human spaceflight

here’s-what-nasa-would-like-to-see-spacex-accomplish-with-starship-this-year

Here’s what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year


Iterate, iterate, and iterate some more

The seventh test flight of Starship is scheduled for launch Thursday afternoon.

SpaceX’s upgraded Starship rocket stands on its launch pad at Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX plans to launch the seventh full-scale test flight of its massive Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket Thursday afternoon. It’s the first of what might be a dozen or more demonstration flights this year as SpaceX tries new things with the most powerful rocket ever built.

There are many things on SpaceX’s Starship to-do list in 2025. They include debuting an upgraded, larger Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, on the test flight preparing to launch Thursday. The one-hour launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 22: 00 UTC) at SpaceX’s launch base in South Texas. You can watch SpaceX’s live webcast of the flight here.

SpaceX will again attempt to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster—more than 20 stories tall and wider than a jumbo jet—back at the launch pad using mechanical arms, or “chopsticks,” mounted to the launch tower. Read more about the Starship Block 2 upgrades in our story from last week.

You might think of next week’s Starship test flight as an apéritif before the entrées to come. Ars recently spoke with Lisa Watson-Morgan, the NASA engineer overseeing the agency’s contract with SpaceX to develop a modified version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon. NASA has contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop and fly two Starship human landing missions under the umbrella of the agency’s Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

We are publishing the entire interview with Watson-Morgan below, but first, let’s assess what SpaceX might accomplish with Starship this year.

There are many things to watch for on this test flight, including the deployment of 10 satellite simulators to test the ship’s payload accommodations and the performance of a beefed-up heat shield as the vehicle blazes through the atmosphere for reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

If this all works, SpaceX may try to launch a ship into low-Earth orbit on the eighth flight, expected to launch in the next couple of months. All of the Starship test flights to date have intentionally flown on suborbital trajectories, bringing the ship back toward reentry over the sea northwest of Australia after traveling halfway around the world.

Then, there’s an even bigger version of Starship called Block 3 that could begin flying before the end of the year. This version of the ship is the one that SpaceX will use to start experimenting with in-orbit refueling, according to Watson-Morgan.

In order to test refueling, two Starships will dock together in orbit, allowing one vehicle to transfer super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into the other. Nothing like this on this scale has ever been attempted before. Future Starship missions to the Moon and Mars may require 10 or more tanker missions to gas up in low-Earth orbit. All of these missions will use different versions of the same basic Starship design: a human-rated lunar lander, a propellant depot, and a refueling tanker.

Artist’s illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

Questions for 2025

Catching Starship back at its launch tower and demonstrating orbital propellant transfer are the two most significant milestones on SpaceX’s roadmap for 2025.

SpaceX officials have said they aim to fly as many as 25 Starship missions this year, allowing engineers to more rapidly iterate on the vehicle’s design. SpaceX is constructing a second launch pad at its Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, to help speed up the launch cadence.

Can SpaceX achieve this flight rate in 2025? Will faster Starship manufacturing and reusability help the company fly more often? Will SpaceX fly its first ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration this year? When will Starship begin launching large batches of new-generation Starlink Internet satellites?

Licensing delays at the Federal Aviation Administration have been a thorn in SpaceX’s side for the last couple of years. Will those go away under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who counts SpaceX founder Elon Musk as a key adviser?

And will SpaceX gain a larger role in NASA’s Artemis lunar program? The Artemis program’s architecture is sure to be reviewed by the Trump administration and the nominee for the agency’s next administrator, billionaire businessman and astronaut Jared Isaacman.

The very expensive Space Launch System rocket, developed by NASA with Boeing and other traditional aerospace contractors, might be canceled. NASA currently envisions the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft as the transportation system to ferry astronauts between Earth and the vicinity of the Moon, where crews would meet up with a landing vehicle provided by commercial partners SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Watson-Morgan didn’t have answers to all of these questions. Many of them are well outside of her purview as Human Landing System program manager, so Ars didn’t ask. Instead, Ars discussed technical and schedule concerns with her during the half-hour interview. Here is one part of the discussion, lightly edited for clarity.

Ars: What do you hope to see from Flight 7 of Starship?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: One of the exciting parts of working with SpaceX are these test flights. They have a really fast turnaround, where they put in different lessons learned. I think you saw many of the flight objectives that they discussed from Flight 6, which was a great success. I think they mentioned different thermal testing experiments that they put on the ship in order to understand the different heating, the different loads on certain areas of the system. All that was really good with each one of those, in addition to how they configure the tiles. Then, from that, there’ll be additional tests that they will put on Flight 7, so you kind of get this iterative improvement and learning that we’ll get to see in Flight 7. So Flight 7 is the first Version 2 of their ship set. When I say that, I mean the ship, the booster, all the systems associated with it. So, from that, it’s really more just understanding how the system, how the flaps, how all of that interacts and works as they’re coming back in. Hopefully we’ll get to see some catches, that’s always exciting.

Ars: How did the in-space Raptor engine relight go on Flight 6 (on November 19)?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: Beautifully. And that’s something that’s really important to us because when we’re sitting on the Moon… well, actually, the whole path to the Moon as we are getting ready to land on the Moon, we’ll perform a series of maneuvers, and the Raptors will have an environment that is very, very cold. To that, it’s going to be important that they’re able to relight for landing purposes. So that was a great first step towards that. In addition, after we land, clearly the Raptors will be off, and it will get very cold, and they will have to relight in a cold environment (to get off the Moon). So that’s why that step was critical for the Human Landing System and NASA’s return to the Moon.

A recent artist’s illustration of two Starships docked together in low-Earth orbit. Credit: SpaceX

Ars: Which version of the ship is required for the propellant transfer demonstration, and what new features are on that version to enable this test?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: We’re looking forward to the Version 3, which is what’s coming up later on, sometime in ’25, in the near term, because that’s what we need for propellant transfer and the cryo fluid work that is also important to us… There are different systems in the V3 set that will help us with cryo fluid management. Obviously, with those, we have to have the couplers and the quick-disconnects in order for the two systems to have the right guidance, navigation, trajectory, all the control systems needed to hold their station-keeping in order to dock with each other, and then perform the fluid transfer. So all the fluid lines and all that’s associated with that, those systems, which we have seen in tests and held pieces of when we’ve been working with them at their site, we’ll get to see those actually in action on orbit.

Ars: Have there been any ground tests of these systems, whether it’s fluid couplers or docking systems? Can you talk about some of the ground tests that have gone into this development?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: Oh, absolutely. We’ve been working with them on ground tests for this past year. We’ve seen the ground testing and reviewed the data. Our team works with them on what we deem necessary for the various milestones. While the milestone contains proprietary (information), we work closely with them to ensure that it’s going to meet the intent, safety-wise as well as technically, of what we’re going to need to see. So they’ve done that.

Even more exciting, they have recently shipped some of their docking systems to the Johnson Space Center for testing with the Orion Lockheed Martin docking system, and that’s for Artemis III. Clearly, that’s how we’re going to receive the crew. So those are some exciting tests that we’ve been doing this past year as well that’s not just focused on, say, the booster and the ship. There are a lot of crew systems that are being developed now. We’re in work with them on how we’re going to effectuate the crew manual control requirements that we have, so it’s been a great balance to see what the crew needs, given the size of the ship. That’s been a great set of work. We have crew office hours where the crew travels to Hawthorne [SpaceX headquarters in California] and works one-on-one with the different responsible engineers in the different technical disciplines to make sure that they understand not just little words on the paper from a requirement, but actually what this means, and then how systems can be operated.

