human spaceflight

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NASA orders more tests on Starliner, but says crew isn’t stranded in space

Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / /
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station on June 13.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station on June 13.

NASA and Boeing officials pushed back Friday on headlines that the commercial Starliner crew capsule is stranded at the International Space Station but said they need more time to analyze data before formally clearing the spacecraft for undocking and reentry.

Two NASA astronauts, commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, will spend at least a few more weeks on the space station as engineers on the ground conduct thruster tests to better understand issues with the Starliner propulsion system in orbit. Wilmore and Williams launched June 5 aboard an Atlas V rocket and docked at the station the next day, completing the first segment of Starliner’s first test flight with astronauts.

NASA managers originally planned for the Starliner spacecraft to remain docked at the space station for at least eight days, although they left open the possibility of a mission extension. The test flight is now likely to last at least a month and a half, and perhaps longer, as engineers wrestle with helium leaks and thruster glitches on Starliner’s service module.

Batteries on this Starliner spacecraft were initially only certified for a 45-day mission duration, but NASA officials said they are looking at extending the limit after confirming the batteries are functioning well.

“We have the luxury of time,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s space operations mission directorate. “We’re still in the middle of a test mission. We’re still pressing forward.”

Previously, NASA and Boeing officials delayed Starliner’s reentry and landing from mid-June, then from June 26, and now they have bypassed a potential landing opportunity in early July. Last week, NASA said in a statement that the agency’s top leadership will meet to formally review the readiness of Starliner for reentry, something that wasn’t part of the original plan.

“We’re not stuck on ISS”

Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said Friday that he wanted to clear up “misunderstandings” that led to headlines claiming the Starliner spacecraft was stuck or stranded at the space station.

“I want to make it very clear that Butch and Suni are not stranded in space,” Stich said. “Our plan is to continue to return them on Starliner and return them home at the right time. We have a little bit more work to do to get there for the final return, but they’re safe on (the) space station.”

With Starliner docked, the space station currently hosts three different crew spacecraft, including SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz. There are no serious plans under consideration to bring Wilmore and Williams home on a different spacecraft.

“Obviously, we have the luxury of having multiple vehicles, and we work contingency plans for lots of different cases, but right now, we’re really focused on returning Butch and Suni on Starliner,” Stich said.

“We’re not stuck on the ISS,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president in charge of the Starliner program. “It’s pretty painful to read the things that are out there. We’ve gotten a really good test flight that’s been accomplished so far, and it’s being viewed rather negatively.”

Stich said NASA officials should have “more frequent interaction” with reporters to fill in gaps of information on the Starliner test flight. NASA’s written updates are not always timely, and often lack details and context.

NASA officials have cleared the Starliner spacecraft for an emergency return to Earth if astronauts need to evacuate the space station for safety or medical reasons. But NASA hasn’t yet approved Starliner for reentry and landing under “nominal” conditions.

“When it is a contingency situation, we’re ready to put the crew on the spacecraft and bring them home as a lifeboat,” Bowersox said. “For the nominal entry, we want to look at the data more before we make the final call to put the crew aboard the vehicle, and it’s a serious enough call that we’ll bring the senior management team together (for approval).”

NASA orders more tests on Starliner, but says crew isn’t stranded in space Read More »

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Countdown begins for third try launching Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule

atlas v, Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, international space station, launch, NASA, Science, Space, starliner, united launch alliance / /

Going today? —

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been in prelaunch quarantine for six weeks.

–

Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, wearing their Boeing spacesuits, leave NASA's crew quarters during a launch attempt May 6.

Enlarge / Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, wearing their Boeing spacesuits, leave NASA’s crew quarters during a launch attempt May 6.

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.

Once more through the door

Wilmore and Williams have done this twice before in hopes of launching into space on the first crew flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. A faulty valve on the Atlas V rocket prevented liftoff May 6, then engineers discovered a helium leak on the Starliner capsule itself. After several weeks of troubleshooting, NASA and Boeing officials decided to proceed with another launch attempt Saturday.

Everything seemed to be coming together for Boeing’s long-delayed crew test flight until a computer problem triggered an automatic hold in the countdown less than four minutes before liftoff. Technicians from United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Atlas V rocket’s builder and operator, traced the problem to a failed power distribution source connected to a ground computer responsible for controlling the final phase of the countdown.

The instantaneous launch opportunity Wednesday is set for 10: 52 am EDT (14: 52 UTC), when the launch site at Cape Canaveral passes underneath the space station’s orbital plane. Forecasters predict a 90 percent chance of good weather for launch. You can watch NASA’s live coverage in the video embedded below.

The countdown began late Tuesday night with the power-up of the Atlas V rocket, which was set to be filled with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants around 5 am EDT (09: 00 UTC). Kerosene fuel was loaded into the Atlas V’s first-stage booster prior to the mission’s first launch attempt in early May.

The two Starliner astronauts departed crew quarters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the 20-minute drive to the launch pad, where they arrived shortly before 8 am EDT (12: 00 UTC) to climb into their seats inside the Starliner capsule. After pressure checks of the astronauts’ suits and Starliner’s crew cabin, ground teams will evacuate the pad about an hour before launch.

