast they could fuel the rocket.
The triple-core rocket, carrying the heaviest payload destined for geostationary orbit, is slated to blast off on Wednesday evening.
George Dvorsky - 26 July 2023
SpaceX is set to make history with tonight’s scheduled launch of the heaviest geostationary satellite ever, EchoStar 24, also known as Jupiter 3. You can catch the action live right here.
Jupiter 3 will be launched using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, one of the world’s most powerful operational rockets. The launch is scheduled for Wednesday, July 26, at 11:04 p.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The satellite will first be sent to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), from where it will maneuver to its final destination: a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles (35,700 km) above Earth.
You will be able to watch the launch live on the SpaceX website, SpaceX’s YouTube channel, or through the live feed provided below. The U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predicts an 85% chance of favorable weather for tonight’s anticipated launch.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-as-spacex-attempts-launch-of-falcon-heavy-1850678030
The first Falcon 9 rocket booster to transport astronauts to orbit met a devastating fate during its latest recovery.
Passant Rabie - 27 December 2023
A Falcon 9 first-stage booster broke apart after completing its 19th mission, tipping over on the floating droneship in the Atlantic Ocean due to high winds.
The SpaceX rocket launched on Saturday, December 23, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, while carrying 23 Starlink satellites to orbit. After landing on the company’s droneship, the rocket booster, known by its serial number B1058, was being transported back to shore when it tipped over due to high winds and waves, SpaceX revealed Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter).
“Super disappointing and sad to lose booster 1058,” Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, wrote on X in reaction to the news. “Tippy boosters occur when you get a certain set of landing conditions that lead to the legs having uneven loading. Heavy wind or sea state then cause the booster to teeter and slide which can lead to even worse leg loading.”
https://gizmodo.com/iconic-spacex-booster-falls-and-breaks-in-the-ocean-1851126023
The European Union agreed to pay a 30 percent premium for Falcon 9 launches.
Eric Berger - 3/19/2024, 2:05 PM
The European Union has reached an agreement with the United States that will allow for the launch of four Galileo navigation satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.
According to Politico, the security agreement permits staff working for the EU and European Space Agency to have access to the launch pad at all times and, should there be a mishap with the mission, the first opportunity to retrieve debris.
With the agreement, final preparations can begin for two launches of two satellites each, on the Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. These Galileo missions will occur later this year. The satellites, which each weigh about 700 kg, will be launched into an orbit about 22,000 km above the planet.
The heightened security measures are due to the proprietary technology incorporated into the satellites, which cost hundreds of millions of euros to build; they perform a similar function to US-manufactured Global Positioning System satellites. The Florida launches will be the first time Galileo satellites, which are used for civilian and military purposes, have been exported outside of European territory.
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday March 20, 2024 12:00AM
The European Union has agreed to launch four Galileo navigation satellites on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket at a 30 percent premium over the standard launch price. Ars Technica reports:
According to Politico, the security agreement permits staff working for the EU and European Space Agency to have access to the launch pad at all times and, should there be a mishap with the mission, the first opportunity to retrieve debris. With the agreement, final preparations can begin for two launches of two satellites each, on the Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. These Galileo missions will occur later this year. The satellites, which each weigh about 700 kg, will be launched into an orbit about 22,000 km above the planet.
Remarkably, SpaceX has launched a Falcon 9 rocket almost every day over the last week.
Stephen Clark - 4/12/2024, 10:51 AM
For the first time, SpaceX launched one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters for a 20th time Friday night on a flight to deliver 23 more Starlink Internet satellites to orbit.
This milestone mission lifted off at 9:40 pm EDT Friday (01:40 UTC Saturday) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Falcon 9 blazed a familiar trail into space, following the same profile as dozens of past Starlink missions.
The rocket's first-stage booster shut off its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, reaching a top speed of more than 5,000 mph (8,000 km per hour). The first stage detached from the Falcon 9's upper stage, which continued firing into orbit. The 15-story-tall Falcon 9 booster, meanwhile, followed an arcing trajectory before braking for a vertical landing on a drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.
The 23 flat-packed Starlink spacecraft deployed from the upper stage a little more than an hour after liftoff, bringing the total number of Starlinks in low-Earth orbit to more than 5,800 spacecraft.
Can the Falcon 9 eventually challenge Soyuz for launch totals?
Eric Berger - 4/24/2024, 8:00 AM
SpaceX launches have become extremely routine. On Tuesday evening, SpaceX launched its 42nd rocket of the year, carrying yet another passel of Starlink satellites into orbit. Chances are, you didn't even notice.
All the same, the cumulative numbers are mind-boggling. SpaceX is now launching at a rate of one mission every 2.7 days this year. Consider that, from the mid-1980s through the 2010s, the record for the total number of launches worldwide in any given year was 129. This year alone, SpaceX is on pace for between 130 and 140 total launches.
But with Tuesday evening's mission, there was a singular number that stood out: 300. The Falcon family, which includes the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters, recorded its 300th successful first-stage landing.
SpaceX is waiting for a determination from the FAA.
Eric Berger - 7/22/2024, 6:32 AM
It was only about 10 days ago that the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage failed in flight, preventing the rocket from delivering its 20 Starlink satellites into a proper orbit. Because they were released lower than expected—about 135 km above the Earth's surface and subject to atmospheric drag—these satellites ultimately reentered the planet's atmosphere and burnt up.
Typically, after a launch failure, a rocket will be sidelined for months while engineers and technicians comb over the available data and debris to identify a cause, perform tests, and institute a fix.
However, according to multiple sources, SpaceX was ready to launch the Falcon 9 rocket as soon as late last week. Currently, the company has a launch opportunity for no earlier than 12:14 am ET (04:14 UTC) on Wednesday for its Starlink 10-4 mission.
Richard Speed - Mon 29 Jul 2024 15:15 UTC
NASA will be launching a crew atop a Falcon 9 in the coming weeks as the SpaceX workhorse returned to flight with three Starlink launches over the weekend.
Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, said that the plan was to launch no earlier than August 18, although the launch window stretched into early September. “That's really driven by a pad turnaround for the Europa Clipper mission,” he said.
The date is also driven by managers having a plan and date to bring back the crew of the Boeing Starliner, which has been enjoying an extended stay at the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers work to understand the issues encountered during the test flight.
Astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore blasted off for a short trip on the Starliner on June 5, arriving at the ISS on June 6 for what was meant to be an eight-day mission. Crew-8, meanwhile, including NASA 'nauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, have been on the space station since March conducting scientific research including a study of brain organoids and another on plant growth.
Stich said: “The overall sequence is to undock and bring Butch [Wilmore] and Suni [Williams] home on Starliner, and then go launch the Crew-9 mission, and then do the direct handover, and bring Crew-8 home.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/nasa_approves_crew_9_launch/
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 29, 2024 11:38AM
“SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket,” reports Space.com, “after the vehicle experienced an issue on the Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA.”
Crew-9 lifted off on Saturday (Sept. 28) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the Crew Dragon capsule “Freedom” [for a 5-month stay, returning in February with Starliner's two astronauts]. Everything appeared to go well. The Falcon 9's first stage aced its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket's upper stage deployed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29) as planned. But the upper stage experienced an issue after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning.
The Falcon 9 rocket is truly delivering on the promise of rapid, reusable launch.
Eric Berger - Dec 2, 2024 8:41 AM
SpaceX recently hit some notable milestones with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, and even in the full context of history, the performance of the vehicle is pretty incredible.
Last Tuesday, the company launched a batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the 400th successful mission by the Falcon 9 rocket. Additionally, it was the Falcon program's 375th booster recovery, according to SpaceX. Finally, with this mission, the company shattered its record for turnaround time from the landing of a booster to its launch to 13 days and 12 hours, down from 21 days.
But even though it was mere hours before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, SpaceX was not done for the month. On Saturday, November 30, the company launched twice more in a little more than three hours. The payloads were more Starlink Internet satellites in addition to two Starshield satellites—a custom version of Starlink for the US Department of Defense—for the US military.
Fram2 is set to launch as early as March 31, sending four first-time astronauts into an orbit never before visited by humans.
Passant Rabie - March 26, 2025
SpaceX is gearing up for one of its most unique missions yet, launching four private astronauts into polar orbit to observe the planet’s most remote regions from above.
The Fram2 mission, named in honor of the original ship that reached both Earth’s Arctic and Antarctic regions, is set for launch no earlier than Monday, March 31 at 11:20 p.m. ET. The mission will venture out where no other human spaceflight mission has gone before, flying over the planet’s polar regions at an altitude of around 265 to 280 miles (425 to 450 kilometers) above the ground.
A four-person crew will ride on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Chun Wang of Malta, who founded the Bitcoin mining companies f2pool and stakefish, is leading Fram2 and is reportedly funding the mission. The remaining crew includes Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Norwegian cinematographer; Eric Philips, an Australian polar adventurer; and Rabea Rogge, a German robotics researcher. Despite their eclectic backgrounds, the private astronauts are all first-timers when it comes to spaceflight.
“I call it the last frontier of unexplored territory in low-Earth orbit.”
Stephen Clark – Apr 1, 2025 9:23 AM
Four adventurers suited up and embarked on a first-of-a-kind trip to space Monday night, becoming the first humans to fly in polar orbit aboard a SpaceX crew capsule chartered by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire.
The private astronauts rocketed into orbit atop a Falcon 9 booster from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:46 pm EDT Monday (01:46 UTC Tuesday). Instead of heading to the northeast in pursuit of the International Space Station, the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft departed Launch Complex 39A and arced to the southeast, then turned south on a flight path hugging Florida's east coast.
The unusual trajectory aligned the Falcon 9 with a perfectly polar orbit at an inclination of 90 degrees to the equator, bringing the four-person crew directly over the North or South Pole every 45 minutes.
Chun Wang, born in China and now a citizen of Malta, paid SpaceX an undisclosed sum for the opportunity to fly to space and bring three hand-picked crewmates along with him. SpaceX likely charged between $100 million and $200 million for the flight. Chun made his fortune as a crypto pioneer, co-founding F2Pool, once the world's largest bitcoin mining company. He named his mission Fram2 in honor of the Norwegian exploration ship Fram used for polar expeditions at the turn of the 20th century.
No one saw Earth's poles from space in the more than 400 human spaceflight missions preceding Fram2. The closest any crew mission has gotten to the poles was the Soviet Union's Vostok 6 mission in 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova's spacecraft reached a latitude of 65.1 degrees.
Jackie Wattles - Updated 2:35 PM EDT, Fri April 4, 2025
SpaceX is wrapping up the latest chapter in its commercial human spaceflight endeavors with the return of Fram2. The mission carried four passengers in a unique orbit around Earth that allowed humans to pass directly over the North and South poles for the first time.
Led by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, who is the financier of this mission, the Fram2 crew has been free-flying through orbit since Monday.
The group splashed down at 9:19 a.m. PT, or 12:19 p.m. ET, off the coast of California — the first West Coast landing in SpaceX’s five-year history of human spaceflight missions. The company livestreamed the splashdown and recovery of the capsule on its website.
During the journey, the Fram2 crew members were slated to carry out various research projects, including capturing images of auroras from space and documenting their experiences with motion sickness.
The ailment proved to be a significant issue for the crew, according to social media posts from Wang, who made his fortune with Bitcoin mining operations and is an avid traveler on Earth.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/04/science/spacex-fram2-mission-return-earth/index.html
“It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent.”
Eric Berger – May 5, 2025 4:00 AM
The rocket was there. And then it decidedly was not.
Shortly after sunrise on a late summer morning nearly nine years ago at SpaceX's sole operational launch pad, engineers neared the end of a static fire test. These were still early days for their operation of a Falcon 9 rocket that used super-chilled liquid propellants, and engineers pressed to see how quickly they could complete fueling. This was because the liquid oxygen and kerosene fuel warmed quickly in Florida's sultry air, and cold propellants were essential to maximizing the rocket's performance.
On this morning, September 1, 2016, everything proceeded more or less nominally up until eight minutes before the ignition of the rocket's nine Merlin engines. It was a stable point in the countdown, so no one expected what happened next.
“I saw the first explosion,” John Muratore, launch director for the mission, told me. “It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent. I swear, that explosion must have taken an hour. It felt like an hour. But it was only a few seconds. The second stage exploded in this huge ball of fire, and then the payload kind of teetered on top of the transporter erector. And then it took a swan dive off the top rails, dove down, and hit the ground. And then it exploded.”
The dramatic loss of the Falcon 9 rocket and its Amos-6 satellite, captured on video by a commercial photographer, came at a pivotal moment for SpaceX and the broader commercial space industry. It was SpaceX's second rocket failure in a little more than a year, and it occurred as NASA was betting heavily on the company to carry its astronauts to orbit. SpaceX was not the behemoth it is today, a company valued at $350 billion. It remained vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the launch industry. This violent failure shook everyone, from the engineers in Florida to satellite launch customers to the suits at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.
The incident came at the height of a rocket rivalry between SpaceX and ULA.
Passant Rabie - May 6, 2025
In 2016, a Falcon 9 rocket exploded during a wet dress rehearsal, creating a massive ball of fire that destroyed an onboard satellite. The reason for the eruption was unclear at first, leading to one of the wildest theories in spaceflight history that apparently got the feds involved.
In Reentry, a book about the early years of SpaceX, veteran space reporter Eric Berger explores the details of the Falcon 9 anomaly. The reason for the failure was not immediately obvious, leading SpaceX engineers to develop several theories. One theory floated by engineers was that a sniper had fired at the rocket, triggering the explosion. Berger recently shared new details about this wild sniper theory, revealed through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The explosion took place on September 1, 2016, around 9 a.m. ET. The Falcon 9 rocket was being prepped for a routine static fire test at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, when it suddenly burst into flames. The anomaly destroyed its onboard payload, the Amos-6 communications satellite.
The Falcon 9 is grounded pending an investigation, possibly delaying upcoming crew flights.
Stephen Clark - 7/12/2024, 1:43 AM
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered an upper stage engine failure and deployed a batch of Starlink Internet satellites into a perilously low orbit after launch from California Thursday night, the first blemish on the workhorse launcher's record in more than 300 missions since 2016.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, posted on X that the rocket's upper stage engine failed when it attempted to reignite nearly an hour after the Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7:35 pm PDT (02:35 UTC).
Posted by BeauHD on Friday July 12, 2024 01:40PM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:
SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday after one broke apart in space and doomed its payload of Starlink satellites, the first failure in more than seven years of a rocket relied upon by the global space industry. Roughly an hour after Falcon 9 lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the rocket's second stage failed to reignite and deployed its 20 Starlink satellites on a shallow orbital path where they will soon reenter and burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
The attempt to reignite the engine “resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote early on Friday on his social media platform X, using an industry acronym for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly that usually means explosion. The Falcon 9 will be grounded until SpaceX investigates the cause of the failure, fixes the rocket and receives the agency's approval, the FAA said in a statement. That process could take several weeks or months, depending on the complexity of the failure and SpaceX's plan to fix it. Musk said SpaceX was updating the software of the Starlink satellites to force their on-board thrusters to fire harder than usual to avoid a fiery atmospheric re-entry. “Unlike a Star Trek episode, this will probably not work, but it's worth a shot,” Musk said.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/07/12/207200/spacexs-historic-falcon-9-success-streak-is-over
SpaceX says a liquid oxygen leak caused the failure of a Falcon 9 launch last week.
Stephen Clark - 7/15/2024, 3:44 PM
It's unclear yet how long SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket will remain grounded as engineers investigate a rare launch failure last week, but the next test flight of the company's next-generation Starship vehicle appears to be on track for liftoff next month.
On Monday, SpaceX test-fired the 33 Raptor engines on the Starship rocket's Super Heavy booster at the company's Starbase facility in South Texas. The methane-fueled engines fired for about eight seconds, long enough for SpaceX engineers to verify all systems functioned normally. At full power, the 33 engines generated nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, twice the power output of NASA's iconic Saturn V Moon rocket.
SpaceX confirmed the static fire test reached its full duration, and teams drained methane and liquid oxygen from the rocket, known as Booster 12 in the company's inventory of ships and boosters. The upper stage for the next Starship test flight, known as Ship 30, completed the static fire of its six Raptor engines in May.
During the fourth flight of Starship on June 6, SpaceX successfully guided the Super Heavy booster back to a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico east of Starbase. The ship continued into space and completed a half-lap around the planet before reentering the atmosphere for a guided propulsive splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Company keen to get back on the horse before the investigation is complete
Richard Speed - Wed 17 Jul 2024 17:45 UTC
SpaceX wants to get back to launching Falcon 9 after one of the rockets experienced an upper stage malfunction last week, which forced it to ditch its satellites in a lower than planned orbit. It has requested a public safety determination from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow it to return to flight.
A spokesperson for the FAA told The Register that SpaceX made the request on July 15, noting “The FAA is reviewing the request and will be guided by data and safety at every step of the process.”
The FAA said in a statement, “When a public safety determination request is received, the agency evaluates safety-critical systems, the nature and consequences of the anomaly, the adequacy of existing flight safety analysis, safety organization performance, and environmental factors.
“If the FAA agrees no public safety issues were involved, the operator may return to flight while the investigation remains open, provided all other license requirements are met.”
As far as SpaceX is concerned, there weren't any public safety issues associated with the mishap. The first stage of the Falcon 9 made a nominal landing on a drone ship after the 2235 local time July 11 launch from Vandenburg Space Force Base in California. Things did not go so well for the upper stage which, according to SpaceX, developed a liquid oxygen leak. The first burn of the upper stage's Merlin Vacuum engine went well, but an “anomaly” occurred when the second burn was supposed to take place, leaving the payload of Starlink satellites in a lower-than-planned orbit.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/spacex_ask_faa_rocket_launch/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 6:48 AM PDT July 26, 2024
Regulators have given SpaceX the all-clear to return to launch with the Falcon 9 rocket two weeks after the vehicle experienced an anomaly on orbit.
It’s a quick turnaround for the space company, which had to conduct an investigation overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, identify the probable cause of the anomaly, and the corrective actions it will take to ensure it doesn’t happen again. This course of action is standard after a rocket launch goes wrong.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 experienced a rare issue on orbit after a routine launch of a batch of Starlink satellites on July 11. While launch and stage separation proceeded as expected, the second stage experienced a catastrophic issue. Twenty satellites were deployed, but were in an orbit too low to survive. All of the satellites have reentered the atmosphere and burned up.
Cracked line blamed for leak
Richard Speed - Fri 26 Jul 2024 17:38 UTC
SpaceX aims to resume launching the Falcon 9 rocket tomorrow after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) agreed to let the company return to flight operations.
An FAA spokesperson told The Register: “After a comprehensive review, the FAA determined no public safety issues were involved in the anomaly that occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 9-3 launch on July 11.
“This public safety determination means the Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation remains open, provided all other license requirements are met.”
SpaceX made a public safety determination request on July 15 following an upper-stage mishap earlier this month. The FAA spent a few days considering it and determined there wasn't a risk to public safety – so Elon Musk's rocketeers could continue launching their rockets while the overall investigation rumbled on.
SpaceX posted an explanation of the incident. The upper-stage leak, which was clearly visible during the mission broadcast, was identified as a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle's oxygen system. This resulted in the spewing of oxygen around the upper-stage engine.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/26/spacex_falcon_9_flight/
The fleet leader has met its demise.
Eric Berger - 8/28/2024, 6:20 AM
Early on Wednesday morning, at 3:48 am ET local time, a Falcon 9 rocket booster making its 23rd launch took off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The mission successfully delivered 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 of the larger vehicles with direct-to-cell capabilities, before attempting a landing on the A Shortfall of Gravitas. However, the experienced booster had a shortfall of stability and tipped over shortly following touchdown.
Prior to Wednesday's landing failure, SpaceX had landed 267 boosters in a row. The company's last failure occurred in February 2021. The cause of the failure was not immediately clear, and SpaceX said “teams are assessing the booster's flight data and status.” Based on video of the landing, it is possible there was an engine burn timing issue.
The rocket suffered a rare landing malfunction after delivering 21 Starlink satellites to orbit.
Passant Rabie - August 29, 2024
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded Falcon 9 after the rocket failed a landing attempt and went up in flames. This is the second time the otherwise dependable launch vehicle has been grounded this year, with its recent fumble taking place days before it was scheduled to launch a private crew to orbit.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida for a routine Starlink mission. The rocket’s upper stage carried 21 Starlink satellites to orbit, but its booster failed to stick the landing on its way down to Earth. Rather than its typically graceful touchdown, Falcon 9 tipped over on the droneship in the Atlantic Ocean and broke apart, ending up in a large fireball.
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday August 28, 2024 05:02PM
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded by the FAA for the second time in less than two months following the failed landing of a first-stage booster, which was destroyed in a fireball after its 23rd flight. Spaceflight Now reports:
The booster, serial number B1062 in the SpaceX fleet, suffered a hard landing, at the tail end of its record-setting 23rd flight. It was consumed in a fireball on the deck of the drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas', which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about 250 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina. The mishap was the first booster landing failure since February 2021. In a statement on Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said that while no public injuries or public property damage was reported, “The FAA is requiring an investigation.”
Failure has become rare, but the FAA needs to look into it regardless
Richard Speed - Fri 30 Aug 2024 14:34 UTC
SpaceX's Falcon 9 has been grounded following a rare mishap during the landing of a veteran booster.
The Falcon 9 first stage, which had performed a record-breaking 23 flights, made what appeared to be a hard landing on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, toppled over, and exploded. The incident marked the end of a streak of successful landings for the Falcon 9 first stage stretching back to 2021.
The mission, which sent 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct-to-Cell capabilities, into low-Earth orbit, was otherwise successful. Although SpaceX has appeared to make the landing of the Falcon 9 first stage almost routine, the incident confirms that the technical tour de force is anything but.
While the mishap occurred during the landing phase, SpaceX opted to stand down from the second Starlink mission of the night to allow teams time to review the data. Due to weather concerns, it had already scrubbed a planned launch for the Polaris Dawn mission.
Unsurprisingly, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is keen to take a closer look. While there were no reported injuries or damage to public property, the agency “is requiring an investigation.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/30/spacex_falcon_9_failure/
Otherwise, Crew-9 launch was a complete success
Richard Speed - Mon 30 Sep 2024 17:30 UTC
Updated SpaceX has grounded the Falcon 9 once more, following the launch of the Crew-9 mission, due to an issue with the second stage deorbit burn.
Despite the successful blast off of the Crew Dragon and subsequent touch down of the Falcon 9 first-stage booster, the second stage did not perform as expected.
The plan was to dispose of the second stage in the ocean, which went largely to order, although it landed in a different part of the ocean than intended.
Elon Musk's rocketeers attributed this to “an off-nominal deorbit burn,” saying: “We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.”
It creates a predicament since SpaceX has several Falcon 9 launches coming up. For example, ESA's Hera mission has a launch window that opens on October 7 and closes on October 27. The expedition is to conduct a detailed post-impact survey of the asteroid Dimorphos after NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully collided with it in September 2022.
SpaceX has not commented on where the second stage ended up; just that it was outside the targeted area. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell reckoned that a slight underburn during the deorbit firing was the most likely scenario.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/spacex_falcon_9_grounded/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 11:05 AM PDT September 30, 2024
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is grounded again after the vehicle’s second stage did not come down in the expected area of the ocean, following an otherwise successful mission that delivered a Dragon capsule and its crew to orbit.
“We will resume launching once we better understand root cause,” the company said in a statement posted to X.
The Crew-9 mission, which carried NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to orbit, launched on Saturday. (Two seats were left empty to ensure the two Boeing Starliner astronauts could return on the capsule in February.) Hague and Gorbunov arrived safely at the International Space Station early Sunday evening.
While the most important part of the mission was carried out without a hitch, the issue that occurred during the second stage’s deorbit burn marks the third time in three months that the Falcon 9 has experienced an anomaly. The deorbit burn is a precisely targeted firing of the stage’s single Merlin Vacuum engine to ensure any debris from reentry lands in a specific zone in the ocean.
SpaceX probably won't be grounded for long, but this could affect the launch of Europa Clipper.
Stephen Clark - 9/30/2024, 7:31 AM
SpaceX is investigating a problem with the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage that caused it to reenter the atmosphere and fall into the sea outside of its intended disposal area after a Saturday launch with a two-man crew heading to the International Space Station.
The upper stage malfunction apparently occurred after the Falcon 9 successfully deployed SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission. Hague and Gorbunov safely arrived at the space station Sunday to begin a five-month stay at the orbiting research complex.
The Falcon 9's second stage Merlin vacuum engine fired for more than six minutes to place the Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The engine was supposed to reignite later to steer the upper stage on a trajectory back into Earth's atmosphere for disposal over the South Pacific Ocean, ensuring the rocket doesn't remain in orbit as a piece of space junk.
“After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn,” SpaceX posted on X late Saturday night. “As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.”
Safety warnings issued to mariners and pilots before the launch indicated the Falcon 9's upper stage was supposed to fall somewhere in a narrow band stretching from southwest to northeast in the South Pacific east of New Zealand. Most of the rocket was expected to burn up during reentry, but SpaceX targets a remote part of the ocean for disposal because some debris was likely to survive and reach the sea.
This is the second landing mishap for the rocket within a month, ending a streak of stellar touchdowns.
Passant Rabie - September 30, 2024
SpaceX may be working its Falcon 9 rocket a little too hard. The normally reliable launch vehicle suffered another malfunction and has been grounded for the second time in a month.
Falcon 9 launched the Crew-9 mission on Saturday, September 28, transporting NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the International Space Station aboard the Dragon crew capsule. After its launch, however, the rocket’s upper stage experienced an “off-nominal deorbit burn” that caused it to miss its targeted landing zone, SpaceX wrote on X.
“We will resume launching after we better understand root cause,” the company added. It’s not clear how long Falcon 9 will remain grounded, but the rocket is a staple in the industry for both private and government-owned payloads. Saturday’s liftoff marked the Falcon 9 rocket’s 89th launch of 2024 alone. SpaceX is aiming for a record-breaking 148 launches of its Falcon 9 rocket this year, topping the 98 missions of 2023.
https://gizmodo.com/spacexs-falcon-9-grounded-indefinitely-after-missing-its-landing-spot-2000505014
After successfully launching a crew to the ISS, the rocket's upper stage experienced an anomaly during its deorbit burn.
Passant Rabie - October 2, 2024
It looks like the Falcon 9 rocket won’t be flying again anytime soon. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has requested an investigation into SpaceX’s launch of its Crew-9 mission as a result of the rocket’s upper stage experiencing an anomaly on its way back for an ocean splashdown.
SpaceX grounded its rocket to look into the root cause of the anomaly, which caused Falcon 9 to miss its targeted landing area. Now, the FAA has made it clear that an investigation is required before the rocket can resume its launches, according to a recent statement. The company’s workhorse is a favorite in the industry, and it has a packed schedule ahead of it, but it’s unclear when it will be able to fly again.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched the Crew-9 mission on Saturday, September 28, transporting NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the International Space Station aboard the Dragon crew capsule. On its way down to land in the ocean, the rocket’s upper stage experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn that caused it to miss its targeted splashdown zone.
SpaceX has long had a hard-charging culture. Is it now charging too hard?
Eric Berger – Mar 10, 2025 9:50 AM
It has been an uncharacteristically messy start to the year for the world's leading spaceflight company, SpaceX.
Let's start with the company's most recent delay. The latest launch date for a NASA mission to survey the sky and better understand the early evolution of the Universe comes Monday night. The launch window for this SPHEREx mission opened on February 28, but a series of problems with integrating the rocket and payloads have delayed the mission nearly two weeks.
Then there are the Falcon 9 first stage issues. Last week, a Falcon 9 rocket launched nearly two dozen Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit. However, one of the rocket's nine engines suffered a fuel leak during ascent. Due to a lack of oxygen in the thinning atmosphere, the fuel leak did not preclude the satellites from reaching orbit. But when the first stage returned to Earth, it caught fire after landing on a droneship, toppling over. This followed a similar issue in August, when there was a fire in the engine compartment. After nearly three years without a Falcon 9 landing failure, SpaceX had two in six months.
The incident raises concerns about companies failing to disclose issues during commercial spaceflight missions.
Passant Rabie - December 18, 2024
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission reportedly experienced an hour-long loss of ground control before two private astronauts exited the Dragon crew capsule for the first commercial spacewalk in history, according to a report by Reuters.
The Polaris Dawn mission launched on September 10, carrying a four-person crew, led by tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. The billionaire-funded mission, riding aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, reached a maximum orbital altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) above Earth, also setting a new record for Earth-orbit apogee (the farthest point reached away from the planet) for a crewed mission. On September 12, Polaris Dawn became the first private mission to conduct a spacewalk, with two astronauts, including Isaacman, stepping outside a SpaceX capsule for a historic moment that broke new ground for commercial spaceflight.
Things may not have gone as smooth inside SpaceX’s mission control room. An anonymous source told Reuters that a power outage at SpaceX’s California facility caused a loss of ground control, meaning that the mission control team was briefly unable to command the spacecraft. The Polaris Dawn crew members did receive training before launching to space, however, they are not professional astronauts.
While part of the seventh test launch of the super heavy-lift rocket was a success, stress on the propulsion system led to debris raining down on Turks and Caicos.
Adam Kovac - February 25, 2025
We now know the likely cause of a Starship test flight failure that caused rocket parts to rain down over popular tourist destinations back in January, and forcing airlines to divert flights.
The upper stage Starship spacecraft experienced a stronger-than-expected harmonic response, according to a statement from SpaceX. By harmonic response, engineers mean vibrations amplified by resonance. That, in turn, put increased stress on the propulsion system, likely causing the rocket to explode before it had the chance to reach space.
On January 17, the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor engines all fired successfully at launch, and the booster was able to both start up and complete its full burn. The upper stage ignited its own Raptor engines as it separated from the booster. While the booster did ultimately return to the ground, where it was caught at the launch site, there was a slight hiccup to the process. A low-power condition in one engine’s igniter system forced it to prematurely shut down, but the other 12 engines worked fine. SpaceX said a potential problem of this nature had already been identified and rectified for future flights by upgrading the igniter system.
All fixed for Flight Test Eight, OK?
Richard Speed - Wed 26 Feb 2025 11:45 UTC
As SpaceX prepares for a Friday launch of its next Starship flight test, Elon Musk's biz has explained that the failure of the previous test was due to a harmonic response.
The return of the Super Heavy booster to its launch site and subsequent capture by the launch tower's arms was a near total success, even though the boostback burn didn't go as planned due to one of the 13 Raptor engines used in the burn aborting on startup because of a low power condition in the igniter system.
All 13 middle ring and center Raptor engines – including the engine that had aborted during startup – were successfully lit for the landing burn, and the Super Heavy was captured.
Things did not go so well for Starship. The vehicle separated from the Super Heavy booster and successfully lit its six second-stage engines. All was good until around two minutes into the burn, when a flash was seen near one of the Raptor engines in the aft section of the vehicle.
Referred to by SpaceX as “the attic,” the unpressurized section is located between the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank and the aft heatshield. After the flash, sensors detected a pressure rise in the attic that suggested a leak.
After approximately another two minutes, a second flash was seen, followed by “sustained fires” in the attic. All but one of the engines eventually shut down and, while communication ceased, SpaceX reckons that the safety system triggered autonomously as expected. Debris from the termination was showered over the Turks and Caicos Islands.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/26/spacex_harmonic_response_starship/
SpaceX now plans at least four Starship launch pads, two in Texas and two in Florida.
Stephen Clark - 2/17/2024, 5:27 PM
One of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will become vacant later this year after the final flight of United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket. SpaceX is looking to make the sprawling facility a new home for the Starship launch vehicle.
The environmental review for SpaceX's proposal to take over Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral is getting underway now, with three in-person public meetings and one virtual meeting scheduled for March to collect comments from local residents, according to a new website describing the plan.
Then federal agencies, led by the Department of the Air Force, will develop an environmental impact statement to evaluate how Starship launch and landing operations will affect the land, air, and water around SLC-37, which sits on Space Force property on the Atlantic coastline.
Environmental studies for rocket launch facilities typically take more than a year, so it will be a while before any major construction begins to convert SLC-37 for Starship launches. In this case, federal officials anticipate publishing a draft environmental impact statement by December, then a final report by October 2025.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/spacex-wants-to-take-over-a-florida-launch-pad-from-rival-ula/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 20 March 2024
SpaceX is in the final stages of certifying a second pad for astronaut launches, which should ease launch site congestion and help the company scale the number of humans it sends to space.
SpaceX has performed 13 crewed missions, and all of them launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It’s the only pad currently certified for human spaceflight. But the company has long intended to upgrade a second pad — SLC-40 at the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — to expand its crew launch capacity.
The company is nearly there. Last fall, SpaceX workers installed a crew access arm to the launch tower, a key piece of infrastructure that allows astronauts access to the crew Dragon spacecraft. The company also installed a new emergency egress system at the pad to allow the crew a quick escape in the case of an anomaly.
The system, which is essentially a long orange slide that stretches from the crew tower to the ground, will help SpaceX “scale to bigger towers and spaceships (think 100 people on Starship),” VP of Launch Kiko Dontchev said in a social media post.
Competitors have tried and failed to keep SpaceX from establishing launch sites before.
STEPHEN CLARK - 7/5/2024, 11:43 AM
United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are worried about SpaceX's plans to launch its enormous Starship rocket from Florida.
In documents submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration last month, ULA and Blue Origin raised concerns about the impact of Starship launch operations on their own activities on Florida's Space Coast. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, urged the federal government to consider capping the number of Starship launches and landings, test-firings, and other operations, and limiting SpaceX's activities to particular times.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, called Blue Origin's filing with the FAA “an obviously disingenuous response. Not cool of them to try (for the third time) to impede SpaceX’s progress by lawfare.” We'll get to that in a moment.
The FAA and SpaceX are preparing an environmental impact statement for launches and landings of the Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), while the US Space Force is working with SpaceX on a similar environmental review for Starship flights from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).
It's unclear how long upgrades will take or when the FAA will approve a booster catch.
Stephen Clark - 8/28/2024, 10:43 AM
Pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks, workers wielding welding guns and torches have climbed onto SpaceX's Starship launch pad in South Texas to make last-minute upgrades ahead of the next test flight of the world's largest rocket.
Livestreams of the launch site provided by LabPadre and NASASpaceflight.com have shown sparks raining down two mechanical arms extending from the side of the Starship launch tower at SpaceX's Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, Texas. We are publishing several views here of the welding activity with the permission of LabPadre, which runs a YouTube page with multiple live views of Starbase.
If SpaceX has its way on the next flight of Starship, these arms will close together to capture the first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, as it descends back to Earth and slows to a hover over the launch pad.
This method of rocket recovery is remarkably different from how SpaceX lands its smaller Falcon 9 booster, which has landing legs to touch down on offshore ocean-going platforms or at concrete sites onshore. Catching the rocket with large metallic arms—sometimes called “mechazilla arms” or “chopsticks”—would reduce the turnaround time to reuse the booster and simplify its design, according to SpaceX.
SpaceX has launched the nearly 400-foot-tall (121 meter) Starship rocket four times, most recently in June, when the Super Heavy booster, itself roughly 233 feet (71 meters) tall, made a pinpoint splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Starbase.
On the same flight in June, the Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world and reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. The ship survived reentry and splashed down in the open ocean northwest of Australia. This flight was the first time either part of the Starship rocket made it back to Earth intact, but SpaceX didn't recover the booster or the ship.
Local advocacy groups argue the ambitious launch schedule could increase pollution, harm wildlife, and disrupt fishing.
Ellyn Lapointe - May 16, 2025
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its 475th Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday, delivering yet another batch of Starlink satellites to space. This workhorse is far and away the most-launched American orbital rocket in history, and it won’t be slowing down anytime soon.
SpaceX aims to more than double the number of Falcon launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, increasing from 50 to 120 per year. To do this, the company has asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to modify its license and allow it to construct a new first-stage booster landing zone.
This could result in an average rate of one launch every three days from this site alone, the Indian River Lagoon Roundtable wrote in a recent letter to the FAA. This local environmental advocacy group is one of several sounding the alarm on SpaceX’s proposal.
Musk's private space venture is claiming that its megarocket does not pose a threat to surrounding wildlife in Texas.
Passant Rabie - 5 July 2023
SpaceX is denying allegations that its Starship rocket poses a threat to surrounding wildlife habitat in Boca Chica, Texas, hoping to dismiss a lawsuit that could potentially delay the anticipated launch of its megarocket.
Elon Musk’s rocket company responded to a lawsuit filed against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) following the inaugural launch of the Starship rocket, asking that a federal court dismiss the complaint put forth by Texas-based environmental groups, SpaceX wrote in a filing submitted on Friday.
In the court filing, SpaceX denied every allegation made by the lawsuit and argued that the environmental groups lacked legal grounds for their claims. At the same time, “SpaceX admits that Super Heavy is a powerful rocket that uses liquid methane for propulsion, and that launching rockets causes heat, noise, and light,” the company wrote in the filing. “SpaceX admits that the concrete launch pad deck was damaged during the liftoff, spreading some debris and dust. The FAA is currently evaluating data related to this launch.”
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-wants-dismissal-starship-rocket-eco-lawsuit-1850606575
Won't someone think of the (checks notes) Kemp's Ridley sea turtle?
Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 6 Jul 2023 18:45 UTC
SpaceX has hit back at a lawsuit brought by the American Bird Conservancy and others regarding risks to the environment near its Starship testing facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
While the Musk-owned rocket company admits its attempted orbital launch of Starship in April ended with a fireball, falling debris, noise, dust, and launchpad pieces flung hither and thither, that's just about all it copped to in its response [PDF] filed in a Washington DC district court.
“SpaceX,” it wrote, “admits that on April 20, 2023, it conducted a test launch of Starship/SuperHeavy in accordance with the license issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and that the launch vehicle successfully lifted off and flew for several minutes before experiencing anomalies that resulted in the termination of the mission and safe destruction of the launch vehicle over the Gulf of Mexico.
“SpaceX admits that the concrete launch pad deck was damaged during the liftoff, spreading some debris and dust.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/spacex_denies_environmental_lawsuit/
Land purchased to save it from Trump's border wall 'completely f*cked' by 'gravel, tractors, and space garbage'
Brandon Vigliarolo - Mon 23 Sep 2024/ 17:00 UTC
Elon Musk is facing down the barrel of another multimillion-dollar suit, this time from the makers of irreverent party game, Cards Against Humanity (CAH).
The game's creators sued [PDF] SpaceX last week, and not because Musk's antics are moving faster than the company's writers can keep up. The lawsuit, which seeks for as much as $15 million in damages, has to do with SpaceX allegedly using a parcel of Texas property owned by CAH to stage materials and equipment for nearby construction projects.
“Elon Musk's SpaceX was building some space thing nearby, and he figured he could just dump his shit all over our gorgeous plot of land without asking,” CAH said on a website it stood up to publicize the suit. “After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for less than half our land's value.”
CAH said it responded in a manner similar to Musk's statements to Twitter advertisers earlier this year, and is now following up with the lawsuit.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/23/cards_against_humanity_spacex/
Posted by msmash on Monday September 23, 2024 09:05AM
SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday. From a report:
Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years “when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.”
The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.
Among the many upgrades is a dramatic overhaul of the stage separation process for the revolutionary SpaceX rocket.
George Dvorsky - 26 June 2023
The largest rocket to ever take flight requires a substantial number of upgrades ahead of its second test flight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed this past weekend.
Musk made the comments on June 24 during a live Twitter discussion with Bloomberg journalist Ashlee Vance, saying “well over a thousand” changes are needed ahead of Starship’s second test flight, the date for which has not yet been set.
True to the company’s ethos to move fast and break things, the SpaceX boss is estimating a 60% chance of success for the upcoming test mission, having assessed a 50% chance of success for the first flight. A Starship prototype blasted off from SpaceX’s Texas launch site on April 20th, but it entered into a fatal tumble some four minutes into the flight and had to be destroyed.
https://gizmodo.com/musk-s-megarocket-second-launch-thousand-tweaks-1850576960
The massive rocket still needs to undergo a number of upgrades before its second test flight, which could take place in six weeks. Or not.
Passant Rabie - 27 June 2023
SpaceX’s launch facility in South Texas saw some fiery action last night as the upper stage of the company’s upcoming Starship prototype let out its first engine roar during a static fire test.
Starship 25 fired its six Raptor engines for a few seconds on Monday at 8:27 p.m. ET at the company’s Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX revealed on Twitter. Starship is a two-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle, this being a test of the upper stage. SpaceX will eventually perform a similar test of the booster, which is equipped with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-ignites-engines-ahead-next-test-flight-1850581120
Aria Alamalhodaei - 5 June 2023
SpaceX continues to make reuse look routine. Shortly before noon ET today, the company launched another cargo resupply capsule to astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) using rocket components that have visited space many times before.
The Falcon 9 booster that lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida this morning (and landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean shortly thereafter) had flown on four previous missions. Meanwhile, the Cargo Dragon capsule that’s currently en route to resupply the orbital lab has seen space three times before.
Packed inside the Dragon is around 7,000 pounds of science and research investigations, station supplies and hardware. That includes a final pair of ISS Roll Out Solar Array (IROSA) solar panels that are meant to replace the station’s aging solar power supply. Four IROSA panels have already been installed on the ISS.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/05/spacex-launches-cargo-resupply-mission-to-iss/
The recoverable spacecraft reentered off the coast of Brazil in the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Indian Ocean, and therefore could not be recovered.
Passant Rabie - April 23, 2025
A German startup was aiming to test a reentry capsule designed to reach orbit and survive the intense heat of returning to Earth. For its first flight, PHOENIX 1 launched to space as part of a SpaceX ride-share mission, but a change in launch plans largely messed the whole thing up.
ATMOS Space Cargo launched its PHOENIX 1 capsule at 8:48 p.m. ET on Monday, with the device tucked inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. About two hours after liftoff, the capsule reentered Earth’s atmosphere, but its splashdown point ended up much farther from the target than originally planned. Missing its intended splashdown zone meant that the spacecraft could not be recovered, and the company could not acquire valuable data and imagery of PHOENIX 1 to see how well it fared during reentry.
The company’s inaugural mission was designed to test the capsule’s heat shield during reentry. In doing so, ATMOS is hoping to develop a capsule capable of carrying out research in orbit and returning back to Earth with its payloads safe on board.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-curveball-sends-experimental-reentry-capsule-off-course-2000593318
The SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico early Sunday morning.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Sep 15, 2024, 7:20 AM PDT
The Polaris Dawn crew safely returned to Earth early Sunday morning, bringing the historic privately funded mission to a close. The Dragon capsule carrying the mission’s four astronauts — Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon — splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico around 3:30AM ET.
On Thursday, Isaacman and Gillis completed the first commercial spacewalk, each taking a turn to exit the craft and perform a series of spacesuit mobility tests. And with this mission, Gillis and Menon have now traveled farther from Earth than any women before. Polaris reached a peak altitude of about 870 miles, which is also the farthest any humans have ventured since the Apollo program.
The crew also performed a number of science experiments, and was able to complete a 40-minute video call to Earth and send files in a major test for Starlink’s space communications capabilities. That included a video recorded during the mission of Gillis, an engineer and violinist, playing the violin in space. “A new era of commercial spaceflight dawns, with much more to come,” Polaris posted on X Sunday morning.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 15, 2024 11:48AM
“It is with great relief that I welcome you home!” SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell posted on X. “This mission was even more extraordinary than I anticipated.”
“SpaceX's Polaris Dawn crew is home,” reports CNN, “capping off a five-day mission to orbit — which included the world's first commercial spacewalk — by splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.” The Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts landed off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. ET Sunday.
The Polaris Dawn mission made history as it reached a higher altitude than any human has traveled in five decades. [870 miles (1,400 kilometers) — beating the 853-mile record set in 1966 by NASA's Gemini 11 mission.] A spacewalk conducted early Thursday morning also marked the first time such an endeavor has been completed by a privately funded and operated mis.sion.
A pair of Polaris Dawn astronauts will venture outside the spacecraft on Thursday at 2:23 a.m. ET.
Passant Rabie - September 11, 2024
Four private astronauts are getting ready for a daring feat in low Earth orbit, opening the hatch and exposing the crew capsule to the vacuum of space before two crew members attempt the first-ever civilian spacewalk.
The Polaris Dawn mission launched on Tuesday at 5:23 a.m. ET on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After spending roughly two days in orbit, two astronauts will venture out for an extravehicular activity outside the Dragon spacecraft in brand new spacesuits. The orbital stunt has never been attempted by a private crew, and could pave the way for more adventurous trips to space.
The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday at 2:23 a.m. ET, and will be live-streamed on the SpaceX website and the company’s X account.
The four-person crew, led by tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, rode to space on board a Dragon spacecraft, which reached higher altitudes than any other SpaceX crew capsule. On Wednesday, Dragon reached a maximum orbit of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), where it performed six orbits of Earth, breaking the record held by NASA’s Gemini 11 mission; the crewed Gemini spacecraft orbited Earth at an altitude of 853 miles (1,373 kilometers) in 1966.
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday September 10, 2024 02:20PM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press:
A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots. Unlike his previous chartered flight, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman shared the cost with SpaceX this time around, which included developing and testing brand new spacesuits to see how they'll hold up in the harsh vacuum. If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won't venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, spacewalks have been the sole realm of professional astronauts since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the U.S. Today, they are routinely done at the International Space Station.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:11 PM PDT September 12, 2024
A crew of four private astronauts made history in the early hours of Thursday when they opened the hatch of their SpaceX Dragon capsule and conducted the first commercial spacewalk.
The spacewalk, the riskiest part of the five-day Polaris Dawn mission, kicked off at 6:12 a.m. ET when oxygen started flowing into the astronauts’ spacesuits. Only two of the four crew members actually exited the vehicle, but all four had to don the new SpaceX-made suits because the Dragon capsule doesn’t have an airlock. That meant the entire spacecraft had to be depressurized.
A spacewalk — sometimes called extravehicular activity — is when astronauts leave the relative safety of their spacecraft for the vacuum of space. In the history of human spaceflight, spacewalks have only ever been performed by government astronauts, who use them as an opportunity to do repairs, perform maintenance, or to conduct scientific experiments. Spacewalks performed by NASA astronauts typically last between five and eight hours.
Billionaire entrepreneur and mission leader Jared Isaacman was the first to exit the Dragon capsule; after he returned, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis took a turn in the vacuum of space. They used a special ladder mobility aid dubbed a “skywalker,” which SpaceX added to the Dragon just for this purpose, to assist them outside the capsule. The pair was connected to the spacecraft by umbilical cords and they kept contact with the ladder at all times. The spacewalk was very quick, with each person outside the spacecraft for less than ten minutes. During that time, Isaacman and Gillis performed a series of movements to test the suits’ mobility and performance.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 12, 2024 02:21PM
Two astronauts, billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, completed the world's first private spacewalk outside a SpaceX capsule, testing new spacesuits and procedures in a risky mission that pushes the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Reuters reports:
The astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission went one at a time, each spending about 10 minutes outside the gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon capsule on a tether, as Elon Musk's company again succeeded in pushing the boundaries of commercial spaceflight. Jared Isaacman, a pilot and the founder of electronic payments company Shift4, exited first, followed by SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, while crewmates Scott Poteet and Anna Menon watched from inside. The whole process, unfolding about 450 miles (730 km) above Earth, lasted an hour and 46 minutes. The four astronauts have been orbiting Earth since Tuesday's launch from Florida. Isaacman is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.
Two crew members emerged from the Dragon spacecraft to test their new SpaceX suits—and to take in the spectacular view.
Passant Rabie - Updated September 12, 2024
Billionaire-funded crew Polaris Dawn became the first private mission to conduct a spacewalk, stepping outside a SpaceX capsule into the vacuum of space for a historic moment that broke new ground for commercial spaceflight.
The Polaris Dawn mission set out for the world’s first private spacewalk early Thursday morning, with the crew members donning their extravehicular spacesuits inside the Dragon spacecraft. Although all four astronauts were exposed to the vacuum of space, only two crew members stepped outside of the spacecraft’s hatch before the cabin was repressurized to signal the end of the spacewalk, SpaceX wrote on X in a series of updates.
Unlike the International Space Station, the Dragon spacecraft is not equipped with an airlock. Therefore, the entire crew cabin had to be depressurized before its hatch was opened, exposing all four astronauts to the vacuum of space.
The astronauts will put SpaceX's new EVA spacesuits to the test.
Mariella Moon - Thu, Sep 12, 2024, 12:45 AM PDT
Two of Polaris Dawn's four astronauts could make history today by performing the first ever commercial spacewalk at around 700 kilometers (435 miles) above our planet. Jared Isaacman, the mission leader and funder, and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis will leave the confines and safety of the Crew Dragon capsule for 15 and 20 minutes each. The other two crew members, Scott Poteet and Anna Menon, will stay inside the vehicle to monitor the spacewalkers' status and make sure everything's in order. SpaceX will stream the event live on its website and on X starting at 4:50AM Eastern time. In case the spacewalk has to be called off, the astronauts will have another opportunity on September 13 at the same time.
The crew members tested SpaceX's new EVA suits with the Earth as their backdrop.
Mariella Moon - Thu, Sep 12, 2024, 5:00 AM PDT
Polaris Dawn astronauts Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis have successfully exited the confines of their Crew Dragon vehicle to perform the first ever commercial spacewalk on September 12. SpaceX and the Polaris crew started preparing for the event at 6:01AM Eastern time, checking that all their gear was in order and putting on the SpaceX extravehicular activity (EVA) suits that all four of them have to wear, because opening the Dragon's hatch will expose them to outer space. Pure oxygen was pumped into the suits to check for leaks before all the air was let out of the vehicle and before Isaacman opened the hatch.
The mission was a success, but it may have been prohibited by space law.
James Felton, Senior Staff Writer - 12 September 2024
Today at 6:12 am ET (10:15 am GMT), the crew of Polaris Dawn made history, becoming the first-ever private citizens to conduct a spacewalk. But they may have made history with another first; the first-ever livestream of a space crime.
In 1967, 111 countries around the world signed up to the Outer Space Treaty, which governs everything in space exploration from who is responsible for space junk, to who owns Neil Armstrong's Moon poops. According to Tomasso Sgobba, executive director of the Netherlands-based International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, the private Polaris Dawn mission may fall foul of one part of the treaty.
“This is a mission which violates Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty,” Sgobba told Al Jazeera. “It’s a well-known issue, which of course has a history.”
The part of the law that the mission may fall outside of relates to activities in space conducted by non-governmental agencies, such as private missions, which were not a thing when the treaty was first created.
The Launch Pad - Streamed live 12 September 2024
Watch LIVE as the crew of Polaris Dawn conduct the first-ever extravehicular activity (EVA) “spacewalk” by commercial astronauts from a SpaceX Crew Dragon, at the highest Earth orbit ever flown since the Apollo program using the first-ever SpaceX-developed EVA suits.
Associated Press - Streamed live 12 September 2024
Two crew members of SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission – tech billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis – will venture just barely outside their capsule as they soar about 450 miles above Earth to perform the first privately funded spacewalk. Read more here: http://apne.ws/rpp6tnV
“This, by the way, is very high on their top risk list.”
Eric Berger - 11/2/2022, 7:11 AM
A senior NASA official said this week that SpaceX has done “very well” in working toward the development of a vehicle to land humans on the surface of the Moon, taking steps to address two of the space agency's biggest concerns.
NASA selected SpaceX and Starship for its Human Landing System in April 2021. In some ways, this was the riskiest choice of NASA's options because Starship is a very large and technically advanced vehicle. However, because of the company's self-investment of billions of dollars into the project, SpaceX submitted the lowest bid, and from its previous work with SpaceX, NASA had confidence that the company would ultimately deliver.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/
Yesterday's test of an upcoming Raptor engine went sideways, causing the test stand to be engulfed in flames.
George Dvorsky - 24 May 2024
A qualification test of a Raptor 2 engine has resulted in a dramatic explosion at SpaceX’s McGregor facility. The company has yet to comment on the incident, but it’s unlikely to affect the upcoming fourth test launch of the Starship megarocket.
The incident occurred on Thursday at around 4:15 p.m. local time at SpaceX’s Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas. Video footage from NASASpaceflight captured the mishap, showing the Raptor engine shutting down approximately 14 seconds after ignition. Following the shutdown (which appeared to be normal), vapor continued to linger and dissipate beneath the engine, but a small fire then appeared at the bottom of the testing stand. The flames grew and traveled upwards, culminating in a gigantic fireball that engulfed the entire tower.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-raptor-engine-test-anomaly-fireball-explosion-1851498711
The company is preparing for Starship's fourth test flight that's scheduled to launch on June 5.
Mariella Moon - Sat, May 25, 2024, 4:00 AM PDT
A SpaceX testing stand at the company's McGregor, Texas facilities went up in flames during a test of its Raptor 2 engines on the afternoon of May 23. According to NASASpaceflight, the engine had an anomaly that caused vapors to seep out and lead to a secondary explosion. The news organization's livestream showed the engine shutting down before the fire started and eventually swallowed the stand in flames and smoke.
SpaceX uses the Raptor engines for its Starship system's Super Heavy booster and upper-stage spacecraft. They use liquid methane and liquid oxygen as fuel, and they were designed to be powerful enough to be able to send Starship to the moon and Mars. As Gizmodo suggests, its gases mixing due to a leak or a similar anomaly could've caused the explosion, though SpaceX has yet to officially address what happened during testing.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-raptor-engine-test-ends-in-a-fiery-explosion-110052362.html
This rocket restored NASA crew launches to US soil, then launched 18 more times.
Stephen Clark - 1/2/2024, 5:38 PM
The Falcon 9 rocket that launched NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX's first crew mission in 2020 launched and landed for the 19th and final time just before Christmas, then tipped over on its recovery ship during the trip back to Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This particular booster, known by the tail number B1058, was special among SpaceX's fleet of reusable rockets. It was the fleet leader, having tallied 19 missions over the course of more than three-and-a-half years. More importantly, it was the rocket that thundered into space on May 30, 2020, on a flight that made history on several counts.
It was the first time a commercial rocket and spacecraft launched people into orbit, and ended a nine-year gap in America's ability to send astronauts into orbit from US soil, following the retirement of the space shuttle. This mission, known as Demo-2 and launched by SpaceX under contract with NASA, ended US reliance on Russian rockets to send crews to the International Space Station.
SpaceX recovered the booster on one of its offshore landing platforms after the historic launch in May 2020, while the Falcon 9's upper stage fired into orbit with the Crew Dragon spacecraft containing Hurley and Behnken. Then, the rocket went into SpaceX's fleet rotation to launch 18 more times, primarily on missions to deploy Starlink Internet satellites.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/a-commanders-lament-on-the-loss-of-a-historic-spacex-rocket/
The new suits will be worn during the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, in which the Crew Dragon spacecraft will orbit Earth for five days.
Passant Rabie - 6 May 2024
SpaceX is preparing to launch a private crew of astronauts on a five day journey through Earth orbit, and they will be the first to try on the company’s latest spacesuit design during a first-of-its-kind spacewalk.
In an update shared on May 4, SpaceX revealed the design of its long-awaited extravehicular activity (EVA) suit. The new spacesuits will be worn by the Polaris Dawn crew during a series of private astronaut missions backed by billionaire Jared Isaacman. The first of the program’s three missions is scheduled to launch no earlier than this summer.
The five-day mission will launch SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft into an elliptical orbit around Earth, from where the private astronauts will collect data and conduct various research and experiments. One of the main highlights of the upcoming mission is the plan to perform the first ever commercial astronaut spacewalk, which will also be the first to occur from the Dragon spacecraft.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-new-spacesuits-private-astronaut-spacewalk-1851458031
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 05, 2023 12:34PM
Recently Ars Technica reported on “another application for SpaceX's Starship architecture that the company is studying,” adding that NASA “is on board to lend expertise.
“Though still in a nascent phase of tech development, the effort could result in repurposing Starship into a commercial space station, something NASA has a keen interest in because there are no plans for a government-owned research lab in low-Earth orbit after the International Space Station is decommissioned after 2030.”
NASA announced last month a new round of agreements with seven commercial companies, including SpaceX. The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) program is an effort established to advance private sector development of emerging products and services that could be available to customers — including NASA — in approximately five to seven years… NASA passed over SpaceX's bid for a funded space station development agreement in 2021, identifying concerns about SpaceX's plans for scaling its life-support system to enable long-duration missions and SpaceX's plan for a single docking port, among other issues. The space agency isn't providing any funding for the new CCSC effort, which includes the Starship space station concept, but the government will support the industry with technical expertise, including expert assessments, lessons learned, technologies, and data.
“The Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment.”
Eric Berger - 6/1/2021, 5:50 AM
As part of last week's federal budget rollout, a process during which the White House proposes funding levels for fiscal year 2022, the US Air Force released its “justification book” to compare its current request to past budget data. The 462-page book contains a lot of information about how the Air Force spends its approximately $200 billion budget.
For those tracking the development of SpaceX's ambitious Starship vehicle, there is an interesting tidbit tucked away on page 305, under the heading of “Rocket Cargo” (see .pdf). The Air Force plans to invest $47.9 million into this project in the coming fiscal year, which begins October 1.
“The Department of the Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to develop the largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AF cargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity,” the document states.
It's the first firing of a vacuum Raptor engine attached to a Starship, as well.
Mariella Moon - October 22nd, 2021
SpaceX has taken a major step towards sending the Starship to orbit. On Thursday night, the private space corporation has conducted the SN20 Starship prototype's first static fire test as part of its preparation for the spacecraft's launch. According to Space, the SN20 is currently outfitted with two Raptor engines: A standard “sea-level” Raptor and a vacuum version designed to operate in space. At 8:16PM Eastern time on Thursday, the company fired the latter. SpaceX then revealed on Twitter that it was the first ever firing of a Raptor vacuum engine integrated onto a Starship.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-sn-20-starship-first-static-fire-test-081730152.html
Casey Handmer - October 28, 2021
Another entry into my blog series on countering misconceptions in space journalism.
It has been exactly two years since my initial posts on Starship and Starlink. While the Starlink post has aged quite well, Starship is still not widely understood despite intervening developments. As usual, this blog represents my own opinions and I do not have any inside information.
To catch you up, two years ago SpaceX unveiled their boilerplate full scale mockup of Starship. Starhopper had completed two untethered flights. SN5 and SN6 hopped to 150 m in August and September of 2020, followed by 10-12 km flights of SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11, and SN15 between December 2020 and May 2021, the last of which stuck the landing.
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/
Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors, which are watching its progress with a mix of awe and horror.
By Bryan Bender - 02/12/2022 12:49 PM EST
Elon Musk is planning yet again to rocket beyond the status quo. And if he succeeds, the aerospace giants that won the first space race may never catch him in this one.
Standing in front of the towering Starship rocket at Space X’s southwest Texas “Starbase” on Thursday night, Musk pledged that his most ambitious spaceship yet will make its first journey in the coming months.
“At this point, I am highly confident we will get to orbit this year,” he said in the first update in two years on the invention he acknowledged “does sound crazy.”
“It will work,” he declared. “There might be a few bumps along the way, but it will work.”
Starship is designed to be the first all-purpose space vehicle: a reusable and refuelable spacecraft that can take scores of people and millions of tons of cargo from Earth directly to the moon and eventually Mars — and do it over and over again.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/12/elon-musk-space-freaking-out-competitors-00008441
If the spacecraft explodes on the pad again, it could impact critical ISS infrastructure.
Andrew Tarantola - June 13th, 2022
The explosive demise on SN-10 last year broke more than SpaceX's Starship prototype. It's also spurred NASA to put a pin in plans for the vessel to use Cape Canaveral as a backup launchpad, at least until the company can provide evidence that another blow up on the pad won't damage infrastructure critical to resupplying the ISS.
The situation is this: Plans for the primary launchpad SpaceX wants in Boca Chica, Texas for the upcoming Starship rocket is already facing lengthy regulatory delays (though the review phase is expected to wrap up next week). The Army Corps of Engineers in April also denied the company's application to expand Galveston-area launch site after SpaceX failed to provide required documentation.
The company has also been rapidly constructing a secondary launch pad at its Cape Canaveral facility but those plans are now on hold. The problem is that SpaceX's new Starship launch pad sits just a few hundred feet from NASA's launchpad 39A, you know, the only NASA launch pad currently in existence that SpaceX's Dragon Crew is approved to launch from. Should another Starship — which relies on an mix of liquid nitrogen and methane as fuel that is unfamiliar to regulators — go kablooey, the explosive force and ship shrapnel could damage launch complex 39A. And with no 39A, we have no more crewed missions to the ISS until it gets fixed.
The new launch tower is being built at Launch Complex 39A, a mere 1,000 feet from where SpaceX launches its Falcon 9 rockets.
George Dvorsky - 23 June 2022 12:35PM
Earlier today, a giant crane added the second segment to SpaceX’s upcoming Starship launch tower at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The new launch pad tower will eventually reach 400 feet in height and potentially host two dozen Starship launches each year.
The second metal tower segment, measuring as tall as a five-story building, was delivered to Launch Complex 39A overnight, as reported in Spaceflight Now. This morning, a tower crane then hoisted the structure atop the first tower segment, which itself was set into place on June 15. Both tower segments were transported from a staging and construction site at the nearby Roberts Road SpaceX facility, according to Telsarati, adding that four more segments appear to be nearing completion.
https://gizmodo.com/spacexs-starship-rocket-tower-adds-second-segment-1849099354
Elon Musk hoped to launch the fully stacked Starship rocket in July, but today's explosion could seriously complicate these plans.
George Dvorsky - 11 July 2022 7:20PM
SpaceX is in the midst of preparing its Starship rocket for its inaugural orbital launch, but an apparent explosion of the Super Heavy booster during tests at the company’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas, may represent a serious setback.
The explosion happened around 5:20 p.m. ET, and it was as unexpected as it was severe. No word yet on the cause of the anomaly or whether anyone was hurt during the incident. The explosion was followed by a significant amount of fire in the vicinity of the giant booster rocket; flames and smoke could still be seen wafting from the launch pad an hour after the incident, but the situation at the test site didn’t appear to be worsening.
https://gizmodo.com/starship-booster-explodes-unexpectedly-during-test-1849166744
Aria Alamalhodaei - 5:01 PM PDT August 9, 2022
SpaceX just got one step closer to the first orbital test flight of its launch system Starship with the successful static fire test of a prototype Super Heavy booster late Tuesday afternoon. That booster, “Booster 7,” was rolled to the launch pad overnight last Friday.
The successful test is a notable milestone for SpaceX, which has been working on its Starship program from its Boca Chica development facility in southeast Texas. It comes just a few weeks after a previous booster test resulted in an explosion at the launch pad — though the damage was clearly not catastrophic, as this same booster was tested today.
Flames spread across an environmentally sensitive area after a static fire test of SpaceX's enormous Starship rocket.
George Dvorsky - 9 September 2022
SpaceX performed a static fire test of a prototype Starship rocket on Thursday, in which all six raptor engines were engaged. The eight-second test appeared to go well, save for the problematic brush fire that ensued.
Starship prototype 24 is currently undergoing tests at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX is preparing the upper stage for an upcoming orbital test of the fully integrated Starship system. During yesterday’s static fire test shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET, the six Raptor engines created a monstrous roar and kicked up a tremendous amount of smoke and dust. After the material settled and the Starship launch pad reemerged, it became clear that several patches of grass in the area were burning.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-static-fire-test-brush-fires-1849517615
SpaceX recently performed a successful static fire test in which seven of the booster's 33 engines ignited.
Passant Rabie - 22 September 2022
SpaceX is expecting to see its gigantic Starship rocket take off on its first flight very soon. CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company is gearing up to attempt the first-ever orbital test flight of the two-stage reusable system as early as late October, but with a launch in November being more “likely.”
Musk shared the update through Twitter, responding to a thread about a recent test of Booster 7's engines. “We will have two boosters & ships ready for orbital flight by then, with full stack production at roughly one every two months,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-orbital-test-starship-november-elon-musk-1849568715
NASA says a Starship launch failure might wreck its Kennedy pad, making it difficult for SpaceX to fly essential cargo and crew to the ISS.
Passant Rabie - 4 October 2022 3:00PM
SpaceX is moving ahead with plans to upgrade a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which will serve as a backup to the Kennedy Space Center pad the company currently uses to launch cargo and crews to space.
During a press briefing last week, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president for build and flight reliability, said that the company is preparing for the upgrades needed for Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) to prepare it for upcoming cargo and crew launches, Space News reported. SpaceX is currently under a commercial crew contract with NASA to shuttle crew and cargo to the International Space Station with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-upgrading-florida-launch-pad-starship-failure-1849614050
The private company has pushed back the inaugural flight of the heavy-lift launch vehicle several times, but signs point to a launch in just a few weeks.
Passant Rabie - 2 November 2022 5:00PM
SpaceX’s super-heavy lift rocket could finally be ready to embark on its first orbital test flight in December, according to a NASA official.
During a NASA Advisory Council meeting on Monday, Mark Kirasich, a senior NASA official overseeing the development of the Artemis program, said that Starship’s test flight may take place early next month, Reuters reported. “We track four major Starship flights. The first one here is coming up in December, part of early December,” Kirasich is quoted as saying.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-spacex-starship-rocket-december-launch-1849734295
The Starship's first orbital test flight has been delayed many times in the past.
Mariella Moon - November 1, 2022 6:08 AM
Starship's first orbital test flight could finally take place next month. Mark Kirasich, a senior NASA official overseeing the development of the Artemis moon program, has revealed the information during a livestreamed NASA Advisory Council meeting. According to Reuters, Kirasich said that NASA tracks four major Starship flights and that the first one is coming up in early December.
Based on the plans SpaceX previously released, the Starship spacecraft with its Super Heavy booster will launch from the company's Boca Chica facility in Texas. The booster will break off three minutes into the flight and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship vehicle itself will go into orbit before reentering and making an ocean landing near Hawaii. The company expects the entire test flight to last for 90 minutes.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-starship-first-orbital-flight-december-100855885.html
The landmark test still brings Starship closer to its first orbital flight.
Mariella Moon - February 9, 2023 5:16 PM
SpaceX has completed its first full static fire test for Starship, if not quite in a way that makes the first orbital test flight next month sound realistic. The company hoped to fire all 33 Raptor engines at once, but Elon Musk noted that two engines didn't make it — the mission team shut off one before startup, while the other “stopped itself.” The 31 that did fire lasted the full duration, however, and Musk claims that's enough to reach orbit.
While SpaceX's last static fire testing in November was a success, the company only ignited 14 of the booster's Raptor engines. It also to send Starship on multiple successful test flights before it can ferry astronauts to and from the Moon.
https://www.engadget.com/spacex-starship-full-static-fire-test-221636396.html
SpaceX achieved a major milestone in its Starship program with a full static fire test, setting the stage for an orbital flight.
George Dvorsky - 10 February 2023 3:28PM
It didn’t last for very long, but the first full-scale static fire test of SpaceX’s Starship rocket appears to have been a success, despite the fact that two of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines did not participate in the demonstration. Here’s what we learned from yesterday’s milestone achievement and what might happen next.
The static fire test took place on Thursday, February 9, with the Booster 7 prototype standing tall on the launch mount at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. As hoped, there were plenty of jaw-dropping visuals to go around and plenty to think about as SpaceX pushes forward with its ambitious Starship program.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-first-starship-static-fire-test-details-photos-1850098400
Here’s our cheat sheet for Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built and SpaceX's ticket to the the Moon, Mars, and other celestial destinations.
George Dvorsky - 23 March 2023 / Updated 24 March 2023
SpaceX is on the cusp of launching its gigantic Starship megarocket now that a launch rehearsal and static fire test is complete. Here’s what you need to know.
SpaceX is currently dominating the spaceflight industry with its freakishly reliable Falcon 9 rocket. Now the highly innovative company, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, is preparing to take its next giant leap with the inaugural launch of the Starship rocket. We’ve put together this guide to help you understand the fully reusable megarocket and its potential to revolutionize spaceflight as we know it.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-rocket-artemis-mechazilla-launch-guide-1850249132
Following a less-than-perfect inaugural launch, the company is gearing up for an imminent second test flight of its megarocket.
Passant Rabie - 6 November 2023
SpaceX is preparing to launch its Starship rocket for the second time, aiming for mid-November for another flight test of its launch vehicle after the first one didn’t go so well.
It’s been over six months since Starship lifted off for the very first time, a problematic debut that has kept the rocket grounded since then. But now SpaceX claims that the second test flight of its megarocket could launch as early as mid-November, “pending regulatory approval,” the company wrote on X. Sources also told Spaceflight Now that Starship’s launch could take place as early as November 13.
Elon Musk’s private space venture has been eager to see Starship take to the skies once again. SpaceX has previously claimed that its rocket has been ready for its second test flight for over a month. The company, however, can’t fly Starship without the green light from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-rocket-second-flight-weeks-away-musk-1850994741
Jeff Foust - November 17, 2023
BERLIN — As SpaceX prepares for its next Starship test flight, a NASA official said that the use of that vehicle for Artemis lunar landings will require “in the high teens” of launches, a much higher number than what the company’s leadership has previously claimed.
In a presentation at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee Nov. 17, Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Moon to Mars Program Office, said the company will have to perform Starship launches from both its current pad in Texas and one it is constructing at the Kennedy Space Center in order send a lander to the moon for Artemis 3.
SpaceX’s concept of operations for the Starship lunar lander it is developing for the Human Landing System (HLS) program requires multiple launches of the Starship/Super Heavy system. One launch will place a propellant depot into orbit, followed by multiple other launches of tanker versions of Starship, transferring methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the depot. That will be followed by the lander version of Starship, which will rendezvous with the depot and fill its tanks before going to the moon.
https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/
“Ship production needs to be roughly an order of magnitude higher than booster production.”
Stephen Clark - 1/4/2024, 5:26 PM
It's no secret that Elon Musk has big ambitions for SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket. This is the vehicle that, with plenty of permutations and upgrades, Musk says will ferry cargo and people across the Solar System to build a settlement on Mars, making humanity a multi-planetary species and achieving the billionaire's long-standing dream.
Of course, that is a long way off. SpaceX is still working on getting Starship into orbit or close to it, an achievement that appears to be possible this year. Then, the company will start launching Starlink satellites on Starship missions while testing in-space refueling technology needed to turn Starship into a human-rated Moon lander for NASA.
SpaceX's South Texas team is progressing toward the third full-scale Starship test flight. On December 20, the Starship's upper stage slated for the next test flight completed a test-firing of its Raptor engines at the Starbase launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast. Nine days later, the 33-engine Super Heavy booster fired up on the launch pad for its own static fire test. On the same day, SpaceX hot-fired the Starship upper stage once again on a test stand next to the launch pad.
The Starship upper stage exploded eight minutes into the second test flight of the revolutionary rocket, but the cause wasn't disclosed until now.
George Dvorsky - 16 January 2024
Elon Musk recently revealed that the explosion of the Starship’s upper stage this past November during its second test flight was caused by a propellant dump gone wrong. Despite this setback, the incident will not impact the megarocket’s upcoming scheduled flight in February, according to the SpaceX CEO.
SpaceX’s second test of Starship, which took place on November 18, 2023, was a notable improvement over the first test, performed several months earlier on April 20. However, instead of a single explosion like the first test, this experimental rocket produced two separate explosions during the second; the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage exploded approximately five minutes apart during the eight-minute mission.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-explosion-test-flight-cause-elon-musk-1851168932
Starship exploded during a liquid oxygen vent on its most recent test flight.
Stephen Clark - 1/15/2024, 3:35 PM
Last year was unquestionably the best year in SpaceX's history, CEO Elon Musk told his employees during an all-hands meeting in South Texas last week.
There were 96 flights of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, plus the first two test flights of the enormous new Starship rocket. In 2024, SpaceX said it aims for more than 140 launches of the Falcon rocket family. There may be up to 10 Starship test flights this year, according to the NASA official who manages the agency's contract with SpaceX to develop Starship into a human-rated Moon lander.
SpaceX posted a video late Friday on the social media platform X of Musk's all-hands meeting at the Starbase launch facility near Brownsville, Texas. The hour-long video includes Musk's comments on SpaceX's recent accomplishments and plans, but the video ends before employees ask questions of their boss.
While it would be nice to see space reporters get more opportunities to question Musk about SpaceX, it's good to see the company sharing these kinds of videos. Musk has presented several formal updates on Starship in the past—in person and virtual—and taken questions from reporters and space enthusiasts.
The DoD wants its own Starships for sensitive and dangerous missions—and possibly due to concerns about Elon Musk himself.
George Dvorsky - 1 February 2024
SpaceX’s Starship is poised to be the most coveted launch vehicle in the world once it’s finally up and running, but the Pentagon is hoping to take things a step further by grabbing full control of the megarocket for critically important missions.
The U.S. Department of Defense is engaging with SpaceX to explore the possibility of the government taking control of the company’s Starship megarocket for “sensitive and potentially dangerous missions,” as first reported by Aviation Weekly. In this proposed scenario, the Pentagon would temporarily acquire a Starship, making it both government property and a government-operated asset. This differs from simply contracting SpaceX for launch services, granting the Pentagon complete control and responsibility for particular missions.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-pentagon-elon-musk-classified-missions-1851216022
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday March 17, 2024 10:56AM
The Street interviewed Chad Anderson, founder/managing partner of the “space economy” investment firm Space Capital, who calls SpaceX's progress “unprecedented,” and believes their next launch could carry “operational” payloads like Starlink satellites.
Anderson added that Starship reaching orbital velocity and reentering the atmosphere at those speeds (roughly 16,000 miles per hour) was “a really big deal,” though it's specifically important for the reusability of the vehicle, which would further cheapen the cost of launch.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/03/17/1754255/whats-next-for-spacexs-starship
Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:00 PM PDT July 8, 2024
SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are causing a stir among some of its competitors. But SpaceX may have even more ambitious plans for a second launch pad right next door: Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/08/techcrunch-space-spacexs-big-plans-for-starship-in-florida/
“SpaceX has dramatically reduced the duration of operations.”
Eric Berger - 7/29/2024, 11:20 AM
After SpaceX decided to launch orbital missions of its Starship rocket from Texas about five years ago, the company had to undergo a federal environmental review of the site to ensure it was safe to do so.
As a part of this multi-year process, the Federal Aviation Administration completed a Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment in June 2022. Following that review, SpaceX received approval to conduct up to five Starship launches from South Texas annually.
SpaceX has since launched Starship four times from its launch site in South Texas, known as Starbase, and is planning a fifth launch within the next two months. However, as it continues to test Starship and make plans for regular flights, SpaceX will need a higher flight rate. This is especially true as the company is unlikely to activate additional launch pads for Starship in Florida until at least 2026.
To that end, SpaceX has asked the FAA for permission for up to 25 flights a year from South Texas, as well as the capability to land both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster stage back at the launch site. On Monday, the FAA signaled that it is inclined to grant permission for this.
The company is gearing up for the sixth test flight of the megarocket, with plans to significantly step up Starship's launch cadence next year.
Passant Rabie - November 14, 2024
SpaceX has big plans for its Starship rocket. After a groundbreaking test flight, in which the landing tower caught the booster, the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk wants to see the megarocket fly up to 25 times next year, working its way up to a launch rate of 100 flights per year, and eventually a Starship launching on a daily basis.
Just over a month after launching Starship and catching the rocket’s booster with giant mechanical arms, SpaceX is getting ready to do it again as it aims for more frequent flights of the super heavy launch vehicle. “Elon would say, next year he would love to have us have 25 missions a year and in the next few years, a hundred,” Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations, said during the Mexico Space Agency’s National Congress of Space Activities conference. “He was telling me, ‘Kathy, I would love to launch a couple of times a day,’…big dreams.”
By comparison, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has already launched 100 times this year, but it’s a tried-and-true rocket that’s been around since 2010. Starship is still under development and undergoing steady modifications, so the goal of 25 launches in 2025 is very ambitious. That amounts to nearly one launch every two weeks. That’s a big ask.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-sets-ambitious-goal-25-starship-flights-in-2025-2000524527
Starship's upper stage survived reentry and splashed down in the Indian Ocean following the rocket's sixth test flight.
Passant Rabie - December 12, 2024
Starship’s most recent test flight may have failed to demonstrate another booster catch, but it did include the rocket’s upper stage performing a graceful dip into the Indian Ocean. SpaceX recently fished the remains of its Starship rocket’s upper stage out of the water and retrieved bits of hardware to help inform its upcoming test flights.
Following the liftoff of Starship on November 19 for its sixth integrated flight test, SpaceX towed Starship’s upper stage back to port in the Western Australian coast. In addition, SpaceX employees traveled to the Gascoyne region in Australia to collect debris from the rocket’s splashdown site, including various tanks, heat-resistant panelling, and other metal pieces scooped up from the water and gathered into bags at the port, according to a video by Interstellar Gateway.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-retrieves-starship-fragments-off-australian-coast-2000537517
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday March 12, 2025 12:00AM
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black:
According to information at this tweet from anonymous sources, parts of Starship will likely require a major redesign due to the spacecraft's break-up shortly after stage separation on its last two test flights. These are the key take-aways, most of which focus on the redesign of the first version of Starship (V1) to create the V2 that flew unsuccessfully on those flights:
It must be emphasized that this information comes from leaks from anonymous sources, and could be significantly incorrect. It does however fit the circumstances, and suggests that the next test flight will not occur in April but will be delayed for an unknown period beyond.
Work is underway on a modified version of the Starship upper stage, aimed at enhancing its performance and reliability.
George Dvorsky - 28 November 2023
Moving swiftly and learning through failure, SpaceX says it’s already looking ahead to version 2 of the Starship upper stage.
In a tweet posted on November 24, company CEO Elon Musk shared a photo showing four Starship upper stages standing vertically at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in south Texas, and saying the quartet will be “the last of V1.” Version 2 comes next, marking the next phase in the company’s iterative development process. Starship is not yet operational, but it represents SpaceX’s ambitious vision for a fully reusable, cost-efficient launch system capable of interplanetary travel with high payload capacity.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-spacex-starship-version-two-launch-1851054436
The rocket and test equipment looked undamaged after the test.
Eric Berger - 12/20/2023, 12:44 PM
Just one month after the second flight of its massive Starship rocket, SpaceX is making progress toward a third attempt.
On Wednesday, at 1:37 pm local time in South Texas, the company performed a static fire test of the next Starship—which bears the serial number Ship 28. The test of the rocket's six engines appeared to be nominal as the Raptors ignited for a handful of seconds. The rocket and ground support equipment looked undamaged after the test.
Also this week SpaceX rolled the booster to be used for the next attempt—Booster 10—to the launch site at its Starbase facility in South Texas. The vehicle has since been lifted onto the orbital launch mount. Presumably this rocket, too, will undergo a static fire test in the coming days.
After these tests are complete the Starship upper stage is likely to be stacked on top of the booster to complete the launch vehicle. At this point it seems likely that the hardware for “Integrated Flight Test 3” would be substantially ready to launch.
No launch license until environmental investigation is complete
Richard Speed - Wed 1 Nov 2023 15:31 UTC
SpaceX has inched a little closer to being granted a license for the next Starship launch after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it had completed the safety review of the company's Starship-Super Heavy license evaluation.
This part of the process looks at issues around public health and safety as well as property safety. The FAA closely inspected SpaceX's safety organization and the risk criteria for launch, re-entry, and disposal of the vehicle.
SpaceX's first attempt at launching the Starship-Super Heavy combo earlier this year could charitably be described as eventful. The rocket significantly damaged its launch pad and sent debris flying over a wide area. It then veered out of control before eventually exploding.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday April 08, 2023 12:00AM
SpaceX plans to carry out a launch rehearsal next week of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, and its first test flight possibly the following week, the private space company said Thursday. Phys.Org reports:
SpaceX published photos of the massive Starship, which is designed to eventually send astronauts to the Moon and beyond, on its launchpad at the company's base in Texas. “Starship fully stacked at Starbase,” SpaceX said in a tweet. “Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week followed by Starship's first integrated flight test ~ week later pending regulatory approval.”
Waits for pen-pushers to sign off debut orbital mission
Katyanna Quach - Tue 11 Apr 2023 01:12 UTC
SpaceX has pushed back the first-ever orbital test flight of its largest and most powerful rocket, the Starship, to wait for regulatory approval from America's Federal Aviation Administration.
The 120-metre-tall (394-feet-tall) super-heavy reusable launch vehicle has remained grounded since its last launch in May 2021. That experiment – in which it took off, did some maneuvers, and landed again – marked a significant milestone towards advancing the Starship toward an orbital flight.
SpaceX hoped to launch the Starship on its next mission as early as March, then pushed back to some time in this week. CEO Elon Musk has since said SpaceX's plans are now “trending towards near the end of the third week of April.” An FAA's Operation Plans Advisory report listed April 17 as a primary target launch date to fly from SpaceX's launch facility, Starbase, in Boca Chica, Texas. April 18 to 22 are listed as back up launch dates.
Starship's first orbital test flight will see its upper stage separate from its super heavy booster and complete one orbit around Earth before landing vertically near Hawaii.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/11/spacex_starship_launch_april/
Elon Musk says the super heavy-lift rocket could finally get off the ground next week, pending a launch license from the FAA.
Passant Rabie - 10 April 2023 12:54PM
The SpaceX Starship rocket’s orbital test flight has been in the works for months, but it looks like it might finally be happening in a little over a week. No, we really mean it this time.
On Monday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that Starship could launch during the third week of April. Starship has been declared “ready for launch,” Musk wrote in an earlier tweet on Sunday. The company completed a final flight readiness test over the weekend, which showed that its massive heavy-lift vehicle was ready to fly for the first time, Ars Technica reported.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-rocket-first-launch-faa-license-1850318949
The 394-foot-tall rocket could finally take flight on April 20. A frozen valve scrambled the first launch attempt on Monday.
George Dvorsky - 18 April 2023
On Monday, a pesky valve is all that came between SpaceX and the maiden flight of its Starship megarocket. The company is now targeting Thursday morning for a mission that CEO Elon Musk predicts has a 50/50 chance of succeeding.
SpaceX originally said it required 48 hours to “recycle” the rocket in preparation for the second launch attempt but later revised that figure to 72 hours. That 24-hour bump conveniently sets the stage for a potential launch on 4/20—a cherished date in Musk’s calendar.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-rocket-launch-attempt-420-1850348039
Aria Alamalhodaei - 19 April 2023
Tomorrow’s Starship orbital flight test may well go explosively wrong, and SpaceX’s less than stellar coordination with officials responsible for overseeing debris cleanup at nearby state parks could leave them with another “substantial burden,” emails between the organizations show.
Starship’s upcoming test does not have a very high probability of success, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Last month, he put the chances of success at around 50%; in a Twitter Spaces earlier this week, he seemed to downgrade that probability even further. “If we do launch, I would consider anything that does not result in the destruction of the launch mount itself, the launch pad […] I would consider that to be a win,” he said.
The possibility of another testing anomaly at Starbase is likely not good news for environmental managers, who must oversee SpaceX’s clean-up efforts for any debris that falls on lands under their jurisdiction, like state parks.
SpaceX is targeting Thursday morning for the inaugural flight of the Starship megarocket.
George Dvorsky - 19 April 2023
A frozen valve forced a postponement on Monday, but Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is now ready for the do-over. It’s the most anticipated launch of the year, and we’ve got you covered for what will hopefully be the dramatic debut of Starship.
Should all go as planned, the 90-minute mission will get started at 9:28 a.m. ET on Thursday, April 20. SpaceX’s coverage. available at the live feed below, will begin around 45 minutes before the 62-minute launch window opens.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-live-spacex-starship-launch-420-1850352680
Spoiler alert: It went boom.
Eric Berger - 4/20/2023, 3:01 AM
10:30 am ET Update: After a short hold 40 seconds before its appointed launch time, SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket slowly climbed from its launch pad on Thursday morning from South Texas. The first stage performed more or less nominally, although about 15 percent of its engines failed during a burn of more than two minutes.
The main problem occurred at stage separation, when the booster and Starship upper stage were lost in a fiery explosion.
So what to make of all this? Ars will have full coverage of the launch, and its import for the space industry, later today.
SpaceX's development process is messier, but it's also much faster.
Eric Berger - 4/20/2023, 10:33 AM
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas—It began with a bang, as big things often do.
On Thursday morning, with clearing skies overhead, SpaceX's Starship rocket slowly began to climb away from its launch pad. Fully laden with about 5,000 metric tons of liquid oxygen and methane propellant, the largest rocket ever built needed about 10 seconds to begin clearing the launch pad.
From a nearby vantage point, the rocket rumbled and the smoke billowed outward—but it seemed like an eternity before Starship poked its head above the smoke and dust. And then it climbed skyward, a brilliant silvery and fiery streak in the sky.
What could not be immediately discerned from the ground is that a handful of the Super Heavy first stage's 33 Raptor engines failed in the early moments of the flight. After about two minutes, more engines failed. Before the end, when the rocket reached a peak altitude just short of 40 km, as many as eight engines appeared to have gone out.
'Rapid unscheduled disassembly' could apply to much of Musk's world
Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 20 Apr 2023 14:33 UTC
SpaceX's second attempt at getting the combined Starship and Super Heavy booster to orbit got further than its try earlier this week. That said, the two stages failed to separate, leading to yet another explosive end for a Starship flight.
Aside from a brief ground hold to finalize a pressure and purging issue, Starship's pre-launch sequence at Starbase in Texas went off flawlessly, but things went wrong at the 2 minute 50 second mark with the Super Heavy booster engines not cutting off, leading to the combined craft going into a spin instead of performing a single flip for separation.
A minute later, the whole thing went up in a fireball.
SpaceX fans will no doubt be along in a moment to say it's OK the thing rapidly came apart and exploded, like so many things in CEO Elon Musk's life, as it's a useful and vital way to improve the tech for actual human use. It's not expected to get everything right first time.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/spacex_launch_fireball/
MARCIA DUNN - 20 April 2023
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas (AP) — SpaceX’s giant new rocket exploded minutes after blasting off on its first test flight Thursday and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. The nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship carried no people or satellites.
SpaceX later said multiple engines on the 33-engine booster were not firing as the rocket ascended, causing it to lose altitude and begin to tumble. The rocket was intentionally destroyed by its self-destruct system, exploding and plummeting into the water.
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starship-launch-elon-musk-d9989401e2e07cdfc9753f352e44f6e2
The 394-foot-tall rocket launched from Starbase Thursday morning, in what is a massive step forward for the SpaceX program.
George Dvorsky - 20 April 2023
It finally happened—and it was as spectacular as we hoped. SpaceX’s Starship megarocket blasted off from the Boca Chica, Texas, launch pad just after 9:30 a.m. ET this morning, lifted upwards by a record-breaking amount of thrust.
Starship is not yet ready for prime time, but by finally taking flight on Thursday, the megarocket is now in the record books as being the biggest, tallest, and most powerful rocket to take flight. This was a test flight, and SpaceX wanted to see just how far they could take it, so having the rocket last for nearly four minutes represents an incredible accomplishment.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-rocket-explodes-first-launch-1850356794
Posted by msmash on Thursday April 20, 2023 06:53AM
SpaceX on Thursday launched its next-generation Starship cruise vehicle for the first time atop the company's powerful new Super Heavy booster rocket, in a highly anticipated, uncrewed test flight from the Gulf Coast of Texas. From a report:
The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, blasted off from the company's Starbase spaceport and test facility east of Brownsville, Texas, on a planned 90-minute debut flight into space. A live SpaceX webcast of the lift-off showed the rocketship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy's 33 raptor engines roared to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor. Getting the Starship and its booster rocket off the ground together for the first time represents a milestone in SpaceX's ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately on to Mars - playing a pivotal role in Artemis, NASA's newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.
SpaceX's development process is messier, but it's also much faster.
Eric Berger - 4/20/2023, 10:33 AM
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas—It began with a bang, as big things often do.
On Thursday morning, with clearing skies overhead, SpaceX's Starship rocket slowly began to climb away from its launch pad. Fully laden with about 5,000 metric tons of liquid oxygen and methane propellant, the largest rocket ever built needed about 10 seconds to begin clearing the launch pad.
From a nearby vantage point, the rocket rumbled and the smoke billowed outward—but it seemed like an eternity before Starship poked its head above the smoke and dust. And then it climbed skyward, a brilliant silvery and fiery streak in the sky.
What could not be immediately discerned from the ground is that a handful of the Super Heavy first stage's 33 Raptor engines failed in the early moments of the flight. After about two minutes, more engines failed. Before the end, when the rocket reached a peak altitude just short of 40 km, as many as eight engines appeared to have gone out.
The most powerful rocket to take flight blasted off last week from Boca Chica, Texas. Nearby residents are still grappling with the repercussions.
Lauren Leffer - 24 April 2023
SpaceX’s Starship launch was a success in some ways and a failure in others. The largest rocket ever built blasted off the launch pad with record-breaking thrust and flew for four minutes straight. But also, multiple engines failed in flight, it didn’t achieve stage separation, and it exploded dramatically in a “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” as the company described it on Twitter.
In the aftermath, the Elon Musk-owned spaceflight venture will have to go back to the drawing board to re-build, make adjustments, and repair some seriously damaged launch infrastructure. There’s also clean-up to do, for SpaceX and the people living nearby the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facility, known as Starbase. Starship’s takeoff left an apparent, but as of yet unquantified, environmental impact in its wake. And to add insult to injury, much of this was largely preventable.
https://gizmodo.com/flawed-spacex-starship-launch-texas-town-covered-dust-1850368682
Musk loyalists said launch wasn't a failure. Tell that to folks, wildlife covered in dust, ash, debris
Katyanna Quach - Wed 26 Apr 2023 21:48 UTC
America's Federal Aviation Administration has grounded SpaceX's Starship to conduct a safety investigation after the heavy-lift launch vehicle rocket destroyed a chunk of the launch pad and exploded during a test last week.
SpaceX was unable to get Starship, said to be the world's most powerful rocket, into orbit during that experiment. The rocket started rotating mid-air when it failed to break free of its booster shortly after takeoff on April 27. It began falling uncontrollably back to Earth, and was detonated over Boca Chica, Texas, within minutes of launch.
Before it even got to that point, Starship had damaged the pad and nearby space center infrastructure during blastoff, and scattered ash and dust over wildlife areas and a nearby town. A video recording of the flight showed chunks of concrete being kicked up by the launch and smashing the windows of a car, and created a cloud of ash and dirt. The mess descended onto Port Isabel, where residents reported hearing the roar of Starship's engines and feeling the ground shake.
The launch on April 20 kicked up a lot of dust and concrete.
Eric Berger - 5/1/2023, 1:06 PM
Several environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday, saying that the agency had not sufficiently regulated the launch of SpaceX's Starship rocket from South Texas.
In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, the groups say that the FAA failed to account for the damage caused by testing and launching the Starship rocket, which results in “intense heat, noise, and light that adversely affects surrounding habitat areas and communities, which included designated critical habitat for federally protected species as well as National Wildlife Refuge and State Park lands.”
During the initial launch of the Starship rocket, on April 20, the environmental organizations say the launch “scattered debris and ash over a large area,” including adjacent lands that provide a habitat for endangered species.
NEPA was violated by letting SpaceX do its own impact study, suit alleges
Brandon Vigliarolo - Tue 2 May 2023 15:51 UTC
A group of environmental nonprofits and an indigenous nation have sued America's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over the fallout from SpaceX's failed Starship launch last month.
The plaintiffs claim the regulator violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by allowing SpaceX to even attempt to get Starship off the ground.
The suit [PDF] filed in a Washington DC district court yesterday, claims the FAA's decision to approve SpaceX's launch plans in Boca Chica, Texas, failed to follow proper procedural rules under NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by allowing SpaceX to perform and report on its own programmatic environmental assessment (PEA).
SpaceX's report, the plaintiffs allege, wasn't as detailed as an in-depth environmental impact study (EIS), which they say should have been performed despite SpaceX's claims that it had implemented some 70 mitigation measures to protect the local environment and wildlife.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/faa_starship_lawsuit/
Billionaire suggests a payload would have solved the problem. And we have a suggestion for who that payload could be
Richard Speed - Mon 15 Jan 2024 20:46 UTC
SpaceX boss Elon Musk has blamed a lack of payload coupled with the venting of liquid oxygen for last year's fiery end to the second flight of the company's Starship and Super Heavy combo.
During a company update posted on X (formerly Twitter) by SpaceX, Musk spent an hour telling the faithful about the company's achievements and his dreams of interplanetary spaceflight. He also provided an update on what happened on the most recent flight.
He said: “If it had had a payload, it would have made it to orbit. Because the reason it didn't quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to fire and an explosion … we normally wouldn't have had that liquid oxygen if we'd had a payload so, ironically, if it had had a payload it would have reached orbit.”