Ars: For the docking system, Orion uses the NASA Docking System, and SpaceX brings its own design to bear on Starship?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: This is something that I think the Human Landing System has done exceptionally well. When we wrote our high-level set of requirements, we also wrote it with a bigger picture in mind—looked into the overall standards of how things are typically done, and we just said it has to be compliant with it. So it’s a docking standard compliance, and SpaceX clearly meets that. They certainly do have the Dragon heritage, of course, with the International Space Station. So, because of that, we have high confidence that they’re all going to work very well. Still, it’s important to go ahead and perform the ground testing and get as much of that out of the way as we can.

Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager, is based at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: ASA/Aubrey Gemignani

Ars: How far along is the development and design of the layout of the crew compartment at the top of Starship? Is it far along, or is it still in the conceptual phase? What can you say about that?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: It’s much further along there. We’ve had our environmental control and life support systems, whether it’s carbon dioxide monitoring fans to make sure the air is circulating properly. We’ve been in a lot of work with SpaceX on the temperature. It’s… a large area (for the crew). The seats, making sure that the crew seats and the loads on that are appropriate. For all of that work, as the analysis work has been performed, the NASA team is reviewing it. They had a mock-up, actually, of some of their life support systems even as far back as eight-plus months ago. So there’s been a lot of progress on that.

Ars: Is SpaceX planning to use a touchscreen design for crew displays and controls, like they do with the Dragon spacecraft?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: We’re in talks about that, about what would be the best approach for the crew for the dynamic environment of landing.

Ars: I can imagine it is a pretty dynamic environment with those Raptor engines firing. It’s almost like a launch in reverse.

Lisa Watson-Morgan: Right. Those are some of the topics that get discussed in the crew office hours. That’s why it’s good to have the crew interacting directly, in addition to the different discipline leads, whether it’s structural, mechanical, propulsion, to have all those folks talking guidance and having control to say, “OK, well, when the system does this, here’s the mode we expect to see. Here’s the impact on the crew. And is this condition, or is the option space that we have on the table, appropriate for the next step, with respect to the displays.”

Ars: One of the big things SpaceX needs to prove out before going to the Moon with Starship is in-orbit propellant transfer. When do you see the ship-to-ship demonstration occurring?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: I see it occurring in ’25.

Ars: Anything more specific about the schedule for that?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: That’d be a question for SpaceX because they do have a number of flights that they’re performing commercially, for their maturity. We get the benefit of that. It’s actually a great partnership. I’ll tell you, it’s really good working with them on this, but they’d have to answer that question. I do foresee it happening in ’25.

Ars: What things do you need to see SpaceX accomplish before they’re ready for the refueling demo? I’m thinking of things like the second launch tower, potentially. Do they need to demonstrate a ship catch or anything like that before going for orbital refueling?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: I would say none of that’s required. You just kind of get down to, what are the basics? What are the basics that you need? So you need to be able to launch rapidly off the same pad, even. They’ve shown they can launch and catch within a matter of minutes. So that is good confidence there. The catching is part of their reuse strategy, which is more of their commercial approach, and not a NASA requirement. NASA reaps the benefit of it by good pricing as a result of their commercial model, but it is not a requirement that we have. So they could theoretically use the same pad to perform the propellant transfer and the long-duration flight, because all it requires is two launches, really, within a specified time period to where the two systems can meet in a planned trajectory or orbit to do the propellant transfer. So they could launch the first one, and then within a week or two or three, depending on what the concept of operations was that we thought we could achieve at that time, and then have the propellant transfer demo occur that way. So you don’t necessarily need two pads, but you do need more thermal characterization of the ship. I would say that is one of the areas (we need to see data on), and that is one of the reasons, I think, why they’re working so diligently on that.

Ars: You mentioned the long-duration flight demonstration. What does that entail?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: The simple objectives are to launch two different tankers or Starships. The Starship will eventually be a crewed system. Clearly, the ones that we’re talking about for the propellant transfer are not. It’s just to have the booster and Starship system launch, and within a few weeks, have another one launch, and have them rendezvous. They need to be able to find each other with their sensors. They need to be able to come close, very, very close, and they need to be able to dock together, connect, do the quick connect, and make sure they are able, then, to flow propellant and LOX (liquid oxygen) to another system. Then, we need to be able to measure the quantity of how much has gone over. And from that, then they need to safely undock and dispose.

Ars: So the long-duration flight demonstration is just part of what SpaceX needs to do in order to be ready for the propellant transfer demonstration?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: We call it long duration just because it’s not a 45-minute or an hour flight. Long duration, obviously, that’s a relative statement, but it’s a system that can stay up long enough to be able to find another Starship and perform those maneuvers and flow of fuel and LOX.

Ars: How much propellant will you transfer with this demonstration, and do you think you’ll get all the data you need in one demonstration, or will SpaceX need to try this several times?

Lisa Watson-Morgan: That’s something you can ask SpaceX (about how much propellant will be transferred). Clearly, I know, but there’s some sensitivity there. You’ve seen our requirements in our initial solicitation. We have thresholds and goals, meaning we want you to at least do this, but more is better, and that’s typically how we work almost everything. Working with commercial industry in these fixed-price contracts has worked exceptionally well, because when you have providers that are also wanting to explore commercially or trying to make a commercial system, they are interested in pushing more than what we would typically ask for, and so often we get that for an incredibly fair price.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Here’s what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year Read More »

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NASA says Orion’s heat shield is good to go for Artemis II—but does it matter?

“We have since determined that while the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere, as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield outer layer, leading to gases forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield,” said Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator. “This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer.”

An independent team of experts concurred with NASA’s determination of the root cause, Melroy said.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, Associate Administrator Jim Free, and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman speak with reporters Thursday in Washington, DC. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Counterintuitively, this means NASA engineers are comfortable with the safety of the heat shield if the Orion spacecraft reenters the atmosphere at a slightly steeper angle than it did on Artemis I and spends more time subjected to higher temperatures.

When the Orion spacecraft climbed back out of the atmosphere during the Artemis I skip reentry, a period known as the skip dwell, NASA said heating rates decreased and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This generated gases inside the heat shield through a process known as pyrolysis. 

“Pyrolysis is just burning without oxygen,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars program. “We learned that as part of that reaction, the permeability of the Avcoat material is essential.”

During the skip dwell, “the production of those gases was higher than the permeability could tolerate, so as a result, pressure differential was created. That pressure led to cracks in plane with the outer mold line of the vehicle,” Kshatriya said.

NASA didn’t know this could happen because engineers tested the heat shield on the ground at higher temperatures than the Orion spacecraft encountered in flight to prove the thermal barrier could withstand the most extreme possible heating during reentry.

“What we missed was this critical region in the middle, and we missed that region because we didn’t have the test facilities to produce the low-level energies that occur during skip and dwell,” Kshatriya said Thursday.

During the investigation, NASA replicated the charring and cracking after engineers devised a test procedure to expose Avcoat heat shield material to the actual conditions of the Artemis I reentry.

So, for Artemis II, NASA plans to modify the reentry trajectory to reduce the skip reentry’s dwell time. Let’s include some numbers to help illustrate the difference.

The distance traveled by Artemis I during the reentry phase of the mission was more than 3,000 nautical miles (3,452 miles; 5,556 kilometers), according to Kshatriya. This downrange distance will be limited to no more than 1,775 nautical miles (2,042 miles; 3,287 kilometers) on Artemis II, effectively reducing the dwell time the Orion spacecraft spends in the lower heating regime that led to the cracking on Artemis I.