Assuming all systems are “go” for launch, the Atlas V will ignite its Russian-made RD-180 main engine and two solid-fueled boosters to vault away from Cape Canaveral and head northeast over the Atlantic Ocean. Wilmore and Williams will be not only the first people to fly in space on Boeing’s Starliner, but also the first astronauts to ride on an Atlas V rocket, which has flown 99 times before with satellites for the US military, NASA, and commercial customers.

The rocket’s Centaur upper stage will deploy Starliner into space around 15 minutes after liftoff. A critical burn by Starliner’s engines will happen around 31 minutes into the flight to finish the task of placing it into low-Earth orbit, setting it up for an automated docking at the International Space Station at 12: 15 pm EDT (16: 15 UTC) Thursday.

The two-person crew will stay on the station for at least a week, although a mission extension is likely if the mission is going well. Officials may decide to extend the mission to complete more tests or to wait for optimal weather conditions at Starliner’s primary and backup landing sites in New Mexico and Arizona. When weather conditions look favorable, Starliner will undock from the space station and head for landing under parachutes.

The crew test flight is a prerequisite to Boeing’s crew capsule becoming operational for NASA, which awarded multibillion-dollar commercial crew contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon started flying astronauts in 2020, while Boeing’s project has been stricken by years of delays.

Wilmore and Williams, both former US Navy test pilots, will take over manual control of Starliner at several points during the test flight. They will evaluate the spacecraft’s flying characteristics and accommodations for future flights, which will carry four astronauts at a time rather than two.

“The expectation from the media should not be perfection,” Wilmore told Ars earlier this year. “This is a test flight. Flying and operating in space is hard. It’s really hard, and we’re going to find some stuff. That’s expected. It’s the first flight where we are integrating the full capabilities of this spacecraft.”

Countdown begins for third try launching Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule Read More »

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Boeing’s Starliner test flight scrubbed again after hold in final countdown

atlas v, Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, launch, NASA, Science, Space, starliner, united launch alliance / /

Hold Hold Hold —

The ground launch sequencer computer called a hold at T-minus 3 minutes, 50 seconds.

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NASA commander Butch Wilmore exits the Starliner spacecraft Saturday following the scrubbed launch attempt.

Enlarge / NASA commander Butch Wilmore exits the Starliner spacecraft Saturday following the scrubbed launch attempt.

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.

It’s been a long road to get here with the Starliner spacecraft, and there’s more work to do before the capsule’s long-delayed first flight with astronauts.

Technicians from United Launch Alliance, builder of the Atlas V rocket, will begin troubleshooting the computer glitch at the launch pad Saturday evening, after draining propellant from the launch vehicle. Early indications suggest that a card in one of three computers governing the final minutes of the Atlas V’s countdown didn’t boot up as quickly as anticipated.

“You can imagine a large rack that is a big computer where the functions of the computer as a controller are broken up separately into individual cards or printed wire circuit boards with their logic devices,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. “They’re all standalone, but together it’s an integrated controller.”

The computers are located at the launch pad inside a shelter near the base of the Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. All three computers must be fully functioning in the final phase of the countdown to ensure triple redundancy. At the moment of liftoff, these computers control things like retracting umbilical lines and releasing bolts holding the rocket to its mobile launch platform.

Two of the computers activated as the final countdown sequence began at T-minus 4 minutes. A single card in the third computer took about six more seconds to come online, although it did boot up eventually, Bruno said.

“Two came up normally and the third one came up, but it was slow to come up, and that tripped a red line,” he said.

A disappointment

Wilmore and Williams, both veteran astronauts and former US Navy test pilots, exited the Starliner spacecraft with the help of Boeing’s ground team. They returned to NASA crew quarters at the nearby Kennedy Space Center to wait for the next launch attempt.

The schedule for the next try will depend on what ULA workers find when they access the computers at the launch pad. Officials initially said they could start another launch countdown early Sunday if they found a simple solution to the computer problem, such as swapping out a faulty card. The computers are networked together, but the architecture is designed with replaceable cards, each responsible for different functions during the countdown, to allow for a quick fix without having to replace the entire unit, Bruno said.

United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket and Boeing's Starliner spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Later Saturday, NASA announced the launch won’t happen Sunday, giving teams additional time to assess the computer issue. The next launch opportunities are Wednesday and Thursday.

Bruno said ULA’s engineers suspect a hardware problem or a network communication glitch caused the computer issue during Saturday’s countdown. That is what ULA’s troubleshooting team will try to determine overnight. NASA said officials will share another update Sunday.

If it doesn’t get off the ground by Thursday, the Starliner test flight could face a longer delay to allow time for ULA to change out limited-life batteries on the Atlas V rocket. Bruno said the battery swap would take about 10 days.

Saturday’s aborted countdown was the latest in a string of delays for Boeing’s Starliner program. The spacecraft’s first crew test flight is running seven years behind the schedule Boeing announced when NASA awarded the company a $4.2 billion contract for the crew capsule in 2014. Put another way, Boeing has arrived at this moment nine years after the company originally said the spacecraft could be operational, when the program was first announced in 2010.