Hmm. This writer is not a rocket scientist, but having something explode because of venting seems… bad. Musk did not explain how the venting caused the fire, only that things would have gone differently had there been a payload. Presumably because the liquid oxygen would have been consumed by the Raptor engines.
Still, the iterative approach used by SpaceX means the lessons will have been learned – Musk was keen to point out that the rocket did not destroy the launch pad this time around. Using a deluge of water to dampen the effects of launch has long been a staple of launches going back decades, but it took the creation of a crater for Musk and co to learn that particular lesson.
CEO Elon Musk said that the massive rocket would fly again in 6 to 8 weeks.
Passant Rabie - 14 June 2023
We’re still not over the sight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploding in a fiery flame following its first-ever liftoff, but the company is reportedly ready to see its heavy-duty launch vehicle fly once again.
On Tuesday, the company’s CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that Starship’s next flight test will take place in six to eight weeks. Starship launched for the first time on April 20 for a less-than-ideal test flight in which a few of the rocket’s engines failed in flight and the two-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle was forced to self-destruct. It also took the rocket 40 seconds to respond to the self-destruct command, another worrying aspect of its debut flight.
Starship’s first launch sent a cloud of dust and debris to the surrounding area, causing damage to the launchpad. SpaceX is reportedly repairing the launchpad and adding upgrades to prevent future damage, including installing a water deluge system at its Starbase facility in South Texas. The company recently tested its water-cooled steel plate against the mighty fire from one of the rocket’s engines.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-is-preparing-for-the-next-starship-launch-1850540623
There were positives and negatives to be taken away from the test firing.
Eric Berger - 8/6/2023, 1:55 PM
SpaceX on Sunday performed a static fire of a new Super Heavy booster at its launch site in South Texas. The ignition of 33 engines proved to be a spectacle, and there were positives and negatives to be taken away from the short-duration test firing.
On the plus side, the rocket—dubbed Booster 9, as it is the ninth to be built as part of SpaceX's iterative design methodology—survived the test and appeared to be in good shape afterward. Also on the positive side of ledger, the company's radically rebuilt ground systems, with an enhanced water suppression system, appeared to function well in protecting the rocket and the launch pad.
However, the test did not run a full duration. It ended after 2.74 seconds, according to SpaceX's webcast, short of the planned five seconds. Moreover, four of the rocket's 33 main Raptor engines shut down prematurely. This indicates that SpaceX is still struggling with the reliability of its Raptor engines despite intense work to improve their performance. This rocket is powered by “Raptor 2” engines, and SpaceX is working on an upgraded “Raptor 3” version to address reliability.
During this test flight, Starship will carry no payloads.
Eric Berger - 9/6/2023, 7:51 AM
On Tuesday, SpaceX stacked its Starship rocket on top of a Super Heavy booster in South Texas, beginning final preparations for a second launch attempt of the massive vehicle.
After the stacking operations were complete, SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that “Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA license approval.”
That caveat is a big one because the Federal Aviation Administration is still reviewing paperwork and data from SpaceX about the first launch attempt of Starship in April 2023. That flight ended after about 90 seconds due to engine problems and other issues with the booster. The FAA has been reviewing data from that accident, including the environmental implications at the launch site and the delayed activation of the rocket's flight termination system.
Following this accident, SpaceX prepared and submitted a “mishap investigation report” to the FAA. After reviewing the report, the FAA will identify corrective actions that the company must make ahead of its second test flight to ensure the safety of people, property, and wildlife near the South Texas launch site, which is surrounded by wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico.
After a botched initial launch on April 20, SpaceX’s Starship is fully stacked and primed for a second takeoff, awaiting regulatory approval.
George Dvorsky - 7 September 2023
The stacking of Starship’s upper stage 25 onto booster 9 was completed on September 5 at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. With the megarocket now standing tall at the launch mount, SpaceX announced its readiness for the second launch, though FAA approval remains outstanding.
On Tuesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Elon Musk confirmed the company’s preparation on X, formerly Twitter, stating: “Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA license approval.” For better or worse, Starship’s second flight promises to be another spectacle. However, in light of the first attempt’s events, the federal regulator is aiming for a more subdued outcome.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-s-starship-poised-for-second-flight-pending-faa-1850812855
Starship Super Heavy to remain on terra firma until US watchdog ticks off the corrective actions
Richard Speed - Thu 7 Sep 2023 14:32 UTC
SpaceX supremo Elon Musk has declared that the next fully stacked Starship is primed for blast off. Sadly, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) doesn't see things in quite the same way.
Musk trumpeted: “Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA license approval” on his mouthpiece, X - formerly known as Twitter. That approval, however, has yet to appear despite the stacking of rocket hardware at SpaceX's South Texas Starbase.
There is no indication when stacking will turn to launching - and hopefully (from Musk's perspective) it won't include exploding this time.
The hold-up is that regulatory approval. Many things went wrong during the first launch attempt, and the FAA expects SpaceX to implement corrective actions to its satisfaction.
An FAA spokesperson told The Register: “The SpaceX Starship mishap investigation remains open. The FAA will not authorize another Starship launch until SpaceX implements the corrective actions identified during the mishap investigation and demonstrates compliance with all the regulatory requirements of the license modification process.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/07/musks_mighty_missile_is_ready/
SpaceX says it has implemented 57 corrective actions on Starship.
Stephen Clark - 9/8/2023, 12:40 PM
Sunday update: Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, posted Sunday on his social media platform X that the company has completed 57 corrective actions required before the second integrated test flight of the Starship rocket. Six more corrective actions will be implemented before future missions. This story has been updated to add Musk's statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it has closed an investigation into the problems SpaceX encountered on its first full-scale Starship test launch in April, but federal regulators won't yet give a green light for the next Starship flight.
“The closure of the mishap investigation does not signal an immediate resumption of Starship launches at Boca Chica,” the FAA said in a statement, referring to the location of SpaceX's Starship launch facility at Boca Chica Beach in South Texas.
The nearly 400-foot-tall Starship rocket, the largest ever built, is standing on its launch pad in Texas for the upcoming test flight, which could happen before the end of this month, pending FAA approval.
If all goes according to plan, the rocket's Super Heavy booster, powered by 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines, will burn for nearly three minutes, then the Starship upper stage will light its own Raptor engines to accelerate to near-orbital velocity, fast enough to send the vehicle on a flight three-quarters of the way around the world. The booster will attempt to descend to a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, testing maneuvers for future flights to recover and reuse the rocket.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/faa-says-spacex-has-more-to-do-before-starship-can-fly-again/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 8 September 2023
The Federal Aviation Administration has closed the mishap investigation into SpaceX’s first orbital test flight in April, but regulators won’t green light a second launch until the company completes more than 60 “corrective actions.”
While the FAA did not disclose the details of the 63 actions SpaceX must take before launching Starship again, the agency did provide a list of just some of what’s expected, including vehicle hardware redesigns, redesigns to the launch pad and additional analysis and testing of safety critical systems.
Once SpaceX has implemented all of the corrective actions — and only at this point — it can apply for and receive a modified license from the FAA to launch Starship again.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/elon-musk-says-starship-is-ready-to-launch-faa-says-not-yet/
MARCIA DUNN - Updated 8:38 AM PDT, September 8, 2023
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX must take a series of steps before it can launch its mega rocket again after its debut ended in an explosion, federal regulators said Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it closed its investigation into SpaceX’s failed debut of Starship, the world’s biggest rocket. The agency is requiring SpaceX to take 63 corrective actions and to apply for a modified FAA license before launching again.
FAA official said multiple problems led to the April launch explosion, which sent pieces of concrete and metal hurtling for thousands of feet (meters) and created a plume of pulverized concrete that spread for miles (kilometers) around.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in the accident’s aftermath that he improved the 394-foot (120-meter) rocket and strengthened the launch pad. A new Starship is on the redesigned pad, awaiting liftoff. It will fly empty, as before.
During the initial test flight, the rocketship had to be destroyed after it tumbled out of control shortly after liftoff from Boca Chica Beach. The wreckage crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX said fuel leaks during ascent caused fires to erupt at the tail of the rocket, severing connection with the main flight computer and leading to a loss of control.
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starship-launch-accident-faa-a8d6cec63de579af4b6d5f040e51825d
Elon Musk’s aerospace company must address these corrective actions to the regulator’s satisfaction should it wish to acquire its next Starship launch license.
George Dvorsky - 8 September 2023 12:35PM
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has officially closed its investigation into the inaugural launch of SpaceX’s in-development megarocket, Starship. The company must now implement 63 corrective measures to secure its next Starship launch license from the FAA.
Starship’s maiden launch, which took place on April 20, was marred by several missteps, including excessive damage at the launch mount, the scattering of debris and dust over the surrounding region, disruption of local wildlife, small wildfire ignitions, and a dangerously flawed self-destruct sequence. The megarocket flew for roughly four minutes before entering into a fatal tumble, and with the self-destruct sequence not immediately resulting in the disintegration of the Starship prototype.
The FAA’s final report highlighted “multiple root causes” of the flawed launch, specifying 63 corrective actions that SpaceX must implement to prevent similar incidents in future launches. These actions entail a redesign of the vehicle’s hardware to prevent leaks and fires, and a modification of the launch pad to boost its resilience—a change SpaceX appears to have made following the April 20 launch; these changes include steel reinforcements beneath the launch mount and a new water deluge system to quell the power of Starship’s 33 Raptor engines. That said, these changes will likely undergo a subsequent FAA review.
https://gizmodo.com/faa-spacex-starship-corrective-measures-regulation-1850818092
The spacelift company won't be searing any more protected ecosystems until it does.
Andrew Tarantola, Senior Editor - Updated Fri, Sep 8, 2023, 10:48 AM PDT
SpaceX's latest Starship test launch was its last for the foreseeable future. The FAA announced Friday that it has closed its investigation into April's mishap, but that the company will not be allowed to resume test launches until it addresses a list of 63 “corrective actions” for its launch system.
“The vehicle’s structural margins appear to be better than we expected,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joked with reporters in the wake of the late April test launch. Per the a report from the US Fish and WIldlife Service, however, the failed launch resulted in a 385-acre debris field that saw concrete chunks flung more than 2,600 feet from the launchpad, a 3.5-acre wildfire and “a plume cloud of pulverized concrete that deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site.”
“Corrective actions include redesigns of vehicle hardware to prevent leaks and fires, redesign of the launch pad to increase its robustness, incorporation of additional reviews in the design process, additional analysis and testing of safety critical systems and components including the Autonomous Flight Safety System, and the application of additional change control practices,” the FAA release reads. Furthermore, the FAA says that SpaceX will have to not only complete that list but also apply for and receive a modification to its existing license “that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next Starship launch.” In short, SpaceX has reached the “finding out” part.
Darrell Etherington - 10 September 2023
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has closed its report into the Starship Heavy test launch at SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch facility that went awry, blasting dirt and debris across a wide area. The FAA report, which includes findings from a SpaceX-led investigation into the incident which was overseen by the agency, ended up finding “multiple root causes” for the problems associated with the launch, and offers 63 corrective actions the company must implement before attempting any further launch activities.
SpaceX performed a test launch of its fully stacked Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster, which together make up the company’s next-generation, fully reusable space launch system, on April 20, 2023. The launch was considered a success by the company, but the spacecraft did not reach orbit, and the launch pad was essentially obliterated by the forces of lift-off, spreading a dangerous amount of debris across a wide area near the launch site and damaging some nearby buildings and vehicles.
Should the announcement hold true, it means SpaceX is swiftly progressing towards its much-anticipated second test flight of the megarocket.
George Dvorsky - 13 September 2023
The second test flight of Starship could happen sooner rather than later, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk claiming that dozens of FAA-requested corrective actions have already been implemented.
Musk announced on September 10 via X, formerly Twitter, that SpaceX has “completed & documented the 57 items required by the FAA for Flight 2 of Starship.” The proclamation arrived just two days after a directive from the Federal Aviation Administration instructing SpaceX to address 63 corrective actions before being granted a launch license for the next Starship flight.
https://gizmodo.com/faa-starship-fixes-carried-out-by-spacex-musk-claims-1850834035
The gigantic rocket could blast off as early as Friday, November 17.
George Dvorsky - 13 November 2023
Later this week, SpaceX is poised for a highly anticipated, and undoubtedly exciting, second test flight of its Starship megarocket—provided it receives the final regulatory approvals. Here’s what you need to know about this critically important test.
The Elon Musk-led company is targeting Friday, November 17 for the second test flight of its Starship megarocket—pending the final go-ahead from regulatory bodies. The upcoming flight follows the first test on April 20, which ended with the rocket’s destruction over the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, SpaceX has undertaken 63 corrective actions as mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Standing 400 feet (122 meters) tall, Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. The megarocket is crucial for SpaceX as it’s central to the company’s goals for more ambitious space missions, including potential trips to Mars. For NASA’s Artemis Moon program and the broader spaceflight community, Starship promises a revolutionary leap, as the rocket will allow for more flexible and cost-effective missions to space.
https://gizmodo.com/what-to-expect-spacex-second-starship-test-flight-1851016863
Aria Alamalhodaei - 15 November 2023
Regulators have given SpaceX the green light to launch its super massive Starship rocket for a second time, just a few days shy of seven months after the first orbital flight test that ended in a spectacular mid-air explosion.
SpaceX — which has been on standby for this final launch approval — will attempt the launch this Friday, November 17, from its sprawling facility near Boca Chica, Texas. The two-hour launch window will start at 7:00 AM CST.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it had awarded SpaceX the launch license for a single Starship flight. On the same day, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completed a written evaluation of the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment finding “no significant environmental changes.”
“The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said in a statement.
Having cleared all regulatory hurdles, SpaceX is set for a re-launch of its megarocket on Friday.
George Dvorsky - 15 November 2023
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized its environmental assessment of SpaceX’s new water deluge system, concluding that it’s no more dangerous than a seasonal rain shower. With that assessment out of the way, and with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also satisfied with its own evaluation, the regulator has given SpaceX the green light for launch.
We’re now closer than ever to the second launch of Space’s colossal Starship, a potentially revolutionary megarocket that could drastically reduce the cost of reaching space and open new possibilities for deep space exploration, including missions to the Moon, Mars and even more distant locations in the solar system.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has finalized its investigation into potential biological and environmental effects posed by SpaceX’s recently installed water deluge system, as the regulator declared in an emailed statement. The water-cooled steel flame deflector is designed to quell the immense power produced by the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines at launch, but the regulator, in cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), wanted to ensure its safety.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-granted-faa-permission-for-second-starship-test-1851025834
It's targeting a November 17 launch date for its spacecraft.
Mariella Moon, Contributing Reporter - Wed, Nov 15, 2023, 7:51 PM PST
SpaceX aims to send Starship to space for its second test flight on November 17, now that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given it the clearance to do so. The company completed its next-generation spacecraft's first fully integrated launch in April, but it wasn't able to meet all its objectives, including having its upper stage fly across our planet before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the ocean near Hawaii. SpaceX had to intentionally blow up the vehicle in the sky after an onboard fire had prevented its two stages from separating.
According to federal agencies, debris from the rocket explosion was found across 385 acres of land on SpaceX's facility and at Boca Chica State Park. It caused wildfire to break out on 3.5 acres of state park land and had led to a “plume cloud of pulverized concrete that deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site.” The FAA grounded Starship until SpaceX took dozens of corrective actions, including a vehicle redesign to prevent leaks and fires. As Space notes, the agency finished its safety review in September, but it still had to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to finish an updated environmental review of the spacecraft.
FAA likely to grant license to fly, though not fry local wildlife
Richard Speed - Tue 14 Nov 2023 13:15 UTC
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) appears to have listed SpaceX on its air traffic control advisory for an upcoming attempt to launch the monster Starship / Super Heavy combo from the company's Boca Chica facility.
The Reg is looking to confirm that FAA licenses have been granted for the launch. Getting to this point has taken some time, at least in terms of the rapid iterative approach adopted by the company for its other vehicles. Still, SpaceX seems set for another attempt seven months after April's effort.
Residing at the bottom of an FAA advisory are three possible dates for flight two of the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy. The primary date is November 17, with backup dates on November 18 and 19.
The FAA grounded SpaceX's Starship after the rocket demolished a chunk of its launchpad and scattered debris over the surrounding area. The launch was aborted a few minutes into flight, although there was a worrying delay between the red button being pushed and the tumbling rocket detonating.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/14/faa_grants_starship_license_to_fly/
SpaceX is now targeting Saturday for the second full-scale Starship test flight.
Stephen Clark - 11/16/2023, 2:23 PM
BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—The launch of SpaceX's second full-size Starship rocket from South Texas is now scheduled for Saturday, a day later than previously planned, according to company founder Elon Musk.
This 24-hour delay will allow time for SpaceX technicians at the company's launch facility, known as Starbase, to replace a component on the rocket's stainless steel Super Heavy booster. There is a 20-minute launch window on Saturday, opening at 7 am CST (13:00 UTC), shortly after sunrise in South Texas.
A delay at this point is unsurprising. Starship is a complex launch vehicle with a sum of 39 methane-burning engines, each producing roughly a half-million pounds of thrust, powering its booster stage and upper stage. And this is only the second test flight of SpaceX's new full-scale, nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket, the largest launch vehicle ever built.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 16 November 2023
SpaceX has officially pushed back the second orbital flight test of Starship by one day to Saturday, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Rumors about the push-back started to swirl after onsite news organizations, like NASASpaceflight, observed a massive crawler crane headed to the launch site. That machine is used to stack (and destack) Starship, so seeing one moving toward the rocket was not the most hopeful sign.
Not long after, Musk confirmed in a social media post on X that the company needs to replace a part called an actuator in one of the grid fins, which are used to control the booster as it falls back through the atmosphere to Earth.
Starship is scheduled to fly again on Saturday, but the crucial demo comes packed with a laundry list of uncertainties.
George Dvorsky - 16 November 2023
As SpaceX gears up for its second Starship test flight, scheduled for Saturday, excitement and anticipation are high, but so too is a sense of dread. Indeed, this ambitious venture is not without its share of risks. Here are 10 major challenges and uncertainties that could impact the outcome of this critically important test.
The first launch of Starship on April 20 turned out to be a fiasco in oh so many ways, yet it’s worth noting that the flight did manage to last for nearly four minutes, attaining a height of approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers). But for such a highly experimental rocket—the largest ever to take to the skies—to last for long has to be considered a partial success. That said, stage separation didn’t unfold as planned and the megarocket entered into a fatal tumble that forced mission controllers to destroy it over the Gulf of Mexico.
https://gizmodo.com/second-spacex-starship-megarocket-launch-fail-musk-1851027498
A successful Starship test flight would unlock a roadmap to even bigger tests.
Stephen Clark - 11/17/2023, 2:42 PM
NASA managers are in South Texas this weekend as SpaceX prepares to launch its second full-sized Starship rocket. If the rocket flies perfectly, it will unlock additional tests beginning as soon as next year to prove that SpaceX can transfer hundreds of tons of super-chilled methane and liquid oxygen between two spaceships in orbit.
This is a fundamental part of the architecture SpaceX has designed to fly Starship missions beyond low-Earth orbit. With two NASA fixed-price contracts valued at more than $4 billion, SpaceX is on the hook to develop and fly two human-rated lunar landers based on the Starship design (and likely many more missions, assuming these first two work as advertised).
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.
Grid fins have been essential to the landing of 230 rockets.
Eric Berger - 11/17/2023, 8:48 AM
SpaceX's Starship rocket did not launch on Friday morning from South Texas as intended because the company had to replace the actuator on a grid fin. The rocket is now being prepared for a launch during a tight window on Saturday morning, from 7 to 7:20 am local time.
Here's an explanation of why grid fins are so important to the rocket's flight—or, more precisely, its landing.
SpaceX's giant Starship rocket is poised to head for space from South Texas.
Stephen Clark - 11/18/2023, 12:59 AM
BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—Early Saturday morning, SpaceX will load more than 10 million pounds of super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into the propellant tanks inside the company's second flight-ready Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket.
Then, if all goes according to plan, 33 Raptor engines will light at 7 am CST (13:00 UTC) to propel this gigantic rocket into the sky over Boca Chica Beach, a remote stretch of South Texas shoreline a couple of miles north of the US-Mexico border. SpaceX will live stream the event on X.
Space fans got what they hope will be their last look at this particular rocket Friday night, hours before law enforcement closed off public access to the launch site. One of the neat things about SpaceX's privately-owned South Texas launch site, named Starbase, is the public can approach within a few hundred feet of the rocket. The surrounding mud flats, dunes, and beach are all public land.
Starship, booster successfully separate in second major test
SpaceX’s Starship vital to Musk’s dream of settling Mars
Loren Grush - November 18, 2023 at 8:27 AM EST / Updated November 18, 2023 at 2:01 PM EST
SpaceX’s colossal Starship spacecraft exploded during its second major test flight on Saturday, but achieved new milestones that advance Elon Musk’s crucial deep-space launch system.
As the Starship spacecraft was heading to near orbit, it appeared to burst apart on an X livestream. Later, the hosts of the livestream said that Starship likely had been lost, believing that the vehicle’s flight termination system activated while the vehicle was attempting to reach near orbit. The flight termination system is used to destroy a rocket if it starts to malfunction or deviates from its flight path during a launch.
Starship reached a speed of 15,000 mph, then self-destructed over the Gulf of Mexico.
Stephen Clark - 11/18/2023, 1:35 PM
BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket reached space for the first time Saturday, flying straight and true for more than eight minutes before exploding nearly 100 miles over the Gulf of Mexico downrange from the company's South Texas launch base.
With this test flight, SpaceX made important steps forward with Starship, the largest rocket ever built. This is the fully reusable launch vehicle Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, says is crucial to his vision of establishing a settlement on Mars. In the nearer term, once Starship is flight proven, SpaceX plans to use the rocket to launch massive payloads of numerous Starlink Internet satellites. NASA has a pair of contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to use a variant of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon. Private space travelers have also signed up to fly on Starship.
But those ambitions hinge on getting Starship into orbit, which hasn't happened yet. The flight profile for Saturday's test launch, designated Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), should have taken the unpiloted Starship on a trajectory to fly most of the way around the world before a targeted reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. In the end, the rocket didn't reach this objective, but the results Saturday were promising.
MARCIA DUNN - Updated Sat, November 18, 2023 at 8:55 AM PST
SpaceX launched its mega rocket Starship but lost both the booster and the spacecraft in a pair of explosions minutes into Saturday’s test flight.
The rocketship reached space following liftoff from South Texas before communication suddenly was lost. SpaceX officials said it appears the ship’s self-destruct system blew it up over the Gulf of Mexico.
Minutes earlier, the separated booster had exploded over the gulf. By then, though, its job was done.
Saturday’s demo lasted eight or so minutes, about twice as long as the first test in April, which also ended in an explosion. The latest flight came to an end as the ship’s six engines were almost done firing to put it on an around-the-world path.
https://news.yahoo.com/spacex-preparing-mega-rocket-second-114504674.html
SpaceX needs to implement 17 corrective actions before it can proceed with the planned third test of its groundbreaking megarocket.
George Dvorsky - 27 February 2024
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight, which SpaceX performed on November 18, 2023. With the inquiry concluded, SpaceX is now on track to advance its program, pending the necessary fixes.
Orbital Test Flight 2 (OFT-2) was a considerable improvement over the first test, done on April 20, 2023, which resulted in considerable damage to the launch pad and the surrounding area as well as the loss of the Starship rocket some four minutes into the flight. Nevertheless, OFT-2, which witnessed the in-flight destruction of both the Super Heavy booster and upper stage, prompted an FAA investigation.
As per the regulator’s guidelines, SpaceX led the mishap investigation, with the FAA keeping a close watch on the process to ensure compliance. The aerospace company identified the root causes of the failed test, resulting in 17 corrective actions, some of which have already been implemented. Starship, still in development, is a fully reusable spacecraft and rocket system designed for missions to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and other locations in the solar system, and it’s set to seriously transform the aerospace industry.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-faa-investigation-test-improvements-1851289673
Aria Alamalhodaei - 26 February 2024
The Federal Aviation Administration has concluded its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the second Starship launch in November, with the regulator saying Monday that it accepted the “root causes and 17 corrective actions” identified by the company.
While this means the investigation is now closed, SpaceX must implement all the corrective actions and apply for a modified launch license before it can fly Starship again.
“The FAA is evaluating SpaceX’s license modification request and expects SpaceX to submit additional required information before a final determination can be made,” the regulator said in a statement Monday.
SpaceX’s second orbital flight test of the nearly 400-foot-tall Starship rocket in November went farther than the first test by a huge margin: all 33 of the Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster powered on successfully and none failed in the course of the nearly three-minute ascent burn. The company also pulled off a spectacularly difficult “hot-stage separation” for the first time, wherein the Starship upper stage lit up to push away from the booster.
“Several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically.”
Eric Berger - 2/26/2024, 3:53 PM
A little more than three months after the most recent launch of a Starship vehicle, which ended with both the booster and upper stage being lost in flight, the Federal Aviation Administration has closed its investigation of the mishap.
“SpaceX identified, and the FAA accepts, the root causes and 17 corrective actions documented in SpaceX’s mishap report,” the federal agency said in a statement issued Monday. “Prior to the next launch, SpaceX must implement all corrective actions and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements.”
SpaceX must still submit additional information to the FAA, which is responsible for the safety of people and property on the ground, before the agency completes its review of an application to launch Starship for a third time. The administrator for Commercial Space Transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, Kelvin Coleman, said last week that early to mid-March is a reasonable timeline for the regulatory process to conclude.
The NASA-funded refueling test would require the megarocket to reach new heights, as the space agency needs the technology for deep space missions.
George Dvorsky - 6 December 2023
SpaceX is actively preparing for the third test of its Starship launch system, a mission that may feature the inaugural attempt at in-flight propellant transfer. This capability is essential for enabling deep space missions and is a crucial component of NASA’s Artemis Moon plans.
The demo, though preliminary in nature, would require Starship to boldly go where no Starship has gone before: low Earth orbit. NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell confirmed the test of the orbital refueling technology in a statement to CNBC. “NASA and SpaceX are reviewing options for the demonstration to take place during an integrated flight test of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket,” the spokesperson said, but “no final decisions on timing have been made.”
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-test-in-flight-fuel-transfer-third-starship-nasa-1851077135
SpaceX appears on track for at least a preliminary propellant transfer test next year.
Stephen Clark - 12/5/2023, 5:06 PM
SpaceX and NASA could take a tentative step toward orbital refueling on the next test flight of Starship, but the US space agency says officials haven't made a final decision on when to begin demonstrating cryogenic propellant transfer capabilities that are necessary to return astronauts to the Moon.
NASA is keen on demonstrating orbital refueling technology, an advancement that could lead to propellant depots in space to feed rockets heading to distant destinations beyond Earth orbit. In 2020, NASA announced agreements with four companies—Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, and a Florida-based startup named Eta Space—to prove capabilities in the area of refueling and propellant depots using cryogenic propellants.
These cryogenic fluids—liquid hydrogen, methane, and liquid oxygen—must be kept at temperatures of several hundred degrees below zero, or they turn into a gas and boil off. Russian supply freighters regularly refuel the International Space Station with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, room-temperature rocket propellants that can be stored for years in orbit, but rockets using more efficient super-cold propellants have typically needed to complete their missions within hours.
January 18, 2024 5:01 PM ET - Russell Lewis
The first all-European commercial crew is on its way to the International Space Station after an early evening SpaceX launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Unlike a NASA mission, this one is paid for by Axiom Space, a Houston-based company flying its third group of paying passengers to the I.S.S. It contracts with SpaceX to get to and from the orbital laboratory. Axiom plans to build its own space station in orbit one day and it's using these missions to help in its planning and designs.
An attempt to launch the mission Wednesday was called off several hours before its scheduled flight. SpaceX and Axiom said they needed additional time “to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis, including the parachute system energy modulator.” The next day SpaceX said, “all systems are looking good for today's launch” without elaborating further.
The capsule will take the next 36 hours racing to catch up to the I.S.S. as it circles about 250 miles above Earth. After docking, the crew will spend two weeks on the orbital laboratory performing about 30 experiments, including “microgravity research, technology demonstrations, and outreach engagements,” according to Axiom.
This third flight has a reasonable chance of success.
Eric Berger - 3/6/2024, 6:01 AM
After SpaceX completed a fueling test of its third full Starship stack on Sunday night, successfully loading more than 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant onto the rocket, it was only a matter of time before the world's largest rocket took flight.
Now, we have a tentative date. In a post on the social media site X, the company posted a link to watch “Starship's third flight test” at 7:30 am ET (11:30 UTC) on March 14. Published on Tuesday morning, the social media post was 'hidden,' but somehow discovered late Tuesday night.
Nevertheless, this is a credible date that the company is working toward. Following the fueling test on Sunday night at the company's Starbase site in South Texas, the hardware appears to be in good shape. Although SpaceX has yet to receive its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency recently announced that it has closed its investigation into the second Starship test flight in November. So a mid-March launch date is plausible from a regulatory standpoint.
The first two Starship flights in April and November last year ultimately failed, but each of the experimental launches provided valuable data. On the second mission four months ago, the first-stage Super Heavy booster performed a nominal flight before it separated from the Starship upper stage. The Starship vehicle exploded a few minutes into its flight due to a leak during a liquid oxygen vent.
With two tumultuous flights already under its belt, third time may be the charm for Elon's megarocket.
Passant Rabie - 6 March 2024
SpaceX teased a tentative date for the third launch of its Starship rocket. The company posted a link on X for viewing Starship’s third flight test next week after having completed a wet dress rehearsal for its massive rocket on Sunday night.
The live feed for Starship’s test flight is currently scheduled for March 14 at 7:30 a.m. ET. Earlier this week, SpaceX carried out a fueling test for its Starship rocket at the company’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
During the launch rehearsal, SpaceX loaded Starship with over 10 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellant and counted down to T-10 seconds before halting the mock launch. The rocket’s hardware seemed to have fared well during the rehearsal, looking like an orbital Batmobile while perched on its launchpad.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-third-test-flight-announced-elon-musk-1851311810
Starship, the rocket voted most likely to explode, is set to take off on Thursday morning, with a 110-minute launch window opening at 8:00 a.m. ET.
George Dvorsky - 13 March 2024
The time has come for Starship to embark on its third test flight, during which the megarocket will once again be pushed to its limits and demonstrate advances made since the previous flight last November.
The 400-foot-tall (122-meter) megarocket is scheduled to blast off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at roughly 8:00 a.m. ET on Thursday, March 14, with a 110-minute launch window available. The company’s livestream will be made available on X and its website, with the broadcast starting at 7:30 a.m. ET. Of course, this is contingent on favorable weather conditions.
https://gizmodo.com/live-stream-spacex-starship-third-launch-1851333034
Aria Alamalhodaei - 13 March 2024
SpaceX will attempt to send the massive Starship rocket to orbit for the third time early Thursday morning after U.S. regulators gave the green light for launch.
The company is aiming to complete the launch within a 110-minute window that opens at 7:00 a.m. CT. Starship testing is conducted from SpaceX’s sprawling Starbase campus near Boca Chica, Texas, though the company will livestream the launch on its website and on the social media site X starting at 6:30 a.m. CT.
SpaceX has conducted two test flights of the 400-foot-tall rocket so far. The first took place last April, and ended with both the upper stage (which is also called Starship) and the Super Heavy booster exploding mid-air. The company made considerable progress during the second orbital test flight, though it too eventually ended in the destruction of the vehicle.
Starship's third launch appeared flawless, but SpaceX has more work to do on recovery.
Stephen Clark - 3/14/2024, 1:12 PM
SpaceX's new-generation Starship rocket, the most powerful and largest launcher ever built, flew halfway around the world following liftoff from South Texas on Thursday, accomplishing a key demonstration of its ability to carry heavyweight payloads into low-Earth orbit.
SpaceX's third towering Starship rocket, standing some 397 feet (121 meters) tall and wider than the fuselage of a 747 jumbo jet, lifted off at 8:25 am CDT (13:25 UTC) Thursday from SpaceX's Starbase launch facility on the Texas Gulf Coast east of Brownsville. SpaceX delayed the liftoff time by nearly an hour and a half to wait for boats to clear out of restricted waters near the launch base.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 14 March 2024
SpaceX is continuing to make progress on the development of Starship, the largest rocket ever built, with the third test flight Thursday accomplishing considerably more than the previous two tests.
The 400-foot-tall Starship rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southeastern Texas at 8:25 a.m. local time. Although SpaceX has been developing Starship for years, this is only the third time the company has attempted an orbital mission.
After liftoff, Starship proceeded through a nominal — aerospace speak for normal — ascend. All 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster performed as designed, and the two stages separated around 2 minutes 45 seconds into the mission. Critically, the launch vehicle nailed a novel stage separation technique called “hot staging,” where the upper stage (also called Starship) lights its engines to push away the Super Heavy booster. The hot-staging technique was performed for the first time, ever, during the second Starship test flight last November.
Booster hit the water hard and monster rocket lost during re-entry, but otherwise a success!
Richard Speed - Thu 14 Mar 2024 15:30 UTC
SpaceX has launched its third Starship Super-Heavy rocket on a test flight that went almost entirely to plan.
The 110-minute test window opened at 0700 CT on March 14, and, after a delay to clear boats from the range, the 33 Raptor engines of the Super Heavy booster were lit, and the Starship stack left the pad at 0825 CT.
Things initially seemed to go perfectly. Staging occurred as expected, and the booster began its journey back to Earth. However, it appeared there was a loss of control as the booster descended for landing, and the required engines did not all relight. The result was a crash into the Gulf of Mexico.
Still, at least the second stage, the Starship, made it into near-orbit and re-entry. SpaceX demonstrated the opening and closing of the payload door and called out propellant transfer operations, but a number of observers noted that something was venting from Starship.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/spacex_starship_launch/
The company plans to test the payload door and carry out the first re-light of a Raptor engine in space.
Kris Holt - Updated Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 7:37 AM PDT
SpaceX hoped the third time would be the charm as it attempted another test of its Starship rocket. This third launch did indeed go well, with the Starship successfully launching at 9:25AM ET. Shortly after launch, it succesfully completed the hot-staging separation from the Super Heavy Booster, and the Starship successfully ignited the second-stage Raptor engines. It's currently coasting and the Raptor engines are planned to be re-lit about 40 minutes after initial take off. The Super Heavy Booster, meanwhile, went into a semi-controlled descent; its engines didn't fully re-ignite as planned prior to splashdown. We should hear more about what worked and didn't work in that phase of testing once everything is finished.
While SpaceX said that both the booster and Starship itself were going to return to Earth at “terminal velocity,” thus making any recovery of them impossible, it looks like Starship itself didn't make it to splashdown. Based on the initial data, it looks like Starship broke up during re-entry. As with the booster, we should hear more about the specifics behind the ship's ultimate fate soon.
SpaceX’s Starship was pushed to its limits during a 49-minute mission on Thursday.
George Dvorsky - 15 March 2024
Starship flew faster and longer than ever before on Thursday, but with both stages lost during the mission, there’s clearly much more progress to be made. Here’s our detailed breakdown of Integrated Flight Test 3 and what happens next.
The megarocket, standing 400 feet tall (121 meters), took off at 9:25 a.m. ET yesterday from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The most powerful rocket in the world, pushing off from the planet with more than 16 million pounds of thrust, was pushed to its limits, succeeding in some ways but falling short in others. Here’s how it all went down.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-third-test-flight-success-booster-crash-1851335555
For fun, we could compare Starship as it exists today to other available rockets.
Eric Berger - 3/15/2024, 7:39 AM
One of the best things about spaceflight is its power to dazzle us.
I will never forget seeing the first images of Pluto and its moon Charon for the first time, with their vibrant colors and exotic geology. A world with super-sized ice volcanoes? Oh my. Similarly affecting were up-close views of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, revealed by Europe's Philae lander. And it is difficult to forget the harrowing footage of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars.
But no space agency or company has dazzled us more in the last 10 years than SpaceX. The company produces moments of wonder and originality that are both breathtaking and full of promise. What SpaceX does best is provide us a glimpse into a tantalizingly close future.
And that happened again on Thursday with the third Starship launch.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday March 14, 2024 05:02PM
sixoh1 writes:
On the third attempt, SpaceX's Super Heavy booster lofted the Starship vehicle to space on a sub-orbital parabolic trajectory. The test was successful for nearly all of the objectives, including payload delivery functions on Starship that will be used for Starlink deployment and in-space fuel transfers. Unfortunately the booster did not soft-land, and the Starship vehicle was destroyed during re-entry, likely due to unspecified issues with re-starting the Raptor engine and then maintaining attitude control during re-entry.
You can watch Starship's third flight test here (https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1768258691319689232).
Elon Musk’s megarocket is grounded pending an FAA investigation, but the relative smoothness of the third mission means the next launch should happen soon.
George Dvorsky - 20 March 2024
The third test flight of Starship on March 14 marked a huge victory for SpaceX, with the experimental rocket hitting a number of key milestones. The unplanned loss of both stages triggered a Federal Aviation Administration investigation, but neither the FAA nor SpaceX anticipate the lengthy delays experienced after the first two tests.
Starship’s second test flight, conducted on November 18, 2023, happened 30 weeks (212 days) after its inaugural demo last April. That launch was a total fiasco, resulting in a protracted federal investigation. The length of time between the second and third tests fell to nearly 17 weeks (117 days), which was better but still not great, as far as SpaceX is concerned.
Recent comments from Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, suggest the fourth flight could happen in about six weeks, which would take us to early May. That would obviously be the quickest turnaround yet. Given how things went down during the third test on March 14, it’s not a completely outrageous projection.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-starship-fourth-test-flight-launch-faa-1851352088
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:50 PM PDT May 30, 2024
SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket could take to the skies for the fourth time on June 5, with the primary objective of evaluating the second stage’s reusable heat shield as the vehicle tries to safely reenter the atmosphere for the first time.
CEO Elon Musk said on his social media platform X that “There are many tough issues to solve with this vehicle, but the biggest remaining problem is making a reusable orbital return heat shield, which has never been done before.”
His post echoes comments he made earlier this month when he noted that the primary goal of the next Starship test was “getting through max reentry heating.”
That means the second stage’s novel heat shield, composed of around 18,000 ceramic hexagonal tiles, will be put to the test. Those tiles are designed to protect the second stage (which is also called Starship) from the extreme temperatures experienced when reentering Earth’s atmosphere. One of the biggest issues, Musk suggested, is the vulnerability of the system overall: “we are not resilient to loss of a single tile in most places,” he said. That means a single damaged or faulty tile could lead to catastrophe.
For the upcoming fourth mission, SpaceX aims to demonstrate key capabilities of the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, including successful reentry.
George Dvorsky - 31 May 2024
SpaceX’s Starship program is gearing up for another crucial test flight next week, pending regulatory approval. This flight will focus on reentry and landing, while also gathering comprehensive flight data to improve future missions.
A new Starship prototype is set to pierce the Texas skies, possibly launching on the morning of Wednesday, June 5. This fourth fully integrated test flight, named IFT-4, is expected to reach new milestones if everything goes as planned, advancing the experimental rocket toward becoming fully operational.
All signs are pointing to a launch. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has finished its safety investigation into the third flight, finding no critical issues as far as public safety is concerned; this presumably opens the door to the issuance of the FAA’s next Starship launch license. Additionally, SpaceX successfully completed its second wet dress rehearsal on May 23 with the two stacked prototype stages, designated Booster 11 and Ship 29.
https://gizmodo.com/upcoming-spacex-launch-targets-safe-reentry-of-starship-1851511901
The FAA has approved a license for SpaceX's fourth Starship launch, set for Thursday.
Stephen Clark - 6/4/2024, 8:56 PM
The Federal Aviation Administration approved the commercial launch license for the fourth test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket Tuesday, with liftoff from South Texas targeted for just after sunrise Thursday.
“The FAA has approved a license authorization for SpaceX Starship Flight 4,” the agency said in a statement. “SpaceX met all safety and other licensing requirements for this test flight.”
Shortly after the FAA announced the launch license, SpaceX confirmed plans to launch the fourth test flight of the world's largest rocket at 7:00 am CDT (12:00 UTC) Thursday. The launch window runs for two hours.
This flight follows three prior demonstration missions, each progressively more successful, of SpaceX's privately developed mega-rocket. The last time Starship flew—on March 14—it completed an eight-and-a-half minute climb into space, but the ship was unable to maneuver itself as it coasted nearly 150 miles (250 km) above Earth. This controllability problem caused the rocket to break apart during reentry.
SpaceX is targeting 8 a.m. ET on Thursday, June 6 for the launch, with reentry and reusability being key goals for the fourth demonstration.
Passant Rabie - 5 June 2024
It’s time for Starship to take flight once again, aiming to splashdown in the Indian Ocean on its way back from its fourth launch to demonstrate the rocket’s reusability.
SpaceX is targeting Thursday, June 6 for the fourth test flight of a new Starship prototype. The megarocket is scheduled to liftoff during a 120-minute launch window that starts at 8 a.m. ET from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, according to SpaceX.
The launch will be live streamed on the SpaceX website, as well as through the company’s account on X. The livestream is scheduled to begin at 7:30 a.m. ET. A number of third party providers have livestreams available, which you can find below.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-spacex-starship-megarocket-fourth-test-flight-1851521195
The FAA has approved a license for SpaceX's fourth Starship launch, set for Thursday.
Stephen Clark - 6/4/2024, 8:56 PM
The Federal Aviation Administration approved the commercial launch license for the fourth test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket Tuesday, with liftoff from South Texas targeted for just after sunrise Thursday.
“The FAA has approved a license authorization for SpaceX Starship Flight 4,” the agency said in a statement. “SpaceX met all safety and other licensing requirements for this test flight.”
Shortly after the FAA announced the launch license, SpaceX confirmed plans to launch the fourth test flight of the world's largest rocket at 7:00 am CDT (12:00 UTC) Thursday. The launch window runs for two hours.
This flight follows three prior demonstration missions, each progressively more successful, of SpaceX's privately developed mega-rocket. The last time Starship flew—on March 14—it completed an eight-and-a-half minute climb into space, but the ship was unable to maneuver itself as it coasted nearly 150 miles (250 km) above Earth. This controllability problem caused the rocket to break apart during reentry.
Jeff Foust - June 6, 2024
Updated 3:20 p.m. Eastern with additional comments.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX conducted the fourth test flight of its Starship launch system June 6, with both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage making it back to the surface intact.
The vehicle lifted off at 8:50 a.m. Eastern from the company’s Starbase test site at Boca Chica, Texas. The ascent appeared to go as planned other than the failure of one of 33 Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster to ignite.
After “hot staging” stage separation, where the Starship upper stage ignites its engines before separating from Super Heavy, the Super Heavy booster performed a boostback burn without any Raptor engine failures, as was the case on two previous flights. It then jettisoned the hot staging interstage section, a new step for this launch that SpaceX says is a temporary measure to reduce the mass of the booster for its landing.
During the booster’s final phase of descent, it reignited three Raptor engines for a landing burn. This allowed the booster to make a “landing” in the Gulf of Mexico, reducing its velocity to zero at the ocean surface before toppling over. Achieving that landing was a major priority for the mission.
https://spacenews.com/starship-survives-reentry-during-fourth-test-flight/
Joey Roulette - June 6, 2024 1:02 PM PDT
June 6 (Reuters) - SpaceX's Starship rocket survived a fiery, hypersonic return from space and achieved a breakthrough landing demonstration in the Indian Ocean on Thursday, completing a full test mission around the globe on the rocket's fourth try.
Starship's controlled fall into the Indian Ocean just 65 minutes after launching from Texas capped the latest advance in the company's test-to-failure rocket development campaign, a multibillion-dollar effort by Elon Musk's space company to build a reusable satellite launcher and moon lander.
The three previous test missions ended with Starship blowing up or disintegrating. Testing has a ways to go. Musk has said SpaceX is planning at least six Starship test flights this year, with more expected in the years ahead as it faces pressure from NASA to demonstrate it can safely put astronaut crews on the lunar surface.
The two-stage, rocket system, which stands nearly 400 feet (120-meter) tall, consists of the Starship vessel mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster. At 7:50 a.m. CDT (1250 GMT), it blasted off from SpaceX's Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village in South Texas, sending powerful shockwaves rippling through the Gulf Coast's morning fog.
Super Heavy detached from the Starship upper stage at an altitude of 74 km (46 miles), as Starship ignited its own engines to ascend further toward space. Meanwhile, Super Heavy returned to the Gulf of Mexico and executed a soft splashdown, demonstrating a touchdown that would otherwise be on land.
Michael Sheetz - Thu, Jun 6 2024 8:15 AM EDT
SpaceX completed a test flight of its Starship rocket for the first time on Thursday, as the company pushed development of the mammoth vehicle past new milestones.
“Our first ever ship landing burn after a launch into space … that was incredible,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company’s broadcast.
Elon Musk’s company launched Starship at about 8:50 a.m. ET from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/spacex-starship-fourth-test-spaceflight.html
Aria Alamalhodaei - 7:33 AM PDT June 6, 2024
SpaceX has shown once again that subjecting rocket hardware to the real-world flight environment pays dividends. In its latest launch, the company achieved a key milestone in its Starship flight test campaign: returning the booster and the upper stage back to Earth in controlled ocean splashdowns.
Bringing the two parts of the launch vehicle back — the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, which is also called Starship — are essential to the company’s long-term plans to make Starship the first-ever fully reusable rocket. But to reuse, you have to recover, and SpaceX is proving that it will be able to do just that with Starship.
The ultimate goal is to fly Super Heavy and the Starship upper stage back to Starbase, SpaceX’s private Starship launch and development site in southeast Texas, where they’d make vertical landings on solid ground. A controlled ocean splashdown is the first step toward executing this plan. SpaceX was the first company to ever reuse a part of a rocket that’s flown to space, but even its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket is only partially reusable (the second stage is expended in orbit).
The SpaceX ship successfully executed a series of firsts, marking a major step forward in its development.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Thu, Jun 6, 2024, 7:29 AM PDT
SpaceX’s Starship just soared through a series of critical milestones in its development, surviving reentry through Earth’s atmosphere and demonstrating a landing burn for the first time, before splashing down in the Indian Ocean. Starship lifted off from the company’s Texas Starbase at around 8:50AM ET for its fourth flight test, which focused on demonstrating the reusability of the massive spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster.
A few minutes after launch, Super Heavy separated from Starship and successfully performed a controlled descent to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico as planned. Starship continued flying for about an hour, starting its reentry a little after the 45 minute mark. Live views from an onboard camera made for a nailbiting final few minutes — at an altitude of about 33 miles above Earth, one of the ship’s flaps started to burn off. Then the camera cracked, obscuring the view so little more than flashes of light from plasma could be seen.
Starship will launch during the late afternoon so its descent into Indian Ocean is visible.
Eric Berger – Nov 6, 2024 12:01 PM
Less than a month has passed since the historic fifth flight of SpaceX's Starship, during which the company caught the booster with mechanical arms back at the launch pad in Texas. Now, another test flight could come as soon as Nov. 18, the company announced Wednesday.
The improbable but successful recovery of the Starship first stage with “chopsticks” last month, and the on-target splashdown of the Starship upper stage halfway around the world, allowed SpaceX to avoid an anomaly investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Thus, the company was able to press ahead on a sixth test flight if it flew a similar profile.
And that's what SpaceX plans to do, albeit with some notable additions to the flight plan.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/the-next-starship-launch-may-occur-in-less-than-two-weeks/
Hands up who wants to see the 'chopsticks' catch the Super Heavy again?
Richard Speed - Thu 7 Nov 2024 13:19 UTC
SpaceX will make its next Starship launch attempt on November 18, if all goes to plan – and may also try another catch of the Super Heavy Booster, depending on conditions.
The sixth flight of Elon Musk's monster rocket has a lot to live up to. The fifth flight test was an undeniably impressive spectacle as the Super Heavy Booster successfully returned to the launch site and was caught by the chopstick arms of the launch tower.
Musk later shared audio recorded while someone played the video game Diablo, describing how close the landing came to being aborted. A commenter on the thread asked “Did you just share Starship data lmaooo?” to which Musk responded, “Yeah 😂.”
During the recording, a voice can be heard explaining that the SpaceX team was “one second” away from a sensor tripping that would have triggered an abort and sent the rocket crashing into the ground.
While SpaceX did not address the comments made in the recording directly, the rocket planned for the sixth flight test will feature hardware changes that include additional redundancy for the booster propulsion systems and increased structural strength.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/07/spacex_plans_next_starship_flight/
Yes, the heat shield has been tweaked. But there's also a banana for scale
Richard Speed - Thu 14 Nov 2024 18:31 UTC
SpaceX has transported its Starship spacecraft to the launchpad in preparation for a scheduled flight test on November 18.
Elon Musk's rocketeers posted images on the billionaire's social media mouthpiece, X, showing the “Ship” portion of the stack headed to the launch tower. Clearly visible beneath the S31 numbering of the ship was what is likely a reference to that old engineering joke: a banana for scale.
We at The Register maintain our own Standards Bureau, which is internationally recognized by absolutely nobody. While SpaceX has opted for the banana, which equates to around one linguine, we'd suggest popping an Osman – just over 13 bananas in size – on the side of the Ship to further highlight the scale of the hardware.
Oddly, SpaceX did not respond to our suggestion.
Before launch, Ship 31 will be stacked atop booster 13. Since SpaceX has already performed a static fire, launch preparations should consist of little more than checkouts, filling the tanks with fuel, and lighting the engines.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/14/spacex_starship_flight_test/
Starship lifted off for its sixth test flight on Tuesday, but its Super Heavy Booster splashed down in the ocean rather than being caught by the company's giant “chopsticks.”
Passant Rabie - November 19, 2024
Shortly after launching its Starship rocket for the sixth time, SpaceX opted out of performing a booster catch, letting the rocket’s first stage dive into the ocean instead. It’s not the result the company was hoping for, but data from the flight will undoubtedly inform future attempts.
Starship lifted off on Tuesday at 5 p.m. ET from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas for its sixth integrated test flight. The suborbital launch was supposed to include the Super Heavy booster being caught by the massive Mechazilla tower after reentry, but SpaceX declared it a no-go for the booster catch roughly four minutes after liftoff.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 9:06 AM PST December 18, 2024
Regulators have given SpaceX the go-ahead to launch Starship for the seventh time, although the company has not yet announced when that mission might take place.
While the exact launch date is unclear, SpaceX engineers have been as busy as ever at the company’s massive launch site near Boca Chica, Texas. In recent days, the company performed test fires of the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage (which is also called Starship), though the two stages have yet to be stacked at the launch tower. The most recent Starship test took place on November 19 with President-elect Donald Trump as a guest.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said SpaceX could launch multiple missions under the new approval, provided that the mission profile and vehicle configuration don’t change. This mission profile includes another catch attempt of the Super Heavy booster — which SpaceX nailed for the first time in an October launch — and the Starship upper-stage vehicle performing a controlled water landing in the Indian Ocean.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/18/spacex-gets-green-light-for-seventh-starship-mission/
SpaceX - (Viewed 5 January 2025)
The seventh flight test of Starship is preparing to launch.
The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades, attempt Starship’s first payload deployment test, fly multiple reentry experiments geared towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy booster.
A block of planned upgrades to the Starship upper stage will debut on this flight test, bringing major improvements to reliability and performance. The vehicle’s forward flaps have been reduced in size and shifted towards the vehicle tip and away from the heat shield, significantly reducing their exposure to reentry heating while simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiling. Redesigns to the propulsion system, including a 25 percent increase in propellant volume, the vacuum jacketing of feedlines, a new fuel feedline system for the vehicle’s Raptor vacuum engines, and an improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors, all add additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions. The ship’s heat shield will also use the latest generation tiles and includes a backup layer to protect from missing or damaged tiles.
The vehicle’s avionics underwent a complete redesign, adding additional capability and redundancy for increasingly complex missions like propellant transfer and ship return to launch site. Avionics upgrades include a more powerful flight computer, integrated antennas which combine Starlink, GNSS, and backup RF communication functions into each unit, redesigned inertial navigation and star tracking sensors, integrated smart batteries and power units that distribute data and 2.7MW of power across the ship to 24 high-voltage actuators, and an increase to more than 30 vehicle cameras giving engineers insight into hardware performance across the vehicle during flight. With Starlink, the vehicle is capable of streaming more than 120 Mbps of real-time high-definition video and telemetry in every phase of flight, providing invaluable engineering data to rapidly iterate across all systems.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-7
Starship will test its payload deployment mechanism on its seventh test flight.
Stephen Clark – Jan 9, 2025 1:59 PM
An upsized version of SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week.
The two-mile transfer moved the bullet-shaped spaceship one step closer to launch Monday from SpaceX's Starbase test site in South Texas. The launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 2200 UTC). This will be the seventh full-scale test flight of SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft and the first of 2025.
In the coming days, SpaceX technicians will lift the ship on top of the Super Heavy booster already emplaced on the launch mount. Then, teams will complete the final tests and preparations for the countdown on Monday.
“The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades, attempt Starship’s first payload deployment test, fly multiple reentry experiments geared towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy booster,” SpaceX officials wrote in a mission overview posted on the company's website.
The mission Monday will repeat many of the maneuvers SpaceX demonstrated on the last two Starship test flights. The company will again attempt to return the Super Heavy booster to the launch site and attempt to catch it with two mechanical arms, or “chopsticks,” on the launch tower approximately seven minutes after liftoff.
The “rapid unscheduled disassembly” was likely caused by a propellant leak, Elon Musk said, and was captured on video by spectators on the ground.
Isaac Schultz - January 17, 2025
SpaceX’s seventh test flight of its marquee rocket, Starship, ended with an unintentional fireworks show. That is, the rocket exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, raining a brilliant stream of debris down through Earth’s atmosphere.
It’s not clear what caused the explosion, but the event was captured on video by people on the ground and forced airplanes to divert course to avoid the superheated bits of falling rocketry.
Starship launched from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas at 4:37 p.m. local time on Thursday. The company’s Mechazilla tower managed to catch the Starship’s huge (233-foot-tall, or 71-meter) Super Heavy booster rocket, a calling card of SpaceX’s bid to make spaceflight a more cost-effective and sustainable endeavor.
SpaceX lost telemetry with the vehicle before the burn stage was completed. This happened about 8.5 minutes into the flight. “Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” according to a SpaceX release.
The Federal Aviation Administration will likely require an investigation into the accident.
Stephen Clark – Jan 16, 2025 8:44 PM
SpaceX launched an upgraded version of its massive Starship rocket from South Texas on Thursday, but the flight ended less than nine minutes later after engineers lost contact with the spacecraft.
For a few moments, SpaceX officials discussing the launch on the company's live webcast were unsure of the outcome of the test flight. However, within minutes, residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico shared videos showing a shower of debris falling through the atmosphere along Starship's expected flight corridor.
The videos confirmed Starship—the rocket's upper stage—broke apart in space, or experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” in SpaceX-speak. This happened well short of the spacecraft's planned trajectory, which would have seen it fly halfway around the world and splash down in the Indian Ocean after more than an hour of flight.
There were no people or satellites aboard the rocket Thursday.
But the company was successfully able to catch Starship's Super Heavy booster.
Mariella Moon - Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 7:44 PM PST
The Starship's seventh test flight ended in an explosion when the vehicle's upper stage “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn” over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX chief Elon Musk posted a video of the event, with debris streaking across and lighting up the sky. During the company's webcast, Dan Huot from SpaceX's communications team said they “saw engines dropping out on telemetry” by the end of the ascent burn and that they ultimately lost contact with the Ship, which is what the company calls the vehicle's upper stage. SpaceX said in a tweet that it will continue reviewing data from the test to understand the explosion's root cause.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory for pilots after the incident, warning them about falling debris in certain areas. SpaceX said before the test that it's meant to “launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades” and it was supposed to conduct Starship's first payload deployment test with the help of 10 Starlink simulators.
Sean O'Kane - 5:08 PM PST January 16, 2025
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told TechCrunch it had to “briefly” slow and divert a number of aircraft in the airspace near Puerto Rico, where debris was seen falling after SpaceX’s Starship exploded during a test flight Thursday.
Multiple flights could be seen entering holding patterns or completely changing course in the airspace near the area after the ship exploded on its way to space, according to data from Flightradar24. The FAA said normal airspace operations have since resumed.
Airports suffered disruptions as a result of the diversions. Miami International Airport posted a 30-minute delay warning due to the “rocket launch anomaly,” according to the FAA’s website. The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida also cited the same reason for a short delay.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/16/faa-had-to-divert-flights-because-of-spacex-starship-explosion/
Elon Musk's company saw mixed results today, with Starship's booster sticking the landing while the upper stage failed during ascent.
George Dvorsky - January 16, 2025
It was a one-step-forward, one-step-back kind of day for SpaceX. The Mechazilla tower once again caught the incoming Starship booster in dramatic fashion, but the upper stage was lost due to an anomaly during ascent.
Starship lifted off from the Boca Chica launch mount at 5:37 p.m. ET, soaring into a clear blue Texas sky. The 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket initiated hot staging and booster engine cutoff shortly before the three-minute mark. The booster then began its descent back to Earth, while the upper stage continued its journey into space.
Mateusz Maszczynski - 19th January 2025
SpaceX was forced to scrub the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket with just 11 seconds to go on Sunday morning after a Delta Air Lines airplane reportedly flew into an area of restricted airspace close to the launch site.
The launch was being broadcast live and was in its final countdown when a voice from the control room could be heard rapidly saying: “Hold, hold, hold!” with the launch stopped at the 11-second mark.
SpaceX was forced to scrub the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket with just 11 seconds to go on Sunday morning after a Delta Air Lines airplane reportedly flew into an area of restricted airspace close to the launch site.
The launch was being broadcast live and was in its final countdown when a voice from the control room could be heard rapidly saying: “Hold, hold, hold!” with the launch stopped at the 11-second mark.
A short time later, the same voice explained: “Held for a possible aircraft in the airspace.” Unfortunately, the aircraft encroaching on the restricted airspace meant that SpaceX was forced to delay the launch until Monday at the earliest.
Flight tracking sleuths quickly worked out that the aircraft involved in the incident was a Boeing 767 operated by Delta Air Lines that had just taken off from Los Angeles International Airport bound for Honolulu, Hawaii.
After departing LAX at around 7:15 am, the airplane, with as many as 216 passengers onboard, flew north along the California coastline before turning Westward just above Vandenburg Space Force Base – the exact location where the Falcon 9 rocket was just to launch from.
Debris from the rocket's upper stage may have caused property damage, prompting an investigation into Starship's “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
Passant Rabie - January 22, 2025
Nearly a week after SpaceX’s megarocket broke apart into tiny pieces of fiery debris, the rocket company is having to launch an investigation into reports of property damage with bits of Starship allegedly washing up onto the shores of Turks and Caicos.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation to determine the root cause of the untimely disassembly of Starship’s upper stage during the rocket’s recent test flight. FAA is also working with SpaceX to confirm allegations that Starship’s rocket debris resulted in public property damage on Turks and Caicos, according to an emailed statement from the administration. Starship’s upcoming test flights are on pause until the investigation wraps up, a development that potentially slows down SpaceX’s ongoing roll with the revolutionary launch vehicle’s progress.
The FAA has cleared SpaceX to launch Starship's eighth test flight as soon as Monday.
Stephen Clark – Feb 28, 2025 4:53 PM
SpaceX plans to launch the eighth full-scale test flight of its enormous Starship rocket as soon as Monday after receiving regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The test flight will be a repeat of what SpaceX hoped to achieve on the previous Starship launch in January, when the rocket broke apart and showered debris over the Atlantic Ocean and Turks and Caicos Islands. The accident prevented SpaceX from completing many of the flight's goals, such as testing Starship's satellite deployment mechanism and new types of heat shield material.
Those things are high on the to-do list for Flight 8, set to lift off at 5:30 pm CST (6:30 pm EST; 23:30 UTC) Monday from SpaceX's Starbase launch facility on the Texas Gulf Coast. Over the weekend, SpaceX plans to mount the rocket's Starship upper stage atop the Super Heavy booster already in position on the launch pad.
The fully stacked rocket will tower 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall. Like the test flight on January 16, this launch will use a second-generation, Block 2, version of Starship with larger propellant tanks with 25 percent more volume than previous vehicle iterations. The payload compartment near the ship's top is somewhat smaller than the payload bay on Block 1 Starships.
This block upgrade moves SpaceX closer to attempting more challenging things with Starship, such as returning the ship, or upper stage, back to the launch site from orbit. It will be caught with the launch tower at Starbase, just like SpaceX accomplished last year with the Super Heavy booster. Officials also want to bring Starship into service to launch Starlink Internet satellites and demonstrate in-orbit refueling, an enabling capability for future Starship flights to the Moon and Mars.
Flying to the Turks and Caicos tonight? Good luck
Richard Speed - Mon 3 Mar 2025 14:04 UTC
SpaceX is set to have another go at launching its monster Starship rocket today after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the venture the green light.
The FAA has issued a license modification authorizing the test flight, which is scheduled to launch on March 3 from 2330 UTC. One of the license modifications references orbital flight, suggesting that SpaceX is getting ready to move on from sub-orbital launches.
The latest launch comes a week after Flight 7, which began so promisingly (the Super Heavy Booster was caught by arms on the launch tower) and ended so badly (the second stage exploded). Debris showered down over the Turks and Caicos Islands.
SpaceX reckoned the premature end to the previous test was down to “harmonic response” and has tweaked the hardware and thrust targets accordingly. It also undertook an extended static fire of Flight 8's Starship to ensure things wouldn't come to pieces in the same way again.
This is still a test, and SpaceX has said: “Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable.”
Although a safety review has been completed, the FAA noted that the investigation into the Starship Flight 7 on January 16 “remains open.”
Reusable first stage of workhorse tips over after landing
Richard Speed - Tue 4 Mar 2025 15:31 UTC
March 3 was a tough day for SpaceX. The company was forced to scrub flight test 8 of its monster Starship rocket and also lost a Falcon 9 first stage, which landed then caught fire and tipped over.
While Starship is still in development, SpaceX has suffered a run of misfortunes with its Falcon 9 workhorse.
The latest problem with the first stage of the Falcon 9 happened during an overnight launch from Florida – a mission to add another 21 Starlink satellites to the network. Thirteen of those satellites, incidentally, had Direct-to-Cell capability. The launch itself went well, and the Starlinks were successfully deployed. This time, the second stage didn't hit Poland, which is good, but the reusable first stage wasn't so lucky.
As we've mentioned previously, SpaceX designs the first stage of the rocket to be reused, and this is why it performs the technological feat of landing the booster (at sea or near the launch site). However, the difficulty of that achievement sometimes results in a fireball.
In the case of the landing on March 3, the first stage successfully touched down on a droneship stationed approximately 250 nautical miles off the Florida coast. However, an “off-nominal fire” at the rocket's base damaged one of the booster's legs, causing the vehicle to tip over with explosive consequences.
SpaceX put on a brave face about the situation, although the booster, at five flights, was a relative spring chicken compared to others in the company's fleet. The rocket biz said: “While disappointing to lose a rocket after a successful mission, the team will use the data to make Falcon even more reliable on ascent and landing.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/04/spacex_loses_falcon_9/
The Starship's previous test flight also exploded during its ascent burn.
Mariella Moon - Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 6:00 AM PST
SpaceX has lost another Starship, as the vehicle's eighth test flight ended in an explosion just like its seventh. The first few minutes of the flight went according to plan: SpaceX launched the Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in Texas at 6:30PM Eastern time on March 6, and its first stage Super Heavy booster flew back down and was successfully captured by the launch tower's “chopstick” arms. The event marked the third time SpaceX was able to capture the booster with the tower's mechanical appendages.
The vehicle's upper stage called the “Ship” was supposed to deploy four dummy Starship satellites as part of the test run before splashing down into the Indian Ocean around 50 minutes later. But eight minutes into the flight, the Ship lost multiple Raptor engines, causing it to lose altitude until it ultimately exploded over the Caribbean. Several people who witnessed the event posted videos of the Ship's debris streaking across the sky.
Observers in Florida, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands spotted falling debris.
Stephen Clark – Mar 6, 2025 8:35 PM
SpaceX's Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk's rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago.
Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launch pad in Texas at 5:30 pm CST (6:30 pm EST; 23:30 UTC) to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX's new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program.
Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launch pad's tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday March 06, 2025 11:00PM
SpaceX's eighth Starship test flight ended in failure after losing control and breaking apart shortly after launch, sending debris over Florida. “Starship didn't make it quite as high or as far” as the attempt nearly two months ago,” notes NPR.
That attempt ended with an explosion that sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos. From the report: This time, wreckage from the latest explosion was seen streaming from the skies over Florida. It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft's self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up. The 403-foot rocket blasted off from Texas. SpaceX caught the first-stage booster back at the pad with giant mechanical arms, but engines on the spacecraft on top started shutting down as it streaked eastward for what was supposed to be a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, half a world away. Contact was lost as the spacecraft went into an out-of-control spin.
'Energetic event' did for Flight 8 after a few minutes. Super Heavy Booster recovered again, so there's that
Simon Sharwood - Fri 7 Mar 2025 06:32 UTC
SpaceX's latest attempt to fly its Starship has again ended in a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
The Thursday mission, the eighth flight of the vehicle NASA has contracted to use for 2027 demo of a crewed Moon landing, aimed to nail an hour-long transatmospheric journey to the Indian Ocean that the previous launch could not achieve.
SpaceX attributed that mission's failure to “harmonic response” several times stronger than the launcher-for-hire company had ever seen in testing. Those forces caused a leak in the propulsion system, causing a fire, and an explosion that saw chunks of Starship rain down over the Atlantic.
SpaceX pledged to upgrade the problematic parts but whatever changes it made didn't stop Flight 8 from ending with the same explosive outcome.
As on Flight 7, the Super Heavy booster did its job, and Starship fired up its engines. But before the end of its ascent burn, SpaceX reported “an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/07/spacex_starship_mission_fail/
The private Fram2 mission is launching later today, sending a crew of amateurs to an unprecedented polar orbit—a frontier never before explored by astronauts.
Passant Rabie - March 31, 2025
Launching rockets from the ground is one thing, but deciding on a route to follow around Earth is a different story. Earth has a set of specific orbits, and space missions travel around the planet on an orbital road of their choice. But not all orbits are created equal—some are less traveled than others.
SpaceX’s upcoming private mission will venture out to a polar orbit around Earth. Fram2, named in honor of the original ship that reached both Earth’s Arctic and Antarctic regions, is set for launch no earlier than Monday, March 31 at 11:20 p.m. ET. The mission will send four amateur astronauts over the planet’s polar regions at an altitude of around 265 to 280 miles (425 to 450 kilometers) above the ground, and the crew will become the first to orbit over Earth’s poles.
After splashdown, the crew will attempt to exit the vehicle without assistance to assess their physical capabilities.
Passant Rabie - April 4, 2025
A crew of four first-time astronauts are on their way home after spending nearly four days in a unique polar orbit. SpaceX’s Fram2 mission is set to return to Earth on Friday, and the astronauts will make their way out of the spacecraft on their own.
The Fram2 crew is scheduled for splashdown on Friday, April 4 at 12:19 p.m. ET. The astronauts will ride home aboard SpaceX’s Dragon crew vehicle, which will splashdown off the coast of California. This will be the first time a crewed Dragon splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. Once back on Earth, “the crew plans to exit from the Dragon spacecraft without additional medical and operational assistance, helping researchers characterize the ability of astronauts to perform unassisted functional tasks after short and long durations in space,” according to SpaceX.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-as-spacexs-private-crew-returns-from-polar-orbit-2000585133
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday April 05, 2025 12:00AM
SpaceX's Fram2 mission returned safely after becoming the first crewed spaceflight to orbit directly over Earth's poles. From a report:
Led by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, who is the financier of this mission, the Fram2 crew has been free-flying through orbit since Monday. The group splashed down at 9:19 a.m. PT, or 12:19 p.m. ET, off the coast of California – the first West Coast landing in SpaceX's five-year history of human spaceflight missions. The company livestreamed the splashdown and recovery of the capsule on its website.
During the journey, the Fram2 crew members were slated to carry out various research projects, including capturing images of auroras from space and documenting their experiences with motion sickness. […] This trip is privately funded, and such missions allow for SpaceX's customers to spend their time in space as they see fit. For Fram2, the crew traveled to orbit prepared to carry out 22 research and science experiments, some of which were designed and overseen by SpaceX. Most of the research involves evaluating crew health.
This is a major step toward the rocket's reusability.
Passant Rabie - April 4, 2025
SpaceX has launched its massive Starship rocket eight times and caught its Super Heavy booster three times in the giant mechanical arms of Mechazilla. Unlike Starship’s upper stage, the booster is now ready for its next steps toward achieving launch, landing, and reuse.
In a post shared on Thursday, SpaceX revealed that it was prepping to launch a Super Heavy Booster that had already flown before. The booster previously lifted off and returned during the rocket’s seventh test flight on January 16, and 29 of its 33 Raptor engines are “flight-proven,” the company wrote on X.
Clearing blocked filters and clogged valves is the order of the day.
Eric Berger - 5/24/2024, 11:10 AM
SpaceX is targeting June 5 for the next flight of its massive Starship rocket, the company said Friday.
The highly anticipated test flight— the fourth in a program to bring Starship to operational readiness and make progress toward its eventual reuse—will seek to demonstrate the ability of the Super Heavy first stage to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico and for the Starship upper stage to make a controlled reentry through Earth's atmosphere before it falls into the Indian Ocean.
This mission will carry no payloads as SpaceX seeks additional flight data about the performance of the complex Starship vehicle. It is simultaneously the largest and most powerful rocket ever built and the first launch system ever intended to be fully and rapidly reusable.
As part of its announcement of the flight date, SpaceX provided some information about its learnings from the most recent flight test, Flight 3, which launched on March 14, 2024.
Sean O'Kane - 9:12 AM PDT May 22, 2025
The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared SpaceX to perform the ninth test flight of its Starship rocket system, following back-to-back explosions earlier this year.
The agency said Thursday it is “expanding the size of hazard areas both in the U.S. and other countries” for the flight based on an updated safety analysis provided by SpaceX. The Starship vehicle mishaps from Flights 7 and 8 caused a greater probability of failure of the vehicle and, therefore, a larger hazard area. Hazard areas are, essentially, temporary no-fly zones the FAA establishes when the potential for impact with debris exists.
The new hazard area drawn up by the FAA covers around 1,600 nautical miles running eastward from Texas and through the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, where debris from the previous two test flights landed. That’s roughly double the size of the hazard area the FAA used for the most recent Starship test flight in March.
The FAA said it is also requiring SpaceX perform the test flight during “non-peak” travel periods, after the previous two Starship mishaps forced the agency to divert dozens of domestic and international flights.
“The FAA is expanding the size of hazard areas both in the US and other countries.”
Stephen Clark – May 22, 2025 11:51 AM
The Federal Aviation Administration gave the green light Thursday for SpaceX to launch the next test flight of its Starship mega-rocket as soon as next week, following two consecutive failures earlier this year.
The failures set back SpaceX's Starship program by several months. The company aims to get the rocket's development back on track with the upcoming launch, Starship's ninth full-scale test flight since its debut in April 2023. Starship is central to SpaceX's long-held ambition to send humans to Mars and is the vehicle NASA has selected to land astronauts on the Moon under the umbrella of the government's Artemis program.
In a statement Thursday, the FAA said SpaceX is authorized to launch the next Starship test flight, known as Flight 9, after finding the company “meets all of the rigorous safety, environmental and other licensing requirements.”
SpaceX has not confirmed a target launch date for the next launch of Starship, but warning notices for pilots and mariners to steer clear of hazard areas in the Gulf of Mexico suggest the flight might happen as soon as the evening of Tuesday, May 27. The rocket will lift off from Starbase, Texas, SpaceX's privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border.
This will be the third flight of SpaceX's upgraded Block 2, or Version 2, Starship rocket. The first two flights of Starship Block 2—in January and March—did not go well. On both occasions, the rocket's upper stage shut down its engines prematurely and the vehicle lost control, breaking apart in the upper atmosphere and spreading debris near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Aircraft Hazard Area now stretches 1,600 nautical miles
Richard Speed - Fri 23 May 2025 13:45 UTC
Updated The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given SpaceX the go-ahead to launch Starship Flight 9, but has nearly doubled the size of the vehicle's Aircraft Hazard Area (AHA).
SpaceX's Starship exploded during the two preceding flights, showering the Turks & Caicos Islands with debris and causing aircraft to be diverted. Flight 7's destruction was caused by “harmonic response,” resulting in a propulsion leak and subsequent fire. SpaceX has not disclosed the cause of Flight 8's failure, but the sequence of events was at least superficially similar to those before the abrupt end of Flight 7.
SpaceX has not yet detailed how it addressed the issues from Flight 8, but the FAA was satisfied enough to allow it to proceed with Flight 9, which will feature a used Super Heavy Booster.
Partly because of the booster reuse and partly due to an updated flight safety analysis, the FAA has expanded the AHA for Flight 9 to “approximately 1,600 nautical miles,” which “extends eastward from the Starbase, Texas, launch site through the Straits of Florida, including the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos Islands.” The AHA for Flight 8 was 885 nautical miles.
The FAA said it “is in close contact and collaboration with the United Kingdom, Turks & Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba as the agency continues to monitor SpaceX's compliance with all public safety and other regulatory requirements.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/faa_spacex_starship_9/
SpaceX has made several hardware changes and improvements to the rocket since its last test flight, which was foiled by an engine anomaly.
Passant Rabie - May 27, 2025
The world’s largest rocket is gearing up for its ninth flight after suffering back-to-back anomalies. SpaceX is prepping Starship for liftoff on Tuesday, hoping the rocket fares better this time around after several improvements since its last flight.
Starship is set for liftoff on Tuesday, May 27 during a launch window that opens at 7:30 p.m. ET. The fully integrated rocket will take to the skies for its ninth test flight from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The launch will be streamed live on SpaceX’s website and through the company’s page on X.
You can tune in 30 minutes before the scheduled launch time for the live webcast. You can also watch the launch via third-party providers, which we’ve provided below.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-as-spacex-tries-to-break-starships-explosive-losing-streak-2000607609
Spaceflight Now- Streamed live on May 27, 2025
Watch live as a Super Heavy booster and Starship launch on a critical test flight for SpaceX's fully reusable rocket, following two consecutive failures of the Starship upper stage.
Liftoff of the 9th fully integrated Starship from SpaceX's Starbase facility at Boca Chica Beach, in Texas, is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. CDT / 7:30 p.m. EDT / 2330 UTC on Tuesday, May 27.
A highlight of the mission will be the reuse of a Super Heavy booster for the first time. The booster will not return for a catch by the launch tower but will instead make a hard splashdown off-shore to allow for more testing.
Our live coverage, hosted by Will Robinson-Smith, will begin two hours before launch and is brought to you in partnership with LabPadre.
Videos like this are made possible by the support of our members. Join this channel to get access to perks:@spaceflightnowvideo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okOzxHN9NOA
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday May 27, 2025 07:06PM
SpaceX's Starship Flight 9 successfully launched and reached space – marking the first reuse of a Super Heavy booster – but both rocket stages were ultimately lost mid-mission due to a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a statement: “Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review.” Musk said the next three Starship test launches could lift off every three to four weeks in the days ahead. Space.com reports:
The mission lifted off from Starbase today at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT; 6:37 p.m. local Texas time), sending the 40-story-tall rocket into the Texas sky atop a pillar of flame. It was a milestone launch, marking the first-ever reuse of a Super Heavy booster; this one earned its wings on Flight 7 in January. (SpaceX swapped out just four of its Raptors after that mission, meaning that 29 of the engines that flew today were flight-proven.) “Lessons learned from the first booster refurbishment and subsequent performance in flight will enable faster turnarounds of future reflights as progress is made towards vehicles requiring no hands-on maintenance between launches,” the company wrote in a Flight 9 mission preview.
The Super Heavy had a somewhat different job to do today; it conducted a variety of experiments on its way back down to Earth. For example, the booster performed a controlled rather than randomized return flip and hit the atmosphere at a different angle. “By increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle, a higher angle of attack can result in a lower descent speed, which in turn requires less propellant for the initial landing burn,” SpaceX wrote in the mission preview. “Getting real-world data on how the booster is able to control its flight at this higher angle of attack will contribute to improved performance on future vehicles, including the next generation of Super Heavy.” These experiments complicated Super Heavy's flight profile compared to previous missions, making another “chopsticks” catch at Starbase a tougher proposition. So, rather than risk damaging the launch tower and other infrastructure, SpaceX decided to bring the booster back for a “hard splashdown” in the Gulf of Mexico on Flight 9. That was the plan, anyway; Super Heavy didn't quite make it that far. The booster broke apart about 6 minutes and 20 seconds into today's flight, just after beginning its landing burn. “Confirmation that the booster did demise,” [Dan Huot, of SpaceX's communications team] said during the Flight 9 webcast. Super Heavy's flight ended “before it was able to get through landing burn,” he added.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/05/28/024205/spacex-starship-blasts-off-in-ninth-test-flight
Musk’s rocket co fails to deploy any dummy satellites either
Simon Sharwood - Wed 28 May 2025 05:59 UTC
SpaceX's Starship has failed, again.
Elon Musk’s private rocketry company staged the ninth launch of the craft on Tuesday and notched up one success by managing to leave the launchpad by re-using a Super Heavy booster for the first time. But multiple fails for Flight 9 followed.
SpaceX paused the countdown for Tuesday's launch at the T-40 mark for some final tweaks, then sent Starship into the sky atop the Super Heavy at 1937 Eastern Daylight Time.
After stage separation, the booster crash-landed six minutes into the flight, after SpaceX used a steeper-than-usual angle of attack for its re-entry “to intentionally push Super Heavy to the limits, giving us real-world data about its performance that will directly feed in to making the next generation booster even more capable.”
The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, did better than the previous two tests flights, in that it actually reached space, but subsequently things (like the craft) got well and truly turned around.
One of the goals for Musk's space crew was to release eight mocked up Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX already failed at its last two attempts to do this when the pod doors never opened. And it was third time unlucky last night when the payload door failed yet again to fully open to release the dummy satellites. SpaceX has not yet provided a reason for the malfunction.
Another goal for Flight 9 was to check out the performance of the ship's heatshield – SpaceX specifically flew it with 100 missing (on purpose) heatshield tiles so that it could test key vulnerable areas “across the vehicle during reentry.” (The spacecraft also employed “Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling” to test different materials for future missions.) But it needed controlled reentry to properly assess stress-test that, and that failed too.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/28/starship_flight_9_crash/
Sean O'Kane - 4:35 AM PDT June 19, 2025
One of SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicles exploded on a test stand in Texas late on Wednesday night, as the company prepared for the tenth test flight of the heavy-lift rocket system.
SpaceX said “all personnel are safe and accounted for” in a post on X, and claimed there are “no hazards to residents in surrounding communities.” The company did not provide an explanation for the explosion.
It’s not immediately clear what impact this will have on SpaceX’s development of the Starship rocket system. A recent advisory from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suggested the tenth test flight could have happened as soon as June 29.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a post seemingly related to the explosion that he considers it to be: “Just a scratch.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/19/spacexs-starship-blows-up-ahead-of-10th-test-flight/
Are we on Mars yet?
George Dvorsky - June 19, 2025
SpaceX’s upper stage prototype, designated Ship 36, exploded in southeast Texas shortly before midnight local time on June 18 during routine preparations for an upcoming test flight.
SpaceX is in the midst of preparing for Starship’s next fully integrated test, known as Flight 10. The last several tests haven’t gone well, but this prototype never even left the ground. The explosion—as shown in spectacular footage from NASASpaceFlight.com—occurred at SpaceX’s Massey facility, a test site located several miles from the launch mount at Starbase, Texas.
The 171-foot-tall (52-meter) Starship upper stage “experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase,” SpaceX said in a statement on X. “A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for.” The Starbase team is coordinating with local authorities to manage the aftermath of the incident, SpaceX said, adding that, while the company reported no threat to nearby communities, it urged the public to steer clear of the area as safety measures are carried out.
The launch is set for Thursday, August 21, at 11:50 p.m. ET. Catch the action live right here.
Passant Rabie - August 21, 2025
The U.S. Space Force’s experimental spaceplane, X-37B, is ready for another go in orbit for an undisclosed duration, in which it will test new technologies aimed at bolstering military capabilities in space.
The Boeing-built orbital test vehicle, designated as OTV-8, will attempt to launch on Thursday at 11:50 p.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spaceplane will ride on board a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the second time SpaceX launches the Space Force’s orbital vehicle. The launch will be streamed live on SpaceX’s website and the company’s X account, and you can also tune in through the live feed below. The live feed will begin around 20 minutes before liftoff.
“The fundamental flow mechanism is the pressure delta across the umbilical.”
Stephen Clark - 4/29/2024, 5:19 PM
Some time next year, NASA believes SpaceX will be ready to link two Starships in orbit for an ambitious refueling demonstration, a technical feat that will put the Moon within reach.
SpaceX is under contract with NASA to supply two human-rated Starships for the first two astronaut landings on the Moon through the agency's Artemis program, which aims to return people to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The first of these landings, on NASA's Artemis III mission, is currently targeted for 2026, although this is widely viewed as an ambitious schedule.
Last year, NASA awarded a contract to Blue Origin to develop its own human-rated Blue Moon lunar lander, giving Artemis managers two options for follow-on missions.
Designers of both landers were future-minded. They designed Starship and Blue Moon for refueling in space. This means they can eventually be reused for multiple missions, and ultimately, could take advantage of propellants produced from resources on the Moon or Mars.
Amit Kshatriya, who leads the “Moon to Mars” program within NASA's exploration division, outlined SpaceX's plan to do this in a meeting with a committee of the NASA Advisory Council on Friday. He said the Starship test program is gaining momentum, with the next test flight from SpaceX's Starbase launch site in South Texas expected by the end of May.
“SpaceX can now proceed with Starship Flight 10 launch operations under its current license.”
Stephen Clark – Aug 15, 2025 1:20 PM
SpaceX is continuing with final preparations for the 10th full-scale test flight of the company's enormous Starship rocket after receiving launch approval Friday from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Engineers completed a final test of Starship's propulsion system with a so-called “spin prime” test Wednesday at the launch site in South Texas. Ground crews then rolled the ship back to a nearby hangar for engine inspections, touchups to its heat shield, and a handful of other chores to ready it for liftoff.
SpaceX has announced the launch is scheduled for no earlier than next Sunday, August 24, at 6:30 pm local time in Texas (23:30 UTC).
Like all previous Starship launches, the huge 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket will take off from SpaceX's test site in Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border. The rocket consists of a powerful booster stage named Super Heavy, with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines. Six Raptors power the upper stage, known simply as Starship.
With this flight, SpaceX officials hope to put several technical problems with the Starship program behind them. SpaceX is riding a streak of four disappointing Starship test flights from January through May, and and the explosion and destruction of another Starship vehicle during a ground test in June.
== Falcon 9 sonic booms can feel more like seismic waves
Trajectories, wind shear, temperature gradients, topography, and weather can affect how a sonic boom spreads.
Jennifer Ouellette – May 27, 2025 9:36 AM
The Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara, California, serves military space launch missions as well as launches for NASA and commercial entities like SpaceX. But how do all those launches affect residents living along the Central Coast? People might marvel at the spectacular visual display, but as launch activity at the base has ramped up, so have the noise complaints, particularly about the sonic booms produced by Falcon 9 launches, which can reach as far south as Ventura County. The booms rattle windows, frighten pets, and have raised concerns about threats to the structural integrity of private homes.
There have been rockets launching from Vandenberg for decades, so why are the Falcon 9 launches of such concern? “Because of the Starlink satellites, the orbital mechanics for where they're trying to place these in orbit is bringing [the trajectories] closer to the coast,” said Brigham Young University's Kent Gee, who described his research into sonic boom effects on neighboring communities in a press briefing at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans. And the launches are occurring much more frequently, from two to three launches per year in the 1980s to between five and seven launches each month today. There were 46 Falcon 9 launches out of the Vandenberg base in 2024 alone, per Gee.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/05/falcon-9-sonic-booms-can-feel-more-like-seismic-waves/
Crew 9 could return as early as next Wednesday.
Eric Berger – Mar 14, 2025 5:15 PM
A Falcon 9 rocket launched four astronauts safely into orbit on Friday evening, marking the official beginning of the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station.
Although any crew launch into orbit is notable, this mission comes with an added bit of importance as its success clears the way for two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to finally return home from space after a saga spanning nine months.
Friday's launch came two days after an initial attempt was scrubbed on Wednesday evening. This was due to a hydraulic issue with the ground systems that handle the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A in Florida.
There were no technical issues on Friday, and with clear skies NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov rocketed smoothly into orbit.
If all goes well, the Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying the four astronauts will dock with the space station at 11:30 pm ET on Saturday. They will spend about six months there.
Posted by BeauHD on Friday March 14, 2025 06:00PM
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a four-member crew to the International Space Station on Friday night, paving the way for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return to Earth after being there for nine months due to issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule. Arrival is set for late Saturday night. The Associated Press reports:
NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting. The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.
Reaching orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free. “Spaceflight is tough, but humans are tougher,” McClain said minutes into the flight.
You can watch a recording of the launch here (https://www.youtube.com/live/yf8uN4VGCCs?si=JQOcRJSuXZvAnFcz&t=14741).
Wilmore and Williams aren't stranded on the International Space Station, and they weren't abandoned, the astronauts reminded CNN in a rare space-to-earth interview last month (https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/15/033223/iss-astronauts-give-space-to-earth-interview-weeks-before-finally-returning-to-earth). “That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck – and I get it. We both get it,” [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. “But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded.” Wilmore added a request: “If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer…”
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/15/0033233/spacex-launches-nasas-crew-10-mission-to-iss
Second time's a charm
Richard Speed - Mon 17 Mar 2025 02:23 UTC
SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endurance capsule successfully launched on Friday, March 14, and docked with the International Space Station (ISS) just over a day later.
It was the second attempt at a lift-off after the first was scrubbed due to a hydraulic issue on Wednesday, March 12. With less than a five percent chance of the weather screwing up the launch this time, the countdown went smoothly and Endurance, sitting atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
Onboard, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov were safely strapped in. It went a little quiet in the press center at Kennedy Space Center as the point where Wednesday's scrub was called was reached. However, no issues were reported this time; the crew access arm was retracted, and propellant loaded into the Falcon 9's tanks.
Launch occurred at 1903 EDT from Launch Complex 39A, with the rumble from the nine Merlin engines reaching observers after several seconds. A few minutes later, the reusable Falcon 9's first stage touched down at Landing Zone 1, replete with the usual sonic booms to alarm the unsuspecting.
The insertion into Earth's orbit went smoothly for what has been dubbed the Crew-10 mission, although a large chunk of foam insulation material could be seen detaching from the second stage after the Crew Dragon pod separated from the rocket.
The company is preparing to launch Starship for the fifth time pending regulatory approval.
Passant Rabie - September 24, 2024
SpaceX recovered the remains of its Starship rocket from the bottom of the sea as the company awaits approval to launch its megarocket for its fifth flight test.
The company’s billionaire founder and CEO Elon Musk posted a photo on X of a mangled Starship first-stage booster being fished out of the waters in the Gulf of Mexico. “Like the ruins of a futuristic, long-dead civilization,” Musk wrote on X.
The hardware looks pretty beat up from its test flight earlier in June, when the rocket reached orbital velocity and both stages completed their return to Earth, with the booster landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship’s fourth liftoff broke new grounds compared to its previous test flights, with the rocket largely surviving peak heating and max aerodynamic pressure during its controlled reentry.
The in-flight propellant transfer is a crucial step in reaching the Moon and Mars.
Passant Rabie - November 4, 2024
By early next year, SpaceX may be ready to have two of its Starships rendezvous in orbit for an ambitious refueling test that will determine the spacecraft’s potential for deep space missions.
During a recent interview with Spaceflight Now, Kent Chojnacki, the deputy manager for NASA’s Human Landing System program, revealed that Starship’s in-flight propellant test is scheduled to take place in March 2025. The orbital demonstration is a major step for Starship, and a crucial part of SpaceX’s capability of delivering NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon.
SpaceX is under a $53.2 million contract with NASA, signed in 2020, to use Starship tankers for in-orbit propellant transfer. During its third test flight, SpaceX transferred around 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from Starship’s header tank to its main tank while it was in space. The upcoming demonstration, however, requires a lot more of the launch vehicle. Two Starships will launch to low Earth orbit around three to four weeks apart, the spacecraft will meet and dock in orbit, and one will transfer propellant to another. After the demonstration, the two Starships will undock from one another and deorbit.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-to-attempt-daring-orbital-refueling-test-of-starship-2000520122
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says Starship will be ready to launch in July, but the private space company has not yet secured permission for liftoff.
Passant Rabie - 29 June 2022
SpaceX’s massive Super Heavy booster stage is now standing (very) tall on the company’s launch pad in south Texas, as it awaits a series of tests and final checks. The company is eager to launch the fully stacked Starship rocket for a flight test as early as July, but a number of regulatory hurdles still stand in the way.
The prototype known as Booster 7 was transported to the Starbase launch site last week for its third and possibly final trip. In a process that lasted from June 23 to 24, B7 was lifted onto the Orbital Launch Mount by a pair of mechanical arms known as “chopsticks,” as NASASpaceflight footage reveals. Booster 7 is notable in that it’s the first flight-ready first stage of the Starship system.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-positions-starship-booster-on-launch-tower-1849119587
An earlier test of the same booster in July resulted in a giant fireball that sent the prototype back to the factory for repairs.
George Dvorsky - 10 August 2022 12:50PM
Engineers at SpaceX have performed the first static fire test of Booster 7, a prototype of the Super Heavy first stage. The test, in which just one of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines was ignited, moves the company closer to its first orbital test of the revolutionary Starship system.
The test happened on August 8 at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, according to a company tweet. Ground teams completed a single Raptor engine static fire test as the 227-foot-tall (69 meters) booster stood vertically at the “Mechazilla” launch tower. Booster 7 is equipped with 33 Raptor engines, but SpaceX, in a rare moment of caution, chose to ignite just one.
https://gizmodo.com/spacex-avoids-explosion-in-test-of-starship-booster-1849395616
Two test firings on Tuesday bring the company closer to a Starship orbital flight.
Eric Berger - 8/10/2022, 7:11 AM
SpaceX ignited engines on both the first and second stages of its Starship launch system on Wednesday, signaling that it is getting closer to a test flight of the massive rocket later this year.
On Monday evening at 5:20 pm local time in South Texas, engineers ignited a single Raptor engine on the Super Heavy booster that serves as the rocket's first stage. This is the first time the company has conducted a static fire test of the booster, which will ultimately be powered by 33 Raptor rocket engines.
About three hours later, on a separate mount at its “Starbase” facility in Texas, SpaceX ignited two engines on the Starship upper stage of the rocket. The company later shared a short video on Twitter of the evidently successful test.
Rick Kazmer - June 16, 2024
A California company has tech that will likely draw attention from the Punkin Chunkin community.
That's because SpinLaunch is developing a large rotating arm that uses kinetic energy to fling 440-pound satellites into low orbit, with successful tests already in the books. Importantly, the process doesn't need rocket fuel to work. It's all powered by electricity.
“This is not a rocket, and clearly our ability to perform in just 11 months this many tests and have them all function as planned, really is a testament to the nature of our technology,” founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney said in a Space.com report from 2022, shortly after a 10th successful launch. The goal is to shoot constellations of satellites skyward — under 600 miles up — by 2026, per the report.
Satellites are used by scientists to monitor our planet's health from above, identifying polluting methane leaks, among other research. So a cleaner way to put them in the sky is exciting science.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/rocket-company-develops-massive-catapult-180000267.html
Darrell Etherington / 4:42 AM PST•March 1, 2021
Monday brings with it not one, but two space SPACS — there’s Rocket Lab, and there’s Spire Global, a satellite operator that bills itself primarily as a SaaS company focused on delivering data and analytics made possible by its 100-plus spacecraft constellation. SPACs have essentially proven a pressure-release valve for the space startup market, which has been waiting on high-profile exits to basically prove out the math of its venture-backability.
Spire Global debuted in 2012, and has raised more than $220 million to date. It will merge with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called NavSight Holdings, in order to make a debut on the NYSE under the ticker “SPIR.” The combined company will have a pro forma enterprise value of $1.6 billion upon transaction close, which is targeted for this summer.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 29 August 2023
Against all odds, Starfish Space has managed to pull its first orbital mission back from the brink of catastrophe, with the startup saying Tuesday that it has regained control over the Otter Pup spacecraft that had been rapidly tumbling through space.