NASA’s inspector general report in May included new images of Orion’s heat shield that the agency did not initially release after the Artemis I mission. Credit: NASA Inspector General

With this change, Kshatriya said NASA engineers don’t expect to see the heat shield erosion they saw on Artemis I. “The gas generation that occurs during that skip dwell is sufficiently low that the environment for crack generation is not going to overwhelm the structural integrity of the char layer.”

For future Orion spaceships, NASA and its Orion prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, will incorporate changes to address the heat shield’s permeability problem.

Waiting for what?

NASA officials discussed the heat shield issue, and broader plans for the Artemis program, in a press conference in Washington on Thursday. But the event’s timing added a coat of incredulity to much of what they said. President-elect Donald Trump, with SpaceX founder Elon Musk in his ear, has vowed to cut wasteful government spending.

NASA says Orion’s heat shield is good to go for Artemis II—but does it matter? Read More »

trump-nominates-jared-isaacman-to-become-the-next-nasa-administrator

Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator.

“I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology, and exploration.”

In a post on X, Isaacman said he was “honored” to receive Trump’s nomination.

“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” Isaacman wrote. “On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun.”

Top officials who served at NASA under President Trump and President Obama endorsed Isaacman as the next NASA boss.

“Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family,” said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump’s first term in the White House. “Jared’s vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him.”

Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman’s nomination was “terrific news,” adding that “he has the opportunity to build on NASA’s amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future.”

Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training. If the Senate confirms his nomination, Isaacman would become the 15th NASA administrator, and the fourth who has flown in space.

Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator Read More »

rocket-report:-a-good-week-for-blue-origin;-italy-wants-its-own-launch-capability

Rocket Report: A good week for Blue Origin; Italy wants its own launch capability


Blue Origin is getting ready to test-fire its first fully integrated New Glenn rocket in Florida.

Blue Origin’s first fully integrated New Glenn rocket rolls out to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.21 of the Rocket Report! We’re publishing the Rocket Report a little early this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We don’t expect any Thanksgiving rocket launches this year, but still, there’s a lot to cover from the last six days. It seems like we’ve seen the last flight of the year by SpaceX’s Starship rocket. A NASA filing with the Federal Aviation Administration requests approval to fly an aircraft near the reentry corridor over the Indian Ocean for the next Starship test flight. The application suggests the target launch date is January 11, 2025.

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.

Another grim first in Ukraine. For the first time in warfare, Russia launched an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile against a target in Ukraine, Ars reports. This attack on November 21 followed an announcement from Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier the same week that the country would change its policy for employing nuclear weapons in conflict. The IRBM, named Oreshnik, is the longest-range weapon ever used in combat in Europe, and could be refitted to carry nuclear warheads on future strikes.

Putin’s rationale … Putin says his ballistic missile attack on Ukraine is a warning to the West after the US and UK governments approved Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied ATACMS and Storm Shadow tactical ballistic missiles against targets on Russian territory. The Russian leader said his forces could attack facilities in Western countries that supply weapons for Ukraine to use on Russian territory, continuing a troubling escalatory ladder in the bloody war in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, this attack has another rocket connection. The target was apparently a factory in Dnipro that, not long ago, produced booster stages for Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket.

Blue Origin hops again. Blue Origin launched its ninth suborbital human spaceflight over West Texas on November 22, CollectSpace reports. Six passengers rode the company’s suborbital New Shepard booster to the edge of space, reaching an altitude of 347,661 feet (65.8 miles or 106 kilometers), flying 3 miles (4.8 km) above the Kármán line that serves as the internationally-accepted border between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. The pressurized capsule carrying the six passengers separated from the booster, giving them a taste of microgravity before parachuting back to Earth.

Dreams fulfilled … These suborbital flights are getting to be more routine, and may seem insignificant compared to Blue Origin’s grander ambitions of flying a heavy-lift rocket and building a human-rated Moon lander. However, we’ll likely have to wait many years before truly routine access to orbital flights becomes available for anyone other than professional astronauts or multimillionaires. This means tickets to ride on suborbital spaceships from Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic are currently the only ways to get to space, however briefly, for something on the order of $1 million or less. That puts the cost of one of these seats within reach for hundreds of thousands of people, and within the budgets of research institutions and non-profits to fund a flight for a scientist, student, or a member of the general public. The passengers on the November 22 flight included Emily Calandrelli, known online as “The Space Gal,” an engineer, Netflix host, and STEM education advocate who became the 100th woman to fly to space. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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Rocket Lab flies twice in one day. Two Electron rockets took flight Sunday, one from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula and the other from Wallops Island, Virginia, making Rocket Lab the first commercial space company to launch from two different hemispheres in a 24-hour period, Payload reports. One of the missions was the third of five launches for the French Internet of Things company Kinéis, which is building a satellite constellation. The other launch was an Electron modified to act as a suborbital technology demonstrator for hypersonic research. Rocket Lab did not disclose the customer, but speculation is focused on the defense contractor Leidos, which signed a four-launch deal with Rocket Lab last year.

Building cadence … SpaceX first launched two Falcon 9 rockets in 24 hours in 2021. This year, the company launched three Falcon 9s in a single day from pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Rocket Lab has now launched 14 Electron rockets this year, more than any other Western company other than SpaceX. “Two successful launches less than 24 hours apart from pads in different hemispheres. That’s unprecedented capability in the small launch market and one we’re immensely proud to deliver at Rocket Lab,” said Peter Beck, the company’s founder and CEO. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Italy to reopen offshore launch site. An Italian-run space center located in Kenya will once again host rocket launches from an offshore launch platform, European Spaceflight reports. The Italian minister for enterprises, Adolfo Urso, recently announced that the country decided to move ahead with plans to again launch rockets from the Luigi Broglio Space Center near Malindi, Kenya. “The idea is to give a new, more ambitious mission to this base and use it for the launch of low-orbit microsatellites,” Urso said.

Decades of dormancy … Between 1967 and 1988, the Italian government and NASA partnered to launch nine US-made Scout rockets from the Broglio Space Center to place small satellites into orbit. The rockets lifted off from the San Marco platform, a converted oil platform in equatorial waters off the Kenyan coast. Italian officials have not said what rocket might be used once the San Marco platform is reactivated, but Italy is the leading contributor on the Vega C rocket, a solid-fueled launcher somewhat larger than the Scout. Italy will manage the reactivation of the space center, which has remained in service as a satellite tracking station, under the country’s Mattei Plan, an initiative aimed at fostering stronger economic partnerships with African nations. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX flies same rocket twice in two weeks. Less than 14 days after its previous flight, a Falcon 9 booster took off again from Florida’s Space Coast early Monday to haul 23 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit, Spaceflight Now reports. The booster, numbered B1080 in SpaceX’s fleet of reusable rockets, made its 13th trip to space before landing on SpaceX’s floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The launch marked a turnaround of 13 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes from this booster’s previous launch November 11, also with a batch of Starlink satellites. The previous record turnaround time between flights of the same Falcon 9 booster was 21 days.

400 and still going … SpaceX’s launch prior to this one was on Saturday night, when a Falcon 9 carried a set of Starlinks aloft from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The flight Saturday night was the 400th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010, and SpaceX’s 100th launch from the West Coast. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Chinese firm launches upgraded rocket. Chinese launch startup LandSpace put two satellites into orbit late Tuesday with the first launch of an improved version of the Zhuque-2 rocket, Space News reports. The enhanced rocket, named the Zhuque-2E, replaces vernier steering thrusters with a thrust vector control system on the second stage engine, saving roughly 880 pounds (400 kilograms) in mass. The Zhuque-2E rocket is capable of placing a payload of up to 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit, according to LandSpace.