“Of course, this is emotionally disappointing,” said Mike Fincke, a NASA astronaut and a backup to Wilmore and Williams on the crew test flight. “I know Butch and Suni didn’t sound disappointed when we heard them on the loops, and it’s because it comes back to professionalism.”

NASA and Boeing were on the cusp of launching the Starliner test flight May 6, but officials called off the launch attempt due to a valve problem on the Atlas V rocket. Engineers later discovered a helium leak on the Starliner spacecraft’s service module, but managers agreed to proceed with the launch Saturday if the leak did not worsen during the countdown.

A check of the helium system Saturday morning showed the leak rate had decreased from a prior measurement, and it was no longer a constraint to launch. Instead, a different problem emerged to keep Starliner on Earth.

“Everybody is a little disappointed, but you kind of roll your sleeves up and get right back to work,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program.

Boeing’s Starliner test flight scrubbed again after hold in final countdown Read More »

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Boeing’s Starliner capsule poised for second try at first astronaut flight

atlas v, Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner, united launch alliance / /
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft sits on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft sits on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

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.

The first crew flight on a new spacecraft is not an everyday event. Starliner is the sixth orbital-class crew spacecraft in the history of the US space program, following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttle, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. NASA signed a $4.2 billion contract with Boeing in 2014 to develop Starliner, but the project is running years behind schedule and has cost Boeing nearly $1.5 billion in cost overruns. SpaceX, meanwhile, won a contract at the same time as Boeing and started launching astronauts on the Crew Dragon four years ago this week.

Now, it is finally Starliner’s turn. A successful crew test flight would set the stage for six operational Starliner flights to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

Assuming the test flight gets off the ground Saturday, the spacecraft is due for docking at the ISS at 1: 50 pm EDT (17: 50 UTC) Sunday to begin a stay of at least eight days. Once managers are satisfied the mission has achieved all its planned test objectives, and pending good weather conditions in Starliner’s landing zone in the western United States, the spacecraft will depart the station and return to Earth for a parachute-assisted touchdown. If the mission takes off on Saturday, the earliest nominal landing date would be Monday, June 10.

Wilmore and Williams have been here before. On May 6, the astronauts were strapped into their seats inside Starliner’s cockpit awaiting takeoff on a flight to the International Space Station. A valve malfunction on the Atlas V rocket prevented launch that day, and officials subsequently discovered a helium leak on Starliner’s service module that delayed the mission until this weekend.

Flying as-is

After weeks of reviews and analysis, managers determined Starliner is safe to fly as-is with the leak. The spacecraft uses helium gas to pressurize its propulsion system and push hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants from internal tanks to the capsule’s maneuvering thrusters.

“When we looked at this problem, it didn’t come down to trades,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for Starliner. “It came down to: Is it safe or not? And it is safe, and that is why we determined that we can fly with what we have.”

Ground teams traced the leak to a flange on one of four doghouse-shaped propulsion pods around the perimeter of the Starliner spacecraft’s service module. In a worst-case scenario, if the condition grew worse during the flight, ground controllers could isolate it by closing the manifold feeding the leak. If the leak doesn’t worsen, engineers are confident they can manage it with no major impacts to the mission.

“We looked really hard at what our options were with this particular flange,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, which oversees the agency’s contract with Boeing. The flange has a helium conduit and lines for the spacecraft’s toxic fuel and oxidizer, which makes a repair “problematic,” Stich said.

Starliner commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams arrived back at NASA's Kennedy Space Center earlier this week to prepare for launch.

Enlarge / Starliner commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams arrived back at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center earlier this week to prepare for launch.

In order to safely fix the leak, which officials believe is likely caused by a defective seal, ground teams would have to disconnect the capsule from the Atlas V rocket, take it back to a hangar, drain its propellant tanks. This would probably push back the long-delayed Starliner test flight until late this year.

But the leak is relatively small and stable. “It’s about a half-pound per day out of 50 pounds of total capability in the tank,” Stich said.

“In our case, we have margin in the helium tank, and we’ve looked really hard to understand that margin and to understand the worst cases, and we took the time to go through that data,” Stich said. “We really think we can manage this leak, both by looking at it before the launch, and then if it got bigger in flight, we could manage it.”

Boeing’s Starliner capsule poised for second try at first astronaut flight Read More »

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Rocket Report: North Korean rocket explosion; launch over Chinese skyline

Boeing, china, Commercial space, european space agency, falcon 9, human spaceflight, india, launch, North Korea, rocket lab, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, spacex, starliner, starship / /
A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China's Shandong province.

Enlarge / A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China’s Shandong province.

Welcome to Edition 6.46 of the Rocket Report! It looks like we will be covering the crew test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX keeps up its cadence of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors helping make sure our stories don’t use the wrong names.

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.

Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea’s latest attempt to launch a rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure due to the midair explosion of the rocket during the first-stage flight this week, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports. Video captured by the Japanese news organization NHK appears to show the North Korean rocket disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country’s northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite named Malligyong-1-1.