The Kent, Washington–based startup said it will now move ahead with an “extensive checkout” of the spacecraft’s onboard systems and a search for a new partner for its rendezvous, proximity and docking (RPD) mission.
The mission seemed doomed to failure back in June. Starfish was one of several companies that hitched a ride to orbit on a space tug operated by Launcher (now owned by Vast). But shortly after reaching low Earth orbit, Launcher mission commanders made the decision to emergency deploy all onboard payloads after the space tug experienced a glitch that caused it to start to rapidly tumble.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 8:00 AM PDT June 26, 2024
Starfish Space and aerospace giant Intelsat have signed a new satellite servicing agreement that could permanently change the paradigm for satellite operations.
Under the contract, Starfish will use its Otter satellite docking spacecraft to boost the orbit of an operational Intelsat satellite in geostationary orbit (GEO), using its onboard propulsion system to potentially provide several more years of life. The two companies aim to conduct the landmark mission — Starfish’s first commercial Otter mission — in 2026.
“This is a market that we’re hoping to develop at large scale, and we actually want commercial customers to be adopting and utilizing satellite servicing as part of their normal fleet operations,” Starfish co-founder Trevor Bennett said in a recent interview.
The mission has two parts: First, the Otter will maneuver to a retired Intelsat in what’s known as a geostationary “graveyard” orbit, where dead satellites in GEO are laid to rest, the goal being to demonstrate that the Otter is prepared to dock with a spacecraft. Second, it will actually dock with the Intelsat spacecraft that’s near the end of its operational life and boost its orbit using the Otter’s on-board propulsion.
“ULA is a fantastic partner that’s successfully launched dozens of missions.”
Eric Berger - 4/19/2021, 9:00 AM
Amazon announced on Monday that its first Project Kuiper satellites will launch into low Earth orbit on an Atlas V rocket.
The announcement provides concrete evidence that the ambitious Internet-from-space project is making progress. It is also notable for the choice of launch vehicle—Amazon is not employing the New Glenn rocket, which is under development by Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin.
Amazon did not say when the first launch will occur, but the company said it had contracted with United Launch Alliance for nine launches to begin building out its constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit. A spokesman declined to say how many of the satellites each Atlas V rocket would be capable of launching.
Darrell Etherington / 9:00 AM PDT•April 19, 2021
Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite constellation is one step closer to actually making it to space: The company announced it has secured an agreement with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) to fly its satellites on nine Atlas V rocket launches. Amazon intends to use multiple launch providers and spacecraft to ultimately get the full complement of 3,236 Kuiper satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO), but ULA is the first launch provider that Amazon has signed or announced.
ULA’s Atlas V is a proven workhorse in the space launch industry, having flown 85 prior missions with a perfect track record. The spacecraft was used to launch NASA’s Perseverance rover, for example, as well as Lockheed Martin’s OSIRIS-REx robotic asteroid exploration craft. While Amazon and ULA detailed the total number of launch vehicles that the contract covers, they didn’t share a timeline about when we can expect the launches to take place.
Sandra Erwin — July 1, 2022
The $1.1 billion USSF-12 mission flew to geosynchronous Earth orbit
WASHINGTON — A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on July 1 launched the USSF-12 mission for the U.S. Space Force. The rocket lifted off at 7:15 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
The $1.1 billion USSF-12 mission to geosynchronous Earth orbit carried two satellites: the Wide Field of View (WFOV) missile-warning spacecraft for the U.S. Space Force, and a ring-shaped payload adapter with six classified smallsat experiments for DoD’s Space Test Program.
This was the 94th mission of the Atlas 5 rocket. The vehicle’s first stage was powered by an RD-180 engine and four solid rocket boosters, and the Centaur upper stage by an Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C-1 engine. To encapsulate the satellites, ULA used a 5.4-meter diameter payload fairing made by Beyond Gravity (formerly RUAG Space).
USSF-12 was originally scheduled to fly in April but was delayed for undisclosed reasons. A June 30 launch attempt was scrubbed due to bad weather conditions.
https://spacenews.com/ulas-atlas-5-launches-u-s-space-force-experimental-missile-warning-satellite/
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday May 19, 2024 09:34AM
Earlier this week the Washington Post reported that America's Defense department “is growing concerned that the United Launch Alliance, one of its key partners in launching national security satellites to space, will not be able to meet its needs to counter China and build its arsenal in orbit with a new rocket that ULA has been developing for years.”
In a letter sent Friday to the heads of Boeing's and Lockheed Martin's space divisions, Air Force Assistant Secretary Frank Calvelli used unusually blunt terms to say he was growing “concerned” with the development of the Vulcan rocket, which the Pentagon intends to use to launch critical national security payloads but which has been delayed for years. ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, was formed nearly 20 years ago to provide the Defense Department with “assured access” to space. “I am growing concerned with ULA's ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rocket and scale its launch cadence to meet our needs,” he wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays….”
“A column of burning, clear hydrogen shot up into a mushroom cloud.”
Eric Berger - 4/7/2023, 7:30 PM
10:30 pm ET Update: Several hours after this article was published, Ars obtained a still image of the Centaur V anomaly that occurred on March 29 during testing of the Vulcan rocket's upper stage. The photo shows the anomaly—a fireball of hydrogen igniting—to the left of Blue Origin's rocket engine test stand.
After the author posted this photo on Twitter, United Launch Alliance chief executive Tory Bruno offered a more detailed assessment of the anomaly. “Most of what you’re seeing is insulation and smaller bits from the test rig. One piece of the hydrogen tank’s dome, about a foot square, ended up a few feet away. The test article is still inside the rig and largely intact, which will significantly help with the investigation”, Bruno said via Twitter.
Original post: On the evening of March 29, at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, United Launch Alliance started pressurizing the upper stage of its new Vulcan rocket. But then, suddenly, something went wrong with this Centaur upper stage.
Shortly after the incident, to his credit, the chief executive of United Launch Alliance, Tory Bruno, was quick to acknowledge on Twitter that something had happened: “Keeping you posted: During Qual testing of Centaur V structural article at MSFC, the hardware experienced an anomaly.”
Unpacking this tweet a little bit, Bruno is saying that during qualification testing—the process of testing rocket engines and stages on the ground to determine their behavior during flight-like conditions—the Centaur stage had a problem. More than a week later, however, there are more questions than answers about the accident.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/ula-continues-investigation-of-centaur-stage-anomaly/
The heavy-lift Vulcan Centaur was undergoing tests at a NASA launch facility when a powerful fireball tore through the test mount.
Passant Rabie - 20 April 2023
Following a disturbing explosion that swept over NASA’s test facility in Alabama, United Launch Alliance (ULA) doesn’t expect its Vulcan rocket to fly until the summer.
The heavy-lift rocket was being prepped for its highly-anticipated inaugural flight, which was scheduled for May 4. On March 29, ULA was pressurizing the upper stage of the Vulcan rocket when a spark triggered a fireball at the test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
The company’s chief executive, Tory Bruno, recently shared a closer look at the explosion on Twitter. During a back and forth with his followers on the social media website, Bruno shared that Vulcan’s earliest estimated launch date would be “June/July.”
https://gizmodo.com/inaugural-launch-ulas-vulcan-centaur-delayed-yet-again-1850358694
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday March 27, 2025 03:00AM
The U.S. Space Force has certified United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket for national security missions after successful test flights and resolution of a booster nozzle issue. This certification allows ULA to join SpaceX in conducting launches under the National Security Space Launch program, with Vulcan missions expected to begin this summer. SpaceNews reports:
“Thank you to all our customer partners who have worked hand-in-hand with us throughout this comprehensive certification process. We are grateful for the collaboration and excited to reach this critical milestone in Vulcan development,” said Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of United Launch Alliance in a ULA statement about the vehicle's certification.
Bruno said at the roundtable that the next launch by ULA will be of its Atlas 5, carrying a set of Project Kuiper broadband satellites for Amazon. That launch is expected as soon as next month. He said then that would be followed by the first two Vulcan national security launches, missions designated USSF-106 and USSF-87. ULA did not give a schedule for those upcoming Vulcan launches but Space Systems Command, in a summary accompanying its press release, said the first NSSL mission on Vulcan is planned for the summer. Bruno said at the roundtable that the payloads for those missions have “complex processing” requirements beyond a typical mission, and did not state how long it would take them to be ready for a launch.
The company's “complicated” ownership structure is holding it back.
Stephen Clark - 10/26/2023, 10:14 AM
It sure sounds like United Launch Alliance is up for sale. Tory Bruno, the rocket builder's CEO, said this week that anyone who purchased ULA would reap the rewards of the company's “transformation” over the last few years, a course change primarily driven by geopolitics and the competitive threat of SpaceX.
While Bruno did not disclose details of any negotiations about a potential sale of ULA, he told Bloomberg News this week that the launch operator is primed for a buyer. Boeing and Lockheed Martin each have a 50 percent stake in the Colorado-based rocket company.
“If I were buying a space business, I’d go look at ULA,” Bruno said. “It’s already had all the hard work done through the transformation. You’re not buying a Victorian with bad plumbing. It’s all been done. You’re coming in at the end of the remodel, so you can focus on your future.”
If ULA has undergone a remodel, it will be tested in the next few months. On Tuesday, ULA announced the first test flight of its new Vulcan rocket is scheduled for December 24. This is the rocket ULA needs to narrow the gap with SpaceX's launch prices. ULA's owners started a multibillion-dollar program to develop the Vulcan rocket in 2014, billing it as a replacement for the company's legacy Atlas and Delta rockets.
Pairing of two launch companies could provide more robust competition to SpaceX.
Eric Berger - 2/21/2024, 2:38 PM
The rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, has emerged as the sole finalist to buy United Launch Alliance.
The sale is not official, and nothing has been formally announced. The co-owners of United Launch Alliance (ULA), Lockheed Martin and Boeing, have yet to comment publicly on the sale of the company, which, until the rise of SpaceX, was the sole major launch provider in the United States. They declined again on Wednesday.
“Consistent with our corporate practice, Boeing doesn’t comment on potential market rumors or speculation,” a Boeing spokesperson said.
Blue Origin did not return a request for comment.
However, two sources told Ars that Blue Origin is nearing the purchase of ULA. The sources said they have not personally seen any signed agreements, but they expect the sale to be announced within a month or two.
In the 11 months since Ars first reported that ULA was up for sale, the company's potential buyer has become a topic of widespread speculation and interest. In November, Ars reported that Blue Origin was one of three potential buyers. In December, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the competition was narrowing and said Blue Origin and a large private equity firm, Cerberus, were the two most likely bidders.
Posted by EditorDavid on Monday August 26, 2024 04:34AM
This weekend NASA said they'd turn to SpaceX to return two astronauts from the International Space Station, notes the Associated Press, “rather than risk using the Boeing Starliner capsule that delivered them.” (They add that Boeing's capsule “has been plagued by problems with its propulsion system.”)
But Reuters reported that even before the setback, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were “in talks to sell their rocket-launching joint venture United Launch Alliance to Sierra Space, two people familiar with the discussions said.”
A deal to sell ULA, a major provider of launch services to the U.S. government and a top rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, would mark a significant shift in the U.S. space launch industry as ULA separates from two of the largest defense contractors to a smaller, privately held firm.
The potential sale comes after years of speculation about ULA's future and failed attempts to divest the joint venture over the past decade. In 2019, Boeing and Lockheed Martin reportedly explored selling ULA but couldn't agree on terms with potential buyers… Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Cerberus Capital Management had placed bids in early 2023 for the company, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Rocket Lab had also expressed interest, two people said. None of those discussions led to a deal…
“It is bittersweet to see the last one, but there are great things ahead.”
Stephen Clark - 4/9/2024, 2:45 PM
The final flight of United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket took off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The Delta IV Heavy, one of the world's most powerful rockets, launched for the 16th and final time Tuesday. It was the 45th and last flight of a Delta IV launcher and the final rocket named Delta to ever launch, ending a string of 389 missions dating back to 1960.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) tried to launch this rocket on March 28 but aborted the countdown about four minutes prior to liftoff due to trouble with nitrogen pumps at an off-site facility at Cape Canaveral. The nitrogen is necessary for purging parts inside the Delta IV rocket before launch, reducing the risk of a fire or explosion during the countdown.
The pumps, operated by Air Liquide, are part of a network that distributes nitrogen to different launch pads at the Florida spaceport. The nitrogen network has caused problems before, most notably during the first launch campaign for NASA's Space Launch System rocket in 2022. Air Liquide did not respond to questions from Ars.
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday April 10, 2024 12:00AM
After 64 years of service, ULA on Tuesday launched its last-ever Delta rocket carrying a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). “The powerful booster departed Space Launch Complex-37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 12:53 p.m. EDT (1653 GMT), literally setting itself on fire for the 16th and final time,” reports Space.com. From the report:
That spectacle, which was unique to the Delta IV in its heaviest configuration, was the result of hydrogen building up in the flame trench and then rising up alongside the rocket after it was used to cool down the three RS-68A engines to cryogenic temperatures. When the engines fired, the hydrogen ignited and flames lapped at the orange insulation covering the core stage and its two side-mounted boosters. The two boosters were jettisoned about four minutes into the flight, followed by the core, or first stage, separating one minute and 45 seconds later. A single RL10C-2-1 engine on the Delta cryogenic second stage then took over, propelling the NROL-70 payload into space. Due to national security concerns, coverage of the launch ceased following fairing jettison at about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into the flight.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/10/0230237/ula-launches-final-delta-rocket-after-64-years
The company tried to test the rocket's engine earlier in May, but it was pushed back due to an issue with the ignition system.
Passant Rabie - 7 June 2023
United Launch Alliance (ULA) is ready for another attempt at firing up the engines of its heavy-lift Vulcan Centaur rocket for a flight readiness test before it launches for the first time.
Vulcan Centaur’s Flight Readiness Firing is scheduled for Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. ET at the Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The test is designed to give the rocket the final go-ahead for launch on its first mission, which was delayed after a fireball erupted at its launch facility.
Wednesday’s static fire test will be broadcast live through ULA’s YouTube Channel. You can also tune in through the feed below.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-ula-attempt-static-fire-test-vulcan-rocket-1850516352
After suffering multiple delays, the heavy-lift Vulcan Centaur is on the verge of finally getting off the ground for the first time.
Passant Rabie - 8 June 2023
After weeks of anticipation, United Launch Alliance (ULA) fired up the two engines of its Vulcan Centaur rocket to prepare for its inaugural flight.
The Colorado-based company completed the final flight readiness test of its heavy-lift rocket on Wednesday at 9:05 p.m. ET at Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41. The entire test lasted for about six seconds, with the rocket’s two BE-4 engines, which run on a mixture of liquid methane and liquid oxygen, throttling up to their target level for two seconds before powering down, ULA said in an emailed statement.
https://gizmodo.com/ula-vulcan-rocket-fires-engines-ahead-debut-flight-1850518807
“Working corrective action and retest.”
Eric Berger - 6/14/2023, 9:48 AM
The Vulcan rocket took a critical step toward its much-anticipated debut launch last week with a successful engine-firing test. However, one critical issue remains unresolved before the large booster can lift off.
This final hurdle involves modifications to the rocket's Centaur V upper stage, which exploded during a test at the end of March. On Tuesday, the chief executive of Vulcan manufacturer United Launch Alliance, Tory Bruno, wrote on Twitter that a root cause of the failure had been identified, and the investigation has been concluded.
As part of their recent updates, neither Bruno nor United Launch Alliance established a new target launch date. Two sources indicated to Ars, however, that this flight likely would not occur before the fourth quarter of this year due to additional needed work.
“These launches place critical capabilities into orbit for our nation.”
Eric Berger - 6/20/2023, 10:43 AM
Once the most formidable rocket company in the United States, and arguably the world, United Launch Alliance has had a really difficult start to this year.
At the beginning of 2023, the company's CEO, Tory Bruno, expressed confidence that the long-awaited Vulcan rocket would make its debut flight in May. During a teleconference with reporters, Bruno even went so far as to say that by the end of 2025, his company would launch a rocket every other week.
But those plans came crashing down in late March when a large explosion occurred on a test stand at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where United Launch Alliance was pressure testing the upper stage of the Vulcan rocket. As part of the qualification test, the liquid hydrogen tank ruptured. Now Vulcan's debut has slipped into at least late summer and may not take place until the final months of this year.
Then, as the company was in the final stages of processing a Delta IV Heavy for its next-to-last flight in early April, the launch team discovered an issue with a valve on the rocket that had to be worked on. This delayed the penultimate flight of the Delta IV Heavy for a couple of months.
Launching Amazon's first two Kuiper satellites is next on ULA's Atlas V schedule.
Stephen Clark - 9/11/2023, 7:06 AM
United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket returned to action Sunday with a mission to deploy multiple satellites into geosynchronous orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office and the US Space Force.
This mission ended a 10-month gap in launches for ULA's primary rocket, the longest period between Atlas V launches in 20 years as the company winds down the Atlas V program in favor of the new Vulcan rocket. There are still 18 more Atlas V flights on ULA's launch schedule—all are reserved by customers—primarily carrying satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband network and launching astronauts on Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crew capsule.
ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has several Atlas V rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral. Customer delays are the main reason ULA hasn't launched any Atlas V rockets since last November. At one point, Boeing's Starliner crew capsule was supposed to launch with astronauts for the first time on top of an Atlas V rocket earlier this year, but that test flight is now delayed into 2024. Another US Space Force mission has also been delayed for months and now likely won't fly until early 2024.
The Colorado-based launch company will end 2023 with just three launches.
Eric Berger - 12/10/2023, 11:24 AM
United Launch Alliance will not see the debut of its next-generation Vulcan rocket in 2023, as previously planned.
The launch company's chief executive, Tory Bruno, announced the delay on the social media site X on Sunday. United Launch Alliance had been working toward a debut flight of the lift booster on Christmas Eve, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Bruno made the announcement after the company attempted to complete a fueling test of the entire rocket, known as a wet dress rehearsal.
“Vehicle performed well,” Bruno wrote. “Ground system had a couple of (routine) issues, (being corrected). Ran the timeline long so we didn't quite finish. I'd like a FULL WDR before our first flight, so XMAS eve is likely out. Next Peregrine window is 8 Jan.”
Peregrine is the rocket's primary payload, a lunar lander built by Astrobotic that is intended to deliver scientific experiments for NASA and other payloads the Moon. It has specific launch windows in order to reach the Moon and attempt a landing during ideal lighting conditions.
From the information contained in Bruno's comment, it appears as though the work to correct the ground systems to fuel Vulcan—the first stage propellant is methane, which United Launch Alliance has not worked with before—will take long enough that it will preclude another fueling test ahead of the rocket's late December launch window. Thus, the next launch attempt will likely occur no earlier than January 8.
United Launch Alliance’s 200-foot-tall Vulcan Centaur blends power and flexibility. Here's what to know about its upcoming first flight.
George Dvorsky - 3 January 2024
On Monday, January 8, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur could finally perform its first flight. ULA has been a rock in the spaceflight industry since its founding in 2006, and with this pending launch, the company is ready to take its next bold step into space. Here’s what you should know about America’s latest powerhouse rocket and and how it could disrupt the sector and compete with the ever-dominant SpaceX.
The 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan Centaur rocket is set to launch from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral. This is a huge deal, as it marks the debut of ULA’s first new rocket design in 18 years. While the (mostly) expendable Vulcan Centaur may not be revolutionary from a technological perspective, it represents a significant evolutionary step for ULA, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corporation and The Boeing Company.
https://gizmodo.com/ula-vulcan-centaur-rocket-first-launch-space-nasa-1851133937
Astrobotic’s pioneering lunar lander is set for lift off on Monday, January 8, at 2:18 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral. You can catch the action live right here.
Passant Rabie - 5 January 2024
Astrobotic’s Peregrine is gearing up for a chance to land on the Moon, hoping to become the first commercial lunar lander to touchdown on the dusty surface of the celestial body and pave the way for other private ventures to follow.
The lunar lander will ride on board United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, which is scheduled for liftoff on Monday, January 8, at 2:18 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The historic launch will be broadcast live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the space agency’s website, and you can also tune in through the feed below. The live feed is set to begin at 1:30 a.m. ET.
https://gizmodo.com/vulcan-centaur-inaugural-launch-astrobotic-peregrine-1851145123
This marks an absolutely pivotal moment for the 20-year-old launch company.
Eric Berger - 1/5/2024, 8:51 AM
It's nearly time. After years of delays, billions of dollars in federal funding, and a spectacular second-stage explosion, the large and impressive Vulcan rocket is finally ready to take flight.
United Launch Alliance's heavy lift vehicle underwent its final review on Thursday, and the company cleared the rocket for its debut flight. With weather looking favorable, the Vulcan rocket is on track to lift off at 2:18 am ET (7:18 UTC) on Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission's primary payload is a lunar lander built by Astrobotic, and the launch will be streamed live here.
This marks an absolutely pivotal moment for the 20-year-old launch company, which has gone from the titan of the US launch industry to playing a distant second fiddle to its one-time upstart competitor SpaceX. Last year, SpaceX launched 98 rockets. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, tallied just three. The owners of ULA, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, are also on the cusp of selling the launch company if they can find a buyer willing to pay the right price. And critically, for the first time, ULA will be flying a new vehicle it designed and developed on its own—a rocket with some but not a majority of its heritage from the legacy Atlas and Delta rockets that have flown since the Cold War.
ULA's first flight-ready Vulcan rocket is finally on the launch pad.
Stephen Clark - 1/5/2024, 5:17 PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—United Launch Alliance's first Vulcan rocket emerged from its hangar Friday for a 30-minute trek to its launch pad in Florida, finally moving into the starting blocks after a decade of development and testing.
This was the first time anyone had seen the full-size 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket in its full form. Since ULA finished assembling the rocket last month, it has been cocooned inside the scaffolding of the company's vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
On Friday, ULA's ground crew rolled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to its seaside launch pad. It was one of the last steps before the Vulcan rocket is cleared for liftoff Monday at 2:18 am EST (07:18 UTC). On Sunday afternoon, ULA engineers will gather inside a control center at Cape Canaveral to oversee an 11-hour countdown, when the Vulcan rocket will be loaded with methane, liquid hydrogen, and liquid oxygen propellants.
ULA has a 45-minute launch window to get the mission off the ground on Monday, and there is an 85 percent chance of good weather.
ULA's Vulcan rocket flew straight and true right out of the gate.
Stephen Clark - 1/8/2024, 7:01 AM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—Right out of the gate, United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket chased perfection.
The Vulcan launcher hit its marks after lifting off from Florida's Space Coast for the first time early Monday, successfully deploying a commercial robotic lander on a journey to the Moon and keeping ULA's unblemished success record intact.
“Yeehaw! I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much!” exclaimed Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO, shortly after Vulcan's departure from Cape Canaveral. “I am so proud of this team. Oh my gosh, this has been years of hard work. So far, this has been an absolutely beautiful mission.”
This was a pivotal moment for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Vulcan rocket will replace ULA's mainstay rockets, the Atlas V and Delta IV, with lineages dating back to the dawn of the Space Age. ULA has contracts for more than 70 Vulcan missions in its backlog, primarily for the US military and Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband network.
The Vulcan rocket lived up to the moment Monday. It took nearly a decade for ULA to develop it, some four years longer than anticipated, but the first flight took off at the opening of the launch window on the first launch attempt.
Standing 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall, the Vulcan rocket ignited its two BE-4 main engines in the final seconds of a smooth countdown. A few moments later, two strap-on solid rocket boosters flashed to life to propel the Vulcan rocket off its launch pad at 2:18 am EST (07:18 UTC).
This follows a successful launch by the Vulcan Centaur rocket.
Lawrence Bonk, Contributing Reporter - Mon, Jan 8, 2024, 11:12 AM PST
The Peregrine spacecraft has experienced an ‘anomaly’ that could endanger its planned moon landing, as reported by the BBC. Astrobotic, the private company behind the project, says this anomaly prevents the spacecraft from pointing its solar panels at the sun. In other words, the vehicle can’t charge its battery. Without power, the planned lunar landing for February might have to be canceled.
Astrobotic engineers are working the problem and will provide updates as they become available. The launch itself went off without a hitch early this morning, as the issue popped up during post-launch checks after communications had been established. The team behind the launch suggest the most likely cause of the anomaly is a problem with propulsion. Unfortunately, the engineers have a limited window of time to troubleshoot and fix the issue, as the spacecraft’s battery is currently “reaching operationally low levels.” There was a short comms breakdown, but it looks like that issue has been resolved.
“We do not expect every launch and landing to be successful.”
Eric Berger - Updated 1/8/2024, 8:45 AM
On Monday morning, the new Vulcan rocket made a smashing debut, launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and performing flawlessly. After 50 minutes of flight, the rocket's upper stage deployed its primary payload—the Peregrine lunar lander—into a Moon-bound trajectory. United Launch Alliance declared complete success with its new rocket.
After the deployment of the spacecraft, its developer, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, also said its ground controllers had successfully established contact with Peregrine. All seemed well as the spacecraft entered a highly elliptical orbit that will bring it toward the Moon in the coming weeks.
However, later on Monday morning, about six hours after liftoff, Astrobotic released an updated statement. While the vehicle's avionics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit and the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, had all powered on and performed as expected, there was a problem.
Astrobotic's Peregrine packed with NASA science gear and other payloads may be a bust
Katyanna Quach - Mon 8 Jan 2024 20:28 UTC
Updated The first commercial American Moon lander – built by startup Astrobotic to carry NASA instruments and private payloads to the lunar surface – is in trouble: the spacecraft's propulsion system malfunctioned shortly after launch on Monday.
Selected for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, US-based Astrobotic was poised to become the first-ever company to successfully land on the surface of the Moon, a feat that has only been achieved by governmental space agencies in America, the Soviet Union, China, and India so far.
The company's Peregrine Lunar Lander suffered an anomaly and was forced to enter safe mode, despite being successfully launched into space earlier in the day.
“Unfortunately, it appears the failure within the propulsion system is causing a critical loss of propellant,” Astrobotic said in its latest update.
“The team is working to try and stabilize this loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture. We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/astrobotic_lunar_lander_failure/
Jeff Foust - January 8, 2024
Updated 1:30 p.m. Eastern with a fourth update from Astrobotic.
NEW ORLEANS — Astrobotic said its Peregrine spacecraft suffered a propulsion anomaly hours after launch Jan. 8, making it increasingly unlikely that it will be able to land on the moon.
In a statement about seven hours after launch on United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan Centaur, Astrobotic said that the spacecraft had entered a “safe, operational state” shortly after deployment from the Centaur upper stage. That included communicating with NASA’s Deep Space Network and activating its propulsion system.
“Unfortunately, an anomaly then occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation,” the company stated. “The team is responding in real time as the situation unfolds and will be providing updates as more data is obtained and analyzed.”
Astrobotic did not immediately provided additional details about the anomaly. Failure to maintain a sun-pointing orientation could deprive the spacecraft of the ability to generate power using is solar panels.
https://spacenews.com/peregrine-lander-suffers-anomaly-after-launch/
Astrobotic, its creators, say the goal is to get spacecraft as far as possible before it loses power
Oliver Holmes - Tue 9 Jan 2024 08.31 EST
The first moon lander to launch from the US in half a century will not make it to the lunar surface due to a fuel leak, its operators have announced, adding that their goal was now to travel as far as possible before losing power.
Peregrine 1, which is also the first commercial space probe to attempt a soft landing on the moon, suffered a “critical loss of propellant” hours after lift-off on Monday due to an “anomaly” in the propulsion system, according to Astrobotic, the US company behind the project.
After initially fearing that the spacecraft would not be able to orient itself towards the sun to charge its batteries, the team at Astrobotic announced it had successfully completed an “improvised manoeuvre” and the solar array was working.
However, in a later statement, the Pittsburgh-based company said its thrusters “could likely only operate for 40 more hours at most”, adding: “At this time, the goal is to get Peregrine as close to lunar distance as we can before it loses the ability to maintain its sun-pointing position and subsequently loses power.”
The NASA-funded private Peregrine mission is ending in defeat, but that doesn't mean NASA needs to change course.
George Dvorsky - 10 January 2024
The dreaded announcement arrived yesterday in a tweet, with Astrobotic admitting that, as a result of a catastrophic propellant leak, there’s “no chance of a soft landing on the Moon.” Mission specialists are scrambling to salvage what they can, but the much-hyped Peregrine-1 lunar mission is effectively over, with a faulty valve being the likely culprit.
United Launch Alliance launched the Astrobotic-developed Peregrine lander aboard its Vulcan Centaur rocket on January 8. This mission, part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) under the Artemis program, marked a pivotal moment, as it was the first of its kind under this initiative. The Peregrine-1 mission garnered significant attention, as it was set to be the first launch of a U.S. lunar lander since the Apollo era and aimed to make history as the first commercial lunar lander to touch down on the Moon. But unfortunately, it’s not to be.
https://gizmodo.com/what-peregrine-failure-means-for-nasa-clps-1851155515
UK trumpets British tech aboard doomed spacecraft
Richard Speed - Tue 9 Jan 2024 17:45 UTC
The Peregrine Mission One lunar lander has just hours of power left before its ambitious mission will be prematurely terminated.
Having launched successfully on the first flight of the ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket, the spacecraft suffered an anomaly that appears to have significantly truncated the planned mission.
Rather than cruise to a landing in February and spend ten days on the Moon's surface doing science, it could all be over for the lander by the end of this week after a propellant leak nixed plans for reaching the Moon, let alone landing.
As it stands, the spacecraft's Attitude Control System (ACS) is working overtime to keep the solar arrays facing the Sun. Assuming these thrusters continue to operate – and Astrobotic warned that they are already well beyond their expected service life – there's a chance the spacecraft could continue in a stable sun-pointing state until the end of tomorrow.
Once the ACS stops working, the spacecraft will likely start to tumble and lose power. Astrobotic said: “At this time, the goal is to get Peregrine as close to lunar distance as we can before it loses the ability to maintain its sun-pointing position and subsequently lose power.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/peregrine_mission_now_measured_in/
Astrobotic's Peregrine spacecraft has mere hours of power left, forcing last-ditch efforts to eke out as much from the ill-fated mission as possible.
George Dvorsky - 9 January 2024
Astrobotic, the team behind the Peregrine spacecraft, is urgently working to extract any possible value from its failing mission. This comes after a catastrophic propellant leak occurred just after yesterday’s launch, ending the spacecraft’s attempt to land on the Moon.
The 2,829-pound (1,283-kilogram) Peregrine lander reached space early yesterday, after the picturesque inaugural launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. Following orbital insertion, Astrobotic, the Pittsburgh-based developer of Peregrine, was able to switch the vehicle on, including its thermal, propulsion, and power controllers. Soon thereafter, however, the spacecraft began to lose propellant at a critical rate, raising fears that that Peregrine would not reach the lunar surface.
https://gizmodo.com/race-against-time-astrobotic-peregrine-moon-mission-1851151921
The image provides a visual clue that supports the Peregrine team's anomaly hypothesis.
Mike Wall - 8 January 2024
Update for 4 p.m. EST on Jan. 9: In an update today, Astrobotic reported that its Peregrine moon lander has lost so much propellant that it will not be able to attempt a moon landing on Feb. 23. The lander will run out of fuel in the upcoming days and Astrobotic will “unable to continue operating the vehicle as a spacecraft.”
Astrobotic's troubled Peregrine moon lander has snapped its first photo in the final frontier, and the image holds clues about what happened to the spacecraft.
Peregrine lifted off early Monday morning (Jan. 8) on the first-ever mission of United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. The historic launch went well, but Peregrine ran into problems shortly after deploying from the rocket's Centaur upper stage.
The lander failed to orient itself properly to face the sun to charge its solar panels, an issue that Astrobotic thinks stemmed from an anomaly in Peregrine's propulsion system. That hypothesis was bolstered by the first image the lander snapped in space, which the company shared today via X (formerly known as Twitter).
“The camera utilized is mounted atop a payload deck and shows Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) in the foreground,” Astrobotic wrote in the X post that featured the photo. “The disturbance of the MLI is the first visual clue that aligns with our telemetry data pointing to a propulsion system anomaly.”
https://www.space.com/astrobotic-peregrine-moon-lander-first-photo-anomaly-clue
Aria Alamalhodaei - 11 January 2024
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander is still operating on orbit, with the company saying there is “growing optimism” that the spacecraft could survive in space longer than the current estimate.
The Pittsburgh-based startup has been releasing a series of updates to social media platform X since the spacecraft’s launch in the early hours of Monday morning. Shortly after separating from the launch vehicle, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, engineers immediately started encountering issues. Ultimately, those issues revealed a dire fuel leak in the spacecraft’s propellant system.
But despite all odds, Peregrine has been operational in space for more than four days, and the estimated operational time remaining continues to extend. Two days ago, Astrobotic said the spacecraft has around 36 hours of propellant remaining; but today, the company updated that estimate to 52 hours remaining as the leak continues to slow.
Despite losing propellant at a critical rate, Peregrine has managed to activate numerous payloads, marking a minor victory in its otherwise ill-fated mission.
Passant Rabie - 12 January 2024
Tragically, Astrobotic’s lander will not be able to pull off a soft landing on the lunar surface. However, Peregrine continues on its trajectory to the Moon, and as a small consolation, its onboard payloads have successfully powered on.
In a series of updates shared on X, Astrobotic announced that it successfully powered up 10 payloads on board Peregrine and received data from all nine payloads designed to communicate with the lander.
The instruments that have turned on so far include a swarm of five tiny robots from Mexico’s space agency, the German-built M-42 radiation detector, and Astrobotic’s own Optical Precision Autonomous Landing sensor. Carnegie Mellon University’s Iris lunar rover also successfully powered up and sent a message from space: “Hello, Earth!”
https://gizmodo.com/astrobotic-peregrine-nasa-payloads-operational-moon-1851159635
Jeff Foust - January 14, 2024
WASHINGTON — Astrobotic says its Peregrine spacecraft, unable to land on the moon because of a propellant leak, will instead reenter the Earth’s atmosphere in the coming days.
In an update posted on social media Jan. 13, Astrobotic said it has been monitoring the trajectory of Peregrine over the last several days. Its Vulcan Centaur launch placed it on a highly elliptical orbit that took out beyond the orbit of the moon, with the original intent of swinging back around the Earth before going out to, and entering orbit around, the moon.
“Our analysis efforts have been challenging due to the propellant leak, which have been adding uncertainty to predictions of the vehicle’s trajectory,” the company said in a statement. “Our latest assessment now shows the spacecraft is on a path towards Earth, where it will likely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
The company did not disclose a time or location for the reentry. Independent analysts, using available tracking data, estimate a reentry late Jan. 18 near Australia.
https://spacenews.com/peregrine-lunar-lander-on-earth-reentry-trajectory/
Astrobotic says the doomed lander made it to lunar distance, but is heading back toward Earth.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 12:40 PM PST
It looks like the Peregrine lunar lander’s final resting place will be back at home where it started. The doomed spacecraft, which experienced an anomaly shortly after launch and has been leaking propellant ever since, is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, Astrobotic wrote in an update on X this weekend. The company plans to host a press conference with NASA on Thursday January 18 at 12PM ET to discuss the lander’s fate.
Peregrine has so far hung on much longer than anyone thought it would after the leak was first detected on January 8, and Astrobotic has been posting round-the-clock status updates. The company days ago ruled out a soft landing on the moon’s surface, but there’s been some uncertainty about where exactly it’ll end up. Peregrine did manage to make it to lunar distance — reaching 238,000 miles from Earth on Friday and then 242,000 as of Saturday — but because of where the moon currently is in its orbit, nothing was there to meet it.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday January 13, 2024 08:54PM
The fuel-leaking Peregrine lunar lander is now “on a parth towards Earth,” according to Update #16 from Astrobotic, which predicts their spacecraft “will likely burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.”
“Our analysis efforts have been challenging due to the propellant leak… The team is currently assessing options and we will update as soon as we are able. The propellant leak has slowed considerably to a point where it is no longer the teams' top priority…
We have now been operating in space for 5 days and 8 hours and are about 242,000 miles from Earth.
Doing science and still alive … but not for long
Richard Speed - Mon 15 Jan 2024 18:22 UTC
Astrobotic has confirmed that the doomed Peregrine Lunar Lander's mission will end on Thursday, January 18 with the spacecraft burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.
On Sunday, January 14, the company said that the spacecraft was 234,000 miles (376,600 km) from Earth and on a path for re-entry.
The question of what to do with the crippled spacecraft has vexed engineers and scientists. The propellant leak ruled out a landing attempt, but the team has managed to extend the life of the lander beyond all expectations. A week ago, mere hours or days were expected from the spacecraft as engineers struggled to understand the issue. A week on from launch, and Peregrine continues to function.
The team has even managed to fire up one of the main engines, saying: “We achieved a 200 millisecond burn and acquired data that indicated Peregrine could have main engine propulsive capability.”
The leak has meant the fuel-to-oxidizer ratio is well outside the normal operating range of the engine, making a controlled burn impossible. However, there is enough fuel – the leak has now slowed – to keep the solar arrays pointed at the sun and run Peregrine for a few more weeks. That is, assuming Peregrine's orbit is raised to miss the Earth.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/15/peregrine_lunar_lander_return/
Astrobotic's lunar lander experienced an anomaly early on that killed the prospect of a soft landing on the Moon's surface.
Passant Rabie - 16 January 2024
The Peregrine lunar lander is coming back home to die. Astrobotic’s shiny gold spacecraft is on a trajectory towards Earth, where it is expected to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere to conclude its tragic demise.
Peregrine has been operational for more than a week, and the spacecraft is stable and responsive, according to Astrobotic. With zero chance of it being able to land on the Moon, however, the company has decided to terminate the mission. In an update shared on Saturday through X, Astrobotic announced that Peregrine is “on a path towards Earth, where it will likely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
On its current trajectory, Peregrine will re-enter through Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday, January 18. “Astrobotic worked with NASA’s assistance to assess the most appropriate action, and this is the best approach to safely and responsibly conclude Peregrine Mission One,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, is quoted as saying in a NASA statement.
https://gizmodo.com/astrobotic-peregrine-moon-lander-atmospheric-reentry-1851168554
Astrobotic's lunar lander is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere at 4:00 p.m. ET over the South Pacific.
Passant Rabie - 18 January 2024
The saga of Peregrine is coming to a tragic end, with the lunar lander scheduled for reentry through Earth’s atmosphere after failing to touch down on the Moon.
After 10 days of journeying through space, Astrobotic has positioned its lunar lander on a trajectory towards Earth to perform a controlled re-entry over a remote area of the South Pacific on Thursday, January 18 around 4:00 p.m. ET, the company wrote in an update.
Peregrine launched on January 8 on board United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, with plans to land on the Moon in late February. However, the spacecraft experienced a propulsion anomaly early on that destroyed any possibility of a soft landing on the Moon. The lander began to lose propellant at a critical rate, which may have been caused by a faulty valve.
https://gizmodo.com/astrobotic-nasa-peregrine-moon-lander-earth-reentry-1851175802
United Launch Alliance may seek certification from the Space Force after one flight.
Eric Berger - 4/3/2024, 12:28 PM
After the impressive debut of the Vulcan rocket in January, it is unclear when the heavy lift vehicle will fly again. The uncertainty is due to a couple of factors, including the rocket's readiness and, perhaps more critically, what will fly on top of it.
United Launch Alliance, which assembles and launches the Vulcan rocket, has long maintained that it would launch the Dream Chaser spacecraft for Sierra Space on the rocket's second mission. This would allow the rocket company to obtain enough data about the performance of Vulcan to earn certification for national security payloads.
An indication of the emphasis the company has put on earning certification from the Space Force—launching military payloads is the primary justification for the existence of Vulcan—comes from the names it chose for the first two launches, Cert-1 and Cert-2.
But what happens if the payload is not ready for Cert-2, as increasingly looks likely to be the case?
ULA looks to have a good shot at making its Vulcan rocket operational this year.
Stephen Clark - 7/22/2024, 5:18 PM
United Launch Alliance is targeting September 16 for the second test flight of the new Vulcan rocket, and a flawless mission could finally set the stage for the first Vulcan launch for the US military by the end of the year.
The US Space Force has contracted ULA's Vulcan rocket to launch the majority of the military's space missions over the next few years. Pentagon officials are eager for Vulcan to get flying so they can start checking off a backlog of 25 military space missions the Space Force wants to launch by the end of 2027.
By any measure, the first Vulcan launch in January was a resounding success. On its debut flight, the new rocket delivered a commercial lunar lander to an on-target orbit. The next Vulcan mission, which ULA calls Cert-2, will be the rocket's second certification flight. The Space Force requires ULA to complete two successful flights of the Vulcan rocket before entrusting it to launch national security satellites.
The US Space Force says this test flight was critical for certifying Vulcan for military missions.
Stephen Clark – Oct 4, 2024 1:08 PM
United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, under contract for dozens of flights for the US military and Amazon's Kuiper broadband network, lifted off from Florida on its second test flight Friday, suffered an anomaly with one of its strap-on boosters, and still achieved a successful mission, the company said in a statement.
This test flight, known as Cert-2, is the second certification mission for the new Vulcan rocket, a milestone that paves the way for the Space Force to clear ULA's new rocket to begin launching national security satellites in the coming months.
While ULA said the Vulcan rocket continued to hit its marks during the climb into orbit Friday, engineers are investigating what happened with one of its solid rocket boosters shortly after liftoff.
After a last-minute aborted countdown earlier in the morning, the 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket lit its twin methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two side-mounted solid rocket boosters to climb away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7:25 am EDT (11:25 UTC) Friday.
Amazon's satellite constellation hits another snag as ULA rocket aborts on pad
Richard Speed - Tue 17 Jun 2025 17:23 UTC
A hardware glitch on United Launch Alliance's (ULA) workhorse Atlas V rocket delayed the launch of the second batch of Project Kuiper satellites.
The problem was identified while the rocket's Centaur upper stage was fueling. ULA boss Tory Bruno posted on BlueSky that the team was “working a temperature measurement warmer than previous family,” before admitting the problem needed more time for resolution. Bruno said: “Possible issue with a GN2 purge line that cannot be resolved inside the count. We will need to stand down for today.”
ULA confirmed that the rocket would not be going to space, with a post on X stating: “The launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 carrying Amazon's second Project Kuiper mission, Kuiper 2, is delayed due to an engineering observation of an elevated purge temperature within the booster engine. The team will evaluate the hardware, and we will release a new launch date when available.”
Project Kuiper finally began full-scale deployment of its low Earth orbit satellite network on April 28 at 1901 EDT (2301 UTC). A ULA Atlas V rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and deployed the first batch of 27 satellites into space at an altitude of 450 km (280 miles).
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/17/second_batch_project_kuiper/
This will be the first national security mission to fly on United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket.
Stephen Clark – Aug 12, 2025 1:10 PM
After more than a decade of development and testing, US military officials are finally ready to entrust United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket to haul a batch of national security satellites into space.
An experimental military navigation satellite, also more than 10 years in the making, will ride ULA's Vulcan rocket into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. There are additional payloads buttoned up inside the Vulcan rocket's nose cone, but officials from the US Space Force are mum on the details.
The Vulcan rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7:59 pm EDT (23:59 UTC) Tuesday. There's an 80 percent chance of favorable weather during the one-hour launch window. It will take several hours for the Vulcan rocket's Centaur upper stage to reach its destination in geosynchronous orbit. You can watch ULA's live launch webcast below.
“I'm just shocked they don't want more coverage of these things and not less.”
Eric Berger - 7/31/2024, 7:05 AM
The emails from United Launch Alliance started popping into the inboxes of photographers a few days after the Fourth of July holiday. Although that day is meant to celebrate freedom and the red glare of rockets, the communication threatened to strip both from some of the company's most ardent devotees.
The message from the launch company announced the implementation of a new “annual agreement” between ULA and all people who place remote cameras at Space Launch Complex-41, the company's active launch site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Anyone interested in setting remotes for future launch dates had 11 days to review and sign the agreement.
The language was clear: Photographers were welcome to set up remote shots at ULA launches if they worked for the media or wanted to post their work on social media. However, photographers could not sell this work independently, including as prints for fellow enthusiasts or for use in annual calendars.
“ULA will periodically confirm editorial publication for media participating in remote camera placement,” the email stated. “If publication does not occur, or photos are sold outside of editorial purposes, privileges to place remote cameras may be revoked.”
To the photographers who spend many hours preparing their equipment, waiting to set up and remove cameras, and persevering through scrubs and more, it seemed like a harsh judgment.
CEO says the rocket could be certified for national security missions before mid-2024.
Eric Berger - 7/13/2023, 11:32 AM
United Launch Alliance has identified the root cause of a failure that destroyed the upper stage of its Vulcan rocket in late March. According to the company's chief executive, Tory Bruno, the Centaur V upper stage failed due to higher-than-anticipated stress near the top of the liquid hydrogen propellant tank and slightly weaker welding.
Bruno outlined the nature of the failure and steps the company is taking to remediate it during a teleconference with space reporters on Thursday. He said United Launch Alliance is working toward flying the heavy lift Vulcan rocket on its debut mission during the fourth quarter of this year.
“We anticipate some movements in the manifest.”
Eric Berger - 1/10/2024, 10:20 AM
Early Monday morning, the hefty Vulcan rocket streaked into orbit for the first time, nailing its performance targets and delivering a substantial success to United Launch Alliance on the vehicle's first test flight.
Unfortunately for the mission's primary customer, Astrobotic, there was subsequently an issue with the lunar lander's propulsion system. However, Astrobotic was quick to clear Vulcan of any blame, saying the payload was delivered into the planned lunar trajectory without issue. “There is no indication that the propulsion anomaly occurred as a result of the launch,” Astrobotic said.
Vulcan's debut was much-anticipated in the US launch community because the rocket provides a potentially viable competitor to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets flown by SpaceX. The US Space Force, in particular, has been waiting on Vulcan to fly dozens of payloads into orbit.
So now that Vulcan has flown once, what's next?
US military seeks an “independent review” to determine if Vulcan can scale.
Eric Berger - 5/13/2024, 3:41 PM
t has been nearly four years since the US Air Force made its selections for companies to launch military payloads during the mid-2020s. The military chose United Launch Alliance, and its Vulcan rocket, to launch 60 percent of these missions; and it chose SpaceX, with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters, to launch 40 percent.
Although the large Vulcan rocket was still in development at the time, it was expected to take flight within the next year or so. Upon making the award, an Air Force official said the military believed Vulcan would soon be ready to take flight. United Launch Alliance was developing the Vulcan rocket in order to no longer be reliant on RD-180 engines that are built in Russia and used by its Atlas V rocket.
“I am very confident with the selection that we have made today,” William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, said at the time. “We have a very low-risk path to get off the RD-180 engines.”
As part of the announcement, Roper disclosed the first two missions that would fly on Vulcan. The USSF-51 mission was scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2022, and the USSF-106 mission was scheduled for launch in the third quarter of 2022.
The second test flight of the Vulcan rocket is scheduled for liftoff on October 4.
Stephen Clark - 9/24/2024, 10:14 AM
United Launch Alliance is free to compete for NASA contracts with its new Vulcan rocket after a successful test flight earlier this year, ending a period where SpaceX was the only company competing for rights to launch the agency's large science missions.
For several years, ULA was unable to bid for NASA launch contracts after the company sold all of its remaining Atlas V rockets to other customers, primarily for Amazon's Project Kuiper Internet network. ULA could not submit its new Vulcan rocket, which will replace the Atlas V, for NASA to consider in future launch contracts until the Vulcan completed at least one successful flight, according to Tim Dunn, senior launch director at NASA's Launch Services Program.
The Vulcan rocket's first certification flight on January 8, called Cert-1, was nearly flawless, demonstrating the launcher's methane-fueled BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin and an uprated twin-engine Centaur upper stage. A second test flight, known as Cert-2, is scheduled to lift off no earlier than October 4 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Assuming the upcoming launch is as successful as the first one, the US Space Force aims to launch its first mission on a Vulcan rocket by the end of the year.
“We have integrated some corrective actions and additional inspections of the hardware.”
Stephen Clark - Oct 30, 2024 8:13 AM
A little more than a year ago, a snippet of video that wasn't supposed to go public made its way onto United Launch Alliance's live broadcast of an Atlas V rocket launch carrying three classified surveillance satellites for the US Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.
On these types of secretive national security missions, the government typically requests that the launch provider stop providing updates on the ascent into space when the rocket jettisons its two-piece payload fairing a few minutes after launch. And there should be no live video from the rocket released to the public showing the fairing separation sequence, which exposes the payloads to the space environment for the first time.
But the public saw video of the clamshell-like payload fairing falling away from the Atlas V rocket as it fired downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2023. It wasn't pretty. Numerous chunks of material, possibly insulation from the inner wall of the payload shroud's two shells, fell off the fairing. The video embedded below shows the moment of payload fairing jettison.
With a Space Force review still ongoing, ULA is removing its next Vulcan rocket from the launch pad.
Stephen Clark - Feb 11, 2025 7:55 AM
Last October, United Launch Alliance started stacking its third Vulcan rocket on a mobile launch platform in Florida in preparation for a mission for the US Space Force by the end of the year.
That didn't happen, and ULA is still awaiting the Space Force's formal certification of its new rocket, further pushing out delivery schedules for numerous military satellites booked to fly to orbit on the Vulcan launcher.
Now, several months after stacking the next Vulcan rocket, ULA has started taking it apart. First reported by Spaceflight Now, the “de-stacking” will clear ULA's vertical hangar for assembly of an Atlas V rocket—the Vulcan's predecessor—to launch the first batch of operational satellites for Amazon's Kuiper Internet constellation.
This involves removing the rocket's Centaur upper stage, interstage adapter, and booster stage from its launch mount. ULA's facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, can only handle stacking one rocket at a time. A second assembly building will double this capacity when it comes online later this year.
ULA hoped to launch as many as 20 missions in 2025, with roughly an even split between its new Vulcan rocket and the Atlas V heading for retirement. That would require around one launch every two and a half weeks. Six weeks into 2025, ULA's first launch of the year is still a month or more away.
“The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year.”
Eric Berger – May 22, 2025 3:32 PM
In recent written testimony to a US House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees the military, the senior official responsible for purchasing launches for national security missions blistered one of the country's two primary rocket providers.
The remarks from Major General Stephen G. Purdy, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, concerned United Launch Alliance and its long-delayed development of the large Vulcan rocket.
“The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date.
“Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions,” Purdy wrote. “Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/the-pentagon-seems-to-be-fed-up-with-ulas-rocket-delays/
The FAA says Varda launched its vehicle into space without a reentry license.
Stephen Clark - 9/20/2023, 4:02 PM
A first-of-its-kind commercial spacecraft owned by an in-space manufacturing startup called Varda Space Industries has been in orbit two months longer than originally planned, waiting for government approval to return to Earth with a cache of pharmaceutical specimens.
Varda's satellite launched on June 12 for what was originally supposed to be a month-long mission to demonstrate the company's technology for producing commercial materials, mainly pharmaceuticals, inside a recoverable capsule designed to return the products to Earth for laboratory analysis and eventual commercial exploitation.
However, the recovery of Varda's capsule is on hold after the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force recently declined to give Varda approval to land its spacecraft in a remote part of Utah. TechCrunch first reported the FAA turned down Varda's application for a commercial reentry license.
“Varda Space Industries launched its vehicle into space without a reentry license,” an FAA spokesperson told Ars on Wednesday. “The FAA denied the Varda reentry license application on September 6 because the company did not demonstrate compliance with the regulatory requirements.”
Posted by msmash on Thursday February 22, 2024 08:00AM
A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. From a report:
Varda Space Industries' in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS. It marks a successful conclusion of Varda's first experimental mission to grow pharmaceuticals on orbit, as well as the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever. The capsule will now be sent back to Varda's facilities in Los Angeles for analysis, and the vials of ritonavir will be shipped to a research company called Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization, Varda said in a statement. The company will also be sharing all the data collected through the mission with the Air Force and NASA, per existing agreements with those agencies.
Space factory startup celebrates successful re-entry
Richard Speed - Fri 23 Feb 2024 21:03 UTC
Almost drowned out by last night's lunar landing, Varda Space Industries celebrated the re-entry and landing of the capsule from its W-1 mission in the Utah desert.
The successful landing was significant for proponents of in-space manufacturing. Materials behave differently when processed in microgravity, and while parabolic flights can briefly achieve similar conditions, the preference is obviously to spend weeks or months on orbit for processing.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/23/materials_processed_in_space_return/
A small capsule containing pharmaceuticals made in space landed in Utah last week.
Stephen Clark - 2/27/2024, 4:00 AM
Varda Space Industries is finally able to celebrate. For nearly eight months, the in-space manufacturing company's first mission was essentially stranded in low-Earth orbit, but not because of any technical malfunction or a restriction imposed by the laws of physics.
Instead, the spacecraft couldn't return to Earth until Varda and three government entities—the US military, the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and the FAA's Air Traffic Organization—all got on the same page. This was far more complicated than anyone envisioned, and Varda had to bypass landing opportunities in July and September because it couldn't secure governmental approvals.
Finally, earlier this month, the FAA approved a commercial reentry license for Varda's space capsule, which was somewhat larger than a mini-fridge, to fall back into the atmosphere and parachute to a landing in the remote Utah desert southwest of Salt Lake City. Varda's landing zone was at the Utah Test and Training Range, a sprawling military facility primarily used for weapons testing.
Varda's capsule landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 pm EST (2140 UTC) last Wednesday. Approaching from the north, the craft's heat shield protected it from scorching temperatures during reentry. Then, the capsule deployed a 6.2-foot-diameter (2.1-meter) parachute to slow its velocity for a relatively gentle landing.
Startup has already shown how to make drugs in space
Iain Thomson - Thu 19 Jun 2025 08:39 UTC
America's aviation regulator has issued its first license for unmanned spacecraft to reenter the Earth's atmosphere to Varda, a startup that's trying to build a space-based manufacturing business.
Last April the FAA introduced Part Rule 450 to the Code of Federal Regulations, requiring unmanned vehicles to get a license for return trips. Spacecraft carrying humans have always had such rules.
The award clears Varda to pursue its goal of launching tiny factories into space where they can take advantage of low gravity to build things that can’t be manufactured on Earth.
The space building business, cofounded by former SpaceX engineer Will Bruey in 2020, has used Rocket Labs hardware to get into orbit. For future trips it will use a range of platforms, including SpaceX. Its next mission is only days away, a Varda spokesperson told The Register, and if all goes well will see its 300kg (660lb) Winnebago spacecraft spend months in space.
“This milestone was achieved because Varda provided comprehensive means of compliance for flight safety analysis across multiple operations, to which the FAA fully accepted,” the agency said in its ruling.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/19/varda_gets_faa_reentry_license/
Varda Space Industries stuck a camera on its W-1 capsule to capture its first reentry mission.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sat, Mar 2, 2024, 1:11 PM PST
Incredible footage released by Varda Space Industries gives us a first-person view of a space capsule’s return trip to Earth, from the moment it separates from its carrier satellite in orbit all the way through its fiery reentry and bumpy arrival at the surface. Varda’s W-1 capsule landed at the Utah Test and Training Range, a military site, on February 21 in a first for a commercial company. It spent roughly eight months leading up to that in low Earth orbit, stuck in regulatory limbo while the company waited for the government approvals it needed to land on US soil, according to Ars Technica.
“Here's a video of our capsule ripping through the atmosphere at mach 25, no renders, raw footage,” the company posted on X alongside clips from reentry. Varda also shared a 28-minute video of W-1’s full journey home from LEO on YouTube.
George Dvorsky - 17 November 2020 5:38PM
An Arianespace Vega rocket carrying two satellites failed to reach orbit yesterday after experiencing a catastrophic failure eight minutes into the launch. Officials are attributing the loss of the rocket to a “series of human errors.”
Vega Flight VV17 started off well, with the 98-foot-tall (30-meter) rocket departing the Guiana Space Center at 8:52 p.m. ET. The first three stages, all powered by solid-fuel, did their job, propelling the vehicle and its cargo over the Atlantic ocean toward space. It was when the liquid-fueled upper stage kicked in that things went sideways.
https://gizmodo.com/vega-rocket-failure-apparently-caused-by-human-error-1845699633
After getting to space, the top stage doesn't reach proper trajectory.
John Timmer - 11/17/2020, 9:19 AM
An overnight launch of Arianespace's Vega rocket failed after reaching space, costing France and Spain an Earth-observing satellite each. The failure represents the second in two years after Vega had built up a spotless record over its first six years of service.
The Vega is designed for relatively small satellites, typically handling total weights in the area of about 1,000 kilograms, though it can lift heavier items into lower orbits or take lighter ones higher. The trip to space is powered by a stack of three solid rocket stages; once in space, a reignitable liquid-fueled rocket can perform multiple burns that take payloads to specific orbits.
Second failure in last three missions doesn't inspire confidence
Katyanna Quach - Thu 19 Nov 2020 / 07:02 UTC
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Arianspace have commissioned an inquiry into the failure of a Vega rocket that crashed on Tuesday, destroying a pair of Earth monitoring satellites built by French and Spanish researchers.
The rocket blasted off from the Guiana Space Center on Tuesday at 0252 UTC. Eight minutes later, after the ignition of its fourth stage, a deviation of trajectory was identified and the mission was lost.
Ukraine's space agency is criticizing the Vega-C rocket failure investigation, which blamed a component sourced from a Ukrainian company.
Passant Rabie - 7 March 2023
The Ukrainian space agency is not too happy with the results of an investigation into the Vega-C rocket anomaly, which blamed a faulty part made in Ukraine for the mission failure.
In a statement issued on Monday, the State Space Agency of Ukraine condemned a recent failure report, arguing that “the presented conclusions remain to be premature and may still require further investigation to identify if there could be additional factors that led to the failure of Vega C LV launch,” the space agency wrote.
On Friday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the results of a months-long investigation into the launch failure of its Vega-C rocket in December 2022. The rocket’s second stage, called the Zefiro 40, suffered a decrease in pressure and the mission was terminated about 2 minutes and 27 seconds after launch.
https://gizmodo.com/ukraine-calls-vega-c-rocket-failure-investigation-prema-1850196904
The test was meant to usher in the return of the medium-lift launch vehicle following a failed launch in December 2022.
Passant Rabie - 6 July 2023
Following a series of setbacks that has hindered the next-generation Vega launcher, the European Space Agency (ESA) is looking into what caused the rocket’s motor to fail during a recent static fire test.
ESA established an Independent Enquiry Commission to investigate an anomaly that occurred during Vega-C’s static fire test on June 28, further delaying the third launch of the medium-lift rocket, European Spaceflight reported.
Vega-C made its debut in July 2022, taking off for the first time from the space agency’s launch facility in Guiana. Its second launch, however, ended in failure due to a faulty nozzle. The rocket took off on December 20, 2022, carrying the Neo 5 and Neo 6 satellites for for Airbus’ Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging constellation. About two minutes and 27 seconds after launch, Vega-C’s second stage, called the Zefiro 40, suffered a decrease in pressure that terminated the mission.
https://gizmodo.com/failed-vega-c-test-esa-investigation-european-rockets-1850610044
A flawed fix to the second stage engine has pushed the return flight of Vega-C until late 2024, challenging Europe’s space ambitions.
George Dvorsky - 3 October 2023
After a disheartening failure in December 2022, the return flight of Europe’s Vega-C rocket has been pushed to late 2024. The delay, just revealed by the European Space Agency, stems from a required redesign of the rocket’s motor nozzle.
The 115-foot-tall (35-meter) rocket’s misfortune struck just 2 minutes and 27 seconds after its departure from the Kourou space base in French Guiana during its second flight late last year. As a result, the Neo 5 and Neo 6 satellites—key parts of Airbus’ Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging constellation—were destroyed before reaching orbit. Vega-C, developed by ESA and operated by Arianespace, is off to a rough start, despite a successful inaugural launch.
https://gizmodo.com/vega-c-esa-avio-arianespace-european-rockets-1850893220
It has also announced the first scientist to fly aboard one of its future flights.
Mariella Moon - 15 Octoboer 2020
Virgin Galactic has started preparing for its first suborbital spaceflight that’s launching from Spaceport America in New Mexico. CNBC found FCC filings back in September revealing the aerospace company’s plans for the last round of SpaceShipTwo tests. Now, Virgin Galactic has confirmed that it is indeed opening its flight planning window for the first of two crewed tests on October 22nd, which means the mission could launch that day or anytime after that.
The company’s preparations include training its pilots using its ground-based simulator, as well as using its carrier aircraft VMS Eve. Apparently, the aircraft, which carries the SpaceShipTwo to the skies before dropping it mid-air, has very similar structure and controls to the spacecraft itself. The spacecraft will also be put through its paces on the ground and will undergo a bunch of pre-flight checks.
https://www.engadget.com/virgin-galactic-first-spaceflight-spaceport-america-052810504.html
Darrell Etherington / 5:48 AM PST•December 14, 2020
Virgin Galactic attempted a test flight of its SpaceShipTwo Unity spaceplane on Saturday, but the flight was cut short after the spacecraft detached from its carrier aircraft. A failsafe prevented Unity’s rocket engines from firing up because the computer that monitors the rockets somehow lost their connection to the rocket engines themselves, Virgin Galactic revealed on Monday.
The failsafe cut-off meant that both SpaceShipTwo Unity and the carrier aircraft, along with all pilots on board, returned safely to Earth for a successful landing without incident. But the test flight was meant to go all the way to space, and this would’ve been a key stage-setting event to clear the way for flying the first actual paying passengers from the company’s New Mexico spaceport.
Posted by msmash on Monday May 03, 2021 01:12PM
It's taken 17 years, with many setbacks and some deaths, and still Richard Branson's space mission is yet to launch. From a report:
Richard Branson was running almost 15 years late. But as we rode into the Mojave desert on the morning of 12 December 2018, he was feeling upbeat and untroubled by the past. He wore jeans, a leather jacket and the easy smile of someone used to being behind schedule. Branson hadn't exactly squandered the past 15 years. He'd become a grandfather, moved to a private island in the Caribbean and expanded Virgin's business empire into banking, hotels, gyms, wedding dresses and more. But he was staking his legacy on Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company he formed in 2004. The idea was to build a rocketship with seats for eight – two pilots, six passengers – that would be carried aloft by a mothership, released about 45,000ft in the air and then zoom just beyond the lower limit of space, float around for a few minutes, before returning to Earth. He was charging $200,000 a seat. It did not initially seem like such a crazy idea. That year, a boutique aviation firm in Mojave, California, two hours north of Los Angeles, had built a prototype mothership and rocketship that a pair of test pilots flew to space three times, becoming the first privately built space craft. Branson hired the firm to design, build and test him a bigger version of the craft.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/05/03/2012216/will-virgin-galactic-ever-lift-off
Mothership checks out, so VSS Unity will fly again
Richard Speed - Thu 20 May 2021 / 18:33 UTC
As bidding intensifies for a seat on Blue Origin's first crewed hop into space, Virgin Galactic has announced the next rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo test flight will take place on May 22.
Things looked a little dicey for Virgin Galactic earlier this month as the biz revealed problems had been found with its carrier aircraft VMS Eve, due to go in for maintenance at the end of this year. The biz told investors earlier this month more investigation of the gremlins, described as a “wear-and-tear issue,” was needed.
Review completed, Virgin has green lit another flight of VMS Eve to 50,000 feet. Eve will then drop the attached VSS Unity, which hopefully will then light its rocket motor for another brief flirtation with space before gliding back to a runway landing. VMS stands for Virgin MotherShip, and VSS means Virgin Space Ship. VSS Unity is an implementation of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo design, and is intended to be a passenger spacecraft.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/20/virgin_galactic_flight/
First launch from New Mexico facility goes off without a hitch, ticks regulatory boxes and even does some science
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 24 May 2021 / 08:15 UTC
On Saturday, Virgin Galactic completed its third spaceflight and the first from its new launch location outside White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
VSS Unity, the name given to Virgin Galactic's second spaceplane, took off bolted to Virgin's mothership VMS Eve. After release, it hit Mach 3 and an apogee of 55.45 miles (89km) before its descent and runway landing.
The spacecraft is designed to hold six passengers and two pilots, but had just two onboard on Saturday - pilot-in-command CJ Sturckow and co-pilot Dave Mackay. Kelly Latimer and Michael Masucci, piloted VMS Eve. As many things are still a first these days when it comes to spacecraft, Virgin lauded Sturckow as “the first person ever to have flown to space from three different states.”
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/24/virgin_galactic_test_flight_success/
“We will immediately begin processing the data.”
Eric Berger - 5/24/2021, 5:21 AM
On Saturday Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spacecraft flew above 80 km for the third time, completing a much-anticipated return to space following more than two years of downtime. The flight, which crested at an altitude of 89.2 km, was piloted by CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay.
“We will immediately begin processing the data gained from this successful test flight, and we look forward to sharing news on our next planned milestone,” said Michael Colglazier, chief executive officer of Virgin Galactic, after the mission.
The flight was significant for Virgin Galactic, as the last time VSS Unity successfully carried out a powered spaceflight came in February 2019. Since that time the company has undertaken a lot of work to prepare for commercial flights on its suborbital space plane. This includes moving its flight operations to New Mexico and at least beginning to upgrade the interior of its cabin for tourist flights. Although Virgin Galactic has not released photos of the spacecraft's interior, some changes can be seen here.
Jody Serrano - 23 May 2021 7:35PM
Space tourism really is the hot topic among billionaires nowadays, and some of them are getting closer to making it a reality. On Saturday, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic made room for itself in the race, successfully launching its spaceplane to space after more than two years. The flight is a step forward for the company on its journey to develop its space tourism system.
Virgin Galactic announced on Saturday that the VSS Unity, its reusable spaceplane designed to carry eight people into space, had completed its third crewed flight. The company said that VSS Unity had reached a speed three times the speed of sound after being released by its mothership, the VMS Eve, a custom-built aircraft that carries the VSS Unity to an altitude of around 50,000 feet before releasing it, at which point the spaceplane’s rocket engine fires up and takes it to space.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-s-vss-unity-nails-its-first-space-fligh-1846952272
Company founder Richard Branson is now in a position to reach space before Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
George Dvorsky - 6/25/21 4:00PM
An upgraded FAA operators license now allows Virgin Galactic to include paying customers on its space flights, in what is a major milestone for the company and also the nascent space tourism sector.
The space tourism industry is starting to heat up.
Blue Origin will attempt its first crewed launch of the New Shepard rocket in July, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the winner of a $28 million auction on board for the ride. Bezos is poised to beat his rivals in the emerging cold war of billionaires trying to get to space before the other guy, but today’s news—that Virgin Galactic has secured an upgraded license to fly paying customers to space—means Richard Branson might actually be the first among them to see the curvature of Earth from suborbital space.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-gets-official-clearance-to-start-flying-1847175196
Darrell Etherington / 4:34 AM PDT•June 25, 2021
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given Virgin Galactic the green light to begin transporting commercial passengers to space aboard its VSS spacecraft. This is an expansion of the company’s existing license, which had granted it permission to fly professional test pilots and astronauts to space using its spaceplane. The updated license comes on the heels of Virgin Galactic’s successful test flight on May 22.
This means that the way is cleared for Virgin Galactic to being operating as the first official ‘spaceline’ — which is like an airline, but for space. The company aims to provide regular service for space tourists and researchers to suborbital space, with an experience that includes unparalleled views of Earth and a few minutes of weightless during the roughly 2 hour trip.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/25/faa-clears-virgin-galactic-for-commercial-astronaut-spaceflight/
A potentially iffy component in the flight actuation system this time
Richard Speed - Mon 13 Sep 2021 / 11:30 UTC
Virgin Galactic's schedule woes worsened last last week as the company pushed its next flight to mid-October thanks to a potentially defective flight control component.
This new delay will affect Virgin's first commercial mission, the 23rd for the VSS Unity rocket-powered spaceplane, after a supplier flagged a manufacturing defect in a component of the flight actuation system.
The issue is unrelated to the Unity 22 test flight problems in July, when, as readers may recall, founder Richard Branson's flight veered off course slightly for a matter of minutes. That debacle ensured that further SpaceShipTwo flights were put on hold while the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Virgin Galactic probed what caused the drift.
As for the Unity 23 component, Virgin Galactic remained tight-lipped on what it was, only confirming it was unsure if the issue had found its way into its vehicles. The timeline for any potential repair or replacement (if required) is therefore unknown.
FAA issue aside, “which is focused on air traffic control clearance and communications,” according to Virgin Galactic, the company had been pressing ahead on preparations for Unity 23, its first research customer mission.
The company launched new consumer branding to mark the occasion.
Steve Dent - February 15th, 2022
Now that Virgin Galactic has a working spaceflight system, it needs to sell rides. The company has announced that it's opening ticket sales to the general public starting on February 16th, letting you become an astronaut if you're willing to pay $450,000 and put down a $150,000 deposit. To mark the launch of public sales, Virgin Galactic revealed new consumer branding (above).
“We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on board at the start of commercial service later this year, providing an incredibly strong foundation as we begin regular operations and scale our fleet,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement.
For that $450K, you'll get a 90-minute ride to the edge of space including the “signature air launch and Mach-3 boost to space,” the company said. Passengers will enjoy several minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views of Earth from the 17 windows, as it showed in a new video (below). The ticket also includes several days of astronaut training, a fitted Under Armour spacesuit, and membership in the Future Astronaut community. All flights launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
The company's goal is to fly 400 revenue flights a year.
Eric Berger - 7/6/2022, 2:13 PM
Nearly a full year has passed since Virgin Galactic last flew its SpaceShipTwo vehicle into space, but the company says it is progressing toward a more rapid cadence of flights.
On Wednesday, Virgin Galactic announced a deal with Boeing-owned Aurora Flight Sciences to design and manufacture two next-generation motherships. A mothership carries the Virgin Galactic spaceship to an altitude of about 15 km before releasing it, after which the spaceship fires its rocket engine and flies above 90 km.
In a news release, Virgin Galactic said it expects to take delivery of the first of the two new motherships in 2025. The company presently has a single carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, that made its first flight in 2008. Virgin has not said how long this vehicle will be able to fly missions, nor how much refurbishment it will need as it begins flying more frequently.
“Blue Origin already won the suborbital space tourism race on July 20, 2021.”
Eric Berger - 7/11/2022, 4:25 AM
It has been 12 months to the day since Sir Richard Branson briefly departed this world, only to make a feathery return back to Earth, landing on a hot, dusty runway in rural New Mexico.
The flight marked a triumphant moment for Branson, who, just a week before turning 71 years old, fulfilled a childhood dream of going to space. In doing so, Branson beat fellow space-obsessed billionaire Jeff Bezos to the punch. The exuberance about his flight—and what it promised for Virgin Galactic—helped push his company's stock above $50 a share.
As Richard Branson went to space, he and his company seemed to be on top of the world.
But it has been a rough ride in the year since. Most crucially, Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spaceship has yet to fly a single time again, and it may not do so until this winter. In the meantime, Bezos' space tourism company, Blue Origin, has started to regularly fly paying customers into space, higher than Virgin Galactic, on a fully reusable spacecraft. Partly as a result, Virgin Galactic's stock price has crashed, now trading at about $7 a share.
It's now set for Q2 2023 due to 'mothership enhancement' delays.
Steve Dent - August 5, 2022 4:45 AM
Virgin Galactic has announced that its commercial space tourism service has been delayed yet again, from the end of this year until Q2 2023. During its earnings report, the company said that the delay is “due to the extended completion dates [i.e., delays] within the mothership enhancement program.”
The mothership VMS Eve is a crucial part of its launch system, carrying the VSS Unity spacecraft to 50,000 feet before it launches to the edge of space. The enhancement program launched July 7th with the aim of improving flight frequency, along with “reliability, predictability and durability.”
At the same time it revealed the updates, Virgin Galactic announced that Boeing's Aurora Flight Sciences will design and manufacture its next-gen motherships, expected to enter service in 2025. The company is also working on a new spaceship, the VSS Imagine, set to make a debut test flight in Q1 2023.
Buys up land to train and entertain space tourists when they do start
Jude Karabus - Fri 5 Aug 2022 12:31 UTC
Virgin Galactic (VG) is once again delaying its commercial service, shifting the expected launch of well-to-do space tourists from the first three months of 2023 to Q2, amid widening losses for the business.
On a call with investors yesterday, CEO Michael Colglazier blamed the delay on supply-chain woes and labor shortages, which he said disrupted “the complex work” needed to prepare the craft for operation.
In May 2021 the Richard Branson-founded company pushed back the commercial spaceflight service to Q1 2023.
“The economic momentum of the company is around the Delta ships.”
Eric Berger - 11/4/2022, 6:59 AM
Space tourism company Virgin Galactic released its third-quarter financial results on Thursday. As one might imagine of a spaceflight company that has not flown since June 2021, the financials are pretty disastrous. The company reported revenue of less than $1 million against losses of more than $146 million.
After a long period of downtime, Virgin Galactic officials said the company is close to completing “modifications” of its VMS Eve carrier aircraft and VSS Unity spacecraft. The company expects to complete a glide flight of Unity, which is released from Eve at altitude, in early 2023. After that point, the company will conduct a powered test flight, likely with its own employees on board, before a research flight for the Italian Air Force.
News of the test lifted Virgin Galactic's stock value by over 13%, but it's still not clear when tourist flights to space will resume.
Kevin Hurler - 16 February 2023
Virgin Galactic’s carrier aircraft VMS Eve took to the California skies yesterday for an important two-and-a-half-hour flight test. It’s the latest sign that the Richard Branson-founded company is preparing to resume suborbital flights.
SpaceNews reported that VMS Eve—named for Branson’s late mother—took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 1:30 p.m. ET. The aircraft then flew for over two and a half hours, reaching altitudes of 41,500 feet (12,650 meters) before touching back down in Mojave. SpaceNews says it was Eve’s first test flight in over year, when the aircraft flew from Spaceport America in New Mexico to Mojave in October 2021.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-spaceplane-launcher-flies-again-1850122288
Aria Alamalhodaei - 8 May 2023
Virgin Galactic will return to the skies later this month, in a crewed mission that the company hopes will bring to an end the nearly two-year gap since its first and only crewed flight in July 2021.
The space tourism company said Monday it will send a crew of four to space in late May. The main objective of the mission is to validate the spaceflight system and “astronaut experience” before officially commencing commercial service in June.
Virgin Galactic took people to space for the first time in July 2021, with a crew that included its billionaire founder Richard Branson. The company was no doubt riding high after that mission, but VG has been plagued by issues since. Some of them are technical; others are financial: the company has reported nearly $1.5 billion in operating losses since 2018. Losses have only ballooned over time, with VG telling investors that it burned $133 million in cash in the final quarter of last year, compared to just $65 million in Q4 2021.
The company plans to launch its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane on Thursday morning with a six-person crew on board.
Passant Rabie - 24 May 2023
Following a two-year hiatus, billionaire Richard Branson’s space tourism venture is getting ready to offer suborbital flights for space tourists in late June, pending one last test flight on Thursday.
Virgin Galactic is scheduled to launch the Unity 25 mission on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The company isn’t live streaming its launch, but will be providing updates through its Twitter feed.
The mission is meant to “assess the customer experience and ground-based testing,” ahead of opening up its commercial operations to the public, according to Virgin Galactic. If all goes well for its final test flight, Virgin Galactic can begin offering private trips to the edge of space for paying customers in late June, the company wrote on its website.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-one-test-away-resuming-space-tourism-1850471723
Devin Coldewey - 24 May 2023
In space, no one can hear you cry. That’s probably why Virgin Galactic is headed up there so soon after the untimely demise of its sister company, Virgin Orbit — currently being salvaged for parts. After a nearly two year hiatus, the space tourism company is ready to fly again and plans to do so tomorrow morning.
Virgin Galactic’s first flight was back in 2021, carrying crew from the company and founder Richard Branson. While it was by most accounts a success, the FAA took issue with a deviation from the flight plan and grounded the company for a short while.
Since then the company has been working on updating its flight hardware and infrastructure to support its ambitious plan to eventually offer suborbital flights to the edge of space on a daily basis. As Mike Moses, now president of spaceline missions and safety, told me shortly after 2021’s launch, it’s partly building and adapting the spacecraft themselves, but also streamlining their processes for inspections and so on.
The Richard Branson-founded company is seeking to resume its commercial flights in late June, with hundreds of customers reportedly waiting in line for a seat.
Passant Rabie - 25 May 2023
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane pulled off its first suborbital flight in nearly two years, potentially paving the way for the company to resume commercial trips to the edge of space.
On Thursday, Virgin Galactic launched its Unity 25 mission from Spaceport America in New Mexico at 11:15 a.m. ET. The liftoff was about an hour behind schedule, although the reason for the delay is still unknown. Nonetheless, Richard Branson’s space tourism venture declared its test flight a success after the spaceplane landed at 12:37 a.m. ET.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-reaches-space-first-time-years-branson-1850475699
Aria Alamalhodaei - 25 May 2023
Following a successful flight to the edge of space on Thursday, space tourism company Virgin Galactic says it is ready to enter commercial service in June.
Virgin Galactic’s aircraft, VMS Eve, departed the New Mexico launch site carrying a crew of six (plus two aircraft pilots) at around 9:15 a.m. MT. The VSS Unity spaceplane dropped from the wing of the jet a little over an hour later, taking off to suborbital space at an altitude of 44,500 feet. The entire mission lasted around 90 minutes.
Thursday’s mission, called Unity 25, concludes a nearly two-year-long pause in operations for the company. That last flight, which took place in June 2021, also took six people to suborbital space, including company founder billionaire Richard Branson. While Virgin Galactic did not broadcast the Unity 25 mission, the company kept followers updated on social media. NASA Spaceflight, a private news website with massive followings on YouTube and Twitter, unofficially livestreamed the flight.
The company is finally close to serving real customers.
Jon Fingas - May 25, 2023 12:31 PM
Virgin Galactic is finally on the cusp of launching its space tourism business. After a late start, the company has completed its last VSS Unity flight test before commercial service starts. The Unity 25 mission tested both technical functionality and the overall experience for astronauts, and reached space at roughly 12:26PM Eastern. The launch also made a little history: crew member Jamila Gilbert became the first female astronaut from New Mexico, according to Virgin. Gilbert and fellow crewmates Chris Huie, Luke Mays and Beth Moses are all Virgin employees.
The company has delayed this test multiple times. The final delay stemmed from difficulties upgrading the VMS Eve host aircraft, which ferries Unity to 50,000 feet. Virgin completed an unpowered test flight in late April, but its first crewed flight dates back to July 2021, when founder Richard Branson joined Moses, Sirisha Bandla and Colin Bennett for Unity 22. Unity 25 is Virgin's fifth spaceflight of any kind.
Richard Branson's company is a few days away from its second commercial flight, although it's anticipating minimal revenue from these suborbital trips.
Passant Rabie - 3 August 2023
Richard Branson’s space tourism venture is set to launch its second commercial trip to suborbital heights in less than two weeks but the company is not too optimistic about the revenue generated by its private orbital tours.
During a recent earnings call, the company announced a revenue of $2 million in the second quarter of 2023 following the success of its first commercial flight but anticipated $1 million in revenue for each of the next two quarters, SpaceNews reported.
Virgin Galactic’s first space tourism flight took off on June 29, sending a three-person crew from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council of Italy to suborbital heights on board the VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane. Its second private mission, Galactic 02, is scheduled to launch on August 10 from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactics-space-tourism-flights-wont-be-bringing-1850701389
Virgin Galactic has just one more flight planned for its only operational spaceship.
Stephen Clark - 2/29/2024, 4:26 PM
Last year, Virgin Galactic seemed to finally be hitting a stride toward making commercial suborbital spaceflight. The company flew its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane to the edge of space six times in six months, giving a few Virgin Galactic customers a taste of spaceflight after waiting more than a decade.
Finally, it appeared that Virgin Galactic turned a corner, moving past the setbacks and course corrections that delayed founder Sir Richard Branson's aim of bringing spaceflight to a wider population. Virgin Galactic officials wouldn't describe the company's next step as a setback or a course correction. It's part of an intentional business strategy to make Branson's dream a reality.
“That dream behind Virgin Galactic came into sharp focus as we repeatedly flew spaceship Unity in 2023,” said Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic's president and CEO, in a quarterly earnings call this week. “Now, in 2024, we're poised for even more meaningful accomplishments as we build the fleet of spaceships that will turn the dream into reality and long-term success.”
But to do so, Virgin Galactic needs to give up on the horse that got them here.
Devin Coldewey - 15 June 2023
After years of tests, space tourism line Virgin Galactic is finally beginning commercial spaceflight services at the end of the month, the company announced today. After these initial flights, they will move to monthly ones and start working through the ticket-holder backlog.
Galactic 01 will, barring any delay, launch some time between June 27-30. This won’t be a bunch of rich leisure-seekers, however, but the first of its scientific research missions. Members of the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy will go up to the edge of space “to conduct microgravity research,” and a few onboard experiments will show the potential for other researchers.
Galactic 02 will be the first real private astronaut flight, or launch, however you want to call it. The passengers are not yet announced, but one imagines it will be a mix of wealthy people, influencers and perhaps a charity spot for a student.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/15/virgin-galactic-starts-commercial-spaceflights-in-two-weeks/
A second flight is already slated for early August.
Jon Fingas - June 15, 2023 5:45 PM
After years of development, Virgin Galactic is finally ready to take paying customers. The company has confirmed that its first commercial spaceflight, Galactic 01, will launch between June 27th and June 30th. This inaugural mission will carry three people from Italy's Air Force and National Research Council as they conduct microgravity research. Virgin had anticipated a late June start, but hadn't committed to that window until now.
The company already has follow-up flights scheduled. Galactic 02 is expected to launch in early August and will carry a private crew. Virgin will fly on a monthly basis afterward, although details of future missions aren't yet available. At least the first two flights will stream live through the company's website.
Virgin conducted its last pre-commercial flight test, its fifth spaceflight of any kind, in late May. The company faced numerous delays and incidents getting to that point, however. The company completed its first SpaceShipTwo test flights in 2013, but paused its efforts after the deadly 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise. Flight testing didn't resume until VSS Unity's glide test at the end of 2016. The firm finally reached space in 2018, but had to wait until 2021 to complete its first fully crewed spaceflight with founder Richard Branson aboard. It pushed back commercial service multiple times due to varying factors, most recently delays in upgrading the VMS Eve “mothership” that carries SpaceShipTwo vehicles to their launch altitude.
The company's shares jumped 40% after the company announced the start of its commercial spaceflight service.
Passant Rabie - 16 June 2023
Virgin Galactic is officially open for suborbital business. The private space venture is set to launch its first commercial flight in late June, the first in a series of trips to the edge of space.
On Thursday, the company announced the start of its commercial spaceflight service with the first mission, Galactic 01, scheduled for launch sometime between June 27 and 30. The follow-up mission, Galactic 02, is set to launch in early August, after which the company is planning to send a commercial crew to the edge of space every month, according to Virgin Galactic.
Galactic 01 is a scientific research mission involving a three-person crew from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy, who will carry out microgravity research on board Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane.
https://gizmodo.com/richard-branson-virgin-galactic-commercial-spaceflight-1850547185
It hasn't been an easy road for Virgin Galactic, and more hurdles are ahead.
Stephen Clark - 6/29/2023, 8:18 AM
Virgin Galactic launched three Italian researchers and three company employees on the suborbital operator’s first commercial flight to the edge of space Thursday.
The six-man crew rocketed to an altitude of more than 279,000 feet, higher than the 50-mile height recognized as the boundary of space by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Virgin Galactic, the space tourism firm founded in 2004 by Richard Branson.
The company’s large carrier jet, called VMS Eve, took off from a runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico and climbed to an altitude of about 45,000 feet, where it released the VSS Unity rocket plane at 11:28 am EDT (1528 UTC) to ignite its motor and start the climb to suborbital space.
The rocket motor fired for about a minute, propelling VSS Unity out of the thick atmosphere on a trajectory that gave the ship’s passengers expansive views of the southwestern United States sprawling under the blackness of space. More importantly, at least for the researchers on Thursday’s flight, the crew in the passenger cabin were able to unstrap from their seats and float in microgravity for several minutes, enough time to accomplish a few research tasks.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/virgin-galactic-begins-commercial-service/
It only took nearly 20 years and one death to get there
Katyanna Quach - Thu 29 Jun 2023 22:06 UTC
Video Virgin Galactic today sent six people to the edge of space in its first-ever commercial flight.
The mission, dubbed Galactic 01, took off at 0830 MT (1430 UTC) from Spaceport America in New Mexico. Onboard the VSS Unity spacecraft were a Virgin Galactic pilot, commander, and astronaut instructor, and the space biz's first paying customers: a mission commander, physician, and engineer all admittedly in the Italian Air Force.
The spacecraft was taken by its mothership VMS Eve, controlled by another pilot and commander from Virgin Galactic, to an altitude of 44,500 feet (13.5km) before it was released. VSS Unity then fired its rockets, boosting the craft to almost three times the speed of sound, to reach a maximum height of 52.9 miles (85km) above ground, which is technically space by US measurements but falls just short of the internationally accepted Kármán Line, 62 miles up.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/virgin_galactic_launch/
The debut is 10 years in the making.
Steve Dent - June 29, 2023 12:17 PM
After building to this point for over a decade, Virgin Galactic has completed its first commercial flight. After launching aboard the mothership VMS Eve, the spaceship VSS Unity reached an altitude of around 52 miles, or the edge of space. It landed nearly 15 minutes later at the company's Spaceport America base near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, completing the Galactic 01 research mission.
The company's first client was the Italian government, which had the aim of conducting microgravity research. Aboard were Air Force colonel Walter Villadei, Air Force lieutenant and flight surgeon Colonel Angelo Landolfi, and Pantaleone Carlucci, a research council member acting as flight engineer and payload specialist. Unity was piloted by retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Masucci and Nicola Pecile, with Virgin Galactic trainer Colin Bennett also on board.
https://www.engadget.com/virgin-galactic-completes-its-first-commercial-spaceflight-161701356.html
Posted by msmash on Thursday June 29, 2023 08:49AM
It is showtime for Virgin Galactic. The spaceflight company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson almost two decades ago launched its long-awaited first commercial spaceflight, called “Galactic 01,” on Thursday. From a report:
Taking off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the company's spacecraft is being flown by a pair of pilots and carries four passengers: A Virgin Galactic trainer, to oversee the mission from inside the cabin, and its first trio of paying customers. The three paying passengers are members of the Italian Air Force, and the flight carries 13 research payloads onboard. Virgin Galactic's start to commercial service comes after years of delays and setbacks. If “Galactic 01” is successful, the company plans to fly its second mission as soon as August and then aims to begin flying its spacecraft, VSS Unity, once a month.
The company is one step closer to space tourism.
Jon Fingas - July 13, 2023 11:15 AM
Now that Virgin Galactic has flown its first commercial spaceflight, it's ready to take civilians aboard. The company now expects to launch its first private passenger flight, Galactic 02, as soon as August 10th. Virgin isn't yet revealing the names of everyone involved, but there will be three passengers alongside the usual crew. You can watch a live stream on the company website.
The inaugural commercial flight, Galactic 01, flew in late June. However, all three passengers were Italian government workers (two from the Air Force and one research council member) conducting microgravity studies. While it's not clear what 02's civilian crew will do, they can be tourists this time around.
The firm has been ramping up its operations in recent months after numerous delays from previous years. While Galactic 02 is just Virgin's seventh spaceflight of any kind, it's the third in 2023. The company says it's establishing a “regular cadence” of flights, and you can expect them to become relatively routine if this voyage goes as planned.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 17 July 2023
Fresh off its first commercial mission, Virgin Galactic will return to the skies on August 10 to take three private citizens to suborbital space and back.
The crew for the mission, called Galactic 02, includes 80-year-old Jon Goodwin, a former Olympian and an early Virgin Galactic ticket holder; and mother-and-daughter duo Keisha Schahaff and 18-year-old Anastatia Mayers, who won their seats in a charity fundraiser for the nonprofit Space for Humanity. Schahaff and Mayers, who are from Antigua and Barbuda, will be the first people from the Caribbean to travel to space.
Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s head of astronaut instruction, will round out the crew. This will be the fourth time Moses will travel to suborbital space with the company.
The flight is expected to last about 90 minutes. As with Virgin Galactic’s previous flight, Galactic 02 will take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/17/virgin-galactic-second-commercial-suborbital-flight-in-august/
“I absolutely believe this is that moment.”
Eric Berger - 7/12/2021, 7:50 AM
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.—Sir Richard Branson basked in the late morning New Mexico sunshine on Sunday. Beaming his white, toothy grin for all to see, the 70-year-old adventurer looked resplendent in his blue flight suit as he stood alongside the pilots, Dave Mackay and co-pilot Mike Masucci, who had just rocketed him above 85 km.
“I have wanted to do this since I was a child,” Branson said. “But honestly, nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space.”
If you think Richard Branson’s space flight on Sunday morning was all about the pomp and simply served to feed the ego of a celebrity billionaire, you would not be wrong. Virgin Galactic hired Stephen Colbert to host the livestream, after all. R&B musician Khalid performed onstage following the mission. It was gaudy. It was showtime. It was absolutely a party.
But make no mistake, this flight was also historic.
Also, an explanation of why Mark “Forger” Stucky left Virgin Galactic.
Eric Berger - 9/1/2021, 2:59 PM
During the historic spaceflight of Sir Richard Branson in July, near the end of the burn of the VSS Unity spacecraft's engine, a red light appeared on a console. This alerted the crew to an “entry glide-cone warning.” Pilots Dave Mackay and Mike Masucci faced a split-second decision: kill the rocket motor or take immediate action to address their trajectory problem.
This scenario is outlined in a new report by Nicholas Schmidle, a writer with more insight into Virgin Galactic than any other journalist, in The New Yorker. For his recently published book Test Gods, Schmidle had unparalleled access to Virgin Galactic and its pilots.
“I once sat in on a meeting, in 2015, during which the pilots on the July 11th mission and others discussed procedures for responding to an entry glide-cone warning,” Schmidle wrote in his story, published Wednesday. “C. J. Sturckow, a former marine and NASA astronaut, said that a yellow light should 'scare the sh– out of you,' because 'when it turns red it's gonna be too late.'”
As they accelerated to Mach 3 in July, the pilots knew that, if they cut the motor, VSS Unity would not climb above 80 km and the founder of Virgin Galactic, Branson, would not beat Jeff Bezos to space. Cutting the motor would be an embarrassment for the company and its founder. They did not abort; instead, they attempted to get the vehicle back on a safe upward trajectory so that it would be in position to safely glide back to the runway in New Mexico.
Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent - 2 September 2021
The US Federal Aviation Administration has grounded Virgin Galactic flights as it investigates how Sir Richard Branson's recent space flight drifted off course during its climb skyward.
The British billionaire fulfilled his life's dream on 11 July by riding his plane 85km (52 miles) in altitude.
But the New Yorker magazine has revealed how the vehicle flew for a period outside its pre-agreed airspace.
Sir Richard's company has strongly disputed the article.
The rocket plane Unity which carried Sir Richard into space landed safely and Virgin Galactic says it is co-operating with the FAA.
In a short statement, the FAA said it was overseeing the Virgin Galactic investigation of its “July 11 SpaceShipTwo mishap that occurred over Spaceport America, New Mexico.
A warning light came on during ascent, yet the pilots continued to steer the Virgin Galactic ship toward space, according to a report from the New Yorker.
George Dvorsky - 2 September 2021 3:00PM
Alarming new details are emerging about the historic Virgin Galactic flight that took billionaire Richard Branson to the edge of space.
Reporter Nicholas Schmidle of the New Yorker has written a scathing article about the July 11 launch that took billionaire Richard Branson to space. The flight, it would appear, did not go according to plan, as the VSS Unity spaceplane veered off course during its ascent. In addition to flying in unsanctioned airspace, the spaceplane failed to reach its intended trajectory, which risked a hazardous descent and landing.
Virgin Galactic pilots Dave Mackay and Mike Masucci were aware of the problem, as multiple warning lights illuminated their console, according to the report. Schmidle says his intel came from eight unnamed individuals who are “knowledgeable about the program.”
https://gizmodo.com/richard-branson-s-trip-to-space-didnt-go-as-planned-1847606419
Aria Alamalhodaei / 12:03 PM PDT•September 2, 2021
Remember that story we posted earlier today about Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight scheduled to launch in September?
We may have spoken too soon. This afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was grounding all Virgin Galactic flights until further notice, pending the results of the investigation into the company’s July 11 crewed flight.
“Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety.”