LandSpace in the lead … Founded in 2015, LandSpace is a leader among China’s crop of quasi-commercial launch startups. The company hasn’t launched as often as some of its competitors, but it became the first launch operator in the world to successfully reach orbit with a methane/liquid oxygen (methalox) rocket last year. Now, LandSpace has improved on its design to create the Zhuque-2E rocket, which also has a large niobium allow nozzle extension on the second stage engine for reduced weight. LandSpace also claims the Zhuque-2E is China’s first rocket to use fully supercooled propellant loading, similar to the way SpaceX loads densified propellants into its rockets to achieve higher performance. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

NASA taps Falcon Heavy for another big launch. A little more than a month after SpaceX launched NASA’s flagship Europa Clipper mission on a Falcon Heavy rocket, the space agency announced its next big interplanetary probe will also launch on a Falcon Heavy, Ars reports. What’s more, the Dragonfly mission the Falcon Heavy will launch in 2028 is powered by a plutonium power source. This will be the first time SpaceX launches a rocket with nuclear materials onboard, requiring an additional layer of safety certification by NASA. The agency’s most recent nuclear-powered spacecraft have all launched on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets, which are nearing retirement.

The details … Dragonfly is one of the most exciting robotic missions NASA has ever developed. The mission is to send an automated rotorcraft to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, where Dragonfly will soar through a soupy atmosphere in search of organic molecules, the building blocks of life. It’s a hefty vehicle, about the size of a compact car, and much larger than NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter. The launch period opens July 5, 2028, to allow Dragonfly to reach Titan in 2034. NASA is paying SpaceX $256.6 million to launch the mission on a Falcon Heavy. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

New Glenn is back on the pad. Blue Origin has raised its fully stacked New Glenn rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of pre-launch testing, Florida Today reports. The last time this new 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket was visible to the public eye was in March. Since then, Blue Origin has been preparing the rocket for its inaugural launch, which could yet happen before the end of the year. Blue Origin has not announced a target launch date.

But first, more tests … Blue Origin erected the New Glenn rocket vertical on the launch pad earlier this year for ground tests, but this is the first time a flight-ready (or close to it) New Glenn has been spotted on the pad. This time, the first stage booster has its full complement of seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines. Before the first flight, Blue Origin plans to test-fire the seven BE-4 engines on the pad and conduct one or more propellant loading tests to exercise the launch team, the rocket, and ground systems before launch day.

Second Ariane 6 incoming. ArianeGroup has confirmed that the first and second stages for the second Ariane 6 flight have begun the transatlantic voyage from Europe to French Guiana aboard the sail-assisted transport ship Canopée, European Spaceflight reports. The second Ariane 6 launch, previously targeted before the end of this year, has now been delayed to no earlier than February 2025, according to Arianespace, the rocket’s commercial operator. This follows a mostly successful debut launch in July.

An important passenger … While the first Ariane 6 launch carried a cluster of small experimental satellites, the second Ariane 6 rocket will carry a critical spy satellite into orbit for the French armed forces. Shipping the core elements of the second Ariane 6 to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, is a significant step in the launch campaign. Once in Kourou, the stages will be connected together and rolled out to the launch pad, where technicians will install two strap-on solid rocket boosters and the payload fairing containing France’s CSO-3 military satellite.

Next three launches

Nov. 29: Soyuz-2.1a | Kondor-FKA 2 | Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia | 21: 50 UTC

Nov. 30: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-65 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05: 00 UTC

Nov. 30: Falcon 9 | NROL-126 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08: 08 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: A good week for Blue Origin; Italy wants its own launch capability Read More »

nasa-is-stacking-the-artemis-ii-rocket,-implying-a-simple-heat-shield-fix

NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix

A good sign

The readiness of the Orion crew capsule, where the four Artemis II astronauts will live during their voyage around the Moon, is driving NASA’s schedule for the mission. Officially, Artemis II is projected to launch in September of next year, but there’s little chance of meeting that schedule.

At the beginning of this year, NASA officials ruled out any opportunity to launch Artemis II in 2024 due to several technical issues with the Orion spacecraft. Several of these issues are now resolved, but NASA has not released any meaningful updates on the most significant problem.

This problem involves the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. During atmospheric reentry at the end of the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, the Orion capsule’s heat shield eroded and cracked in unexpected ways, prompting investigations by NASA engineers and an independent panel.

NASA’s Orion heat shield inquiry ran for nearly two years. The investigation has wrapped up, two NASA officials said last month, but they declined to discuss any details of the root cause of the heat shield issue or the actions required to resolve the problem on Artemis II.

These corrective options ranged from doing nothing to changing the Orion spacecraft’s reentry angle to mitigate heating or physically modifying the Artemis II heat shield. In the latter scenario, NASA would have to disassemble the Orion spacecraft, which is already put together and is undergoing environmental testing at Kennedy Space Center. This would likely delay the Artemis II launch by a couple of years.

In August, NASA’s top human exploration official told Ars that the agency would hold off on stacking the SLS rocket until engineers had a good handle on the heat shield problem. There are limits to how long the solid rocket boosters can remain stacked vertically. The joints connecting each segment of the rocket motors are certified for one year. This clock doesn’t actually start ticking until NASA stacks the next booster segments on top of the lowermost segments.

However, NASA waived this rule on Artemis I when the boosters were stacked nearly two years before the successful launch.

A NASA spokesperson told Ars on Wednesday that the agency had nothing new to share on the Orion heat shield or what changes, if any, are required for the Artemis II mission. This information should be released before the end of the year, she said. At the same time, NASA could announce a new target launch date for Artemis II at the end of 2025, or more likely in 2026.

But because NASA gave the “go” for SLS stacking now, it seems safe to rule out any major hardware changes on the Orion heat shield for Artemis II.

NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix Read More »

the-iss-has-been-leaking-air-for-5-years,-and-engineers-still-don’t-know-why

The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why

“The station is not young,” said Michael Barratt, a NASA astronaut who returned from the space station last month. “It’s been up there for quite a while, and you expect some wear and tear, and we’re seeing that.”

“The Russians believe that continued operations are safe, but they can’t prove to our satisfaction that they are,” said Cabana, who was the senior civil servant at NASA until his retirement in 2023. “And the US believes that it’s not safe, but we can’t prove that to the Russian satisfaction that that’s the case.

“So while the Russian team continues to search for and seal the leaks, it does not believe catastrophic disintegration of the PrK is realistic,” Cabana said. “And NASA has expressed concerns about the structural integrity of the PrK and the possibility of a catastrophic failure.”

Closing the PrK hatch permanently would eliminate the use of one of the space station’s four Russian docking ports.

NASA has chartered a team of independent experts to assess the cracks and leaks and help determine the root cause, Cabana said. “This is an engineering problem, and good engineers should be able to agree on it.”

As a precaution, Barratt said space station crews are also closing the hatch separating the US and Russian sections of the space station when cosmonauts are working in the PrK.

“The way it’s affected us, mostly, is as they go in and open that to unload a cargo vehicle that’s docked to it, they’ve also taken time to inspect and try to repair when they can,” Barratt said. “We’ve taken a very conservative approach to closing the hatch between the US side and the Russian side for those time periods.

“It’s not a comfortable thing, but it is the best agreement between all the smart people on both sides, and it’s something that we as a crew live with and adapt.”