Russia’s role? … Experts initially thought the pending North Korean launch, which was known ahead of time from international airspace warning notices, would use the same Chŏllima 1 rocket used on three flights last year. But North Korean statements following the launch Monday indicated the rocket used a new propulsion system burning a petroleum-based fuel, presumably kerosene, with liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The Chŏllima 1 rocket design used a toxic mixture of hypergolic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide as propellants. If North Korea’s statement is true, this would be a notable leap in the country’s rocket technology and begs the question of whether Russia played a significant role in the launch. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged more Russian support for North Korea’s rocket program in a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)

Rocket Lab deploys small NASA climate satellite. Rocket Lab is in the midst of back-to-back launches for NASA, carrying identical climate research satellites into different orbits to study heat loss to space in Earth’s polar regions. The Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) satellites are each about the size of a shoebox, and NASA says data from PREFIRE will improve computer models that researchers use to predict how Earth’s ice, seas, and weather will change in a warming world. “The difference between the amount of heat Earth absorbs at the tropics and that radiated out from the Arctic and Antarctic is a key influence on the planet’s temperature, helping to drive dynamic systems of climate and weather,” NASA said in a statement.

Twice in a week… NASA selected Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle to deliver the two PREFIRE satellites into orbit on two dedicated rides rather than launching at a lower cost on a rideshare mission. This is because scientists want the satellites flying at the proper alignment to ensure they fly over the poles several hours apart, providing the data needed to measure how the rate at which heat radiates from the polar regions changes over time. The first PREFIRE launch occurred on May 25, and the next one is slated for May 31. Both launches will take off from Rocket Lab’s base in New Zealand. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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A rocket launch comes to Rizhao. China has diversified its launch sector over the last decade to include new families of small satellite launchers and new spaceports. One of these relatively new small rockets, the solid-fueled Ceres 1, took off Wednesday from a floating launch pad positioned about 2 miles (3 km) off the coast of Rizhao, a city of roughly 3 million people in China’s Shandong province. The Ceres 1 rocket, developed by a quasi-commercial company called Galactic Energy, has previously flown from land-based launch pads and a sea-borne platform, but this mission originated from a location remarkably close to shore, with the skyline of a major metropolitan area as a backdrop.

Range safety … There’s no obvious orbital mechanics reason to position the rocket’s floating launch platform so near a major Chinese city, other than perhaps to gain a logistical advantage by launching close to port. The Ceres 1 rocket has a fairly good reliability record—11 successes in 12 flights—but for safety reasons, there’s no Western spaceport that would allow members of the public (not to mention a few million) to get so close to a rocket launch. For decades, Chinese rockets have routinely dropped rocket boosters containing toxic propellant on farms and villages downrange from the country’s inland spaceports.

Rocket Report: North Korean rocket explosion; launch over Chinese skyline Read More »

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The first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is on hold indefinitely

atlas v, Boeing, commercial crew, human spaceflight, NASA, Science, Space, starliner, united launch alliance / /

Pursuing rationale —

“NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward.”

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Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on the eve of the first crew launch attempt earlier this month.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on the eve of the first crew launch attempt earlier this month.

Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images

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.”

Delays are nothing new for the Starliner program, but it’s not yet clear how this delay will compare to the spacecraft’s previous setbacks.

Software problems cut short an unpiloted test flight in 2019, forcing Boeing to fly a second demonstration mission. Starliner was on the launch pad when pre-flight checkouts revealed stuck valves in the spacecraft’s propulsion system in 2021. Boeing finally flew Starliner on a round-trip mission to the space station in May 2022. Concerns about Starliner’s parachutes and flammable tape inside the spacecraft’s crew cabin delayed the crewed test flight from last summer until this year.

Boeing aims to become the second company to fly astronauts to the space station under contract with NASA’s commercial crew program, following the start of SpaceX’s crew transportation service in 2020. Assuming a smooth crewed test flight, NASA hopes to clear the Starliner spacecraft for six-month crew rotation flights to the space station beginning next year.

In the doghouse

Engineers first noticed the helium leak during the first launch attempt for Starliner’s crewed test flight May 6, but managers did not consider it significant enough to stop the launch. Ultimately, a separate problem with a pressure regulation valve on the spacecraft’s United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket prompted officials to scrub the launch attempt.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were already strapped into their seats inside the Starliner spacecraft on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, when officials ordered a halt to the May 6 countdown. Wilmore and Williams returned to their homes in Houston to await the next Starliner launch opportunity.

ULA returned the Atlas V rocket to its hangar, where technicians swapped out the faulty valve in time for another launch attempt May 17. NASA and Boeing pushed the launch date back to May 21, then to May 25, as engineers assessed the helium leak. The Atlas V rocket and Starliner spacecraft remain inside ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility to wait for the next launch opportunity.

Boeing engineers traced the leak to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster in one of four doghouse-shaped propulsion pods on the Starliner service module.

There are 28 reaction control system thrusters—essentially small rocket engines—on the Starliner service module. In orbit, these thrusters are used for minor course corrections and pointing the spacecraft in the proper direction. The service module has two sets of more powerful engines for larger orbital adjustments and launch-abort maneuvers.