While the July 11 mission was completed with no injuries to staff or crew, including the company’s billionaire founder Richard Branson, it was recently uncovered that the spaceplane deviated its trajectory outside of cleared airspace. During flight, a red warning light came on the spaceplane’s dashboard, indicating that it went off its planned trajectory. The spaceplane flew off-course for a total of 1 minute and 41 seconds, the FAA said. The deviation was first reported by The New Yorker.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/02/faa-grounds-virgin-galactic-amidst-investigation-into-july-mission
The company's spacecraft flew out of its designated airspace for a minute.
Mariella Moon - September 2nd, 2021
The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into an anomaly on the Virgin Galactic flight that carried Richard Branson to space. In a piece discussing not just that particular flight but the company's various safety issues throughout the years, The New Yorker explained that Virgin's spacecraft went off-course during descent, triggering an “entry glide-cone warning.” The spacecraft uses the glide cone method, which mimics water circling down the drain, for landing. Apparently, the pilots for the mission didn't fly as steeply as they should have, causing the system to raise the alarm.
An FAA spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that the vehicle “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance as it returned to Spaceport America” and it's investigating the incident. The agency gives missions to space a designated airspace they can fly in to prevent collisions with commercial planes and to minimize civilian casualties in the event of an accident. Virgin's Unity 22 mission flew out of that designated airspace for a minute and forty-one seconds before the pilots were able to correct course.
https://www.engadget.com/faa-probe-anomaly-richard-branson-virgin-galactic-092123771.html?src=rss
Mariella Moon - 4:05 AM PDT•September 2, 2021
The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into an anomaly on the Virgin Galactic flight that carried Richard Branson to space. In a piece discussing not just that particular flight but the company’s various safety issues throughout the years, The New Yorker explained that Virgin’s spacecraft went off-course during descent, triggering an “entry glide-cone warning.” The spacecraft uses the glide cone method, which mimics water circling down the drain, for landing. Apparently, the pilots for the mission didn’t fly as steeply as they should have, causing the system to raise the alarm.
An FAA spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that the vehicle “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance as it returned to Spaceport America” and it’s investigating the incident. The agency gives missions to space a designated airspace they can fly in to prevent collisions with commercial planes and to minimize civilian casualties in the event of an accident. Virgin’s Unity 22 mission flew out of that designated airspace for a minute and forty-one seconds before the pilots were able to correct course.
Biz defends 'safe and successful' ride
Iain Thomson - Fri 3 Sep 2021 / 06:02 UTC
America's aviation safety officials have grounded Virgin Galactic flights after its rocket trip that took company founder Richard Branson up into the heavens for a few minutes went off course.
In July, the beardy British billionaire and his crew briefly reached an altitude of 86km (53 miles) aboard a rocket plane dubbed SpaceShipTwo aka Virgin Space Ship Unity. That took them above NASA's 80km definition of the edge of space, fulfilling Branson's ambition to go beyond Earth's atmosphere.
To get that high, their spacecraft took off attached to a large plane called Virgin MotherShip Eve, and was released at about 16km above the surface to continue rocketing on up into space. Crucially, it emerged afterwards that on return to Earth, SpaceShipTwo flew outside the airspace it was allocated.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/03/virgin_galactic_grounded/
FAA investigators were looking into anomalies that occurred during the July flight that took billionaire Richard Branson to the edge of space.
George Dvorsky - 30 September 2021 12:20PM
The Federal Aviation Administration is satisfied with the corrective actions taken by Virgin Galactic following an incident on July 11 in which the company’s spaceplane flew outside of mandated airspace.
Virgin Galactic has successfully resolved issues having to do with air traffic control clearance and real-time mission communications, which means it’s cleared to resume FAA-licensed flights to space. The federal regulator “required Virgin Galactic to implement changes on how it communicates to the FAA during flight operations to keep the public safe,” the FAA explained in an emailed statement, adding that Virgin Galactic “made the required changes and can return to flight operations.”
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-s-spaceshiptwo-flights-allowed-to-resum-1847774282
The FAA accepted the company's proposal to expand its protected airspace.
Steve Dent - September 30th, 2021
Virgin Galactic has been cleared to fly again by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) following an anomaly on its previous flight, the WSJ has reported. The agency launched a probe into the space company's first crewed flight after it dropped below its approved trajectory.
The FAA determined that the SpaceShip Two Unity craft, with founder Richard Branson and five others aboard, had deviated from its assigned airspace for a minute and 41 seconds and failed to report the error as required. However, it accepted Virgin Galactic's proposal to expand the protected airspace for a wider array of possible trajectories and to communicate with air traffic control in real time during flights.
“The updates to our airspace and real-time mission notification protocols will strengthen our preparations as we move closer to the commercial launch of our spaceflight experience,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 30, 2021 12:00AM Virgin Galactic is cleared to resume flights of its SpaceShipTwo space plane, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Wednesday, after capping a safety investigation into issues that came up during the company's July flight carrying its founder Richard Branson. During that mission, SpaceShipTwo strayed from its designated airspace on its descent from space, and Virgin Galactic didn't tell the FAA about it when it was supposed to. The Verge reports:
With the investigation now closed, the FAA required Virgin Galactic to make changes “on how it communicates to the FAA during flight operations to keep the public safe,” it said in a statement. Virgin Galactic said that includes “updated calculations to expand the protected airspace for future flights” and “additional steps into the Company's flight procedures to ensure real-time mission notifications to FAA Air Traffic Control.” Another change: “Updated calculations to expand the protected airspace for future flights,” the company said.
Richard Branson's company launched its commercial flights earlier this year, but it doesn't expect to turn a profit until the debut of its Delta class vehicles.
Passant Rabie - 8 November 2023
In an effort to cut cost for the sake of the development of its next generation spaceplane, Virgin Galactic will lay off a number of its employees and save on expenses in hopes of bringing in future profits from its commercial flights.
Richard Branson’s private space venture announced on Tuesday a “strategic realignment of the company’s resources and a related workforce reduction” so that it can focus on developing its Delta class of vehicles. Virgin Galactic did not specify how many employees would be laid off.
“Uncertainty has grown in the capital markets,” Michael Colglazier, Virgin’s chief executive officer, wrote in a memo to employees, citing interest rates and geopolitical unrest as factors that stood in the way of financing, according to BNN Bloomberg.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-layoffs-new-spaceplane-prep-1851002703
Everything's fine, but a fastening fell off when it shouldn't have
Richard Speed - Tue 6 Feb 2024 15:12 UTC
Virgin Galactic has reported itself to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after discovering a detached alignment pin from the mechanism used to keep its suborbital spaceplane attached to the mothership aircraft.
According to the company, the alignment pin is used to ensure the spaceplane (in this case, Unity) is aligned correctly to the mothership (VMS Eve) during the mating of the vehicles on the ground.
In flight, the pin helps to transfer load from drag and other forces from Unity to the shear pin fitting assembly and into the pylon and center wing of the mothership. The alignment pin remained in place during the mated portion of the flight, but detached after Unity was released.
Virgin Galactic said: “While both parts play a role during mated flight, they do not support the spaceship's weight, nor do they have an active function once the spaceship is released.”
However, having bits of your launch system detach unexpectedly is not great, despite the success of Galactic 06, a suborbital spaceflight launched on January 26, 2024. The mission carried a crew of six, including four private passengers, on a jaunt to just over 55 miles above the Earth before gliding back to a landing at Spaceport America.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/06/virgin_galactic_report_faa/
“The FAA is overseeing the Virgin Galactic-led mishap investigation.”
Eric Berger - 2/6/2024, 11:57 AM
Virgin Galactic reported an anomaly on its most recent flight, Galactic 06, which took place 12 days ago from a spaceport in New Mexico.
In a statement released Monday, the company said it discovered a dropped pin during a post-flight review of the mission, which carried two pilots and four passengers to an altitude of 55.1 miles (88.7 km).
This alignment pin, according to Virgin Galactic, helps ensure the VSS Unity spaceship is aligned to its carrier aircraft when mating the vehicles on the ground during pre-flight procedures. The company said the alignment pin and a shear pin fitting assembly performed as designed during the mated portion of the flight, and only the alignment pin detached after the spaceship was released from the mothership.
“During mated flight, as the vehicles climb towards release altitude, the alignment pin helps transfer drag and other forces from the spaceship to the shear pin fitting assembly and into the pylon and center wing of the mothership,” the statement said. “The shear pin fitting assembly remained both attached and intact on the mothership with no damage. While both parts play a role during mated flight, they do not support the spaceship’s weight, nor do they have an active function once the spaceship is released.”
Aria Alamalhodaei - 6 February 2024
Virgin Galactic is working with regulators to investigate an issue with an alignment pin that was discovered after the last crewed suborbital flight in January.
During post-flight reviews, Virgin said it discovered that an alignment pin had detached from VMS Eve, the aircraft that carries the suborbital space plane to altitude. The company notified the U.S. Federal Administration of the anomaly, and the two are conducting a review, which is standard procedure for issues that arise during a commercial launch.
The alignment pin is a small component that helps ensure the spaceship, called VMS Unity, is aligned properly to the aircraft when the two vehicles are mated on the ground. During flight, the pin also plays an important role in shifting drag and other aerodynamic forces from the spaceship to the aircraft.
“During mated flight, as the vehicles climb towards release altitude, the alignment pin helps transfer drag and other forces from the spaceship to the shear pin fitting assembly and into the pylon and center wing of the mothership,” the company explained in a statement on the anomaly. “The shear pin fitting assembly remained both attached and intact on the mothership with no damage. While both parts play a role during mated flight, they do not support the spaceship’s weight, nor do they have an active function once the spaceship is released.”
A shareholder is up in arms after reports surfaced that the company misrepresented its Unity spaceplane, causing its stock price to plummet.
Kyle Barr - 17 February 2023
A Virgin Galactic stockholder is taking the company’s execs to task, saying their penchant for covering up major failures encountered during tests of its Unity spaceplane have tanked investors’ chances of winning big in the commercial space race.
In a new lawsuit filed Monday in Delaware district court, stockholder Yousef Abughazaleh claims that the spaceflight company, its execs, and its billionaire founder Richard Branson lied about just how good and safe its spaceplanes were, all in order to inflate the company’s stock price and let execs cash out in more than $1.3 billion of common stock. The suit was filed on behalf of Virgin Galactic Holdings Incorporated.
https://gizmodo.com/stockholder-sues-virgin-galactic-for-lying-about-flight-1850128781
Virgin Orbit may be dead, but Richard Branson's other space venture is getting closer to resuming its commercial space tourism services.
Kevin Hurler - 26 April 2023
Virgin Galactic appears to be one step closer to resuming its space tourism services. The company announced today a successful suborbital test of the VSS Unity spaceplane and hopes to begin rocket-powered spaceflight tests in the coming months.
According to a press release from Virgin Galactic, VSS Unity completed its final glide test during a flight this morning in New Mexico. During the test, VMS Eve took off from Spaceport America with VSS Unity tucked between its twin fuselages at 8:35 a.m. ET. After reaching an altitude of 47,000 feet (14.3 kilometers), Eve released Unity at 9:47 a.m. ET, with the spaceplane landing back at Spaceport America nine minutes later.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-glide-test-ahead-planned-space-trek-1850379005
The spacecraft takes a step toward commercial spaceflight.
Eric Berger - 4/26/2023, 10:46 AM
The VSS Unity spacecraft did not make a powered flight with its rocket engine on Wednesday, but it cleared the final hurdle before doing so by performing a glide test in New Mexico.
On Wednesday morning, the VMS Eve aircraft took off from Spaceport America and subsequently released the spacecraft at an altitude of about 14 kilometers. After this, VSS Unity glided back to the runway in New Mexico, testing modifications to the spacecraft's flight controls and handling.
After the test, Virgin Galactic said the glide flight closes its “final validation test points” of a campaign to ensure the aircraft and space plane are ready to resume powered flights. To that end, the company said data collected during the flight will be analyzed in the coming weeks, and assuming the review goes well, the next mission will be a powered spaceflight.
That flight will carry two pilots and four company employees, who will serve as “mission specialists,” to evaluate the customer experience during the mission. And if that flight goes well, Virgin Galactic said it is prepared to commence commercial service during the second quarter of 2023. The first commercial flight will carry officials with the Italian Air Force.
By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business - Updated 11:53 AM ET, Mon January 18, 2021
Austin, Texas (CNN Business)A 70-foot rocket, riding beneath the wing of a retrofitted Boeing 747 aircraft, detached from the plane and fired itself into Earth's orbit on Sunday — marking the first successful launch for the California-based rocket startup Virgin Orbit.
Virgin Orbit's 747, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, took off from California around 10:30 am PT with the rocket, called LauncherOne, nestled beneath the plane's left wing. The aircraft flew out over the Pacific Ocean before the rocket was released, freeing LauncherOne and allowing it to power up its rocket motor and propel itself to more than 17,000 miles per hour, fast enough to begin orbiting the Earth.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/17/tech/virgin-orbit-launch-scn/index.html
Jody Serrano - 1/18/21 8:21PM
The commercial race to space just got a little more crowded. Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, Virgin Galactic’s sister company, has successfully launched a rocket into orbit for the first time. It also managed to successfully deliver payloads for a customer, NASA, dropping off a number of nanosatellites sponsored by the agency.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-s-launcherone-rocket-reaches-orbit-for-the-first-1846083227
Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent - 17 January 2021
Sir Richard Branson's rocket company Virgin Orbit has succeeded in putting its first satellites in space.
Ten payloads in total were lofted on the same rocket, which was launched from under the wing of one of the entrepreneur's old 747 jumbos.
Sir Richard is hoping to tap into what is a growing market for small, lower-cost satellites.
By using a jet plane as the launch platform, he can theoretically send up spacecraft from anywhere in the world.
Darrell Etherington / 8:50 AM PDT•June 9, 2021
Virgin Orbit is getting ready to launch its next mission to space, with a target window at the end of this month. This will be the first time Virgin Orbit is flying after its first successful orbital launch in January, and it’s carrying seven small satellites on behalf of clients including the U.S. Department of Defense and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. It’s also going to be the first time everyone can watch along live as Virgin Galactic makes the trip to space, since the company is streaming the mission via YouTube.
Previously, Virgin Orbit has opted not to provide live video of its flights, choosing instead to provide a feed of text updates via its social media channels. The YouTube stream should provide unprecedented views of the Virgin launch process, which includes transporting its small Launcher One rocket on to a high altitude for a midair launch from the wing of a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft.
Paperwork needs sorting for a launch from the UK
Richard Speed - Fri 14 Jan 2022 19:28 UTC
Virgin Orbit has managed a third successful mission as the company deployed seven satellites into orbit from its LauncherOne rocket.
Describing itself as “the responsive launch and space solutions company,” Virgin Orbit achieved two missions last year. Yesterday's launch was just a few days shy of the company's first successful mission on 17 January 2021. Its first effort, in 2020, ended in failure.
This week's launch included repeat business from the US Department of Defense and Polish company SatRevolution. The payload included experiments in space-based communications, debris detection, navigation, and propulsion. All in all, Virgin Orbit has managed to launch 26 satellites. Still, it's a far cry from the 109 of fellow small-sat upstart Rocket Lab and just a quarter of the payloads launched by SpaceX on its Transporter-3 mission, also on 13 January.
Posted by BeauHD on Friday May 13, 2022 12:00AM
Virgin Orbit is assembling a fleet of modified 747 jets, the company announced Tuesday, ordering two new modified cargo airframes to help launch more rockets into space. CNBC reports:
The company is acquiring the two additional airframes through L3Harris, which will modify the jets to carry and launch Virgin Orbit's rockets. Virgin expects to take delivery of the first of the planes next year. Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said the delivery timing of the second plane will be “driven more by market demand” for launches. The deal “unleashes us in a few ways,” he said. “It eliminates one of the key chokepoints that we have in the system,” Hart told CNBC. It also will help the company keep launches going in case one of their aircraft is undergoing maintenance, which will open up “all sorts of possibilities for supporting different customers in different places,” he added.
Stefanie Waldek -12:47 PM PDT•June 29, 2022
Update: The launch was delayed due to a slight problem with propellant temperature, but Virgin Orbit has confirmed it will make its next attempt tonight (July 1st) no earlier than 10:20 PM PDT.
Update 2: Launch is good and payloads are in orbit!
We’re sorry in advance for getting Paula Abdul stuck in your head today.
Virgin Orbit is ready to launch the “Straight Up” mission this evening at 10 PM PDT — yes, it’s named after the singer’s 1988 hit — and you can watch it live below.
The mission will ferry seven experimental satellites to orbit for the United States Space Force, demonstrating both new hardware (a new satellite bus and radio communications technology) and software (regarding satellite monitoring and studying climate change).
They’ll be taken to orbit via Virgin Orbit’s “horizontal” launch system: The LauncherOne rocket is released from the belly of a modified Boeing 747 aircraft named Cosmic Girl while the aircraft is in mid-flight. The plane will take off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California before flying over the Pacific Ocean, where LauncherOne will be released to deliver its payload to a 500-kilometer orbit.
The race for first space launch from UK soil (or airspace) continues
Richard Speed - Mon 25 Jul 2022 16:00 UTC
The UK's Civilian Aviation Authority has launched a public consultation on the environmental effects of the plans of Virgin Orbit at a base on the southwest coast of England.
At present, Virgin Orbit seems set to win the race for first launch from UK soil (or rather, the airspace west of Cornwall, since the LauncherOne two-stage rocket is dropped from a modified Boeing 747-400 dubbed Cosmic Girl.)
Rocket fans hoping for a flurry of flights are sadly in for a disappointment. Virgin Orbit is applying for an operator license and the proposals are for a mere two horizontal launches per year from Spaceport Cornwall (Cornwall Airport Newquay) until 2030. This is considerably more than the UK has historically managed, however.
Coupled with the potential vertical launches from other sites in the UK, such as SaxaVord and Sutherland spaceport, and other rocketeers (such as Orbex or Skyrora), there is the potential for many more than two launches to orbit per year.
The company's CEO says a filter likely became dislodged within the rocket's second stage, leading to the crash.
Kevin Hurler - 8 February 2023
Last month, Virgin Orbit ran into trouble when its LauncherOne rocket crashed, destroying seven payloads on board in an attempt to deploy satellites in low Earth orbit. Now, the company suspects that the cause of the anomaly could have been a pesky filter that only cost around $100.
Speaking at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, California this week, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart shed some light on the possible cause of the crash, which occurred on January 9. Had the launch been successful, the Start Me Up mission would’ve marked the first orbital launch from British soil. The prime suspect is likely a filter that was supposed to be in the rocket’s second stage engine, and Hart claimed that the company would be assessing other filter options for future missions.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-orbit-launcherone-rocket-filter-anomaly-1850088235
A filter got dislodged and caused issues mid-flight, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said.
Mariella Moon - February 8, 2023 5:35 AM
Virgin Orbit's first orbital launch from UK soil, which was supposed to be a huge milestone for the company and for the region, may have ended in failure because of a component that cost around $100. According to SpaceNews, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart has revealed at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, California that the evidence so far points to a filter in the rocket's second stage engine getting dislodged and causing issues.
If you'll recall, the company launched its historic “Start Me Up” mission from Spaceport Cornwall on January 9th, and things seemed to flow smoothly at first. Virgin's LauncherOne rocket was able to detach from its carrier aircraft, and the company reported a successful stage separation. But soon, it became clear that the rocket wasn't able to reach orbit as planned. ”[The rocket's] upper stage experienced an anomaly,” a company spokesperson told Engadget at the time, and that “prematurely ended the first burn of the upper stage.” They added: “This event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor without ever achieving orbit.”
Virgin Orbit just received a $10 million boost from Branson’s investment company, marking its third cash injection in as many months.
George Dvorsky - 3 February 2023
Virgin Investments Limited has pumped $55 million into Virgin Orbit since November of last year, in what is a troubling sign for the fledgling satellite launch company.
Cash flow problems, an achingly slow launch cadence, and a botched satellite delivery in January—these are a few of our not-so-favorite things when it comes to Virgin Orbit these days. The Richard Branson-owned company is struggling, and based on recent developments, it appears to be struggling quite badly.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-orbit-branson-financial-trouble-satellites-1850070137
It's reportedly seeking funding following the failure of its first UK launch.
Steve Dent - March 16, 2023 2:55 AM
Satellite launch company Virgin Orbit is starting an “operational pause” and furloughing most employees except for a skeleton crew, CNBC has reported. The company is reportedly seeking new investors to relieve financial pressure and plans to give “an update on go-forward operations in the coming weeks,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Companies like SpaceX launch heavy rockets from the ground to get satellite payloads in orbit. However, Virgin Orbit carries smaller rockets to a height of about 35,000 feet on the wing of a Boeing 747, reducing fuel required. Earlier this year, it attempted to launch nine satellites into low-Earth orbit from its UK base. Unfortunately, the mission failed — reportedly due to a dislodged fuel filter.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday March 16, 2023 12:00AM
Virgin Orbit is furloughing nearly all its employees and pausing operations for a week as it looks for a funding lifeline, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. From the report:
Company executives briefed staff on the situation in an all-hands meeting at 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to people who were in the meeting. The furlough is unpaid, though employees can cash in PTO, with only a small team continuing to work. Virgin Orbit is also moving up payroll by a week to Friday. In the all-hands, company leaders told employees that they aimed to provide an update on the furlough and funding situation by next Wednesday or Thursday, according to the people, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss internal matters.
Luxembourg’s defense department wants to evaluate Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne system as a means for “strengthening” NATO and other allies.
George Dvorsky - 20 October 2022 4:55PM
The Luxembourg Directorate of Defense and Virgin Orbit signed an agreement earlier this week to explore the possibility of developing “responsive space capabilities” for use by NATO and possibly other allies.
The letter of intent, signed on Monday by the Luxembourg Minister of Defense and Virgin Orbit, kickstarts a collaboration in which the two partners will explore the possibility of using Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne system as means to advance NATO’s reach into space, as explained in a company press release. The mobile launch infrastructure provided by Virgin Orbit would be based in Luxembourg but made available to NATO and its European partners.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-orbit-nato-defense-agreement-1849683784
Aria Alamalhodaei - 3:19 PM PST December 8, 2022
Virgin Orbit is retargeting a launch that was supposed to take place as soon as next week from Cornwall, England — and that was to be the first spaceflight to depart from British soil — due to additional technical to-dos and remaining regulatory hurdles.
In a statement, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said the company would retarget launch for “the coming weeks.” In addition to remaining technical work and outstanding launch licenses, Hart said the limited two-day launch window also moved Virgin to delay the mission. He did not elaborate on what technical work is needed for flight readiness.
Just a few hours after the announcement broke, the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the regulatory body that licenses launch, released its own statement to rebuke Virgin’s claim that remaining regulatory issues were in part the reason for the mission delay.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/08/uk-regulator-says-its-not-to-blame-for-virgin-orbit-mission-delay/
It's not our fault, says Civil Aviation Authority
Katyanna Quach - Fri 9 Dec 2022 06:30 UTC
Virgin Orbit's plan to launch a rocket into space from the UK has been delayed.
All eyes were on the historic flight, slated for December 14, which would have marked the first time orbital satellites have been launched from British soil. Virgin Orbit was to send nine satellites aboard its LauncherOne rocket – carried by a modified Boeing 747 nicknamed Cosmic Girl – from Spaceport Cornwall, but has decided to delay the flight.
CEO Dan Hart blamed the delay on failing to secure flight licenses and the need to perform “additional technical work” on the aircraft.
“With licenses still outstanding for the launch itself and for the satellites within the payload, additional technical work needed to establish system health and readiness, and a very limited available launch window of only two days, we have determined that it is prudent to retarget launch for the coming weeks to allow ourselves and our stakeholders time to pave the way for full mission success,” Hart explained in a statement to The Register.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/09/firstever_orbital_satellite_launch_from/
The company is progressing toward a 'historic' satellite launch from Cornwall.
Steve Dent - December 21, 2022 6:25 AM
Virgin Orbit is set to make the first ever space flight from UK soil, after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approved a “historic” first launch license from Spaceport Cornwell. With that in hand, the company plans to launch nine satellites from a LauncherOne rocket aboard its “Cosmic Girl” Boeing 747 aircraft in January next year.
Virgin Orbit first announced plans to launch from a site at Cornwall Airport Newquay four years ago, so the launch has been many years in the making. The first flight was originally scheduled in for mid-December, but was postponed due to technical issues and the lack of a license.
Despite those concerns, the CAA said the license was issued within 15 months, “putting the UK framework on a competitive footing with international space regulators.” The regulator added it took “all reasonable steps” to mitigate safety risks. Spaceport Cornwall, meanwhile, received its launch certification last month.
Using a modified Boeing 747 and a tiny rocket, Virgin Orbit will attempt to deliver payloads for government and commercial customers to Earth orbit.
Passant Rabie - 6 January 2023
A modified Boeing aircraft, with a rocket tucked under its wing, will take off from British soil as early as next week, marking the United Kingdom’s first ever orbital launch.
Virgin Orbit is getting ready to send off its Cosmic Girl mothership from Spaceport Cornwall in England after clearing some final regulatory hurdles, paving the way for the historic launch. Cosmic girl is all set for takeoff on Monday, January 9 at 5:16 p.m. ET, with back up windows available on January 13, 15, 19 and 20.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-orbit-cosmic-girl-first-british-orbital-launch-1849958532
Posted by BeauHD on Monday January 09, 2023 02:42PM
Britain has conducted its first orbital space launch from UK soil on Monday evening, making it the privately-owned Virgin Orbit's first international launch. Deutsche Welle reports:
Dubbed “Start Me Up,” as in the Rolling Stones song, the rocket is carrying nine small satellites now making their way into space. The repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft took off from Cornwall in southwestern England at around 10:15 pm local time (2215 GMT) before releasing the rocket around an hour into flight over the Atlantic Ocean, toward the south of Ireland. The nine satellites the rocket will bring into orbit will be used for both civil and defense purposes. The plane, meanwhile, should make its way back to Cornwall.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/09/2241202/uk-conducts-first-satellite-orbital-space-launch
This is likely to be a devastating launch failure for Virgin Orbit.
Eric Berger - 1/9/2023, 4:56 PM
Everything went well during the initial phases of a historic launch attempt by Virgin Orbit on Monday night as the rocket started its journey to space over the Atlantic Ocean, southwest of Ireland.
Shortly after the LauncherOne rocket was dropped from the Cosmic Girl aircraft, its NewtonThree main engine lighted smartly and the first stage climbed toward orbit. The first stage engine's shutdown appeared to be nominal, with the second stage igniting to complete the 8.5-minute burn to low-Earth orbit.
Unfortunately, after this point, the information from Virgin Orbit's webcast and its Twitter feed became confusing. Although the webcast telemetry data suggested that the rocket's altitude started dropping, the host said nothing about this, and instead explained that telemetry data from the rocket could be erratic. And a few minutes later, Virgin Orbit tweeted that its rocket and nine payloads had successfully reached orbit.
Only, they had not. Thirty-five minutes after the rocket's ignition, and long after it should have reached orbit, the company tweeted that a problem had occurred. “We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information,” the company said via Twitter. The earlier tweet, claiming mission success, was deleted.
“The public cannot wait for the UK to come and join that exclusive launch club.”
Eric Berger - 1/9/2023, 6:33 AM
After years of working through a thicket of regulatory matters, Virgin Orbit says it is finally ready to fly its LauncherOne rocket from the United Kingdom.
If all goes well, the modified Boeing 747-400 Cosmic Girl aircraft will take off from a spaceport in Cornwall on Monday evening, with a launch opportunity at 5:16 pm ET (22:16 UTC) over the Atlantic Ocean. This “Start Me Up” mission, bound for low Earth orbit, will carry satellites from seven customers in the United States and United Kingdom.
The air-launch mission has received considerable attention in the United Kingdom because it is being advertised as the first orbital launch from the nation. It will also be the first orbital satellite launch from the UK or Western Europe. However, it will not be a vertical launch from UK soil. Spaceports capable of such launches are under construction in several locations around the nation but probably will not be ready for an orbital launch this year. And unlike British launch companies that aim to use those spaceports, Virgin Orbit's technology was developed, built, and tested in the United States.
Virgin Orbit set to help UK county put pasty-munching image behind it
Lindsay Clark - Mon 9 Jan 2023 15:46 UTC
In what is believed to be the first satellite launch from Western European soil, a hefty Boeing 747 is set to take to the skies from a regional airport on Cornwall's north coast tonight and deliver a payload capable of climbing into orbit.
US firm Virgin Orbit – founded by Brit entrepreneur Richard Branson – expects to see the lumbering aircraft take off from Newquay Airport at just before midnight local time, after which it is set to head out over the Atlantic.
Once off Ireland's southern coast – and cruising at 35,000ft – the modified jet named Cosmic Girl is expected to let go of a Virgin Orbit rocket which promises to employ its first-stage engine to ascend into orbit. Once circling the Earth from an altitude of more than 500km, the privately owned space hardware is set to deliver nine small satellites to begin their celestial work.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/09/virgin_galactic_cosmic_girl_rocket_launch/
Devin Coldewey - 11:00 AM PST January 9, 2023
Update: Despite successfully reaching second engine cut-off and thus past many of the most difficult parts of launch, the Start Me Up mission has suffered “an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit.” Status beyond that is unknown. The Cosmic Girl aircraft and crew are fine. This story is developing.
For all the U.K.’s contributions to research and aerospace, one thing it has never had is an actual orbital launch from its soil. That could change today with a mission going to space via a Virgin Galactic launch system, hoping to make history — and you can watch it right here.
The mission, called “Start Me Up” (and we may guess that Virgin’s Richard Branson got The Rolling Stones’ permission over breakfast), will take off at 10:16 p.m. local time (2:16 PST) from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 1:35 PM PST•January 10, 2023
Virgin Orbit’s much-hyped launch from Cornwall, U.K. on Monday ended in failure, with the company announcing that the mission experienced an “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit.
The “Start Me Up” mission attracted much attention; not only was it the company’s sixth launch, it was also billed as the first-ever space flight from the United Kingdom and the first-ever orbital launch attempt from the new Spaceport Cornwall, in southeast England. (Other U.K.-based rocket companies, like Orbex and Skyrora, are racing to be the first to conduct a vertical rocket launch from U.K. soil.)
But the anomaly may prove to be a very costly mistake for the company, which has been on shaky financial ground since going public in 2021. The first miscalculation occurred shortly after the company completed its merger with special purpose acquisition company NextGen Acquisition Corp. II at the end of 2021. Virgin Orbit only garnered $228 million in gross proceeds from the merger, falling far short of the projected $483 million the company projected it would receive from the transaction.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/10/virgin-orbits-botched-launch-highlights-shaky-financial-future/
The LauncherOne rocket suffered an anomaly about 30 minutes into the mission, spoiling the first attempt at an orbital launch from British soil.
Passant Rabie - 10 January 2023
Britain’s first orbital launch ended in a disappointing failure after Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket suffered an anomaly, destroying the seven payloads on board.
The company’s modified Boeing aircraft, named Cosmic Girl, took off on Monday at 5:02 p.m. ET from Spaceport Cornwall, carrying the LauncherOne booster rocket tucked beneath its left wing.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-orbit-launchone-crashes-first-uk-orbital-launch-1849969272
Some financial analysts believe the company will run out of money in March.
Eric Berger - 1/10/2023, 6:30 AM
On Monday night Virgin Orbit's attempt to launch a rocket from the United Kingdom failed after a problem with the rocket's second-stage engine.
The US-based launch company did not provide any additional details about the cause of the accident, which led to the loss of nine small satellites on board. In the wake of the failure, officials sought to put a brave face on the mission's outcome and Virgin Orbit's future.
“We will work tirelessly to understand the nature of the failure, make corrective actions, and return to orbit as soon as we have completed a full investigation and mission assurance process,” Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit's chief executive officer, said in a prepared statement.
However, the confident words belie a reality that the financial road ahead for Virgin Orbit is a very, very difficult one.
The LauncherOne rocket burned up in Earth's atmosphere, resulting in the destruction of all seven satellites on board.
Passant Rabie - 11 January 2023
After failing to reach orbit and deliver seven payloads on board, Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket fell back to Earth towards its fiery doom. The rocket’s hellish descent was captured on video, revealing the unfortunate journey back from space.
Ramón López, an observer at the Spanish Meteor Network, caught the rocket reentering Earth’s atmosphere from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. He released the footage on YouTube, as well as on Twitter.
https://gizmodo.com/video-virgin-orbit-launcherone-rocket-crashing-1849974959
Aria Alamalhodaei - 8:49 AM PST•January 12, 2023
Virgin Orbit, the unconventional rocket company founded by billionaire Sir Richard Branson, said its mission failure earlier this week was due to an anomaly with the rocket’s second stage.
Although the LauncherOne rocket managed to reach space and achieve stage separation, the anomaly prematurely terminated the first burn of the upper stage’s engines, at an altitude of around 180 kilometers, Virgin said in a statement. Due to this engine anomaly, both the rocket components and payload fell back to Earth and were destroyed upon atmospheric reentry.
The mission payload consisted of nine small satellites, including two CubeSats for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense, a first test satellite from Welsh in-space manufacturing startup Space Forge and what would’ve been Oman’s first earth observation satellite.
The anomaly that aborted the attempt has been identified as a 'premature shutdown of first burn of second stage.'
Andrew Tarantola - January 12, 2023 2:16 PM
Everything was going great until it wasn't in the skies over Cornwall, UK on Monday. Virgin Orbit, the space launch division of Sir Richard Branson's sprawling commercial empire, was in the midst of setting a major milestone for the country and the nation: to be the first orbital launch from European soil. The carrier aircraft, Cosmic Girl, had successfully taken off from Spaceport Cornwall, LauncherOne had cleanly separated from the modified 747 and properly ignited its first stage rocket, blasting it and its payload of satellites into space. But before they could be pushed into their proper orbit by the rocket's second stage, something went wrong. On Thursday, Virgin Orbit leaders provided a preliminary explanation as to just what happened.
“At an altitude of approximately 180 km, the upper stage experienced an anomaly. This anomaly prematurely ended the first burn of the upper stage,” the company told Engadget via email. “This event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor without ever achieving orbit.”
https://www.engadget.com/virgin-orbit-update-cause-start-me-up-mission-failure-191641002.html
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday January 14, 2023 08:34AM
It was meant to be the first-ever orbital mission to take off from the United Kingdom — carried by a Virgin Orbit rocket launched from a private jumbo jet Monday over the Atlantic ocean, according to the BBC.
But instead “at an altitude of approximately 180km (111 miles), the upper stage experienced an anomaly which 'prematurely ended' the first burn. The company said this event ended the mission, with the rocket components and payload falling back to Earth within the approved safety corridor.,,,”
At this point the unmanned rocket became “a slow moving fireball in the sky,” astrodynamics lecturer Marco Langbroek told Gizmodo in an email.
Satellites end up in 'unusable' orbit
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 8 Aug 2022 04:01 UTC
India’s small satellite launch vehicle (SSLV) made a spectacular debut launch on Sunday, but the mission fell short of overall success when two satellites were inserted into the incorrect orbit, rendering them space junk.
The SSLV was developed to carry payloads of up to 500 kg to low earth orbits on an “on-demand basis”. India hopes the craft will let its space agency target commercial launches.
Although it is capable of achieving 500 km orbits, SSLV's Saunday payload was an 135 kg earth observation satellite called EOS-2 and student-designed 8 kg 8U cubesat AzaadiSAT. Both were intended for a 356 km orbit at an inclination of about 37 degrees.
That rocket missed that target.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) identified the root cause of the failure Sunday night: a failure of logic to identify a sensor failure during the rocket stage.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/08/indias_sslv_satellite_unusable_orbit/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2:33 PM PDT August 8, 2022
The maiden flight of India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) ended in failure when the rocket failed to insert its payloads into the target orbit.
India Space Research Organization (ISRO), the country’s space agency, confirmed on Twitter that the satellites “are no longer usable” after the rocket’s kick stage placed the satellites into an elliptical, rather than circular, orbit.
The vehicle took off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sunday. In a video statement, ISRO’s Chairman Shri Somanath confirmed all three rocket stages performed nominally. The rocket also has a terminal stage, the velocity trimming module, which was tasked with deploying the payload. The satellites separated from this final stage at around 356 kilometers, which is when ISRO noticed the anomaly, Somanath said.
Mangalyaan's impressive eight-year run in Martian orbit has likely come to an end, with the Indian probe suffering through recent energy-starving eclipses.
Passant Rabie - 3 October 2022 12:55PM
In orbit around Mars since 2014, India’s Mangalyaan spacecraft has suddenly gone silent. Mission controllers are no longer able to communicate with the orbiter, which is assumed to have run out of fuel and battery power, but only after long-exceeding its mission lifespan.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) appears to be over, with sources confirming to news outlets in India that there would be no way to recover the spacecraft. The mission launched on November 5, 2013, marking India’s first interplanetary mission. The Mangalyaan spacecraft entered Mars orbit on September 23, 2014, and has been observing the Martian atmosphere and surface since then.
https://gizmodo.com/indias-mars-orbiter-silent-running-out-of-fuel-isro-1849609093
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday August 07, 2022 09:34PM
“If you've been following Joe Barnard's rocketry projects for the past few years, you'll know that one of his primary goals has been to propulsively land a model rocket like SpaceX,” reports Hackaday.
“Now, 7 years into the rollercoaster journey, he has finally achieved that goal with the latest version of his Scout rocket.” Many things need to come together to launch AND land a rocket on standard hobby-grade solid fuel rocket motors. A core component is stabilization of the rocket during the entire flight, which achieved using a thrust-vectoring control (TVC) mount for the rocket motors and a custom flight computer loaded with carefully tuned guidance software. Until recently, the TVC mounts were 3D printed, but Joe upgraded it to machined aluminum to eliminate as much flex and play as possible.
https://idle.slashdot.org/story/22/08/08/0136247/i-landed-a-model-rocket-like-spacex-it-took-7-years
“This particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions.”
Eric Berger - 11/2/2020, 3:30 PM
NASA has formally commented (PDF) on a request by a US company to build a megaconstellation of satellites at an altitude of 720km above the Earth's surface, citing concerns about collisions. This appears to be the first time that NASA has publicly commented on such an application for market access, which is pending before the Federal Communications Commission.
“NASA submits this letter during the public comment period for the purpose of providing a better understanding of NASA's concerns with respect to its assets on-orbit, to further mitigate the risks of collisions for the mutual benefit of all involved,” wrote Samantha Fonder, an engineer for the space agency.
George Dvorsky - 9 March 2021 11:50AM
An unusual arrangement involving NASA, the Russian space agency, and a commercial intermediary will see an American astronaut fly to the ISS in a cashless exchange meant to preserve a tradition that dates back over 20 years.
NASA normally pays around $90.25 million for a seat aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but the agency is becoming increasingly reluctant to hand over these large sums of money now that its commercial crew program is officially off the ground. That said, NASA did pay that exorbitant fee last October to transport American astronaut Kate Rubins to the space station, in what was speculated to be the last time U.S. taxpayers would pay Russia for trips to space.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-scoops-a-seat-aboard-russian-rocket-without-having-1846447540
“Let me know if there’s anything else you need—we are here to serve!”
Eric Berger - 8/25/2021, 8:20 AM
In what appear to be legitimate emails from April and May, a senior official of the US rocket company United Launch Alliance (ULA) characterizes the leadership of NASA as “incompetent and unpredictable.”
The statement was made in one of six emails leaked on a hacking forum on Tuesday evening. The leaked emails all involve correspondence between Robbie Sabathier, the vice president of government operations and strategic communications at ULA, and Hasan Solomon, a lobbyist at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a large aerospace union.
The emails make claims, some verifiable and some that seem to be wildly erroneous, about the relationship between NASA, the Trump administration, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and China. The central argument put forth by ULA—a company whose launch business has been damaged by the rise of SpaceX—is that NASA, as led by Trump officials, favored SpaceX for political reasons.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 1:57 PM PDT•September 8, 2022
Rocket Lab and Sierra Space have signed separate agreements with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to explore how their respective flight systems — Rocket Lab’s Electron and Neutron rockets, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane — could be used for superfast cargo delivery on Earth.
The agreements are what’s known as Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), a vehicle to facilitate R&D work between the government and nongovernmental entities like startups and private companies. These specific CRADAs are with the U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), an agency under the aegis of the DOD.
Galactic 05 will mark the company's sixth flight and conclude its debut year of commercial space tourism.
Passant Rabie - 23 October 2023
A crew of researchers is preparing to conduct experiments approximately 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface while on board Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane.
Last week, Richard Branson’s space tourism company announced that its upcoming mission, Galactic 05, is scheduled for a launch window that opens on November 2. The mission will fly planetary scientist Alan Stern and science communicator and bioastronautics researcher Kellie Gerardi, plus a mystery third passenger who’s been identified as a private astronaut of Franco-Italian nationality.
Stern, the principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto, will be training for a future suborbital spaceflight as part of the the space agency’s Flight Opportunities program. During his time on board Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane, Stern will wear a biomedical harness to assess researchers’ reactions to high G-forces and the microgravity environment. Stern will also operate a wide-field visible and ultraviolet camera to test it during suborbital flights.
https://gizmodo.com/virgin-galactic-nasa-pluto-scientist-space-tourism-1850946225
Boeing's Starliner is the latest addition to the surprisingly short list of passenger spacecraft in NASA's history.
Passant Rabie - 7 May 2024
Following a scrub on Monday, Boeing is getting ready to launch its first crew of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, May 10, as part of a $4.3 billion contract with NASA. Perhaps surprisingly, this is only the sixth vehicle owned or funded by NASA to be used throughout the agency’s storied history.
The space agency has been around since 1958, yet only a select few spacecraft have transported NASA astronauts to space. Boeing’s Starliner could join a rather exclusive list should it succeed in docking with the ISS and delivering its precious human cargo. We’ve put together a list of all the spacecraft that have flown, or will soon be flown, with NASA crews on board.
https://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-elite-group-of-spacecraft-that-have-carried-1851459088
Jack Kuhr - July 10, 2024
With the emergence of Starship, New Glenn, and SLS rockets, NASA engineers are reimagining what is possible for future space telescopes and our search for life in the universe.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be NASA’s first telescope designed for transport on super heavy-lift launch vehicles. The National Academies Astro2020 decadal survey recommended the project as its highest-priority next-gen telescope, with a deployment date slated for sometime in the 2040s.
Preliminary design discussions have commenced, and in May, NASA awarded BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman contracts worth a combined $17.5M to advance key stabilizing tech.
Hello out there (echo 3x): Habitable Worlds’ primary mission is in its name. The observatory seeks to answer one of life’s greatest questions: is anyone else out there?
Is our Pale Blue Dot unique in its ability to sustain life, or is life ubiquitous, but too faint to detect with existing instruments?
Something appears to be broken in how NASA procures launch services.
Stephen Clark – Apr 24, 2025 4:15 PM
In an era of reusable rockets and near-daily access to space, NASA is still paying more than it did 30 years ago to launch missions into orbit, according to a study soon to be published in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica.
Launch is becoming more routine. Every few days, SpaceX is sending another batch of Starlink Internet satellites to orbit, and other kinds of missions fill up the rest of SpaceX's launch schedule. SpaceX, alone, has ample capacity to launch the handful of science missions NASA puts into space each year. If supply outpaces demand, shouldn't prices go down?
It's not so simple. NASA is one of many customers jockeying for a slot on SpaceX's launch manifest. The US military is launching more missions than ever before, and SpaceX is about to become the Pentagon's top launch provider. SpaceX already launches more missions for NASA than any other rocket company.
Commercial satellites and SpaceX's own Starlink missions also fill up the launch schedule. So far this year, more than 70 percent of SpaceX's launches have deployed Starlink satellites or Starshield spacecraft, a military version of the Starlink platform for the US government.
So, there's a lot of demand, even if NASA's missions make up only a fraction of SpaceX's launch business.
A real-time journey through the Apollo missions.
This website consists entirely of historical mission material
Ken Shirriff - April 2022
During the Apollo missions to the Moon, a critical task for NASA was determining the spacecraft's position. To accomplish this, they developed a digital ranging system that could determine the distance to the spacecraft, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, with an accuracy of about 1 meter.
The basic idea was to send a radio signal to the spacecraft and determine how long it takes to return. Since the signal traveled at the speed of light, the time delay gives the distance. The main problem is that due to the extreme distance to the spacecraft, a radar-like return pulse would be too weak.2 The ranging system solved this in two ways. First, a complex transponder on the spacecraft sent back an amplified signal. Second, instead of sending a pulse, the system transmitted a long pseudorandom bit sequence. By correlating this sequence over multiple seconds, a weak signal could be extracted from the noise.1
In this blog post I explain this surprisingly-complex ranging system. Generating and correlating pseudorandom sequences was difficult with the transistor circuitry of the 1960s. The ranging codes had to be integrated with Apollo's “Unified S-Band” communication system, which used high-frequency microwave signals. Onboard the spacecraft, a special frequency-multiplying transponder supported Doppler speed measurements. Finally, communicating with the spacecraft required a complex network of ground stations spanning the globe.
https://www.righto.com/2022/04/the-digital-ranging-system-that.html
“Our strategy is being there and being ready to go.”
Eric Berger - 10/3/2023, 2:08 PM
HOUSTON—It has been 18,558 days since the United States landed a spacecraft on the Moon.
And counting.
NASA has not sent a spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. Since that time, the Soviet Union, China, and India have successfully landed there, but the United States has gone elsewhere. There are various reasons for this, including a sharp focus by NASA on exploration of Mars. But now that is finally about to change.
I am standing in a gleaming facility in Houston, a few kilometers from the storied Johnson Space Center, in a facility formally known as the Lunar Production and Operations Center. It is where a small company called Intuitive Machines builds machines designed to land on the Moon. And standing before me, 4.3 meters tall, is a real-life lunar lander.
Like, seriously. This sucker will be launched within a month or two on a Falcon 9 rocket. And one way or another, it is going to the Moon. Maybe it will crash. Maybe it will make its desired soft landing. But one way or another, the United States is finally getting back into the Moon game.
It has been far too long.
Edited by Eric M. Jones and Ken Glover
Commentary by the Editors and
Apollo 11 Astronauts - Neil A. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
Apollo 12 - Astronauts Charles (Pete) Conrad, Jr. and Alan L. Bean
Apollo 14 Astronaut - Edgar D. Mitchell
Apollo 15 Astronauts - David R. Scott and James B. Irwin
Apollo 16 Astronaut - Charles M. Duke
Apollo 17 Astronauts - Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. (Jack) Schmitt
Shockingly, astronauts can curse when in high-stress situations
Richard Speed - Tue 21 May 2024 14:00 UTC
It has been 55 years since Apollo 10 slipped into lunar orbit. The mission? To rehearse nearly every part of Apollo 11's landing except the part where it would actually land.
The pace of the Apollo program is difficult for the Artemis generation to comprehend. Having flown a crew to lunar orbit on Apollo 8 at the end of 1968 and checked out the lunar module with Apollo 9 at the start of 1969, NASA was ready to take the next step with Apollo 10 and do almost everything except perform the touchdown.
The crew consisted of Gemini veterans Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, and John Young. Cernan and Young would go on to land on the Moon in later Apollo missions, while Stafford's next (and last) spaceflight would be the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project of 1975.
The launch of the Saturn V was relatively straightforward, although the so-called pogo motion was described by Cernan in his book The Last Man on the Moon “as if the gods were mixing martinis.”
The pogo shaking continued throughout the launch. Cernan recalled: “The spacecraft was talking to us, and we didn't like what it had to say.” A new vibration replaced it during the burn to send the spacecraft to the Moon. The shaking was so bad that Cernan feared that the mission might be aborted. The infamously foul-mouthed former astronaut wrote: “Quoth the Raven, no fucking way.”
Considering the astronomical occupational risks, life insurance was prohibitively expensive for the first NASA astronauts.
In the early days of the U.S. space program, NASA didn't offer astronauts life insurance for in-flight missions, and private life insurance was extremely expensive. To get around this, the crew of the Apollo 11 mission signed hundreds of autographs for their families to sell if they died. If the mission went wrong, NASA planned to cut communication with the astronauts and let them either suffocate or take their own lives.
October 17, 2023 - Jonny Thomson
It’s 4 p.m. on a Friday, and you’re clock-watching. Working at the desk of a life insurance company is rarely fun, but today feels like it’s dragged on forever. Then, in walks someone new.
“Hi, I’m Neil,” he says, “Neil Armstrong.”
“Hi Neil,” you say. “Before we get started, can I ask what it is you do?”
“Oh, sure, I’m an astronaut.” There’s a pause. You look up at Neil.
“As in, you work at NASA?”
“No, no, I’m an astronaut,” he says. “In a few months, I’m going to try and land on the Moon. It’s never been done before, and I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance of making it. I personally think we’ll probably get back to Earth, at least.”
He smiles. You don’t. This is going to need a phone call.
Trip to moon required Apollo 11 crew to sign U.S. Customs declaration to enter the country
Barbara Blum - (Viewed 23 July 2025)
If you have ever traveled overseas, then returned to the U.S., you likely filled out a “customs declaration” form on the airplane:
“Are you bringing with you: plants, food, animals, soil, disease agents, cell cultures or snails? Declare all articles that you have acquired and are bringing into the United States.”
Who would have guessed the regulations would have been enforced so rigorously in 1969 when three men returned to the U.S. from a rather long business trip – to the moon and back. After more than 477,000 miles roundtrip, they had to file and sign a “General Declaration” for the items they acquired on the trip — specifically, “moon rock and moon dust samples.”
The flight number was typed in as “Apollo 11,” and the departure point was listed as “Moon” with arrival at Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
The Declaration of Health section, asks travelers to list: “Any other condition on board which may lead to the spread of disease.” The answer was “To be determined.”
(First-man-on-the-moon and former UC engineering professor Neil Armstrong died Aug. 25, 2012, at 82 years of age.)
https://magazine.uc.edu/editors_picks/recent_features/armstrong/moonrocks.html
The space agency is investigating the impact of engine plumes on lunar dust and rocks in preparation for future Moon landings.
Passant Rabie - 16 November 2023
The Moon is about to be a busy place, with a series of crewed missions planned by NASA as part of its Artemis program, as well as an influx of upcoming commercial landers eyeing a spot on the lunar surface. Before it sends a fleet of spacecraft to the Moon, however, NASA first wants to understand the impact these future landers might have on the lunar surface.
Using the Pleaides supercomputer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, engineers at the space agency developed new software tools to predict the environmental impact of engine plumes on the Moon for upcoming missions, NASA announced this week. The supercomputer created a simulation of the Apollo 12 lander touching down on the Moon’s surface on November 19, 1969.
As a spacecraft touches down on the Moon, its rocket engines are fired in order to counteract the lunar gravitational force and control its descent towards the surface. The engines blast supersonic plumes of hot gas towards the surface, kicking up dust, rock and other debris. The clouds of dust can obstruct vision, interfere with navigation and instruments on board the spacecraft, or cause damage to the lander and other nearby hardware, according to NASA. The plumes could also erode the surface of the Moon itself.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-apollo-artemis-impact-lunar-surface-study-1851027806
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday December 07, 2022 05:40PM
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine:
Fifty years ago today, astronauts aboard Apollo 17, NASA's last crewed mission to the Moon, took an iconic photograph of our planet. The image became known as the Blue Marble – the first fully illuminated picture of Earth, in color, taken by a person. Now, scientists have re-created that image during a test run of a cutting-edge digital climate model. The model can simulate climatic phenomena, such as storms and ocean eddies, at 1-kilometer resolution, as much as 100 times sharper than typical global simulations.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday October 14, 2023 03:00AM
Richard Tribou reports via Phys.Org:
NASA's goal to reduce the costs of the powerful Space Launch System rocket for its Artemis program by 50% was called “highly unrealistic” and a threat to its deep space exploration plans, according to a report by NASA's Office of the Inspector General released (PDF) on Thursday. The audit says the costs to produce one SLS rocket through its proposed fixed-cost contract will still top $2.5 billion, even though NASA thinks it can shrink that through “workforce reductions, manufacturing and contracting efficiencies, and expanding the SLS's user base.”
“We must be realistic.”
Eric Berger - 1/9/2024, 12:58 PM
Citing “crew safety” as the agency's chief priority, NASA officials outlined a new schedule for the Artemis lunar program on Tuesday. The roughly one-year delay for each of the next three missions came as little surprise, given the significant amount of work left to be done before astronauts can return to the Moon later this decade.
“Safety is our top priority,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a teleconference with reporters.
The new dates, according to NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, are:
“We must be realistic,” Free said. “We're looking at our Starship progress, and need for propellant transfer, the need for numerous landings. We're looking at our spacesuits that we're acquiring in a different manner than we've done before, and developing the new spacesuits as well. It's an incredibly large challenge and a really big deal.”
“In my judgment, the Artemis Program is excessively complex.”
Eric Berger - 1/18/2024, 7:40 AM
On Wednesday, former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, 73, put forward a deferential but determined countenance as he addressed a House subcommittee that was conducting a hearing on NASA's Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon.
“I will be direct,” Griffin said. “In my judgment, the Artemis Program is excessively complex, unrealistically priced, compromises crew safety, poses very high mission risk of completion, and is highly unlikely to be completed in a timely manner even if successful.”
Essentially, Griffin told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, NASA could not afford to faff around with a complex, partly commercial plan to put humans back on the Moon, with an eye toward long-term settlement. Instead, he said, the agency must get back to the basics and get to the Moon as fast as possible. China, which has a competing lunar program, must not be allowed to beat NASA and its allies back to the Moon. The space agency, he said, needed to “restart” the Moon program and chuck out all of the commercial space nonsense.
NASA hopes to launch the Artemis 1 rocket on Monday, November 14, but a potential hurricane is now complicating the agency’s plans.
George Dvorsky - 7 November 2022 4:36PM
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has entered into a hurricane preparedness mode as Subtropical Storm Nicole threatens the peninsula. At the same time, the space agency says its 321-foot-tall SLS rocket will remain at the launch pad—at least for now.
NOAA is currently tracking Nicole, saying the storm will produce heavy rains by Wednesday night and Thursday across the Florida peninsula, and it’s projecting the arrival of tropical storm-force winds at Kennedy Space Center by Wednesday morning. So by the looks of it, Florida is about to experience a late-season Category 1 hurricane.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-artemis-1-storm-nicole-florida-1849754143
A small fleet of CubeStats joins three mannequins, fungus, algae, and more on a trip to the Moon and back
Evan Ackerman - 16 November 2022
NASA’s Artemis-1 mission launched early in the pre-dawn hours this morning, at 1:04 a.m. eastern time, carrying with it the hopes of a space program aiming now to land American astronauts back on the moon. The Orion spacecraft now on its way to the moon also carries with it a lot of CubeSat-sized science. (Some satellites have even, as of press time, begun to tweet.)
And while the objective of Artemis 1 is to show that the launch system and spacecraft can make a trip to the Moon and return safely to Earth, the mission is also a unique opportunity to send a whole spacecraft-load of science into deep space. In addition to the interior of the Orion capsule itself, there are enough nooks and crannies to handle a fair number of CubeSats, and NASA has packed as many experiments as it can into the mission. From radiation phantoms to solar sails to algae to a lunar surface payload, Artemis 1 has a lot going on.
The gigantic SLS blasted off into the dark Florida sky, becoming the most powerful rocket to ever take flight. The Artemis era has officially begun.
George Dvorsky - 15 November 2022
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is officially underway, with SLS lifting off from Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday morning and sending the Orion spacecraft on a 25-day journey to the Moon and back.
An idea conceived more than 12 years ago has finally taken flight. NASA’s 5.75-million-pound Space Launch System thundered away from Launch Pad 39B at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:47 a.m. ET, marking the start of the Artemis 1 mission and kicking off the Artemis lunar program, setting the stage for humans to land on the Moon this decade.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-launches-sls-artemis-1-moon-1849786135
The US space agency had not launched an orbital rocket since 2011.
Eric Berger - 11/16/2022, 12:33 AM
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—The skies were auspicious during the wee hours of Wednesday morning, as the Artemis I mission ticked down its final seconds until liftoff.
Ten, nine, eight seconds …
Shining brightly, near the southern horizon, was the constellation Orion, namesake to NASA's new deep space vehicle.
Seven, six, five …
Hanging almost directly overhead the launch tower was a half Moon, the destination of the Artemis I mission.
Four, three, two, and one …
Suddenly, the night lights came not from the stars pricking the night sky, nor the fat Moon overhead. Rather, the rocket roared to life, its massive solid rocket boosters pushing it upward. As the rocket ascended, it left in its wake a tremendous pillar of exhaust, evocative of Jack's giant beanstalk. Several seconds after liftoff, the sound and fury and acoustic energy of the Space Launch System thundered outward.
It provides NASA the data it needs to ensure astronauts can fly safely aboard the SLS and the Orion vehicle.
Mariella Moon - November 16, 2022 3:43 AM
NASA's Artemis 1 mission has finally launched after several delays caused by engine problems, fuel leaks and Mother Nature giving the agency no choice but to reschedule due to tropical storms. This is the first time NASA's Space Launch System, its most powerful rocket yet, and Orion crew vehicle are flying together — it also officially marks the beginning of the agency's Artemis program, which aims to take humanity back to the Moon.
There was a tense moment before this latest (and successful) launch attempt when NASA was unsure if the rocket would lift off. The launch team discovered a leak on the launch tower's liquid hydrogen replenish valve, and it took some time to tighten the bolts around it. In addition, the US Space Force had to fix the radar that was going to track the rocket's launch, because it suddenly went offline. In the end, the ground crew managed to fix the hydrogen leak, and Space Force found that the radar issue was caused by a bad Ethernet switch.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-artemis-1-mission-successful-launch-084330480.html
Amazon and Cisco even managed to sneak Alexa and Webex on board
Brandon Vigliarolo - Fri 18 Nov 2022 07:30 UTC
After several delays, NASA's Artemis I mission has finally launched and the Orion spacecraft is on its way to an orbital date with the Moon. There aren't any human passengers aboard, but that doesn't mean the mission is only about stress testing a new crew capsule.
The primary objective of the first Artemis mission is to test Orion's heat shield, mission operations and retrieval process – but there's a bunch of other stuff on board to test other craft functions too, and NASA isn't wasting the mission.
Four of 10 cubesats that launched last week have experienced serious problems, with one failing outright and the remaining three likely doomed as well.
Passant Rabie - November 21, 2022
Japan’s tiny lunar lander never got to touch down on the Moon, as it failed to communicate with ground controllers shortly after launching aboard NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The spacecraft was one of 10 cubesats that participated in the Artemis 1 launch, which endured several delays that may have affected the cubesats’ performance in space.
On Monday, the Japanese space agency JAXA announced that it was unable to receive radio signals from its OMOTENASHI cubesat, officially declaring a mission failure. “We will investigate the cause of this incident and proceed with the future operation plan while consulting with the relevant parties,” the OMOTENASHI team wrote on twitter.
https://gizmodo.com/cubesats-secondary-payloads-failure-sls-launch-artemis-1849808636
The low-cost Luna-H Map cubesat failed to fire its thruster during a planned lunar flyby, but NASA says all is not lost.
Passant Rabie - 23 November 2022 12:30PM
The inaugural launch of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) sent the Orion capsule on a historic mission to the Moon and back, but the rocket’s secondary payloads have been faltering.
NASA’s Luna-H Map cubesat launched aboard SLS on November 16 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, along with 9 other miniature satellites as secondary payloads. The lunar cubesat is tasked with a mission to measure the amount of water-ice hiding in the Moon’s shadowed regions. However, the tiny probe failed to perform a crucial maneuver on Monday ahead of its planned lunar flyby. NASA is still hoping to resolve Luna-H Map’s glitch over the next few months in an effort to salvage the mission, the space agency wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
https://gizmodo.com/artemis-1-luna-h-map-satellite-experiencing-problems-1849816524
“I would say that we’re going to try our best to get there.”
Eric Berger - 12/5/2022, 4:00 AM
The launch of the Artemis I mission in mid-November was spectacular, and NASA's Orion spacecraft has performed nearly flawlessly ever since. If all goes as anticipated—and there is no reason to believe it won't—Orion will splash down in calm seas off the California coast this weekend.
This exploration mission has provided dazzling photos of Earth and the Moon and offered a promise that humans will soon fly in deep space again. So the question for NASA, then, is when can we expect an encore?
Realistically, a follow-up to Artemis I is probably at least two years away. Most likely, the Artemis II mission will not happen before early 2025, although NASA is not giving up hope on launching humans into deep space in 2024.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/artemis-i-has-finally-launched-what-comes-next/
New photos from Orion offer spectacular views of the Moon and lunar environment, the likes of which haven't been seen in decades.
George Dvorsky - 7 December 2022
Orion’s most recent accomplishments include a new distance record, a close flyby of the Moon, and a trajectory correction maneuver that sent the uncrewed capsule on its journey back to Earth. Not surprisingly, these milestone events made for some excellent photo opportunities.
https://gizmodo.com/orion-artemis-1-moon-flyby-photos-nasa-1849863344
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday March 07, 2023 11:00PM from the exceeding-expectations dept.
NASA's Orion spacecraft performed better than expected on its first deep-space flight despite experiencing unpredicted loss of its heat shield material. Space.com reports:
During Tuesday's call, NASA program managers revealed that Orion's heat shield did not perform as expected, losing more material than the agency had planned for. Nevertheless, NASA leadership is confident that everything will be ready for the crewed around-the-moon flight of Artemis 2, which is planned for next year. Howard Hu, manager of NASA's Orion Program, lauded the crew module's performance during the test flight, noting that NASA was able to accomplish 161 overall test objectives planned for the mission, even adding an additional 21 during the flight based on the spacecraft's performance.
The Luna-H Map cubesat launched on board the Artemis 1 mission in November 2022, but failed to fire its engines shortly after its delayed liftoff.
Passant Rabie - 3 May 2023
A shoebox-sized satellite may soon meet its untimely death after failing to fire its thrusters. The cubesat may have been compromised as it excessively waited for launch on board NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in advance of the Artemis 1 mission last year.
Engineers have been working to try and salvage the LunaH-Map cubesat mission, hoping to engage its propulsion system and give it a second chance at entering lunar orbit. It may be too late for the tiny satellite, however, as the team behind the mission could end its operations at the end of this month.
Speaking at the Interplanetary Small Satellite Conference on Monday, Craig Hardgrove, the mission’s principal investigator at Arizona State University, revealed that the team would officially call off the mission by the end of May if they cannot ignite the cubesat’s propulsion system, SpaceNews reported.
https://gizmodo.com/engineers-may-pull-plug-struggling-artemis-cubesat-1850400290
The SLS upper stage will send a crewed Orion spacecraft on a 10-day journey to the Moon and back as early as late next year.
Passant Rabie - 11 April 2023 5:10PM
NASA’s Artemis 2 is feeling realer by the minute. The next upper stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket is now ready for tests at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in advance of the upcoming mission.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has started testing the second Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), which recently came out of its storage and moved into a test cell at the Delta Operation Center for pre-flight testing and preparations, according to ULA.
ICPS is the upper stage of NASA’s SLS rocket, which the space agency used to send the Orion spacecraft on an uncrewed trip to the Moon in November 2022 for its Artemis 1 mission. But for the follow-up mission, slated for launch in 2025, another ICPS will be used to transport the Orion spacecraft while it’s carrying four astronauts on board.
https://gizmodo.com/upper-stage-nasa-artemis-sls-megarocket-ready-tests-1850324870
Mobile launcher 1 sustained some damage from the megarocket's inaugural blastoff in November 2022.
Passant Rabie - 22 June 2023
Launch pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is being prepped for the first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years, with repairs underway to fix the damage caused by the inaugural flight of the space agency’s lunar program.
Engineers with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program are completing a set of upgrades to mobile launcher 1 and launch pad 39B in anticipation of the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which is set to launch in late 2024, according to NASA. The space agency is also working to fix the elevators on the mobile launcher, which sustained damage during the launch of Artemis 1.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off on November 16, 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion capsule on a 25.5-day journey to the Moon and back. The launch of the Artemis program’s first mission went smoothly, save for some damage to the mobile launcher caused by the massive rocket’s powerful blast.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-progresses-sls-pad-repairs-upgrades-artemis-2-1850565244
“We’re getting back into testing, which is what we love.”
Stephen Clark - 8/18/2023, 4:30 AM
NASA's repaired and upgraded mobile launch platform moved back to its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center this week. This marks a transition from refurbishment after the launch of the Artemis I mission last year into preparations for Artemis II—the Moon program's first flight with astronauts.
The giant structure sustained more damage than expected during the first launch of NASA's Space Launch System rocket last November. The 380-foot-tall (116-meter) launch tower has been parked just north of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building since January, undergoing repairs and modifications to prepare it for its next use on Artemis II.
That work is now largely complete, and NASA's Apollo-era crawler-transporter began moving the launch platform back to Launch Complex 39B on Wednesday for about four months of testing. Then, if all goes well, NASA will declare the structure ready for stacking of the SLS Moon rocket for Artemis II.
“What’s the mood? I think folks are really ready to get back into pad operations,” said Jeremy Parsons, deputy manager of NASA's exploration ground systems program at Kennedy. “They’re really ready to get back into stacking. It’s been a push, but I can’t be more proud of them.”
The Artemis 2 crew went through emergency drills as part of preparation for the mission to the Moon and back.
Passant Rabie - 20 December 2023
Four astronauts are getting ready to travel to the Moon and back for NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, and the space agency is making sure that the crew is well-prepared in case things go wrong during the 10-day journey through space.
The Artemis 2 crew is undergoing emergency training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, practicing procedures on how to exit the Orion spacecraft. This week, NASA released a video of the astronauts sliding down from an Orion mockup in order to learn how to make their way out of the spacecraft in case of an emergency after Orion splashes down in the Pacific Ocean.
NASA astronauts Victor Glover, who will serve as pilot for the mission, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, can be seen taking turns in the video posted on X (formerly Twitter) sliding down to safety.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-moon-astronaut-emergency-training-orion-1851114735
The crew of Artemis 2 are preparing to become the first humans to fly to the moon since 1972. The Artemis program faces many challenges but allowing people to learn about the program should not be one of them. Targeting the word 'Artemis' no matter what the context, a reckless anti-piracy sweep has demanded Google deindexing against dozens of innocent platforms for simply trying to report on mankind's quest for knowledge.
Andy Maxwell - 26 December 2023
There’s no question that content creators should have the ability and means to protect their work.
Those who rely on easily copied images to generate income face a stark choice; allow third-parties to illegally profit from illicit copies that may even outrank the originals in Google search, or spend time and money fighting back.
For an increasing number of OnlyFans and Instagram models, hiring companies that offer cut-price DMCA takedown services may seem like the perfect solution. The reality is that cheap can come at a cost.
Reckless takedown practices, with creators’ names necessarily associated with them, are punishing other innocent creators by demanding that all record of their work is deindexed from Google search.
https://torrentfreak.com/reckless-dmca-deindexing-pushes-nasas-artemis-towards-black-hole-231226/
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday December 28, 2023 11:00PM
Andy Maxwell reports via TorrentFreak:
As the crew of Artemis 2 prepare to become the first humans to fly to the moon since 1972, the possibilities of space travel are once again igniting imaginations globally. More than 92% of internet users who want to learn more about this historic mission and the program in general are statistically likely to use Google search. Behind the scenes, however, the ability to find relevant content is under attack. Blundering DMCA takedown notices sent by a company calling itself DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. claim to protect the rights of an OnlyFans/Instagram model working under the name 'Artemis'. Instead, keyword-based systems that fail to discriminate between copyright-infringing content and that referencing the word Artemis in any other context, are flooding towards Google. They contain demands to completely deindex non-infringing, unrelated content, produced by innocent third parties all over the world.
Philip Sloss - April 2, 2024
NASA is working with Orion spacecraft prime contractor Lockheed Martin to resolve a handful of issues that came up late last year during ground testing, forcing the space agency to delay the launch readiness target date for its Artemis II circumlunar mission to September 2025. The Lockheed Martin assembly, test, and launch operations (ATLO) team at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is reinstalling some electronics and implementing workarounds for others affected by an electrical circuit flaw found in digital motor controllers on the spacecraft.
While a resolution to that issue appears to be getting closer, the Orion program and contractor teams are also working through the corrective actions process for a problem with how the Orion batteries handle the shock of an extreme abort case. Resolution of both issues will be necessary to allow Lockheed Martin’s production team to move towards finishing assembly and test of the spacecraft before turning it over to Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) for Artemis II launch processing. Currently, the teams are working to meet the EGS handover milestone around the end of summer this year.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/04/resolving-artemis-ii-issues/
Astronauts won't return to the satellite's surface until 2027.
Anna Washenko - Thu, Dec 5, 2024, 2:41 PM PST
NASA announced a new schedule for its upcoming Artemis missions to send astronauts to the moon. This is the second delay to these crewed missions after NASA's postponed the timeline in January of this year. The agency said it now aims to launch the Artemis 2 mission in April 2026, as well as pushing back the Artemis 3 mission to mid-2027.
The delay was partly caused by issues with the Orion spacecraft's heat shield during the uncrewed Artemis 1 test flight. During that mission, charred material on the heat shield wore away in an unexpected manner. Data from inside the capsule showed that if crew had been present during that flight, the temperatures would still have been safe even though the heat shield performed differently to expectations. But that's the sort of thing you don't want to take chances with once astronauts are aboard.
“Victor, Christina, Jeremy and I have been following every aspect of this decision and we are thankful for the openness of NASA to weigh all options and make decisions in the best interest of human spaceflight,” said Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut who will head the Artemis II mission. “We are excited to fly Artemis 2 and continue paving the way for sustained human exploration of the Moon and Mars.” The other three Artemis 2 crew members are Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.
Moonquakes were first detected on the Moon's near side during the Apollo era, but there's little information on the tremors taking place at the south pole.
Passant Rabie - 17 April 2024
NASA is building a compact seismometer for its upcoming Artemis 3 mission to the Moon, hoping to learn more about the internal structure of the dusty satellite from its lunar tremors.
The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) was selected as one of the first three potential payloads for Artemis 3, which is scheduled for launch in 2026. LEMS is an autonomous, self-sustaining station that’s designed to withstand the cold lunar night and operate during the day, continuously monitoring ground motion from moonquakes.
The instrument is designed to sniff out moonquakes for a period of three months to up to two years, measuring the Moon’s geophysical activity over long durations of time.
Moonquakes are primarily the result of temperature swings on the Moon, which vary from 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) during the day to -208° F (-133 C) at night. These extreme temperature variations cause the Moon’s surface to expand when it’s hot and contract when it’s cold, causing it to shake and crack.
https://gizmodo.com/artemis-lunar-south-pole-moonquake-detector-1851415972
If it were to happen, a revised Artemis III mission could echo Apollo 9.
Eric Berger - 4/19/2024, 8:20 AM
Although NASA is unlikely to speak about it publicly any time soon, the space agency is privately considering modifications to its Artemis plan to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon later this decade.
Multiple sources have confirmed that NASA is studying alternatives to the planned Artemis III landing of two astronauts on the Moon, nominally scheduled for September 2026, due to concerns about hardware readiness and mission complexity.
Under one of the options, astronauts would launch into low-Earth orbit inside an Orion spacecraft and rendezvous there with a Starship vehicle, separately launched by SpaceX. During this mission, similar to Apollo 9, a precursor to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the crew would validate the ability of Orion and Starship to dock and test habitability inside Starship. The crew would then return to Earth. In another option NASA is considering, a crew would launch in Orion and fly to a small space station near the Moon, the Lunar Gateway, and then return to Earth.
To discuss these options, Ars asked for an interview with Catherine Koerner, a deputy associate administrator who oversees Exploration Systems Development for NASA. Instead, the space agency offered a noncommittal statement.
“NASA continues to work toward the Artemis II crewed test flight in September of 2025 and the Artemis III test flight to land astronauts near the lunar South Pole in September of 2026,” the statement read. “The agency evaluates element progress and status on a daily basis and uses that data to make decisions at the right time for each mission as a part of prudent programmatic and mission management. Should a particular hardware element not be available to support a mission as scheduled or planned, NASA will evaluate the readiness of available hardware for options to make those decisions with crew safety as the number one priority.”
NASA will run out of RS-25s to drop into the ocean unless the production line restarts
Richard Speed - Wed 4 Oct 2023 16:01 UTC
A test run of the engines powering NASA's Moon rocket is due to kick off this week, an essential milestone since the Space Shuttle cast-offs will need to be replaced – beginning with Artemis V.
NASA's Artemis uses parts left over from the Space Shuttle program. It is notable for having managed to turn the Space Shuttle Main Engines from marvels of reusability into disposable units to be dumped into the ocean during launch, along with the rest of the core stage.
However, only a finite number of engines are available, and NASA has contracted Aerojet Rocketdyne to restart production of the RS-25 engine.
The new engines differ from the Space Shuttle originals. Reusability is no longer required, but extra power is. The engines must also be cheaper to produce so a new design is needed. This design must also be certified, hence the testing.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/04/space_shuttle_engine_test/
NASA is set to kick off a series of tests to ensure the updated RS-25 engine is ready and reliable for powering the SLS megarocket.
George Dvorsky - 4 October 2023
NASA is gearing up to start a crucial series of tests on the updated RS-25 engine, which will power the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon.
The RS-25 engine, pivotal during the Space Shuttle era, continues to be a key focus as NASA looks to future Artemis missions. The upcoming certification tests, scheduled to extend into 2024, will take place at the Fred Haise Test Stand, situated within NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. A total of 12 tests are lined up, each spanning at least 500 seconds to reflect genuine launch durations, as NASA outlined in a press release.
The test series will use the developmental engine E0525 to finalize and certify the RS-25's design. This engine’s components match the design features of those used during the initial certification test series, completed at Stennis in June. Through these tests, NASA will gather essential data on the engine’s performance and reliability.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-megarocket-rs-25-upgraded-engine-tests-1850898656
“The team reviewed the forecast and determined the rocket will remain at the pad.”
Eric Berger - 11/8/2022, 5:44 AM
As subtropical storm Nicole moved across the Atlantic Ocean toward Florida on Monday afternoon, NASA confirmed that its Artemis I mission would remain at the launch pad along the state's east coast.
“Based on current forecast data, managers have determined the Space Launch System rocket and Orion will remain at Launch Pad 39B,” the agency said.
The risks to these large and costly vehicles are non-zero, however, and appear to be rising as Nicole starts to strengthen. The space agency's primary concern from tropical systems is winds. Much of the rocket's structure is pretty robust, such as its tank-like solid rocket boosters. But there are sensitive elements prone to damage from debris and wearing effects due to high winds inside a tropical system.
The SLS and Orion spacecraft will remain on the launch pad as Tropical Storm Nicole approaches.
Kris Holt - November 9, 2022 10:25 AM
NASA has once again delayed the launch of Artemis 1 in the face of a potentially dangerous weather system. The agency had penciled in the launch for the early morning of November 14th, but it's now retargeting liftoff for November 16th. The current two-hour launch window opens at 1:04AM ET. There's a backup launch opportunity scheduled for November 19th.
The latest delay is due to the threat posed by Tropical Storm Nicole. The new launch window is dependent on conditions being safe enough for NASA employees to return to work, as well as inspections after the weather system has passed. The agency says that pushing back the launch date “will allow the workforce to tend to the needs of their families and homes, and provide sufficient logistical time to get back into launch status following the storm.”
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-artemis-1-launch-delay-tropical-storm-nicole-152545294.html
The Artemis 1 mission is now scheduled to blast off on Wednesday, November 16, but that assumes the incoming storm doesn't damage NASA's megarocket.
George Dvorsky - 9 November 2022 10:45AM
Monday, November 14 was supposed to be the day that the Space Launch System finally takes flight, but a late-season tropical storm has forced NASA to bump the launch back, but thankfully not by a whole lot. The space agency opted to leave SLS on the launch pad, saying it’s designed to withstand storms of this magnitude.
I’m in the Eastern Time Zone, so I was all ready to stay up late on Sunday to watch the early Monday morning Artemis 1 launch, but it now appears that I’ll have to stay up late on Tuesday to watch—hopefully—a very early Wednesday morning launch. I have an upstart tropical storm named Nicole to thank for this disruption in my schedule. Of course, the folks on the ground at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, who are in batten-down-the-hatches mode, have it worse. That said, they won’t be shuttling the rocket back to the garage for shelter, which means SLS will have to ride out the storm.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-1-will-remain-on-pad-hurricane-nicole-1849761881
Just call it the Sad Launch System
Katyanna Quach - Tue 8 Nov 2022 23:06 UTC
NASA's plans to launch its Space Launch System (SLS) super rocket this November from the Kennedy Space Center may be foiled yet again if a tropical storm continues gaining strength on its predicted path toward Florida.
The American space agency is working with the US Space Force and the National Hurricane Center to monitor Subtropical Storm Nicole, which is forecast to hit Cape Canaveral in about 96 hours at time of writing. Staff are preparing to hunker down as surface winds could reach 58 mph (93 kph) on the Florida shoreline, according to the Space Launch Delta 45 unit of the Space Force.
NASA appears to be keeping the 322-foot (98-metre) Space Launch System on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center for now. “Based on current forecast data, managers have determined the Space Launch System rocket and Orion will remain at Launch Pad 39B,” it said in a statement on Monday.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/08/nasa_sls_storm_nicole/
The space agency may need to go through an additional process to clear its rocket for launch due to Tropical Storm Nicole.
Passant Rabie - 10 November 2022 5:26PM
Tropical Storm Nicole made landfall as a hurricane early Thursday morning, unleashing strong winds on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) where the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was left stranded on the launchpad.
In anticipation of the storm, NASA further delayed the launch of the SLS rocket for its Artemis 1 mission to the Moon. Instead of taking off on November 14, the rocket’s liftoff was delayed to no earlier than November 16 “pending safe conditions for employees to return to work, as well as inspections after the storm has passed,” NASA wrote in a blog. However, rather than rolling the SLS rocket back to the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building for shelter, the space agency opted to keep it on the launchpad to weather the storm.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-moon-rocket-nicole-florida-artemis-1849769476
NASA likely to begin inspections of the rocket and spacecraft later today.
Eric Berger - 11/10/2022, 7:10 AM
Early on Thursday morning, Hurricane Nicole made landfall near Vero Beach on Florida's eastern coast. Because Nicole had a very large eye, nearly 60 miles in diameter, its strongest winds were located well to the north of this landfalling position.
As a result of this, Kennedy Space Center took some of the most intense wind gusts from Nicole late on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. While such winds from a Category 1 hurricane are unlikely to damage facilities, they are of concern because the space agency left its Artemis I mission—consisting of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft—exposed on a pad at Launch Complex-39B. The pad is a stone's throw from the Atlantic Ocean.
How intense were the winds? The National Weather Service hosts data from NASA sensors attached to this launch pad's three lighting towers on a public website. It can be a little difficult to interpret the readings because there are sensors at altitudes varying from 132 feet to 457 feet. Most of the publicly available data appears to come from an altitude of about 230 feet, however, which would represent the area of the Space Launch System rocket where the core stage is attached to the upper stage. The entire stack reaches a height of about 370 feet above the ground.
“If we didn’t design it to be out there in harsh weather we picked the wrong launch spot.”
Eric Berger - 11/11/2022, 2:28 PM
NASA said on Friday that its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft appear to have survived their encounter with Hurricane Nicole this week without incurring any significant damage.
“Right now there’s nothing preventing us from getting to the 16th,” said Jim Free, the engineer who leads the development of exploration systems for NASA. To that end, the space agency is working toward a launch at 1:04 am ET (06:04 UTC) on Wednesday, from Kennedy Space Center. This Artemis I mission will send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon in preparation for human missions later this decade.
Free said Nicole produced significant winds over the spaceport in Florida. However, he did not provide precise numbers, nor exact design specifications that the Space Launch System rocket is designed to withstand. However, Free said that at no point was the rocket exposed to wind gusts above its design limits. This appears to check out, based on publicly available data. For example, the National Weather Service reported a maximum wind gust of 93 mph at an altitude of 200 feet at the rocket's launch pad, which is close to, but not above, the rocket's limit of 97 mph at that height (see full SLS design specifications for weather).
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday December 06, 2020 09:34AM
The Verge reports that a power component failed on the Orion deep-space crew capsule that NASA hopes to launch (unmanned) from its Space Launch System (or SLS) in late 2021, in a mission called Artemis 1.
The problem? It's buried deep within one of the spacecraft's power/data units (or PDUs) within the adapter that connects the capsule to its power/propulsion trunk “service module,” so there's no easy way to fix it:
“The agency continues to monitor the rise of COVID cases in the Kennedy area.”
Eric Berger - 8/31/2021, 6:07 AM
Publicly, NASA is still holding on to the possibility of a 2021 launch date for the debut flight of its Space Launch System rocket. This week, an agency spokesperson told Ars that “NASA is working toward a launch for the Artemis I mission by the end of this year.”
However, a source said the best-case scenario for launching the Artemis 1 mission is spring of next year, with summer being the more realistic target for a test flight of the heavy lift rocket and Orion spacecraft. The space agency is already running about two months behind internal targets for testing and integrating the rocket at Kennedy Space Center, and the critical pre-flight tests remain ahead.
The inaugural launch of SLS will happen no earlier than February 12, 2022.
George Dvorsky - 22 October 2021 4:15PM
Like a cherry placed atop a delicious sundae, NASA technicians have successfully mounted the Orion spacecraft onto the Space Launch System rocket. It’s a major milestone, as the space agency prepares for the upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon.
The completed stacking of the SLS rocket has resulted in a structure that stands 332 feet (101 meters) tall. A team of NASA engineers and technicians finished the installation at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida shortly before midnight on October 21. The launch abort system was also secured to the rocket, in addition to the 74,000-pound (33.5-metric ton) Orion spacecraft. The stacking process started earlier this year, and its completion represents a major milestone for NASA.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-completes-stacking-of-next-gen-rocket-revealing-a-1847919354
The two torsos, named “Helga” and “Zohar,” will journey to the Moon ahead of the crewed Artemis missions.
Passant Rabie - 2 May 2022 11:55AM
Helga and Zohar are headed for a trip around the Moon on an important mission, measuring radiation risks for female astronauts for the first time.
The inanimate pair are manikins modeled after the body of an adult woman. For the Artemis 1 mission, in which an uncrewed Orion capsule will travel to the Moon and back, one of the manikins will be outfitted with a newly developed radiation protection vest. Helga and Zohar, as they’re called, won’t be alone, as they’ll be joined by a third manikin that will collect data about flight accelerations and vibrations. Artemis 1 is scheduled to blast off later this year.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-is-sending-artificial-female-bodies-to-the-moon-to-1848861579
The uncrewed Artemis 1 capsule is equipped with 16 cameras, which it will use to snap pictures and gather data during its journey to the Moon and back.
Passant Rabie - 16 November 2022
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is in full swing, with the agency’s SLS megarocket blasting off earlier this morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The freshly launched Orion spacecraft is heading to the Moon, but it captured a sweet view of Earth before saying goodbye.
Orion will travel for 25 days, logging 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) beyond the Moon before returning to Earth. During the first few hours of its trip, Orion captured gorgeous views of our home planet glimmering in a soft shade of blue against the dark backdrop of space.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-moon-bound-orion-capsule-view-earth-1849790927
Japan's space agency has been unable to communicate with one of two cubesats it launched earlier this week as part of the Artemis 1 mission.
Passant Rabie - 17 November 2022
The launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission sent the Orion capsule on a journey to the Moon, in addition to 10 cubesats included as secondary payloads. The Space Launch System’s upper stage successfully deployed the tiny satellites yesterday, but one of them appears to be malfunctioning.
The jumbo Moon rocket took off on Wednesday at at 1:47 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, officially kickstarting NASA’s Artemis Moon program. The rocket skillfully placed the Orion capsule in space for its 25.5 day journey to the Moon and back, in a mission that will prepare NASA for future crewed missions to the lunar surface.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-artemis-cubesats-jaxa-malfunction-1849796055
NASA's Artemis 1 capsule is en route to the Moon, where it’s expected to break a number of spacefaring records—including one set during Apollo 13.
George Dvorsky - 17 November 2022
NASA’s Space Launch System blasted off on Wednesday, sending the uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a 25-day journey to the Moon and back. Orion should reach its destination early next week, at which time it’ll perform some intricate orbital acrobatics and set a number of spacefaring records in the process.
We’re in day two of Artemis 1, and the mission appears to be going well. SLS lit up the Florida sky early Wednesday morning, using its 8.8 million pounds of thrust to propel the $20 billion Orion capsule to space. Following a successful trans-lunar injection, Orion separated from the rocket’s Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage some two hours into the mission. The capsule, with its trusty companion, the European Service Module (ESM), are now cruising to the Moon.
https://gizmodo.com/orion-spacecraft-nasa-moon-journey-1849796028
NASA's Moon-bound capsule has no shortage of cameras, a number of which have important jobs to do.
Kevin Hurler - 18 November 2022
The Artemis era has officially begun following the successful launch of NASA’s Space Launch System, which delivered the Orion capsule to space. As the spacecraft begins its first uncrewed trip to the Moon and back, NASA’s on-board cameras will document the entire journey.
NASA has access to 16 cameras aboard Orion that it’s using to document Artemis 1. Orion is currently on a 25-day mission to a point 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) past the Moon and back, and NASA’s cameras will help the agency keep an eye on how the spacecraft handles the trip before astronauts climb aboard for future Artemis missions.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-orion-artemis-cameras-navigation-1849797208
The Artemis 1 spacecraft was just 81 miles above the lunar surface at one point.
Kris Holt - November 21, 2022 1:27 PM
NASA's Orion spacecraft has successfully completed one of the key maneuvers of its maiden journey: a flyby of the Moon during which it got as close as 81 miles to the lunar surface. This was important for a few reasons, not least because it marked a critical test for the propulsion system.
Orion carried out four trajectory correction burns on its way to the Moon, but this time around, the orbital maneuvering system engine fired for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. This accelerated Orion at a rate of more than 580MPH. At the time the burn started, the uncrewed spacecraft was traveling at 5,023MPH, 238 miles above the Moon. Shortly after the burn, it was 81 miles above the lunar surface and it was traveling at 5,102MPH.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-orion-moon-flyby-artemis-1-182736221.html
Posted by msmash on Monday November 21, 2022 08:18AM
Nasa's Orion capsule reached the moon on Monday, whipping around the back side and passing within 80 miles of the surface on its way to a record-breaking lunar orbit. From a report:
The close approach occurred as the crew capsule and its three test dummies were on the far side of the moon. Because of the half-hour communication blackout, flight controllers in Houston did not know if the critical engine firing went well until the capsule emerged from behind the moon, more than 232,000 miles from Earth.
As expected, NASA lost contact with the spacecraft for 34 minutes as Orion passed behind the Moon.
George Dvorsky - November 21, 2022
The Artemis 1 mission continues to unfold as planned, with the uncrewed Orion capsule successfully performing a critical course correction maneuver Monday morning. NASA’s capsule came to within 80 miles of the lunar surface during the flyby, in what will be Orion’s closest approach.
The uncrewed Artemis 1 capsule, launched on November 16, entered into the lunar sphere of influence at 2:09 p.m. (all times Eastern) on Sunday and is now in the process of reaching its ultimate destination: distant retrograde orbit. Orion needs to perform two powered burns to enter DRO, the first of happened Monday morning, according to a NASA blog post.
https://gizmodo.com/orion-artemis-1-first-lunar-flyby-nasa-1849808053
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday November 29, 2022 02:00AM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC:
The US space agency's Orion capsule has reached a key milestone on its demonstration mission around the Moon. On Monday, it moved some 430,000km (270,000 miles) beyond the Earth – the furthest any spacecraft designed to carry humans has travelled. The ship is uncrewed on this occasion, but if it completes the current flight without incident, astronauts will be on the next outing in two years' time. […] The previous record for the most distant point reached by a human-rated spacecraft was set by the Apollo-13 mission in April 1970. It went out to 400,171km (248,655 miles) from Earth as its crew fought to navigate their way home following an explosion in their capsule's service module.
The course correction maneuver occurred on Thursday afternoon, setting the stage for a second up-close lunar flyby.
George Dvorsky - 1 December 2022 12:30PM / Updated 1 December 2022 5:02PM
It’s day 16 of the 25.5-day Artemis 1 mission, which means it’s time for the Orion spacecraft to begin its journey back home. The uncrewed capsule departed distant retrograde orbit on Thursday afternoon following a successful exit burn.
Update: December 1, 5:02 p.m. ET: NASA declared a “nominal burn,” which began at 4:54 p.m. ET and lasted for one minute and 45 seconds. Orion will now leave distant retrograde orbit and perform a flyby of the Moon as it charts a course back home.
https://gizmodo.com/orion-departs-moon-nasa-artemis-1849840835
Orion's return flyby burn began today at 11:43 a.m. ET, during which time ground controllers temporarily and expectedly lost contact with the capsule.
George Dvorsky - 5 December 2022 10:40AM / Updated 5 December 2022 12:20PM
NASA’s Orion spacecraft has executed its final close flyby of the Moon, in what is expected to be the last major course correction of the Artemis 1 mission.
Update: 12:20 p.m. ET: Orion successfully completed its return flyby burn, which began at 11:43 a.m. ET and lasted for 3 minutes and 27 seconds. The maneuver set up the spacecraft for its return journey to Earth.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-orion-perform-final-lunar-flyby-return-1849853452
The Artemis 1 spacecraft is returning from its historic trip to the Moon, with splashdown scheduled for Sunday,
December 11 at 12:40 p.m. ET. - George Dvorsky
All good things come to an end, including NASA’s wildly successful Artemis 1 mission to the Moon and back. At least, it’s been successful so far, as Orion must still perform a harrowing reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. You can follow the action live right here.
NASA’s coverage of this event is scheduled to begin on Sunday at 11:00 a.m. (all times Eastern), with the live broadcast available on NASA TV, YouTube and at the live stream below. The coverage will continue past Orion’s expected landing time, 12:40 p.m., as NASA’s Mission Control in Houston will hand the mission responsibilities over to the Exploration Ground Systems recovery team.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-orion-splashdown-nasa-artemis-1849871812
“Reentry is our priority-one objective for a reason.”
Eric Berger - 12/9/2022, 6:27 AM
NASA's Artemis I mission is nearly complete, and so far Orion's daring flight far beyond the Moon has gone about as well as the space agency could hope. However, to get a passing grade, the mission must still ace its final test.
This final exam will come on Sunday, when the spacecraft starts to enter Earth's atmosphere at 12:20 pm ET (17:20 UTC). During the course of the next 20 minutes, before Orion splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, it will need to slow down from a velocity of Mach 32 to, essentially, zero before dropping into the water.
This is no small feat. Orion has a mass of 9 metric tons, about the same as two or three large elephants. Its base, covered with a heat shield designed to slowly char away during passage through Earth's atmosphere, must withstand temperatures near 3,000 degrees Celsius.
NASA’s Artemis 1 trek to the Moon is coming to a close, but for the capsule recovery team, its mission is just about to begin.
George Dvorsky - 9 December 2022
Should all go as planned, NASA’s Orion spacecraft will splash down off the coast of Baja, California, on Sunday, December 11 at 12:40 p.m. ET. As the uncrewed capsule bobs up and down in the open ocean, a crack team will spring into action and attempt to pull off a carefully choreographed recovery operation. Here’s how we expect it to unfold.
The sight of Orion floating in the Pacific Ocean will most assuredly be a welcome sight this Sunday, but it will also be a time for reflection. The spacecraft will have completed a remarkable journey, in which it buzzed the lunar surface at a distance of 81 miles (130 kilometers) and ventured nearly 43,000 miles (69,000 km) beyond the Moon. At its maximum distance, Orion was 268,554 miles (432,194 km) from Earth, setting a new record for a passenger-rated spacecraft.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-orion-artemis-splashdown-recovery-1849870102
MARCIA DUNN - Sun, December 11, 2022 8:56 AM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby.
The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) before splashing down west of Baja California near Guadalupe Island. A Navy ship quickly moved in to recover the spacecraft and its silent occupants — three test dummies rigged with vibration sensors and radiation monitors.
NASA hailed the descent and splashdown as close to perfect, as congratulations poured in from Washington..
“I'm overwhelmed,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said from Mission Control in Houston. “This is an extraordinary day … It's historic because we are now going back into space — deep space — with a new generation.”
https://news.yahoo.com/nasas-orion-capsule-returning-moon-165617748.html
“It is the beginning of the new beginning.”
Eric Berger - 12/11/2022, 2:00 PM
The first step of a journey is often the most difficult one. So it is worth pausing a moment to celebrate that NASA just took the essential first step on the path toward establishing a permanent presence in deep space.
Amidst a backdrop of blue skies and white clouds, the Orion spacecraft dropped into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday a few hundred kilometers off the Baja Peninsula. This brought to a close the Artemis I mission, a 25.5-day spaceflight that demonstrated NASA is just about ready to begin flying humans back into deep space once again.