The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why Read More »

there-are-some-things-the-crew-8-astronauts-aren’t-ready-to-talk-about

There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about


“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it. I said we’re not going to talk about it.”

NASA astronaut Michael Barratt works with a spacesuit inside the Quest airlock of the International Space Station on May 31. Credit: NASA

The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth.

In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an unspecified “medical issue” after splashdown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that concluded the 235-day mission. After an overnight stay in a hospital in Florida, NASA said the astronaut was released “in good health” and returned to their home base in Houston to resume normal post-flight activities.

The space agency did not identify the astronaut or any details about their condition, citing medical privacy concerns. The three NASA astronauts on the Dragon spacecraft included commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin accompanied the three NASA crew members. Russia’s space agency confirmed he was not hospitalized after returning to Earth.

Dominick, Barratt, and Epps answered media questions in a post-flight press conference Friday, but they did not offer more information on the medical issue or say who experienced it. NASA initially sent all four crew members to the hospital in Pensacola, Florida, for evaluation, but Grebenkin and two of the NASA astronauts were quickly released and cleared to return to Houston. One astronaut remained behind until the next day.

“Spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand,” said Barratt, a medical doctor and flight surgeon. “We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes. This was one of those times, and we’re still piecing things together on this, and so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we’re going to say about that event at this time.”

NASA typically makes astronaut health data available to outside researchers, who regularly publish papers while withholding identifying information about crew members. NASA officials often tout gaining knowledge about the human body’s response to spaceflight as one of the main purposes of the International Space Station. The agency is subject to federal laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, restricting the release of private medical information.

“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it,” Barratt said. “I said we’re not going to talk about it. I’m a medical doctor. Space medicine is my passion … and how we adapt, how we experience human spaceflight is something that we all take very seriously.”

Maybe some day

Barratt said NASA will release more information about the astronaut’s post-flight medical issue “in the fullness of time.” This was Barratt’s third trip to space and the first spaceflight for Dominick and Epps.

One of the most famous incidents involving hospitalized astronauts was in 1975, before the passage of the HIPAA medical privacy law, when NASA astronauts Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand stayed at a military hospital in Hawaii nearly two weeks after inhaling toxic propellant fumes that accidentally entered their spacecraft’s internal cabin as it descended under parachutes. They were returning to Earth at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, in which they docked their Apollo command module to a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit.

NASA’s view—and perhaps the public’s, too—of medical privacy has changed in the nearly 50 years since. On that occasion, NASA disclosed that the astronauts suffered from lung irritation, and officials said Brand briefly passed out from the fumes after splashdown, remaining unconscious until his crewmates fitted an oxygen mask tightly over his face. NASA and the military also made doctors available to answer media questions about their condition.

The medical concern after splashdown last month was not the only part of the Crew-8 mission that remains shrouded in mystery. Dominick and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson were supposed to go outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk June 13, but NASA called off the excursion, citing a “spacesuit discomfort issue.” NASA replaced Dominick with Barratt and rescheduled the spacewalk for June 24 to retrieve a faulty electronics box and collect microbial samples from the exterior of the space station. But that excursion ended after just 31 minutes, when Dyson reported a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of her spacesuit.

While Barratt discussed the water leak in some detail Friday, Dominick declined to answer a question from Ars regarding the suit discomfort issue. “We’re still reviewing and trying to figure all the details,” he said.

Aging suits

Regarding the water leak, Barratt said he and Dyson noticed her suit had a “spewing umbilical, which was quite dramatic, actually.” The decision to abandon the spacewalk was a “no-brainer,” he said.

“It was not a trivial leak, and we’ve got footage,” Barratt said. “Anybody who was watching NASA TV at the time could see there was basically a snowstorm, a blizzard, spewing from the airlock because we already had the hatch open. So we were seeing flakes of ice in the airlock, and Tracy was seeing a lot of them on her helmet, on her gloves, and whatnot. Dramatic is the right word, to be real honest.”

Dyson, who came back to Earth in September on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, reconnected the leaking umbilical with her gloves and helmet covered with ice, with restricted vision. “Tracy’s actions were nowhere short of heroic,” Barratt said.

Once the leak stabilized, the astronauts closed the hatch and began repressurizing the airlock.

“Getting the airlock closed was kind of me grabbing her legs and using her as an end effector to lever that thing closed, and she just made it happen,” Barratt said. “So, yeah,  there was this drama. Everything worked out fine. Again, normal processes and procedures saved our bacon.”

Barratt said the leak wasn’t caused by any procedural error as the astronauts prepared their suits for the spacewalk.

“It was definitely a hardware issue,” he said. “There was a little poppet valve on the interface that didn’t quite seat, so really, the question became why didn’t that seat? We solved that problem by changing out the whole umbilical.”

By then, NASA’s attention on the space station had turned to other tasks, such as experiments, the arrival of a new cargo ship, and testing of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule docked at the complex, before it ultimately departed and left its crew behind. The spacewalk wasn’t urgent, so it had to wait. NASA now plans to attempt the spacewalk again as soon as January with a different set of astronauts.

Barratt thinks the spacesuits on the space station are good to go for the next spacewalk. However, the suits are decades old, and their original designs date back more than 40 years, when NASA developed the units for use on the space shuttle. Efforts to develop a replacement suit for use in low-Earth orbit have stalled. In June, Collins Aerospace dropped out of a NASA contract to build new spacesuits for servicing the International Space Station and future orbiting research outposts.

“None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use and not really upgrading,” Barratt said.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about Read More »

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Astronaut hospitalized after returning from 235-day space mission

NASA said Friday one its astronauts is in a hospital in Florida for medical observation after a “normal” predawn splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico inside a SpaceX capsule.

The mission’s other three crew members were cleared to return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston after their own medical evaluations, NASA said.

The hospitalized astronaut “is in stable condition and under observation as a precautionary measure,” a NASA spokesperson said in a statement. The agency did not identify the astronaut or provide any more details about their condition, citing medical privacy protections.

Strapped into their seats onside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, the four-person crew splashed down just south of Pensacola, Florida, at 3: 29 am EDT (07: 29 UTC) Friday, wrapping up a 235-day mission in low-Earth orbit.

NASA extended their stay at the International Space Station earlier this year to accommodate schedule changes caused by the troubled test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, then to wait for better weather conditions in SpaceX’s recovery zones near Florida.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were inside SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft for reentry and splashdown. NASA said one of its astronauts “experienced a medical issue” after the splashdown, and all four crew members were flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola for medical evaluation.

Three of the crew members were later released and departed Pensacola on a NASA business jet to fly back to Houston, according to NASA. The unidentified astronaut remains at Ascension.

“We’re grateful to Ascension Sacred Heart for its support during this time, and we are proud of our team for its quick action to ensure the safety of our crew members,” the NASA spokesperson said. “NASA will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, left, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, second from left, Matthew Dominick, second from right, and Jeanette Epps, right are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after splashdown Friday morning.

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, left, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, second from left, Matthew Dominick, second from right, and Jeanette Epps, right are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after splashdown Friday morning. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

This mission, named Crew-8, was SpaceX’s eighth operational crew rotation flight to the space station under a multibillion-dollar commercial crew contract with NASA. This was the first flight to space for Dominick, Epps, and Grebenkin, and the third space mission for Barratt.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, released a photo of Grebenkin standing in Pensacola a few hours after splashdown. “After the space mission and splashdown, cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin feels great!” Roscosmos posted on its Telegram channel.