The spacecraft’s propulsion system is pressurized using helium, an inert gas. The thrusters burn a mixture of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants. Helium is not combustible, so a small leak is not likely to be a major safety issue on the ground. However, the system needs sufficient helium gas to force propellants from their internal storage tanks to Starliner’s thrusters.

In a statement last week, NASA described the helium leak as “stable” and said it would not pose a risk to the Starliner mission if it didn’t worsen. A Boeing spokesperson declined to provide Ars with any details about the helium leak rate.

If NASA and Boeing resolve their concerns about the helium leak without requiring lengthy repairs, the International Space Station could accommodate the docking of Starliner through part of July. After docking at the station, Wilmore and Williams will spend at least eight days at the complex before undocking to head for a parachute-assisted, airbag-cushioned landing in the Southwestern United States.

After July, the schedule gets messy.

The space station has a busy slate of multiple visiting crew and cargo vehicles in August, including the arrival of a fresh team of astronauts on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the departure of an outgoing crew on another Dragon. There may be an additional window for Starliner to dock with the space station in late August or early September before the launch of SpaceX’s next cargo mission, which will occupy the docking port Starliner needs to use. The docking port opens up again in the fall.

ULA also has other high-priority missions it would like to launch from the same pad needed for the Starliner test flight. Later this summer, ULA plans to launch a US Space Force mission; it will be the last mission to use an Atlas V rocket. Then, ULA aims to launch the second demonstration flight of its new Vulcan Centaur rocket—the Atlas V’s replacement—as soon as September.

The first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule is on hold indefinitely Read More »

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Blue Origin resumes human flights to suborbital space, but it wasn’t perfect

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“I lied” —

Blue Origin’s space capsule safely landed despite a problem with one of its parachutes.

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Ed Dwight, 90, exits Blue Origin's crew capsule Sunday after a 10-minute flight to the edge of space.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight, 90, exits Blue Origin’s crew capsule Sunday after a 10-minute flight to the edge of space.

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.

“The transitions, the separations and stuff were a little bit more dynamic than I thought,” Dwight said in remarks after Sunday’s flight. “But that’s how it’s supposed to be. It makes your mind wonder, ‘Is something wrong?’ But no, it was absolutely terrific and the view … absolutely fantastic. This was a life-changing experience. Everybody needs to do this.”

Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Dwight and his five co-passengers lifted off from Blue Origin’s remote launch site in West Texas at 9: 35 am CDT (14: 35 UTC). Strapped into reclining seats inside a pressurized capsule, the passengers rode Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket into the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. After burning its main engine more than two minutes, the rocket released the crew capsule and continued coasting upward to an apogee, or high point, of nearly 66 miles (107 kilometers), just above the internationally recognized boundary of space.

This was the seventh time Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown people to suborbital space, and the 25th flight overall of the company’s fleet of New Shepard rockets. It was the first time Blue Origin has launched people in nearly two years, resuming suborbital service after a rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. In December, Blue Origin launched another uncrewed suborbital research mission to set the stage for the resumption of human missions Sunday.

Joining Dwight on Blue Origin’s capsule were investor Mason Angel, French businessman Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth Hess, adventurer Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura, an Indian pilot and entrepreneur. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin was sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people, and the other five participants were paying passengers.

After cutoff of the New Shepard rocket engine, the passengers had a few minutes to unfasten their seatbelts and float around the cabin while taking in the view of Earth. They returned to their seats as the capsule descended back into the atmosphere. The reusable New Shepard booster reignited its main engine for a propulsive landing back in Texas, while the crew capsule deployed parachutes to slow for touchdown a few miles away.

Two of three

However, one of the three main parachutes did not fully unfurl as the capsule drifted back to the ground. The capsule is designed to safely land with two chutes, a capability Blue Origin demonstrated on a test flight in 2016.

“It looks like we do have two parachutes that have full inflation, the third is not quite fully inflated,” said Ariane Cornell, a Blue Origin official hosting the company’s live webcast Sunday. “Landing with two parachutes is perfectly OK for this system.”

Family members and Blue Origin personnel greeted the passengers as they exited the capsule. All six appeared to be in good spirits and good health.

Although it had no obvious ill effects on the crew or the spacecraft, Blue Origin engineers will investigate the malfunction to determine what went wrong. The capsule’s three main parachutes were supplied to Blue Origin by Airborne Systems, which manufactures parachutes for every US human-rated spacecraft.

One of the three main parachutes on Blue Origin's crew capsule did not fully inflate before landing.

Enlarge / One of the three main parachutes on Blue Origin’s crew capsule did not fully inflate before landing.

Blue Origin

Airborne also provides parachutes for SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, Boeing’s Starliner, and NASA’s Orion capsule. Those parachutes have different designs and sizes than the chutes used on Blue Origin’s capsule, but it wasn’t immediately clear if there might be any crossover concerns on other programs stemming from the malfunction on Sunday’s flight.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the regulatory agency that oversees US commercial space missions, said in a statement it did not consider the parachute issue a mishap. This statement suggests the incident will not trigger a mishap investigation that would require FAA oversight.