This has not happened in half a century. At times, it seemed like it might never happen again. But now, it is most definitely happening.
NASA's progress back toward the Moon, and one day potentially Mars, has been at times lethargic. The political process that led NASA to this point in recent decades was messy and motivated by parochial pork projects. But on Sunday there could be no denying that this process has brought NASA, the United States, and dozens of other nations participating in the Artemis Program to the point where its human deep space exploration program is a very, very real thing.
The Orion crew vehicle landed in the Pacific Ocean following a near-perfect flight.
Igor Bonifacic - December 11, 2022 12:50 PM
NASA's Artemis 1 mission has returned to Earth following a successful trip around the Moon. On Saturday, at approximately 12:40PM ET, the uncrewed Orion vessel landed off the coast of Baja, California, completing a nearly 26-day journey that saw the spacecraft break an Apollo flight record and send back stunning photos of Earth's natural satellite.
On its way to the Pacific Ocean, Orion performed what’s known as a skip entry. After entering the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the crew vessel briefly used its own lift to “skip” back out before re-entering for the final descent. In doing so, it became the first spacecraft designed to carry humans to carry out such a maneuver.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-artemis-1-moon-mission-successfuly-returns-to-earth-175007566.html
After 25.5 days in space and 1.3 million miles traveled, Orion is back home following the thrilling debut of NASA’s Artemis program.
George Dvorsky - 11 December 2022
The uncrewed Orion spacecraft performed a flawless splashdown in the Pacific Ocean earlier today, in what is a very promising and exciting start to the Artemis era of lunar missions.
A recovery team led by NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems is in the midst of recovering the capsule, a careful process that can take upwards of five hours to complete. Orion splashed down at 12:40 p.m. ET as expected, roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Guadalupe Island near Baja, California. The plan is for the USS John P. Murtha to deliver the capsule to a naval base in San Diego, and then for a truck to deliver it to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will undergo thorough inspections. Preliminary inspections from helicopter indicate that the capsule is undamaged.
https://gizmodo.com/orion-splashes-down-pacific-nasa-artemis-1-1849876010
Would you ride to the Moon in a sightly used spaceship? Yeah, it's got some miles on it …
Katyanna Quach - Thu 15 Dec 2022 01:35 UTC
NASA's Orion capsule – built to send the first woman and another man to the Moon – has arrived at a US naval base in San Diego, California, and will be dragged ashore for inspection.
The podule just returned from a relatively short trip in space. As part of the Artemis I mission, it was launched unmanned atop America's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket as a dress rehearsal of sorts. It's hoped the Orion will in future missions ferry human crews to the Moon. For now, NASA is testing out the pod in the cold, unforgiving void beyond Earth's atmosphere.
This particular mission – have Orion circle the Moon and return home – suffered a rocky start. The SLS rocket carrying the capsule into space was delayed for months by technical glitches and nasty weather. When it finally launched in November, the capsule’s 25-day journey around the Moon and back to our planet was smooth.
Orion traveled 1.4 million miles (2.25 million km) around the Moon, before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The US Navy retrieved the spacecraft and ferried it back to Naval Base San Diego aboard the amphibious ship USS Portland this week. It will be offloaded and returned to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/15/orion_capsule_post_flight_analysis/
The heat shield issue notwithstanding, NASA reported steady progress toward the anticipated crewed launch of Artemis 2 in November 2024.
George Dvorsky - 8 March 2023
Orion set several records during the Artemis 1 mission to the Moon, in addition to surviving 5,000-degree Fahrenheit temperatures during atmospheric reentry. The spacecraft’s innovative heat shield made this possible, but NASA’s follow-up analysis of the protective layer has revealed levels of wear and tear that weren’t predicted by models.
“Orion exceeded all performance expectations,” Howard Hu, manager of the Orion program, told reporters yesterday at a NASA briefing to discuss the latest Artemis 1 findings. Over 160 flight test objectives were achieved, of which 21 were added over the course of the mission as managers got “better performance than expected,” he said. The uncrewed Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2022, following a 26-day trip to the Moon and back.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-orion-heat-shield-damage-artemis-1-investigation-1850203327
4 astronauts in one 'cozy' space about the size of two minivans
Laura Dobberstein - Tue 24 Oct 2023 13:45 UTC
NASA is confirming that the Orion crew and service module for the Artemis II mission were successfully joined together.
The actual event happened last Thursday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after months of hardware installations and tests, NASA said last night.
The module integration paves the way for a power-up test, followed by altitude chamber testing that simulates conditions in the vacuum of deep space. A fully connected spacecraft is scheduled to fly three astronauts from NASA and one from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) around the moon and back over the course of 21 days in 2024.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/artemis_ii_orion_modules/
The space agency has also been trying to resolve an issue with the spacecraft's heat shield.
Passant Rabie - 4 March 2024
Four astronauts are scheduled to ride on board the Orion spacecraft in September 2025 for NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. But before the Artemis crew can strap into Orion, the space agency still needs to resolve an issue with the spacecraft’s side hatch that could prevent the astronauts from exiting in case of an emergency.
During a recent meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), members of the panel revealed that NASA has been studying an issue related to the Orion spacecraft’s side hatch to ensure that it can be opened in a variety of different scenarios, SpaceNews reported. This is in addition to another lingering issue with Orion’s heat shield that was revealed after the spacecraft touched down following the Artemis 1 mission in December 2022.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-orion-hatch-crew-safety-issue-1851305060
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday May 04, 2024 12:34PM
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
The heat shield of the Orion spacecraft intended one day to carry astronauts to the moon under NASA's Artemis program suffered unexpected damage in more than 100 places as the spacecraft returned to Earth during an uncrewed test flight in 2022, according to a watchdog report released late Wednesday.
While the capsule withstood the fiery tumult of reentry, when temperatures reached 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it plunged through the atmosphere at nearly 25,000 mph, the damage the heat shield suffered was far greater than NASA engineers had expected and more severe than NASA had revealed previously. Photos of the heat shield in the report showed gouges that look like small potholes. “Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew,” the report, by NASA's inspector general, concluded… The IG report provides the most detailed description of the issue to date. It also highlighted other problems with the spacecraft that could create significant challenges for the space agency as it seeks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.
“I’m not going to share right now. When it comes out, it’ll all come out together.”
Stephen Clark – Oct 28, 2024 6:44 PM
For those who follow NASA's human spaceflight program, when the Orion spacecraft's heat shield cracked and chipped away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late 2022, what caused it became a burning question.
Multiple NASA officials said Monday they now know the answer, but they're not telling. Instead, agency officials want to wait until more reviews are done to determine what this means for Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft's first crew mission around the Moon, officially scheduled for launch in September 2025.
“We have gotten to a root cause,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars program office, in response to a question from Ars on Monday at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
“We are having conversations within the agency to make sure that we have a good understanding of not only what's going on with the heat shield, but also next steps and how that actually applies to the course that we take for Artemis II,” she said. “And we'll be in a position to be able to share where we are with that hopefully before the end of the year.”
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday October 29, 2024 12:00AM
Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports:
For those who follow NASA's human spaceflight program, a burning question for the last year-and-a-half has been what caused the Orion spacecraft's heat shield to crack and chip away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late 2022. Multiple NASA officials said Monday they now know the answer, but they're not telling. Instead, agency officials want to wait until more reviews are done to determine what this means for Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft's first crew mission around the Moon, officially scheduled for launch in September 2025.
“We have gotten to a root cause,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars program office, in response to a question from Ars on Monday at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium. “We are having conversations within the agency to make sure that we have a good understanding of not only what's going on with the heat shield, but also next steps and how that actually applies to the course that we take for Artemis II,” she said. “And we'll be in a position to be able to share where we are with that hopefully before the end of the year.”
Engineers have identified the issue with the Orion spacecraft's heat shield, but NASA isn’t revealing the details yet.
Passant Rabie - October 29, 2024
NASA finally knows what caused the erosion of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield following its historic trip to the Moon in 2022, but the space agency is not telling, at least not yet.
During a meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) in Houston, NASA officials revealed that they had identified the reason the Orion heat shield chipped away during the Artemis 1 mission but refused to share what it was. “We have conclusive determination of what the root cause is of the issue,” Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator at NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said during the meeting on Monday, SpaceNews reported. “I’m not going to share right now, when it comes out, it will all come out together.”
NASA is still determining how to proceed for the Artemis 2 mission, which is set to launch in September 2025, according to Glaze. The space agency is running additional tests to mitigate the crew capsule’s erosion during atmospheric reentry, which will be completed by the end of November.
“If this isn’t raising red flags out there, I don’t know what will.”
Eric Berger - Dec 6, 2024 2:29 PM
Within hours of NASA announcing its decision to fly the Artemis II mission aboard an Orion spacecraft with an unmodified heat shield, critics assailed the space agency, saying it had made the wrong decision.
“Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA,” Ed Pope, an expert in advanced materials and heat shields, wrote on LinkedIn.
There is a lot riding on NASA's decision, as the Artemis II mission involves four astronauts and the space agency's first crewed mission into deep space in more than 50 years.
A former NASA astronaut, Charles Camarda, also expressed his frustrations on LinkedIn, saying the space agency and its leadership team should be “ashamed.” In an interview on Friday, Camarda, an aerospace engineer who spent two decades working on thermal protection for the space shuttle and hypersonic vehicles, said NASA is relying on flawed probabilistic risk assessments and Monte Carlo simulations to determine the safety of Orion's existing heat shield.
“I worked at NASA for 45 years,” Camarda said. “I love NASA. I do not love the way NASA has become. I do not like that we have lost our research culture.”
Hopefully it won't be another 10 years before the capsule is troubled by a crew
Richard Speed - Wed 11 Dec 2024 10:28 UTC
It is ten years since NASA sent the Orion spacecraft into space on the Exploration Flight Test-1 mission.
While the bad news bus was rolling around NASA last week, unloading a revised schedule for the first crewed mission for the spacecraft that includes a delay into 2026, the anniversary was noted by the space agency.
In 2014, the Space Shuttle program had only recently wound down with the last flight of the orbiter in 2011. NASA's great hope for a return to the Moon, the Constellation program, was axed in 2010, but the capsule that would have been launched atop the Ares I launch vehicle (often referred to as “the stick” since its first stage was a single solid rocket booster derived from the Space Shuttle) was retained.
While the rest of the Space Launch System (SLS) was beset by delays, a substantial amount of work had already been done on Orion. While the spacecraft's service module, a unit derived from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), wouldn't feature until the Artemis I mission in 2022, Lockheed Martin's Orion capsule was ready for a test flight in 2014.
The mission ended in early August, marking the conclusion of years of valuable scientific observations and discoveries.
Passant Rabie - 27 September 2023
After blasting beams of energy through the clouds for the past 17 years, NASA’s lidar satellite mission came to an end this past August, the agency has revealed.
CALIPSO, a joint mission by NASA and the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), had exhausted its fuel reserves. Due to its decaying orbit, the satellite was no longer capable of generating sufficient power to operate its science instruments. As such, the two space agencies agreed to end the mission on August 1, NASA announced on Tuesday.
The mission combined an active lidar (an acronym for light detection and ranging) instrument with passive infrared and visible imagers to probe the vertical structure and properties of thin clouds and aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere. Lidar, as well as radar, direct beams of energy towards Earth and then measure how the beams reflect off the clouds and aerosols. That’s why lidar is considered an active sensor compared to other science instruments, which use passive sensors that measure reflected sunlight or radiation emitted from the Earth or clouds.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-calipso-cloud-observing-satellite-mission-ends-1850879472
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday September 14, 2022 12:00AM
On Sept. 26, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will slam headfirst into a small asteroid in the name of planetary defense. ”[S]cientists hope that should a dangerous asteroid threaten the planet in the future, a mission like DART could avert the disaster,” reports Space.com. From the report:
The theory goes that if scientists ever detected an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, an impactor probe could realign the orbit of the space rock, ensuring that it crossed Earth's path when our planet was a safe distance away. But scientists don't want to be working only from theory if the situation arises. That's where DART's dramatic destruction comes into play. The spacecraft will slam into a small asteroid called Dimorphos, which like clockwork orbits a larger near-Earth asteroid called Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. (Neither asteroid poses any threat to Earth, and DART won't change that.) The DART impact should adjust the orbit of Dimorphos, cutting its circuit by perhaps 10 minutes.
NASA’s first test of a strategy to protect Earth from asteroids is days away. Here’s what you need to know.
George Dvorsky - 15 September 2022
A NASA spacecraft called DART is set to deliberately crash into a small asteroid as part of a planetary defense test. While this space rock isn’t of concern, what we learn from the mission could help us if ever an asteroid does head our way.
NASA keeps tabs on 28,000 nearby asteroids, none of which currently pose a threat to Earth. That said, astronomers detect around 3,000 asteroids each year, so it’s possible that we’ll eventually find one with our name on it. Thankfully, the upcoming DART test to deflect a non-threatening asteroid could mean we’re not just sitting ducks.
Called LICIACube, the Italian-built probe will take images of DART’s impact with asteroid Dimorphos on September 26.
George Dvorsky - 16 September 2022 12:04PM
DART won’t survive its mission to deflect an asteroid, but the recently deployed LICIACube—a tiny probe equipped with cameras—will document the encounter in gory detail.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is the space agency’s first demonstration of a defense strategy to protect against threatening asteroids. The 1,376-pound spacecraft is scheduled to smash into Dimorphos—the junior member of the Didymos binary asteroid system—on September 26 at 7:14 p.m. ET. Dimorphos poses no threat to Earth, but the experiment, should it work, will slightly nudge the moonlet from its current trajectory. In the future, a similar strategy could be used to deflect a genuinely threatening asteroid.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-dart-liciacube-camera-probe-asteroid-1849545126
The DART mission to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid is on track for Monday, and two familiar eyes will be watching.
George Dvorsky - 23 September 2022 12:28PM
On Monday, NASA will attempt to smash its car-sized DART spacecraft into a non-threatening asteroid, in what is an important first test of a planetary defense strategy against hazardous celestial objects. A host of telescopes will be watching, including the Hubble and Webb space telescopes.
“We are moving an asteroid,” Tom Statler, DART program scientist, told reporters yesterday at a NASA press briefing. “We’ve never done that before,” he added, saying “it’s kind of astonishing that we’re doing that.” The capacity to deflect an asteroid would open up an “amazing frontier,” but it all starts with Monday’s test at Didymos, the “perfect natural laboratory for this double test,” said Statler. The spacecraft is expected to slam into Dimorphos, the smaller member of the Didymos binary asteroid system, at 7:14 p.m. ET on September 26.
https://gizmodo.com/webb-hubble-observe-dart-asteroid-mission-nasa-1849573364
Devin Coldewey - 10:10 AM PDT•September 26, 2022
One of NASA’s biggest crowd-pleasers in years is about to reach its denouement: If all goes well, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft (or rather guided anti-space-rock missile) will impact its target at around 14,700 miles per hour. You can watch it live-ish right here at about 3 p.m. PDT.
DART was launched last November and has spent the intervening months positioning itself for a perfect shot on Dimorphos, a 525-foot-wide asteroid in orbit around Didymos, which is half-a-mile wide (and more the type of object we’d need to worry about, planetarily speaking). Today is the big day.
Posted by msmash on Monday September 26, 2022 10:22AM
Most mission scientists would wince at the thought of their spacecraft being smashed to smithereens. But for those behind Nasa's Dart probe, anything short of total destruction will be chalked up as a failure. From a report:
The $330m spacecraft is due to slam head-on into an asteroid about 11m kilometres above the Indian Ocean soon after midnight on Monday. The impact, at nearly seven kilometres a second, will obliterate the half-tonne probe, all in the name of planetary defence. Not that Dimorphos, the asteroid in question, poses any threat to humanity. The Dart, or double asteroid redirection test, is an experiment, the first mission ever to assess whether asteroids can be deflected should one ever be found on a collision course with Earth. A well-placed nudge could avert Armageddon, or so the thinking goes, and spare humans the same fate as the dinosaurs.
Details of the impact aren't yet here, but the probe's last image indicates success.
John Timmer - 9/26/2022, 4:17 PM
Update, 10:30 pm ET: If this is an indication of the quality of the images we should expect over the next several days, we're in for a treat.
About 24 hours prior to its collision, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) probe performed its last course correction based on commands sent by ground controllers. “It's pointed to within a football field of the central body,” said Bobby Braun of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL). “That last maneuver was spot-on.”
Even at this late stage, DART's onboard camera couldn't resolve its ultimate target, the small asteroid Dimorphos, so the central body it was targeting is the partner Dimorphos orbits, called Didymos. DART's onboard navigation couldn't start navigating toward its target until it could see it, which was only expected to occur about 90 minutes before impact. At that point, the navigation started adjusting DART's course to get it heading straight at Dimorphos. Ground controllers, separated by about a minute of communications time, could only watch.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/dart-goes-silent-after-hitting-an-asteroid/
Humanity’s accomplishments in space are worth celebrating, but today’s DART test to deflect a non-threatening asteroid carries existential implications.
George Dvorsky - 26 September 2022 4:34PM
Later today, NASA’s DART spacecraft will attempt to smash into a non-threatening asteroid. It’s one of the most important things we’ve done in space—if not the most important thing—as this experiment to deflect a non-threatening asteroid could eventually result in a robust and effective planetary defense strategy for protecting life on Earth.
We’ve landed humans on the Moon, transported rovers to Mars, and sent spacecraft to interstellar space, yet nothing compares to what might happen today when NASA’s DART spacecraft smashes into Dimorphos, the smaller member of the Didymos binary asteroid system. Should all go according to plan, DART will smash directly into the 525-foot-wide (160-meter) asteroid at 7:14 p.m. ET (watch it live here) and change the rock’s speed by around 1%. That’s a small orbital adjustment for an asteroid, but a giant leap for humankind.
https://gizmodo.com/why-dart-is-the-most-important-mission-ever-launched-to-1849582491
The 1,340-pound spacecraft plowed directly into Dimorphos as intended. Astronomers now need to determine the potential impact of the test.
George Dvorsky - 26 September 2022 8:21PM
NASA’s DART spacecraft has crashed into Dimorphos, with the loss of signal occurring today at exactly 7:14 p.m. ET as expected. Scientists will now pore over the data to see if the kinetic impactor altered the asteroid’s orbital trajectory.
NASA’s first demonstration of a possible planetary defense strategy appears to have gone exceptionally well, with the DART spacecraft successfully impacting a non-threatening asteroid following a 10-month journey to the Didymos binary asteroid system.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-dart-crashes-into-asteroid-success-1849583961
Posted by msmash on Tuesday September 27, 2022 07:00AM
NASA's DART spacecraft successfully slammed into a distant asteroid at hypersonic speed on Monday in the world's first test of a planetary defense system, designed to prevent a potential doomsday meteorite collision with Earth. From a report:
Humanity's first attempt to alter the motion of an asteroid or any celestial body played out in a NASA webcast from the mission operations center outside Washington, D.C., 10 months after DART was launched. The livestream showed images taken by DART's camera as the cube-shaped “impactor” vehicle, no bigger than a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, streaked into the asteroid Dimorphos, about the size of a football stadium, at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT) some 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth. The $330 million mission, some seven years in development, was devised to determine if a spacecraft is capable of changing the trajectory of an asteroid through sheer kinetic force, nudging it off course just enough to keep Earth out of harm's way. Whether the experiment succeeded beyond accomplishing its intended impact will not be known until further ground-based telescope observations of the asteroid next month. But NASA officials hailed the immediate outcome of Monday's test, saying the spacecraft achieved its purpose.
Darrell Etherington - 5:08 AM PDT•September 27, 2022
NASA has completed a key step of its “Double Asteroid Redirection Test” (DART), smashing a satellite roughly the size of a vending machine into a small moon that’s about half-a-mile in diameter. The moon, Dimorphos, is orbiting an even larger asteroid, Didymos, and while neither is in any danger of colliding with Earth, they’re good test cases to see whether us puny humans smashing them with technology can cause them to change course.
DART is basically a demonstration of what would be a “Hail Mary” pass in the case of any asteroid actually threatening Earth — namely, can we use a human-made spacecraft to redirect any planet-killers enough that they end up safely whizzing by our home planet instead of causing a repeat of the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.
It was the first time the telescopes have observed the same celestial target simultaneously.
Kris Holt - September 29, 2022 12:00 PM
NASA made history this week after an attempt to slam its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft into an asteroid nearly 7 million miles away proved successful. While NASA shared some close-up images of the impact, it observed the planetary defense test from afar as well, thanks to the help of the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes. On the surface, the images aren't exactly the most striking things we've seen from either telescope, but they could help reveal a lot of valuable information.
This was the first time that Hubble and JSWT have observed the same celestial target simultaneously. While that was a milestone for the telescopes in itself, NASA suggests the data they captured will help researchers learn more about the history and makeup of the solar system. They'll be able to use the information to learn about the surface of Dimorphos (the asteroid in question), how much material was ejected after DART crashed into it and how fast that material was traveling.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-dart-james-webb-space-telescope-hubble-160003212.html
Daniel Lawler - Paris (AFP) Sept 29, 2022
The James Webb and Hubble telescopes on Thursday revealed their first images of a spacecraft deliberately smashing into an asteroid, as astronomers indicated that the impact looks to have been much greater than expected.
The world's telescopes turned their gaze towards the space rock Dimorphos earlier this week for a historic test of Earth's ability to defend itself against a potential life-threatening asteroid in the future.
Astronomers rejoiced as NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor slammed into its pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped target 11 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Earth on Monday night.
Images taken by Earth-bound telescopes showed a vast cloud of dust expanding out of Dimorphos – and its big brother Didymos which it orbits – after the spaceship hit.
A new image shows a roughly 6,000-mile trail of debris in the aftermath of the historic DART test.
Isaac Schultz - 3 October 2022 4:45PM
Last week, NASA’s DART spacecraft intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, a petite moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. Now, a telescope on the ground in Chile has imaged the massive plume created by the impact in the days following the encounter.
The crash was a planetary defense test; NASA is seeking to know if a kinetic impactor can change the trajectory of an Earth-bound space rock, should we ever spot a large one on a collision course with us. The space agency’s Center for Near Earth Objects exists to monitor the status of these objects and their orbits.
https://gizmodo.com/telescope-spots-huge-debris-trail-nasa-dart-1849610800
This is what you get when you mess with DART.
Jon Fingas - October 4, 2022 5:04 PM
NASA's successful asteroid impact test created a beautiful mess, apparently. As the Associated Press reports, astronomers using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile have captured an image revealing that DART's collision with Dimorphos left a trail of dust and other debris measuring over 6,000 miles long. The spacecraft wasn't solely responsible — rather, the Sun's radiation pressure pushed the material away like it would with a comet's tail.
The trail is only likely to get larger, according to the researchers. It should eventually stretch to the point where the dust stream is virtually unrecognizable from the usual particles floating in the Solar System. NASA didn't create headaches for future probes and explorers. The space agency chose Dimorphos (a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos) as the deliberate crash wouldn't pose a threat to Earth.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-dart-dimorphos-impact-trail-length-210414070.html
Ground, space-based telescopes, and a nearby cubesat have all captured the impact.
John Timmer - 10/7/2022, 2:56 PM
At a press conference shortly before NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft smashed into an asteroid, a reporter tried to get a sense of just what would happen as a bunch of metal and electronics smashed into a pile of rubble left over from the birth of the Solar System. “Give us a sense of this combat between our spacecraft and this rock,” the reporter asked a scientist at the Applied Physics Lab.
“The spacecraft's going to lose,” APL's Nancy Chabot quipped back.
The amazing thing about that loss is that we got to experience it in real time, as the last image from DART's onboard camera cut out after only a small fraction of it was transmitted to Earth.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/post-impact-images-of-dart-mission-have-not-disappointed/
For the first time ever, humanity has changed the trajectory of a planetary object, reducing the asteroid Dimorphos’s orbital period.
George Dvorsky - 11 October 2022
The results are in from NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which attempted to deflect an asteroid: NASA has forever reshaped the Didymos-Dimorphos system. The successful test points to a possible planetary defense strategy for protecting Earth against hazardous near-Earth objects.
NASA’s 1,340-pound spacecraft smashed into the moonlet on September 26 following a 10 month journey to the binary asteroid system. Astronomers kept a close watch on the pair in the days following the encounter in hopes of detecting a possible change to the system’s orbital dynamics.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-dart-didymos-dimorphos-asteroid-test-space-defense-1849644501
“NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet.”
Igor Bonifacic - October 11, 2022 2:45 PM
The next time an asteroid threatens Earth, humanity might have a chance of saving the planet. On Tuesday, NASA announced that its experimental Double Asteroid Redirection Test successfully altered the orbit of Dimorphos. Following two weeks of data collection and analysis, the agency found that DART's impact shortened the asteroid's orbit around its parent, Didymos, by 32 minutes. Before the September 26th collision, NASA estimated DART needed to change the orbital period of Dimorphos by 73 seconds or more to call the test a success. The spacecraft beat that benchmark by more than 25 times.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-dart-mission-smashing-success-184543626.html
Stefanie Waldek - 3:00 PM PDT•October 11, 2022
The demise of a spacecraft is usually something rather poignant. But two weeks ago, NASA celebrated one’s destruction.
On September 26, NASA executed the final stage of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), in which a spacecraft intentionally crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos to investigate whether such an impact could deflect an Earth-bound stellar object. A successful collision was the first cause for celebration, but now there’s even more reason to cheer. NASA has officially determined the DART mission a success, revealing in a press conference today that Dimorphos’ orbit has changed significantly due to the impact.
In crashing DART into Dimorphos, planetary defense researchers hoped the spacecraft’s kinetic energy would transfer to the asteroid, altering its path. In theory, the same method could be used to protect Earth from an incoming asteroid. (For what it’s worth, neither Dimorphos nor the larger asteroid Didymos, which it orbits, pose a threat to our planet.)
The asteroid Dimorphos had its 12-hour orbit shortened by a half-hour.
John Timmer - 10/11/2022, 2:36 PM
On Tuesday, NASA announced that its first test of a potential planetary defense system was a notable success. The Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) successfully smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in late September, hoping to alter its orbit around a larger companion. Any changes in the orbit, however, would be difficult to pick up and potentially require months of follow-up observations. But the magnitude of the orbital shift was large enough that ground-based observatories picked it up already.
Meanwhile, a lot of hardware is also picking up the debris that shot out from the impact, giving scientists a lot of information about the collision and the asteroid.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/dart-mission-successfully-shifted-its-targets-orbit/
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday October 11, 2022 02:20PM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian:
A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles from Earth succeeded in shifting the orbit of the space rock, Nasa said on Tuesday, announcing the results of its first such test. The US space agency strategically launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (“Dart”) spacecraft into the path of the asteroid, thereby throwing it off course. Nasa hopes to be able to deflect any asteroid or comet that comes to pose a real threat to Earth.
NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid last month. It took some astronomical know-how to confirm the redirection test was a success.
George Dvorsky - 14 October 2022 12:49PM
Earlier this week, NASA announced that its DART spacecraft successfully moved an asteroid by a few dozen feet. This raises a valid question: How the heck did scientists figure this out, given that Dimorphos is nearly 7 million miles away? Needless to say, this task required some clever astronomy and a veritable village of astronomers.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, shortened the amount of time it takes Dimorphos to orbit Didymos, as the spacecraft pushed the target asteroid slightly closer to its larger companion. Dimorphos’s orbital period around Didymos used to be 11 hours and 55 minutes, but it’s now 11 hours and 23 minutes—a change of 32 minutes, give or take two minutes. That represents “tens of meters” in terms of the altered distance, as Nancy Chabot, DART coordination lead at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, told reporters on Tuesday.
https://gizmodo.com/how-we-know-dart-moved-the-asteroid-nasa-1849658591
The space agency intentionally moved an asteroid last month, but the DART experiment is producing some unexpected side-effects.
George Dvorsky - 20 October 2022 1:24PM
A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a pair of dusty tails extending out from Didymos-Dimorphos, the result of NASA’s DART spacecraft smashing into the smaller member of the binary asteroid system.
One tail, sure. But two? That’s undeniably weird, and also awesome. The European Space Agency posted the newly acquired image earlier today, revealing the complex aftereffects of NASA’s $308 million experiment to nudge a harmless asteroid.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-dart-asteroid-two-tails-hubble-1849682283
Studies reveal final moments before NASA probe crashed into an asteroid.
Alexandra Witze - 1 March 2023
Last September, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft smashed into an asteroid, deliberately altering the rock’s trajectory through space in a first test of planetary defence. Now scientists have deconstructed the collision and its aftermath — and learnt just how successful humanity’s punch at the cosmos really was.
DART, which was the size of a golf cart, collided with a Great Pyramid-sized asteroid called Dimorphos. The impact caused the asteroid’s orbit around another space rock to shrink — Dimorphos now completes an orbit 33 minutes faster than before the impact, researchers report1 today in Nature. This means that if a dangerous asteroid were ever detected heading for Earth, a mission to smash into it would probably be able to divert it away from the planet.
DART’s success has been reported before; now, five studies in Nature describe the final moments of the crash and how it affected the asteroid. One group combined data on the spacecraft’s trajectory with photographs of the asteroid’s surface just before impact2. As DART hurtled towards Dimorphos at more than 6 kilometres per second, the first part that hit was one of its solar panels, which smashed into a 6.5-metre-wide boulder. Microseconds later, the main body of the spacecraft collided with the rocky surface next to the boulder — and the US$330-million DART shattered to bits.
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday March 02, 2023 02:00AM
After analyzing the data collected from NASA's successful Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) last year, the DART team found that the kinetic impactor mission “can be effective in altering the trajectory of an asteroid, a big step toward the goal of preventing future asteroid strikes on Earth.” The findings were published in four papers in the journal Nature. From a NASA press release:
The first paper reports DART's successful demonstration of kinetic impactor technology in detail: reconstructing the impact itself, reporting the timeline leading up to impact, specifying in detail the location and nature of the impact site, and recording the size and shape of Dimorphos. The authors, led by Terik Daly, Carolyn Ernst, and Olivier Barnouin of APL, note DART's successful autonomous targeting of a small asteroid, with limited prior observations, is a critical first step on the path to developing kinetic impactor technology as a viable operational capability for planetary defense. Their findings show intercepting an asteroid with a diameter of around half a mile, such as Dimorphos, can be achieved without an advance reconnaissance mission, though advance reconnaissance would give valuable information for planning and predicting the outcome. What is necessary is sufficient warning time – several years at a minimum, but preferably decades. “Nevertheless,” the authors state in the paper, DART's success “builds optimism about humanity's capacity to protect the Earth from an asteroid threat.”
Recoil from DART impact changed Dimorphos's orbit more than expected
Katyanna Quach - Thu 2 Mar 2023 10:30 UTC
Plumes of dust and rocks kicked up from the surface of asteroid Dimorphos after NASA's DART spacecraft smashed into it altered the space rock's orbit more than the kinetic impact alone, according to research published on Wednesday.
Boffins successfully changed the position of an astronomical body in space for the first time in history during the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission last October. A 610kg (1,345lb) spacecraft was directed to crash headfirst into an binary asteroid system to see whether it was possible to knock it off its original orbit.
DART was a huge success. The impact from the collision with Dimorphos shortened its orbit by 33 minutes – it now takes less than 11 and a half hours to circle around its parent asteroid, Didymos. The change is significantly greater than had been expected.
Researchers analyzing data from the experiment calculated that material ejected from Dimorphos's surface during the collision changed its momentum by a greater amount than DART's impact.
The spacecraft alone would have altered Dimorphos's orbit by seven minutes, but the recoil and ejecta created by the impact shortened it even further, according to a paper published in Nature. A second study estimated that the loss of material from the asteroid's surface contributed to the change in momentum by a factor between 2.2 and 4.9.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/sending_spacecraft_to_crash_into/
Scientists confirm that DART's impact method can be used to protect Earth from planet-killing asteroids.
Mariella Moon - March 4, 2023 10:01 AM
Last year, NASA's DART spacecraft successfully completed its mission: To collide with an asteroid called Dimorphos to see if it was possible to change the trajectory of any potentially planet-killing space rock. Scientists from the DART team have been analyzing the data collected from the mission since then, and they've now published five papers in Nature explaining the details of DART's results. They've also decided that, yes, the method can be used to defend Earth if ever an asteroid big enough to kill us all heads our way.
Apparently, one of DART's solar panels hit Dimosphos first before its body fully collided with the rock at 6km per second (3.7 miles per second). The spacecraft smashed into the asteroid around 25 meters (85 feet) from its center, which was a huge factor in the mission's success, since it maximized the force of the impact. According to the studies, the collision had managed to eject 1 million kilograms or 1,100 tons of rock from Dimorphos. That spray of rubble flew outwards away from the asteroid, generating four times the momentum of DART's impact and changing Dimorphos' trajectory even further.
NASA's historic mission to deflect an asteroid kicked up voluminous debris into space.
Isaac Schultz - 21 March 2023
Last fall, NASA’s DART spacecraft smashed into Dimorphos, a small asteroid some 7 million miles away, in an unprecedented attempt to change the orbit of a natural body in space. Now, two teams of astronomers have released images of the collision’s aftermath taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.
The researchers found that the ejected cloud of debris from the asteroid appeared more blue than the space rock itself, indicating that Dimorphos is composed of fine particles. But as time passed after the crash, the debris formed a tail and clumps that may have been made up of larger particles. Both teams’ papers are published today in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
https://gizmodo.com/dart-asteroid-aftermath-very-large-telescope-nasa-1850247096
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday March 23, 2023 12:00AM
Careful scrutiny of the debris from the impact of NASA's DART mission into Dimorphos has not found any evidence for water-ice on the asteroid, nor the residue of thruster fuel from the spacecraft, new results from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) show. Space.com reports:
However, the data from the MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile does indicate differences in the size of particles in the debris, and show how the polarization of the light from the asteroid changed. These could both reveal details about the nature of the ejecta excavated by the impact, the recoil from which gave Dimorphos the biggest push. […] “Before the impact, we were not really sure what to expect,” said Cyrielle Opitom of the University of Edinburgh in an interview with Space.com.
The asteroid-smashing planetary defense mission knocked some large rocks free.
John Timmer - 7/20/2023, 2:37 PM
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) mission was a success from the perspective of planetary defense, as it successfully shifted the orbit of an asteroid. But the mission had a scientific element to it, and we're still sifting through the debris of the collision to determine what the impact tells us about the asteroid. That's difficult due to the distance to the asteroid and the low amounts of light that reflect off the debris.
Today, a paper was released by a team that analyzed images of the aftermath using the Hubble Space Telescope. They've spotted dozens of boulders that collectively would have originally made up 0.1 percent of the mass of Dimorphos, DART's target. And while they're all moving very slowly from the site of the collision, some of them should be able to escape the gravity of the double asteroid system.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday August 12, 2023 12:00AM
A UCLA-led study of NASA's DART mission found that the collision launched a cloud of boulders from its surface. “The boulder swarm is like a cloud of shrapnel expanding from a hand grenade,” said Jewitt, lead author of the study and a UCLA professor of earth and planetary sciences. “Because those big boulders basically share the speed of the targeted asteroid, they're capable of doing their own damage.” From a news release:
In September 2022, NASA deliberately slammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos to knock it slightly off course. NASA's objective was to evaluate whether the strategy could be used to protect Earth in the event that an asteroid was headed toward our planet. Jewitt said that given the high speed of a typical impact, a 15-foot boulder hitting Earth would deliver as much energy as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Fortunately, neither Dimorphos nor the boulder swarm have ever posed any danger to Earth. NASA chose Dimorphos because it was about 6 million miles from Earth and measured just 581 feet across – close enough to be of interest and small enough, engineers reasoned, that the half-ton Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, planetary defense spacecraft would be able to change the asteroid's trajectory.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 10, 2023 12:59PM
One year ago NASA crashed its DART spacecraft into the asteroid “Dimorphos” (which orbits around a much larger asteroid named “Didymos”). The BBC calls the mission “part of an experiment to change the space rock's direction and test Earth's defences against asteroids in the future.
“However, a teacher and his class studying the rock have now discovered that since the collision, it has moved in a strange and unexpected way.”
[U]sing their school telescope, a team of children and their teacher Jonathan Swift at Thacher School in California have found that more than a month after the collision, Dimorphos' orbit continuously slowed after impact… which is unusual and unexpected. As reported in the New Scientist, the team presented their findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Dimorphos continues to puzzle scientists after NASA’s DART impact, raising new questions about asteroid behaviors and potential space interventions.
George Dvorsky - 12 September 2023
After the successful impact of NASA’s DART mission on the Dimorphos asteroid, scientists have encountered a series of unexpected outcomes, the latest being the unanticipated lengthening of the asteroid’s orbital period around its larger partner, Didymos.
In September of last year, NASA’s $308 million DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission deliberately collided with the Dimorphos asteroid. This fridge-sized spacecraft impacted the 525-foot-wide (160-meter-wide) asteroid at speeds of up to 14,000 miles per hour (22,500 kilometers per hour), aiming to change its orbital path around its larger partner, Didymos. The binary pair is situated 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth and doesn’t pose a threat to Earth—either before or after the redirection test.
The mission was a resounding success; the impact altered Dimorphos’s orbital period around Didymos by over half an hour, shifting its position by tens of meters. This achievement was far beyond the DART team’s goal of 72 seconds, marking the beginning of several unexpected outcomes. The experiment hints at the potential of using kinetic impactors to redirect dangerous asteroids, but the numerous questions arising from the DART mission suggest there’s much more for us to understand first.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-dart-asteroid-redirection-orbit-near-earth-objects-1850829947
The tiny asteroid was left deformed after the spacecraft slammed into it at a high rate of speed.
Passant Rabie - 27 February 2024
In September 2022, a NASA spacecraft smashed into a tiny asteroid to nudge it off its orbital course. The mission was a success in testing an asteroid deflection method that may come in handy one day, but rather than leaving behind an impact crater, the orbital collision changed the shape of the target asteroid altogether, revealing its fungible composition.
A team of researchers simulated the impact of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, to reveal how it likely transformed Dimorphos, a 558-foot-wide (170-meter) space rock that orbits its larger 2,625-foot-wide (800-meter) companion, Didymos. In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, the simulations show that the impact led to significant reshaping and resurfacing of the asteroid Dimorphos.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-dart-dimorphos-asteroid-warped-rubble-pile-1851282670
A CubeSat trailed the DART asteroid impactor, capturing images of debris set loose.
John Timmer - 2/28/2024, 11:36 AM
In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a successful test of planetary defense technology. That success was measured by a significant shift in Dimorphos' orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Since then, various observatories have been analyzing the data to try to piece together what the debris from the impact tells us about the structure of the asteroid.
All of those observations have taken place at great distances from the impact. But DART carried a small CubeSat called LICIACube along for the ride and dropped it onto a trailing trajectory a few weeks before impact. It took a while to get all of LICIACube's images back to Earth and analyzed, but the results are now coming in, and they provide hints about Dimorphos' composition and history, along with why the impact had such a large effect on its orbit.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 24, 2024 10:34AM
NASA's 2022 DART mission “successfully demonstrated how a fast-moving spacecraft could change an asteroid's trajectory by crashing into it,” remembers Gizmodo, “potentially providing a way to defend Earth — though the asteroid in this test was never a real threat.”
But a followup study suggests debris from that 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid “could actually strike back,” they add, “though we're not in any danger.”
The [DART] team posits that the collision produced a field of rocky ejecta that could reach Earth within 10 years… [Various aerospace scientists] studied data collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, which observed DART's impact of Dimorphos up close. Then, they fed LICIACube's data into supercomputers at NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility to simulate how the debris from the asteroid — basically dust and rock — may have disseminated into space. The simulations tracked about 3 million particles kicked up by the impact, some of which are large enough to produce meteors that could be spotted on Earth. Particles from the impact could get to Mars in seven to 13 years, and the fastest particles could make it to our own world in just seven years.
“This detailed data will aid in the identification of DART-created meteors, enabling researchers to accurately analyze and interpret impact-related phenomena,” the team wrote in the paper.
The author of a new book on the DART mission takes us behind the scenes of the day NASA smacked an asteroid.
Passant Rabie - October 11, 2024
Around 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid stretching 6 miles (10 kilometers) across struck Earth, ending the reign of the dinosaurs. Today, the probability of an asteroid that size wiping out humanity is quite low, but there are thousands of smaller space rocks lurking around Earth’s orbit capable of destroying entire cities, and those have a higher chance of crashing into our planet. The problem is, we don’t really have a viable plan of defense.
In September 2022, a NASA spacecraft crashed into a city-killer-sized asteroid to slightly nudge it off its orbital course and test kinetic impact as a means of planetary defense should an asteroid be headed our way. NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was a success, proving that we may stand a chance against the flying piles of rubble.
In his new book, How to Kill An Asteroid, award-winning science journalist Robin Andrews offers a rare personal look at the development of the mission, the team that made it happen, and what it was like to be inside the mission control room when the asteroid got smacked. The book leans into the sci-fi fantasy aspect of the mission, detailing all the cool science while still delivering drama, humor, and a great group of characters.
Chris Leymarie FMN - March 25, 2024
After 64 years and 389 successful launches, United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Delta rocket family is set to retire with the launch of the last Delta IV Heavy later this week.
First introduced in 1960, the original Delta rocket was a modified Thor ballistic missile used by the Air Force at the time. The name Delta, or the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet, seemed natural considering the four upper stages in the original design. The name stuck. NASA adopted the Delta rocket as a general-purpose rocket capable of carrying various satellites into orbit.
Military variants of the Delta rocket generally retained the Thor name and launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, while satellites would launch from Cape Canaveral. Throughout the 1970s, the Delta rocket, or one of its many variants, became NASA’s most frequently used booster for satellite launches.
https://floridamedianow.com/2024/03/25/the-end-of-an-era-the-last-delta-launches-this-week/
The final Delta IV Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch Thursday, weather permitting.
Stephen Clark - 3/27/2024, 4:15 PM
This is the rocket that literally lights itself on fire before it heads to space. It's the world's largest rocket entirely fueled by liquid hydrogen, a propellant that is vexing to handle but rewarding in its efficiency.
The Delta IV Heavy was America's most powerful launch vehicle for nearly a decade and has been a cornerstone for the US military's space program for more than 20 years. It is also the world's most expensive commercially produced rocket, a fact driven not just by its outsized capability but also its complexity.
Now, United Launch Alliance's last Delta IV Heavy rocket is set to lift off Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government's spy satellite agency.
“This is such an amazing piece of technology, 23 stories tall, a half-million gallons of propellant and a quarter-million pounds of thrust, and the most metal of all rockets, setting itself on fire before it goes to space,” said Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO. “Retiring it is (key to) the future, moving to Vulcan, a less expensive higher-performance rocket. But it’s still sad.”
Charles Briggs - Space Coast FL (SPX) - Mar 27, 2024
The last mission of the venerable Delta IV Heavy rocket, marked by the launch of the NROL-70 security payload, is scheduled for March 28, 2024, at 1:40 PM EDT from SLC 37, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This event not only signifies the conclusion of the Delta Rocket lineage but also celebrates its rich history of achievements and innovations in space exploration.
The Delta Rocket series, since its inception on May 13, 1960, during Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, has been a cornerstone of American space endeavors. With its first launch coinciding with cultural milestones like Elvis Presley's “Stuck on You” topping the charts and a loaf of bread costing 20 cents, the Delta has since then completed 388 missions. It has evolved from its original configuration of 90 feet in height and a mass of 112,000 lbs to the Delta IV Heavy's impressive stature of 235 feet and a mass of 1.6 million lbs.
Throughout its operational years, the Delta rocket has been instrumental in deploying the first GPS satellites, leading exploratory missions to Mars and Mercury, and launching significant payloads such as the MESSENGER Orbiter to Eros, the Dawn spacecraft to Vesta and Ceres, and the Deep Impact probe.
It has also been pivotal in missions aimed at studying the sun, returning comet dust samples through Stardust and Genesis missions, and deploying the Kepler observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope. Notably, it facilitated the launch of the first Eutelsat commercial satellite and the inaugural Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle for the Air Force.
ULA's Delta IV Heavy rocket is set to launch one last mission to orbit, marking the end of an era that dates back to the early 1960s.
Passant Rabie - 28 March 2024
The grand Delta finale is upon us, as United Launch Alliance (ULA) prepares to launch its last Delta IV rocket and bid farewell to an iconic rocket family that dates back to the Cold War.
Update: March 28, 4:18 p.m. ET: The launch of Delta IV Heavy rocket was scrubbed due to an “issue with the gaseous nitrogen pipeline which provides pneumatic pressure to the launch vehicle systems,” ULA wrote on X. Liftoff of the rocket is now scheduled for Friday at 1:37 p.m. ET.
The Delta IV Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch on Thursday at 2:03 p.m. ET from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. ULA will broadcast the rocket’s final liftoff on its website, and you can also tune in through the live feed below. The broadcast will begin at around 2:45 p.m. ET. Forecasters are currently predicting a 30% chance of favorable weather for the launch. Forecasters are currently predicting a 30% chance of favorable weather for the launch.
https://gizmodo.com/launch-ula-delta-iv-heavy-final-flight-most-metal-1851371281
Whew! Relief for boffins as rotorcraft slated to arrive at Saturn moon in 2034
Richard Speed - Wed 17 Apr 2024 17:30 UTC
NASA has finally confirmed its Dragonfly rotorcraft mission will be heading to Titan, one of Saturn's Moons, meaning the team behind the project can finalize its design and get to work building the spacecraft.
Things had been looking a little risky for the drone as budgets were squeezed and launch dates shifted – Dragonfly was originally slated for launch in 2026. But yesterday NASA approved the mission and the July 2028 launch date, with a scheduled arrival at Titan in 2034.
The total lifecycle cost of the mission is currently $3.35 billion, approximately double the proposed cost. The increases were blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, and “the results of an in-depth design iteration.” The project was also directed to replan multiple times due to funding constraints in fiscal years 2020 and 2022.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/nasa_confirms_dragonfly_mission/
About 3,000 staffers applied to leave the agency, following 870 earlier this year.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 1:44 PM PDT·1 min read
The second round of deferred resignations for NASA staff closed on Friday, and the agency says roughly 3,000 employees applied to leave, according to Bloomberg. The Trump administration first offered the deferred resignation program as a buyout to government workers in January as it gutted the federal workforce under the guidance of DOGE — then led by Elon Musk — asking employees to resign while still receiving benefits and pay for a period of time. In the earlier round, 870 NASA employees reportedly opted to leave. The space agency opened a second round in June, with a July 25 deadline.
The latest batch of applications brings the total to nearly 4,000 employees, or roughly 20 percent of NASA's workforce, according to a statement provided to Bloomberg. It comes after Politico reported earlier this month that over 2,000 senior NASA staff members have agreed to leave.
NASA is grappling with proposed budget cuts that could crush the agency's science programs and result in the loss of thousands of jobs. A group of current and former NASA employees called on Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to reject the “harmful cuts” in a letter published on July 21, writing that recent policies “threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission.”
Some heading into retirement, others to private sector
Richard Speed - Mon 28 Jul 2025 16:01 UTC
Almost 3,900 of NASA's workforce is set to leave the agency thanks to voluntary incentives, with senior staffers among those heading out the door.
The figures were issued by NASA HQ on Friday. About 3,000 employees opted to take part in a second round of the agency's Deferred Resignation Program. Some 870 participated in the first round, earlier this year.
The exodus has led observers to bemoan the loss of talent. Former Hubble astronaut Dr John Grunsfeld described the departures to The Register as “a real brain drain.”
He told us that employees who accepted early exit offers tended “to be the most senior people with the most knowledge.”
The number of NASA employees leaving is subject to change. Staff could decide to drop out of the buyout programs, or NASA might opt to reject their resignations. However, the headcount reduction has caused alarm.
A letter of dissent titled “The Voyager Declaration,” with hundreds of signatures from current and former NASA employees, said: “Thousands of NASA civil servant employees have already been terminated, resigned, or retired early, taking with them highly specialized, irreplaceable knowledge crucial to carrying out NASA's mission.”
Figures on NASA's website put the workforce at just under 18,000. The number given in the FY2026 budget request is 17,391. A drop of almost 4,000 is therefore substantial. It also calls into question how NASA would manage to continue all its missions should the cuts in the White House's original budget proposal be unpicked by lawmakers.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/nasa_voluntary_exits/
Instrument works fine. Now, about those transistors
Richard Speed - Mon 4 Aug 2025 15:31 UTC
NASA's Europa Clipper probe checked out its radar as the spacecraft hurtled past Mars on the way to Jupiter's moon Europa.
The Mars flyby in March was primarily to use the planet's gravitational pull to tweak the Europa Clipper's trajectory. However, boffins were able to use the proximity of the planet to calibrate the spacecraft's infrared camera and test its radar ahead of its arrival at Europa in 2030, NASA has confirmed.
Engineers were unable to test the flight version of the radar instrument on Earth. Engineering models were tested outside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, but the flight hardware needed to be kept sterile so could only be tested in a clean room.
NASA has access to some enormous clean rooms, and the spacecraft was assembled and tested in the giant High Bay 1 clean room at JPL. However, there wasn't sufficient space to test the fully assembled radar. According to NASA, a chamber about 250 feet (76 meters) long would have been needed to test the “echo” or bounceback of the instrument's signals.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/europa_clipper_mars_flyby/
“It's that level of risk that they were taking. I think that's what really hit home.”
Eric Berger – Sep 13, 2025 4:15 AM
Six decades have now passed since some of the most iconic Project Gemini spaceflights. The 60th anniversary of Gemini 4, when Ed White conducted the first US spacewalk, came in June. The next mission, Gemini 5, ended just two weeks ago, in 1965. These missions are now forgotten by most Americans, as most of the people alive during that time are now deceased.
However, during these early years of spaceflight, NASA engineers and astronauts cut their teeth on a variety of spaceflight firsts, flying a series of harrowing missions during which it seems a miracle that no one died.
Because the Gemini missions, as well as NASA's first human spaceflight program Mercury, yielded such amazing stories, I was thrilled to realize that a new book has recently been published—Gemini & Mercury Remastered—that brings them back to life in vivid color.
The book is a collection of 300 photographs from NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs during the 1960s, in which Andy Saunders has meticulously restored the images and then deeply researched their background to more fully tell the stories behind them. The end result is a beautiful and powerful reminder of just how brave America's first pioneers in space were. What follows is a lightly edited conversation with Saunders about how he developed the book and some of his favorite stories from it.
Four years later, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon
Richard Speed - Wed 4 Jun 2025 17:31 UTC
It is 60 years since Ed White became the first American to float outside a spacecraft.
Gemini 4 launched on June 3, 1965, with the goals of demonstrating that the US was capable of mounting a multi-day crewed mission, sending one of the crew outside the capsule on an extravehicular activity (EVA), and attempting a rendezvous with the spent Titan II second stage.
The USSR had already managed an EVA a few months earlier, sending Alexei Leonov on a spacewalk outside Voskhod 2. However, Leonov's jaunt outside the Soviet capsule was later revealed to have almost ended in disaster after his suit ballooned, requiring the cosmonaut to bleed off pressure to return to the vehicle.
Keen to demonstrate that the US was closing a perceived gap with the Soviet space program, NASA slipped in the EVA relatively late in the day. In an interview, Gemini 4's commander, James McDivitt (who would go on to fly on Apollo 9), recalled the EVA was added “about two months or maybe even less [before the flight].”
While the Voskhod had an inflatable exterior airlock, the Gemini 4 astronauts had to open a hatch for White to float out. Famously, they struggled to get the hatch open. A similar issue, including difficulties locking the hatch afterward, had happened on a ground test, and the commander had sought out an engineer working on the hatch to understand the problem — a wise decision, as it turned out.
Once out, White floated freely, using a Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit (HHMU), aka “the zip gun,” to maneuver outside the spacecraft. He took pictures and, by all accounts, had a whale of a time, although the gas in the HHMU ran out after a few minutes, forcing him to pull himself back and forth along the tether.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/04/first_us_spacewalk_60_years_ago/
The inflatable shield's ceramic fiber is designed to withstand the scorching temperatures of atmospheric reentry.
Passant Rabie - 10 November 2022 2:23PM
After launching an inflatable heat shield experiment to space on Thursday, NASA has now recovered the device after its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The space agency is seeking to learn whether this kind of heat shield can protect precious payloads from the high temperatures of atmospheric reentry.
NASA’s Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) took off onboard an Atlas 5 rocket at 4:49 a.m. ET on Thursday from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The flying saucer may not look like much, but this $93 million device could play a crucial role in sending future missions to Mars, Venus, and Titan.
https://gizmodo.com/loftid-inflatable-heat-shield-nasa-splashdown-1849768136
Called JuRa, the cube is a radar instrument expected to fly on the Hera mission to survey the impact of NASA's asteroid-nudging experiment.
Kevin Hurler - 28 October 2022 3:30PM
In the aftermath of the astounding plan to move a harmless asteroid with NASA’s DART mission, further science is needed to determine exactly what kind of impact humanity had on the distant Dimorphos. ESA’s Hera mission aims to do just that with its launch in two years, and it will be bringing along a scrappy sidekick in the form of a tiny radar.
The European Space Agency is calling the cubic radar JuRa, named after the Juventas cubesat to be packed aboard Hera. JuRa is 4-inch (10-centimeter) box that will be hitching a ride on the Juventas CubeSat as Hera visits the post-DART Dimorphos-Didymos system in a few years.
https://gizmodo.com/high-tech-cube-asteroid-smashed-nasa-dart-1849715523
Passant Rabie - March 13, 2025
The Hera probe has swung around Mars, using the planet’s gravitational pull to fling itself toward its asteroid target. During its brief rendezvous with the Red Planet, Hera caught a glimpse of the less-seen side of Mars’ smaller, tidally-locked moon as it orbited its home planet.
The European Space Agency (ESA) launched its Hera mission on October 7, 2024, to inspect the damage caused by NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) when it smashed into an asteroid to redirect its orbit. Hera is set to reach its asteroid target in 2026, but the space probe got to dust off its science tools for the first time during its Mars flyby on Wednesday.
The spacecraft came as close as 3,106 miles (5,000 kilometers) to Mars, allowing the planet’s gravity to shift Hera’s trajectory toward its target as it cruised through deep space. During its flyby, Hera activated a trio of instruments to image the surface of the Red Planet, as well as its moon Deimos.
https://gizmodo.com/hera-asteroid-probe-spots-mysterious-martian-moon-during-flyby-2000575572
The agency last heard back from the lander on December 15th.
Igor Bonifacic - December 21, 2022 2:02 PM
After two consecutive failed attempts to re-establish contact, NASA on Wednesday officially called an end to its InSight Mars mission. On December 15th, the lander made its final transmission to Earth. NASA said it would make the tough decision to call the mission dead after two failed communication attempts earlier this year. The agency will continue to listen for a signal “just in case” but notes the odds of that occurring at this point are “considered unlikely.”
NASA shared the news of InSight’s impending demise on Monday when it posted the lander’s final selfie – taken on April 24th, 2022 – to Twitter. Since arriving on the martian surface in 2018, InSight has gradually accumulated dust on its solar panels. Earlier this year, NASA predicted the debris would become too thick for the lander to power itself.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-officially-retires-its-in-sight-mars-lander-190245298.html
The lander might be dead, but its scientific legacy lives on
Brandon Vigliarolo - Tue 25 Apr 2023 18:44 UTC
NASA's Mars InSight lander may be dead, but the data it gathered is still filled with surprises – like the first direct observations of another planet's core, which scientists now believe is smaller and denser than previously thought.
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists poring over InSight's data found that two Marsquakes recorded in 2021 produced seismic waves that passed right through Mars' core, an event that had never before been captured.
The pair of quakes were also the first that InSight detected from the far side of Mars, which made them harder to pick out from the background noise picked up by InSight's seismological instruments, but also ideal for observing the Martian depths. The further a quake is from InSight, NASA said, the deeper into the planet those waves have to go to be detected.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/25/nasa_insight_lander_mars_paper/
NASA to bid a final farewell to InSight
Richard Speed - Tue 17 Dec 2024 18:58 UTC
Two years after NASA retired the InSight lander, scientists are continuing to use the vehicle to learn more about Mars.
InSight was retired in 2022 after it stopped communicating with Earth. The silence started during the lander's extended mission and was expected. Dust had been building up on the lander's solar arrays, preventing its batteries from recharging and eventually leading to its demise. Hopeful that a passing dust devil might clean the arrays, NASA has been listening for a signal from the lander, but with not a peep from InSight over the last two years, that effort will end at the close of 2024.
However, scientists have kept an eye on the lander thanks to images taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Those images have helped scientists better understand how dust works on the Martian surface.
Science team member Ingrid Daubar of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island said, “Even though we're no longer hearing from InSight, it's still teaching us about Mars.
“By monitoring how much dust collects on the surface — and how much gets vacuumed away by wind and dust devils — we learn more about the wind, dust cycle, and other processes that shape the planet.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/17/silent_nasa_lander_gives_scientists/
The problem was likely caused by a radiation spike produced by Jupiter's tumultuous magnetosphere, according to the space agency.
Passant Rabie - 12 January 2023
NASA’S Jupiter mission is back in action after suffering from an acute case of spacecraft amnesia, which caused the Juno spacecraft to temporarily lose access to data stored in its memory.
The NASA spacecraft resumed its regular operations on December 29, the space agency announced on Tuesday. Juno went into safe mode on December 17 due to a memory anomaly that took place following the spacecraft’s 47th close flyby of Jupiter and its moon Io.
After completing its flyby on December 14, Juno began the process of sending science data to ground control, but the downlink was disrupted. The solar-powered orbiter had difficulty accessing the memory stored in its onboard computer. The glitch was likely caused by Juno flying through a radiation-heavy area in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, causing a radiation spike that messed with its systems, NASA explained in its statement.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-juno-spacecraft-memory-glitch-jupiter-radiation-1849979591
It’s not the first time the spacecraft has had issues with its imaging instrument.
Isaac Schultz - 30 January 2023
The Juno spacecraft did not take all the images it was supposed to during a flyby of Jupiter on January 22. NASA says it will look into the problem.
Juno is an orbiter that launched to Jupiter from Earth in August 2011. Since its arrival at the gas giant in 2016, the spacecraft has made 48 flybys of the planet, during which its JunoCam visible light imager has taken images of the tops of clouds in the planet’s turbid skies.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-juno-orbiter-camera-malfunction-1850048457
Io, Io, it's off to work we go
Richard Speed - Thu 28 Dec 2023 20:04 UTC
NASA's Juno mission is to close out 2023 with a low pass over Io, one of Jupiter's many moons.
The spacecraft will come within 930 miles (1,500 kilometres) of the surface on December 30. According to NASA this week, “The pass is expected to allow Juno instruments to generate a firehose of data.”
We're sure beaming back that sensor data will be a lot of fun. The probe's computer system includes 256 MB of flash memory, 128 MB of DRAM, a radiation-hardened PowerPC processor, and a set of radio communication uplinks and downlinks.
Io is slightly larger than Earth's moon and is said to be the most geologically active object in the Solar System. Its volcanoes produce plumes of sulfur that can reach 300 miles (500 kilometres) above the surface as Jupiter and the other moons of the gas giant pull on Io.
Juno is one of many spacecraft to snap shots of Jupiter and its moons. Pioneer 10 and 11 got there in 1973 and 1974 respectively, followed by the Voyagers, which featured far more advanced imaging systems. The Voyager images provided evidence of plumes emanating from the surface of Io, and the pair were followed by the Galileo probe, which arrived in 1995.
Other craft – Cassini and New Horizons – also made observations as they hurtled toward their ultimate destinations.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/28/juno_to_get_up_close/
'Magnificent' image shows violent volcanic surface
Richard Speed - Tue 2 Jan 2024 17:00 UTC
New images of Jupiter's moon, Io, were this week released by NASA following the flyby of the Juno spacecraft on December 30.
The images were snapped by the JunoCam imager and have since been subject to processing by the JunoCam community to enhance details and mitigate wear and tear of the instrument operating in the harsh environment around Jupiter.
Six images were released, although the community has quickly enhanced them to pick out details such as volcanoes on the moon's surface.
The images are undeniably impressive and show a pockmarked orange sphere. Scientists have used words such as “magnificent” to describe them.
Juno has accomplished its primary science goals so planners are seeking to maximize the return from the probe by tweaking its orbit to get up close and personal with Jupiter's moons. A second flyby of Io is planned for February 3, 2024.
NASA's June spacecraft saw molten rock—and a mountain straight out of Star Wars—on Jupiter's moon Io.
Isaac Schultz - 18 April 2024
Two recent flybys of Jupiter’s moon Io by NASA’s Juno spacecraft revealed a couple of stunning surprises: a remarkably steep mountain and islands in the middle of a burbling lava lake. The new findings were announced yesterday by Scott Bolton, the principal investigator of the Juno mission, at the European Geophysical Union’s General Assembly.
“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” Bolton said in a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory release. “There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”
The Io flybys took place in December 2023 and February 2024; Juno came within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the moon’s surface. It imaged Io’s northern latitudes, and some of those close-up images were published earlier this year. The spacecraft has also imaged Jupiter’s moon Europa, whose icy surface stands in stark dichotomy to Io’s hellish environment. But that imagery pales in comparison to the visualizations constructed with new Juno data, collected by the spacecraft’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) and its JunoCam imager.
https://gizmodo.com/lava-lake-jupiter-moon-io-volcano-nasa-juno-1851420396
Juno captures images of Io's violence as study says it has always been that way.
John Timmer - 4/19/2024, 11:17 AM
Ever since the Voyager mission sent home images of Jupiter's moon Io spewing material into space, we've gradually built up a clearer picture of Io's volcanic activity. It slowly became clear that Io, which is a bit smaller than Mercury, is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, with all that activity driven by the gravitational strain caused by Jupiter and its three other giant moons. There is so much volcanism that its surface has been completely remodeled, with no signs of impact craters.
A few more details about its violence came to light this week, with new images being released of the moon's features, including an island in a lake of lava, taken by the Juno orbiter. At the same time, imaging done using an Earth-based telescope has provided some indications that this volcanism has been reshaping Io from almost the moment it formed.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/04/io-new-image-of-a-lake-of-fire-signs-of-permanent-volcanism/
Since 2016, the NASA mission has captured some awe-inspiring views of alien worlds and promising venues for alien life.
Isaac Schultz - 25 April 2024
Jupiter and its moons are a diverse and dynamic subdivision of our solar system’s neighborhood, one that NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been visiting since 2016. Besides hosting the system’s largest planet, at over 300 times the mass of our own planet, the Jovian system includes 95 known moons, the largest of which are intriguing venues for understanding the evolution of our solar system and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Two of the moons—Io and Europa—are polar opposites. One is covered in volcanoes and lava lakes while the other is an icy body which probably contains a huge subsurface ocean. With as much time flying around the Jovian system as a two-term president, Juno continues to pull back the curtain on the mysteries that remain on the gassy, gritty bodies about 484 million miles from Earth. Here are some of the best images Juno has captured of Jupiter and its most prominent moons.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-juno-best-images-jupiter-moons-io-europa-1851427089
“NASA officials informed us they do not intend to request a fixed-price proposal.”
Eric Berger - 8/27/2024, 1:18 PM
NASA's problems with the mobile launch tower that will support a larger version of its Space Launch System rocket are getting worse rather than better.
According to a new report from NASA's inspector general, the estimated cost of the tower, which is a little bit taller than the length of a US football field with its end zones, is now $2.7 billion. Such a cost is nearly twice the funding it took to build the largest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which is seven times taller.
This is a remarkable explosion in costs as, only five years ago, NASA awarded a contract to the Bechtel engineering firm to build and deliver a second mobile launcher (ML-2) for $383 million, with a due date of March 2023. That deadline came and went with Bechtel barely beginning to cut metal.
According to NASA's own estimate, the project cost for the tower is now $1.8 billion, with a delivery date of September 2027. However the new report, published Monday, concludes that NASA's estimate is probably too conservative. “Our analysis indicates costs could be even higher due in part to the significant amount of construction work that remains,” states the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasas-second-large-launch-tower-has-gotten-stupidly-expensive/
Stop us if you've heard this one before
Richard Speed - Wed 28 Aug 2024 15:16 UTC
NASA is receiving yet another Moon-related kicking. This time, it is over the Mobile Launcher 2 (ML-2) project, on which the agency plans to assemble and launch the beefier versions of its Space Launch System.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has described the cost and schedule of the structure as “not sustainable” despite the US space agency's efforts to improve matters.
“Not sustainable” is somewhat an understatement when reading the report. To rub salt into the wound, the OIG reported that the ML-2 contract was originally awarded to Bechtel National Inc in June 2019 for $383 million. Delivery was then expected in March 2023.
Sadly, this did not work out. By August 2022, the contract value had risen to over $1 billion, with delivery now set for May 2026. In December 2023, the ML-2 project was estimated to cost $1.5 billion with a November 2026 delivery, something NASA said it intended to keep Bechtel accountable for.
In June, NASA established an Agency Baseline Commitment (ABC) for ML-2 with a cost of $1.8 billion and a delivery date of September 2027. A sensible bit of wiggle room when making commitments to US Congress.
However, even then, the OIG thinks costs could rise and delivery slip further due to the sheer amount of construction work that remains. The OIG wrote: “Our projections indicate the total cost could reach $2.7 billion by the time Bechtel delivers the ML-2 to NASA.”
The LunaH-Map mission missed its initial shot at lunar orbit but the team hasn't given up on it yet.
Passant Rabie - 5 January 2023
A mission to measure lunar water-ice on the Moon is in jeopardy after the cubesat failed to fire its engines shortly after launch. Time is now running out, as the team has until mid-January to fix the spacecraft’s thrusters and give it a second chance to enter lunar orbit.
NASA’s LunaH-Map, manufactured by Arizona State University, was one of 10 cubesats launched on November 16, 2022 as secondary payloads aboard the Artemis 1 mission. The tiny probe was one of six cubesats cable of sending radio signal to ground teams, in what was an upsetting rate of attrition.
https://gizmodo.com/engineers-salvage-luna-h-map-cubesat-moon-mission-1849954853
This ticket to the Moon will probably go to a European or Japanese astronaut.
Stephen Clark - 12/21/2023, 8:44 AM
One of the core tenets of NASA's Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon is its inclusion of international partners. This intertwines the program, like the International Space Station, with considerations of geopolitics and international relations, alongside key themes like US national prestige, exploration, and scientific discovery.
Earlier this year, NASA named a Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen, to the Artemis II crew training to fly around the far side of the Moon, a mission that will likely launch sometime in 2025. This flight won't land on the Moon, but NASA plans a series of lunar landing missions beginning with Artemis III later this decade.
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced an international astronaut will land on the Moon during one of NASA's Artemis missions.
“Today, in recognition of the essential role that our allies and partners play in the Artemis program, I am proud to announce that alongside American astronauts, we intend to land an international astronaut on the surface of the Moon by the end of the decade,” Harris said at a meeting of the National Space Council.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/us-commits-to-landing-an-international-astronaut-on-the-moon/
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday December 21, 2023 11:00PM
During a meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Kamala Harris said an international astronaut will land on the Moon during one of NASA's Artemis missions. “Today, in recognition of the essential role that our allies and partners play in the Artemis program, I am proud to announce that alongside American astronauts, we intend to land an international astronaut on the surface of the Moon by the end of the decade,” Harris said. Ars Technica reports:
Although the National Space Council is useful in aggregating disparate interests across the US government to help form more cohesive space policies, public meetings like the one Wednesday can seem perfunctory. Harris departed the stage soon after her speech, and other government officials read from prepared remarks during the rest of the event. Nevertheless, Harris' announcement highlighted the role the space program plays in elevating the soft power of the United States. It was widely assumed an international astronaut would eventually land on the Moon with NASA. Harris put a deadline on achieving this goal.
NASA selected three companies to develop their lunar terrain vehicles over the next year.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Apr 7, 2024, 1:24 PM PDT
Three companies are vying for the opportunity to send their own lunar vehicle to the moon to support NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions. The space agency announced this week that it’s chosen Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab to develop their lunar terrain vehicles (LTV) in a feasibility study over the next year. After that, only one is expected to be selected for a demonstration mission, in which the vehicle will be completed and sent to the moon for performance and safety tests. NASA is planning to use the LTV starting with the Artemis V crew that’s projected to launch in early 2030.
The LTV that eventually heads to the moon’s south pole needs to function as both a crewed and uncrewed vehicle, serving sometimes as a mode of transportation for astronauts and other times as a remotely operated explorer. NASA says it’ll contract the chosen vehicle for lunar services through 2039, with all the task orders relating to the LTV amounting to a potential value of up to $4.6 billion. The selected company will also be able to use its LTV for commercial activities in its down time.
Humanity’s first lunar space station will offer new ways to explore space and do science, but it will also present unprecedented health and safety risks.
George Dvorsky - 19 July 2022 3:42PM
NASA, along with a suite of international and private partners, has big plans to build a small space station. Called Lunar Gateway, the proposed outpost will support missions at and around the Moon and provide a unique platform for conducting science. Here’s what you should know about the upcoming space station and how it’ll enable the next giant leap in space exploration.
We’ve sent humans to the lunar surface, built space stations in low Earth orbit, landed rovers on Mars, and even sent spacecraft on journeys to the outer reaches of the solar system. Impressive, no doubt, but plenty of items remain on the celestial to-do list, not least of which is the construction of a station around the Moon. That we have yet to do so seems like a glaring omission, but this is where we find ourselves today.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-lunar-gateway-moon-space-station-artemis-1849194753
In some rare spacecraft on spacecraft action, Korea's Danuri mission captured NASA's veteran lunar orbiter using a sibling camera.
Passant Rabie - 15 May 2023
A pair of lunar orbiters recently crossed each other’s paths around the Moon, with one flying overhead and capturing an image of the orbiting spacecraft below. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, snapped the streaked, fuzzy photo of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as both spacecraft circled the Moon.
This wasn’t entirely a coincidence, though, as the two mission teams coordinated the orbital rendezvous. On April 7, LRO passed about 11 miles (18 kilometers) below Danuri, enabling the Korean orbiter to capture the image at a relative velocity of 7,113 miles per hour (3,180 meters per second) between the two spacecraft, according to the team behind NASA’s ShadowCam.
https://gizmodo.com/danuri-orbiter-captures-photo-nasa-reconnaissance-moon-1850438566
“In all my years of working with Boeing I never saw them sign up for additional work for free.”
Eric Berger - 9/24/2024, 10:58 AM
In the early 2010s, NASA's Commercial Crew competition boiled down to three players: Boeing, SpaceX, and a Colorado-based company building a spaceplane, Sierra Nevada Corporation. Each had its own advantages. Boeing was the blue blood, with decades of spaceflight experience. SpaceX had already built a capsule, Dragon. And some NASA insiders nostalgically loved Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser space plane, which mimicked the shuttle's winged design.
This competition neared a climax in 2014 as NASA prepared to winnow the field to one company, or at most two, to move from the design phase into actual development. In May of that year Musk revealed his Crew Dragon spacecraft to the world with a characteristically showy event at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne. As lights flashed and a smoke machine vented, Musk quite literally raised a curtain on a black-and-white capsule. He was most proud to reveal how Dragon would land. Never before had a spacecraft come back from orbit under anything but parachutes or gliding on wings. Not so with the new Dragon. It had powerful thrusters, called SuperDracos, that would allow it to land under its own power.
“You’ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,” Musk bragged. “Which is something that a modern spaceship should be able to do.”
A few weeks later I had an interview with John Elbon, a long-time engineer at Boeing who managed the company’s commercial program. As we talked, he tut-tutted SpaceX’s performance to date, noting its handful of Falcon 9 launches a year and inability to fly at a higher cadence. As for Musk’s little Dragon event, Elbon was dismissive.
“We go for substance,” Elbon told me. “Not pizzazz.”
“The government's really got to look at itself.”
Eric Berger - Nov 21, 2024 4:00 AM
When it comes to space policy, a hallmark of the first Trump administration was its embrace of private companies. NASA sought to build fewer expensive things and buy more lower-cost services. In doing so, it aimed to foster a healthy ecosystem of private space companies.
Under the leadership of Jim Bridenstine, NASA, during these years, stood on the shoulders of more than a decade of government investment in commercial space. This culminated in a triumphant Crew Dragon mission in the summer of 2020, the first privately led human orbital spaceflight.
This Demo-2 mission, sending NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station on a SpaceX vehicle, validated NASA’s long push into commercial space. Since then, the agency has only doubled down on this approach, generally using fixed-price contracts and buying a service instead of telling companies what and how to build while paying a premium.
There are growing concerns about the sustainability of this strategy, though. Some contractors are struggling financially, and others have bowed out of commercial programs entirely. Inside the space agency, too, there appears to be some pushback against these private space initiatives, with agency officials seeking more control. Some key commercial space leaders have left or been edged out of the agency, leaving questions about who will champion these programs. In short, after nearly two decades, NASA’s commercial space efforts are starting to show some cracks.
The space agency doesn't seem to save any money by outsourcing its missions to private companies, according to the analysis.
Passant Rabie - Published October 9, 2025
NASA has grown extremely dependent on its commercial partners in the past few years, outsourcing the development of almost all of its spacecraft and missions so that it can, so the theory goes, save some of that sweet federal money.
But it seems this bargain might not be paying off, after all. In a paper published recently in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, researchers revealed that NASA’s commercial partnerships are not necessarily more cost-effective than if the agency had built the spacecraft itself.
The findings come as NASA faces severe budget cuts and massive layoffs that threaten several of its most ambitious and successful missions—while the private space industry continues to grow.
The Mars Ascent Vehicle will bring back samples from the Red Planet that are currently being collected by the Perseverance rover.
Passant Rabie - 15 August 2023
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been diligently collecting rocky samples from Mars to stow them away on the planet’s dusty surface while engineers work to develop a rocket that can launch off of another world as a crucial step in the process of retrieving the samples.
The team behind the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) recently tested its first and second stage solid rocket motors in a vacuum chamber that simulated the cold temperatures on the Red Planet, according to NASA.
“This test demonstrates our nation has the capacity to develop a launch vehicle that can successfully be lightweight enough to get to Mars and robust enough to put a set of samples into orbit to bring back to Earth,” Benjamin Davis, MAV propulsion manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “The hardware is telling us that our technology is ready to proceed with development.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-tests-the-first-rocket-to-launch-from-the-surface-1850734545
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is losing its grip on managing NASA's next flagship mission.
Stephen Clark - 4/16/2024, 6:53 AM
NASA's $11 billion plan to robotically bring rock samples from Mars back to Earth is too expensive and will take too long, the agency's administrator said Monday, so officials are tasking government and private sector engineers to come up with a better plan.
The agency's decision on how to move forward with the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program follows an independent review last year that found ballooning costs and delays threatened the mission's viability. The effort would likely cost NASA between $8 billion and $11 billion, and the launch would be delayed at least two years until 2030, with samples getting back to Earth a few years later, the review board concluded.
But that's not the whole story. Like all federal agencies, NASA faces new spending restrictions imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a bipartisan budget deal struck last year between the White House and congressional Republicans. With these new budget headwinds, NASA officials determined the agency's plan for Mars Sample Return would not get specimens from the red planet back to Earth until 2040.
One of the primary goals of NASA's Perseverance rover, driving around Mars since 2021, is to collect and catalog more than 30 samples of Martian rocket, sediment, and air for return to Earth by a future mission. Perseverance is sealing these specimens in cigar-size titanium tubes, and collectively, they will total roughly half a kilogram in mass.
Posted by msmash on Tuesday April 16, 2024 07:40AM
SonicSpike shares a report:
The quest to return rock materials from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul. The US space agency says the current mission design can't return the samples before 2040 on the existing funds and the more realistic $11bn needed to make it happen is not sustainable. Nasa is going to canvas for cheaper, faster “out of the box” ideas. It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later in the year.
“To reduce mission complexity, this new concept is doing one launch.”
Stephen Clark - 5/10/2024, 5:31 PM
NASA is looking for ways to get rock samples back from Mars for less than the $11 billion the agency would need under its own plan, so last month, officials put out a call to industry to propose ideas.
Boeing is the first company to release details about how it would attempt a Mars Sample Return mission. Its study involves a single flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the super heavy-lift launcher designed to send astronauts to the Moon on NASA's Artemis missions.
Jim Green, NASA's former chief scientist and longtime head of the agency's planetary science division, presented Boeing's concept Wednesday at the Humans to Mars summit, an annual event sponsored primarily by traditional space companies. Boeing is the lead contractor for the SLS core stage and upper stage and has pitched the SLS, primarily a crew launch vehicle, as a rocket for military satellites and deep space probes.
The space agency will provide a broadcast update on the marquee mission that is intended to recover samples of Martian rock for study on Earth.
Isaac Schultz - January 6, 2025
Check, check—is this thing on? NASA officials will announce an update on the Mars Sample Return mission tomorrow afternoon, providing some eagerly awaited clarity on one of the most hyped planetary science goals of the century to date.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, the agency’s Science Mission Directorate associate administrator, will host the call. The call’s audio will be streamed on the NASA website at 1 p.m. ET tomorrow, January 7.
Top of tomorrow’s docket is how NASA aims to bring Martian rock samples collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth in a safe, cost-effective, and timely manner. So far, that has proven an insurmountable challenge.
The Mars sample return has everything to do with the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021. Since then, the rover has been collecting pieces of Martian rock that scientists consider compelling enough to be retrieved for study on Earth.
Thus, the sample return mission revolves around Perseverance. But the rover has done its job, collecting plenty of Martian rocks that hold clues to the planet’s geological, hydrological, and possibly astrobiological history. The sample tubes also contain a bit of Martian atmosphere; all told, having samples of another planet on Earth will allow scientists to learn much more than what they can do remotely with rovers (just look at the Apollo samples, which continue to reveal new insights about the age and evolution of Earth’s Moon).
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-big-mars-update-how-to-watch-the-upcoming-sample-return-reveal-2000546214
The Perseverance rover has been collecting Martian rock samples since 2021, but NASA is still figuring out how to bring them back to Earth.
Passant Rabie - January 7, 2025
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been hard at work on Mars, collecting pieces of rock and stowing them away on the Red Planet. But back on Earth, the space agency has been struggling to carry out its plan of retrieving the Martian samples. Following months of deliberation, NASA has decided to pursue two alternative routes for its Mars Sample Return program, one of which elicits the help of the private industry.
During a media briefing on Tuesday, NASA announced an unusual approach to its ambitious Martian sample mission. The space agency will simultaneously pursue two different ways of brining samples from the other world to Earth. “Pursuing two potential paths forward will ensure that NASA is able bring these samples back from Mars with significant cost and schedule saving compared to the previous plan,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
In April 2024, NASA called on the private industry to come up with alternative ways to pick up Martian rock and dust from the Red Planet and drop them off on Earth. The space agency asked for proposals for a less complex mission architecture that would lower cost and bring the samples to Earth at an earlier date. Five months later, the agency received 11 studies from both the NASA community and industry players, and a team was formed to assess the best way to return the samples.
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-answer-to-mars-sample-return-problem-develop-two-plans-2000547164
“We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back.”
Stephen Clark – Jan 8, 2025 10:44 AM |
For nearly four years, NASA's Perseverance rover has journeyed across an unexplored patch of land on Mars—once home to an ancient river delta—and collected a slew of rock samples sealed inside cigar-sized titanium tubes.
These tubes might contain tantalizing clues about past life on Mars, but NASA's ever-changing plans to bring them back to Earth are still unclear.
On Tuesday, NASA officials presented two options for retrieving and returning the samples gathered by the Perseverance rover. One alternative involves a conventional architecture reminiscent of past NASA Mars missions, relying on the “sky crane” landing system demonstrated on the agency's two most recent Mars rovers. The other option would be to outsource the lander to the space industry.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson left a final decision on a new mission architecture to the next NASA administrator working under the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump nominated entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the agency's 15th administrator last month.
“This is going to be a function of the new administration in order to fund this,” said Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida who will step down from the top job at NASA on January 20.
The question now is: will they? And if the Trump administration moves forward with Mars Sample Return (MSR), what will it look like? Could it involve a human mission to Mars instead of a series of robotic spacecraft?
There's hope yet for the troubled Mars Sample Return program.
Mariella Moon - Wed, Jan 8, 2025, 6:15 AM PST
NASA will analyze and explore two different landing options for its Mars Sample Return program, though it will take almost two years to do so and is expected to announce its decision in late 2026. The agency had to temporarily hit pause on the program after an independent review found that it could cost between $8 billion and $11 billion, which is way above budget.
The first method NASA is evaluating is called the “sky crane,” in which a vehicle will head to Mars, get close to the surface with the help of a parachute, pick up the samples the Perseverance rover had collected using cables or other mechanisms and then fly away. NASA previously used this method to place the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the planet.
Meanwhile, the second option requires the help of commercial space companies. Last year, the agency asked SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and other companies to submit proposals on how to get the collected Martian samples back to Earth. Whichever option the agency chooses will carry a smaller version of the Mars Ascent Vehicle than originally planned. The Mars Ascent Vehicle is a lightweight rocket that will take the samples from the planet's surface into Martian orbit. It will also have to be capable of transporting a container that can fit 30 sample tubes. Once the sample container is in orbit, a European Space Agency orbiter will capture it and bring it back home.
JPL's sky crane tech or private vendor to get $5-7B contract, before hitching lift back to Earth with ESA
Richard Speed - Wed 8 Jan 2025 17:06 UTC
NASA says it needs until 2026 before making a final decision on how the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission will work.
During a briefing on January 7, the US space agency confirmed it had whittled down the options to two: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which would employ the sky crane technology - used to land the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars - to deposit a lander on the surface of the red planet; the other would use a commercial vendor to get the lander to Mars.
The lander itself would feature a small rocket, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which would take the samples to a spacecraft provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) for a trip back to Earth.
The plan relies on the Perseverance trundlebot being able to make it to the lander, and a spare arm developed as part of the Perseverance mission and fitted to the lander taking the samples from the rover and loading them into the MAV.
The price given for the JPL option was between $6.6 billion and $7.7 billion, while the commercial providers came in between $5.8 billion and $7.1 billion. NASA did not go into detail on what the commercial vendors suggested, citing proprietary information, but did note that as well as heavy landers, an architecture along the lines of JPL's sky crane had also been proposed.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/08/nasa_whittles_down_mars_sample/
Roxana Bardan - Jan 07, 2025
To maximize chances of successfully bringing the first Martian rock and sediment samples to Earth for the benefit of humanity, NASA announced Tuesday a new approach to its Mars Sample Return Program. The agency will simultaneously pursue two landing architectures, or strategic plans, during formulation, encouraging competition and innovation, as well as cost and schedule savings.
NASA plans to later select a single path forward for the program, which aims to better understand the mysteries of the universe, and to help determine whether the Red Planet ever hosted life. NASA is expected to confirm the program – and its design – in the second half of 2026.
“Pursuing two potential paths forward will ensure that NASA is able to bring these samples back from Mars with significant cost and schedule saving compared to the previous plan,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These samples have the potential to change the way we understand Mars, our universe, and – ultimately – ourselves. I’d like to thank the team at NASA and the strategic review team, led by Dr. Maria Zuber, for their work.”
In September 2024, the agency accepted 11 studies from the NASA community and industry on how best to return Martian samples to Earth. A Mars Sample Return Strategic Review team was charged with assessing the studies and then recommending a primary architecture for the campaign, including associated cost and schedule estimates.
If NASA is serious about exploring Mars, it’s past time to send new missions.
Stephen Clark – Dec 10, 2025 4:29 PM
NASA has lost contact with one its three spacecraft orbiting Mars, the agency announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, a second Mars orbiter is perilously close to running out of fuel, and the third mission is running well past its warranty.
Ground teams last heard from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on Saturday, December 6. “Telemetry from MAVEN had showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind the red planet,” NASA said in a short statement. “After the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars, NASA’s Deep Space Network did not observe a signal.”
NASA said mission controllers are “investigating the anomaly to address the situation. More information will be shared once it becomes available.”
Didn’t phone home as expected on December 6th and nobody knows why
Simon Sharwood - Thu 11 Dec 2025 03:01 UTC
Houston, we have a problem: NASA has lost contact with the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft.
The aerospace agency revealed the issue in a Tuesday post that explained recent telemetry from the craft suggested all its systems were working as intended.
After NASA received that data, MAVEN swung behind Mars, and therefore lost contact with Earth as its radios can’t send data through a planet.
But when MAVEN’s orbit brought it back into view, ground stations on Earth could not detect any signal from the probe.
NASA doesn’t know what’s gone wrong.
“The spacecraft and operations teams are investigating the anomaly to address the situation,” its statement reads, before promising to deliver more information once it becomes available.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/11/nasa_maven_loss_of_contact/
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday December 10, 2025 11:00PM
NASA has lost contact with its MAVEN Mars orbiter after it passed behind Mars. When it remerged from behind the planet, the spacecraft never resumed communications. SpaceNews reports:
MAVEN launched in November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars in September 2014. The spacecraft's primary science mission is to study the planet's upper atmosphere and interactions with the solar wind, including how the atmosphere escapes into space. That is intended to help scientists understand how the planet changes from early in its history, when it had a much thicker atmosphere and was warm enough to support liquid water on its surface.
MAVEN additionally serves as a communications relay, using a UHF antenna to link the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the Martian surface with the Deep Space Network. NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft also serve as communications relays for the rovers, but are both significantly older than MAVEN. The spacecraft has suffered some technical problems in the past, notably with its inertial measurement units (IMUs) used for navigation. In 2022, MAVEN switched to an “all-stellar” navigation system to minimize the use of the IMUs.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/12/11/0026246/nasa-loses-contact-with-maven-mars-orbiter
This could be the end of the orbiter that studies the Red Planet’s atmosphere and relays communications between NASA and its Mars rovers.
Ellyn Lapointe - December 16, 2025
Last week, NASA revealed that it lost contact with a vital Martian probe that’s been studying the Red Planet for more than a decade. Despite the mission team’s efforts to restore communication with the orbiter, their latest status report does not bode well.
On Monday, NASA confirmed that it hasn’t received telemetry from the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft since December 4, but said the team did recover a brief fragment of tracking data from December 6. Analysis of that signal suggests that the orbiter was rotating in an “unexpected manner” and that its orbital trajectory may have changed.
“The team continues to analyze tracking data to understand the most likely scenarios leading to the loss of signal. Efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN also continue,” the NASA statement reads.
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-maven-spacecraft-may-actually-be-lost-in-space-2000700204
Time running out for savin' MAVEN as stricken spacecraft still silent as Mars solar conjunction nears
Richard Speed - Wed 24 Dec 2025 11:32 UTC
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is continuing to evade attempts by engineers to make contact as the solar conjunction nears, halting contact with any Mars missions until January 16, 2026.
The agency last heard from the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiter on December 6, and the last fragment of tracking data recovered by engineers indicated that the probe was tumbling and that its orbit trajectory might have changed.
The latter point is highly significant – if any engineers can't work out where the spacecraft is, contacting it is highly challenging, either from Earth or using one of the other Mars orbiters or rovers. According to NASA, on December 16 and 20, the Curiosity trundlebot team used the rover's Mastcam instrument in an attempt to image MAVEN's reference orbit, but the spacecraft was not detected.
The problem now is that the solar conjunction is approaching. The Mars solar conjunction occurs when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun. This means that from Monday, December 29, until Friday, January 16, NASA will not have contact with any Mars missions and won't be able to fire commands at MAVEN in the hope of getting a response from the stricken spacecraft.
Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA will resume attempts to reestablish communications with the orbiter.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/24/nasa_tries_trundlebot_mastcam_to/
Now 50 times as far from the Sun as Earth, History-Making Pluto Explorer Photographs Voyager 1’s Location from the Kuiper Belt
April 15, 2021
In the weeks following its launch in early 2006, when NASA’s New Horizons was still close to home, it took just minutes to transmit a command to the spacecraft, and hear back that the onboard computer received and was ready to carry out the instructions.
As New Horizons crossed the solar system, and its distance from Earth jumped from millions to billions of miles, that time between contacts grew from a few minutes to several hours. And on April 18 at 12:42 UTC (or April 17 at 8:42 p.m. EDT), New Horizons will reach a rare deep-space milepost – 50 astronomical units from the Sun, or 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
New Horizons is just the fifth spacecraft to reach this great distance, following the legendary Voyagers 1 and 2 and their predecessors, Pioneers 10 and 11. It’s almost 5 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) away; a remote region where one of those radioed commands, even traveling at the speed of light, needs seven hours to reach the far flung spacecraft. Then add seven more hours before its control team on Earth finds out if the message was received.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20210415
US space agency plans to shift the New Horizons planetary probe to studying heliophysics, and some scientists don’t agree.
Alexandra Witze - 04 May 2023
In the distant reaches of the Solar System, more than 8 billion kilometres from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is at the centre of a dispute over its future.
The craft, which snapped stunning images during humanity’s first visit to Pluto in 2015, is within a few years of exiting the Kuiper belt, the realm of frozen objects that orbit the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to Pluto, it has flown past another Kuiper belt object called Arrokoth, but has not found a third object to visit before it leaves. So NASA now plans to repurpose the spacecraft mainly as a heliophysics mission, to study space weather and other phenomena that it can measure from its unique location in the Solar System.
The future of New Horizons hangs in the balance as NASA seeks to fundamentally change the focus of the mission.
Passant Rabie - 9 May 2023
It took nearly 15 years for NASA’s New Horizons mission to reach the point where it is at today, around 50 times farther from the Sun than is Earth. From its unique observational perch, the spacecraft has been studying the frozen depths of the solar system to help piece together the origin story of the planets orbiting the Sun.
As the New Horizons spacecraft continues its journey at the outer edge of the solar system, uncertainty lies ahead. NASA is looking to change the primary goal of New Horizons, refocusing the mission to study the Sun’s environment instead of observing objects in the doughnut-shaped ring known as the Kuiper Belt. This has made some people very unhappy.
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-unhappy-nasa-plan-alter-new-horizons-mission-1850408415
The decision to expand New Horizons' mission to explore a potential object in the Kuiper Belt, and not just the Sun, comes as a great relief to scientists.
Passant Rabie - 2 October 2023
A famous NASA spacecraft will continue exploring the outer reaches of the solar system thanks to an extended lifeline. This decision overturns NASA’s earlier proposal to change the mission’s course and transfer it to a different division.
NASA has decided to extend its New Horizons mission until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is expected to take place as early as 2028, the space agency announced. The mission was originally scheduled to wrap up operations at the end of 2024.
During its bonus time in the frozen depths of the solar system, New Horizons will mainly focus on collecting heliophysics data (heliophysics is the study of the Sun and how it interacts with its surrounding environment). The spacecraft will observe the Sun in a low-power mode, but as a bonus, it will also search for an object in the Kuiper Belt to conduct a close flyby.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-new-horizons-extended-mission-kuiper-belt-1850892636
If it weren't for the new budget, New Horizons could keep exploring the outer reaches of the solar system into the 2030s.
Passant Rabie - July 15, 2025
On July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, revealing unprecedented close-up views of the complex icy world. The iconic mission is still returning data from the far reaches of the solar system, but a lack of funding now threatens to end the mission prematurely.
As NASA celebrates the 10th anniversary of the historic Pluto flyby, the space agency is also bracing for budget cuts that threaten the historic New Horizons probe. The White House’s budget proposal, released in May, reduces NASA’s upcoming budget by $6 billion compared to 2025. Under the proposed budget, NASA’s planetary science budget would drop from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. The severe drop in funding would kill dozens of active and planned missions, including New Horizons.
New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, and traveled 9 billion miles in nine and a half years to become the first spacecraft to reach Pluto. Its journey through the harsh space environment wasn’t the only challenge; members of the space community advocated for nearly 20 years for the approval of the spacecraft, according to The Planetary Society. At the time, NASA missions to Pluto were deemed not worth the cost. As a result, New Horizons was nearly canceled on multiple occasions due to budgeting conflicts. In 2002, the White House tried to kill the mission after NASA had already started developing it, but a massive backlash forced Congress to step in and restore New Horizons’ funding.
The coordinated effort is seeking to create alternative space propulsion technologies for both the civilian and defense sectors.
George Dvorsky - 24 January 2023
Two of the most forward-thinking agencies in the United States are joining forces to foster the development of advanced space propulsion. A fireside chat on the new collaboration is scheduled for Tuesday morning, and you can watch it live right here.