Adapting to Earth

This is not the first time an astronaut has been hospitalized after returning to Earth, but it is uncommon. South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon was hospitalized for back pain after experiencing higher-than-expected g-forces during reentry in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2008.

Three NASA astronauts were hospitalized in Hawaii after splashing down at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission in 1975. The astronauts suffered lung irritation after breathing in toxic vapors from the Apollo spacecraft’s thrusters in the final moments before splashdown.

Astronaut hospitalized after returning from 235-day space mission Read More »

boeing-is-still-bleeding-money-on-the-starliner-commercial-crew-program

Boeing is still bleeding money on the Starliner commercial crew program


“We signed up to some things that are problematic.”

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft backs away from the International Space Station on September 6 without its crew. Credit: NASA

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.

Mounting losses

Boeing has reported recurring financial losses on the program and added $250 million to the tally with Wednesday’s quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This brings the company’s total losses on Starliner to $1.85 billion, recorded in increments over the last few years as the program has faced technical problems and delays.

In its SEC filing, Boeing wrote: “Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods.”

Boeing runs the Starliner program under a fixed-price contract with NASA, meaning the government pays the contractor a set amount of money, and the company is on the hook for any cost overruns. These are favorable terms for the government because they divert financial risk to the contractor, usually resulting in lower costs if the program is successful.

Since the last Starliner test flight ended in a disappointing fashion, Boeing has released no updates on its plans for the future of the spacecraft. The company released a short written statement after Starliner landed in early September, saying managers would review data and “determine the next steps for the program.”

A week after Starliner landed, Boeing’s chief financial officer, Brian West, echoed that line. “There is important work to determine any next steps for the Starliner program, and we’ll evaluate that,” he said at a conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley.

A member of the Starliner recovery team removes cargo from the spacecraft after landing in New Mexico on September 6, without its two-person crew.

Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

A member of the Starliner recovery team removes cargo from the spacecraft after landing in New Mexico on September 6, without its two-person crew. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

Starliner concluded its third test flight a little more than six weeks ago, leaving behind the two astronauts the craft ferried to the International Space Station earlier in the year. This was the first time people flew into orbit on a Starliner spacecraft.

NASA, which partnered with Boeing to develop the Starliner spacecraft, decided the Boeing capsule should return to Earth without its crew after the test flight encountered problems with overheating thrusters and helium leaks. The spacecraft safely reached the space station with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in June, but agency officials were not comfortable with risking the crew’s safety on Starliner for the trip home. Instead, the duo will return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft early next year.

Boeing managers had a different opinion and lobbied for Starliner to return to Earth with Wilmore and Williams. Ultimately, the Starliner spacecraft parachuted to a successful landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, on September 6, but there’s a lot of work ahead for Boeing to fix the thruster problems and helium leaks before the capsule can fly with people again. This will take many months—potentially a year or more—and will cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars, as shown in Wednesday’s SEC filing.

Doing less

In response to questions Wednesday from Wall Street investment firms, Ortberg, who took the CEO job in August, suggested it’s time for Boeing to look at cutting some of its losses and recalibrate how it pursues new business opportunities. Boeing’s previous CEO, Dave Calhoun, said last year the company would no longer enter into fixed-price development contracts.

“I think that that we’re better off being doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well,” Ortberg said. “So we’re in the process of taking an evaluation of the portfolio. It’s something a new CEO always does when you come into a business.”

Most of Boeing’s financial loss in the third quarter of this year came from the company’s commercial airplane business. Beset by safety concerns with its 737 Max aircraft and a labor strike that has halted production at many of its airplane factories, Boeing posted its worst quarterly performance since the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

Even before the strike, the Federal Aviation Administration capped Boeing’s production rate for the 737 Max, limiting revenue for the commercial airplane business.

Ortberg didn’t specify any programs that Boeing might consider trimming or canceling, but said the company’s “core” business of commercial airplanes and military systems will stay.

“There are probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with, or that just distract us from our main goal here. So, more to come on that,” Ortberg said. “I don’t have a specific list of things that we’re going to keep and we’re not going to keep. That’s something for us to evaluate, and the process is underway.”

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s new CEO, is pictured in 2016 during his tenure as chief executive of Rockwell Collins.

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s new CEO, is pictured in 2016 during his tenure as chief executive of Rockwell Collins. Credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Apart from technical execution, Ortberg identified Boeing’s errors in cost and risk estimation as other reasons for the company’s poor performance on several fixed-price government contracts, including Starliner.

“We’re not going to be able to just wave the wand and clean up these troubled contracts,” he said. “We signed up to some things that are problematic.”

Ortberg said he is reluctant to ditch all of Boeing’s troubled contracts. “Even if we wanted to, I don’t think we can walk away from these contracts,” he said. “These are our core customers that need this capability. We’ve got long-term commitments to them. So walking away isn’t an answer to this.”

However, Orberg added that Boeing could reassess programs as they shift from one contract phase to the next. NASA’s commercial crew contract with Boeing has a maximum value of $4.6 billion, but that assumes the agency gives Boeing the green light to fly six operational Starliner missions.

So far, NASA has only authorized Boeing to begin detailed preparations for three. The latter half of the commercial crew contract remains a question mark, and could be an opportunity for Boeing to reevaluate the Starliner program without breaking its obligations to NASA. This is especially salient because NASA plans to decommission the International Space Station in 2030, and it’s not clear Boeing could fly all six of its Starliner missions before then while still alternating with SpaceX for crew transportation duties.

“We do have to get into a position where we’ve got a portfolio much more balanced with less risky programs and more profitable programs, and we’re going to be working that,” Ortberg said. “But I don’t think a wholesale walkaway is in the cards.”

This statement makes it sound like Boeing isn’t going to pull the plug on Starliner immediately. Still, Boeing hasn’t laid out its specific plans for Starliner, or even confirmed its intention to keep working on the program. This is puzzling.

Saying nothing

Ortberg was not asked about Starliner in Wednesday’s investor call. After the call, Ars asked a Boeing spokesperson if the company still has a long-term commitment to the Starliner program. The spokesperson replied that the company has nothing to share on the topic.

The Starliner test flight this year was supposed to pave the way for NASA to officially certify the Boeing crew capsule to begin flying in a slate of up to six operational crew rotation flights to the space station. Once certified, Boeing will become NASA’s second crew transportation provider alongside SpaceX, which has now launched nine operational crew missions for NASA, plus a handful more all-private astronaut missions.

NASA still wants to certify Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to provide the agency with a second commercial option for getting astronauts into orbit. A fundamental goal set out for NASA’s commercial crew program more than a decade ago was to develop two dissimilar human-rated transportation systems for access to low-Earth orbit. The idea here is competition will drive down costs, and NASA will have a backup option if one of the commercial crew providers runs into difficulties.

However, NASA has not announced whether it will require Boeing to complete another test flight to achieve the certification milestone with Starliner. NASA is looking at slots to fly an unpiloted Starliner spacecraft on a cargo mission to the space station next year, perhaps to verify modifications to the ship’s propulsion system really fix the problems discovered on the test flight this year.

NASA is making moves while assuming Boeing will stay in the game. Astronauts are still assigned to train for the first operational Starliner mission, although it’s not likely to happen until the end of next year or in 2026. Earlier this month, NASA announced SpaceX will launch a four-person crew to the International Space Station no earlier than July of next year, taking a slot that the agency once hoped Boeing would use.

Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, told reporters in late August that he received assurances from Ortberg that Boeing intends to “move forward and fly Starliner in the future.” At the time, Ortberg was just a couple of weeks into his tenure at Boeing.