Before the 2022 launch failure, Blue Origin’s New Shepard program achieved a cadence, on average, of roughly one flight every two months. Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by Richard Branson, ramped up the flight rate of its suborbital SpaceShipTwo spaceplane over the last year as Blue Origin’s rocket remained grounded.

But Virgin Galactic is about to halt operations of its own spaceship following one more flight with passengers next month. The company says it decided to suspend flights of the VSS Unity rocket plane to focus its resources on developing a fleet of larger air-launched spaceships that are easier to reuse.

This means Blue Origin, assuming it can regain or build on the cadence it demonstrated in 2021 and 2022, will be the only company serving the suborbital space tourism and research market for at least the next couple of years.

Blue Origin resumes human flights to suborbital space, but it wasn’t perfect Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden

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On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas.

Enlarge / On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket’s next test flight from South Texas.

Welcome to Edition 6.44 of the Rocket Report! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It looks like this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two-and-a-half months after the previous Starship test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.

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.

Blue Origin launch on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will launch six passengers on a flight to suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) over West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, has not flown people to space since a New Shepard rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.

Historic flight … This will be the 25th flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, and the seventh human spaceflight mission on New Shepard. Before Blue Origin’s rocket failure in 2022, the company was reaching a flight cadence of about one launch every two months, on average. The flight rate has diminished since then. Sunday’s flight is important not only because it marks the resumption of launches for Blue Origin’s suborbital human spaceflight business, but also because its six-person crew includes an aviation pioneer. Ed Dwight, 90, almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. Dwight will become the oldest person to ever fly in space.

Spaceport Camden is officially no more. With the stroke of a pen, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill that dissolved the Camden County Spaceport Authority, Action News Jax reported. This news follows a referendum in March 2022 where more than 70 percent of voters rejected a plan to buy land for the spaceport on the Georgia coastline between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. County officials still tried to move forward with the spaceport initiative after the failed referendum, but Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled in February that the county had to abide by the voters’ wishes.

$12 million for what?… The government of Camden County, with a population of about 55,000 people spent $12 million on the Spaceport Camden concept over the course of a decade. The goal of the spaceport authority was to lure small launch companies to the region, but no major launches ever took place from Camden County. State Rep. Steven Sainz, who sponsored the bill eliminating the spaceport authority, said in a statement that the legislation “reflects the community’s choice and opens a path for future collaborations in economic initiatives that are more aligned with local needs.” (submitted by zapman987)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Polaris Spaceplanes moves on to bigger things. German startup Polaris Spaceplanes says it is progressing with construction of its MIRA II and MIRA III spaceplane prototypes after MIRA, a subscale test vehicle, was damaged earlier this year, European Spaceflight reports. The MIRA demonstration vehicle crash-landed on a test flight in February. The incident occurred on takeoff at an airfield in Germany before the vehicle could ignite its linear aerospace engine in flight. The remote-controlled MIRA prototype measured about 4.25 meters long. Polaris announced on April 30 that will not repair MIRA and will instead move forward with the construction of a pair of larger vehicles.

Nearly 16 months without a launch … The MIRA II and MIRA III vehicles will be 5 meters long and will be powered by Polaris’s AS-1 aerospike engines, along with jet engines to power the craft before and after in-flight tests of the rocket engine. Aerospike engines are rocket engines that are designed to operate efficiently at all altitudes. The MIRA test vehicles are precursors to AURORA, a multipurpose spaceplane and hypersonic transporter Polaris says will be capable of delivering up to 1,000 kilograms of payload to low-Earth orbit. (submitted by Jay500001 and Tfargo04)

Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden Read More »

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NASA confirms “independent review” of Orion heat shield issue

artemis, artemis I, artemis II, human spaceflight, NASA, orion, Science, Space, victor glover / /
The Orion spacecraft after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Artemis I mission.

Enlarge / The Orion spacecraft after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Artemis I mission.

NASA has asked a panel of outside experts to review the agency’s investigation into the unexpected loss of material from the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft on a test flight in 2022.

Chunks of charred material cracked and chipped away from Orion’s heat shield during reentry at the end of the 25-day unpiloted Artemis I mission in December 2022. Engineers inspecting the capsule after the flight found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry stripped away pieces of the heat shield as temperatures built up to 5,000° Fahrenheit.

This was the most significant discovery on the Artemis I, an unpiloted test flight that took the Orion capsule around the Moon for the first time. The next mission in NASA’s Artemis program, Artemis II, is scheduled for launch late next year on a test flight to send four astronauts around the far side of the Moon.

Another set of eyes

The heat shield, made of a material called Avcoat, is attached to the base of the Orion spacecraft in 186 blocks. Avcoat is designed to ablate, or erode, in a controlled manner during reentry. Instead, fragments fell off the heat shield that left cavities resembling potholes.

Investigators are still looking for the root cause of the heat shield problem. Since the Artemis I mission, engineers conducted sub-scale tests of the Orion heat shield in wind tunnels and high-temperature arcjet facilities. NASA has recreated the phenomenon observed on Artemis I in these ground tests, according to Rachel Kraft, an agency spokesperson.