The 2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech Forum is officially underway in National Harbor, Maryland. The theme for this year’s confab is to “explore the frontiers of aerospace,” and it will run from today through to Friday at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. Forum speakers will touch upon the future of space and planetary exploration, aeronautics, climate research, and Earth sciences, among other topics.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-live-nasa-darpa-advanced-propulsion-tech-panel-1850020209
Called DRACO, the demonstration spacecraft could reach Mars three times faster than vessels running on traditional chemical-based propulsion.
Kevin Hurler - 24 January 2023
One of the bigger questions surrounding NASA’s interest in sending a crewed mission to Mars surrounds the best way to get there, and it appears the agency might have found its answer. NASA announced today that it will be developing a nuclear thermal rocket engine in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The collaboration is called DRACO, or Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, and it’s expected to reduce the travel time it takes to get astronauts to Mars—and potentially more distant targets in deep space. According to a press release, NASA will lead technical development of the nuclear thermal engine that will be combined with an experimental DARPA spacecraft. The two agencies will further collaborate on combining the rocket with the spacecraft ahead of its demonstration in space as early as 2027.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-darpa-nuclear-powered-rocket-mars-1850023206
Hey, at least this one isn't an actual bomb
Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 27 Jul 2023 16:01 UTC
NASA's ambitions to speed up space travel are about to go nuclear, as its joint project with military boffinry unit DARPA has found a builder for an experimental nuclear thermal rocket vehicle, or X-NTRV: Lockheed Martin.
If all goes according to plan, NASA's Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program (DRACO) will have its first test craft in orbit and ready to fire by no later than 2027, according to Lockheed, which NASA and DARPA enlisted to begin fabrication and design of the X-NTRV.
Nuclear thermal rockets (NTRs) have significant advantages over traditional chemical rockets, but that doesn't mean they eliminate the need for propellant entirely. Using an onboard nuclear reactor fueled with high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), nuclear thermal propulsion systems heat hydrogen propellant and funnel released gasses through a nozzle.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/27/nasa_darpa_nuclear_spacecraft/
The military and NASA seem serious about building demonstration hardware.
Jacek Krywko - 7/22/2024, 4:00 AM
Phoebus 2A, the most powerful space nuclear reactor ever made, was fired up at Nevada Test Site on June 26, 1968. The test lasted 750 seconds and confirmed it could carry first humans to Mars. But Phoebus 2A did not take anyone to Mars. It was too large, it cost too much, and it didn’t mesh with Nixon’s idea that we had no business going anywhere further than low-Earth orbit.
But it wasn’t NASA that first called for rockets with nuclear engines. It was the military that wanted to use them for intercontinental ballistic missiles. And now, the military wants them again.
The 22-year-old Mars Odyssey recently showed signs of missing fuel, sparking an interplanetary mystery that required some clever scientific sleuthing.
Passant Rabie - 16 March 2023
For nearly two years, NASA engineers had been worried that the fuel supply of the Mars Odyssey orbiter was running low, bringing a tragic end to the precious spacecraft. But as it turns out, they had miscalculated what’s left in the orbiter’s gas tank and that it’s good to go for another two years, according to NASA.
The Mars Odyssey has been orbiting the Red Planet for over two decades, traveling a distance equivalent to 1.37 billion miles (2.21 billion kilometers) in space. When it launched in 2001, the orbiter had 500 pounds (225.3 kilograms) of hydrazine propellant to power it through its orbital journeys around Mars. However, what Odyssey doesn’t have is a fuel gauge, making it difficult for mission controllers to determine exactly how much fuel the orbiter has left in its tank.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-mars-odyssey-orbiter-missing-fuel-1850233897
“It has been a long, strange trip,” says the top scientist on NASA's PACE mission.
Stephen Clark - 2/8/2024, 5:37 AM
NASA's latest mission dedicated to observing Earth's oceans and atmosphere from space rocketed into orbit from Florida early Thursday on a SpaceX launch vehicle.
This mission will study phytoplankton, microscopic plants fundamental to the marine food chain, and tiny particles called aerosols that play a key role in cloud formation. These two constituents in the ocean and the atmosphere are important to scientists' understanding of climate change. The mission's acronym, PACE, stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem.
Nestled in the nose cone of a Falcon 9 rocket, the PACE satellite took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 1:33 am EST (06:33 UTC) Thursday after a two-day delay caused by poor weather.
Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines powered the Falcon 9 rocket southeast from the launch site, then the reusable booster stage separated to begin maneuvers to return back to Cape Canaveral for landing. Falcon 9's upper stage engine steered the rocket and the PACE satellite on a southerly trajectory along Florida's east coast.
'New era of ocean science' hoped to follow debut of billion-dollar plankton-spotter
Katyanna Quach - Fri 9 Feb 2024 07:27 UTC
NASA has successfully launched PACE, its latest near-billion-dollar climate-monitoring satellite that will study how microscopic plankton and aerosol particles are impacted by global warming.
Launched on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, ocean Ecosystem spacecraft took to the skies at 0133 EST (0633 UTC). Mission control confirmed it had managed to establish communication with the satellite.
PACE’s primary payloads are a spectrometer to measure the intensity of light, and Multi-angle Polarimeters to measure the polarization of sunlight as it passes through clouds, aerosols, and the ocean.
Mapping the color of oceans provides a wealth of information – including the level of chlorophyll in phytoplankton, which can reveal changes in surrounding temperatures and oxygen levels. Populations of these tiny algae can form huge dense blooms observable from space.
Measuring the different angles of UV-to-shortwave sunlight allows scientists to probe the size and composition of particles that can impact weather.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/09/nasa_pace_launches_ocean_science/
NASA's first chat about its newest rover talks about the landing and what's next.
John Timmer - 2/18/2021, 4:57 PM
In their first press conference following Perseverance's successful landing on Mars, NASA and JPL scientists revealed some information on where the rover landed and what to expect for the next several days and weeks as it begins its mission in earnest.
“I can, and have, watched those videos for hours.”
Eric Berger - 2/22/2021, 3:10 PM
Never before, in all of our millions of years, have humans directly observed a spacecraft landing on another planet. Until now.
On Monday, NASA released a video (embedded below) that included several viewpoints from the descent of Mars Perseverance to the surface of the red planet last week. A camera on the back shell captured a view of the parachute deploying, and cameras on the descent stage and rover itself captured the final seconds of the landing.
“I can, and have, watched those videos for hours,” said NASA's Al Chen, the lead for the entry, descent, and landing for Perseverance. “I find new stuff every time. I invite you to do so as well.”
George Dvorsky - 22 February 2021 4:33PM
NASA has released stunning footage of the Perseverance rover landing on Mars, in what is a seminal achievement for the space agency.
Late last week, an unbelievable image showed the rover landing on Mars, taken from a camera aboard the descent stage. Today, NASA did one better, releasing video footage—from the perspective of multiple cameras—of the historic landing, which took place on February 18.
https://gizmodo.com/unreal-video-of-perseverance-landing-on-mars-will-take-1846328878
Officials also showed more images that the rover has captured on the planet's surface.
Kris Holt - 02.22.21
It's early days, but NASA's latest mission to Mars has been a successful one thus far. After providing photos of Perseverance's safe descent to the surface last week, the agency has revealed footage of the critical moments of the landing: the moments when the rover touched down.
The footage starts when Perseverance is seven miles above the surface. During the video, you can see the rover's heat shield, which protected it during its entry into Mars' atmosphere, falling away.
“For those who wonder how you land on Mars — or why it is so difficult — or how cool it would be to do so — you need look no further,” acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement. “Perseverance is just getting started, and already has provided some of the most iconic visuals in space exploration history. It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet.”
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-landing-mars-video-191346299.html
Devin Coldewey / 11:48 AM PST•February 22, 2021
NASA has released video taken by the Perseverance landing module and rover showing the famous “seven minutes of terror” in a bracing first-person perspective. The images sent back Friday were just a teaser — this is the full experience, and the first video of a Mars landing ever captured.
A full description of the rover’s descent and mission can be found here, but briefly stated here’s what happened:
After decelerating in the atmosphere interplanetary velocity, the heat shield is jettisoned and the parachute deployed. Beneath the heat shield are a number of cameras and instruments, which scanned the landscape to find a good landing spot. At a certain altitude and speed the parachute is detached and the “jetpack” lower stage takes over, using rockets to maneuver towards the landing area. At about 70 feet above the surface the “sky crane” dangles the rover itself out of the lander and softly plops it down on the ground before the jetpack flies off to crash at a safe distance.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/22/watch-perseverances-harrowing-descent-to-the-surface-of-mars/
See how plucky Perseverance touched down on the unforgiving dust world
Katyanna Quach - Tue 23 Feb 2021 / 06:20 UTC
Video NASA successfully landed its fifth robotic rover on the surface of Mars just five metres from its target, the American space agency said after releasing footage of the historic landing.
As Perseverance plunged through the Martian atmosphere and shed its lower shell, its cameras were able to provide scientists with a view of what was going on above and below the vehicle. You can watch the drama unfold below as mission control recounts the various steps needed to slow the rover down from a whopping 5,300 metres per second to plonk it safely on the ground.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/23/perseverance_landing_video/
By Jonathan Amos, BBC Science Correspondent - 19 February 2021
The American space agency has released an astonishing image sent back from Mars by its Perseverance rover.
It shows the robot heading down to the ground on Thursday to make its landing. It was acquired by the rocket cradle that placed the vehicle on the surface.
Perseverance has a large amount of data in its memory banks which it is gradually offloading to Earth.
Among other pictures is a view from a satellite that captures the rover in the parachute phase of its descent.
This also represents an immense technical achievement because the satellite - the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - was approximately 700km from Perseverance at the time and traveling at about 3km/s.
Devin Coldewey / 11:28 AM PST•February 19, 2021
The Perseverance Mars rover landed safely yesterday, but only after a series of complex maneuvers as it descended at high speed through the atmosphere, known by the team as the “seven minutes of terror.” NASA has just shared a hair-raising image of the rover as it dangled from its jetpack above the Martian landscape, making that terror a lot easier to understand.
Published with others to the rover’s Twitter account (as always, in the first person), the image is among the first sent back from the rover; black-and-white shots from its navigation cameras appeared almost instantly after landing, but this is the first time we’ve seen the rover — or anything, really — from this perspective.
The image was taken by cameras on the descent stage or “jetpack,” a rocket-powered descent module that took over once the craft had sufficiently slowed via both atmospheric friction and its parachute. Once the heat shield was jettisoned, Perseverance scanned the landscape for a safe landing location, and once that was found, the jetpack’s job was to fly it there.
The red planet's red looks different to a robot with hyperspectral cameras for eyes.
Adam Rogers, wired.com - 2/27/2021, 4:15 AM
The seven minutes of terror are over. The parachute deployed; the skycrane rockets fired. Robot truck goes ping! Perseverance, a rover built by humans to do science 128 million miles away, is wheels-down on Mars. Phew.
Percy has now opened its many eyes and taken a look around.
The rover is studded with a couple dozen cameras—25, if you count the two on the drone helicopter. Most of them help the vehicle drive safely. A few peer closely and intensely at ancient Martian rocks and sands, hunting for signs that something once lived there. Some of the cameras see colors and textures almost exactly the way the people who built them do. But they also see more. And less. The rover’s cameras imagine colors beyond the ones that human eyes and brains can come up with. And yet human brains still have to make sense of the pictures the cameras send home.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/perseverances-eyes-see-a-different-mars/
George Dvorsky - Friday 26 February 2021 8:30AM
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been on Mars for a full week, and the images are starting to pour in. Here are our favorites so far.
The six-wheeled rover landed in Jezero crater on Feb. 18, and the Mars 2020 team is busily preparing Perseverance for the science stage of the mission. But that hasn’t stopped the rover from snapping some seriously interesting pics, which NASA is making available. As of this posting, the space agency has uploaded more than 5,600 raw images to the publicly available archive, so yeah, the SUV-sized rover has been very active, at least in the photography department.
https://gizmodo.com/perseverance-s-most-intriguing-images-captured-from-mar-1846354314
Not a hardware or software bug, for a change
Katyanna Quach - Thu 12 Aug 2021 / 21:33 UTC
Mars rover Perseverance failed in its first attempt to collect a sample of rock from the Red Planet because the material crumbled to dust, NASA scientists have said.
Last week, the nuke-powered science lab extended its robotic arm to bore 7cm into the seemingly hard surface, gather a core of material, and bottle it in a sample tube. Although its equipment appeared to be working fine, Perseverance came up empty handed.
A closer look confirmed there was nothing wrong with the trundle bot’s software or hardware. Instead, it's the rock that is to blame. Images from the WATSON camera onboard shows the regolith simply disintegrated, leaving no solid core to collect.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/12/nasa_perseverance_rocks/
NASA briefly celebrated when it seemed the Perseverance rover had grabbed its first sample, but they soon realized the tube was empty.
Isaac Schultz - 12 August 2021 12:55PM
The Perseverance rover may have hit its first major hiccup on Mars, as last week’s attempt at sampling Martian rock turned up a perplexing amount of nothing. Yesterday, mission team members at NASA reported that the rover’s systems functioned perfectly—the problem instead lies with the composition of the Martian surface.
Louise Jandura, the chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, unpacked the issue in a blog post. “The volume measurement and post-measurement image arrived indicating that the sample tube was empty. It took a few minutes for this reality to sink in but the team quickly transitioned to investigation mode,” she wrote.
https://gizmodo.com/perseverance-s-missing-mars-rock-sample-appears-to-have-1847473327
Posted by BeauHD on Friday September 03, 2021 03:00AM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN:
The Perseverance rover successfully drilled into a Martian rock on Thursday, creating an intact core sample that could one day be returned to Earth. But NASA wants better images to make sure the sample is safely in the tube before it's sealed up and stowed on the rover. So far, data sent back by the rover and initial images suggest an intact sample was inside the tube after Perseverance drilled into a rock selected by the mission's science team. After the initial images were taken, the rover vibrated the drill bit and tube for five one-second bursts to clear both of any residual material from outside of the tube. It's possible that this caused the sample to slide down further inside the tube.
The mission to get it back to Earth will be a little more challenging.
Steve Dent - September 6th, 2021
After initially failing to capture a rock sample, NASA has confirmed that Perseverance succeeded in its second attempt. The space agency has verified that a pencil-width core of rust-colored rock is safely trapped in the rover's sample tube tube, ready to be processed and sent back to Earth, CNET has reported.
After NASA initially thought it had nabbed the first sample last month, a subsequent check showed the sample tube empty. That created something of a mystery, with scientists wondering where the rock could have gone. Eventually, NASA determined that the particular sample it tried to collect was actually too powdery to be collected. “The hardware performed as commanded, but the rock did not cooperate this time,” JPL engineers said at the time.
The Mars rover is dealing with some debris that stopped its sample collecting process.
Isaac Schultz - 10 January 2022 1:35PM
The Perseverance rover has run into a snag, after a Martian rock sample extracted on December 29 didn’t transfer correctly into the rover’s long-term storage. NASA is currently working on how to remove debris from the rover’s machinery before proceeding with more sampling.
Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling and caching at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in a NASA blog post that the issue occurred when the rock sample was being moved from the end of the robotic arm that drilled it onto the carousel that holds the sample tubes. Sensors on Perseverance track resistance when the coring bit holding the sample first comes in contact with the carousel, and this time, there was more drag than usual.
https://gizmodo.com/the-perseverance-rover-has-a-little-pebble-problem-1848331541
Mission controllers are taking advantage of the rover's “thinking while driving capability” to push the limits on Mars.
Kevin Hurler - 12 April 2022
Slow and steady is winning the race. NASA’s Perseverance Rover has broken the record for the longest distance driven by a rover on the Red Planet, according to a release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Currently en route to its final destination of the Jezero Crater river delta—a 3-mile journey from its landing site—the rover traveled 1,047 feet in one day. Even more impressive, it did so with minimal help from humans.
Rover drivers on Earth at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are driving the rover using special 3D glasses and 3D photos to view the surrounding terrain more accurately. This allows the team to select different destination points along the route for Perseverance, but the path the rover takes to get to those points is decided by its onboard self-driving system. Along the way, Perseverance needs to identify hazards like jagged rocks, loose sand, and craters, and figure out how best to avoid them in real-time, without help from Earthlings.
https://gizmodo.com/perseverance-rover-mars-distance-record-1848782666
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday April 30, 2022 12:00AM
New pictures from the Ingenuity helicopter offer a fresh perspective of the wreckage left behind when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars last year, NASA said on Wednesday. The Verge reports:
Launched in 2020, the Perseverance rover successfully landed on the Red Planet in 2021, with the mission of finding ancient signs of life on Mars. The rover carried the Ingenuity helicopter onboard – an experimental project that scientists on Earth hoped would be able to see sights that the rover couldn't. Perseverance went through a grueling process known as the seven minutes of terror to descend onto the Martian surface. As it entered the atmosphere, a heat shield helped protect the rover from the blistering heat of reentry and slowed it down dramatically. After that, the massive parachute deployed out of the backshell (a cone-shaped part of the descent vehicle), slowing it down even more. At that point, the backshell and parachute separated from Perseverance and let the descent stage take over, using rocket thrusters and a “sky crane” to gently lower the rover to a smooth landing.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday May 14, 2022 09:34AM
After traveling 300 miles on the underbelly of the Perseverance rover, the “Ingenuity” helicopter has made 28 different flights over the surface of Mars, reports the Washington Post, staying aloft for a total of nearly one hour, flying 4.3 miles with a maximum speed of 12.3 miles per hour and a top altitude of 39 feet. “It's traversed craters, taken photos of regions that would be hard to reach on the ground, and served as a surprisingly resilient scout that has adapted to the changing Martian atmosphere and survived its harsh dust storms and frigid nights.
“Now the engineers and scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are worried that their four-pound, solar-powered drone on Mars, may be nearing the end of its life.”
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday June 11, 2022 08:34PM Four months ago, NASA's Mars rover Perseverance picked up a “pet rock,” tucked inside its left front wheel, that's been riding along ever since. Space.com reports:
So far, its ridden across 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers) with the Perseverance rover as it drives across its Jezero Crater home on Mars.
Perseverance has carried the rock north across its landing site, named for the famed late science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, and then west across a region called “Kodiak,” the remains of a former delta at Jezero. The rover is currently in the midst of what NASA calls its Delta Front Campaign and may have drilled into its first sedimentary Mars rock, Ravanis wrote.
Producing vital gas out of Red Planet's hostile atmosphere? Truly a test of Perseverance
Katyanna Quach - Thu 1 Sep 2022 22:58 UTC
The oxygen-generator onboard NASA's Perseverance rover, which has repeatedly extracted the vital gas from the Martian atmosphere in tests, has been detailed in a scientific paper published this week.
About 95 percent of the Martian atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, and very little is oxygen. If we're to have long-term manned missions on the planet, we need to make oxygen right there from the CO2 as that's much more efficient than routinely sending it in tanks all the way from Earth. Oxygen is needed for breathing, rocket fuel, and more.
Perseverance's oxygen-generator, made by a team led by MIT, is named the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE for short. It started producing oxygen in April last year from the Martian carbon dioxide at a rate of six grams per hour, enough to give an astronaut a little over 10 minutes to breathe.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/01/perseverance_mars_moxie_oxygen/
A future mission will pick up these rock cores and bring them to Earth, where scientists will search them for signs of ancient life.
Isaac Schultz - 28 October 2022 3:51PM
For nearly two years (has it been that long already?) NASA’s Perseverance rover has been scuttling about the western rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater, coring rocks and imaging the planet’s surface.
The rover’s main purpose is to collect rock samples of scientific interest that can be stored on the surface and brought to Earth in 2033. Now, the rover team is finally selecting a spot to drop off its first cache of samples.
https://gizmodo.com/perseverance-sample-return-location-nasa-1849716702
A particulate-filled whirlwind swept right over the Perseverance rover, providing some fortuitous scientific data.
Isaac Schultz - 13 December 2022 5:21PM
Researchers working with a microphone aboard the Perseverance rover have managed to record sounds of a passing dust devil. The audio data was enough for them to determine the physical characteristics of the Martian whirlwind, which crossed right over the NASA rover.
The event occurred on November 27, 2021, and Perseverance also took images of the dust devil in question. The team’s research describing the convective, dust-loaded vortex is published today in Nature Communications.
https://gizmodo.com/perseverance-rover-mars-dust-devil-audio-nasa-1849889882
The 10 sample tubes are strewn about the Three Forks region of Jezero Crater.
Isaac Schultz - 14 February 2023
NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent its two years on Mars imaging the planet’s surface and collecting rock samples that will, should all go well, be brought to Earth in the early 2030s.
The rover collected samples of Martian regolith (rocks and dust) as well as the planet’s atmosphere, which it stored in its sample cache. But it also collected 10 sample tubes, which it left sitting on the Martian surface as backups in case disaster strikes and the samples aboard Perseverance become inaccessible.
https://gizmodo.com/perseverance-mars-rover-rock-samples-mars-surface-nasa-1850114382
The Mars rover has had a stubborn rock lodged in its wheel since last year.
Passant Rabie - 24 April 2023
Mars is a lonely place, and it just got a little lonelier for one rover. NASA’s Perseverance has parted ways with a lumpy stone that has been its companion for more than a year.
Last spring, a photo of one of Perseverance’s wheels revealed a small rock along for the ride. A recently captured image, however, shows a lonely aluminum wheel without the stowaway that had been stuck there all these months. The sad news was confirmed on Twitter by Gwénaël Caravaca, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, who bid farewell to Percy’s pet rock.
https://gizmodo.com/the-rock-stuck-in-nasas-perseverance-rover-is-finally-f-1850368210
Latest snaps have NASA rethinking scale of rivers on the Red Planet
Brandon Vigliarolo - Fri 12 May 2023 21:31 UTC
Never mind the trickling stream that NASA's Curiosity rover spotted on Mars near Mount Sharp, young upstart Perseverance has found proof of water that flowed faster and at greater depths than previous evidence indicated.
Rather than the downhill streams photographed by Curiosity earlier this year, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory overseeing the Perseverance mission said the coarse sediment grains and cobbles found by their rover in the Jezero Crater point to much more powerful water flows than ever suspected on Mars.
The shape of loose rocks found by Perseverance “indicate a high-energy river that's truckin' and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it's able to move larger pieces of material,” said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at JPL with a background in studying Earth's waterways.
Perseverance, which touched down in Mars's Jezero Crater in 2021, found evidence for the fast-flowing river when it visited a region of Jezero filled with curved bands of layered rock that scientists dubbed “the curvilinear unit” when they spotted it from space earlier.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/12/more_water_evidence_mars/
Ingenuity's still setting records, but waking it up and chatting are getting harder
Simon Sharwood - Tue 30 May 2023 00:29 UTC
NASA has revealed a six-day stretch during which it could not contact its Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
In a lengthy post, chief engineer Travis Brown explained that after the copter's 49th flight, radio contact was lost for six sols – just short of six days and six hours of terrestrial time.
Initially, NASA's Mars boffins weren't unduly concerned. The Perseverance Rover had moved behind a rocky outcrop that created a “communication shadow.” Brown wrote that since Sol 685 the helicopter “had unfortunately been drifting in and out of night-time survival mode” which made daily contact with the craft difficult. So a day or two without contact wasn't worrying.
But once Perseverance moved to another location and Ingenuity still could not be found, Brown wrote “the situation began to generate some unease.”
“Poor telecom performance was seen as a plausible explanation, but there were reasons to doubt it,” he wrote. “In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout. Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/30/ingenuity_mars_helicopter_offline/
The rotorcraft went silent for nearly a full week—an “agonizingly long time,” according to mission controllers, and it's a problem that could get worse.
Isaac Schultz - 31 May 2023
The Ingenuity helicopter paved new ground (air?) in April 2019, when it communicated data of its first flight—the first powered, controlled flight on another planet—to NASA scientists on Earth.
But now, it seems Ingenuity isn’t interested in communicating with its engineering team at all; as of late, the Mars helicopter has only communicated with NASA scientists intermittently and unpredictably.
The communication breakdown is making it difficult for the Ingenuity team to guide the craft around the Martian landscape—and crucially, both within range but safely away from the Perseverance rover, the real star of the Mars 2020 program.
According to a status update written by Travis Brown, Ingenuity’s chief engineer, the communication problems started in earnest following Ingenuity’s 49th flight on April 2, 2023, which set records for the rotorcraft’s height and airspeed.
Following downlink of data from its 49th flight, the Ingenuity team failed to uplink instructions for the rotocraft’s next flight.
https://gizmodo.com/ingenuity-helicopter-mars-silent-nasa-perseverance-1850492079
The intrepid rover found a donut-shaped rock that may be a meteorite which landed on Mars.
Passant Rabie - 28 June 2023
While roaming the Martian terrain, NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted an odd-shaped rock that may have traveled its way from space to land on the Red Planet.
Using its SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager, the Perseverance rover snapped a series of images on Friday that revealed a donut-shaped rock laying on the surface of Mars. The large rock has a hole in the middle and is surrounded by smaller fragments that may have broken off from it, sort of like a donut and its donut holes.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-finds-other-worldly-treat-mars-1850585636
347.7 meters in a day - humans could probably do better
Brandon Vigliarolo - Wed 27 Sep 2023 19:00 UTC
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has set a speed record by traversing a massive boulder field in a third the time it would have taken its predecessor Curiosity.
That isn't to say Perseverance is fast - to traverse Snowdrift Peak, a rocky region in the Jezero Crater the rover entered on June 26, it still took more than a month, with Perseverance emerging on the far side July 31 and ready to roll.
“It was much denser than anything Perseverance has encountered before – just absolutely littered with these big rocks,” said Tyler Del Sesto, deputy rover planner lead for Perseverance and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We didn't want to go around it because it would have taken us weeks. More time driving means less time for science, so we just dove right in.”
Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, is equipped with self-driving capabilities in the form of the AutoNav system, which is why NASA said the rookie rover is so much more capable than those that came before it.
Even the earliest Mars rovers had some form of auto-navigation, but their capabilities were limited. The first Martian rover, Sojourner, had to take a break every 5.1 inches to reassess its plans. Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived on Mars in 2004, needed to pause every 1.6 feet to make the same determination.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/27/perseverance_rover_mars_record/
An impressive trek through a dense boulder field is the latest in a growing list of accomplishments for the six-wheeled rover.
George Dvorsky - 26 September 2023
NASA’s Perseverance rover, equipped with an advanced computer pilot known as AutoNav, has been making significant strides on the Martian surface, setting new speed records since its landing in February 2021.
In a journey from June 26 to July 31, Perseverance covered a distance of 2,490 feet (759 meters) through an area dubbed Snowdrift Peak. Remarkably, this feat was achieved in about a third of the time it would have taken other NASA Mars rovers, according to an agency press release.
Tyler Del Sesto, deputy rover planner lead for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, highlighted the challenges of this terrain. “It was much denser than anything Perseverance has encountered before—just absolutely littered with these big rocks,” said Del Sesto. Instead of taking a detour that would have consumed weeks, the team “just dove right in.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-sets-new-speed-records-on-mars-1850874314
Engineers are trying to resolve an issue with one of the rover's instruments, which lets Perseverance shoot lasers at rocks.
Passant Rabie - 14 February 2024
The Perseverance rover is at risk of losing its ability to zap Martian rocks with lasers after one of its instruments began malfunctioning last month.
One of two covers on SHERLOC, an instrument fitted on the end of the robot’s arm to look for microscopic clues on rocks, is partially open, interfering with the rover’s ability to collect scientific data, NASA announced on Tuesday. The covers prevent dust from accumulating on the instrument’s cameras, which help Perseverance in its quest to seek out minerals and organic compounds considered to be the building blocks of life on Earth.
The mission team discovered the malfunction on January 6, and engineers have been working to figure out the cause behind the cover’s orientation to devise a possible fix. “To better understand the behavior of the cover’s motor, the team has been sending commands to the instrument that alter the amount of power being fed to it,” NASA wrote.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-problem-sherloc-laser-1851255729
Bot's arm used to free instrument's dust cover and return to science
Richard Speed - Thu 27 Jun 2024 15:35 UTC
NASA engineers have performed another remarkable feat of remote debugging and restored the SHERLOC instrument of the Perseverance Mars rover to operation.
SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) is mounted on the rover's arm and uses two cameras and a laser spectrometer to hunt for organic compounds and minerals in rocks.
Finding signs of these markers might point to evidence of past microbial life on the Red Planet. Hunting for environments that might once have been capable of supporting microbial life and looking for signatures of that life are two of Perseverance's science objectives, so a problem with SHERLOC is inconvenient despite overlap with other instruments on the rover.
The issue was not with the cameras or spectrometer but with one of the two covers designed to keep dust off the instruments' optics. Earlier this year, the cover became frozen in place. This stemmed from a malfunction in the motor that both moves the cover and adjusts the focus for the spectrometer and one of the cameras, the Autofocus and Context Imager.
Getting the dust cover to open required shaking the SHERLOC instrument. Engineers started by rotating the rover's arm before trying the percussive drill to loosen debris that could potentially jam the lens cover.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/27/perseverance_sherloc_operational/
Could this be a sample of Mars' original crust?
Elisha Sauers - June 15, 2024
If looking at this Mars vista conjures up childhood memories of the song, “One of these things is not like the others,” NASA scientists are right there with you.
Perseverance, a car-size lab on six wheels, traveled into the Red Planet's Neretva Vallis last week. Though this region may look like a barren desert, it was once an ancient river channel that fed into the Jezero crater billions of years ago.
As Perseverance traversed the inlet, the rover came upon a hill covered in boulders, with one in particular attracting the science team's attention: a light speckled rock amid a sea of dark lumps.
“Every once in a while, you'll just see some strange thing in the Martian landscape, and the team is like, 'Oh, let's go over there,'” Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, told Mashable. “This was like the textbook definition of (chasing) the bright, shiny thing because it was so bright and white.”
https://mashable.com/article/nasa-mars-rover-boulder-discovery
But the rock still has to be sent back to Earth for extensive testing.
Mariella Moon - Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 8:00 AM PDT
NASA's Perseverance rover has been collecting samples from Mars since 2021, but one of its most recently collected rocks could help it achieve its goal of finding evidence of ancient life on the planet. Nicknamed Cheyava Falls after the tallest waterfall in the Grand Canyon, the 3.2 feet by 2 feet sample contains “chemical signatures and structures” that could've been formed by ancient microbial life from billions of years ago.
Perseverance collected the rock on July 21 from what was once a Martian river valley carved by flowing water long ago. The sample, which you can see in close up below and from afar at the center of the image above, exhibits large white calcium sulfate veins running along its length. They indicate that water did run through the rock at one point.
More importantly, it contains millimeter-size marks that look like “leopard spots” all over its central reddish band. On our planet, those spots could form on sedimentary terrestrial rocks when there are chemical reactions that turn hematite, one of the minerals responsible for Mars' reddish color, to white. Those reactions can release iron and phosphate, which could've served as an energy source for microbes.
The rover trekked nearly 2,000 feet to get out of the crater, where it will explore a 4-billion-year-old environment.
Isaac Schultz - December 13, 2024
Well, look at that. The Perseverance rover has clambered out of the crater that’s been its cradle for nearly four years on the Red Planet.
Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021. The rover is charged with looking for biosignatures—evidence that the inhospitable world was not only once capable of supporting life, but actually did. To quickly sum what the rover has been up to:
Percy has been toiling on the Martian surface for the past 3.5 years. In its tenure, the rover has drilled into rocks, taken images of the Martian surface and the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, and compiled a collection of rock samples that will hopefully— someday—be brought to Earth for study.
The rover landed in Jezero Crater, which once held a large lake. The crater was formed by an impact event some 3.9 billion years ago. On the crater’s western edge was a river delta, which contains compelling rocks that researchers are eager to study on Earth—eventually.
Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday December 24, 2025 11:00PM
With NASA's Mars Sample Return mission delayed into the 2030s, engineers are certifying the Perseverance rover to keep operating for many more years while it continues collecting and safeguarding Martian rock samples. Ars Technica reports:
The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars,” Lee said in a press briefing Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting. “Perseverance is really in excellent shape. All the systems onboard are operational and performing very, very well. All the redundant systems onboard are available still, and the rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come.”
The rover's operators at JPL are counting on sustaining Perseverance's good health. The rover's six wheels have carried it a distance of about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, since landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater in February 2021. That is double the original certification for the rover's mobility system and farther than any vehicle has traveled on the surface of another world. Now, engineers are asking Perseverance to perform well beyond expectations. An evaluation of the rover's health concluded it can operate until at least 2031. The rover uses a radioactive plutonium power source, so it's not in danger of running out of electricity or fuel any time soon. The Curiosity rover, which uses a similar design, has surpassed 13 years of operations on Mars.
It's not preserved matter from biological organisms, but the discovery is a boost to the rover's mission: finding signs of ancient life on Mars.
Isaac Schultz - 12 July 2023 3:20PM
Researchers poring over imagery and data from the Perseverance rover on Mars have found evidence of organic molecules in the planet’s Jezero Crater, potentially providing evidence of the planet’s carbon cycles and its ability to host life.
The discovery is by no means a confirmation that life once existed on Mars, but it is a sign that the conditions necessary for life as we know it once did. Perseverance is investigating many aspects of the fourth planet from the Sun, but chief among them is whether or not Mars hosted life in its ancient past.
The researchers found signals of organic molecules in all ten of the targets Perseverance scrutinized with its SHERLOC instrument (that’s short for the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals instrument). The team’s recent research describing the organic-mineral associations around Jezero was published today in Nature.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-preserved-organic-matter-mars-1850630956
Building blocks for life could have been present for up to 2.6 billion years on the Red Planet, rover discovery shows
Lindsay Clark - Wed 12 Jul 2023 15:30 UTC
The Perseverance Mars rover has found evidence of a range of organic molecules that suggest a more complex chemical cycle on the planet than previously thought.
The discovery in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater might be the result of historic chemical interactions between water and rocks, or come from interplanetary dust or meteors, scientists say. However, biological origins are not being ruled out.
In any case, improving scientific understanding of Martian organic matter could help reveal carbon sources, with implications for the search for any possible signs of life.
The team led by Sunanda Sharma, a post-doctoral researcher fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, collected data from the rover’s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, which was designed to offer a more detailed mapping and analysis of organic molecules minerals on Mars than earlier hardware.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/perseverance_data_provides_more_detail/
A hilly terrain on Mars stood between Ingenuity and Perseverance, interrupting their communication for over 60 days.
Passant Rabie - 3 July 2023
After 63 days of agonizing silence, NASA’s Martian chopper finally phoned home.
The Ingenuity helicopter reestablished communication with mission control on June 28, officially logging its 52nd flight as a success, NASA recently announced. The space agency lost contact with Ingenuity as the helicopter was descending towards the surface of the Red Planet following its most recent flight on April 26.
The reason behind the communication drop was that a hill was inconveniently positioned between Ingenuity and its rover pal Perseverance, preventing the Martian pair from communicating with one another. Ingenuity relies on Perseverance to deliver its messages to Earth, using shiny antennas to exchange data at about 100 kilobits per second. The data is routed from the Ingenuity-facing antenna to the rover’s main computer before being transferred to Earth by way of an orbiting spacecraft.
https://gizmodo.com/mars-ingenuity-helicopter-nasa-two-month-silence-1850601767
Posted by msmash on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @05:46PM from the all's-well dept.
JoeRobe writes:
After 63 days of agonizing silence, NASA's Martian chopper finally phoned home. The Ingenuity helicopter reestablished communication with mission control on June 28, officially logging its 52nd flight as a success, NASA recently announced. The space agency lost contact with Ingenuity as the helicopter was descending towards the surface of the Red Planet following its most recent flight on April 26.
“The helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing.”
Eric Berger - 8/8/2023, 7:50 AM
By the standard of some of its previous flights, the most recent voyage of NASA's intrepid Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was nothing special. Over a period of 24 seconds, the small helicopter rose to an altitude 5 meters above the red planet's dusty surface and then touched back down in the same spot.
During some of its past flights, Ingenuity has flown for nearly three minutes at a time and traversed as far as 700 meters across Martian terrain. In fact, after landing on Mars more than two years ago as part of the Perseverance mission, the helicopter is arguably one of NASA's greatest exploration feats of all time.
Mission success for Ingenuity was completing five relatively short flights. However, since its first test flight in April 2021, the helicopter has exceeded all expectations by flying more than 50 different sorties across Mars and surviving long and dark winters.
Ingenuity stopped communicating with the Perseverance rover on Thursday during its 72nd flight.
Cheyenne MacDonald, Weekend Editor - Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 11:57 AM PST
NASA is trying to figure out how to reach its Ingenuity Mars helicopter after losing contact with the craft earlier this week. During its 72nd flight — a “quick pop-up” to an altitude of about 40 feet — NASA says Ingenuity stopped communicating with the Perseverance rover before it was meant to. It went quiet on Thursday, and as of Friday afternoon, NASA still hadn’t heard from it.
Perseverance serves the go-between for all communications to and from the helicopter; Ingenuity sends information to Perseverance, which then passes it on to Earth, and vice versa. According to NASA, the small helicopter completed the ascent as planned, but ceased communications while on its way back down. “The Ingenuity team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish communications with the helicopter,” NASA said in a status update on Friday. Ingenuity had previously ended a flight earlier than it was supposed to, and Thursday’s jaunt was meant to “check out the helicopter’s systems.”
https://www.engadget.com/nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-has-gone-silent-on-mars-195746735.html
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 21, 2024 12:35PM
“Good news…” NASA posted Saturday night on X. “We've reestablished contact with the Mars Helicopter…”
After a two-day communications blackout, NASA had instructed its Perseverance Mars rover “to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal” — and apparently they did the trick. “The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout” during the helicopter's record-breaking 72nd flight.
Slashdot reader Thelasko shared this report from NPR:
Communications broke down on Thursday, when the little autonomous rotorcraft was sent on a “quick pop-up vertical flight,” to test its systems after an unplanned early landing during its previous flight, the agency said in a status update on Friday night. The Perseverance rover, which relays data between the helicopter and Earth during the flights, showed that Ingenuity climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet, NASA said.
NASA - 21 January 2024
NASA has re-established contact with its tiny helicopter on Mars, the US space agency said Saturday, after an unexpected outage prompted fears that the hard-working craft had finally met its end.
Ingenuity, a drone about 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) tall, arrived on Mars in 2021 aboard the rover Perseverance and became the first motorized craft to fly autonomously on another planet.
Data from the helicopter are transmitted via Perseverance back to Earth, but communications were suddenly lost during a test flight on Thursday, Ingenuity's 72nd lift-off on Mars.
“Good news today,” NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, late Saturday.
The agency said that contact had finally been made with the helicopter by commanding Perseverance to “perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal.”
“The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72,” it added.
NASA previously said that Ingenuity had attained an altitude of 40 feet (12 meters) on Flight 72, which was a “quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter's systems, following an unplanned early landing during its previous flight.”
But during its descent, “communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown,” the agency said.
JPL had noted on Friday that Perseverance was temporarily “out of line-of-sight with Ingenuity, but the team could consider driving closer for a visual inspection.”
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-nasa-regains-contact-mini-helicopter.amp
The Perseverance rover picked up its signal on Saturday night.
Cheyenne MacDonald - Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 8:57 AM PST
After a short period of worrying silence, NASA said on Saturday night that it was able to regain contact with the Ingenuity helicopter. The autonomous aircraft unexpectedly ceased communications with the Perseverance rover, which relays all transmissions between Ingenuity and Earth, on Thursday during its 72nd flight on Mars. It had already been acting up prior to this, having cut its previous flight short for an unknown reason, and NASA intended to do a systems check during the latest ascent.
Ingenuity has been flying above Mars, off and on, for nearly three years.
Eric Berger - 1/22/2024, 6:34 AM
The US space agency prompted widespread dismay in the spaceflight community on Friday evening when it announced that communication had been lost with the Mars Ingenuity helicopter during its most recent flight on Thursday, January 18.
“During its planned descent, communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown,” according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The Ingenuity team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish communications with the helicopter.”
This seemed like a bad sign for the plucky little helicopter, which has vastly outperformed its planned lifetime of a handful of test flights since it landed on Mars in February 2021 and began flying two months later. Rather, the communications loss occurred on the 72nd flight of the 4-pound flying machine—the first on another planet.
However, by Saturday, there was a more hopeful update from NASA. On the social media site X, the agency said: “Good news today: We've reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.”
ESA makes its own discovery: the most water ever found on Mars
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 22 Jan 2024 04:30 UTC
NASA regained contact with its Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, on Saturday two days after it lost communication as the vehicle descended from its most recent flight.
The loss of contact with its counterpart rover Perseverance occurred last Thursday during Flight 72, which the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) described as “a quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter's systems.”
Flight 72 was intended to check everything was hunky-dory after Flight 71 was unexpectedly cut short when featureless portions of the planetary surface saw Ingenuity's downward-facing camera struggle to pick out features to aid navigation.
During Flight 72, the vehicle flew upward to an altitude of 12 meters (39.4 feet) and back. The entire process lasted just over 32 seconds, before the communication cutoff.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/22/mars_ingenuity_incident_esa_ice/
Aria Alamalhodaei - 25 January 2024
Ingenuity, the small helicopter that’s been buzzing around the Red Planet for almost three years, has taken its final flight. NASA announced today that at least one of the helicopter’s carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during its last mission, grounding it for good.
To say that Ingenuity had a remarkable run is a bit of an understatement: the helicopter was launched as a technology demonstration mission, with engineers hoping to achieve up to five flights with the vehicle. As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson explained in a statement today, Ingenuity was up against the very, very thin Martian atmosphere, which is less than 1% as dense as Earth’s.
There are other challenges, too: Mars is known for epic dust storms, very cold temperatures, and the thin atmosphere does little to shield radiation. But despite all of these challenges, Ingenuity ended up performing 72 flights, collectively traveling 11 miles and climbing up to 79 feet at the highest altitude.
Abbey A. Donaldson - Jan 25, 2024
NASA’s history-making Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has ended its mission at the Red Planet after surpassing expectations and making dozens more flights than planned. While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight.
Originally designed as a technology demonstration to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, the first aircraft on another world operated from the Martian surface for almost three years, performed 72 flights, and flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.
“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best – make the impossible, possible. Through missions like Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future flight in our solar system and smarter, safer human exploration to Mars and beyond.”
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends/
RIP, Ingenuity, the first craft to fly on another planet.
Passant Rabie - 25 January 2024
After nearly three years of flying across the Martian terrain, the Ingenuity helicopter has finally ended its mission. NASA declared Thursday that Ingenuity had sustained damage to a blade during its most recent landing and would not make another flight.
Images of Ingenuity’s last flight—its 72nd on Mars—which took place on January 18, revealed that one or more of its rotor blades were damaged and that the helicopter will no longer be able to fly, NASA announced. “The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best – make the impossible, possible.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-mars-helicopter-ingenuity-breaks-blade-mission-end-1851198338
The helicopter suffered rotor blade damage on its 72nd flight.
Kris Holt, Contributing Reporter - Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 12:40 PM PST
After three years of service, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter has flown on Mars for the last time. Earlier this month, during its 72nd flight, Ingenuity stopped communicating with the Perseverance rover. Although NASA later reestablished contact with the helicopter, it emerged that at least one of Ingenuity's carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during a landing on January 18th. The helicopter is upright and is still in contact with ground controllers, but it's no longer capable of flight.
Ingenuity far outlasted its original planned lifespan. NASA designed the helicopter to carry out up to five test flights over 30 days. But it stayed in service for over three years. Ingenuity flew over 14 times farther than originally anticipated and it had a total flight time of over two hours.
Ingenuity has spent more than two hours flying above Mars since April 2021.
Eric Berger - 1/25/2024, 11:38 AM
Something has gone wrong with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore. (Shortly after this article was published, NASA confirmed the end of Ingenuity's mission).
When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.
This was especially difficulty on Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere, with a pressure of less than 1 percent that of Earth's. The solution they landed on was a very light 4-lb helicopter with four blades. It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.
In Memoriam for plucky robot that brushed off dead sensors and dust like they were nothing
Laura Dobberstein - Fri 26 Jan 2024 11:33 UTC
After 72 flights and three years, NASA has retired Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that became the first aircraft operated outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
During its last flight on January 18th, the drone lost contact with its counterpart rover Perseverance. Communication was reestablished two days later.
Unfortunately, the exercise, which was intended to be “a quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter's systems,” proved fatal.
“New images confirm the #MarsHelicopter sustained rotor damage during Flight 72. Our helicopter has flown its final flight,” revealed NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Thursday.
NASA further detailed that the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers but now grounded.
A photo released by JPL of a rotor blade’s shadow implies a chunk of the blade was broken off or bent, most likely the former given its carbon fibre foam core material.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/26/mars_helicopter_ingenuity_grounded/
Ingenuity packed more computing power than all other NASA deep space missions combined.
Eric Berger - 1/29/2024, 3:45 AM
Much has been written about the plucky exploits of NASA's small Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. And all of the accolades are deserved. “The little mission that could” did, flying 72 sorties across the red planet and pushing out the frontier of exploration into the unknown.
Yet as impressive as Ingenuity's exploits were over the last three years, and though its carbon fiber blades will spin no more, its work has only just begun.
Ingenuity was groundbreaking in two significant ways that will ripple through the culture of NASA and its exploration efforts for decades to come. Although it is impossible to know the future, both of these impacts seem overwhelmingly positive for our efforts to divine the secrets of our Solar System.
First of all, and most obviously, NASA has now demonstrated that powered flight is possible on other worlds. This is an idea that's no longer theoretical; it's grounded in reality. “Engineering has absolutely shattered our paradigm of exploration by introducing this new dimension of aerial mobility,” said Lori Glaze, NASA's overall director of planetary science.
The space agency is still trying to figure out what may have caused Ingenuity's mission-ending damage, leading to the proposed spin test.
Passant Rabie - 1 February 2024
It’s been a week since NASA announced the end of its Mars helicopter mission, and we’re still not over losing our beloved Ginny. But apparently, neither is NASA, as the space agency is still trying to figure out what happened during Ingenuity’s last flight on Mars.
During a livestream held on Wednesday to pay tribute to the Ingenuity helicopter, NASA announced that the mission team will rotate Ingenuity’s blades and give them a little “wiggle” to adjust their angle in order to try and determine the extent of the damage, Space.com first reported. The space agency also revealed that all four of Ingenuity’s blades were damaged during the helicopter’s fatal 72nd landing on the Red Planet.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-ingenuity-helicopter-mars-wiggle-test-malfunction-1851216299
Ingenuity will never fly again, forever grounded on the Martian dunes, where it looks incredibly lonely.
Passant Rabie - 6 February 2024
NASA’s iconic Martian duo have officially parted ways, with the Perseverance rover capturing a lonely view of its helicopter friend, which recently suffered a fatal blow that left it unable to fly.
A recent image beamed down from Mars shows the Ingenuity helicopter parked atop the sand dunes of Mars’ Neretva Vallis, as Perseverance rolls away from its sidekick. The image was taken on Sunday and processed by Simeon Schmauss, a visual design student who turned it into a panorama by stitching together six raw images posted online by NASA.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-ingenuity-helicopter-perseverance-final-spot-1851231371
This new data should help us understand Ingenuity's final moments on Mars.
Eric Berger - 2/26/2024, 6:33 AM
It has now been several weeks since NASA's tenacious helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, made its final flight above the red planet.
This happened last month. On January 6, Ingenuity flew 40 feet (12 meters) skyward but then made an unplanned early landing after just 35 seconds. Twelve days later, operators intended to troubleshoot the vehicle with a quick up-and-down test. Data from the vehicle indicated that it ascended to 40 feet again during this test, but then communications were ominously lost at the end of the flight.
On January 20, NASA reestablished communications with the helicopter, but the space agency declared an end to its flying days after an image of the vehicle's shadow showed that at least one of its blades had sustained minor damage. This capped an end to a remarkable mission during which Ingenuity exceeded all expectations.
One last software update installed safely, reconfigured it as 'stationary testbed'
Simon Sharwood - Thu 18 Apr 2024 04:30 UTC
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter concluded its mission on Tuesday, sending a final signal in its role as a companion to the Perseverance Rover.
The copter's last message named those who worked on the mission (a list was uploaded in advance) and also confirmed that a recent software patch installed successfully.
The patch means Ingenuity is now set up for ops as a “stationary testbed.” In that role the craft will wake up daily, activate its flight computers, and test the performance of its solar panel, batteries, and electronic equipment. It will also take a picture of the Martian surface with its color camera.
That data will remain stored on Ingenuity, which relies on radio contact with Perseverance to contact Earth. Perseverance is still trundling across Mars and will one day pass beyond radio range and become unable to contact its flying companion.
It's hoped that the cache of data inside Ingenuity will provide insights into Martian weather patterns and dust movement.
But someone – or something – will have to visit Mars and find Ingenuity to get it.
“Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills – either with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts – Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data, a final testament to the reason we dare mighty things,” gushed Ingenuity's project manager, Teddy Tzanetos of JPL, before thanking the 'copter “for inspiring a small group of people to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds at the frontiers of space.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/18/mars_helicopter_ingenuity_final_message/
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 21, 2024 03:25PM
Two months ago the team behind NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter released a video reflecting on its historic explorations of Mars, flying 10.5 miles (17.0 kilometers) in 72 different flights over three years. It was the team's way of saying goodbye, according to NASA's video.
And this week, LiveScience reports, Ingenuity answered back:
On April 16, Ingenuity beamed back its final signal to Earth, which included the remaining data it had stored in its memory bank and information about its final flight. Ingenuity mission scientists gathered in a control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California to celebrate and analyze the helicopter's final message, which was received via NASA's Deep Space Network, made up of ground stations located across the globe.
In addition to the remaining data files, Ingenuity sent the team a goodbye message including the names of all the people who worked on the mission. This special message had been sent to Perseverance the day before and relayed to Ingenuity to send home.
The intrepid Mars helicopter broke down in January 2024, and the space agency now knows why.
Isaac Schultz - December 11, 2024
It’s been nearly a year since the record-breaking Ingenuity helicopter broke a blade, ending the airborne ventures of the first powered, controlled aircraft to take flight on another planet. Now, NASA engineers are investigating the rotorcraft’s final flight, to better understand the circumstances of its end.
Ingenuity broke records on Mars, with the Perseverance rover capturing mind-blowing video as it flew above the Martian surface. That all came to an end in January 2024, and now, researchers are getting close to understanding how the helicopter broke apart.
Ingenuity surpassed all expectations during its three-year tenure. The helicopter arrived on the Red Planet as a technology demonstrator—merely to showcase the ability for humankind to launch powered, controlled flights on other worlds. After five test flights, the helicopter became a scout for the Perseverance rover on Mars, as the latter explored the arid environment of Jezero Crater.
Ingenuity ultimately operated for nearly three years and performed 72 flights over that span. On its final flight, the helicopter climbed to 40 feet (12 meters) above the Martian surface, but after 32 seconds, the chopper was back on the ground and communications had stopped.
Engineers are already beginning to plan for possible follow-on missions.
Eric Berger - Dec 11, 2024 9:44 AM
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.
In short, the helicopter's on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter's blades.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/nasa-believes-it-understands-why-ingenuity-crashed-on-mars/
Engineers are already beginning to plan for possible follow-on missions.
Eric Berger - Dec 11, 2024 9:44 AM
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.
In short, the helicopter's on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter's blades.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/nasa-believes-it-understands-why-ingenuity-crashed-on-mars/
Landing hard at an angle not great for the old rotor blades
Richard Speed - Fri 13 Dec 2024 16:31 UTC
It appears the bland Martian surface triggered a chain of events that left NASA's Ingenuity helicopter permanently grounded on the red planet.
The helicopter's flying career came to an abrupt end earlier this year when Flight 72 was cut short, and communications were briefly lost. After re-establishing contact, it soon became clear Ingenuity would not be flying again – the rotor blades were damaged, and one was entirely detached.
At the time, the prevailing theory was that the flight ended when Ingenuity's downward-facing camera could not pick out features on the surface. According to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), this is still the most likely scenario for what started a chain of events that left the helicopter crippled.
Performing an air crash investigation from hundreds of millions of kilometers away is tricky. It's impossible to get hands on the wreckage, there are unlikely to be any witnesses, and there aren't brightly colored black boxes to give clues about what happened in the final minutes of the flight.
What there is, however, is telemetry. Data sent during the final flight indicates that around 20 seconds after take-off, Ingenuity's navigation system couldn't find enough surface features to track. It was designed to operate over textured, flat terrain, not the steep, featureless sand ripples where it ultimately met its demise.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/13/ingenuity_mars_helicopters_flying_days/
University of California (Los Angeles) - January 29, 2024
Ground-penetrating radar reveals eons of environmental changes, offers hope that soil samples hold traces of life.
And going and going until the probe squeaked its last in 2003
Richard Speed - Tue 5 Dec 2023 20:45 UTC
It is 50 years since Pioneer 10, NASA's first all-nuclear electrical powered spacecraft, got up close and personal with our solar system's largest planet, Jupiter.
Pioneer 10, the first of NASA's probes into the outer solar system, was launched from Cape Canaveral on March 3, 1972. The spacecraft was powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) running on plutonium-238 because solar power was insufficient at the distance of Jupiter from the Sun. The primary goal of the probe was to observe the gas giant, assuming it got through the asteroid belt and survived the intense radiation around the planet.
Many of the lessons learned from Pioneer 10 would go on to inform the design of its successors, including the Voyager probes.
On December 4, 1973, Pioneer 10 made its closest approach to Jupiter. According to NASA, the spacecraft came within 81,000 miles (130,354 km) of the planet's surface and passed at approximately 78,000 miles per hour (126,000 kilometers/hour).
Between November 6 and December 31, 1973, the spacecraft took about 500 pictures of Jupiter's atmosphere with the highest resolution of approximately 200 miles (320 km), clearly showing landmarks such as the Great Red Spot.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday April 20, 2024 12:00AM
Longtime Slashdot reader garyisabusyguy shares a report from The Debrief:
Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company's propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth's gravity. “The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred,” Buhler told The Debrief. “This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.” “There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before,” Buhler added. “It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes.”
Aria Alamalhodaei - 1:51 PM PDT October 28, 2022
NASA said Friday that its Psyche mission (named after the asteroid the mission is targeting) has been rescheduled to October next year. The news comes just a few months after the agency announced that it would definitively miss its planned 2022 launch attempt. The delayed schedule is due to late delivery of key components of the spacecraft, including the flight software and testing equipment. The launch window for this year concluded on October 11.
NASA conducted an internal review to determine whether the mission could launch next year, in addition to a separate independent review commissioned by the agency to examine the failures that led to missing the launch window. It appears that the review determined that next year’s launch is a go.
The Saffire experiment set fire to a Cygnus cargo vehicle in orbit to learn how flames behave in space.
Passant Rabie - 16 February 2024
After eight years of experimenting with flames in space, NASA lit a fire inside a cargo spacecraft for the last time and sent its Saffire experiment toward a burning reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA’s Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiments, also known as Saffire, came to a fitting end on January 9, flying aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft that burned up as it plunged through the atmosphere for its planned reentry.
The series of experiments has been going since 2016 in order to understand how fire behaves in microgravity. Saffire is also designed to study how different materials propagate flames in space, in order to inform future spacecraft and spacesuit designs, as well as protocols for dealing with fire emergencies when astronauts don’t have the option of leaving the spacecraft or returning to Earth, according to NASA.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-fire-in-space-experiment-ends-in-flames-saffire-1851264484
Half a century later, there's a Moon rocket behind those same doors
Richard Speed - Wed 26 Mar 2025 13:15 UTC
It is 50 years since the very last Saturn rocket rolled out from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to launchpad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center.
The super heavy rockets were built and used for nine crewed flights to the Moon from December 1968 to December 1972, as well as for launching US space station Skylab in 1973.
As for the launch vehicle pictured above, the Saturn IB was the final in a series that began with the Saturn V check-out vehicle, followed by 12 flight Saturn V rockets for the Apollo Moon program and a final Saturn V to launch Skylab in 1973. Four of the smaller Saturn IB rockets, including three for Skylab missions and the one pictured above – for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission – were also stacked. A further Saturn IB was assembled for the Skylab rescue mission but was not needed and so not launched.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/26/50_years_since_last_saturn/
By Emanuele Signoretta on August 6, 2020
The Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) had a key role in the Apollo Moon mission, guiding and controlling the Saturn V rocket. Like most computers of the era, it used core memory, storing data in tiny magnetic cores. In this article, I take a close look at an LVDC core memory module from Steve Jurvetson’s collection. This memory module was technologically advanced for the mid-1960s, using surface-mount components, hybrid modules, and flexible connectors that made it an order of magnitude smaller and lighter than mainframe core memories.2 Even so, this memory stored just 4096 words of 26 bits.
https://www.open-electronics.org/the-core-memory-inside-a-saturn-v-rockets-computer/
The launch of NASA's upcoming megarocket will be even louder, but the space agency has taken precautions to suppress the noise.
Passant Rabie - 24 August 2022 1:55PM
On November 9, 1967, a 363-foot-tall (111-meter) Saturn V rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, generating 7.5 million pounds of thrust. The blast created by the Apollo 4 liftoff was among the loudest noises ever produced by our species, scientists calculated at the time. In fact, the roar was so loud that it sparked a rumor that the Saturn V launch melted concrete and lit grass on fire over a mile away.
A team of scientists is now claiming to have put this rumor to rest, suggesting that, while the Saturn V rocket launch was very, very loud, it was not loud enough to melt concrete. As NASA prepares to send the even-more powerful Space Launch System (SLS) on the Artemis 1 mission to the Moon and back, the agency will use water in an attempt to partially dampen the rocket’s blast, which is predicted to be even louder than Saturn V.
https://gizmodo.com/sound-of-nasas-saturn-v-rocket-did-not-melt-concrete-1849451045
It also wasn't loud enough to ignite grass or hair, or “blast rainbows from the sky.”
Jennifer Ouellette - 12/30/2022, 3:04 PM
There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2022, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: Busting the popular myth that the Saturn V launch was loud enough to melt concrete.
The 1967 Apollo 4 mission was an uncrewed flight to test the Saturn V rocket as a viable launch vehicle for future manned missions. The test was a smashing success and a critical step in the US space program. But the Saturn V was also incredibly loud—so loud that a rumor emerged claiming that the acoustic energy was sufficient to melt concrete. That is not the case, according to an August paper published in a special educational issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
“The Saturn V has taken on this sort of legendary, apocryphal status,” said co-author Kenneth Gee of Brigham Young University. “We felt that, as part of the JASA special issue on Education in Acoustics, it was an opportunity to correct misinformation about this vehicle.” In addition to the authors' analysis, the paper includes several problems for students to solve relating to the event—including a tongue-in-cheek problem involving using acoustic temperature to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
The Saturn V rocket remains one of NASA's greatest technological achievements—a powerful launch vehicle that finally brought the Moon within reach.
George Dvorsky - 23 February 2023 7:00AM
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” President John Kennedy said famously in a 1962 speech. A bold goal, and a goal that required NASA to develop a rocket capable of the task.
That rocket would be known as the Saturn V, a three-stage rocket that, until the space shuttle era, was the most powerful launch vehicle to successfully take flight. The Saturn V supported the first and only crewed flights to the Moon, and later contributed to the construction of Skylab—the first U.S. space station.
https://gizmodo.com/saturn-v-rocket-nasa-moon-launch-sls-space-missions-1850141507
From the cutting edge of physics research to a valuable monitoring tool
Richard Speed - Tue 26 Dec 2023 12:11 UTC
Space Extenders II SOHO, a joint ESA and NASA mission, is still going strong after almost thirty years since launch and at this point the craft is an essential part of space infrastructure.
SOHO mission manager Luis Sánchez Duarte describes the spacecraft as being far from a “spring chicken,” having dedicated decades to studying the Sun.
“It has its quirks,” he tells The Register. “It actually has some single points of failure these days. For example, the battery. As long as we can maintain the orientation towards the Sun, everything's fine. But if there's a mishap and we lose the orientation, something bad may happen.”
That said, aside from a few degradations and the odd near-death experience, the spacecraft continues to perform admirably. It's a testament to its designers.
According to Sánchez, the key instrument – the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) – “is working just fine.”
“SOHO has moved from the cutting edge of physics research into being a monitoring tool,” Sánchez says. Its main application is in space weather forecasting, which is what keeps the spacecraft operating.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/26/soho_space_infrastructure/
Probe may not make it to 30 as funding runs out and replacement is launched
Richard Speed - Tue 3 Dec 2024 20:02 UTC
ESA and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is approaching what could be its final year of operations as it hits the 29th anniversary of its launch.
The mission took off from Cape Canaveral's LC36-B on December 2, 1995, and was designed for a nominal lifetime of two years. The original objective was to answer questions regarding the Sun's interior, corona, and the solar wind.
In later years, SOHO has also become something of a comet hunter, thanks to its location at the L1 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth in the direction of the Sun, and its instruments, such as the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO).
However, while engineers reckoned in 2020 that the spacecraft would be able to endure for another few years, it is unlikely to remain operational past the 30th anniversary of its launch. A chunk of SOHO's funding comes from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which uses data from the spacecraft to monitor solar activity.
While keeping an eye on space weather was not one of the primary goals at launch, it has kept the lights on as the years passed. After all, SOHO's mission started with a duration of two years. Enough consumables were loaded to manage another four years. Thanks to creativity and impressive engineering, the mission has continued for just over 29 years.
The spacecraft survived the encounter and even managed to capture value data about our host star.
Passant Rabie - 6 September 2022
Solar Orbiter has been traveling through space for more than two years, making several close flybys of Venus as it steadily inches closer to the Sun. On September 4, the small spacecraft was in the midst of its most recent gravitational assist when it felt the violent wrath of our host star.
The Sun fired off a gigantic coronal mass ejection on August 30, reaching the spacecraft just a few days later. Thankfully, Solar Orbiter is built to withstand these types of temperamental outbursts from the Sun, and it was even able to collect valuable data on solar storms.
https://gizmodo.com/solar-orbiter-hit-by-gigantic-outburst-from-sun-1849500091
April 11, 2024 - Evan Gough
Everyone knows that solar energy is free and almost limitless here on Earth. The same is true for spacecraft operating in the inner Solar System. But in space, the Sun can do more than provide electrical energy; it also emits an unending stream of solar wind.
Solar sails can harness that wind and provide propulsion for spacecraft. NASA is about to test a new solar sail design that can make solar sails even more effective.
Solar pressure pervades the entire Solar System. It weakens with distance, but it’s present. It affects all spacecraft, including satellites. It affects longer-duration spaceflights dramatically. A spacecraft on a mission to Mars can be forced off course by thousands of kilometres during its voyage by solar pressure. The pressure also affects a spacecraft’s orientation, and they’re designed to deal with it.
Though it’s a hindrance, solar pressure can be used to our advantage.
A few solar sail spacecraft have been launched and tested, beginning with Japan’s Ikaros spacecraft in 2010. Ikaros proved that radiation pressure from the Sun in the form of photons can be used to control a spacecraft. The most recent solar sail spacecraft is the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2, launched in 2019. LightSail 2 was a successful mission that lasted over three years.
https://www.universetoday.com/166594/nasas-next-solar-sail-is-about-to-go-to-space/
The Solar Sail mission will launch on April 23 on board Rocket Lab's Electron vehicle.
Passant Rabie - 18 April 2024
NASA’s experimental solar sail is ready to take flight in Earth orbit, using the pressure of sunlight to test a new way of propulsion through the cosmos.
The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System(ACS3) is scheduled for launch on Tuesday, April 23 on board Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from New Zealand. The mission will use composite booms in Earth orbit for the first time, testing their ability to deploy the sail in orbit.
The rocket will deploy the microwave-sized cubesat about 600 miles (966 kilometers) above Earth (more than twice the altitude of the International Space Station), where it will begin unfurling its solar sail to stretch across 30 feet (9 meters) per side.
The process of unfurling will take about 25 minutes, and NASA has equipped the mission with a suite of onboard digital cameras to capture images of the sail during and after deployment to assess its shape and alignment.
Once unfurled, the solar sail system will become around the same size as a tiny studio apartment in Bushwick. The sail has to be large enough to efficiently generate thrust, and at a high enough orbit to be able to gain altitude and overcome atmospheric drag using the tiny force of sunlight on the sail, which is roughly equivalent to the weight of a paperclip resting on your palm, according to NASA.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-set-launch-solar-sail-sunlight-space-travel-1851420248
Look out for a new star next week
Richard Speed - Fri 19 Apr 2024 19:00 UTC
NASA is to send a solar sail demonstrator into orbit next week, and there is a good chance that the sail, measuring 860 square feet (80 square meters), will be visible from Earth.
The primary goal of the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) mission is to demonstrate the deployment of a new composite boom made from flexible polymer and carbon fiber materials.
Despite being stiffer than previous designs, the tube-shaped boom can be squashed flat and rolled like a tape measure, according to Keats Wilkie, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Wilkie said: “Booms have tended to be either heavy and metallic or made of lightweight composite with a bulky design – neither of which work well for today's small spacecraft.”
However, this approach means that the sail's booms can be reduced to a small package “while offering all the advantages of composite materials, like less bending and flexing during temperature changes.”
Handy, because the 12U CubeSat built by NanoAvionics is hardly a behemoth.
The mission launched on April 23 to test sunlight-propelled space travel.
Passant Rabie - 1 May 2024
Nearly a week after launching to space, a microwave-sized cubesat phoned home for the first time as it prepares to embark on its mission of sailing through low Earth orbit.
NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) contacted ground operators on Tuesday at 2:30 a.m. ET as it passed over the ground hub located at Santa Clara University’s Robotics Systems Lab in Santa Clara, California, the space agency announced in a blog post.
The solar sail mission launched on April 23 on board Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from New Zealand. It was delivered to a Sun-synchronous orbit around 600 miles (966 kilometers) above Earth’s surface (more than twice the altitude of the International Space Station). The mission team confirmed successful two-way communications and will set a date to unfurl the sail after all commissioning tasks have been completed, according to NASA.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-solar-sail-first-contact-from-space-1851449783
Big things come in small packages
Richard Speed - Thu 2 May 2024 10:45 UTC
NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) mission has made contact with Earth and confirmed that all is well with the diminutive spacecraft.
Engineers established two-way communication with the spacecraft a few days after launch as the microwave oven-sized CubeSat passed over the ground hub located at Santa Clara University’s Robotics Systems Lab in Santa Clara, California.
Having confirmed the spacecraft was healthy, engineers can work on the mission's commissioning phase, which is expected to last between one and two months. Once done, the spacecraft can then deploy the four booms that span the diagonals of the square and unroll the solar sail.
Once that's done, the spacecraft will conduct a series of tests to demonstrate that it can change its orbit by angling the sail. A successful demonstration will lay the way for larger sails; the sail of ACS3 has an area of 80 square meters – large enough to appear as a bright star in the sky but not enough for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
According to NASA, “This boom design could potentially support future solar sails as large as 5,400 square feet (500 square meters), about the size of a basketball court, and technology resulting from the mission’s success could support sails of up to 21,500 square feet (2,000 square meters) – about half a soccer field.”
But first, it has to work. Cameras mounted on the spacecraft will capture the deployment of the sail, its shape, and its symmetry.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/nasa_solar_sail_boom_demonstrator/
The microwave-oven-sized cubesat unfurled its massive sail to test a novel way of traveling through space.
Passant Rabie - August 30, 2024
Despite a failed first attempt, NASA deployed its pioneering solar sail system, which will harness energy from the Sun to propel itself forward through space.
The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is now fully deployed after NASA succeeded in extending the mission’s experimental booms on Thursday at 1:33 p.m. ET, the space agency announced. NASA teams will begin testing the new form of space travel, initiating different maneuvers to see how well the sail fares in orbit.
NASA’s solar sail mission launched in April to test new materials and deployable structures for a propulsion system that runs on photons from the Sun. A few months after its launch, the mission’s sail became stuck when an onboard power monitor detected higher-than-expected motor currents, pausing the unfurling process.
The mission teams were successful on their second attempt to deploy the solar sail, fully unfurling it to stretch across 860 square feet (80 square meters), or about as large as half a tennis court. The sail needs to be large enough to generate sufficient thrust, while also being at a high enough orbit to gain altitude and overcome atmospheric drag using the subtle force of sunlight on the sail. NASA’s solar sail orbits Earth at approximately twice the altitude of the International Space Station.
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-solar-sail-mission-is-finally-flying-after-deployment-glitch-2000493203
60 years after Arthur C Clarke wrote Sunjammer, space agency catches up
Iain Thomson - Wed 4 Sep 2024 10:42 UTC
NASA has successfully extended into orbit an 80 m2 (860 square foot) sail that is designed to catch emissions from the Sun and convert them into propulsion for space exploration.
The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) was launched on April 23 from New Zealand aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron hardware and – after months of careful checking – was successfully unfurled at 1333 EDT (1033 PDT) on Thursday, August 29. Such is the compact nature of the spacecraft that the whole thing fit inside a 23x23x34 centimeter (9x9x13 inch) CubeSat before being deployed.
“The sail will appear as a square about half the size of a tennis court,” NASA Ames reported.
“Now, with the sail fully extended, the Solar Sail System may be visible to some keen skywatchers on Earth who look up at the right time. Stay tuned to NASA.gov and @NASAAmes on social media for updates on how to catch the spacecraft passing over your area.”
The sail is orbiting much higher than the International Space Station's orbit. This is to avoid the drag of the Earth, since while the ISS regularly uses thrusters to move upwards and away from atmospheric drag, ACS3 produces a tiny amount of thrust, so must be further out. Once testing is complete NASA hopes to use this demonstrator to change altitudes without the need for propellant.
Solar sails were first discussed in the 17th century, by astronomer Johannes Kepler in a letter to Galileo which suggested that some force emanating from the Sun was causing comets to stream tails of debris away as they circled the star. “Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void,” he is quoted as saying.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/04/nasa_acs3_solar_sail/
Who needs fuel – or even engines – when you could use the sun to push a spacecraft along?
Iain Thomson - Fri 6 Sep 2024 04:30 UTC
NASA has announced its experimental ACS3 solar-sailing spacecraft is working as expected, after it was spotted tumbling in the night sky.
The 80 m2 (860 sq ft) Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) successfully spread its sails last week. The spacecraft uses pressure produced by solar radiation to move – doing away with conventional rocket propellant. NASA is testing the sail in the hope that its design, and the materials used, are viable for future vessels.
As the boffins put it:
NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, or ACS3, technology demonstration uses composite materials – or a combination of materials with different properties – in its novel, lightweight booms that deploy from a CubeSat. Data obtained from ACS3 will guide the design of future larger-scale composite solar sail systems that could be used for space weather early warning satellites, near-Earth asteroid reconnaissance missions, or communications relays for crewed exploration missions.
Questions were raised this week after the instrument – which launched in April and is now in Earth's orbit – was observed to be slowly tumbling, gyrating, or wobbling.
NASA's Langley Research Center assured the public that's neither unusual nor worrying.
“Our Solar Sail System is sailing around Earth, slowly tumbling as expected while the mission team characterizes its boom and sails,” the agency explained Thursday.
You can, we're told, track the craft from NASA's app.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/nasa_solar_sail_acs3/
“Certain players are going to have to do a harder pivot.”
Eric Berger – Aug 6, 2025 12:18 PM
About five years from now, a modified Dragon spacecraft will begin to fire its Draco thrusters, pushing the International Space Station out of its orbit and sending the largest object humans have built in space inexorably to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
And then what?
China's Tiangong Space Station will still be going strong. NASA, however, faces a serious risk of losing its foothold in low-Earth orbit. Space agency leaders have long recognized this and nearly half a decade ago awarded about $500 million to four different companies to begin working on “commercial” space stations to fill the void.
But in that time there has been precious little metal cut, and there are serious concerns about whether any of these replacement stations will be ready to go when the International Space Station falls into the drink.
On Monday, in one of his first official tasks, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy signed a new “directive” on commercial space stations that seeks to address this concern.
“To meet the goals of a commercial system within the proposed budget, a modification to the current approach for LEO platforms is required as specified in the remaining sections of this directive,” states the document, signed by Duffy. To succeed, he wrote, the strategy “must be altered.”
NASA has issued a “second letter of concern” to Bechtel.
Eric Berger - 1/28/2022, 6:54 AM
The Space Launch System rocket that NASA has been building for more than a decade now—and which may finally launch for the first time this spring or summer—is rather big. And big rockets need large, complicated ground systems to fuel them and support their launch.
As one might imagine, for a rocket as expensive as the SLS booster—development so far has run in excess of $20 billion and counting—its associated ground systems are quite costly as well.
Much has already been said and written about the first “mobile launch tower” built for the SLS rocket. The massive, rolling Mobile Launcher-1 supports the 108-meter-tall SLS rocket, provides access to the Orion spacecraft, and supplies power, communications, coolant, and fuel to the rocket. Over a decade, NASA spent about $1 billion to build, redesign, and then complete the structure under a cost-plus contract.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/nasas-second-sls-launch-tower-is-also-late-and-over-budget/
With the Space Launch System rollout complete, NASA will begin preparations for a critical rehearsal.
George Dvorsky - 18 March 2022
NASA’s megarocket designed to carry humans to the Moon has reached historic Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Standing 322 feet tall, the Space Launch System is an impressive sight—one we’ve waited ages to finally see—as these striking photos attest.
Space Launch System, NASA’s biggest-ever rocket, began its crawl from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad yesterday. This is the critical centerpiece of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface later this decade. The uncrewed inaugural mission, Artemis 1, is set to launch this spring or summer.
https://gizmodo.com/our-first-views-of-nasa-s-long-awaited-megarocket-full-1848671797
It’s unclear when the rocket’s practice countdown will move forward.
Igor Bonifacic - April 17th, 2022
After multiple attempts to complete a critical fueling test of its next-generation Space Launch System, NASA has decided to finish the rocket’s “wet dress rehearsal” at a later date. On late Saturday evening, the agency announced it would move the SLS off from its launch pad and back to the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building to give one of its gaseous nitrogen suppliers time to complete a critical upgrade. Nitrogen supply issues had delayed two previous countdown rehearsals, according to Space News.
NASA will also use the opportunity to replace a faulty helium check valve and repair a minor hydrogen leak technicians found in one of the “umbilical” fuel lines running from the rocket’s mobile launch tower. “During that time, the agency will also review schedules and options to demonstrate propellant loading operations ahead of launch,” NASA said. It promised to share more information about the decision, as well as its plans moving forward, during a press conference scheduled for April 18th.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-rolls-back-sls-moon-rocket-172111948.html
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 17, 2022 10:56AM
“After three attempts to complete a critical fueling test of the Space Launch System rocket, NASA has decided to take a break,” reports Ars Technica:
On Saturday night the space agency announced plans to roll the large SLS rocket from the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center to the Vehicle Assembly Building in the coming days. This marks a notable step back for the program, which has tried since April 1 to complete a “wet dress rehearsal” test, during which the rocket is fueled and brought to within 10 seconds of launch. The decision comes after three tries during the last two weeks. Each fueling attempt was scuttled by one or more technical issues with the rocket, its mobile launch tower, or ground systems that supply propellants and gases. During the most recent attempt, on Thursday April 14, NASA succeeded in loading 49 percent of the core-stage liquid oxygen fuel tank and 5 percent of the liquid hydrogen tank. [NASA reports that the team ended the test after “observing a liquid hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical.”]
The SLS launch rehearsal ended up being a big, befuddled mess, despite NASA’s assurances to the contrary.
George Dvorsky - 18 April 2022 12:40PM
NASA, after three failed attempts to complete a wet dress rehearsal of its Space Launch System, has decided to return its gigantic rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The move will likely mean further delays to the Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to the Moon.
Space is hard—we get it—but the recently unconcluded SLS wet dress rehearsal was just plain sad.
Indeed, NASA couldn’t even complete a modified launch rehearsal this past Thursday, in which ground crews were attempting to load the rocket’s core stage with cryogenic propellants. A small hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical was blamed for the test stoppage, with NASA saying it would re-run the modified launch test early this week. The space agency quickly changed its plans, however, announcing on Saturday that the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket will return to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center for repairs.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-back-to-vehicle-assembly-building-1848806257
“This is really hard work,” a NASA official said. The gigantic SLS rocket is back in the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida for repairs.
George Dvorsky - 6 May 2022 11:35AM
NASA will attempt another countdown rehearsal of the Space Launch System in early June, but the space agency warned that multiple tests of its finicky rocket might be necessary.
SLS returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on April 26, allowing technicians to swap out a faulty upper stage helium check valve and fix a small hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical. These and other “nuisance” problems, as NASA describes them, prevented groundcrews from performing a fourth wet dress rehearsal, in which the rocket was to be fully loaded with super-cooled propellants and a full countdown practiced. NASA was hoping to perform the fourth test while the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket was still standing on Launch Complex 39B, but it was not to be.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-rocket-launch-delays-august-2022-1848890875
Space Launch System will begin its journey back to Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center on June 6.
George Dvorsky - 27 May 2022 3:52PM
A fourth attempt to complete a full-fledged launch rehearsal of NASA’s Space Launch System has been slated for June. NASA’s ground teams say they’ve resolved a batch of technical issues that prevented the practice session from happening in April. For this next test, they will fill the giant rocket with super-cooled propellant and rehearse a full countdown.
Speaking to reporters today, Cliff Lanhman, senior vehicle operations manager at NASA, said the call to stations for rollout will happen at 6:00 p.m. ET on June 5, with Crawler-Transporter 2 making its first motion at midnight on June 6. The loading of cryogenic propellants will happen no earlier than June 19, Lanhman said, adding that Florida’s tumultuous summer weather (i.e. thunderstorms) could change that.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-space-launch-system-wet-dress-rehearsal-june-6-1848987542
“The teams have really done a great job addressing the issues we saw.”
Eric Berger - 6/15/2022, 12:23 PM
NASA has been attempting to conduct a critical fueling test of its Space Launch System rocket for nearly three months, and now the agency says it is ready to try again.
This will be NASA's fourth attempt to load the SLS rocket's first and second stages with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and go deep into a countdown toward launch before ending the test at T-10 seconds. The space agency plans to call its team of engineers and technicians to their stations on Saturday evening and begin fueling operations on Monday morning, June 20.
“Our team is ready to go,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA's launch director for the Artemis I mission, which represents a test flight for the SLS vehicle and Orion spacecraft. “We're really looking forward to getting back to this test and getting into it starting on Saturday evening and certainly looking forward to the tanking operation.”
A problematic hydrogen leak and incomplete countdown rehearsal means a fifth SLS wet dress rehearsal is a distinct possibility.
George Dvorsky - 21 June 2022
NASA wrapped up its fourth wet dress rehearsal of the Space Launch System yesterday, during which time ground teams achieved a number of key test objectives. That said, an unresolved hydrogen leak prevented a full completion of the test, in a development that could further complicate the Artemis 1 mission schedule.
Yesterday’s wet dress rehearsal ended at 7:37 p.m. ET, with ground teams successfully managing to fill both rocket stages with supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants—something they hadn’t been able to achieve during the first three rehearsal attempts. The teams also practiced a terminal countdown, but the clock was stopped at T-29 seconds instead of the intended T-10 second mark. The rocket has been drained of its propellant and it remains standing on Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida as launch controllers determine next steps.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-fourth-wet-dress-rehearsal-1849090122
“It was a long day for the team, but I think it was a very successful day.”
Eric Berger - 6/21/2022, 10:45 AM
NASA tried three times during April to complete a critical fueling test of its large Space Launch System rocket. And three times, due to about half a dozen technical problems, the space agency failed.
And so NASA made the difficult decision to roll the large rocket back into the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs, adding a couple of months of delays to a program already years behind schedule. After this work was complete in early June, NASA rolled the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft back out to the launch pad for a fourth try.
The painful decision turned out to be the correct one. Over the course of more than 14 hours on Monday, NASA largely succeeded in completing this fueling test, loading hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen into the first and second stages of the SLS rocket.
“It was a long day for the team, but I think it was a very successful day for the team,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director.
The much-anticipated first launch of the Space Launch System could happen as early as late August.
George Dvorsky - 23 June 2022 2:50PM
The fourth and most recent attempt at a full launch rehearsal of NASA’s Space Launch System went reasonably well, and despite some lingering issues and uncertainties, the agency is sending the rocket back to the hangar for final preparations in advance of its first flight. That inaugural launch will represent Artemis 1, the first mission in NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
In a press release today, NASA—to my surprise—said it is done testing SLS after reviewing data from the recent launch rehearsal. That another full-blown rehearsal would be required seemed likely to me on account of an unresolved hydrogen leak linked to a faulty quick-connect fitting, which subsequently prevented ground teams from practicing the fully scheduled launch countdown on Monday. The goal was to reach T-10 seconds, but the launch controllers decided to quit the rehearsal at T-29 seconds for safety reasons.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-first-launch-artemis-1-1849100398
“We made incredible progress last week.”
Eric Berger - 6/28/2022, 2:39 PM
The US space agency has spent a long, long time designing, developing, building, and testing the Space Launch System rocket. When NASA created the rocket program in 2010, US legislators said the SLS booster should be ready to launch in 2016.
Of course, that launch target and many others have come and gone. But now, after more than a decade and more than $20 billion in funding, NASA and its litany of contractors are very close to declaring the 111-meter tall rocket ready for its debut launch.
On June 20, NASA successfully counted the rocket down to T-29 seconds during a pre-launch fueling test. Although they did not reach T-9 seconds, as was the original goal, the agency's engineers collected enough data to satisfy the requisite information to proceed toward a launch.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/nasa-aims-to-launch-the-sls-rocket-in-just-2-months/
The road to the Moon is paved with… river rock?
Richard Speed - Fri 1 Jul 202215:33 UTC
NASA's Moon rocket is to trundle back into its shed today after a delay caused by concerns over the crawlerway.
The massive transporter used to move the Space Launch System between Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and launchpad requires a level pathway and teams have been working on the inclined pathway leading to the launchpad where the rocket currently resides to ensure there is an even distribution of rocks to support the mobile launcher and rocket.
The latest wet dress rehearsal was completed on June 20 after engineers “masked” data from sensors that would have called a halt to proceedings. Once back in the VAB, engineers plan to replace a seal on the quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical. The stack will then roll back to the launchpad for what NASA fervently hopes is the last time before a long hoped-for launch in late August.
That first launch is an uncrewed test of the Artemis system, and will result in the Orion capsule and European Service Module (ESM) being sent around the Moon and the capsule returning to Earth.
The local tourism office says more than 100,000 spectators are likely to hunker down near Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
George Dvorsky - 8 August 2022 11:26AM
NASA’s SLS rocket is slated to launch for the first time in just three weeks, rumbling off the launch pad with 8.8 million pounds of thrust. There to see it take flight will be thousands upon thousands of spectators, as the Artemis era officially gets underway.
The 322-foot-tall Space Launch System is the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever built, launching with 15% more power than the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket and nearly 12% more power than the system that delivered the Space Shuttle to orbit. Attending an SLS launch will be a feast for the senses—and a major attraction for tourists visiting Florida’s Space Coast.
https://gizmodo.com/crowds-expected-artemis-1-nasa-sls-inaugural-launch-1849384431
The rocket may launch just two weeks from now.
Eric Berger - 8/15/2022, 11:13 AM
It's actually happening. NASA is finally set to launch its massive Space Launch System rocket, and barring catastrophe, the Orion spacecraft is going to fly to the Moon and back.
The space agency's final pre-launch preparations for this Artemis I mission are going so well, in fact, that NASA now plans to roll the rocket to Launch Pad 39B as soon as Tuesday, August 16, at 9 pm ET (01:00 UTC Wednesday). This is two days ahead of the previously announced rollout schedule.
This earlier date for the rocket's rollout follows completion of a flight termination system test over the weekend. This was the final major test of the launch system and spacecraft prior to rollout and marks the completion of all major pre-launch activities. NASA continues to target three dates to attempt the Artemis I launch: August 29, September 2, and September 5.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 11:00 AM PDT August 16, 2022
NASA engineers have completed final tests of the Space Launch System (SLS), clearing the way for the mega moon rocket to roll out to the launch pad today instead of Friday as originally planned.
The space agency was able to move up the date for the rollout — when a transporter-crawler moves the 322-foot-tall SLS from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center — because it completed key tests of the rocket’s flight termination system (FTS). The FTS is a critical series of components that ensure a rocket can be safely destroyed after launch in the case of a major failure. Testing of the FTS was “the final major activity” on NASA’s pre-launch to-do list, the agency said.
The SLS rocket is set to travel to the launch pad Tuesday evening. Its inaugural launch will represent the first mission in the Artemis lunar program.
Passant Rabie - 16 August 2022 11:10AM
NASA’s most powerful rocket is ready to make its way to the launch pad before its inaugural launch as part of the Artemis 1 mission to the Moon. The space agency is rolling out the enormous Space Launch System (SLS) to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday evening, and the historic kickoff to humanity’s return to the Moon will all be streamed live. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the big launch itself, however, as liftoff won’t happen before August 29.
NASA’s live stream of the rollout starts at 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday. You can watch the action on the NASA Kennedy YouTube channel or at the feed below.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-sls-rollout-launch-pad-nasa-artemis-1-1849414441
“This has been a really tough thing.”
Eric Berger - 8/23/2022, 4:30 AM
President Eisenhower signed the law establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 29, 1958. At the time, the United States had put about 30 kg of small satellites into orbit. Less than 11 years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon.
President Obama signed a NASA Authorization Act on October 11, 2010. Among its provisions, the law called on NASA to create the Space Launch System rocket and have it ready for launch in 2016. It seemed reasonable. At the time, NASA had been launching rockets, including very large ones, for half a century. And in some sense, this new SLS rocket was already built.
The most challenging aspect of almost any launch vehicle is its engines. No problem—the SLS rocket would use engines left over from the space shuttle program. Its side-mounted boosters would be slightly larger versions of those that powered the shuttle for three decades. The newest part of the vehicle would be its large core stage, housing liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel tanks to feed the rocket's four main engines. But even this component was derivative. The core stage's 8.4-meter diameter was identical to the space shuttle's external tank, which carried the same propellants for the shuttle's main engines.
The inaugural launch of SLS is scheduled for Monday, August 29, and everything seems to be going according to plan.
Passant Rabie - 23 August 2022 2:35PM
The historic kickoff to humanity’s return to the Moon is all set for launch. NASA’s Artemis 1 mission just completed its flight readiness review on Monday, with the space agency giving it the final “go” for an August 29 launch.
NASA officials held a meeting to discuss the technical details related to the launch of Artemis 1, saying they’ve cleared the mission for a two-hour launch window that opens at 8:33 a.m. ET on August 29. There are two backup windows also available on September 2 and September 5. “We are go for launch, which is absolutely outstanding,” NASA associate administrator Robert Cabana told reporters at a press conference Monday night, as reported by Spaceflight Now. “This day has been a long time coming.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-go-for-launch-of-sls-megarocket-1849446191
“I still don't know to this day if my boss, Charlie, was in on the whole deal.”
Eric Berger - 8/25/2022, 4:00 AM
Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver published a book earlier this year, Escaping Gravity, that tells the tale of her nearly three decades in US space policy.
Garver played an important and at times controversial role in the history of NASA over the last 15 years, having served as leader of President Obama's transition team on space issues in late 2008 and early 2009, and later as deputy administrator for the space agency until 2013.
At NASA she had a strained relationship with the agency's administrator, Charlie Bolden. Garver pushed for substantial change at the behest of the Obama administration and more investment in the commercial space industry; whereas, Bolden was more supportive of traditional space and represented the views of many people at NASA at the time resistant to change. Bolden and his allies won the battle, ensuring NASA's development of the Space Launch System rocket.
NASA's SLS may be a new rocket, but its engines, which once powered the Space Shuttle, are anything but.
George Dvorsky - 2 September 2022 1:13PM
Each of the four RS-25 engines currently positioned at the base of NASA’s Space Launch System has gone to space many times before, and each has an interesting story to tell. One first flew in 1998, boosting astronaut John Glenn to orbit. Soon, if all goes well, these veteran boosters will propel NASA into the Artemis era.
NASA’s Space Launch System is the most powerful rocket ever built, capable of lifting more than 57,320 pounds (26 metric tons) of cargo and crew to the Moon. Future configurations could see the rocket lift as much as 99,208 pounds (45 metric tons). It’s an engineering marvel—at least we hope so—with its maiden voyage scheduled for this Saturday at 2:17 p.m. ET. But as NASA takes a bold leap into the Artemis era and a steady succession of increasingly sophisticated missions to the lunar environment, it’s important to remember that SLS is a new rocket that’s made from a bunch of old parts.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-1-sls-rs-25-engines-space-shuttle-1849490202
The upcoming 1.4-million-gallon liquid hydrogen tank at Kennedy Space Center will increase the rate at which NASA can conduct launch attempts.
George Dvorsky - 1 February 2023
Preparations for the crewed Artemis 2 trip to the Moon are in full swing, with NASA rolling-out various fixes, upgrades, and new technologies to support the mission, which could happen as soon as 2024. Among the more exciting developments are a gigantic new hydrogen fuel tank and an updated escape system that harkens back to the Space Shuttle era.
Artemis 2, the sequel to the recently concluded Artemis 1 mission, is launching no earlier than late 2024, but NASA, in an effort to maintain this timeline, is already in go mode. A key difference between the two missions is that astronauts will take part in Artemis 2, requiring some important add-ons and adjustments that weren’t needed for the uncrewed Artemis 1. To that end, teams with Exploration Ground Systems have been hard at work at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
https://gizmodo.com/largest-hydrogen-tank-nasa-sls-rocket-artemis-1850059559
“A revised Artemis campaign plan should be a high priority for the new NASA Administrator.”
Eric Berger – Feb 26, 2025 6:52 AM
The lights may be starting to go out for NASA's Space Launch System program.
On Wednesday, one of the Republican space policy leaders most consistently opposed to commercial heavy lift rockets over the last decade—as an alternative to NASA's large SLS rocket—has changed his mind.
“We need an off-ramp for reliance on the SLS,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in written testimony. He issued the statement in advance of a hearing about US space policy, and the future of NASA's Artemis Moon program, before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
A physicist and influential policy expert, Pace has decades of experience researching and writing space policy. He has served in multiple Republican administrations, most recently as executive secretary of the National Space Council from 2017 to 2020. He strongly advocated for the SLS rocket after Congress directed NASA to develop it in 2011.
Christian Davenport - August 27, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The rocket was late, again. The initial launch date, the end of 2016, was long gone. And now in the spring of 2019, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator at the time, was told it’d be another year or more before NASA’s Space Launch System would be ready.
He was furious and threatened to replace the rocket with one built by the fast-growing private space sector, such as SpaceX. But Bridenstine’s attempt to bench NASA’s rocket was quickly rebuffed by the powerful interests, including Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the appropriations committee. Those interest had shepherded the SLS through thickets of controversy since its inception more than a decade ago.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/27/nasa-sls-moon-artemis-human-space/
The powerful rocket's debut comes after a long series of delays and cost overruns.
Josh Dinner - 29 August 2022
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The enormous Space Launch System (SLS), NASA's new moon rocket, is finally ready to fly.
SLS is scheduled to lift off this morning (Aug. 29) on Artemis 1, the first mission in NASA's Artemis program of moon exploration. If all goes according to plan, the 322-foot-tall (98 meters) rocket will lift off at 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) here on the Space Coast, sending an uncrewed Orion capsule on a six-week journey to lunar orbit and back.
Seeing SLS on the pad is surreal for space fans, who for years had to make do with renderings of the powerful launcher. And those digital illustrations and animations have changed over time, along with the envisioned purpose and destinations of the deep-space rocket.
https://www.space.com/artemis-1-space-launch-system-rocket-cost
Posted by msmash on Monday August 29, 2022 08:29AM
NASA delayed the debut launch of its new massive rocket due to an issue with one of its engines, dealing a temporary blow to the space agency's plan to return to the lunar surface. From a report:
With Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and a global audience watching online, the uncrewed Artemis I mission was called off at 8:34 a.m., one minute after its originally scheduled liftoff time. The launch missed its window after controllers were unable to resolve a temperature problem with one of the rocket's four main engines. The rocket and space capsule are in “a safe and stable configuration,” NASA said Monday in a statement, adding that engineers were continuing to gather data.
Actually, it was not time.
Eric Berger - 8/29/2022, 4:40 AM
8:40am ET Update: NASA has called a scrub on its first attempt to launch the Space Launch System rocket. The problem was due to an “engine bleed” issue, which effectively means that one of the four main engines could not be properly chilled ahead of its ignition.
It is not clear when the next launch attempt will occur. NASA has an availability to launch at 12:48 pm ET (16:48 UTC) on September 2. However, if work is needed on one of the engines, the rocket likely would need to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, pushing back a launch attempt until at least October.
Ars will have full coverage of the scrub, and what happens next, later on Monday afternoon.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/the-final-countdown-begins-for-nasas-hulking-new-rocket/
The next potential launch window has yet to be determined.