Two months later, Nelson’s secondhand assertion is still all we have.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Boeing is still bleeding money on the Starliner commercial crew program Read More »

spacex-launches-mission-to-bring-starliner-astronauts-back-to-earth

SpaceX launches mission to bring Starliner astronauts back to Earth

Ch-ch-changes —

SpaceX is bringing back propulsive landings with its Dragon capsule, but only in emergencies.

Updated

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft climbs away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Saturday atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft climbs away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Saturday atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA/Keegan Barber

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov lifted off Saturday from Florida’s Space Coast aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, heading for a five-month expedition on the International Space Station.

The two-man crew launched on top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at 1: 17 pm EDT (17: 17 UTC), taking an advantage of a break in stormy weather to begin a five-month expedition in space. Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines powered the first stage of the flight on a trajectory northeast from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then the booster detached and returned to landing at Cape Canaveral as the Falcon 9’s upper stage accelerated SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft into orbit.

“It was a sweet ride,” Hague said after arriving in space. With a seemingly flawless launch, Hague and Gorbunov are on track to arrive at the space station around 5: 30 pm EDT (2130 UTC) Sunday.

Empty seats

This is SpaceX’s 15th crew mission since 2020, and SpaceX’s 10th astronaut launch for NASA, but Saturday’s launch was unusual in a couple of ways.

“All of our missions have unique challenges and this one, I think, will be memorable for a lot of us,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.

First, only two people rode into orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, rather than the usual complement of four astronauts. This mission, known as Crew-9, originally included Hague, Gorbunov, commander Zena Cardman, and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson.

But the troubled test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft threw a wrench into NASA’s plans. The Starliner mission launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Boeing’s spacecraft reached the space station, but thruster failures and helium leaks plagued the mission, and NASA officials decided last month it was too risky to being the crew back to Earth on Starliner.

NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar commercial crew contracts in 2014, with each company responsible for developing human-rated spaceships to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX flew astronauts for the first time in 2020, and Boeing reached the same milestone with the test flight that launched in June.

Ultimately, the Starliner spacecraft safely returned to Earth on September 6 with a successful landing in New Mexico. But it left Wilmore and Williams behind on the space station with the lab’s long-term crew of seven astronauts and cosmonauts. The space station crew rigged two temporary seats with foam inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft currently docked at the outpost, where the Starliner astronauts would ride home if they needed to evacuate the complex in an emergency.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov in their SpaceX pressure suits.

Enlarge / NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov in their SpaceX pressure suits.

NASA/Kim Shiflett

This is a temporary measure to allow the Dragon spacecraft to return to Earth with six people instead of the usual four. NASA officials decided to remove two of the astronauts from the next SpaceX crew mission to free up normal seats for Wilmore and Williams to ride home in February, when Crew-9 was already slated to end its mission.

The decision to fly the Starliner spacecraft back to Earth without its crew had several second order effects on space station operations. Managers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had to decide who to bump from the Crew-9 mission, and who to keep on the crew.

Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov ended up keeping their seats on the Crew-9 flight. Hague originally trained as the pilot on Crew-9, and NASA decided he would take Zena Cardman’s place as commander. Hague, a 49-year-old Space Force colonel, is a veteran of one long-duration mission on the International Space Station, and also experienced a rare in-flight launch abort in 2018 due to a failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket.

NASA announced the original astronaut assignments for the Crew-9 mission in January. Cardman, a 36-year-old geobiologist, would have been the first rookie astronaut without test pilot experience to command a NASA spaceflight. Three-time space shuttle flier Stephanie Wilson, 58, was the other astronaut removed from the Crew-9 mission.

The decision on who to fly on Crew-9 was a “really close call,” said Bowersox, who oversees NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate. “They were thinking very hard about flying Zena, but in this situation, it made sense to have somebody who had at least one flight under their belt.”

Gorbunov, a 34-year-old Russian aerospace engineer making his first flight to space, moved over to take pilot’s seat in the Crew Dragon spacecraft, although he remains officially designated a mission specialist. His remaining presence on the crew was preordained because of an international agreement between NASA and Russia’s space agency that provides seats for Russian cosmonauts on US crew missions and US astronauts on Russian Soyuz flights to the space station.

Bowersox said NASA will reassign Cardman and Wilson to future flights.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits before their launch.

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits before their launch.

Operational flexibility

This was also the first launch of astronauts from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s busiest launch pad. SpaceX has outfitted the launch pad with the equipment necessary to support launches of human spaceflight missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, including a more than 200-foot-tall tower and a crew access arm to allow astronauts to board spaceships on top of Falcon 9 rockets.

SLC-40 was previously based on a “clean pad” architecture, without any structures to service or access Falcon 9 rockets while they were vertical on the pad. SpaceX also installed slide chutes to give astronauts and ground crews an emergency escape route away from the launch pad in an emergency.

SpaceX constructed the crew tower last year and had it ready for the launch of a Dragon cargo mission to the space station in March. Saturday’s launch demonstrated the pad’s ability to support SpaceX astronaut missions, which have previously all departed from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles north of SLC-40.

Bringing human spaceflight launch capability online at SLC-40 gives SpaceX and NASA additional flexibility in their scheduling. For example, LC-39A remains the only launch pad configured to support flights of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX is now preparing LC-39A for a Falcon Heavy launch October 10 with NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which only has a window of a few weeks to depart Earth this year and reach its destination at Jupiter in 2030.

With SLC-40 now certified for astronaut launches, SpaceX and NASA teams are able to support the Crew-9 and Europa Clipper missions without worrying about scheduling conflicts. The Florida spaceport now has three launch pads certified for crew flights—two for SpaceX’s Dragon and one for Boeing’s Starliner—and NASA will add a fourth human-rated launch pad with the Artemis II mission to the Moon late next year.

“That’s pretty exciting,” said Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator. “I think it’s a reflection of where we are in our space program at NASA, but also the capabilities that the United States has developed.”

Earlier this week, Hague and Gorbunov participated in a launch day dress rehearsal, when they had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with SLC-40. The launch pad has the same capabilities as LC-39A, but with a slightly different layout. SpaceX also test-fired the Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday evening, before lowering the rocket horizontal and moving it back into a hangar for safekeeping as the outer bands of Hurricane Helene moved through Central Florida.

Inside the hangar, SpaceX technicians discovered sooty exhaust from the Falcon 9’s engines accumulated on the outside of the Dragon spacecraft during the test-firing. Ground teams wiped the soot off of the craft’s solar arrays and heat shield, then repainted portions of the capsule’s radiators around the edge of Dragon’s trunk section before rolling the vehicle back to the launch pad Friday.

“It’s important that the radiators radiate heat in the proper way to space, so we had to put some some new paint on to get that back to the right emissivity and the right reflectivity and absorptivity of the solar radiation that hit those panels so it will reject the heat properly,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability.

Gerstenmaier also outlined a new backup ability for the Crew Dragon spacecraft to safely splash down even if all of its parachutes fail to deploy on final descent back to Earth. This involves using the capsule’s eight powerful SuperDraco thrusters, normally only used in the unlikely instance of a launch abort, to fire for a few seconds and slow Dragon’s speed for a safe splashdown.

A hover test using SuperDraco thrusters on a prototype Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2015.

Enlarge / A hover test using SuperDraco thrusters on a prototype Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2015.