“The team is currently synthesizing results from a variety of tests and analyses that inform the leading theory for what caused the issues,” said Rachel Kraft, a NASA spokesperson.

Last week, nearly a year and a half after the Artemis I flight, the public got its first look at the condition of the Orion heat shield with post-flight photos released in a report from NASA’s inspector general. Cameras aboard the Orion capsule also recorded pieces of the heat shield breaking off the spacecraft during reentry.

NASA’s inspector general said the char loss issue “creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions.”

“Those pictures, we’ve seen them since they were taken, but more importantly… we saw it,” said Victor Glover, pilot of the Artemis II mission, in a recent interview with Ars. “More than any picture or report, I’ve seen that heat shield, and that really set the bit for how interested I was in the details.”

NASA confirms “independent review” of Orion heat shield issue Read More »

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Faulty valve scuttles Starliner’s first crew launch

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The Atlas V rocket and Starliner spacecraft on their launch pad Monday.

Enlarge / The Atlas V rocket and Starliner spacecraft on their launch pad Monday.

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.

Work ahead

Everything else was going smoothly in the countdown Monday night. This mission will also be the first time astronauts have flown on ULA’s Atlas V rocket, which has logged 99 successful flights since 2002. It is the culmination of nearly a decade-and-a-half of development by Boeing, which has a $4.2 billion contract with NASA to ready Starliner for crew missions, then carry out six long-duration crew ferry flights to and from the International Space Station.

This crew test flight will last at least eight days, taking Wilmore and Williams to the space station to verify Starliner’s readiness for operational missions. Once Starliner flies, NASA will have two human-rated spacecraft on contract. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has been in service since 2020.

When officials scrubbed Monday night’s launch attempt, Wilmore and Williams were already aboard the Starliner spacecraft on top of the Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The Boeing and ULA support team helped them out of the capsule and drove them back to crew quarters at the nearby Kennedy Space Center to wait for the next launch attempt.

“I promised Butch and Suni a boring evening,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s CEO. “I didn’t mean for it to be quite this boring, but we’re going to follow our rules, and we’re going to make sure that the crew is safe.”

When the next launch attempt actually occurs depends on whether ULA engineers determine they can resolve the problem without rolling the Atlas V rocket back to its hangar for repairs.

The valve in question vents gas from the liquid oxygen tank on the Centaur upper stage to maintain the tank at proper pressures. This is important for two reasons. The tank needs to be at the correct pressure for the RL10 engines to receive propellant during the flight, and the Centaur upper stage itself has ultra-thin walls to reduce weight, and requires pressure to maintain structural integrity.

Faulty valve scuttles Starliner’s first crew launch Read More »

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NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue

artemis, artemis II, human spaceflight, Lockheed Martin, moon, NASA, orion, Space / /

Flight rationale —

“When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t.”

–

NASA's Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2021, at the end of the Artemis I mission.

Enlarge / NASA’s Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2021, at the end of the Artemis I mission.

NASA

NASA officials declared the Artemis I mission successful in late 2021, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment. The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft performed nearly flawlessly on an unpiloted flight that took it around the Moon and back to Earth, setting the stage for the Artemis II, the program’s first crew mission.

But one of the things engineers saw on Artemis I that didn’t quite match expectations was an issue with the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. As the capsule streaked back into Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the mission, the heat shield ablated, or burned off, in a different manner than predicted by computer models.

More of the charred material than expected came off the heat shield during the Artemis I reentry, and the way it came off was somewhat uneven, NASA officials said. Orion’s heat shield is made of a material called Avcoat, which is designed to burn off as the spacecraft plunges into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 km per hour). Coming back from the Moon, Orion encountered temperatures up to 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius), hotter than a spacecraft sees when it reenters the atmosphere from low-Earth orbit.

Despite heat shield issue, the Orion spacecraft safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Engineers discovered the uneven charring during post-flight inspections.

No answers yet

Amit Kshatriya, who oversees development for the Artemis missions in NASA’s exploration division, said Friday that the agency is still looking for the root cause of the heat shield issue. Managers want to be sure they understand the cause before proceeding with Artemis II, which will send astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the far side of the Moon.

This will be the first time humans fly near the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. In January, NASA announced a delay in the launch of Artemis II from late 2024 until September 2025, largely due to the unresolved investigation into the heat shield issue.

“We are still in the middle of our investigation on the performance of the heat shield from Artemis I,” Kshatriya said Friday in a meeting with a committee of the NASA Advisory Council.

Engineers have performed sub-scale heat shield tests in wind tunnels and arc jet facilities to better understand what led to the uneven charring on Artemis I. “We’re getting close to the final answer in terms of that cause,” Kshatriya said.

NASA officials previously said it is unlikely they will need to make changes to the heat shield already installed on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis II, but haven’t ruled it out. A redesign or modifications to the Orion heat shield on Artemis II would probably delay the mission by at least a year.