Igor Bonifacic - August 29, 2022 7:30 AM
NASA has scrubbed the hotly anticipated launch of its Space Launch System rocket due to engine issues. “The launch of #Artemis I is no longer happening today as teams work through an issue with an engine bleed,” the space agency tweeted. After attempting a series of fixes, was unable to get one of the booster's RS-25 engine down to the correct temperature, after facing a similar problem in June.
The scrub happened with 40 minutes left before launch, and isn't necessarily surprising or disconcerting. Last week, NASA's Artemis mission manager said that it “could scrub for any number of reasons. We're not going to promise that we're going to get off on Monday. We could have weather, we could have technical issues or we could have a range and public safety hold and or a combination of those.”
https://www.engadget.com/how-to-watch-nasa-artemis-1-moon-launch-113048363.html
This science stuff is harder than it looks
Richard Speed - Mon 29 Aug 2022 13:35 UTC
NASA's Space Launch System remained rooted to the pad this morning at the Kennedy Space Center on the US East Coast after its launch was scrubbed by controllers.
The unmanned rocket was supposed to blast off around 0830 ET (1230 UTC). The flight would have been the first proper test of the multi-billion-dollar SLS – the US agency's two-stage super heavy-lifter rocket – which is designed to eventually take astronauts to the Moon by 2025 under the Artemis program.
Today's rocket, with an empty Orion crew capsule sitting atop the stack, was due to go fly around the Moon to evaluate its abilities and design ahead of any manned mission. However, that's been called off after one of the engines couldn't be set to the correct temperature.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/29/nasa_sls_artemis_scrubbed/
An engine that refused to cool down led to today’s scrub, delaying the much-anticipated inaugural launch of NASA’s SLS.
George Dvorsky - 29 August 2022 3:50PM
NASA’s first attempt to launch its Space Launch System megarocket did not go as planned, with officials declaring a scrub due an “engine bleed” issue. Sounds ominous, but NASA officials said Monday afternoon that a re-attempt on Friday is not out of the question.
At 8:34 a.m. ET, and with the countdown clock stuck at T-40 minutes, launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson declared an official end to the first SLS launch attempt. The unplanned hold began more than an hour earlier, as ground teams struggled to resolve an issue with one of the rocket’s four core stage RS-25 engines. Simply put, engineers couldn’t make the engine—specifically engine number three—cold enough for the launch, resulting in the scrub.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-delay-engine-issue-friday-launch-1849470036
“I am very proud of this launch team.”
Eric Berger - 8/29/2022, 12:39 PM
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—Despite all of the hard work by its engineers and technicians, NASA did not really get close to firing up the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Monday.
The rocket experienced several issues during the countdown early on Monday before running into a technical problem the launch team could not solve: an RS-25 rocket engine that did not properly chill down prior to ignition. Even if the engine problem had been resolved, weather along the Florida coast on Monday morning proved dicier than anticipated.
Space is hard, certainly. But Monday's attempt—which NASA had promoted heavily by inviting celebrities to the launch and which included a visit by Vice President Kamala Harris—was perhaps a bit rushed. Why? Because NASA rolled a rocket out to launch without accounting for all of the things that could go wrong.
NASA is under tremendous pressure to launch its new megarocket—and it shows.
George Dvorsky - 30 August 2022
On Monday, NASA failed in its first attempt to launch the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, with engineers struggling to resolve an engine cooling issue. It’s a wholly unsurprising result, given that NASA was unable to complete a single wet dress rehearsal, of which four were attempted earlier in the year. The space agency appears to be winging it, with the botched launch attempt effectively serving as the fifth wet dress rehearsal, in what is a troubling sign.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) was supposed to take flight on Monday morning, but instead we’re left wondering about the state of the program as a whole. NASA will provide more updates about the rocket later this evening, including whether a launch on Friday or Monday might be possible, or whether the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket will have to make its now-familiar 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) trek back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-launch-unfinished-rehearsals-artemis-1-1849474140
The two-hour launch window starts at 2:17 p.m. ET (6:17 p.m. UTC) on September 3. The rocket's Monday launch was scrubbed due to temperature sensor problems.
George Dvorsky - 31 August 2022 10:47AM
NASA’s mission management team has made the decision to re-attempt a launch of the Artemis 1 Mission’s Space Launch System on Saturday afternoon, saying a faulty sensor was to blame for the scrub this past Monday.
The space agency’s 322-foot-tall (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) is currently standing proud on Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but hopefully for not much longer. After reviewing the data from Monday’s scrub, NASA’s mission management team has decided to proceed with the mission, telling reporters on Tuesday evening that the next launch attempt will occur on Saturday. NASA had previously selected Friday September 2 and Monday September 5 as possible launch days, so the decision to attempt a launch on Saturday came as a complete surprise.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-1-mission-saturday-launch-attempt-1849478080
“The way the sensor is behaving does not line up with the physics of the situation.”
Eric Berger - 8/31/2022, 6:41 AM
After scrubbing a launch attempt of the Space Launch System rocket on Monday, NASA officials said they're working toward a second attempt to fly the Artemis I mission on Saturday, September 3.
NASA flight controllers halted the first launch attempt after they were unable to verify that one of the SLS rocket's four main engines—engine no. 3—had been properly cooled to a temperature of -420° Fahrenheit prior to ignition. The engines must be chilled to very cold temperatures to handle the injection of very cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants.
During a news conference on Tuesday evening, NASA's program manager for the SLS rocket, John Honeycutt, said his engineering team believed the engine had actually cooled down from ambient temperature to near the required level but that it was not properly measured by a faulty temperature sensor.
A hydrogen fuel leak thwarted Saturday's attempt.
Igor Bonifacic - September 3, 2022 11:30 AM
Following a failed attempt earlier this week, NASA has once again delayed the start of its Artemis 1 Moon mission. The agency was forced to scrub Saturday’s launch after staff at Kennedy Space Center failed to fix a persistent leak in a liquid hydrogen connection point on the agency's next-generation Space Launch System super heavy-lift rocket.
NASA detected the leak at 7:23AM ET and tried to troubleshoot the problem in a few different ways, but after three failed attempts ground crew recommended a “no go” for Saturday's launch attempt. Monday's attempt was cut short after one of the four on the SLS could not reach the appropriate temperature to send Artemis 1 into space.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-scrubs-artemis-1-again-153016409.html
Sitting, Leaking Slowly?
Richard Speed - Sat 3 Sep 2022 16:20 UTC
It was second time unlucky for NASA as its Space Launch System rocket remained rooted to its Florida launch pad following a second scrub of its Moon mission.
Once again, the countdown was fraught with drama when over-pressure warnings were triggered in the liquid oxygen and hydrogen lines as engineers chilled down the plumbing of the vehicle prior to the loading of chilled fuel. Déjà vu struck as a leak was detected at an 8-inch quick disconnect (QD) point for the hydrogen fueling umbilical line at the base of the rocket (a different QD to the one that leaked during the first attempt earlier this week.)
Engineers paused liquid hydrogen loading to allow the hardware in the area to warm up in the hope that the leak would seal itself. When that failed, engineers had a crack at pressurizing lines to force the balky seal to reseat itself as the countdown clock continued its relentless march toward the launch window.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/03/artemis_nasa_scrubbed/
A hydrogen leak prevented the launch of NASA’s SLS rocket this Saturday, in what is a troubling yet highly predictable development.
George Dvorsky - 6 September 2022
NASA’s Space Launch System is powered by a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Together, these elements provide for a compact and extremely powerful rocket propellant, but these same attributes are also what make this fuel a liability.
The second launch attempt of SLS had to be called off on Saturday, September 3, after engineers failed to resolve a hydrogen leak in a quick disconnect—an 8-inch inlet that connects the liquid hydrogen fuel line to the rocket’s core stage. As a result of the setback, SLS probably won’t launch until October at the earliest. The Artemis 1 mission, in which an uncrewed Orion spacecraft will journey to the Moon and back, will have to wait.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-hydrogen-leaks-sls-rocket-space-shuttle-1849500702
A third launch attempt of Artemis 1 could happen in late September, but that would require some serious hustle.
George Dvorsky - 7 September 2022 12:00PM
NASA is preparing to replace a faulty seal linked to a hydrogen leak that resulted in the second scrubbed launch attempt of SLS on Saturday. The repairs will happen at the launch pad, which is ideal from a testing perspective, but NASA still needs to cart the jumbo rocket back to the assembly building to meet safety requirements.
Technicians will replace a seal on the quick disconnect, an interface that joins the liquid hydrogen fuel line on the mobile launcher to the Space Launch System core stage, according to a brief NASA statement. The teams will also check plate coverings on other umbilicals to rule out hydrogen leaks at those locations. “With seven main umbilical lines, each line may have multiple connection points,” NASA explained.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-to-fix-sls-rocket-hydrogen-leak-on-launch-pad-1849505441
Assuming NASA gets a waiver from the Eastern Range, Artemis 1 could launch on September 23 or 27.
George Dvorsky - 8 September 2022
Like a student late to submit an assignment, NASA has requested an extension from the Space Force that would allow the space agency to perform a third launch attempt of its mega Moon rocket later this month.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is currently undergoing repairs following a hydrogen leak that resulted in a second failed launch attempt this past Saturday. The agency is eager to proceed with a third launch attempt in late September and has filed a special waiver request with the Eastern Range to make that happen, as Jim Free, associate administrator of NASA’s exploration systems development mission directorate, told reporters Thursday morning.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-space-force-waiver-september-sls-launch-1849513499
Will it be third time lucky?
Katyanna Quach - Fri 9 Sep 2022 02:32 UTC
NASA will attempt, for the third time now, to blast off its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Moon in late September.
Officials are targeting September 23 at the earliest, and September 27 as a potential backup should it have to scrub the launch yet again. Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development, confirmed at a briefing on Thursday the American space agency had asked the US Space Force division for approval to fly on those dates.
Designed to fly the first woman and another man to the Moon sometime this decade (ideally) under the Artemis program, the SLS is NASA's most powerful rocket to date.
Its launch, if and when it happens, will be the rocket's first major test, during which it will carry an unmanned crew capsule into space so that the pod can detach and circle the Moon before returning to Earth. When it is time to set foot on the lunar surface again, an SLS rocket will be used to send a capsule carrying astronauts to the Moon, using a SpaceX lander to bring them down to the regolith.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday September 10, 2022 12:00AM
NASA said Thursday that it is working to fix the issues that delayed the launch of its Artemis I moon rocket last week, and that it hopes to make another attempt later this month. CNBC reports:
The space agency on Sept. 3 called off the second attempt to launch the mission after detecting a hydrogen leak as the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was being fueled. The Artemis I mission represents the debut of the SLS rocket and the uncrewed Orion capsule it is carrying, for what is expected to be a more than month-long journey around the moon. NASA made several unsuccessful attempts during the launch countdown on Saturday to fix the leak.
A fueling test could happen as early as September 17th.
Igor Bonifacic - September 11, 2022 1:39 PM
NASA has completed a critical repair of its next-generation Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. On Friday, engineers replaced the leaky seal that forced the agency to scrub its most recent attempt to launch Artemis 1. On September 3rd, a fitting on one of the fuel lines to the SLS began leaking hydrogen. Ground crew at Kennedy Space Center tried to troubleshoot the problem three times, only for the leak to persist and force NASA to call off the launch attempt. On Friday, engineers also replaced the seal on a 4-inch hydrogen “bleed line” that was responsible for a smaller leak during an earlier August 29th launch attempt.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-replaces-leaky-sls-hydrogen-fuel-seal-173936142.html
A third launch attempt of Artemis 1 could happen in late September, but that would require some serious hustle.
George Dvorsky, Artem Golub, and Passant Rabie - 12 September 2022 4:45PM
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-opts-to-fix-megarocket-hydrogen-leak-at-the-launch-1849526593
The space agency still needs permission from Space Force to move forward with its Artemis 1 plans.
Passant Rabie - 13 September 2022
After two failed attempts to launch its mega Moon rocket, NASA is planning for a third go at its inaugural Artemis mission. The space agency is now hoping to test the rocket on September 21 and finally launch it to space six days later, with a backup opportunity in early October. That is, if Space Force agrees.
NASA had been aiming to launch the Space Launch System (SLS) on September 23, but the space agency has pushed that back to September 27, and with a backup opportunity available on October 2. The 70-minute launch window on September 27 opens at 11:37 a.m. ET. The 109-minute launch window for the October 2 launch is still under review, but it opens at 2:52 p.m. ET.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-new-target-date-launch-sls-megarocket-artemis-1849530433
Could it be third time lucky? The odds are not in space agency's favor
Richard Currie - Wed 14 Sep 2022 14:30 UTC
NASA has once again pushed back the launch of the Artemis I mission to send the SLS rocket and Orion capsule beyond the Moon.
Last week the agency said it was targeting September 23 at the earliest, and September 27 as a potential backup if the launch has to be scrubbed for the third time.
Now NASA has said a cryogenic demonstration will take place no earlier than September 21 and updated its request for a launch opportunity on September 27, with October 2 as backup – which is cutting it close.
The schedule is getting crowded as SpaceX's window to send NASA's Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station opens on October 3.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/14/nasa_artemis_new_launch_date/
For those on tenterhooks over this Moon mission
Katyanna Quach - Tue 20 Sep 2022 00:09 UTC
NASA will televise a test on Wednesday to confirm whether a repair made to its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has fixed the hydrogen leak that forced officials to scrub a previous launch attempt.
The super heavy launch vehicle has yet to leave the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida since it was first rolled out last month. The plan is to fly the SLS off to the Moon so that its empty Orion capsule can circle the natural satellite before returning to Earth. The US space agency wants to ultimately use SLS to send humans – the first woman and another man – to the Moon, as part of the Artemis program, this decade with those astronauts riding in the Orion podule.
NASA has tried to send the rocket off to space twice now, but engineers have run into issues every time they try to load the multi-billion-dollar rocket with propellant. Hence all the attention now on it.
A cryogenic tanking test of the Space Launch System achieved all objectives, potentially setting the stage for a third launch attempt of the rocket.
George Dvorsky - 21 September 2022
A demonstration to confirm a repaired hydrogen leak appears to have gone well, with NASA declaring Wednesday’s cryogenic tanking test a success. Engineers still need to review the results, but the space agency could be on track to perform its third launch attempt of its SLS megarocket in just six days—a mission that would officially kick off the Artemis lunar program.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson declared a “go” for tanking at 7:30 a.m. (all times Eastern), around 30 minutes after the intended start time. Ground teams began the process of loading more than 700,000 gallons of propellant into the megarocket, beginning with the core stage. Today’s cryogenic tanking test, as it was called, happened as the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket stood at Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
https://gizmodo.com/sls-tanking-test-success-nasa-artemis-1-1849565384
The Artemis 1 mission's next launch attempt could take place on September 27th.
Mariella Moon - September 21, 2022 11:46 PM
The next Artemis 1 launch attempt might take place as soon as next week, seeing as NASA has met all the objectives it set out to do to consider its rocket's fuel test a success. NASA had to test adding super-cooled fuel to the Space Launch System's tanks to confirm the repairs it made after it scrubbed the mission's second launch attempt in late August. The ground team at Kennedy Space Center spotted a persistent hydrogen leak affecting one of the fuel lines on the SLS at the time and tried to fix it the day of three times. In the end, the team was unsuccessful and decided to postpone the mission.
The team determined a few days later that the leak was triggered when the SLS rocket's core booster tank went through a brief overpressurization. To prevent the same incident from happening, the team adjusted procedures for filling the rocket's tank with propellants, and it involves transitioning temperatures and pressures more slowly to prevent rapid changes that could cause leakage. The team's engineers also replaced the rocket's liquid hydrogen seals after discovering a small indentation in one of them that may have contributed to the leak.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-completes-artemis-1-rocket-fuel-test-034656131.html
Launch of SLS is set for Tuesday, but a threatening storm could send the Artemis 1 rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
George Dvorsky - 23 September 2022
We’ve got some good news and some bad news. Space Force has granted NASA’s request for an extension to launch the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket—yay—but a tropical storm is brewing in the Atlantic, which could threaten its scheduled launch on Tuesday, September 27.
NASA finally got the Space Force waiver it was seeking, as John Blevins, SLS chief engineer, told reporters earlier this afternoon. The space agency can now proceed with a launch on either September 27 or October 2. This will be NASA’s third attempt to launch the rocket and the Artemis 1 mission, in which an uncrewed Orion capsule will journey to the Moon and back.
https://gizmodo.com/space-force-approves-launch-of-nasa-s-megarocket-but-b-1849575109
Space agency officials seem OK with leaving the rocket out in a tropical storm.
Eric Berger - 9/23/2022, 2:06 PM
On Friday afternoon, senior officials at NASA joined a teleconference to speak with reporters about the current plan to launch the Artemis I mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This will be the third attempt to get the massive Space Launch System rocket off the ground and boost the Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit for an approximately 40-day uncrewed test flight before returning to Earth.
The rocket is ready, officials said. During fueling tests and launch attempts NASA has been bedeviled by hydrogen propellant leaks, as the tiny molecule is difficult to handle and constrain at super-chilled temperatures. However, following a longer-than-expected, but ultimately successful propellant loading test on Wednesday, NASA engineers expressed confidence in their revamped fueling procedures.
NASA has also reached an accord with US Space Force officials to extend the battery life for the rocket's onboard flight termination system. This left only weather as a potential constraint to a planned launch attempt for Tuesday, September 27, at 11:37 am EST (15:37 UTC). The problem is that weather now poses a significant threat to the schedule due to a tropical depression that will likely track toward Florida in the coming days. There is an 80 percent chance of unacceptable weather during the launch window.
NASA is buying some time with this decision.
Eric Berger - 9/24/2022, 8:35 AM
NASA on Saturday announced that it will no longer attempt to launch its Artemis I mission on Tuesday, September 27, as Tropical Storm Ian continues developing in the Caribbean Sea.
Instead of preparing the massive Space Launch System rocket for liftoff in three days, teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will instead start to configure the ground systems and vehicle for a potential roll back to a large hangar, the Vehicle Assembly Building. Sheltering inside this building would protect the $4 billion rocket and Orion spacecraft from any foul weather due to Ian.
Earlier, NASA had said it would make a decision by Saturday afternoon on whether to roll the Artemis I mission back inside the hangar. However, in its announcement on Saturday the agency said it would now make that decision on Sunday.
The Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Kris Holt 0 September 26, 2022 11:09 AM
With the Artemis 1 launch site in the predicted path of Hurricane Ian, NASA has decided not to take any chances with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. The agency will roll them back to the safety of the Vehicle Assembly Building, starting at around 11PM ET this evening. You'll be able to watch the rollback on NASA's ongoing Artemis 1 livestream below.
“Managers met Monday morning and made the decision based on the latest weather predictions associated with Hurricane Ian, after additional data gathered overnight did not show improving expected conditions for the Kennedy Space Center area,” NASA said in a statement. “The decision allows time for employees to address the needs of their families and protect the integrated rocket and spacecraft system.”
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-artemis-1-hurricane-ian-rollback-150906626.html
Kennedy Space Center and SLS emerged unscathed, but the storm upset NASA’s plan to fly the Artemis 1 mission in October.
George Dvorsky - 3 October 2022 11:40AM
At first it was technical hurdles, but now a natural disaster has forced a delay to NASA’s Artemis 1 mission. With the rocket tucked inside the space agency’s gigantic assembly building and with normal ground operations set to resume this week, Space Launch System won’t take flight until November 12 at the earliest.
Hurricane Ian laid waste to much of Florida last week, resulting in the loss of life, widespread power outages, and property damage on an unfathomable scale. After hemming and hawing over whether to shelter the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket from the storm, NASA finally decided to roll SLS back to the Vehicle Assembly Building with just hours to spare.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-artemis-1-sls-launch-november-hurricane-ian-1849608767
Heh, prove us wrong, kids. Prove us wrong
Katyanna Quach - Wed 12 Oct 2022 21:12 UTC
NASA now hopes to blast an unmanned Orion capsule atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Moon on November 14 after suffering, among other delays, a setback due to Hurricane Ian smashing up Florida.
The nearly 100-metre-tall heavy launch vehicle was slowly wheeled back to the hangar on September 26 to shelter from the devastating storm. Now that Hurricane Ian has blown over, NASA can roll the rocket back out onto the launchpad at Cape Canaveral on the US East Coast to prepare for yet more delays, sorry, actual launch next month.
The Americans said their SLS rocket was in fine condition, and “minimal work” will be required to return the machine to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. “Teams will perform standard maintenance to repair minor damage to the foam and cork on the thermal protection system and recharge or replace batteries on the rocket, several secondary payloads, and the flight termination system,” NASA said in a statement on Wednesday.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/12/nasa_sls_november_date/
The space agency has been trying to launch SLS since August and is now hoping to see the Artemis 1 rocket take flight in November.
George Dvorsky - 12 October 2022 4:55PM
After two launch scrubs, an impromptu tanking test, and an awful hurricane, NASA is once again preparing for the inaugural launch of its Space Launch System.
The new targeted launch date for the Artemis 1 mission is Monday, November 14, with a 69-minute launch window that opens at 12:07 a.m. ET, as NASA announced today in a blog post. In the event of a scrub, backup launch opportunities exist on Wednesday, November 16 and Saturday, November 19, with launch windows opening at 1:04 a.m. ET and 1:45 a.m. ET, respectively. NASA is planning to roll the rocket back to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, November 4.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-targets-new-date-for-launch-of-jumbo-moon-rocket-1849649947
Set your alarm for 7 minutes after midnight on November 14.
Eric Berger - 10/12/2022, 9:40 AM
A little more than two weeks have passed since NASA prudently rolled its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft inside the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center to protect the hardware from Hurricane Ian.
During that time, engineers and technicians from the space agency and its contractors have performed a detailed inspection of the rocket and spacecraft to determine its flight readiness. This was an important process because the vehicles have been in a fully stacked configuration for nearly a year, since October 21, 2021. NASA wanted to assess the ongoing viability of batteries on the rocket, hypergolic fuel stored on Orion's service module, and more.
After two previous failures, will third time be the charm?
Katyanna Quach - Thu 3 Nov 2022 23:58 UTC
NASA will roll its Space Launch System back out to the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday to prepare for a third attempt to put its most powerful rocket yet into the sky on November 14.
The rocket has remained in the hangar to shelter from Hurricane Ian, which struck the coast of Florida late September. Engineers have worked to repair and replace components to make sure the vehicle is in tip-top condition to fly to the Moon during its first test flight.
They're ready to wheel the SLS back out onto the launchpad tomorrow at 1201 EDT (0401 UTC). Transporting such a hefty, expensive bit of equipment for the four-mile journey from the hangar to the launchpad is a tricky and delicate business. The process is expected to take about ten hours and NASA intends to livestream every painstaking moment.
Hurricane Ian sent SLS back to the garage, but the inaugural Artemis 1 Moon mission is now poised to launch on November 14.
George Dvorsky - 4 November 2022 12:58PM
The towering Space Launch System is back at Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, following a nine-hour trek from the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building. The agency is targeting November 14 for the rocket’s first launch, an event that will kick off the Artemis 1 mission and NASA’s return to the Moon.
Could this be it? Might this finally be the last time NASA has to cart the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket to the launch pad? I’m obsessively toggling between optimism and pessimism, as there’s good reason for both.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-rocket-launch-november-14-artemis-1-1849743747
NASA is targeting a two-hour launch window that opens at 1:04 a.m. ET on Wednesday, despite minor damage caused by Hurricane Nicole.
George Dvorsky - 15 November 2022 12:10PM
The Artemis era appears to be at hand. After 12 years of anticipation, two scrubs, and two hurricanes, NASA’s 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket is finally ready to take flight. You can watch the action live right here.
Alright, so this could be it. Staying awake for a launch that could happen an hour after midnight shouldn’t pose a problem for me, given my ample supply of candy, popcorn, and Nespresso capsules. It also doesn’t hurt that I’ve waited over a decade for this launch, so this unusually late weekday night will be a small price to pay. Well, assuming NASA can finally light this gigantic candle.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-watch-live-nasa-sls-rocket-artemis-third-attempt-1849784854
“We are going,” NASA says. “We sure hope so,” America replies.
Eric Berger - 11/15/2022, 11:40 AM
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—After writing about NASA's Space Launch System rocket for a dozen years—certainly well into the hundreds of thousands of words—I've run out of things to say about the big, orange booster.
Well, almost. What I would like to say is that it is time, beyond time really, for this mission to fly.
As NASA has sought to build public interest in the Artemis program and spur momentum for the Artemis I launch of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, the space agency has increasingly used the slogan, “We are going.”
The response from much of the space community to this can be succinctly stated: “We are ready for you to go.”
The most powerful operational rocket in the world blasted off last week, causing all sorts of damage to the launch pad. NASA officials don't seem to be worried.
George Dvorsky - 22 November 2022 2:55PM
A scorched platform, fried cameras, broken pipes, and a busted elevator are among the casualties of last week’s launch of NASA’s SLS rocket. Mobile Launcher 1 and Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center will require repairs, but NASA says they’ll be ready for the next Artemis mission.
Space Launch System, or SLS, blasted off during the early hours of Wednesday, November 16, sending the Orion capsule on a 25.5-day journey to the Moon and back. It was a picture-perfect launch, and NASA has said as much. Preliminary data from the Artemis 1 flight indicates that SLS performed as well as or even exceeded expectations, Mike Sarafin, Artemis 1 mission manager, told reporters yesterday.
NASA, in addition to lauding its new megarocket, released a jaw-dropping supercut of the Artemis 1 launch.
Passant Rabie - 2 December 2022
NASA has conducted a preliminary review of the inaugural Space Launch System launch, saying the rocket met and even exceeded all expectations.
On Wednesday, NASA released its initial analysis of SLS’ performance as it lifted off on November 16, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to the Moon for the space agency’s Artemis 1 mission. “The first launch of the Space Launch System rocket was simply eye-watering,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, said in a statement. “While our mission with Orion is still underway and we continue to learn over the course of our flight, the rocket’s systems performed as designed and as expected in every case.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-artemis-exceeded-expectations-1849843145
“At current cost levels the SLS program is unsustainable.”
Eric Berger - 9/7/2023, 1:21 PM
In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.
Published on Thursday, the new report (see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on the development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program.
“Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states.
A new report accuses the space agency of a lack of transparency regarding the cost of its SLS program.
Passant Rabie - 8 September 2023 3:30PM
NASA has come under heat for the increasing cost of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which space agency officials have finally admitted to being unsustainable and unaffordable, a new report revealed.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Thursday that heavily criticized NASA for its lack of transparency regarding the true cost of the SLS program, which has already gone $6 billion over budget.
The SLS rocket launched on November 16, 2022 for the Artemis 1 mission, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon and back. The 5.75-million-pound rocket is essential to NASA’s Moon program, with plans to launch Artemis 2 in late 2024 followed by the first crewed landing on the lunar surface as early as 2025 and another one tentatively set for 2028.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-unaffordable-costs-artemis-moon-rocket-1850818625
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 09, 2023 07:34AM
An anonymous reader shared this report from the senior space editor at Ars Technica:
In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently U.S. taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program. Published on Thursday, the new report (see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on the development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program. “Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states…
“NASA’s aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50 percent is highly unrealistic.”
Eric Berger - 10/13/2023, 12:07 PM
In recent years NASA has acknowledged that its large Space Launch System rocket is unaffordable and has sought to bring its costs down to a more reasonable level. The most recent estimate is that it costs $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, and this does not include add-ons such as ground systems, integration, a payload, and more.
Broadly speaking, NASA's cost-reduction plan is to transfer responsibility for production of the rocket to a new company co-owned by Boeing and Northrop Grumman, which are key contractors for the rocket. This company, “Deep Space Transport,” would then build the rockets and sell them to NASA. The space agency has said that this services-based model could reduce the cost of the rocket by as much as 50 percent.
However, in a damning new report, NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, says that is not going to happen. Rather, Martin writes, the cost of building the rocket is actually likely to increase.
“Our analysis shows a single SLS Block 1B will cost at least $2.5 billion to produce—not including Systems Engineering and Integration costs—and NASA’s aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50 percent is highly unrealistic,” Martin wrote in an audit of the agency's plans, which was published on Thursday.
The space agency is contemplating a transition to a service contract model to manage and reduce the skyrocketing costs of its SLS megarocket.
Passant Rabie - 13 October 2023 11:50AM
NASA’s goal to reduce costs on its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket by switching to a commercial service contract was dismissed in the latest audit of the space agency’s ongoing Moon program.
The office of NASA’s inspector general (OIG) released a report on Thursday that referred to the space agency’s goal of saving 50% on the future launches of SLS as “highly unrealistic.” The report estimated that a single SLS will cost more than $2 billion to produce for the first 10 launches.
The SLS rocket launched on November 16, 2022 for the Artemis 1 mission, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon and back. The 5.75-million-pound rocket is essential to NASA’s Moon program, with plans to launch Artemis 2 in late 2024 followed by the first crewed landing on the lunar surface as early as 2025 and another mission tentatively set for 2028.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-sls-moon-rocket-costs-auditor-general-budget-1850924888
The White House has not made a final decision yet on the large rocket.
Eric Berger – Feb 7, 2025 2:07 PM
The Space Launch System rocket is seen rolling toward its launch pad, LC-39B, in Florida. Credit: Trevor Mahlmann
The primary contractor for the Space Launch System rocket, Boeing, is preparing for the possibility that NASA cancels the long-running program.
On Friday, with less than an hour's notice, David Dutcher, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, scheduled an all-hands meeting for the approximately 800 employees working on the program. The apparently scripted meeting lasted just six minutes, and Dutcher didn't take questions.
During his remarks, Dutcher said Boeing's contracts for the rocket could end in March and that the company was preparing for layoffs in case the contracts with the space agency were not renewed. “Cold and scripted” is how one person described Dutcher's demeanor.
Overdue, over budget and now… perhaps just over?
Richard Speed - Mon 10 Feb 2025 15:28 UTC
Boeing has notified staff that hundreds of jobs could be eliminated if the Artemis program is canceled or heavily revised.
The aerospace giant is infamous for the Calamity Capsule – Starliner – but is also a major contributor to NASA's monster Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).
Boeing makes the Core Stage for the rocket, but SLS development has been slow and hit by frequent delays. It is also a costly way to get beyond Earth's orbit, but is the only way to send astronauts to the Moon for now. Aside from the Orion capsule on the top of the stack, it is also entirely expendable, unlike SpaceX's Starship.
The rocket finally made its maiden launch in 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon and back. The next launch, Artemis II, is expected in 2026 and will send a crew around the Moon. A landing mission, Artemis III, is planned for 2027, with a SpaceX Starship as the crewed lander.
A Boeing spokesperson said, “To align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations, we informed our Space Launch Systems team of the potential for approximately 400 fewer positions by April 2025. This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
“We are working with our customer and seeking opportunities to redeploy employees across our company to minimize job losses and retain our talented teammates.”
The current US administration is seeking to reduce costs, with the boss of SpaceX, Elon Musk, at the head of a group charged with making “efficiencies” in US government operations. It is not hard to imagine Musk taking a look at the Artemis program and the SLS and thinking, “That can definitely go.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/10/boeing_warns_sls_staff_that/
One of the engines on NASA's next Space Launch System rocket requires repairs.
Stephen Clark – Apr 30, 2025 10:40 AM
A couple of weeks ago, ground teams at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida removed one of the four main engines from the Space Launch System rocket slated to send four astronauts on a voyage around the Moon next year.
NASA officials ordered the removal of one of the massive rocket's RS-25 main engines after discovering a hydraulic leak on the engine's main oxidizer valve actuator, which controls the flow of super-cold liquid oxygen propellant into the engine's main combustion chamber, an agency spokesperson told Ars.
In its place, technicians installed another RS-25 engine from NASA's inventory to the bottom of the rocket's core stage, which is standing vertical on its mobile launch platform inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy. Teams began integrating the replacement engine with the rocket last Friday and are in the process of firmly securing it in the Engine 4 position on the core stage, the NASA spokesperson said.
Forget Martian dust devils, it's the peril of the blue smoke you have to worry about
Richard Speed - Wed 29 Nov 2023 16:14 UTC
Engineer and astro-futurist Chris Lewicki wrote an essay this week - that would not be out of place in our Who, Me? archives - about a testing mistake that nearly transformed half a billion dollars worth of Mars Rover into spacecraft scrap.
Lewicki posted the tale to his personal site, describing work on the Spirit Mars Rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California more than two decades ago.
It was February 2003, and a mere two weeks remained before the trundlebot would be packed up for shipment to Florida for its launch.
The spacecraft needed to be checked and rechecked for the last time on Earth. Everything had to be verified as being in perfect working order; the rovers were, at the time, among the most complex spacecraft ever built. They also represented nearly a billion dollars of NASA investment.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/29/jpl_engineer_spirit_mars_rover/
STEREO-A will pass between Earth and the Sun for its first flyby since launch in 2006, collaborating with other missions to reveal new insights about our star.
Passant Rabie - 12 August 2023
For the past 17 years, a lone spacecraft has been following Earth’s tracks in its orbit around the Sun and capturing unprecedented views of our host star. Now, STEREO-A has finally caught up with its home planet, lapping us in our cosmic trail and meeting the Earth for a brief rendezvous.
On Saturday, NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft is scheduled for its first Earth flyby since its launch on October 25, 2006, the space agency revealed. The flyby is not only a chance for the spacecraft to reunite with Earth, but also provides a rare opportunity for STEREO-A to collaborate with other NASA missions to view the Sun in new and exciting ways.
The STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) mission actually started off with twin spacecraft: the leading STEREO-A (for ahead) and STEREO-B, which lagged behind. The two spacecraft provided the first stereoscopic, or multiple-perspective, view of the Sun. At some point, the spacecraft even achieved a 180 degree separation from each other in their orbits, giving us a simultaneous view of the star as a complete sphere for the first time.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-stereo-a-earth-17-years-sun-1850730286
October 26, 2014 - waynehale
It was about a quarter past midnight on July 23, 1999 when the Ralph Roe, the Shuttle Launch Director, told Eileen’s crew that they were go for launch and wished them good luck. The launch, which had been scrubbed late in the countdown on two previous attempts, was going to be about 7 minutes late due to some transient communications system problems at the Merritt Island Launch Annex (MILA) tracking station.
In Houston, I was sitting on the back row of mission control acting as the Mission Operations Director. Sitting next to me was Chuck Knarr, former flight director and executive in the United Space Alliance. In the hot seat at the Flight Director position was John Shannon with LeRoy Cain sitting beside him to watch the weather and keep track of the checklists. Capcom was Scott “Scooter” Altman.
The old joke was: “which F-14 pilot do you want as your wingman? Cobra, Maverick, or Scooter?” The correct answer was Scooter – Cobra and Maverick were just Hollywood movie creations for ‘Top Gun’; in that movie all the real flying was done by Scooter.
Down in the trench was Flight Dynamics Officer (FDO) Lisa Shore with Carson Sparks sitting next to her as TRAJ officer. On the Electrical General Instrumentation and Lighting (EGIL) console was Tim North – about to get the ride of his life – and on the back row was Booster Officer Jon Reding, one of the coolest heads to sit at that position. A well seasoned crew to watch over the launch phase for Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission, her pilot Jeff Ashby, and the rest of the unusually small crew of Columbia.
https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/sts-93-we-dont-need-any-more-of-those/
Ars solves the mystery by going directly to a primary source—the president himself.
Eric Berger - Dec 30, 2024 5:58 AM
We’d been chatting for the better part of two hours when Chris Kraft’s eyes suddenly brightened. “Hey,” he said, “Here’s a story I’ll bet you never heard.” Kraft, the man who had written flight rules for NASA at the dawn of US spaceflight and supervised the Apollo program, had invited me to his home south of Houston for one of our periodic talks about space policy and space history. As we sat in recliners upstairs, in a den overlooking the Bay Oaks Country Club, Kraft told me about a time the space shuttle almost got canceled.
It was the late 1970s, when Kraft directed the Johnson Space Center, the home of the space shuttle program. At the time, the winged vehicle had progressed deep into a development phase that started in 1971. Because the program had not received enough money to cover development costs, some aspects of the vehicle (such as its thermal protective tiles) were delayed into future budget cycles. In another budget trick, NASA committed $158 million in fiscal year 1979 funds for work done during the previous fiscal year.
This could not go on, and according to Kraft the situation boiled over during a 1978 meeting in a large conference floor on the 9th floor of Building 1, the Houston center’s headquarters. All the program managers and other center directors gathered there along with NASA’s top leadership. That meeting included Administrator Robert Frosch, a physicist President Carter had appointed a year earlier.
By Howard Berkes - Sunday, March 7, 2021 • 3:09 PM EST
On Jan. 27, 1986, Allan McDonald stood on the cusp of history.
McDonald directed the booster rocket project at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol. He was responsible for the two massive rockets, filled with explosive fuel, which lifted space shuttles skyward. He was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of the Challenger ”…to approve or disapprove a launch if something came up,” he told me in 2016, 30 years after Challenger exploded.
His job was to sign and submit an official form. Sign the form, he believed, and he'd risk the lives of the seven astronauts set to board the spacecraft the next morning. Refuse to sign, and he'd risk his job, his career, and the good life he'd built for his wife and four children.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday March 07, 2021 04:54PM
Long-time Slashdot reader Nkwe shares an article from NPR:
His job was to sign and submit an official form. Sign the form, he believed, and he'd risk the lives of the seven astronauts set to board the spacecraft the next morning. Refuse to sign, and he'd risk his job, his career, and the good life he'd built for his wife and four children.
“And I made the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime,” McDonald told me. “I refused to sign it. I just thought we were taking risks we shouldn't be taking….
A documentary crew discovered the wreckage while searching for World War II aircraft.
Will Shanklin - November 10, 2022 3:10 PM
A documentary crew searching for World War II-era aircraft wreckage recently discovered historical artifacts of a more modern variety. After reviewing the footage, NASA has confirmed that underwater wreckage filmed off the Florida coast is from the disastrous final flight of the space shuttle Challenger, in which seven people were killed.
Divers working on the documentary noticed “a large human-made object covered partially by sand on the seafloor.” It had a modern construction, including eight-inch square tiles, commonly used in shuttles’ thermal protection systems. That tipped off the crew members that the wreckage may be NASA-related, and they contacted the space agency, which looked over the footage and confirmed its origin. NASA says it is considering what additional actions to take regarding the debris.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-challenger-explosion-wreckage-discovery-201048870.html
The spacecraft exploded shortly after launch in 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board.
Isaac Schultz -10 November 2022 1:40PM
A film crew working on a series about the Bermuda Triangle has made an unexpected discovery off the coast of Florida: a 20-foot segment of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded in flight in one of NASA’s major tragedies.
The Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, about 73 seconds after the spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. 46,000 feet above the ground, the Shuttle exploded due to an escape of hot gas within a booster rocket, caused by a weakening of the spacecraft’s rubber O-rings.
All seven crew members were killed in the disaster, including Christa McAuliffe, who was set to become the first teacher in space. Debris from the explosion rained down onto the Atlantic Ocean.
https://gizmodo.com/part-of-challenger-space-shuttle-found-atlantic-ocean-1849768268
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday November 10, 2022 11:00PM
A large section of the destroyed space shuttle Challenger has been found buried in sand at the bottom of the Atlantic, more than three decades after the tragedy that killed a schoolteacher and six others. CBC.ca reports:
NASA's Kennedy Space Center announced the discovery Thursday. “Of course, the emotions come back, right?” said Michael Ciannilli, a NASA manager who confirmed the remnant's authenticity. When he saw the underwater video footage, “My heart skipped a beat, I must say, and it brought me right back to 1986 … and what we all went through as a nation.” It's one of the biggest pieces of Challenger found in the decades since the accident, according to Ciannilli, and the first remnant to be discovered since two fragments from the left wing washed ashore in 1996.
A documentary film crew stumbled across a section of the destroyed spacecraft that measures at least 15 by 15 feet
Margaret Osborne, Daily Correspondent - November 14, 2022 3:37 p.m.
In search of a sunken World War II-era aircraft, a TV documentary crew plunged into the waters off the coast of Florida. Instead, the divers came across a large, flat metal object with square tiles indicative of a spacecraft, partially covered by sand on the seafloor.
The team, which had been filming for the History Channel, soon realized their discovery is one of the largest recovered pieces of NASA’s Challenger Space Shuttle.
“Looking at the images that have been released, it's obviously a piece of the orbiter,” Jennifer Levasseur, a curator at Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, tells NPR’s Elissa Nadworny. “If you go and visit any of the space shuttles, you'll notice that the tiles that protect the vehicle for reentry—those black tiles on the bottom—have a very obvious pattern, just like tiles on a floor.”
The crew contacted NASA, which confirmed the find in a statement last week.
O-ring erosion on Discovery would have disastrous effects a year later
Richard Speed - Tue 28 Jan 2025 11:45 UTC
It has been 40 years since NASA launched the first dedicated Department of Defense Space Shuttle mission, after which engineers spotted O-ring seal defficiencies that would doom Challenger a year later.
The five crew members launched on the three-day jaunt to space and back – aboard Space Shuttle Discovery – on January 24, 1985. The purpose of the classified mission was to deploy a satellite to geostationary orbit using an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).
The mission was commanded by Apollo veteran Thomas “TK” Mattingly, who had been dropped from Apollo 13 due to exposure to German measles and later flew on Apollo 16. Mattingly also flew with Henry “Hank” Hartsfield on Space Shuttle Columbia for STS-4 in 1982.
Along with Mattingly, the crew comprised pilot Loren Shriver, mission specialists James Buchli and Ellison Onizuka, and payload specialist for the US Air Force Gary Payton.
The mission was shrouded in secrecy. The actual launch time was kept secret until the T minus nine-minute mark, and public coverage of the expedition soon ceased after the successful lift-off.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/28/nasa_discovery_dod_mission/
Ben Evans - February 1, 2020
For 16 days in January 2003, the seven men and women of shuttle Columbia’s STS-107 crew—Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, Mission Specialists Dave Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Mike Anderson and Laurel Clark and Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon of Israel—worked around-the-clock to complete 80 scientific experiments spanning a variety of disciplines from life sciences to fluid physics and from materials research to Earth observations. Eighty-seven missions since the loss of Challenger, they had serviced the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) four times and had begun building the sprawling International Space Station (ISS) in low-Earth orbit.
The shuttle remained an inherently dangerous vehicle, although the robustness of the four surviving orbiters—Discovery, Atlantis, Columbia herself and the “baby” of the fleet, Endeavour—had been amply demonstrated and their shortcomings were well-understood. Or so it seemed. Those shortcomings came home to roost with horrifying suddenness on the morning of 1 February 2003.
Columbia broke apart during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts on board. For the Shuttle program, it marked the beginning of the end.
George Dvorsky - 31 January 2023
The 28th flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia ended in disaster on February 1, 2003, while it was 27 miles above the state of Texas, marking the second catastrophic mission of NASA’s shuttle program. Twenty years later, the tragic event serves as an important reminder of the dangers posed by space exploration—and why astronaut safety should always be a priority.
A falling chunk of insulating foam weighing no more than 1.67 pounds—that’s all it took to take down the 179,000-pound Space Shuttle Columbia. The debris formed a gash in the orbiter’s left wing, compromising the Shuttle’s thermal protection system. The orbiter disintegrated during reentry on February 1, 2003, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members on board.
https://gizmodo.com/columbia-space-shuttle-nasa-20-years-anniversary-1850048700
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 07, 2024 05:54PM
CNN revisits 2003's disastrous landing of the Space Shuttle Columbia tonight with two “immersive” specials co-produced by BBC and Mindhouse Productions “featuring exclusive interviews and revealing never-before-broadcast footage,” according to an announcement — with two more specials airing next week.
You can watch a trailer here. (https://youtu.be/vZWFPlMEP1I)
Across four episodes, the story of the ticking-clock of Columbia's final mission is told in dramatic detail, beginning months before the troubled launch, unfolding across the sixteen days in orbit, and concluding with the investigation into the tragic loss of the seven astronauts' lives. Weaving together intimate footage shot by the astronauts themselves inside the orbiter, exclusive first-hand testimony from family members of the Shuttle's crew, key players at NASA — some of whom have never spoken before — and journalists who covered the story on the ground, the series paints an intimate portrait of the women and men onboard and uncovers in forensic detail the trail of events and missed opportunities that ultimately led to disaster.
The eventful launch of STS-93 and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Richard Speed - Fri 26 Jul 2024 09:33 UTC
Twenty-five years ago, Space Shuttle Columbia launched the Chandra X-ray observatory and nearly ended in catastrophe. As the then-ascent flight director John Shannon observed: “Yikes. We don't need another one of those.”
Space Shuttle Columbia was launched from Kennedy Space Center's LC-39B on the morning of July 23, 1999. Two previous launch attempts, on July 20 and 22, were scrubbed because of a faulty sensor and bad weather.
The launch was third time lucky in more ways than one.
Unknown to the Shuttle's crew and flight controllers, Columbia contained several flaws – as do all vehicles – some of which were about to make their presence felt during the launch phase of the mission. A bit of wiring within the payload bay had chafed against a burred screw head, a single gold-plated pin was slightly loose in a deactivated Liquid Oxygen (LOX) post in the main injector of the right engine, and the main center engine had a slight bias in pressure measurements on its B channel that would only show when the engine reached full throttle.
Oh, and there was a slightly loose connection on a hydraulic pressure sensor on the right solid rocket booster (SRB).
The team was blissfully unaware of any of this.
The countdown progressed normally, and by T-3 seconds, all the engines were up and running and operating at 100 percent power.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/26/space_shuttle_columbia_near_miss/
Posted by BeauHD on Friday July 11, 2025 12:00AM Senator Dick Durbin questioned a Texas-led effort to move Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston, describing it as an expensive “heist” costing an estimated $305 million, not the $85 million initially budgeted. “This is not a transfer. It's a heist,” said Durbin during a budget markup hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee. “A heist by Texas because they lost a competition 12 years ago.” In April, Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz introduced legislation to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from Virginia to Houston, which ultimately passed into law on July 4 as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Ars Technica reports:
“In the reconciliation bill, Texas entered $85 million to move the space shuttle from the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia, to Texas. Eighty-five million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it is not nearly what's necessary for this to be accomplished,” Durbin said. Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston.
Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian's collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred “all rights, interest, title, and ownership” for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian. “This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don't have the right in Texas to claim this,” said Durbin. […]
Endeavour raised into position for California Science Center's 'Go For Stack'
Richard Speed - Thu 1 Feb 2024 16:30 UTC
For the first time in more than ten years, a Space Shuttle has been raised into launch position. Although the completed stack won't be seeing a launchpad any time soon.
The Space Shuttle in question is Endeavour, which last flew in space on mission STS-134 in 2011. Endeavour was decommissioned after landing and shipped off to the California Science Center in Los Angeles for display.
The California Science Center had grand plans for its star exhibit, although Endeavour remained in a temporary pavilion as funds were raised for a more permanent home. It took until 2022 before they broke ground for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the site, and the final assembly of a Space Shuttle stack could commence.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/01/space_shuttle_endeavour_goes_vertical/
Generating ”…public resistance to the provision's enforcement.”
Robert Pearlman – Aug 8, 2025 8:28 AM
Texas lawmakers, seemingly not content with getting NASA's endorsement to move a retired space shuttle to Houston, are now calling for an investigation into how the Smithsonian allegedly objected to relocating the orbiter it has owned for more than a decade.
Senator John Cornyn and Representative Randy Weber on Thursday sent a letter to John Roberts, the Smithsonian Institution's chancellor and chief justice of the United States, suggesting that the Smithsonian's staff may have violated the law in their efforts to block legislation authorizing the space vehicle's transfer.
“Public reporting suggest that the Smithsonian Institution has taken affirmative steps to oppose the passage and implementation of this provision. These steps reportedly include contacting staff of the Senate Appropriations and Rules Committees to express opposition, as well as engaging members of the press to generate public resistance to the provision's enforcement,” wrote Cornyn and Weber to Roberts.
Acting Administrator has selected a lucky orbiter, but won't say which one
Richard Speed - Sun 10 Aug 2025 07:27 UTC
The NASA acting Administrator has picked a Space Shuttle to move to Houston, and the lucky vehicle is… NASA's not telling.
“We have no public statement at this time,” is the official word from the US space agency.
The requirement to move one of the Space Shuttles was included in US President Donald Trump's mega budget bill, which allocated $85 million for transporting the vehicle to Texas and constructing a facility to display it. The question is… which Space Shuttle?
There are three retired orbiters that have flown in space. Endeavour is at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it is being prepared for display in a “ready for launch” configuration. Atlantis can be viewed as if it were on-orbit, with payload bay doors open, at Kennedy Space Center. Discovery is parked up at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center.
A fourth Shuttle, Enterprise, which was used for fit checks and approach and landing tests, but never launched into orbit, can be found at the Intrepid Museum in New York.
Taking aside the question of how a Space Shuttle might be moved at this stage, NASA's reluctance to name the vehicle hints that perhaps even just picking one is not quite as straightforward as lawmakers think it is. According to the Smithsonian, NASA transferred the vehicle to it in 2012. Ownership of Endeavour was transferred to the California Science Center in 2011. Atlantis is a possibility, but it is Discovery that was the subject of the original “Bring the Space Shuttle Home” act.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/10/nasa_wont_name_the_shuttle/
“Removing an item from the National Collection is not a viable solution…”
Robert Pearlman – Sep 29, 2025 9:36 AM
A former NASA astronaut turned US senator has joined with other lawmakers to insist that his two rides to space remain on display in the Smithsonian.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) has joined fellow Democratic senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both of Virginia, and Dick Durbin of Illinois in an effort to halt the move of space shuttle Discovery to Houston, as enacted into law earlier this year. Kelly flew two of his four missions aboard Discovery.
“Why should hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars be spent just to jeopardize a piece of American history that's already protected and on display?” wrote Kelly in a social media post on Friday. “Space Shuttle Discovery belongs at the Smithsonian, where millions of people, including students and veterans, go to see it for free.”
In a letter sent on the same day to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Kelly and his three colleagues cautioned that any effort to transfer the winged orbiter would “waste taxpayer dollars, risk permanent damage to the shuttle, and mean fewer visitors would be able to visit it.”
“It is worth noting that there is little evidence of broad public demand for such a move,” wrote Kelly, Warner, Kaine, and Durbin.
Smithsonian warns that dismantling orbiter for relocation is history in the wrecking
Richard Speed - Thu 2 Oct 2025 16:39 UTC
How would you move Space Shuttle Discovery from Virginia to Texas? The White House Office of Management and Budget asked NASA and the Smithsonian Institution and the response was to dismantle it.
The space agency and research institute estimate “that the cost to move Discovery to Houston would, at minimum, be between $120 million and $150 million, exclusive of the cost of building a new exhibit in Houston.” This is considerably more than the $85 million budgeted for transportation and exhibition construction. Unfortunately, doing so may require disassembling the Space Shuttle.
A Capitol Hill source confirmed to The Register the existence of the exchange.
The Space Shuttle was never designed to be dismantled. In addition to its frame and internals, the vehicle is covered with delicate ceramic tiles, capable of withstanding the heat of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, along with thermal blankets. Then there are the cables and connectors underneath.
If it must be moved and legal hurdles such as ownership are overcome, then dismantling it and accepting damage to an irreplaceable artifact is unavoidable. The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft have long been decommissioned, and getting one flightworthy again would be a lengthy and expensive undertaking, even if it were possible. Going by water requires a journey to a barge suitable for transporting the spacecraft and all the associated expenses.
So, if the Shuttle is to be relocated, and Discovery is the selected space vehicle, it'll need to be taken apart and then put back together at its destination.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/02/dismantling_discovery/
Discovery has been on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum for more than a decade. Now, Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn want to bring it to Texas.
Ellyn Lapointe - October 2, 2025
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., has been home to Space Shuttle Discovery for more than a decade. Each year, millions of visitors get the chance to munch on freeze-dried “astronaut ice cream” and gaze up at the iconic spaceship that launched the Hubble Space Telescope and built the International Space Station.
Future visitors, however, may not be so lucky. According to NASA Watch, the White House budget office has asked the Smithsonian to begin chopping up Discovery in preparation to move it to Houston, Texas. NASA Watch called the development “unprecedented and alarming,” as NASA did not design Discovery to be disassembled, and doing so could result in irreparable damage, particularly to the shuttle’s frame, heat shield, and thermal insulation fabric.
https://gizmodo.com/texas-senators-want-to-chop-up-space-shuttle-discovery-2000666760
Can be shifted for a tenth of the price AND the wings don't have to come off – allegedly
Richard Speed - Wed 8 Oct 2025 13:27 UTC
Texas senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have hit back at a Smithsonian memo on relocating Space Shuttle Discovery, claiming the institute's cost estimates are “more than ten times higher” than quotes from private logistics firms.
According to a letter signed by Cornyn and Cruz, advice that the Shuttle's wings would need to be removed is “misinformation.”
The letter [PDF] is the latest episode in the saga of moving a flown and formerly crewed space vehicle – widely expected to be Space Shuttle Discovery (although NASA has yet to confirm this officially) – from the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington DC to Houston, Texas.
While the letter largely airs old grievances over the Smithsonian's selection as Discovery's final resting place and the political motivations Cornyn and Cruz allege were behind the scenes, it also provides a few clues regarding the Senators' plans.
$85 million is currently allocated in the spending bill to move and display a space vehicle. It is worth emphasizing that there is no mention of Space Shuttle Discovery. The vehicle must have flown in space and carried astronauts, which technically could also mean the Apollo 10 capsule at London's Science Museum.
Working on the basis that it is Discovery to be moved (Cornyn and Cruz certainly think so), the Smithsonian issued a warning last week that dismantling the vehicle for shipment represented the most cost-effective approach, but it would still cost between $120 million and $150 million before considering a facility in which to display the orbiter.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/08/senators_smithsonian_discovery/
Houston, we have a custody battle
Richard Speed - Thu 9 Oct 2025 18:00 UTC
Exclusive The war of words over the possible relocation of Space Shuttle Discovery has ratcheted up, with the office of Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) telling The Register that the orbiter belongs in Houston “whether the woke Smithsonian and its cronies in Congress like it or not.”
The kerfuffle started earlier this month when NASA and the Smithsonian estimated it would cost between $120 million and $150 million to move the antique spacecraft from its current location in Virginia to a new spot in Houston, Texas, and the relocation would require chopping the shuttle into pieces. The move was sparked by the 2025 budget reconcilation bill, which included a line item of $85 million to relocate at least one craft that has flown astronauts to Houston, the home of the Johnson Space Center, which oversees manned space flight for the agency. Cornyn and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz, another Republican, have been advocating to bring Discovery to Houston since April.
A spokesperson for Cornyn's office called bunk on the new estimate, telling The Register, “The fact is that all four shuttles have moved across the country without disassembly on more than one occasion.
“The Smithsonian estimates are purposefully overblown, and an outside vendor skilled at moving military equipment like tanks, military aircraft larger than a space shuttle, and the shuttle mock-up has estimated the total cost to be between $5-$8 million, which includes transportation from the Smithsonian to a barge and a barge to Space Center Houston.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/cornyn_smithsonian_shuttle_comments/
“This is the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard in nearly five years in the United States Senate.”
Robert Pearlman – Oct 23, 2025 4:30 AM
Have you heard the news that Texas’ senators want to chop up NASA’s retired space shuttle Discovery in order to move it from the Smithsonian to Houston? The lawmakers in question have and are now crying foul to the Department of Justice.
Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), together with Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), on Wednesday sent a letter to the DOJ urging the Smithsonian be investigated for allegedly violating the Anti-Lobbying Act. They claim that the institution—Discovery‘s home for the past 13 years—improperly used appropriated funds to influence Congress regarding the relocation of the winged orbiter.
“Public reporting suggests the Smithsonian Institution has taken affirmative steps to oppose the passage and implementation of the shuttle’s relocation, as part of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” wrote Cornyn and Cruz to Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate. “These steps include lobbying the staff of the Senate Appropriations and Rules Committees to express disapproval, coordinating with members of the press to generate public opposition to the law’s passage and disseminating misinformation about the cost and logistics of the move.”
The letter also alleged that the Smithsonian has called for the pending fiscal year 2026 Interior and Environment Appropriations Act and the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act to be amended to block funding for the shuttle’s transport and rehousing.
Cornyn & co ask DoJ to probe respected research institution for trying to 'influence' public
Richard Speed - Thu 23 Oct 2025 12:50 UTC
The saga of the Great Space Shuttle Relocation has taken another turn after US lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to look into alleged lobbying by the Smithsonian museum to prevent a possible transfer of Discovery to Houston, Texas.
A letter, sent by US Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Congressman Randy Weber (TX-14) has asked for an investigation into possible violations of the Anti-Lobbying Act by Smithsonian Institution staff in connection with attempts to derail the passage and implementation of the Space Shuttle provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
What's the Space Shuttle provision, you ask? The act talks about a “space vehicle” that has flown into space and carried astronauts. This doesn't necessarily mean Space Shuttle Discovery. However, both sides of the argument certainly believe it does.
Earlier this month, the war of words over the possible relocation of the vehicle intensified, with NASA and the Smithsonian estimating that a move to Houston would cost between $120 million and $150 million (excluding the cost of housing the orbiter) and require dismantling Discovery for transport. A spokesperson for Senator Cornyn's office later told The Register the total cost was more likely to be in the region of $5 million to $8 million.
Yesterday, the lawmakers said: “the Institution has circulated cost estimates that exceed quotes from experienced private-sector logistics firms by more than tenfold and has falsely claimed the shuttle's wings would need to be removed for transport, a claim not supported by industry experts.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/23/discovery_doj_lobbying_letter_cornyn/
Request For Ideas: How would you move a retired orbiter across the US?
Richard Speed - Fri 24 Oct 2025 09:29 UTC
The White House's Office of Management and Budget is grappling with how to transport Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Museum in Virginia to Space Center Houston. How would you do it?
Certain individuals have held a grudge for years over the omission of Houston, Texas, when the remaining Space Shuttles were handed out at the end of the program. Los Angeles got one, Florida got one, but Houston, where the missions were managed, was left off the list.
The grumbling has continued for more than a decade, and US president Donald Trump's recent spending bill, which is still being argued over, included $85 million to relocate a space vehicle that has flown a crew. This was widely interpreted as an order to move Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Space Center Houston in Texas.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/how_do_you_solve_discovery_route/
The Lunar Trailblazer will leverage gravity as it prepares to get snagged by the Moon for orbit.
Isaac Schultz - February 17, 2025
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer is officially in Florida and integrated with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in anticipation of its launch into space later this month.
The petite satellite is set to launch no earlier than February 26 from Kennedy Space Center, with the ultimate objective of getting into lunar orbit and taking a full assessment of the water content on our planet’s rocky satellite. Water molecules exist on the Moon’s sunlit surface, but the water is lost to space, raising the still-open question of how water on the lunar surface is replenished. The Lunar Trailblazer could provide answers.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory described the complicated maneuver that will get the Trailblazer in a position to reach lunar orbit in a release published this week.
Lunar Trailblazer will separate from its rocket approximately 48 minutes after launch, the release stated, and head towards the Moon for a minimum two-year mission.
It's increasingly unlikely that Lunar Trailblazer will deliver quality science.
Eric Berger – Mar 5, 2025 6:57 AM
Since the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft launched in late February as a rideshare spacecraft along with a Falcon 9 launch, NASA has been providing a series of increasingly worrisome updates about the health of the small orbiter. Trailblazer appears to be spinning and out of contact with engineers back on Earth.
In an update published on Tuesday evening, the space agency acknowledged that a mission operations team at the California Institute of Technology is continuing its efforts to reestablish contact with the 200-kg spacecraft intended to orbit the Moon.
“Based on telemetry before the loss of signal last week and ground-based radar data collected March 2, the team believes the spacecraft is spinning slowly in a low-power state,” the space agency said. “They will continue to monitor for signals should the spacecraft orientation change to where the solar panels receive more sunlight, increasing their output to support higher-power operations and communication.”
While Lunar Trailblazer's mission is no longer possible, the space agency is assessing other options for the spacecraft.
Passant Rabie - March 13, 2025
NASA is not one to let a good spacecraft go to waste. For nearly two weeks, the space agency has been trying to reestablish communications with a recently launched satellite that was originally headed toward the Moon.
Lunar Trailblazer launched on February 26 on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the aim of entering lunar orbit and gathering data on the state of water on the Moon. Despite successfully deploying from the rocket, the spacecraft began experiencing trouble with its power system shortly after reaching space. The next day, communication with Trailblazer was lost. Since then, NASA has been trying to communicate with its spacecraft. Although Lunar Trailblazer will not be able to carry out its original mission, the space agency is working to find alternative options for the spacecraft.
“Based on telemetry before the loss of signal last week and ground-based radar data collected March 2, the team believes the spacecraft is spinning slowly in a low-power state,” NASA wrote in an update on March 4. “They will continue to monitor for signals should the spacecraft orientation change to where the solar panels receive more sunlight, increasing their output to support higher-power operations and communication.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-is-still-trying-to-squeeze-some-life-from-doomed-lunar-orbiter-2000575805
Stricken spacecraft gives scientists the silent treatment
Richard Speed - Tue 5 Aug 2025 13:30 UTC
NASA has called it quits on attempts to contact its Lunar Trailblazer probe, notching up a failure in its low-cost, high-risk science program.
The probe, designed to map lunar water, launched on February 26, hitching a ride with the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander. All went well at first. The spacecraft separated from the rocket approximately 48 minutes after launch and established communications.
However, by the next day, contact was lost. It appeared the solar arrays were not properly oriented toward the Sun, and the probe's batteries had been depleted. The spacecraft was tracked from Earth, and observations indicated it was in a slow spin as it drifted off into deep space.
Andrew Klesh, Lunar Trailblazer's project systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said: “As Lunar Trailblazer drifted far beyond the Moon, our models showed that the solar panels might receive more sunlight, perhaps charging the spacecraft's batteries to a point it could turn on its radio.”
NASA gave the stricken probe a few extra weeks in July to respond, but as the month drew to a close, so too did NASA's efforts to recover the spacecraft. Even if there had been sufficient power to turn on the radio, the signal would have been too weak for controllers to receive telemetry and issue commands.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/05/lunar_trailblazer_dead/
Posted by msmash on Friday January 31, 2020 11:25AM
Last Saturday, Voyager 2's software shut down all five of the scientific instruments onboard because the spacecraft was consuming way too much power. Engineers at NASA don't know what triggered this energy spike and are currently trying to get the interstellar probe, which was launched in 1977, back to normal operations. Its primary mission was supposed to last five years. In 2018, it officially left the solar system. In order to keep the spacecraft running properly 42 years later, NASA has had to carefully manage power consumption for the instruments and the probe's heaters. From a report:
About 11.5 billion miles away, Voyager 2 was supposed to make a scheduled 360-degree rotation that would help calibrate its magnetometer (used to measure magnetic fields). The spacecraft delayed this move for still unknown reasons, leaving two other internal systems running at high power. The onboard software decided to offset this power deficit by shutting down the five scientific instruments still working. NASA engineers shut down one of the power-hungry systems and turned the science instruments back on. But the spacecraft is still not cleared for normal operations and is not collecting any new data for now. […] It takes 17 hours for data from Earth to get to Voyager 2, and vice versa. This lag means it will take several days to solve the spacecraft's woes. As it is, the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which powers the spacecraft, is only expected to last another five years before the plutonium-238 can no longer provide enough heat to power the probe's instruments, so Voyager 2 is on its last hurrah anyway.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday February 09, 2020 10:34AM
Iwastheone quotes Inverse:
In an incredible feat of remote engineering, NASA has fixed one of the most intrepid explorers in human history. Voyager 2, currently some 11.5 billion miles from Earth, is back online and resuming its mission to collect scientific data on the solar system and the interstellar space beyond.
On Wednesday, February 5 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, NASA's Voyager Twitter account gave out the good news: Voyager 2 is not only stable, but is back at its critical science mission.
“My twin is back to taking science data, and the team at (twitter) NASAJPL is evaluating the health of the instruments after their brief shutoff,” the account tweeted… In a statement, NASA confirmed that Voyager 2 is back in business. “Mission operators report that Voyager 2 continues to be stable and that communications between the Earth and the spacecraft are good….”
The fix is no mean feat: It takes 17 hours one-way to communicate with Voyager 2 from Earth, which is the furthest away manmade object in space. That means a single information relay takes 34 hours.
MICHELLE STARR - 19 OCTOBER 2020
In November 2018, after an epic, 41-year voyage, Voyager 2 finally crossed the boundary that marked the limit of the Sun's influence and entered interstellar space. But the little probe's mission isn't done yet - it's now sending home information about the space beyond the Solar System.
The effort required an upgraded dish in Australia.
Jon Fingas - November 3, 2020
NASA just made contact with Voyager 2 for the first time since March thanks to a key technology upgrade. The agency has revealed that it sent commands to the probe on October 29th using the recently upgraded Deep Space Station 43 dish in Canberra, Australia. The instructions were part of a test for new hardware, including a radio transmitter that hadn’t been replaced in 47 years — before Voyager 2 even launched.
The mission team received status updates and scientific data from Voyager in the intervening months, but couldn’t reach out.
DSS43 is part of a larger Deep Space Network that ensures all spacecraft beyond the Moon can get in touch as long as there’s a line of sight to Earth. This dish is the only one that can communicate with Voyager 2, however. The craft is so far away (11.6 billion miles) that Northern Hemisphere antennas can’t get in touch, and DSS43 is the only Southern Hemisphere dish powerful enough to send commands.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-contacts-voyager-2-via-deep-space-station-dish-154502422.html
George Dvorsky - 2 December 2020 10:10AM
NASA’s Voyager spacecraft may be billions of miles away and over 40 years old, but they’re still making significant discoveries, as new research reveals.
A paper published today in the Astronomical Journal describes an entirely new form of electron burst, a discovery made possible by the intrepid Voyager probes. These bursts are happening in the interstellar medium, a region of space in which the density of matter is achingly thin. As the new paper points out, something funky is happening to cosmic ray electrons that are making their way through this remote area: They’re being reflected and boosted to extreme speeds by advancing shock waves produced by the Sun.
https://gizmodo.com/voyager-probes-spot-previously-unknown-phenomenon-in-de-1845793983
They're still useful decades later.
Jon Fingas - December 5, 2020
The Voyager probes are still contributing to science over 40 years later and billions of miles from home. Researchers have detected a new form of cosmic ray electron burst using instruments aboard Voyager 1 and 2. Coronal mass ejections from the Sun created shockwaves that first manifested as near-light-speed electron waves, followed by plasma waves and then the shockwaves themselves.
The electrons appear to have been propelled after reflecting off a strong magnetic field at the edge of the shockwave, with the wave motion and interstellar magnetic field lines respectively accelerating and guiding the electrons. The concept isn’t new (it happens with solar winds), but scientists haven’t seen interstellar shockwaves in a new medium like this.
https://www.engadget.com/voyager-1-2-detect-cosmic-ray-elecron-burst-221731623.html
Resets clock to avoid going into safe mode
Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor - Mon 15 Feb 2021 / 00:58 UTC
A signal from venerable space probe Voyager 2 reached Earth today, acknowledging that the spacecraft has received its first command since March 2020 and had reset internal clocks as instructed.
Voyager 2 has sent data home since that date, but the ability to send commands to the probe was temporarily offline due to a refresh of DSS 43, the antenna outside Canberra that – thanks to its Southern Hemisphere location, size, and power – is the only facility in the world that can reach the spacecraft.
DSS 43 is 49 years old and, before the refresh, many of its major components were more than four decades old. Maintenance requirements were leading to increased downtime so a decision to upgrade the facility was taken.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/15/voyager_2_executes_commands_again/
The discovery of persistent plasma waves by Voyager 1 opens a new avenue to study structure in the nearby interstellar medium from sub-AU to tens of AU scales.
Stella Ocker, Ph.D. Candidate, Cornell University - May 10, 2021
Almost 11 years ago, Voyager 1 crossed an unprecedented boundary: it became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space. I was just a high-school student at the time, oblivious to the milestone and unaware that the following decade would see me join the Voyager Interstellar Mission as a graduate student Guest Investigator. While I was busy learning the undergraduate physics curriculum, Voyager 1 was treading through the interstellar medium and revealing in stark detail how interstellar plasma and the solar wind collide and interact across a boundary layer called the heliopause, where they engage in a massive pressure-balancing act that shields our heliosphere from the great beyond.
https://astronomycommunity.nature.com/posts/voyager-1-hears-the-hush-of-interstellar-plasma
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday May 11, 2021 01:02AM
Obipale shares a report from Phys.Org:
Voyager 1 – one of two sibling NASA spacecraft launched 44 years ago and now the most distant human-made object in space – still works and zooms toward infinity. The craft has long since zipped past the edge of the solar system through the heliopause – the solar system's border with interstellar space – into the interstellar medium. Now, its instruments have detected the constant drone of interstellar gas (plasma waves), according to Cornell University-led research published in Nature Astronomy.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/05/11/081246/voyager-1-detects-plasma-hum
Gazing into the void for at least a few more years yet
Lindsay Clark - Tue 11 May 2021 / 10:03 UTC
Nearly nine years after leaving the solar system, and decades beyond its original mission, Voyager 1 is still gathering valuable data, providing plasma readings to continuously sample the density of the interstellar medium.
Scientists at Cornell University have used data from the spacecraft, first launched in 1977, to uncover a weak signal that details interstellar plasma density over about 10 au (astronomical unit, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun) with an average sampling distance of 0.03 au, according to a paper in Nature Astronomy.
Voyager 1, whose original mission was supposed to finish in 1980, crossed the heliopause in 2012, making it the first human-made object to do so. This gave researchers an opportunity to directly measure activity outside the solar system, or at least as much as the spacecraft's ageing arsenal of instruments would allow.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/11/voyager_1_interstellar_medium/
May 18, 2022 - JPL (NASA)
While the spacecraft continues to return science data and otherwise operate as normal, the mission team is searching for the source of a system data issue.
The engineering team with NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is trying to solve a mystery: The interstellar explorer is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, along with gathering and returning science data. But readouts from the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don’t reflect what’s actually happening onboard.
The AACS controls the 45-year-old spacecraft’s orientation. Among other tasks, it keeps Voyager 1’s high-gain antenna pointed precisely at Earth, enabling it to send data home. All signs suggest the AACS is still working, but the telemetry data it’s returning is invalid. For instance, the data may appear to be randomly generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in.
The issue hasn’t triggered any onboard fault protection systems, which are designed to put the spacecraft into “safe mode” – a state where only essential operations are carried out, giving engineers time to diagnose an issue. Voyager 1’s signal hasn’t weakened, either, which suggests the high-gain antenna remains in its prescribed orientation with Earth.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/engineers-investigating-nasas-voyager-1-telemetry-data
Engineers debugging at 160 bits per second, with 41 hours latency
Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor - Thu 19 May 2022 06:32 UTC
NASA engineers are investigating anomalous telemetry data produced by venerable space probe Voyager 1.
A Wednesday announcment states that the probe is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, and still doing science and phoning home with data.
But Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) – kit that helps point the probe’s antenna towards Earth - does not currently “reflect what’s actually happening onboard.”
NASA says AACS data “may appear to be randomly generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in.”
The good news is that the craft is still doing fine. It’s not needed to enter safe mode and its signal is still strong, so it appears the main antenna is properly aligned even if system data suggests otherwise.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/19/voyager_1_anomalous_telemetry_data/
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday May 19, 2022 03:00AM
The engineering team with NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is trying to solve a mystery: The interstellar explorer is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, along with gathering and returning science data. But readouts from the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don't reflect what's actually happening onboard. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports:
The AACS controls the 45-year-old spacecraft's orientation. Among other tasks, it keeps Voyager 1's high-gain antenna pointed precisely at Earth, enabling it to send data home. All signs suggest the AACS is still working, but the telemetry data it's returning is invalid. For instance, the data may appear to be randomly generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in. The issue hasn't triggered any onboard fault protection systems, which are designed to put the spacecraft into “safe mode” – a state where only essential operations are carried out, giving engineers time to diagnose an issue. Voyager 1's signal hasn't weakened, either, which suggests the high-gain antenna remains in its prescribed orientation with Earth.
Voyager launched in 1977, and now humankind’s most distant object is transmitting data that doesn’t make sense.
Isaac Schultz - 19 May 2022 3:35PM
Voyager 1 is nearly 14.5 billion miles from Earth and continues to hurtle out of the solar system at about 38,000 miles per hour. But NASA engineers working on the 44-year-old spacecraft have recently been vexed by the probe’s articulation and control system, which is generating data that appears to be completely random.
“A mystery like this is sort of par for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission,” said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager 1 and 2 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in a NASA release.
https://gizmodo.com/voyager-1-spacecraft-nasa-weird-data-1848949154
The pioneering probes are still running after nearly 45 years in space, but they will soon lose some of their instruments
Tim Folger - July 1, 2022
If the stars hadn't aligned, two of the most remarkable spacecraft ever launched never would have gotten off the ground. In this case, the stars were actually planets—the four largest in the solar system. Some 60 years ago they were slowly wheeling into an array that had last occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson in the early years of the 19th century. For a while the rare planetary set piece unfolded largely unnoticed. The first person to call attention to it was an aeronautics doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology named Gary Flandro.
It was 1965, and the era of space exploration was barely underway—the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, only eight years earlier. Flandro, who was working part-time at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., had been tasked with finding the most efficient way to send a space probe to Jupiter or perhaps even out to Saturn, Uranus or Neptune. Using a favorite precision tool of 20th-century engineers—a pencil—he charted the orbital paths of those giant planets and discovered something intriguing: in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all four would be strung like pearls on a celestial necklace in a long arc with Earth.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/record-breaking-voyager-spacecraft-begin-to-power-down/
The space probe left Earth in 1977, and it's still running—with some hiccups.
Isaac Schultz - 30 August 2022 2:05PM
Earlier this year, the Voyager 1 spacecraft—over 14 billion miles from Earth—started sending NASA some wacky data. Now, engineers with the space agency have identified and solved the issue, and no, it wasn’t aliens.
The strange data was coming from Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system, which is responsible for maintaining the spacecraft’s orientation as it hurtles through interstellar space at about 38,000 miles per hour.
https://gizmodo.com/voyager-1-telemetry-problem-fixed-1849474513
Deeply impressive that NASA engineers fixed telemetry transmit glitch on 1970s probe in the first place
Jude Karabus - Wed 31 Aug 2022 14:15 UTC
NASA knows the “how” but not the why of a telemetry data routing snafu that caused “garbled” information about the 45-year-old Voyager 1 probe's position to be sent to mission controllers on the ground.
The space agency's engineers announced a fix of the issue last night, saying they'd discovered the data was being routed through the wrong place altogether – an onboard computer the team said was “known to have stopped working years ago,” which then “corrupted the information.”
Calling the fix from billion of miles away the “ultimate telesurgery,” Voyager propulsion engineer Todd Barber said the team were “delighted” after being left “flummoxed” over the nonsensical attitude control telemetry. “We couldn't get any health and safety info about the pointing of the spacecraft or any of the thruster operation,” he noted.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/voyager_1_telemetry_data_corrupted/
The probe was apparently sending back data through a broken onboard computer.
Mariella Moon - September 1, 2022 8:05 AM
ack in May, NASA reported that the Voyager 1 space probe was sending back jumbled or inaccurate telemetry data. The probe itself seemed to be in good shape, with a signal that's still strong enough to beam back information, and nothing was triggering its fault protection systems that would put it in “safe mode.” According to NASA, the Voyager team has not only figured the problem out since then — it has also solved the issue.
Turns out we're getting jumbled data here on Earth, because the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) has been sending back information through an onboard computer that had stopped working years ago. The computer was corrupting the data before it even went out. Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd said that when her team suspected that this was the issue, they implemented a low-risk fix: They commanded the AACS to send its data through the probe's working computer again.
https://www.engadget.com/nasa-fixed-glitch-voyager-1-120545004.html
Thank you, Ed Stone – the only person to ever hold the job
Simon Sharwood - Wed 26 Oct 2022 05:56 UTC
The Voyager mission's project scientist has retired after 50 years in the job.
Ed Stone signed on for the gig when the two Voyager spacecraft were still on the drawing board in 1972.
He's had the job ever since. As NASA explained, Stone rose to become director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and, as that facility manages the Voyagers, he kept the gig managing the twin probes. He later retired from JPL in 2001 but continued to serve as the Voyager mission's project scientist.
“It has been an honor and a joy to serve as the Voyager project scientist for 50 years,” Stone said, in NASA's post farewelling him from the job. “The spacecraft have succeeded beyond expectation, and I have cherished the opportunity to work with so many talented and dedicated people on this mission. It has been a remarkable journey, and I'm thankful to everyone around the world who has followed Voyager and joined us on this adventure.”
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/26/ed_stone_voyager_boss_retires/
The interstellar traveler is gradually losing power, but a clever tweak means it can continue running all of its scientific instruments.
George Dvorsky - 26 April 2023
At 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from Earth, Voyager 2 is so far that it takes more than 22 hours for NASA’s signals to reach the probe. With its power gradually diminishing, mission planners thought they might have to shut down one of its five scientific instruments next year, but a newly implemented plan has resulted in a welcomed delay.
A recent adjustment, in which the probe redirects a tiny amount of power meant for an onboard safety system, means all five scientific instruments aboard Voyager 2 can stay active until 2026, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab press release. There’s a modicum of risk involved, as the affected system protects Voyager 2 from voltage irregularities, but NASA says the probe can now keep its science instruments turned on for a while longer.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-power-hack-extends-voyager-2-mission-science-1850378890
The interstellar traveler is gradually losing power, but a clever tweak means it can continue running all of its scientific instruments.
George Dvorsky - Updated 26 April 2023 8:55PM
At 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from Earth, Voyager 2 is so far that it takes more than 22 hours for NASA’s signals to reach the probe. With its power gradually diminishing, mission planners thought they might have to shut down one of its five scientific instruments next year, but a newly implemented plan has resulted in a welcomed delay.
A recent adjustment, in which the probe redirects a tiny amount of power meant for an onboard safety system, means all five scientific instruments aboard Voyager 2 can stay active until 2026, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab press release. There’s a modicum of risk involved, as the affected system protects Voyager 2 from voltage irregularities, but NASA says the probe can now keep its science instruments turned on for a while longer.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-power-hack-extends-voyager-2-mission-science-1850378890
By redirecting energy from probe's voltage regulator, NASA buys itself another three years
Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 27 Apr 2023 17:40 UTC
NASA boffins seeking a way to postpone instrument shutdowns on the venerable Voyager spacecrafts have worked out a solution they say will get another three years of power to Voyager 2's five remaining scientific tools.
The trick involves repurposing Voyager 2's onboard voltage regulator, NASA said. That device is designed to trigger a backup circuit in the event electrical flow to Voyager's scientific instruments changes suddenly, which could damage them.
The regulator draws a small amount of power from Voyager's radioisotope thermoelectric generators and stores it for emergencies, but NASA was able to modify it from 12 billion miles away to shunt that power to the remaining scientific instruments, delaying the need to turn one off until 2026. Without the trick, NASA said an instrument would have had to go offline sometime this year.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/27/nasa_tweaks_voyager_2s_power/
The Voyagers were launched nearly half a century ago.
Eric Berger - 7/28/2023, 9:24 AM
About a week ago, operators of the Voyager 2 spacecraft sent a series of commands that inadvertently caused the distant probe to point its antenna slightly away from Earth. As a result, NASA has lost contact with the spacecraft, which is nearly half a century old and presently 19.9 billion km away from the planet.
For the time being, NASA and the mission's scientists aren't panicking. In an update posted Friday, the space agency said Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation several times a year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth. It is scheduled to do so again on October 15, which should allow communication to resume. In the meantime, NASA said it does not anticipate the spacecraft veering off course.
Launched separately in 1977 on two different rockets, the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft have been true trailblazers for NASA and the world. Never before had a spacecraft visited four worlds in a single, grand tour as the two Voyager probes did in the 1970s and 1980s with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
The spacecraft’s antenna is—alarmingly—no longer pointing towards Earth, in what NASA hopes is a temporary problem.
George Dvorsky - 28 July 2023 1:40PM
A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2’s antenna orientation, preventing the iconic spacecraft from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth, NASA announced earlier today. Mission controllers transmitted the commands to Voyager 2 on July 21.
Voyager 2, one of two twin probes launched in the 1970s to explore planets in the outer solar system, is located some 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth and is continually moving deeper into interstellar space. The glitch has disrupted the probe’s ability to communicate with ground antennas operated by the Deep Space Network (DSN), and it’s unable to receive commands from the mission team on Earth, NASA explained.
The communications pause is expected to be just that—a pause. Voyager 2 is “programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth,” the space agency says. This procedure should—fingers crossed—re-establish the lost connection and allow routine communications to resume. The next reset is scheduled for October 15, which is 79 days from now. Undoubtedly, this will be 79 agonizing days for NASA and the Voyager team.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-voyager-2-unplanned-communications-pause-1850686910
Thankfully the probe regularly phones home to fix this sort of mess
Laura Dobberstein - Mon 31 Jul 2023 05:59 UTC
NASA revealed on Friday that its venerable Voyager 2 probe is currently incommunicado, because the space agency pointed its antenna in the wrong direction.
By the time the news was released, the antenna on the spacecraft had been pointing two degrees away from the Earth for over a week.
This left it without the ability to receive commands or transmit data to antennae operated by the Deep Space Network (DSN).
NASA reckons the situation is temporary and will not end the probe's nearly 46-year stint in space as it is programmed to recalibrate its position a few times a year. October 15 is the next scheduled reset.
The space org added that Voyager 2's trajectory is expected to remain unchanged. The probe is currently around 32 billion kilometers from Earth, and gets 15km further away every second. The glitch does not impact Voyager 1, which is currently almost 24 billion clicks away from Earth and hurtling along at 17km/sec while staying in touch with home.
Voyager 2's electrical systems were tweaked earlier this year, in the hope of extending its working life.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/31/nasa_mistakenly_disconnects_voyager_2/
Not all heroes wear capes – some are 50-year-old antennas
Laura Dobberstein - Wed 2 Aug 2023 07:55 UTC
A signal from Voyager 2 has been detected by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) over a week after communications with the distant probe were lost, the US agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Tuesday.
The disco-era spacecraft was detected by Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex's 70-metre dish, Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43), after a long-shot search.
The five-storey tall dish is the sole facility capable of reaching Voyager 2. It takes over 18 hours for a signal to travel from the probe to the dish, covering a distance of over 19 billion kilometres.
“The Deep Space Network has picked up a carrier signal from [Voyager 2] during its regular scan of the sky. A bit like hearing the spacecraft's 'heartbeat,' it confirms the spacecraft is still broadcasting, which engineers expected,” explained JPL.
Communications to VGER2 were severed when a series of planned commands to the probe inadvertently pointed its antenna's aim two degrees away from Earth on July 21. NASA set expectations that the situation would likely resolve on October 15, when the probe is scheduled to perform a regular and preplanned position recalibration.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/02/voyager_2_signal_detected/
The legendary probe went silent two weeks ago as the result of NASA transmitting a potentially faulty command.
George Dvorsky - 1 August 2023
NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, currently 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, has phoned home, essentially telling mission controllers that the recent rumors of its impending death have been greatly exaggerated. The ongoing communications problem, however, remains unresolved.
In a mission update tweeted earlier today, JPL announced that the Deep Space Network (DSN) snagged a carrier signal from Voyager 2, confirming that the 46-year-old spacecraft is in good health. NASA’s DSN consists of a worldwide network of large antennas and communication facilities that support interplanetary spacecraft, among other missions. Receipt of this “heartbeat” signal, as it’s also known, is a massive relief and a positive sign, but Voyager 2 is not yet out of the interstellar woods.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-detects-heartbeat-message-from-voyager-2-1850696125
Posted by msmash on Tuesday August 01, 2023 09:04AM
Nasa engineers hope to re-establish contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft after sending a faulty command that severed communications with the far-flung probe. From a report:
The spacecraft is one of a pair that launched in 1977 to capture images of Jupiter and Saturn, but continued on a journey into interstellar space to become the farthest human-made objects from Earth. The space agency lost contact with Voyager 2, which is now more than 12bn miles away, when mission staff accidentally beamed the wrong command to the distant spacecraft more than a week ago.
After sending the command, NASA had to wait 37 hours for a response.
Eric Berger - 8/4/2023, 2:19 PM
NASA lost contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft—the second-most distant object ever built by humans and flung into space—nearly two weeks ago due to an errant command sent to the probe. This caused Voyager to point its antenna slightly away from Earth.
At the time, the space agency said it wasn't panicking. The mission's scientists believed they had several options to restore communications with the half-century-old probe. And so they did.
In an update posted Friday, NASA said all is now well once again with Voyager 2. NASA's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, was able to send a “shout” command to Voyager instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself into a proper position to facilitate communication with Earth.
It took 18.5 hours for the signal to reach the spacecraft, which is now 19.9 billion kilometers away from Earth. Finally, after a total of 37 hours, a signal returned from the probe. Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, at 12:29 am ET, Voyager 2 started streaming back science and telemetry data.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/voyager-2-phones-home-and-says-everything-is-cool/
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 05, 2023 08:34AM
“NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2,” according to a mission update posted Friday:
The agency's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar “shout” more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.
NASA's Voyager 2 probe, launched over four decades ago, collected data in 1978 that suggests the possibility of jets existing above other planets.
Isaac Schultz - 10 January 2024
There are jets in Jupiter’s magnetosheath, according to Voyager 2 mission data from 1979. The 45-year-old information is now revealing the dynamics of the plasma stream.
You may remember Voyager 2. It launched in August 1977 and is now 12.66 billion miles from Earth, hurtling out into interstellar space. It is the second-most-distant object humans have sent into space, after Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles away.
In 1979, Voyager 2 made a flyby of Jupiter, passing through the subsolar magnetosheath—the layer of the planet’s magnetosphere that is situated under the Sun. The spacecraft collected data during the transit which a team of scientists has now reviewed, revealing at least three jets above the gas giant. The team’s research was published this week in Nature Communications.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-voyager-plasma-jets-jupiter-magnetosphere-1851160380
Dwindling power and problematic communications, but the spacecraft just keeps on going
Richard Speed - Sat 9 Nov 2024 09:30 UTC
“We're definitely going to make the 50th anniversary,” says Professor Garry Hunt, one of the scientists responsible for NASA's Voyager mission, as Voyager 1 recovers from an unexpected pause in communications.
Launched when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, the two Voyager spacecraft have endured almost half a century of spaceflight and, according to Hunt, should still be in contact with Earth in 2027, 50 years after leaving the planet.
A spokesperson for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory told The Register that the agency hopes there will be enough power from the onboard Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) to keep the antenna and at least one science instrument running until the early 2030s.
The power produced by the RTGs is dwindling, and the Voyager team has been forced to make difficult decisions to eke out what remains. The plasma science instrument was recently turned off on Voyager 2, leaving four instruments operating on the probes.
Things are, however, starting to stack up a little for the hardy and well loved spacecraft. The small Voyager team at JPL managed to come up with a way to restore operations earlier this year after Voyager 1 began transmitting nonsense back to Earth. In September, engineers had to perform a delicate balancing act with the remaining power to warm the thrusters.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/09/voyager_closes_in_on_a/
The two spacecraft were designed under low budgets, and the status of both is already in doubt.
Adam Kovac - February 28, 2025
If you need yet another reminder that space travel is ridiculously complicated, two freshly launched probes have already run into trouble.
On February 26, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center, with a payload that included NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer and Astroforge’s Odin. By February 28, both had experienced communications issues with their handlers back on Earth.
In a statement, NASA said that, while Lunar Trailblazer had deployed from the rocket after reaching space without incident, mission control soon began receiving troubling data about the spacecraft’s power systems. At 7:30 a.m. ET on February 27, communication with Trailblazer was lost, only to be regained several hours later.
“The team now is working with NASA ground stations to reestablish telemetry and commanding to better assess the power system issues and develop potential solutions,” said NASA.
Lunar Trailblazer, designed to orbit the Moon, was built to search for clues about the location and state of its water. As part of the agency’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, NASA has called the Lunar Trailblazer “high-risk, low-cost.” Although SIMPLEx missions are supposed to be capped at $55 million, there have been cost overruns tied to the Trailblazer. According to The New York Times, the cost of building and operating it has reached $94 million.
Solar panels are next to useless in the outer solar system, so NASA’s Voyager probes rely on nuclear batteries—technology first developed in the 1960s—to keep running billions of miles from Earth.
Benjamin Roulston, The Conversation - March 19, 2025
Powering spacecraft with solar energy may not seem like a challenge, given how intense the Sun’s light can feel on Earth. Spacecraft near the Earth use large solar panels to harness the Sun for the electricity needed to run their communications systems and science instruments.
However, the farther into space you go, the weaker the Sun’s light becomes and the less useful it is for powering systems with solar panels. Even in the inner solar system, spacecraft such as lunar or Mars rovers need alternative power sources.
As an astrophysicist and professor of physics, I teach a senior-level aerospace engineering course on the space environment. One of the key lessons I emphasize to my students is just how unforgiving space can be. In this extreme environment where spacecraft must withstand intense solar flares, radiation and temperature swings from hundreds of degrees below zero to hundreds of degrees above zero, engineers have developed innovative solutions to power some of the most remote and isolated space missions.
So how do engineers power missions in the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond? The solution is technology developed in the 1960s based on scientific principles discovered two centuries ago: radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs.
https://gizmodo.com/the-1960s-tech-keeping-nasas-voyager-probes-alive-for-nearly-50-years-2000578052
Probes face 26% funding cut as NASA grapples with shutdown chaos
Richard Speed - Fri 10 Oct 2025 12:57 UTC
NASA's Voyager project could be facing a 26 percent budget cut while the plug is pulled on other programs, according to insiders familiar with the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The mission currently costs approximately $5 million per year, although an exact figure is difficult to ascertain, not least because the US space agency has been affected by the federal shutdown.
One source that asked to remain anonymous told The Register: “We're a bit annoyed that Voyager has lost 26 percent of its budget… It's so bloody small… The whole thing is absolutely outrageous.”
The probes, launched almost 50 years ago on a grand tour of the solar system, are on a trajectory that will take them far beyond the Sun's influence. Both are still collecting scientific data and have faced technical challenges in recent years. Voyager 1 began spouting gibberish due to faulty hardware, which engineers on Earth bypassed. And Voyager 2 temporarily gave Earth the silent treatment after its antenna was accidentally pointed in the wrong direction.
The budget has yet to be finalized, and disputes over funding for services into October and beyond have led to a US government shutdown.
The shutdown and budget worries are affecting other NASA missions. Juno, which was launched in 2011 to study Jupiter, reached the end of a expedition extension on September 30. However, even though the spacecraft remains in relatively good health despite the nine years it has spent in the harsh environment around Jupiter, its future is now in doubt.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/nasa_voyagers_budget/
The twin probes should operate for about a year before the team is forced to shut off yet more instruments.
Passant Rabie - March 6, 2025
The Voyager spacecraft have been cruising through interstellar space for more than 47 years, collecting precious data on the vast cosmos. All that traveling has taken a toll on the farthest human-made objects, and the spacecraft’s days are numbered. NASA engineers are resorting to shutting off science instruments on both Voyager probes to keep the two iconic missions alive.
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory turned off Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem experiment on February 25, and will shut off the low-energy charged particle instrument aboard Voyager 2 on March 24, NASA announced Wednesday. If it weren’t for these energy-conserving measures, the twin probes may have had a few more months left before running out of power. Both spacecraft now have enough power to operate for another year or so before engineers are forced to turn off two more instruments. It’s a grim reality for the popular interstellar travelers, who have suffered from a fair share of glitches in the past couple of years.
The twin Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.
Sarah Fielding - Updated Thu, Mar 6, 2025, 7:13 AM PST
Nearly 50 years after they were first launched, Voyager 1 and 2 are still traveling around interstellar space — though they've faced some setbacks over the years. Now, NASA has announced that the twin Voyager spacecraft are losing some of their features in a bid to extend their lifespans in the face of a diminishing power supply.
On February 25, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) turned off Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem experiment and on March 25, it will shut down Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument.
“The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at the JPL. “But electrical power is running low. If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.”
The twin probes should operate for about a year before the team is forced to shut off yet more instruments.
Passant Rabie - March 6, 2025
The Voyager spacecraft have been cruising through interstellar space for more than 47 years, collecting precious data on the vast cosmos. All that traveling has taken a toll on the farthest human-made objects, and the spacecraft’s days are numbered. NASA engineers are resorting to shutting off science instruments on both Voyager probes to keep the two iconic missions alive.