SpaceX

“The way it works is, in the case where all the parachutes totally fail, this essentially fires the thrusters at the very end,” Gerstenmaier said. “That essentially gives the crew a chance to land safely, and essentially escape the vehicle. So it’s not used in any partial conditions. We can land with one chute out. We can land with other failures in the chute system. But this is only in the case where all four parachutes just do not operate.”

When SpaceX first designed the Crew Dragon spacecraft more than a decade ago, the company wanted to use the SuperDraco thrusters to enable the capsule to perform propulsive helicopter-like landings. Eventually, SpaceX and NASA agreed to change to a more conventional parachute-assisted splashdown.

The SuperDracos remained on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to push the capsule away from its Falcon 9 rocket during a catastrophic launch failure. The eight high-thrust engines burn hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants that combust when making contact with one another.

The backup option has been activated for some previous commercial Crew Dragon missions, but not for a NASA flight, according to Gerstenmaier. The capability “provides a tolerable landing for the crew,” he added. “So it’s a true deep, deep contingency. I think our philosophy is, rather than have a system that you don’t use, even though it’s not maybe fully certified, it gives the crew a chance to escape a really, really bad situation.”

Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said the emergency propulsive landing capability will be enabled for the return of the Crew-8 mission, which has been at the space station since March. With the arrival of Hague and Gorbunov on Crew-9—and the extension of Wilmore and Williams’ mission—the Crew-8 mission is slated to depart the space station and splash down in early October.

This story was updated after confirmation of a successful launch.

SpaceX launches mission to bring Starliner astronauts back to Earth Read More »

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NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS—unless Russia gets in the way

This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft.

Enlarge / This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA/Roscosmos

A little more than two years ago, Dmitry Rogozin, the bellicose former head of Russia’s space agency, nearly brought the International Space Station partnership to its knees.

During his tenure as director general of Roscosmos, Rogozin was known for his bombastic social media posts and veiled threats to abandon the space station after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin tersely dismissed Rogozin in July 2022 and replaced him with Yuri Borisov, a former deputy prime minister.

While the clash between Russia and Western governments over the war in Ukraine has not cooled, the threats against the International Space Station (ISS) ended. The program remains one of the few examples of cooperation between the US and Russian governments. Last year, Russia formally extended its commitment to the ISS to at least 2028. NASA and space agencies in Europe, Japan, and Canada have agreed to maintain the space station through 2030.

It’s this two-year disparity that concerns NASA officials plotting the final days of the ISS. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in June to develop a deorbit vehicle based on the company’s Dragon spacecraft to steer the more than 450-ton complex toward a safe reentry over a remote stretch of ocean.

“We do have that uncertainty, 2028 through 2030, with Roscosmos,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS program at NASA Headquarters, in a meeting of the agency’s advisory council this week. “We expect to hear from them over the next year or two as far as their follow-on plans, hoping that they also extend through 2030.”

Fighting through the tension

Roscosmos works in four-year increments, so Russia’s decision last year extended the country’s participation in the space station program from 2024 until 2028. Russian space officials know the future of the country’s space program is directly tied to the ISS. If Russia pulls out of the space station in 2028, Roscosmos will be left without much of a human spaceflight program.

There’s no chance Russia will have its own space station in low-Earth orbit in four years, so abandoning its role on the ISS would leave Russia’s Soyuz crew ferry spacecraft without a destination. Russian and Chinese leaders have fostered closer ties in space in recent years, but China’s Tiangong space station is inaccessible from Russia’s launch sites.

The US and Russian segments of the ISS depend on one another for critical functions. The US section generates most of the space station’s electricity and maintains the lab’s orientation without using precious rocket fuel. Russia is responsible for maintaining the station’s altitude and maneuvering the complex out of the path of space junk, although Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft has also demonstrated an ability to boost the station’s orbit.

While Russia’s space program would feel the pain if Roscosmos made an early exit from the space station, the relationship between Russia and the West is volatile. US and European leaders may soon give Ukraine the green light to use Western-supplied weapons for attacks deep inside Russian territory. Putin said last week that this would be tantamount to war. “This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia,” he said.

NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS—unless Russia gets in the way Read More »

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Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit

Ascendant —

Launch startups in China and Europe are borrowing ideas and rhetoric from SpaceX.

Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Enlarge / Landspace’s reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

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.

Landspace hops closer to a reusable rocket. Chinese private space startup Landspace has completed a 10-kilometer (33,000-foot) vertical takeoff and vertical landing test on its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket testbed, including a mid-flight engine reignition at near supersonic conditions, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The 18.3-meter (60-foot) vehicle took off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, ascended to 10,002 meters, and then made a vertical descent and achieved an on-target propulsive landing 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from the launch pad. Notably, the rocket’s methane-fueled variable-thrust engine intentionally shutdown in flight, then reignited for descent, as engines would operate on future full-scale booster flybacks. The test booster used grid fins and cold gas thrusters to control itself when its main engine was dormant, according to Landspace.

“All indicators met the expected design” … Landspace hailed the test as a major milestone in the company’s road to flying its next rocket, the Zhuque-3, as soon as next year. With nine methane-fueled main engines, the Zhuque-3 will initially be able to deliver 21 metric tons (46,300 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit with its booster flying in expendable mode. In 2026, Landspace aims to begin recovering Zhuque-3 first-stage boosters for reuse. Landspace is one of several Chinese companies working seriously on reusable rocket designs. Another Chinese firm, Deep Blue Aerospace, says it plans a 100-kilometer (62-mile) suborbital test of a reusable booster soon, ahead of the first flight of its medium-class Nebula-1 rocket next year. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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Isar Aerospace sets low bar for success on first launch. Daniel Metzler, CEO of German launch startup Isar Aerospace, stated that the first flight of the Spectrum rocket would be a success if it didn’t destroy the launch site, European Spaceflight reports. During an interview at the Handelsblatt innovation conference, Metzler was asked 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,” explained Metzler. “That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.” This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX’s first flight of the Starship rocket last year.

In the catbird seat? … Isar Aerospace could be in a position to become the first in a new crop of European commercial launch companies to attempt its first orbital flight. Another German company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, recently gave up on a possible launch this year after the booster for its first launch caught fire and collapsed during a test at a launch site in Scotland. Isar plans to launch its two-stage Spectrum rocket, designed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit, from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. Isar hasn’t publicized any schedule for the first flight of Spectrum, but there are indications the publicity-shy company is testing hardware at the Norwegian spaceport. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

FAA to introduce new orbital debris rules. The Federal Aviation Administration is moving ahead with efforts to develop rules for the disposal of upper stages as another Centaur upper stage breaks apart in orbit, Space News reports. The FAA released draft regulations on the matter for public comment one year ago, and the head of the agency’s commercial spaceflight division recently said the rules are a “high priority for our organization.” The rules would direct launch operators to dispose of upper stages in one of five ways, from controlled reentries to placement in graveyard or “disposal” orbits not commonly used by operational satellites. One change the FAA might make to the draft rules is to reduce the required timeline for an uncontrolled reentry of a disposed upper stage from no more than 25 years to a shorter timeline. “We got a lot of comments that said it should be a lot less,” said Kelvin Coleman, head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight office. “We’re taking that into consideration.”

Upper stages are a problem … Several recent breakups involving spent upper stages in orbit have highlighted the concern that dead rocket bodies could create unnecessary space junk. Last month, the upper stage from a Chinese Long March 6A disintegrated in low-Earth orbit, creating at least 300 pieces of space debris. More recently, a Centaur upper stage from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket broke apart in a much higher orbit, resulting in more than 40 pieces of debris. This was the fourth time one of ULA’s Centaur upper stages has broken up since 2018. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit Read More »