Instead, engineers are analyzing all of the possible trajectories the Orion spacecraft could fly when it reenters the atmosphere at the end of the Artemis II mission. On Artemis I, Orion flew a skip reentry profile, where it dipped into the atmosphere, skipped back into space, and then made a final descent into the atmosphere, sort of like a rock skipping across a pond. This profile allows Orion to make more precise splashdowns near recovery teams in the Pacific Ocean and reduces g-forces on the spacecraft and the crew riding inside. It also splits up the heat load on the spacecraft into two phases.

The Apollo missions flew a direct reentry profile. There is also a reentry mode available called a ballistic entry, in which the spacecraft would fly through the atmosphere unguided.

Ground teams at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission into an altitude chamber earlier this month.

Enlarge / Ground teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission into an altitude chamber earlier this month.

The charred material began flying off the heat shield in the first phase of the skip reentry. Engineers are looking at how the skip reentry profile affected the performance of the Orion heat shield. NASA wants to understand how the Orion heat shield would perform during each of the possible reentry trajectories for Artemis II.

“What we have the analysis teams off doing is saying, ‘OK, independent of what the constraints are going to be, what can we tolerate?” Kshatriya said.

Once officials understand the cause of the heat shield charring, engineers will determine what kind of trajectory Artemis II needs to fly on reentry to minimize risk to the crew. Then, managers will look at building what NASA calls flight rationale. Essentially, this is a process of convincing themselves the spacecraft is safe to fly.

“When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t,” Kshatriya said.

Assuming NASA approves the flight rationale for Artemis II, there will be additional discussions about how to ensure Orion heat shields are safe to fly on downstream Artemis missions, which will have higher-speed reentry profiles as astronauts return from landings on the Moon.

In the meantime, preparations on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis II continue at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The crew and service modules for Artemis II were mated together earlier this year, and the entire Orion spacecraft is now inside a vacuum chamber for environmental testing.

NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn

blue origin, Commercial space, ed Dwight, human spaceflight, launch, Polaris dawn, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / /

The wait is over —

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4.”

–

Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Welcome to Edition 6.38 of the Rocket Report! Ed Dwight was close to joining NASA’s astronaut corps more than 60 years ago. With an aeronautical engineering degree and experience as an Air Force test pilot, Dwight met the qualifications to become an astronaut. He was one of 26 test pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but he wasn’t selected. Now, the man who would have become the first Black astronaut will finally get a chance to fly to space.

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.

Ed Dwight named to Blue Origin’s next human flight. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, announced Thursday that 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963, will be one of six people to fly to suborbital space on the company’s next New Shepard flight. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. It took 20 more years for the first Black American to fly to space. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin is sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people. Five paying passengers will join Dwight for the roughly 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space over West Texas. Kudos to Space for Humanity and Blue Origin for making this happen.

Return to flight … This mission, named NS-25, will be the first time Blue Origin flies with human passengers since August 2022. Blue Origin hasn’t announced a launch date yet for NS-25. On an uncrewed launch the following month, an engine failure destroyed a New Shepard booster and grounded Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket program for more than 15 months. New Shepard returned to flight December 19 on another research flight, again without anyone onboard. As the mission name suggests, this will be the 25th flight of a New Shepard rocket and the seventh flight with people. Blue Origin has a history of flying aviation pioneers and celebrities. On the first human flight with New Shepard in 2021, the passengers included company founder Jeff Bezos and famed female aviator Wally Funk. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Revisit Astra’s 2020 rocket explosion. In March 2020, as the world was under the grip of COVID, Astra blew up a rocket in remote Alaska and didn’t want anyone to see it. New video published by TechCrunch shows Astra’s Rocket 3 vehicle exploding on its launch pad. This was one of several setbacks that have brought the startup to its knees. 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, TechCrunch reports. Satellite imagery of the launch site showed burn scars, suggesting an explosion, but the footage published this week confirms the reality of the event. This was Astra’s first orbital-class rocket, and it blew up during a fueling rehearsal.

A sign of things to come … Astra eventually flew its Rocket 3 small satellite launcher seven times, but only two of the flights actually reached orbit. This prompted Astra to abandon its Rocket 3 program and focus on developing a larger rocket, Rocket 4. But the future of this new rocket is in doubt. Astra’s co-founders are taking the company private after its market value and stock price tanked, and it’s not clear where the company will go from here. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Russia’s plan to “restore” its launch industry. Yuri Borisov, chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has outlined a strategy for Russia to regain a dominant position in the global launch market, Ars reports. This will include the development of a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability. In an interview posted on the Roscosmos website, Borisov said he hopes Russia will have a “completely new fleet of space vehicles” by the 2028-2029 timeframe. Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.

Reason to doubt … Russia’s launch industry was a global leader a couple of decades ago when prices were cheap relative to Western rockets. But the heavy-lift Proton rocket is nearing retirement after concerns about its reliability, and the still-reliable Soyuz is now excluded from the global market after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the 2000s and 2010s, Russia’s position in the market was supplanted by the European Ariane 5 rocket and then SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Roscosmos originally announced the medium-lift Amur rocket program in 2020 for a maiden flight in 2026. Since then, the rocket has encountered a nearly year-for-year delay in its first test launch. I’ll believe it when I see it. The only new, large rocket Russia has developed in nearly 40 years, the expendable Angara A5, is still launching dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn Read More »