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory turned off Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem experiment on February 25, and will shut off the low-energy charged particle instrument aboard Voyager 2 on March 24, NASA announced Wednesday. If it weren’t for these energy-conserving measures, the twin probes may have had a few more months left before running out of power. Both spacecraft now have enough power to operate for another year or so before engineers are forced to turn off two more instruments. It’s a grim reality for the popular interstellar travelers, who have suffered from a fair share of glitches in the past couple of years.
“The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, said in a statement. “But electrical power is running low. If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.”
Veteran probes close in on the half century
Richard Speed - Thu 6 Mar 2025 13:42 UTC
More science instruments are being shut down on the Voyager probes as engineers attempt to eke out the power and keep them running for years to come.
It should not come as a surprise that NASA is turning off instruments. The shutdowns were already planned to take place as the venerable probes enter the final years of their operational life. The team hopes that if it takes action now, the robotic spacecraft could still be operating with at least one science instrument into the 2030s.
Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem – a suite of three telescopes designed to study cosmic rays, including protons from the galaxy and the Sun, by measuring their energy and flux – was shut down last week. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is due for deactivation later this month.
This means that it should be 2026 before another instrument must be turned off on both spacecraft. For Voyager 1, its low-energy charged particle instrument will need to be deactivated. In 2026, the cosmic ray subsystem aboard Voyager 2 will be turned off.
The Voyagers carry an identical set of 10 science instruments, which are being gradually shut down. Some were geared toward planetary flybys, and so are no longer needed.
Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), called the probes “deep space rockstars,” but noted that electrical power was running low. “If we don't turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.”
“It's kind of like losing a best friend.”
Passant Rabie - April 5, 2025
In 1977, two probes launched less than a month apart on a mission to the great beyond. The twin Voyager spacecraft were to travel where no other mission had gone before, exploring what lies outside the vast bubble that surrounds our solar system, beyond the influence of our host star.
Voyager 1 reached the beginning of interstellar space in 2012, while Voyager 2 reached the boundary in 2018, traveling beyond the protective bubble surrounding the solar system known as the heliosphere. The Voyager probes were the first spacecraft to cross into interstellar space and have been exploring the unfamiliar region for nearly 48 years. But all good things must come to an end, and the iconic mission is gradually losing steam as it approaches oblivion.
The Voyagers are powered by heat from decaying plutonium, which is converted into electricity. Each year, the aging spacecraft lose about 4 watts of power. In an effort to conserve power, the mission team has turned off any systems that were deemed unnecessary, including a few science instruments. Each Voyager spacecraft began with 10 instruments, but now have just three each. The two spacecraft now have enough power to operate for another year or so before engineers are forced to turn off two more instruments.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 06, 2025 08:34AM
“I started working on Voyager in 1977,” the Voyager mission's project scientist told Gizmodo Saturday in a new interview. “It was my first job out of college.”
35 years later, a Voyager probe became the first spacecraft to cross into interstellar space in 2012, with Voyager 2 following in 2018. But while each Voyager spacecraft carries 10 scientific instruments, all but three have now been turned off to conserve power, Gizmodo writes. “The two spacecraft now have enough power to operate for another year or so before engineers are forced to turn off two more instruments…” Voyager Mission Project Scientist Linda Spilker: The number of people that are working on and flying Voyager is a whole lot smaller than it was in the planetary days… The challenge was, can we reach the heliopause? We didn't know where it was, we had no idea how far away it was. We got to Neptune, and then we thought, “well, maybe it's just another 10 [astronomical units] or so, a little bit further, a little bit further.” And so every time we got a little bit further, the modelers would go back, scratch their heads and say, “ah, it could be a little bit more, a little bit farther away,” and so on and on that continued, until finally, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in 2012…
Oct. 20, 2023 - NASA / JPL
The efforts should help extend the lifetimes of the agency’s interstellar explorers.
Engineers for NASA’s Voyager mission are taking steps to help make sure both spacecraft, launched in 1977, continue to explore interstellar space for years to come.
One effort addresses fuel residue that seems to be accumulating inside narrow tubes in some of the thrusters on the spacecraft. The thrusters are used to keep each spacecraft’s antenna pointed at Earth. This type of buildup has been observed in a handful of other spacecraft.
The team is also uploading a software patch to prevent the recurrence of a glitch that arose on Voyager 1 last year. Engineers resolved the glitch, and the patch is intended to prevent the issue from occurring again in Voyager 1 or arising in its twin, Voyager 2.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-team-focuses-on-software-patch-thrusters
David Szondy - October 22, 2023
NASA Voyager mission engineers are preparing a software patch that will allow the thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 interstellar probes to continue operating for another five years, keeping the spacecraft in communications with Earth.
The Voyager spacecraft have been in service since their launch in 1977 and have exceeded their life expectancy many times over. They're a testament to the teams that designed them, but after almost half a century their very longevity is creating new problems that were never anticipated.
One of these is that the hydrazine-fueled thrusters used to keep the Voyagers aiming their high-gain antennas at Earth are showing their age. Though they still have enough propellant to last until 2037 thanks to careful conservation by Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, the thrusters themselves could do with a good cleaning.
The problem is that over the years each thruster firing has left residue in the system, which has been building up slowly but surely. If there's too much buildup, the fuel lines could clog and that would be it for the spacecraft.
https://newatlas.com/space/nasa-tweaks-voyager-software-protect-thrusters-against-gunge/
A pair of tweaks aim to prolong the 1970s-era probes’ journey through interstellar space.
George Dvorsky - 23 October 2023
NASA’s Voyager team has rolled out important measures in an attempt to further prolong the interstellar journey of the two Voyager spacecraft, which have been transmitting data from deep space since 1977.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still ticking after all these years, and NASA would very much like to keep it that way. In the latest attempt to prolong the 46-year-old mission, engineers implemented modifications to the thrusters and introduced a software patch, ensuring the Voyager spacecraft continue their unparalleled exploration of interstellar space.
The Voyager mission, comprising Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, was only supposed to last for four years, focusing on exploring Saturn and Jupiter, but NASA continually extended the missions over the years and decades. Voyager 2 was given the opportunity to visit Uranus and Neptune, making it the only spacecraft to visit these distant ice giants. Later, in the 1990s, the mission’s scope was broadened to allow both probes to venture beyond the heliosphere—a protective bubble generated by the Sun. Voyager 1 reached this outer boundary in 2012, followed by Voyager 2 in 2018.
https://gizmodo.com/interstellar-tune-up-nasa-s-voyager-spacecraft-get-cru-1850949786
The upgrade might not go well, so prioritized the probe doing better science
Simon Sharwood - Mon 23 Oct 2023 06:33 UTC
NASA patched its Voyager 2 spacecraft last week, to address a bug that last year saw its sibling generate corrupted telemetry data, but won't know if its fix worked – or overwrote critical code – until some time after October 28.
Both Voyagers were launched in 1977. Voyager 1 is now more than 22 billion kilometers (15 billion miles) from Earth, and almost 22 and a half light hours away. Voyager 2 is over 20 billion kilometers from home (12.5 billion miles) and more than eighteen hours and forty minutes away at the speed of light. The two probes have left our solar system and communication is therefore very slow – 160 bits per second to Voyager 1 as of May 2022.
NASA already figured out that the cause of the garbled data on Voyager 1 was the attitude articulation and control system (AACS) – a tool that controls the crafts' orientation, including keeping their antennae pointed precisely at Earth.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/23/nasa_voyager_upgrades/
Around a half-dozen full-timers and a few part-timers are keeping Voyager alive.
Stephen Clark - 10/23/2023, 5:15 PM
Forty-six years in deep space have taken their toll on NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft. Their antiquated computers sometimes do puzzling things, their thrusters are wearing out, and their fuel lines are becoming clogged. Around half of their science instruments no longer return data, and their power levels are declining.
Still, the lean team of engineers and scientists working on the Voyager program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are taking steps to eke out every bit of life from the only two spacecraft flying in interstellar space, the vast volume of dilute gas outside the influence of the Sun's solar wind.
“These are measures that we're trying to take to extend the life of the mission,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, in an interview with Ars.
Voyager's instruments are studying cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and the plasma environment in interstellar space. They're not taking pictures anymore. Both probes have traveled beyond the heliopause, where the flow of particles emanating from the Sun runs into the interstellar medium.
Joshua Hawkins - Oct 23rd, 2023 9:09PM EDT
Voyager 2 is over 12 billion miles from Earth, making its way through interstellar space. Along its almost 50-year journey, the probe has seen more of the universe than we ever will. Now, NASA has completed a critical software update for Voyager 2 that will help keep it running even longer.
The update, which took almost 18 hours to complete, was transmitted to help Voyager 2 avoid the same problem that its sibling, Voyager 1, experienced last year. Back in 2022, NASA reported issues with readings from Voyager 1’s AACS, which stands for attitude articular and control system. The telemetry data that NASA was getting didn’t make sense, and NASA was concerned it had lost the probe forever.
Thankfully, the issue doesn’t seem to have caused any lasting issues with Voyager 1, but NASA wants to avoid the same thing happening with Voyager 2, so it just sent out this huge software update. The patch is essentially an insurance policy that NASA hopes will project the probe for future interstellar space exploration.
https://bgr.com/science/nasa-just-sent-a-software-update-to-a-spacecraft-12-billion-miles-away/
The famous spacecraft started transmitting a repeated pattern of ones and zeroes, and engineers are scrambling to find a solution.
Passant Rabie - 13 December 2023
NASA’s iconic space probe is having trouble communicating with its home planet due to a computer glitch, forcing engineers to resort to decades-old manuals to come up with a way to fix the 46-year-old mission.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth. The spacecraft has been exploring the outer regions of the solar system, but it is recently unable to send back any science or engineering data due to an issue with one of its three onboard computers, NASA said on Tuesday.
The spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS) collects data from Voyager’s science instruments, as well as engineering data about the health of the spacecraft. That data is combined into a single package so it can be transmitted to Earth through one of the probe’s subsystems, the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), in binary code.
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-voyager-1-spacecraft-is-speaking-gibberish-1851096904
Ashley Strickland, CNN - Updated 5:41 PM EST, Wed December 13, 2023
CNN — NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a computer glitch that’s causing a bit of a communication breakdown between the 46-year-old probe and its mission team on Earth.
Engineers are currently trying to solve the issue as the aging spacecraft explores uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system.
Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, while its twin Voyager 2 has traveled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from our planet. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager probes are the two longest-operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long lifespans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/13/world/voyager-1-computer-issue-scn/index.html
Science and telemetry data hit by latest issue
Richard Speed - Thu 14 Dec 2023 16:04 UTC
NASA's veteran Voyager 1 spacecraft has stopped transmitting engineering and science data back to Earth.
The issue appears to be with the Flight Data System (FDS), which is not communicating correctly with one of the probe's subsystems - the Telemetry Modulation Unit (TMU).
Rather than useful data, the TMU is simply transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes as if it were “stuck,” according to NASA.
The FDS is responsible for collecting data from Voyager 1's science instruments as well as on the general health of the spacecraft. This is all packaged up and sent back to Earth by the TMU. Having worked through the possibilities, the Voyager team reckons the issue lies with the FDS.
“This past weekend the team tried to restart the FDS and return it to the state it was in before the issue began, but the spacecraft still isn't returning useable data,” NASA says.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/14/engineers_work_to_fix_voyager/
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday December 14, 2023 11:00PM
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is, once again, having trouble transmitting any scientific or systems data back to Earth. “The 46-year-old spacecraft is capable of receiving commands, but a problem seems to have arisen with the probe's computers,” reports Space.com. Slashdot readers quonset and ArchieBunker shared the news. From the report:
Voyager 1's flight data system (FDS), which collects onboard engineering information and data from the spacecraft's scientific instruments, is no longer communicating as expected with the probe's telecommunications unit (TMU), according to a NASA blog post on Dec. 12. When functioning properly, the FDS compiles the spacecraft's info into a data package, which is then transmitted back to Earth using the TMU. Lately, that data package has been “stuck,” the blog post said, “transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros.” Voyager's engineering team traced the problem back to the FDS, but it could be weeks before a solution is found.
Turns out it’s hard to fix a problem that’s 15.14 billion miles away.
Isaac Schultz - 7 February 2024
Humanity’s most distant spacecraft is glitching out—again—and engineers are having quite a diffitcult time solving the problem. Voyager 1, what are we going to do with you?
The issue is with the 46-year-old Voyager 1’s flight data system (FDS), one of its three onboard computers. The FDS collects data from Voyager’s science instruments and takes data on the spacecraft’s status and general health. The system isn’t properly communicating with the telemetry modulation unit, which actually takes the data collected by the system and sends it to Earth.
This is just the latest in a spate of communications issues with the aging Voyager 1, which launched in 1977, shortly after SavePreviewCancel Edit summary [Voyager 1]
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Note: By editing this page you agree to license your content under the following license: CC Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International twin spacecraft Voyager 2. In May 2022, the probe suddenly started sending nonsensical attitude articulation and control (AACS) data. Suzanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager missions, described the glitch as “par for the course at this stage.”
https://gizmodo.com/voyager-1-s-archaic-onboard-computers-are-stuttering-1851235331
You think your latency is bad? How about 45 hours to see if a command worked?
Richard Speed - Thu 8 Feb 2024 15:30 UTC
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has confirmed that work to resolve a data issue aboard Voyager 1 continues, almost two months since the spacecraft began spouting gibberish.
The good news is that engineers can send commands to the spacecraft and have confirmed that those commands are being received. However, the distances involved mean that the process is hugely time consuming. According to JPL, it takes 22.5 hours for a message to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the response to be received.
Thus, engineers must wait 45 hours to see if a command has the expected outcome.
The Register understands that “all available talents” are being used to resolve the problem. Considering the age of the probe and the fact that it is running on so many backup systems, such issues are inevitable.
Dr Garry Hunt, a member of the original Voyager team, told us: “This certainly shows the value of having backup systems and duplications.”
According to Hunt, it is also a reminder that “commercial space organizations will not be able to afford to work in this way so we can expect more failures in the new space age.”
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/08/engineers_work_to_revive_voyager/
Plus, a major development in the quest for nuclear fusion power.
Gizmodo Staff - 10 February 2024
The 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft is on the fritz again, and this time it may be critical. As one engineer said, “this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager.” Here are our top science stories from this week.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-holds-out-hope-of-recovering-voyager-1-probe-1851243144
Posted by msmash on Thursday March 07, 2024 08:14AM
The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn't sent usable data from interstellar space in months. From a report:
When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that – and much more. Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “pale blue dot,” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space. Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.
March 6, 20245:00 AM ET - Nell Greenfieldboyce
The last time Stamatios “Tom” Krimigis saw the Voyager 1 space probe in person, it was the summer of 1977, just before it launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Now Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles away, beyond what many consider to be the edge of the solar system. Yet the on-board instrument Krimigis is in charge of is still going strong.
“I am the most surprised person in the world,” says Krimigis — after all, the spacecraft's original mission to Jupiter and Saturn was only supposed to last about four years.
These days, though, he's also feeling another emotion when he thinks of Voyager 1.
“Frankly, I'm very worried,” he says.
Ever since mid-November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending messages back to Earth that don't make any sense. It's as if the aging spacecraft has suffered some kind of stroke that's interfering with its ability to speak.
April Ryder - 6 March 2024
For several months now, NASA’s Voyager 1 has been sending back incomprehensible code of repeating 1s and 0s, and experts can’t figure out how to fix the spacecraft from 15 billion miles away. Technology aboard the probe dates back to the 1970s when the craft was first launched.
The clicker you use to lock and unlock your vehicle has more technology inside of it than the Voyager 1 has to work with when communicating with NASA. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched just 16 days apart in the summer of 1977 and have traveled billions of miles away from Earth since their journeys began.
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sci/voyager-1-worries-nasa.html
The probe has been glitching for months, and the prospects look very grim, but NASA is not yet ready to give up.
Passant Rabie - 7 March 2024
For more than 45 years, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been cruising through the cosmos, crossing the boundary of our solar system to become the first human-made object to venture to interstellar space. Iconic in every regard, Voyager 1 has delivered groundbreaking data on Jupiter and Saturn, and captured the loneliest image of Earth. But perhaps nothing is lonelier than an aging spacecraft that has lost its ability to communicate while traveling billions of miles away from home.
NASA’s Voyager 1 has been glitching for months, sending nonsensical data to ground control. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been trying to resolve the issue, but given how far the spacecraft currently is, the process has been extremely slow. Things are looking pretty bleak for the aging mission, which might be nearing the end. Still, NASA isn’t ready to let go of its most distant spacecraft just yet.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-voyager-probe-glitching-months-not-quitting-1851317484
Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers
Richard Speed - Thu 14 Mar 2024 13:15 UTC
Engineers are hopeful that the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 might have turned a corner after spending the last three months spouting gibberish at controllers.
On March 1, the Voyager team sent a command, dubbed a “poke,” to get the probe's Flight Data System (FDS) to try some other sequences in its software in the hope of circumventing whatever had become corrupted.
Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless have memories of poke sheets for various 1980s games. Not that this hack ever used a poke to get infinite lives in Jet Set Willy, of course.
While Voyager 1's lifespan is not infinite, it has endured far longer than anticipated and might be about to dodge yet another bullet. On March 3, the mission team saw something different in the stream of data returned from the spacecraft, which had been unreadable since December.
An engineer with the Deep Space Network (DSN) was able to decode it, and by March 10, the team determined that it contained a complete memory dump from the FDS.
The FDS memory read-out contains its code, variables, and science and engineering data for downlink.
The 46-year-old spacecraft has been transmitting gibberish for months, but the team may be close to identifying the source of the glitch.
Passant Rabie - 14 March 2024
The Voyager 1 spacecraft sent a new signal that contains valuable data, which may save the aging probe. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are currently looking for discrepancies in the message in order to find out why the spacecraft—the farthest piece of human technology from Earth—has been speaking gibberish for the past few months.
On March 3, the team behind the Voyager 1 mission received a promising signal from the spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS). Although it wasn’t in the format regularly used by Voyager 1 when the spacecraft is operating normally, it was still different than the unreadable data stream that the mission has been transmitting since it developed an odd glitch in November 2023.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-voyager-1-reconnects-data-glitch-1851334565
Denise Hill - March 13, 2024
Since November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, but the signal does not contain usable data. The source of the issue appears to be with one of three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.
On March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one section of the FDS that differed from the rest of the computer’s unreadable data stream. The new signal was still not in the format used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team wasn’t initially sure what to make of it. But an engineer with the agency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas that communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling to the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and found that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory.
The FDS memory includes its code, or instructions for what to do, as well as variables, or values used in the code that can change based on commands or the spacecraft’s status. It also contains science or engineering data for downlink. The team will compare this readout to the one that came down before the issue arose and look for discrepancies in the code and the variables to potentially find the source of the ongoing issue.
Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers
Richard Speed - Thu 14 Mar 2024 13:15 UTC
Engineers are hopeful that the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 might have turned a corner after spending the last three months spouting gibberish at controllers.
On March 1, the Voyager team sent a command, dubbed a “poke,” to get the probe's Flight Data System (FDS) to try some other sequences in its software in the hope of circumventing whatever had become corrupted.
Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless have memories of poke sheets for various 1980s games. Not that this hack ever used a poke to get infinite lives in Jet Set Willy, of course.
While Voyager 1's lifespan is not infinite, it has endured far longer than anticipated and might be about to dodge yet another bullet. On March 3, the mission team saw something different in the stream of data returned from the spacecraft, which had been unreadable since December.
A new signal from humanity's most distant spacecraft could be the key to restoring it.
Stephen Clark - 3/15/2024, 4:23 PM
It's been four months since NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft sent an intelligible signal back to Earth, and the problem has puzzled engineers tasked with supervising the probe exploring interstellar space.
But there's a renewed optimism among the Voyager ground team based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. On March 1, engineers sent a command up to Voyager 1—more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth—to “gently prompt” one of the spacecraft's computers to try different sequences in its software package. This was the latest step in NASA's long-distance troubleshooting to try to isolate the cause of the problem preventing Voyager 1 from transmitting coherent telemetry data.
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 16, 2024 12:34PM
“Engineers have sent a 'poke' to the Voyager 1 probe,” reports CNN, “and received a potentially encouraging response…”
“A new signal recently received from the spacecraft suggests that the NASA mission team may be making progress in its quest to understand what Voyager 1 is experiencing…”
[T]hey hope to fix a communication issue with the aging spacecraft that has persisted for five months. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system. While Voyager 1 has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth, that signal has not carried any usable data since November, which has pointed to an issue with one of the spacecraft's three onboard computers…
Ashley Strickland, CNN - Updated 6:29 PM EDT, Thu March 14, 2024
Engineers have sent a “poke” to the Voyager 1 probe and received a potentially encouraging response as they hope to fix a communication issue with the aging spacecraft that has persisted for five months.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system.
While Voyager 1 has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth, that signal has not carried any usable data since November, which has pointed to an issue with one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers.
A new signal recently received from the spacecraft suggests that the NASA mission team may be making progress in its quest to understand what Voyager 1 is experiencing. Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/world/voyager-1-communication-issue-poke-scn/index.html
Corrupted memory hardware is causing the mission to transmit gibberish, but there may be a way to fix it.
Passant Rabie - 5 April 2024
After months of sending unusable data to mission control, there’s finally hope for the Voyager 1 spacecraft. NASA engineers pinpointed the cause behind the mission’s odd anomaly, and think they can help the interstellar probe make sense again.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending nonsensical data due to corrupted memory hardware in the spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS). “The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working,” NASA wrote in an update.
FDS collects data from Voyager’s science instruments, as well as engineering data about the health of the spacecraft, and combines them into a single package that’s transmitted to Earth through one of the probe’s subsystems, the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), in binary code.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-voyager-corrupted-hardware-chip-anomaly-gibberish-1851390354
Naomi Hartono - April 4, 2024
Engineers have confirmed that a small portion of corrupted memory in one of the computers aboard NASA’s Voyager 1 has been causing the spacecraft to send unreadable science and engineering data to Earth since last November. Called the flight data subsystem (FDS), the computer is responsible for packaging the probe’s science and engineering data before the telemetry modulation unit (TMU) and radio transmitter send the data to Earth.
In early March, the team issued a “poke” command to prompt the spacecraft to send back a readout of the FDS memory, which includes the computer’s software code as well as variables (values used in the code that can change based on commands or the spacecraft’s status). Using the readout, the team has confirmed that about 3% of the FDS memory has been corrupted, preventing the computer from carrying out normal operations.
The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working. Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years.
“Engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally.”
Stephen Clark - 4/5/2024, 5:28 PM
Engineers have determined why NASA's Voyager 1 probe has been transmitting gibberish for nearly five months, raising hopes of recovering humanity's most distant spacecraft.
Voyager 1, traveling outbound some 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth, started beaming unreadable data down to ground controllers on November 14. For nearly four months, NASA knew Voyager 1 was still alive—it continued to broadcast a steady signal—but could not decipher anything it was saying.
Confirming their hypothesis, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California confirmed a small portion of corrupted memory caused the problem. The faulty memory bank is located in Voyager 1's Flight Data System (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft. The FDS operates alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.
The FDS duties include packaging Voyager 1's science and engineering data for relay to Earth through the craft's Telemetry Modulation Unit and radio transmitter. According to NASA, about 3 percent of the FDS memory has been corrupted, preventing the computer from carrying out normal operations.
Since you can't get a soldering iron out there, the fix will be in software
Richard Speed - Mon 15 Apr 2024 15:02 UTC
Engineers at NASA have pinpointed some corrupted memory as the cause of Voyager 1's troubles and are working on a remote fix to deal with the hardware problem.
The veteran probe began sending unreadable data back to Earth in late 2023, and engineers have tried to understand the nature of the issue. Last month, they sent a command – a “poke” to the spacecraft's Flight Data System (FDS) – and the resulting data stream contained a complete memory dump from the computer.
The team was able to use this readout, which contained the computer's code and variables, to ascertain that approximately 3 percent of the FDS memory had been corrupted. That corruption is preventing normal operation of the FDS, which is responsible for packaging the probe's engineering and science data before it gets passed to the Telemetry Modulation Unit (TMU), the radio transmitter and is sent back to Earth.
The Voyager team reckons that a single chip responsible for the corrupted portion of memory is at fault, although they can only make an informed guess with regard to what has happened.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/15/voyager_engineers_prepare_fix/
April 22, 2024
After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.
For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).
Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth
JPL engineers pinpointed the cause behind the anomaly and came up with a clever plan to rescue the iconic mission.
Passant Rabie - 22 April 2024
The Voyager 1 spacecraft returned usable data for the first time in more than five months, giving hope for the 46-year-old mission to finally be able to resume its normal operations.
NASA’s favorite interstellar probe transmitted data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems to mission control on Saturday, the space agency announced. That’s great news for the mission, and the next step is hopefully for Voyager 1 to begin returning science data again.
The last time Voyager 1 sent readable science and engineering data back to Earth was on November 14, 2023. Afterwards, the spacecraft was receiving commands, but talking back to Earth in unusable gibberish. The storied spacecraft is exploring the outermost edge of the Sun’s domain, combining its observations with data from newer missions to get a better understanding of how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-voyager-probe-making-sense-months-gibberish-1851427197
“We're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for, and that's always good news.”
Stephen Clark - 4/23/2024, 10:56 AM
Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.
Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of the probe's three computers.
“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop in the room,” said Linda Spilker, project scientist for NASA's two Voyager spacecraft at JPL. “It was quiet. People were looking very serious. They were looking at their computer screens. Each of the subsystem (engineers) had pages up that they were looking at, to watch as they would be populated.”
NASA scientists spent months coaxing the 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft back into healthy communication
Meghan Bartels - April 22, 2024
After months of nonsensical transmissions from humanity’s most distant emissary, NASA’s iconic Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally communicating intelligibly with Earth again.
Voyager 1 launched in 1977, zipped past Jupiter and Saturn within just a few years and has been trekking farther from our sun ever since; the craft crossed into interstellar space in 2012. But in mid-November 2023 Voyager 1’s data transmissions became garbled, sending NASA engineers on a slow quest to troubleshoot the distant spacecraft. Finally, that work has paid off, and NASA has clear information on the probe’s health and status, the agency announced on April 22.
“It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an interview with Scientific American when the team was still tracking down the issue.
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday April 23, 2024 12:00AM
quonset writes:
Just over two weeks ago, NASA figured out why its Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending useful data. They suspected corrupted memory in its flight data system (FDS) was the culprit. Today, for the first time since November, Voyager 1 is sending useful data about its health and the status of its onboard systems back to NASA. How did NASA accomplish this feat of long distance repair? They broke up the code into smaller pieces and redistributed them throughout the memory.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/22/2343257/voyager-1-resumes-sending-updates-to-earth
All from billions of miles away
Richard Speed - Tue 23 Apr 2024 11:45 UTC
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has begun returning usable engineering data after engineers devised a way to work around a damaged memory chip.
It is the first time the spacecraft has returned usable data since it began babbling nonsensically in 2023. The problem was eventually traced to a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) memory.
The chip's failure made science and engineering data from the probe unusable, and posed a challenge for engineers. The chip contained some of the FDS computer's code, but simply shifting that code elsewhere wasn't an option – no single location was large enough to hold it.
The solution was to break the code into sections, tweak them so they still functioned as a whole, and store them in different places in the FDS. Any references to the code's location would also need to be updated.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/23/voyager_1_engineering_updates/
“We're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for, and that's always good news.”
Stephen Clark - 4/23/2024, 10:56 AM
Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.
Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of the probe's three computers.
“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop in the room,” said Linda Spilker, project scientist for NASA's two Voyager spacecraft at JPL. “It was quiet. People were looking very serious. They were looking at their computer screens. Each of the subsystem (engineers) had pages up that they were looking at, to watch as they would be populated.”
How NASA is Hacking Voyager 1 Back to Life
Gwendolyn Rak - 06 May 2024
On 14 November 2023, NASA’s interstellar space probe Voyager 1 began sending gibberish back to Earth. For five months, the spacecraft transmitted unusable data equivalent to a dial tone.
In March, engineers discovered the cause of the communication snafu: a stuck bit in one of the chips comprising part of Voyager’s onboard memory. The chip contained lines of code used by the flight data subsystem (FDS), one of three computers aboard the spacecraft and the one that is responsible for collecting and packaging data before sending it back to Earth.
JPL engineers sent a command through the Deep Space Network on 18 April to relocate the affected section of code to another part of the spacecraft’s memory, hoping to fix the glitch in the archaic computer system. Roughly 22.5 hours later, the radio signal reached Voyager in interstellar space, and by the following day it was clear the command had worked. Voyager began returning useful data again on 20 April.
Tony Greicius - May 22, 2024
Voyager 1 has resumed returning science data from two of its four instruments for the first time since a computer issue arose with the spacecraft in November 2023. The mission’s science instrument teams are now determining steps to recalibrate the remaining two instruments, which will likely occur in the coming weeks. The achievement marks significant progress toward restoring the spacecraft to normal operations.
In April, after five months of troubleshooting since the original computer issue, the mission was able to get the spacecraft to begin returning usable engineering data about the health and status of its onboard systems, including the science instruments. On May 17, the team sent commands to the 46-year-old spacecraft that enabled it to resume sending science data to Earth. With Voyager 1 located more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from its home planet, it takes light over 22 1/2 hours to reach the spacecraft, and 22 1/2 hours for a signal to return to Earth. As a result, the team had to wait nearly two days to see if their commands were successful.
The plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument are now returning usable science data. As part of the effort to restore Voyager 1 to normal operations, the mission is continuing work on the cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument. (Six additional instruments aboard Voyager 1 are either no longer working or were turned off after the probe’s flyby of Saturn.)
The spacecraft has resumed full science operations after a technical issue began creating complications in November 2023.
Stefanie Waldek - June 14, 2024
All right, everyone — we can all breathe a sigh of relief. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is fully operational once more, with all four science instruments returning usable data to Earth.
The problems began in November 2023, when Voyager 1 lost its ability to “speak” with us. More specifically, it started sending to Earth unintelligible data instead of its normal 0s and 1s of binary code. Of course, Voyager 1 is 46 years old — ancient for a spacecraft — so it wasn't entirely a surprise that its health might be waning. And that's not to mention that it's in entirely uncharted interstellar territory, some 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth.
Voyager 1's dogged team was determined to not only figure out what went wrong, but also to fix the problem. And they've succeeded! Controllers identified where the issue was located: the flight data subsystem (FDS), used to “package” data to be sent to Earth. Further sleuthing revealed the exact chip causing the problem, which allowed them to find a workaround. After the team relocated the code to a new location in the FDS, Voyager 1 finally sent back intelligible data on April 20, 2024 — but only from two of its four science instruments. Now, just two months later, Voyager 1's remaining two science instruments are back up and running, communicating effectively with mission control on Earth.
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday June 15, 2024 03:00AM
wgoodman shares a report from The Register:
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in action and conducting normal science operations for the first time since the veteran probe began spouting gibberish at the end of 2023. All four of the spacecraft's remaining operational instruments are now returning usable data to Earth, according to NASA. Some additional work is needed to tidy up the effects of the issue. Engineers need to resynchronize the timekeeping software of Voyager 1's three onboard computers to ensure that commands are executed at the correct times. Maintenance will also be performed on the digital tape recorder, which records some data from the plasma instrument for a six-monthly downlink to Earth.
Voyager 1's woes began in November 2023, when the spacecraft stopped transmitting usable data back to Earth. Rather than engineering and science data, NASA found itself faced with a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, as though the spacecraft was somehow stalled. Engineers reckoned the issue lay with the Flight Data System (FDS) and in March sent a command – dubbed a “poke” – to get the FDS to try some other software sequences and thus circumvent whatever was causing the problem. The result was a complete memory dump from the computer, which allowed engineers to pinpoint where the corruption had occurred. It appeared that a single chip was malfunctioning, and engineers were faced with the challenge of devising a software update that would work around the defective hardware.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/06/15/0343232/voyager-1-returns-to-normal-science-operations
Engineers needed to swap out the clogged thrusters on the spacecraft as it continues its journey through interstellar space.
Passant Rabie - September 11, 2024
The Voyager 1 spacecraft has been cruising through the cosmos for 47 years, collecting precious data beyond the solar system. All that interstellar travel, however, is taking its toll on the probe. Recently, NASA engineers had to resolve a thruster issue affecting Voyager 1, overcoming a series of obstacles posed by the probe’s aging hardware.
The wear-and-tear of space travel has caused Voyager 1’s thrusters to become clogged. A fuel tube inside the thrusters has filled up with silicon dioxide, a side effect of age within the spacecraft’s fuel tank. To help Voyager 1 continue its mission, a team of engineers switched to a different set of thrusters than the one the spacecraft had been relying on, NASA recently announced. Plot twist, that one is clogged, too.
Voyager 1 uses its thrusters to point itself towards Earth and keep communication lines open with ground control. The spacecraft has three sets of thrusters, two for attitude propulsion and one for trajectory correction maneuvers. During the beginning of its mission, Voyager 1 needed the different types of thrusters to carry out its planetary flybys, but the spacecraft is now on a straightforward path out of the solar system, therefore it’s no longer picky with which one it uses.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-pulls-off-delicate-thruster-swap-keeping-voyager-1-mission-alive-2000497434
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 12, 2024 03:00AM
fjo3 shares a report from NASA:
Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering. After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters. […]
Switching to different thrusters would have been a relatively simple operation for the mission in 1980 or even 2002. But the spacecraft's age has introduced new challenges, primarily related to power supply and temperature. The mission has turned off all non-essential onboard systems, including some heaters, on both spacecraft to conserve their gradually shrinking electrical power supply, which is generated by decaying plutonium. While those steps have worked to reduce power, they have also led to the spacecraft growing colder, an effect compounded by the loss of other non-essential systems that produced heat. Consequently, the attitude propulsion thruster branches have grown cold, and turning them on in that state could damage them, making the thrusters unusable.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/0615206/voyager-1-team-accomplishes-tricky-thruster-swap
Ashley Strickland - Updated 6:17 PM EDT, Mon September 16, 2024
Engineers at NASA have successfully fired up a set of thrusters Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades to solve an issue that could keep the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from billions of miles away.
When Voyager 1 lifted off to space on September 5, 1977, no one expected that the probe would still be operating today.
As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1 experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will react to any changes.
Currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away. The probe operates beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its instruments directly sample interstellar space.
Earlier this year, engineers spotted an issue when the fuel tube inside one of Voyager’s thrusters became clogged. If the thrusters are clogged, they can’t generate as much force to keep the spacecraft steady. Voyager’s thrusters keep the spacecraft oriented in a way that it can communicate with Earth.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/16/science/voyager-1-thruster-issue/index.html
Passant Rabie - October 29, 2024
Voyager 1 can’t seem to catch a break. The interstellar traveler recently recovered from a thruster glitch that nearly ended its mission, and now NASA’s aging probe stopped sending data to ground control due to an unknown issue.
On Monday, NASA revealed that Voyager 1 recently experienced a brief pause in communication after turning off one of its radio transmitters. The space agency is now relying on a second radio transmitter that hasn’t been used since 1981 to communicate with Voyager 1 until engineers can figure out the underlying issue behind the glitch.
The flight team behind the mission first realized something was amiss with Voyager 1’s communication when the spacecraft failed to respond to a command. On October 16, the team used NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN)—a global array of giant radio antennas—to beam instructions to Voyager 1, directing it to turn on one of its heaters.
https://gizmodo.com/voyager-1-ghosts-nasa-forcing-use-of-backup-radio-dormant-since-1981-2000517890
NASA - October 29, 2024
NASA reconnected with Voyager 1 after a fault protection system prompted the spacecraft to turn off a transmitter.
Engineers at JPL are investigating the incident, facing the challenge of managing commands and data over a 15 billion-mile distance. The team aims to stabilize communications and address the technical difficulties of the aging spacecraft in interstellar space. Reestablishing Contact With Voyager 1
On October 24, NASA successfully reestablished contact with the Voyager 1 spacecraft after a brief communication pause. Recently, Voyager 1 shut off one of its two radio transmitters, and NASA’s team is now working to identify the cause.
The shutdown appears to have been triggered by the spacecraft’s fault protection system, which automatically manages onboard issues. This system conserves power by disabling non-essential systems if the spacecraft’s power supply is overstretched. However, it could take days to weeks for the team to pinpoint what exactly activated the fault protection system.
https://scitechdaily.com/15-billion-miles-away-nasas-voyager-1-breaks-its-silence/
The backup radio transmitter has remained dormant for about 43 years.
Samantha Mathewson - 30 October 2024
Following recent communication issues, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft resorted to using a backup radio transmitter that has been inactive since 1981.
The interstellar explorer experienced a brief pause in communications after putting itself in a protective state to conserve power. This was triggered by a command sent on Oct. 16 from NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) — a global array of giant radio antennas — instructing the spacecraft to turn on one of its heaters.
The mission's flight team first realized there was an issue with Voyager 1 on Oct. 18, when the spacecraft failed to respond to that command. The team later discovered that the spacecraft had turned off its primary X-band radio transmitter and instead switched over to its secondary S-band radio transmitter, which uses less power, according to a statement from NASA.
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday November 03, 2024 12:39PM
Somewhere off in interstellar space, 15.4 billion miles away from Earth, NASA's 47-year-old Voyager “recently went quiet,” reports Mashable.
The probe “shut off its main radio transmitter for communicating with mission control…”
Voyager's problem began on October 16, when flight controllers sent the robotic explorer a somewhat routine command to turn on a heater. Two days later, when NASA expected to receive a response from the spacecraft, the team learned something tripped Voyager's fault protection system, which turned off its X-band transmitter. By October 19, communication had altogether stopped.
The farthest spacecraft in the universe went momentarily rogue, but scientists breathed a sigh of relief when it reconnected at an unexpected radio frequency
Margherita Bassi, Daily Correspondent - November 6, 2024
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2: a pair of spacecraft tasked with touring Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune by taking advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets that only happens once every 175 years. The two probes had both completed their encounters with these worlds by 1989, and since then, they’ve traveled to the outer limits of our solar system and beyond, sending critical scientific data back to Earth.
Recently, however, Voyager 1 briefly fell silent. It broke communication with NASA in mid-October, then restored contact in an unexpected way: a backup radio transmitter that had been inactive since 1981.
“The spacecraft recently turned off one of its two radio transmitters, and the team is now working to determine what caused the issue,” according to a NASA blog post.
NASA’s twin Voyager probes have been flying for 47 years, which means the agency’s scientists and engineers back on Earth have increasingly had to deal with age-related maintenance issues, per Space.com’s Samantha Mathewson. Last December, for instance, Voyager 1 started sending nonsensical transmissions. Engineers solved the problem five months later, restoring the craft to its full abilities by this summer.
Posted by msmash on Wednesday November 13, 2024 08:41AM
Mark Rainey:
Engineers are currently debugging why the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is 15 billions miles away, turned off its main radio and switched to a backup radio that hasn't been used in over forty years!
I've had some tricky debugging issues in the past, including finding compiler bugs and debugging code with no debugger that had been burnt into prom packs for terminals, however I have huge admiration for the engineers maintaining the operation of Voyager 1.
Recently they sent a command to the craft that caused it to shut off its main radio transmitter, seemingly in an effort to preserve power and protect from faults. This prompted it to switch over to the backup radio transmitter, that is lower power. Now they have regained communication they are trying to determine the cause on hardware that is nearly 50 years old. Any communication takes days. When you think you have a difficult issue to debug, spare a thought for this team.
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/13/1138224/the-ultimate-in-debugging
The spacecraft was forced to rely on a radio transmitter that hadn't been used in 43 years.
Passant Rabie - November 27, 2024
After some quiet time, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in action. NASA’s iconic mission has resumed its regular operations following a month-long pause in communication.
In late October, Voyager 1 suddenly turned off one of its radio transmitters, forcing the mission team to rely on a backup unit—a weaker transmitter that hadn’t been used since 1981. Earlier this month, however, the mission team managed to turn on the spacecraft’s primary radio transmitter, called an X-band transmitter, and resumed collecting precious data from Voyager’s four operating science instruments, NASA announced on Tuesday.
The mission, launched in 1977, became the first spacecraft to cross the boundary of the solar system by venturing into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is currently 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth, and its upkeep is becoming more challenging.
Earlier in October, the flight team behind the mission realized something was amiss with Voyager 1’s communication when the spacecraft failed to respond to a command. It turned out that spacecraft’s fault protection system shut off the X-band transmitter, which autonomously responds to onboard issues affecting the mission, after engineers activated one of Voyager’s heaters.
The Dwingeloo telescope, designed to observe signals at low frequencies, detected the farthest human spacecraft when it went dark earlier this year.
Passant Rabie - December 17, 2024
Voyager 1 is currently exploring interstellar space at a distance of 15.5 billion miles (24.9 billion kilometers) away from Earth. Communicating with the farthest human-made object can be challenging, but not for a telescope that’s built to listen to lower frequencies emanating from the cosmos.
A team of amateur astronomers used the Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands to receive signals from Voyager 1 after a communication glitch forced the spacecraft to rely on a backup transmitter. Dwingeloo, built in the 1950s, joins an elite group of telescopes able to detect Voyager’s faint radio signals from deep space, a crucial capability when NASA’s antennas aren’t able to communicate with the spacecraft.
In late October, Voyager 1 suddenly turned off one of its radio transmitters, forcing the mission team to rely on a backup unit—a weaker transmitter that hadn’t been used since 1981. Voyager’s second radio transmitter, called the S-band, transmits a much fainter signal than its X-band transmitter. The flight team at NASA wasn’t sure the S-band signal could be detected, as the spacecraft is much farther away today than it was 43 years ago. NASA uses the Deep Space Network to communicate with its spacecraft, but the global array of giant radio antennas is optimized for higher frequency signals.
Thomas Telkamp, Tammo Jan Dijkema, Cees Bassa, Ed Dusschoten - December 10, 2024
We have used the historic Dwingeloo radio telescope to receive signals from the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Only a few telescopes in the world have received these signals, which are very faint due to the distance of Voyager 1: almost 25 billion kilometers, more than four times the distance to Pluto.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 to visit the outer planets in the Solar system. After its primary mission ended, it was sent on a journey out of the Solar system. It is currently the most distant and fastest human-made object, traveling in interstellar space. Its radio signals, traveling at the speed of light, currently need 23 hours to reach Earth.
The Dwingeloo telescope was built in 1956, by what is now ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Today the telescope is a national monument, used by amateurs, organized in Stichting Radiotelescoop Dwingeloo (CAMRAS).
Since the Dwingeloo telescope was designed for observing at lower frequencies than the 8.4GHz telemetry transmitted by Voyager 1, a new antenna had to be mounted. At these higher frequencies, the mesh of the dish is less reflective, making it extra challenging to receive faint signals.
To find the very weak carrier signal in the noise, we used orbital predictions of Voyager 1 to correct for the Doppler shift in frequency caused by motion of Earth and Voyager 1. By doing so, the signal could be seen live in the telescope observation room (picture 1). Later analysis confirmed that the Doppler shift corresponds to that of Voyager 1 (picture 2).
https://www.camras.nl/en/blog/2024/dwingeloo-telescope-receives-signals-from-voyager-1/
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday December 21, 2024 01:02PM
“Voyager 1 is currently exploring interstellar space at a distance of 15.5 billion miles (24.9 billion kilometers) away from Earth,” writes Gizmodo.
And yet a team of amateur astronomers in the Netherlands was able to receive Voyager's signals on a 1950s-era telescope…
The astronomers used orbital predictions of Voyager 1's position in space to correct for the Doppler shift in frequency caused by the motion of Earth, as well as the motion of the spacecraft through space… [The signal] was found live, and further analysis later confirmed that it corresponded to the position of Voyager 1.
“I did the experiment,” mathematician/scientific software engineer Tammo Jan Dijkema told Slashdot in an email, as “one of a crew of four.” He works at ASTRON (the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy) while volunteering at the Dwingeloo radio telescope, and wants to clarify any suggestion in Gizmodo's article “that we received signals at S-band, which is not true. We received the 'normal' Voyager-1 signal at 8.4 GHz. See our blog post… The Dwingeloo reception was not related to Voyager's temporary glitch at all.”
Flight Software Workshop - Apr 16, 2025
David Cummings (JPL) presents “How We Diagnosed and Fixed the 2023 Voyager 1 Anomaly from 15 Billion Miles Away” for FSW Workshop 2025 hosted by Stoke Space at UW Seattle, WA, March 2025.
NASA just brought Voyager 1’s dead thrusters back to life—right before the spacecraft goes quiet for nearly two years.
Passant Rabie - May 16, 2025
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been in space for nearly 50 years, enduring the harsh environment of outer space while teams on the ground figure out ways to keep its aging hardware from falling apart. In the latest attempt to keep Voyager alive, engineers managed to bring the spacecraft’s old thrusters back to life after being inoperable for decades.
NASA’s engineers revived a set of thrusters on board the Voyager 1 spacecraft to use as backup while the mission goes offline for ongoing upgrades to a radio antenna used to communicate with deep space missions, the space agency revealed this week. Voyager’s primary roll thrusters had stopped working in 2004 after losing power in two small internal heaters, but the team managed to restart the thrusters while the spacecraft cruises through interstellar space at a distance of 15.14 billion miles away (24.4 billion kilometers).
Voyager 1 launched in 1977, less than a month after its twin probe, Voyager 2, began its journey to space. The twin spacecraft rely on a set of primary thrusters that move them around to keep their antennas pointed toward Earth so they can send data and receive commands. The primary thrusters adjust the spacecraft’s orientation—pitch and yaw—while separate thrusters control its roll. Those thrusters—a set of primary and backup units—rotate the spacecraft’s antenna like a vinyl record, keeping each Voyager pointed toward a star they use to orient themselves in space.
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-revives-voyager-thrusters-considered-dead-for-20-years-2000603287
Posted by BeauHD on Saturday May 17, 2025 12:00AM
NASA engineers have successfully revived Voyager 1's backup thrusters, unused since 2004 and once considered defunct. Space.com reports:
This remarkable feat became necessary because the spacecraft's primary thrusters, which control its orientation, have been degrading due to residue buildup. If its thrusters fail completely, Voyager 1 could lose its ability to point its antenna toward Earth, therefore cutting off communication with Earth after nearly 50 years of operation. To make matters more urgent, the team faced a strict deadline while trying to remedy the thruster situation. After May 4, the Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 – and its twin, Voyager 2 – was scheduled to go offline for months of upgrades. This would have made timely intervention impossible.
To solve the problem, NASA's team had to reactivate Voyager 1's long-dormant backup roll thrusters and then attempt to restart the heaters that keep them operational. If the star tracker drifted too far from its guide star during this process, the roll thrusters would automatically fire as a safety measure – but if the heaters weren't back online by then, firing the thrusters could cause a dangerous pressure spike. So, the team had to precisely realign the star tracker before the thrusters engaged. Because Voyager is so incredibly distant, the team faced an agonizing 23-hour wait for the radio signal to travel all the way back to Earth. If the test had failed, Voyager might have already been in serious trouble. Then, on March 20, their patience was finally rewarded when Voyager responded perfectly to their commands. Within 20 minutes of receiving the signal, the team saw the thruster heaters' temperature soar – a clear sign that the backup thrusters were firing as planned.
Powered by plutonium, running on pure stubbornness
Richard Speed - Sun 7 Sep 2025 10:31 UTC
It is almost half a century since Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to study Jupiter, Saturn, and the atmosphere of Titan. It continues to send data back to Earth.
Although engineers reckon that the aging spacecraft might survive well into the 2030s before eventually passing out of range of the Deep Space Network, the spacecraft's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off in 2025. More of the probe's instruments are earmarked for termination as engineers eke out Voyager's power supply for a few more years.
On September 5, 1977, the power situation was a good deal healthier when the mission got underway. Launched just over two weeks after Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was scheduled to make flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. It skipped a visit to Pluto in favor of a closer look at the Saturnian moon Titan, which had an intriguing atmosphere.
The launch was the final one for the Titan IIIE rocket and was marred slightly by an earlier-than-expected second stage engine cutoff. NASA averted disaster by using a longer burn of the Centaur stage to compensate, and Voyager 1's mission to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond began.
Voyager 1's journey to the launchpad began with the “Grand Tour” concept of the 1960s, in which Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noted an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would occur in the 1970s, allowing a probe to swing by all the planets by using gravity assists.
Two missions were planned – one to be launched in 1977 to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, and another in 1979 to visit Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The concept gained support, but with costs spiraling and NASA also trying to develop the Space Shuttle, it was scaled back to visit two planets with two probes, derived from the Mariner program.
Indeed, the mission was known as the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn project until shortly before the 1977 launch, when the name “Voyager” was selected.
Scott Manley - May 17, 2025
In November 2023 Voyager 1 stopped communicating with Earth, the telemetry it was sending contained no information, but engineers working on the spacecraft could tell it was still listening. It would take months of experimenting to understand the problem and develop a fix using techniques that had never been employed before and designing software for a 50 year old computer using pen and paper.
It took the spacecraft nearly five decades to get there. It takes light a day.
James Felton, Senior Staff Writer (Editor Holly Large) - 4 November 2025
James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile
For the first time in humanity's long history, a human-made object will soon be a full light-day away from our home planet.
Space, as they say, is pretty big, and human-made objects are slow. The record speed any human has ever traveled was set by Apollo 10 back in 1969, and has not been broken since. The fastest human spaceflight remains 39,937.7 kilometers per hour (24,816.1 miles per hour), and at those speeds, it would take 3,730 hours to travel just 1 astronomical unit (AU), the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
At around 155 days, that's an unacceptable travel time to (for example) slam into the Sun. And while it takes you 155 days to get wherever it is you went, light and communications from Earth would reach you in about 8 minutes and 20 seconds, really rubbing it in how great it is to be massless.
But we will get a real reminder of the vast distance and incredible speed of light in late 2026, when Voyager 1 becomes the first human-made object to reach one light-day away from Earth.
Piyush Gupta - November 25, 2025
After nearly 50 years in space, NASA’s Voyager 1 is about to hit a historic milestone. By November 15, 2026, it will be 16.1 billion miles (25.9 billion km) away, meaning a radio signal will take a full 24 hours—a full light-day—to reach it. For context, a light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion km), so one light-day is just a tiny fraction of that.
Launched in 1977 to explore Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, becoming the most distant human-made object ever. Traveling at around 11 miles per second (17.7 km/s), it adds roughly 3.5 astronomical units (the distance from Earth to the Sun) each year. Even after decades in the harsh environment of space, Voyager 1 keeps sending data thanks to its radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which will last into the 2030s.
Communicating with Voyager 1 is slow. Commands now take about a day to arrive, with another day for confirmation. Compare that to the Moon (1.3 seconds), Mars (up to 4 minutes), and Pluto (nearly 7 hours). The probe’s distance makes every instruction a patient exercise in deep-space operations. To reach our closest star, Proxima Centauri, even at light speed, would take over four years—showing just how tiny a light-day is in cosmic terms.
https://scienceclock.com/voyager-1-is-about-to-reach-one-light-day-from-earth/
The interstellar probe has just enough power to continue exploring the cosmos into the 2030s.
Passant Rabie - October 2, 2024
NASA’s aging interstellar probe is gradually losing power, forcing the space agency to shut down one of its science instruments to conserve its energy.
Launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 2 mission has been probing the outer bounds of the solar system at a distance of 12.8 billion miles (20.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. All that time journeying through the cosmos has taken a toll on the iconic probe, and NASA is doing everything it can to extend the life of Voyager 2 for as long as possible.
On Tuesday, NASA announced that mission engineers have turned off the plasma science instrument on board Voyager 2 due to its shrinking electrical power supply. The spacecraft still has four functioning science instruments on board to measure various elements of interstellar space, but it will no longer be able to detect the amount of plasma (or electrically charged atoms) and the direction it is flowing.
Veteran probe set to score a half-century while still doing science
Richard Speed - Thu 3 Oct 2024 11:45 UTC
Engineers have turned off Voyager 2's plasma science instrument in an effort to eke out the veteran probe's dwindling power supply.
The instrument has become less useful in recent years due to its orientation relative to the direction that plasma is flowing in interstellar space. It consists of four “cups,” three of which point toward the Sun to observe the solar wind inside the heliosphere. A fourth points at a right angle to the other three to observe the plasma in planetary magnetospheres, and now interstellar space.
It proved critical when Voyager 2 exited the heliosphere in 2018, following its sibling, Voyager 1, into interstellar space.
Scientists took a year to confirm that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space since it lacked a working plasma science instrument – the device stopped working in 1980 and was turned off in 2007. However, the instrument aboard Voyager 2 continued to function, and scientists noted a dramatic fall in the flow of plasma into the three cups facing the Sun as it exited the heliosphere.
The heliosphere is the bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun that surrounds the solar system.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/03/voyager_2_plasma_instrument/
Hold the jokes—this is serious news.
Gayoung Lee - December 5, 2025
When Voyager 2 made its historic flyby of Uranus in 1986, the spacecraft captured the best data humanity had gathered on the giant planet up to that point. But as scientists become better at analyzing cosmic signals, they’re also uncovering past mistakes by revisiting Voyager 2’s data, as yet another study points out.
This time, astronomers with the Southwest Research Institute offer an answer to a 39-year-old mystery surrounding Uranus’s radiation levels, reporting their research in Geophysical Research Letters.
Specifically, the unusual, “off the charts” energy levels of Uranus’s electron radiation belts—donut-shaped regions of energetic electrons surrounding a planet—were more likely the product of a solar wind storm. They were probably not caused by the planet’s natural radiation levels. It just so happened that Voyager 2 visited Uranus on a particularly unusual day, and that skewed our perception of the ice giant.
Indeed, scientists had mistakenly assumed such conditions were typical for the planet—even as the scientists themselves struggled to explain how that could be possible. But as the new analysis suggests, Uranus appeared to be having a bad weather day.
https://gizmodo.com/voyager-2-caught-uranus-on-a-bad-weather-day-in-1986-study-finds-2000695751
Temperatures there reach an astonishing 30,000-50,000 kelvin.
James Felton (Edited by: Laura Simmons) - June 11, 2025
In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager probes to study the Solar System's edge, and the interstellar medium between the stars. One by one, they both hit the “wall of fire” at the boundaries of our home system, measuring temperatures of 30,000-50,000 kelvin (54,000-90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) on their passage through it.
There are a few ways you could define the edge of the Solar System – for instance, where the planets end, or at the Oort cloud, the boundary of the Sun's gravitational influence where objects may still return closer to the Sun. One way is to define it as the edge of the Sun's magnetic field, where it pushes up against the interstellar medium, known as the heliopause.
“The Sun sends out a constant flow of charged particles called the solar wind, which ultimately travels past all the planets to some three times the distance to Pluto before being impeded by the interstellar medium,” NASA explains. “This forms a giant bubble around the Sun and its planets, known as the heliosphere.”
It is beyond that where the heliopause lies.
“The boundary between solar wind and interstellar wind is the heliopause, where the pressure of the two winds are in balance. This balance in pressure causes the solar wind to turn back and flow down the tail of the heliosphere,” NASA continues.
“As the heliosphere plows through interstellar space, a bow shock forms, similar to what forms as a ship plowing through the ocean.”
Tina Morrison - 18:18, Mar 24 2023
Dawn Aerospace plans to start rocket-powered flights within the next month after it received certification from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly out of a civil airport.
Chief executive Stefan Powell said on Friday the company had received certification from the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand (CAA) for the imminent rocket-powered flight campaign of its Mk-II Aurora spaceplane.
“The mission of the Mk-II Aurora is to fly to space twice in a day and, in doing so, demonstrate that rocket-powered systems can be as reusable as commercial aircraft,” he said. “This marks the first time a remotely piloted, rocket-powered vehicle has been certified for flight out of a civil airport.”
LightSail 2 will end its mission by reentering Earth's atmosphere after spending 3.5 years in orbit.
Passant Rabie - 15 November 2022 4:30PM
A tiny spacecraft is about to sail into its demise, burning up as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere for the end of its mission.
The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 has been getting dragged down by the pull of Earth’s atmosphere, and is expected to reenter the atmosphere within the next few days, the organization announced on Monday. When it does, the spacecraft will burn up, bringing its three and a half year journey of orbiting Earth to a fiery end.
https://gizmodo.com/spacecraft-space-solar-sail-lightsail-2-1849785785
The photon surfing spacecraft was a victim of atmospheric drag, bringing the pioneering mission to a close.
Passant Rabie - 18 November 2022
After three-and-a-half years of sailing above Earth, the LightSail 2 spacecraft has burnt its shiny metallic wings as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere in a fiery blaze.
The Planetary Society announced the end of its solar sailing mission on Thursday. The spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere sometime on November 17, burning up during its descent, but the mission successfully demonstrated the use of sunlight to propel satellites in orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/lightsail-2-solar-sail-mission-ends-1849801179
Aria Alamalhodaei - 7 July 2023
Space propulsion company Pulsar Fusion has started construction on a large nuclear fusion chamber in England, as it races to become the first firm to fire a nuclear fusion-powered propulsion system in space.
Nuclear fusion propulsion tech, arguably a golden goose of the space industry, could reduce the travel time to Mars by half and cut the travel time to Titan, Saturn’s moon, to two years instead of 10. It sounds like science fiction, but Pulsar CEO Richard Dinan told TechCrunch in a recent interview that fusion propulsion was “inevitable.”
“You’ve got to ask yourself, can humanity do fusion?” he said. “If we can’t, then all of this is irrelevant. If we can — and we can — then fusion propulsion is totally inevitable. It’s irresistible to the human evolution of space. This is happening, because the application is irresistible.”
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/07/pulsar-fusion-interstellar-space-travel-a-reality/
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 06, 2025 03:57PM
Nuclear fusion — which releases four times the energy of fission — could theoretically happen sooner in space than on earth, reports CNN.
“And it could help spacecraft achieve speeds of up to 500,000 miles (805,000 kilometers) per hour — more than the fastest object ever built…”
With funding from the UK Space Agency, British startup Pulsar Fusion has unveiled Sunbird, a space rocket concept designed to meet spacecraft in orbit, attach to them, and carry them to their destination at breakneck speed using nuclear fusion… For now, Sunbird is in the very early stages of construction and it has exceptional engineering challenges to overcome, but Pulsar says it hopes to achieve fusion in orbit for the first time in 2027. [Pulsar's founder/CEO says the first functional Sunbird would be ready four to five years later.]
If the rocket ever becomes operational, it could one day cut the journey time of a potential mission to Mars in half.
Many of these rockets, you may recall, were supposed to fly in 2020.
Eric Berger - 12/27/2021, 5:15 AM
A little more than three years ago, Ars published an article assessing the potential for four large rockets to make their debut in 2020. Spoiler alert: none of them made it. None even made it in 2021. So will next year finally be the year for some of them?
Probably. Maybe. We sure hope so.
At the time of the older article's publication, July 2018, four heavy-lift rockets still had scheduled launch dates for 2020—the European Space Agency's Ariane 6, NASA's Space Launch System, Blue Origin's New Glenn, and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. The article estimated the actual launch dates, predicting that Europe's Ariane 6 would be the only rocket to make a launch attempt in 2020. All four of the predicted launch dates proved overly optimistic, alas.
Devin Coldewey - 11:56 AM PST March 3, 2022
As part of the escalating tensions between Russia and the U.S. (to say nothing of the rest of the world), Roscosmos has announced that the country will cease all shipments of rocket engines to the States. As the agency’s head Dmitry Rogozin put it on a state news broadcast: “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.” Fortunately, we can do better than broomsticks.
The two affected Russian engines are reliable and powerful, having formed the main thrust for ULA Atlas V launches for 20 years, as well as Antares rockets. But as you may have observed over the last few years, Atlas and Antares launches — especially using engines from the ’90s — are very much the minority when it comes to launch volume and capability.
Being part of an industry with long timelines means being prepared for situations like this well in advance, and the U.S. has been working on reducing its reliance on Russian hardware for quite a while now. Specifically, ULA tapped Blue Origin to develop a replacement for the Russian RD-180 engines back in 2018, for the next-generation Vulcan launch vehicle.
Andy Law - April 28, 2022
Rocket engines are incredibly complex machines, pushing the boundaries of materials science and human ingenuity, with a multitude of different engine cycles that characterize the engine. In this article we discuss the many rocket engine cycles that engineers have used.
The types of power cycle range from very simple cycle types like cold gas thrusters, to more and more complicated ones like the famous full-flow staged combustion. This article will showcase all prominent types of engine cycles and describe and picture them in detail.
We can compare rocket engine cycle types to internal combustion engine types, in one sense. Car engine types include 2-stroke, 2 cylinder, or 4-stroke, 4 cylinder, supercharged, turbocharged, etc. They all operate under the same basic principles but employ different techniques to reach their power and/or efficiency goal.
Some of the following will sound familiar if you’ve read or have seen our article and video about SpaceX’ Raptor engine, but this time the whole article and the video will only focus on engine cycle types.
The Space Force is looking for responsive launch. This week, they're the unresponsive ones.
Stephen Clark – Apr 17, 2025 5:23 PM
Last week, the first operational satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband network were minutes from launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
These spacecraft, buttoned up on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, are the first of more than 3,200 mass-produced satellites Amazon plans to launch over the rest of the decade to deploy the first direct US competitor to SpaceX's Starlink internet network.
However, as is often the case on Florida's Space Coast, bad weather prevented the satellites from launching April 9. No big deal, right? Anyone who pays close attention to the launch industry knows delays are part of the business. A broken component on the rocket, a summertime thunderstorm, or high winds can thwart a launch attempt. Launch companies know this, and the answer is usually to try again the next day.
But something unusual happened when ULA scrubbed the countdown last Wednesday. ULA's launch director, Eric Richards, instructed his team to “proceed with preparations for an extended turnaround.” This meant ULA would have to wait more than 24 hours for the next Atlas V launch attempt.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 2 August 2023
The final Antares rocket built with components made in Russia and Ukraine lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia last night, marking the end of a successful flight program and renewed pressure on Northrop Grumman and Firefly to develop its replacement.
The Antares-230+ rocket is carrying more than 8,200 pounds of equipment and science experiments for the astronaut crew on the International Space Station. The mission, NG-19, marks the 19th cargo resupply mission by Northrop Grumman on behalf of NASA. The Cygnus spacecraft that carries the supplies is expected to arrive at the station early Friday morning. Astronauts will load the spacecraft up with trash; once it departs the ISS, it will return to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.
Northrop has been using its Antares-230+ series rocket to fly cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station since 2019, as part of a multibillion-dollar Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) 2 contract from NASA. SpaceX was also awarded a CRS-2 contract for cargo delivery with its Cargo Dragon capsule.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/02/american-made-antares-rocket-debut-slips-to-2025/
Posted by BeauHD on Friday September 15, 2023 08:30PM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas:
Imperial College is developing a rocket thruster called the Iridium Catalysed Electrolysis CubeSat Thruster (ICE-Cube Thruster) that is so small that it can only be fabricated using techniques originally designed for making silicon chips. The entire thruster chip is about the length of a fingernail, with the combustion chamber and nozzle only measuring 1 mm long. It also requires only 20 watts of electric current to operate and in a test campaign generated 1.25 millinewtons of thrust at a specific impulse of 185 seconds on a sustained basis. To put that into perspective, that's half a billion times less thrust than the engines used on the Space Shuttle.
The small rockets are not cheap, but they are effective.
Eric Berger - 6/16/2021, 9:15 AM
For the first time in nearly eight years, a Minotaur 1 rocket launched into space Tuesday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket, which is derived from Cold-War-era surplus missiles, carried three classified satellites into orbit for the US National Reconnaissance Office.
This was the first launch of the four-stage Minotaur 1 rocket since a demonstration mission for the Air Force in 2013, which also orbited 23 CubeSats. Although the current mission was delayed for more than two hours by poor weather on Tuesday morning, it successfully launched at 9:35 am ET (13:35 UTC).
The Minotaur 1, which has the capacity to launch a little more than 500 kg into low Earth orbit, is a mix of decades-old technology and modern avionics. The vehicle's first and second stages are taken from a repurposed Minuteman I missile, the first generation of land-based, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles. These missiles were in service from 1962 to 1965 before they were phased out in favor of the Minuteman II and Minuteman III missiles. The latter ICBMs are still in silos today.
“It is a unique structure unparalleled in the world.”
Eric Berger - 9/4/2020, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 3.14 of the Rocket Report! So basically, it's Pi week for us. Also, you may realize we did not put out a Rocket Report last week—this is because the threat of Hurricane Laura provided an unexpected but significant distraction to the author. But now we're back with a larger edition than ever.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
“At some point, commercial entities are going to catch up.”
Eric Berger - 9/11/2020, 7:44 AM
Charlie Bolden, a four-time astronaut, served as NASA administrator from mid-2009 through early 2017. During that time, he oversaw the creation and initial development of the agency's large Space Launch System rocket.
Although some NASA officials such as then-Deputy Director Lori Garver were wary of the rocket's costs—about $20 billion has now been poured into development of a launch vehicle based on existing technology—Bolden remained a defender of the large rocket, calling it a lynchpin of the agency's plans to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit, perhaps to the Moon or Mars. He also dismissed the efforts of commercial space companies like SpaceX to build comparable technology.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/former-nasa-administrator-says-sls-rocket-will-go-away/
“JAXA will deal with the LE-9 engine-related problem in an appropriate manner.”
Eric Berger - 9/18/2020, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 3.16 of the Rocket Report! This week, we have a couple of small-launch failures to discuss, as well as schedule slippages for the debut of European and Japanese rockets. Finally, Europe's next heavy-lift rocket, the Ariane 6, has been showing signs of progress.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Also: Rocket Lab rehearses for a US debut while Firefly fires up an Alpha
Tue 22 Sep 2020 / 10:00 UTC - Richard Speed
In Brief Mother Nature scuppered SpaceX's twelfth operational launch of its Starlink satellites, forcing the company to throw in the towel “due to severe weather in the recovery area.”
Already postponed due to what SpaceX delicately described as a “recovery issue”, the next proposed date has yet to be confirmed.
Recovery of the first stage of the Falcon 9 is a key part of SpaceX's business model, and the booster fated to loft the next batch of 60 Starlink satellites has seen action twice this year already, once for the Demo-2 mission of the Crew Dragon, and again for the ANASIS-II launch.
“These scrubs will no doubt frustrate other range users.”
Eric Berger - 9/30/2020, 6:56 AM
United Launch Alliance has been attempting to launch a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, valued at more than $1 billion, for quite a while now. On Tuesday evening, just hours before the company's latest attempt to launch the large Delta IV Heavy booster, the mission was scrubbed again.
The weather at the launch site was far from optimal, but the mission was delayed due to a technical problem with the launch pad. What is notable is that this is now the third issue that the company, ULA, has experienced with its ground systems equipment at Space Launch Complex-37 in Cape Canaveral, Florida for this flight.
The mission, dubbed NROL-44, was originally due to launch in June. When it was delayed until late August, military officials did not cite a reason for the schedule slip. However, on August 29, everything seemed nominal as the three-core rocket counted down to liftoff from its Florida-based launch pad. The countdown reached zero, the three main RS-68 engines ignited, and the launch conductor said, “Liftoff!”
“The reduced Delta launch tempo is certainly a factor.”
Eric Berger - 9/30/2020, 10:07 PM
Late on Wednesday night, United Launch Alliance's large Delta IV Heavy rocket again came within seconds of lifting off from its Florida launch pad. But once again, the launch was scrubbed.
Following the automated abort of the rocket at T-7 seconds, both the booster and its valuable National Reconnaissance Office payload were said to be safe. Because the abort was triggered just before the rocket's main RS-68 engines had begun to ignite, the delay before the next launch attempt may be less than a week.
“Falcon 9 and Delta 4 stopped within seconds of launch? This is good stuff.”
Eric Berger - 10/30/2020, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 3.22 of the Rocket Report! After a spate of recent scrubs, the Cape gets down to business in the coming week with back-to-back government launches, one by United Launch Alliance and the other by SpaceX. Fingers (and toes) are crossed.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Hopefully not another half century before the next… although launchpads are pricey
Richard Speed Thu 28 Oct 2021 10:56 UTC
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the UK joining an elite club of one: nations that gained the ability to launch satellites into orbit and then discarded the skill. The one – and only – successful orbital launch of the Black Arrow took place in 1971.
The place? The Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA) in Australia (about 450km from Adelaide.) It seems the UK was scattering rocket parts over Australia long before the US's first space station smacked into the country years later. The first of the UK's forays took place in 1969 and the fourth, and final, launch occurred on 28 October in '71, sending the Prospero satellite into Earth orbit.
New research states there’s a 10% risk in the next decade that falling rocket parts will cause casualties, especially for nations in the southern hemisphere.
Kyle Barr - 11 July 2022 4:45PM
Sorry kids, but when you’re wishing on a falling star, those flashing streaks in the night sky might actually be flaming rocket parts. And as new research suggests, some of those flaming rocket parts could be headed in your general direction.
Scientists say there’s a growing likelihood that raining rocket parts could cause injury or harm for people down on Earth. Though it’s still extremely unlikely you’ll receive a rocket fuselage to the face when staring up at the stars, researchers are calling on the world’s spacefaring nations to consider controlled reentries for ship components left floating in low-Earth orbit.
https://gizmodo.com/falling-rocket-parts-more-likely-to-cause-deaths-1849165671
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday December 01, 2024 07:34AM
“Spacecraft, satellites, and space-based systems all face cybersecurity threats that are becoming increasingly sophisticated and dangerous,” reports CNBC.
“With interconnected technologies controlling everything from navigation to anti-ballistic missiles, a security breach could have catastrophic consequences.”
Critical space infrastructure is susceptible to threats across three key segments: in space, on the ground segment and within the communication links between the two. A break in one can be a cascading failure for all, said Wayne Lonstein, co-founder and CEO at VFT Solutions, and co-author of Cyber-Human Systems, Space Technologies, and Threats. “In many ways, the threats to critical infrastructure on Earth can cause vulnerabilities in space,” Lonstein said. “Internet, power, spoofing and so many other vectors that can cause havoc in space,” he added. The integration of artificial intelligence into space projects has heightened the risk of sophisticated cyber attacks orchestrated by state actors and individual hackers. AI integration into space exploration allows more decision-making with less human oversight.
For example, NASA is using AI to target scientific specimens for planetary rovers. However, reduced human oversight could make these missions more prone to unexplained and potentially calamitous cyberattacks, said Sylvester Kaczmarek, chief technology officer at OrbiSky Systems, which specializes in the integration of AI, robotics, cybersecurity, and edge computing in aerospace applications. Data poisoning, where attackers feed corrupted data to AI models, is one example of what could go wrong, Kaczmarek said. Another threat, he said, is model inversion, where adversaries reverse-engineer AI models to extract sensitive information, potentially compromising mission integrity. If compromised, AI systems could be used to interfere with or take control of strategically important national space missions…
Danuri will provide new views of the lunar surface and help South Korea plan for its future exploration of our natural satellite.
Passant Rabie - 19 December 2022
After a four month journey through space, the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) has finally reached lunar orbit. The probe will spend the next year scanning the surface from above in search of water ice and suitable landing spots for future missions.
South Korea’s first mission to the Moon, known as Danuri, completed its first lunar orbit insertion maneuver on December 17 at 12:45 p.m. ET (2:45 a.m. in South Korea), the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) announced on Monday. “The first entry maneuver was the most important maneuver to ensure that Danuri was stably captured by the moon’s gravity and did not pass the moon,” KARI’s statement read.
https://gizmodo.com/south-korea-danuri-lunar-orbiter-first-moon-mission-1849911066
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday May 15, 2021 08:04PM
Slashdot reader boudie2 writes:
Maritime Launch Services has secured financing it says will allow it to begin construction on a spaceport facility this fall and get its first launch off the ground in 2022. The first Cyclone 4M medium-class launch vehicle would take off in 2023.
December 22, 2022
Inauguration by H.M the King of Sweden, the Swedish Prime Minister and the President of the EU Commission in January 2023
On 13 January 2023, the Swedish head of state, King Carl XVI Gustaf, together with European and Swedish political dignitaries will visit Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden to cut the ribbon of a new spaceport that will significantly reshape the European space landscape. After years of preparation and construction, European mainland’s first orbital launch complex, Spaceport Esrange, will be inaugurated. The event will take place in the city of Kiruna in conjunction with Sweden taking over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
For Europe, the new orbital launch facility at Esrange is a long-awaited critical asset. Today, only some ten countries in the world have the capability to launch satellites. Spaceport Esrange will offer an independent European gateway to Space, supplementing and strengthening current European capabilities in French Guiana.
“This new launch complex will help creating a foundation for a resilient Europe in Space. New satellite constellations in orbit, responsive launch capabilities and development of reusable rocketry will enable a secure, competitive and sustainable Europe. This will make Europe stronger,“ says Stefan Gardefjord, CEO of SSC.
https://sscspace.com/inauguration-of-mainland-europes-first-satellite-launch-complex/
Sea-based launches are hitting their stride. That could lead to a lot more space missions with a lot less red tape.
Becky Ferreira - February 11, 2025
Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, pushing even the busiest spaceports, like Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, to their operational limits. Orbital launches worldwide have more than doubled over the past four years, from about 100 to 250 annually. That number is projected to spiral further up this decade, fueled by an epic growth spurt in the commercial space sector.
To relieve the congestion, some mission planners are looking to the ocean as the next big gateway to space. China has sent more than a dozen space missions from ocean platforms since 2019, most recently in January 2025. Italy’s space program has announced it will reopen its ocean launchpad off the coast of Kenya, while German space insiders envision an offshore spaceport in the North Sea. In the US, the idea of sea launches has attracted attention from heavyweights like SpaceX and inspired a new startup called the Spaceport Company.
Launching rockets from offshore platforms like barges or oil rigs has a number of advantages. For one thing, it dramatically expands potential locations to lift off from, especially along the equator (this provides rockets with a natural speed boost because, thanks to geometry, the equator moves faster than the poles). At the same time, it is potentially safer and more environmentally friendly, placing launches further from population centers and delicate ecosystems.
SaxaVord Spaceport, on U.K.'s most northerly inhabited island, has unexpectedly yielded Bronze Age artifacts.
Isaac Schultz - 21 July 2023
Workers preparing land for a future rocket launch site in the United Kingdom’s Shetland Islands were surprised when they stumbled on a relic of the Bronze Age: an arrangement of stones, pits and burnt bones that suggest the site was once a cremation cemetery.
SaxaVord Spaceport is on Unst, Shetland, the most northerly inhabited island in the United Kingdom. The spaceport’s ground station will consist of antennae supporting satellite operations, though the recent Bronze Age discovery was made while workers were laying the groundwork for a rocket launch site.
The site was assessed by AOC Archaeology. The spaceport stated that the discovery will not impact the ongoing construction work on the site.
https://gizmodo.com/bronze-age-cemetery-saxavord-spaceport-rocket-launch-1850664077
Aria Alamalhodaei - 21 June 2023
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) will build a dedicated launch pad at the Guiana Space Center (GSC) in French Guiana, with launches commencing in 2025, the company said Wednesday.
RFA signed a binding agreement with France’s national space agency CNES for use of the launch site at GSC, located in Kourou, French Guiana. The launch complex had historically been home to a small French launcher known as Diamant, which was retired in the 1970s. Currently, the only launch vehicles that fly from GSC are ArianeGroup’s Ariane 5 and the Italian aerospace company Avio’s Vega.
“By launching from Kourou, the European Spaceport, we can serve ESA and its member states as institutional customers for any mission profile they desire,” RFA’s chief commercial officer Jörn Spurmann said in a statement.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/21/rocket-factory-augsburg-aims-to-launch-from-french-guiana-in-2025/
Jagmeet Singh - 28 February 2024
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has received the go-ahead to construct a new spaceport in Tamil Nadu, with which it aims to help private players launch small rockets in space with less fuel consumption.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the second spaceport, located on an island named Kulasekharapatnam off the southern state of Tamil Nadu. It will be second after the space agency’s existing Satish Dhawan Space Centre, founded in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota in 1971, with two launch pads.
The spaceport will be dedicated to launching smaller launch vehicles and will be ready in about two years, ISRO chairman S Somanath said on the sidelines of the event in Tamil Nadu. Smaller rockets are cheaper to launch and, like Rocket Lab’s Electron, have shown that they can be a reliable and affordable way to get to space outside of sharing a ride with several other payloads.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/india-isro-new-spaceport-small-rocket-launches/
With increasing demand on terrestrial launch pads, some companies are venturing out into the open sea, with this Virginia startup leading the way.
Passant Rabie - 24 May 2023
The Spaceport Company recently pulled off a series of rocket launches from a floating launch pad in the Gulf of Mexico, in its effort to create more options for rocket companies needing to reach space.
On Monday, the Virginia-based startup announced its successful demonstration, marking the first set of rocket launches from U.S. territorial waters using a prototype mobile floating spaceport.
“This demonstration provided numerous lessons which will be incorporated into our next project: building a sea-based spaceport capable of orbital operations,” Tom Marotta, founder and CEO of The Spaceport Company, said in the company statement. “We are working towards offering the U.S.’s first truly commercial spaceport, which can best support the rapidly growing commercial launch industry and alleviate the burdens on government ranges.”
https://gizmodo.com/virginia-startup-launches-rockets-mobile-sea-platform-1850469520
The new airspace restrictions are meant to reduce the effects of the steadily increasing cadence of rocket launches onto surrounding airports.
Passant Rabie - 21 June 2023
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is looking to limit the disruptions caused by rocket launches from Florida’s space coast, significantly reducing the amount of airspace closed off during liftoffs.
After reexamining the existing airspace restrictions for most Florida launches, the FAA determined that they were “too large and could be safely reduced,” the administration wrote in a recent statement. The FAA, therefore, introduced new, smaller zones for restricted airspace during rocket launches so as not to impact central Florida airports.
https://gizmodo.com/faa-eases-airspace-restrictions-florida-rocket-launches-1850560010
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday May 11, 2025 02:02PM
18 years ago Slashdot covered the creation of Spaceport America.
Today Space.com hails it as “the first purpose-built commercial spaceport in the world.” But engineer/executive director Scott McLaughlin has plans to grow even more.
Already home to an array of commercial space industry tenants, such as Virgin Galactic, SpinLaunch, Up Aerospace, and Prismatic, Spaceport America is a “rocket-friendly environment of 6,000 square miles of restricted airspace, low population density, a 12,000-foot by 200-foot runway, vertical launch complexes, and about 340 days of sunshine and low humidity,” the organization boasts on its website…
Space.com: What changes do you see that make Spaceport America even more viable today?
McLaughlin: I think opening ourselves up to doing different kinds of work. We're more like a civilian test range now. We've got high-altitude UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]. We're willing to do engine production. We believe we're about to sign a data center, one that's able to provide services to our customers who want low-latency, artificial intelligence, or high-powered computing. You'll be able to rent some virtual machines and do your own thing and have it be instantaneous at the spaceport. So I think being more broadminded about what we can do at the spaceport is helping generate customers and revenue…
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/05/11/2040256/how-spaceport-america-will-grow
“Those launches are exciting the young minds that are watching them.”
Stephen Clark - 3/8/2024, 4:00 AM
Welcome to Edition 6.34 of the Rocket Report! It's Starship season again. Yes, SpaceX appears to be about a week away from launching the third full-scale Starship test flight from the company's Starbase site in South Texas, pending final regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Ars will be there. SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch pad at Starbase, and the company's footprint there is also about to get a little bigger, with the expected acquisition of 43 acres of Texas state park land.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday December 17, 2024 11:00PM
SpaceX has filed a petition to incorporate its Starbase facility in South Texas as a new city, aiming to streamline infrastructure development and support the growing workforce needed for Starship production and testing. Space.com reports:
“To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community,” SpaceX said in the petition, which was shared in a post on X (formally Twitter). “That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley.”
The petition was addressed to Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr., the county's top elected official. The next step will be for officials to review the petition to determine if it complies with statutory requirements. Then, an election would be held to incorporate Starbase. […] With Starship expected to “fundamentally alter humanity's access to space,” SpaceX aims to make the area of the Starbase launch site the “Gateway to Mars,” the company wrote in the petition. […] “Incorporating Starbase will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world class place to live – for hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity's future in space,” SpaceX officials said in the petition.
If SpaceX can clean up Starship's reliability issues, the company is free to fly.
Eric Berger – May 6, 2025 11:46 AM
Although we are still waiting for SpaceX to signal when it will fly the Starship rocket again, the company got some good news from the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday.
After a lengthy review, the federal agency agreed to allow SpaceX to substantially increase the number of annual launches from its Starbase launch site in South Texas. Previously, the company was limited to five launches, but now it will be able to conduct up to 25 Starship launches and landings during a calendar year.
“The FAA has determined that modifying SpaceX’s vehicle operator license supporting the increased launch and landing cadence of the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment,” states the document, known as a Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact. This finding was signed by Daniel P. Murray, executive director of the FAA's Office of Operational Safety.
This ruling follows a draft finding issued six months ago that indicated this would be the final outcome.
Sean O'Kane - 10:58 AM PDT June 27, 2025
A crane collapsed at SpaceX’s South Texas rocket facility this week, and the company’s newly-formed city won’t say if anyone was hurt.
On June 23, a crane being used to clean up debris from the most recent SpaceX rocket explosion collapsed at the company’s launch complex. Footage of the accident was captured by Lab Padre, one of the content creators who film and photograph the site on a regular basis. But it was filmed from far away, making it impossible to tell whether anyone was harmed or in danger.
SpaceX has not publicly acknowledged the collapse, and did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. That’s not surprising; While the company posts details about spaceflight mishaps, like when its Starship rockets blow up, it is otherwise tight-lipped.
But SpaceX’s facility is now part of a newly-incorporated city called Starbase, Texas, and this accident happened within its borders. And after one of the Starship rockets blew up on a test stand last week, Starbase officials made a short post on X about it.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/27/spacexs-starbase-city-officials-silent-on-crane-collapse/
Mechanical chopsticks on the launch tower grab a returning rocket and Starship splashes down on target
Richard Speed - Sun 13 Oct 2024 23:46 UTC
SpaceX's engineers performed two significant feats on Saturday: catching Starship's Super Heavy Booster with mechanical arms on the rocket's launch tower, and achieving a pinpoint landing of Starship itself in the Indian Ocean.
The flight was the fifth for SpaceX's monster rocket, which comprises the Super Heavy Booster and the payload-carrying Starship itself. It came a day after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a license modification authorizing the launch from SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
The license authorized a mission that would see Starship reach sub-orbital altitude, before re-entering and making a water landing in the Indian Ocean, and the catch attempt by arms dubbed Mechazilla on the launch tower. It also included exceptions if things didn't go well – such as Starship failing to handle the heat of re-entry, under which circumstance SpaceX was allowed to conduct an uncontrolled landing provided the FAA was notified first.
However, the exceptions were not needed. To the clear surprise of SpaceX staffers, Mechazilla caught the spent Super Heavy Booster. The excitement caused by the sight of the Super Heavy Booster descending for an unprecedented first catch was reminiscent of the early Falcon 9 landings.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/13/first_time_success_spacexs_mechazilla/
“We’ll see the booster fly back and land at the tower and be captured by the arms, or we’ll take out the tower.”
Stephen Clark – Oct 13, 2024 12:49 AM
Early Sunday morning, SpaceX will try something no one has ever done before. Around seven minutes after lifting off from South Texas, the huge stainless steel booster from SpaceX's Starship rocket will, if all goes according to plan, come back to the launch pad and slow to a hover, allowing powerful mechanical arms to capture it in midair.
This is SpaceX's approach to recovering Starship's Super Heavy booster. If it works, this method will make it easier and faster to reuse the rocket than it is to recycle boosters from SpaceX's smaller Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Falcon 9's boosters usually come down on a floating drone ship stationed hundreds of miles out to sea, requiring SpaceX to return the rocket to shore for refurbishment.
“We’re going for high reusability,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability.
Sunday's test flight will be the fifth launch of SpaceX's full-scale Super Heavy/Starship rocket, the largest flying object ever to take off from planet Earth. The fully-stacked launcher stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall and measures 30 feet (9 meters) wide. The Super Heavy booster's 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines will generate nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket from the Apollo lunar program.
“Starships are meant to fly. It sure as hell flew today. So let’s get ready for the next one.”
Stephen Clark – Oct 13, 2024 5:14 PM
SpaceX accomplished a groundbreaking engineering feat Sunday, when it launched the fifth test flight of its gigantic Starship rocket, then caught the booster back at the launch pad in Texas with mechanical arms seven minutes later.
This achievement is the first of its kind, and it's crucial for SpaceX's vision of rapidly reusing the Starship rocket, enabling human expeditions to the Moon and Mars, routine access to space for mind-bogglingly massive payloads, and novel capabilities that no other company—or country—seems close to attaining.
The test flight began with a thundering liftoff of the 398-foot-tall (121.3-meter) Starship rocket at 7:25 am CDT (12:25 UTC) from SpaceX's Starbase launch site in South Texas, a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. The rocket's Super Heavy booster stage fired 33 Raptor engines, generating nearly 17 million pounds of thrust and gulping 20 tons of methane and liquid oxygen propellants per second at full throttle.
This is twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, used to send astronauts to the Moon more than 50 years ago.
Aria Alamalhodaei - 10:35 AM PDT October 13, 2024
For the first time, SpaceX not only launched its mammoth Starship, but also returned the booster to the launch site and to caught it with a pair of oversized “chopsticks.”
This test flight — the fifth in the Starship development program — took place Sunday morning at the company’s Starbase site in southeast Texas. The nearly 400-foot-tall Starship is at the centerpiece of SpaceX’s stated ambition to make life multi-planetary, but more immediately NASA’s ambitious Artemis campaign to return humans to the surface of the moon.
SpaceX envisions rapid reuse of the entire Starship vehicle, which includes an upper stage (also called Starship) and a Super Heavy booster — but that means proving out the capability to recover both stages and quickly refurbish them for future flights.
So it makes sense that the primary objectives for this fifth flight test were two-fold: attempting the first-ever “catch” of the Super Heavy booster at the launch site and an on-target Starship reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
– SpaceX space junk crashed onto Saskatchewan farmland, highlighting a potential impending disaster ==
July 11, 2024 1:19pm EDT - Aaron Boley & Samantha Lawler
In late April, farmers in Saskatchewan stumbled upon spacecraft fragments while preparing their fields for seeding. It sounds like the beginning of a science fiction movie, but this really happened, sending a powerful warning: it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt or killed by falling space junk.
The Axiom Space private astronaut mission (Ax-3) concluded safely on Feb. 9 when its SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down off the coast of Florida. Several weeks later, the Crew Dragon’s cargo trunk re-entered the atmosphere over Canada after being abandoned in orbit prior to the capsule’s return. five large burned out husks of metal are leaned against a barn wall Space junk recovered from a farm in Saskatchewan. (S. Lawler), CC BY Several incidents
The Federal Aviation Administration, charged with approving commercial spaceflight launches in the United States, has claimed that such trunks typically “burn up” during their re-entry.
This is clearly incorrect. Similar fragments, likely from the trunk of a different Crew Dragon mission, were found in North Carolina in May, including a smaller piece that landed on the roof of a house.
Should it succeed, PLD Space will become the first private micro launcher to launch a rocket in Europe's emerging space race.
Matías S. Zavia - 23 May 2023
Spanish manufacturer PLD Space successfully carried out the final ignition test of its reusable Miura 1 rocket on Wednesday, setting the stage for its imminent launch from southern Europe.
In the next few days, PLD Space aims to become the first private micro launcher company to actually launch a rocket in the European space race. The Miura 1 is a one-stage suborbital rocket that stands 41 feet (12.5 meters) long, or about the height of four-story building. The rocket serves as a proof-of-concept for PLD’s larger Miura 5 rocket, which aims to launch satellites into orbit beginning in 2025.
PLD Space developed the Miura 1’s TEPREL-B motor in-house, which can achieve a thrust of 30 kN with a simple pressure-fed cycle using jet fuel. The rocket can reach an altitude of 93 miles (150 kilometers) with a cargo of 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and is meant to be reusable for at least three trips.
https://gizmodo.com/first-spanish-suborbital-rocket-ready-launch-1850457028
The research rocket took a longer trajectory than intended and accidentally ended up in the neighboring country.
Passant Rabie - 26 April 2023
A wayward rocket has caused a rift between two Scandinavian nations after accidentally falling on the wrong side of the border.
On Monday, the Sweden Space Corporation (SSC) launched the TEXUS-58 rocket from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden. The rocket took “a slightly longer and more westerly trajectory than expected,” SSC wrote in a statement. As a result, the Swedish rocket crashed in neighboring Norway.
The research rocket, part of a European program commissioned by the European Space Agency, was used to carry out experiments in zero gravity at an altitude of 155 miles (250 kilometers). On its way back down, however, TEXUS-58 landed around 15 miles (25 kilometers) northwest of the planned landing site.
https://gizmodo.com/norway-not-amused-swedish-rocket-crashed-turf-1850378809
Reuters - April 26, 2023 5:02 AM PDT
Sweden launches research rocket, accidentally hits Norway
The TEXUS 58 research rocket launched by Sweden Space Corp (SSC), lifts off from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden April 24, 2023. Sweden Space Corp (SSC)/Handout via REUTERS
STOCKHOLM, April 25 (Reuters) - A research rocket launched by Sweden Space Corp (SSC) early on Monday from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden malfunctioned and landed 15 km (9.32 miles) inside neighbouring Norway.
The rocket reached an altitude of 250 kilometers (155.34 miles) where experiments were carried out in zero gravity, the agency said in a statement.
“It landed in the mountains at 1,000 meters altitude, and 10 kilometers from the closest settlement,” Philip Ohlsson, head of communications at SSC, told Reuters on Tuesday.
There are routines in place when things go wrong and we inform both Swedish and Norwegian governments, and other actors, he said.
It can track objects the size of a golf ball traveling at up 30,000 kilometers per hour in LEO.
Mariella Moon - April 24th, 2021
There's a new giant space radar in Costa Rica that can track orbital debris as small as two centimeters. It was built by LeoLabs, a company that provides commercial radar tracking services for objects in Low Earth Orbit, which has declared the site fully operational less than a year after breaking ground. LeoLabs CEO Dan Ceperley said it's the “most advanced commercial space radar of its kind” — one that's capable of tracking objects the size of a golf ball traveling at up 30,000 kilometers per hour.
The radar can keep an eye on both active satellites and space junk, which make up the vast majority of man-made objects found in LEO. They're also the risks LeoLabs' customers — made up of satellite operators, defense, space and regulatory agencies, insurance and scientific institutions — want to keep tabs on.
https://www.engadget.com/space-radar-costa-rica-track-tiny-orbital-debris-045119323.html
The UP Aerospace rocket suffered an anomaly about three seconds after liftoff, destroying student projects and the cremated remains of two individuals.
Passant Rabie - 2 May 2023
A small suborbital rocket from Colorado-based company UP Aerospace failed shortly after its launch on Monday, exploding seconds after liftoff over the New Mexico desert. The rocket was carrying over a dozen student experiment payloads for NASA, as well as the cremated remains of a late NASA astronaut.
UP Aerospace’s SpaceLoft XL rocket launched at 12:45 p.m. ET on May 1 from Spaceport America. Around three seconds after ignition, the rocket suffered an anomaly and was destroyed in flight, KVIA-TV reported.
The rocket was packed with 13 payloads from NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge—a series of science and technology experiments created by students from the sixth to 12th grades.
https://gizmodo.com/rocket-nasa-astronaut-cremated-remains-destroyed-1850394994
A small rocket carrying ashes for a suborbital memorial service blew up seconds after launch, but the company claims the precious payload managed to survive.
Passant Rabie - 3 May 2023
More than 100 capsules containing cremated human remains have been recovered after a rocket carrying the ashes for a space memorial service exploded over the New Mexico desert.
Up Aerospace launched its suborbital rocket on Monday at 12:45 p.m. ET from Spaceport America. The rocket was carrying over a dozen student experiment payloads for NASA, as well as the cremated remains of a late NASA astronaut and a chemist, among others, whose families had sent them off for a suborbital memorial service. About three seconds after liftoff, however, the rocket suffered a fatal anomaly that caused it to blow up.
Incredibly, the cremated ashes survived the explosion and have been recovered, according to space memorial service Celestis. “All 120 flight capsules are safely in the hands of launch personnel and will be returned to us awaiting our next flight,” Charles Chafer, Celestis co-founder and CEO, explained in an emailed statement. “While the rocket was destroyed in flight, the care and professionalism of our launch service provider—Up Aerospace—ensured that the Celestis payload was unharmed and will be able to be relaunched.”
https://gizmodo.com/cremated-remains-astronaut-recovered-failed-launch-1850401214