NASA

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The world’s most-traveled crew transport spacecraft flies again

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with the Crew-8 mission, sending three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with the Crew-8 mission, sending three NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s oldest Crew Dragon spacecraft launched Sunday night on its fifth mission to the International Space Station, and engineers are crunching data to see if the fleet of Dragons can safely fly as many as 15 times.

It has been five years since SpaceX launched the first Crew Dragon spacecraft on an unpiloted test flight to the space station and nearly four years since SpaceX’s first astronaut mission took off in May 2020. Since then, SpaceX has put its clan of Dragons to use ferrying astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.

Now, it’s already time to talk about extending the life of the Dragon spaceships. SpaceX and NASA, which shared the cost of developing the Crew Dragon, initially certified each capsule for five flights. Crew Dragon Endeavour, the first in the Dragon fleet to carry astronauts, is now flying for the fifth time.

This ship has spent 466 days in orbit, longer than any spacecraft designed to transport people to and from Earth. It will add roughly 180 days to its flight log with this mission.

Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 10: 53 pm EST Sunday (03: 53 UTC Monday), following a three-day delay due to poor weather conditions across the Atlantic Ocean, where the capsule would ditch into the sea in the event of a rocket failure during the climb into orbit.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin put on their SpaceX pressure suits and strapped into their seats inside Crew Dragon Endeavour Sunday evening at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX loaded liquid propellants into the rocket, while ground teams spent the final hour of the countdown evaluating a small crack discovered on Dragon’s side hatch seal. Managers ultimately cleared the spacecraft for launch after considering whether the crack could pose a safety threat during reentry at the end of the mission.

“We are confident that we understand the issue and can still fly the whole mission safely,” a member of SpaceX’s mission control team told the crew inside Dragon.

This mission, known as Crew-8, launched on a brand-new Falcon 9 booster, which returned to landing a few minutes after liftoff at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9’s upper stage released the Dragon spacecraft into orbit about 12 minutes after liftoff. The four-person crew will dock at the space station around 3 am EST (0800 UTC) Tuesday.

Crew-8 will replace the four-person Crew-7 team that has been at the space station since last August. Crew-7 will return to Earth in about one week on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, which is flying in space for the third time.

The Crew-8 mission came home for a reentry and splashdown off the coast of Florida in late August of this year, wrapping up Crew Dragon Endeavour’s fifth trip to space. This is the current life limit for a Crew Dragon spacecraft, but don’t count out Endeavour just yet.

Fleet management

“Right now, we’re certified for five flights on Dragon, and we’re looking at extending that life out,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “I think the goal would be for SpaceX to say 15 flights of Dragon. We may not get there in every single system.”

One by one, engineers at SpaceX and NASA are looking at Dragon’s structural skeleton, composite shells, rocket engines, valves, and other components to see how much life is left in them. Some parts of the spacecraft slowly fatigue from the stresses of each launch, reentry, and splashdown, along with the extreme temperature swings the capsule sees thousands of times in orbit. Each Draco thruster on the spacecraft is certified for a certain number of firings.

Some components are already approved for 15 flights, Stich said in a recent press conference. “Some, we’re still in the middle of working on,” he said. “Some of those components have to go through some re-qualification to make sure that they can make it out to 15 flights.”

Re-qualifying a component on a spacecraft typically involves putting hardware through extensive testing on the ground. Because SpaceX reuses hardware, engineers can remove a part from a flown Dragon spacecraft and put it through qualification testing. NASA will get the final say in certifying the Dragon spacecraft for additional flights because the agency is SpaceX’s primary customer for crew missions.

The Dragon fleet is flying more often than SpaceX or NASA originally anticipated. The main reason for this is that Boeing, NASA’s other commercial crew contractor, is running about four years behind SpaceX in getting to its first astronaut launch on the Starliner spacecraft.

When NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar commercial crew contracts in 2014, the agency envisioned alternating between Crew Dragon and Starliner flights every six months to rotate four-person crews at the International Space Station. With Boeing’s delays, SpaceX has picked up the slack.

The world’s most-traveled crew transport spacecraft flies again Read More »

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Humanity’s most distant space probe jeopardized by computer glitch

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An annotated image showing the various parts and instruments of NASA's Voyager spacecraft design.

Enlarge / An annotated image showing the various parts and instruments of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft design.

Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission’s loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft.

The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1’s ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the spacecraft’s science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. So, there’s no insight into key parameters regarding the craft’s propulsion, power, or control systems.

“It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven’t given up,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. “There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager.”

Dodd became the project manager for NASA’s Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers responsible for humanity’s exploration into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft ever, speeding away from the Sun at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second).

Voyager 2, which launched 16 days before Voyager 1 in 1977, isn’t quite as far away. It took a more leisurely route through the Solar System, flying past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, while Voyager 1 picked up speed during an encounter with Saturn to overtake its sister spacecraft.

For the last couple of decades, NASA has devoted Voyager’s instruments to studying cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and the plasma environment in interstellar space. They’re not taking pictures anymore. Both probes have traveled beyond the heliopause, where the flow of particles emanating from the Sun runs into the interstellar medium.

There are no other operational spacecraft currently exploring interstellar space. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which flew past Pluto in 2015, is on track to reach interstellar space in the 2040s.

State-of-the-art 50 years ago

The latest problem with Voyager 1 lies in the probe’s Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft working alongside a command and control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.

The FDS is responsible for collecting science and engineering data from the spacecraft’s network of sensors and then combining the information into a single data package in binary code—a series of ones and zeros. A separate component called the Telemetry Modulation Unit actually sends the data package back to Earth through Voyager’s 12-foot (3.7-meter) dish antenna.

In November, the data packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it were stuck, according to NASA. Dodd said engineers at JPL have spent the better part of three months trying to diagnose the cause of the problem. She said the engineering team is “99.9 percent sure” the problem originated in the FDS, which appears to be having trouble “frame syncing” data.

A scanned 1970s-era photo of the Flight Data Subsystem computer aboard NASA's Voyager spacecraft.

Enlarge / A scanned 1970s-era photo of the Flight Data Subsystem computer aboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft.

So far, the ground team believes the most likely explanation for the problem is a bit of corrupted memory in the FDS. However, because of the computer hangup, engineers lack detailed data from Voyager 1 that might lead them to the root of the issue. “It’s likely somewhere in the FDS memory,” Dodd said. “A bit got flipped or corrupted. But without the telemetry, we can’t see where that FDS memory corruption is.”

When it was developed five decades ago, Voyager’s Flight Data Subsystem was an innovation in computing. It was the first computer on a spacecraft to make use of volatile memory. Each Voyager spacecraft launched with two FDS computers, but Voyager 1’s backup FDS failed in 1981, according to Dodd.

The only signal Voyager 1’s Earthbound engineers have received since November is a carrier tone, which basically tells the team the spacecraft is still alive. There’s no indication of any other major problems. Changes in the carrier signal’s modulation indicate Voyager 1 is receiving commands uplinked from Earth.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t cracked the nut yet, or solved the problem, or gotten any telemetry back,” Dodd said.

Humanity’s most distant space probe jeopardized by computer glitch Read More »

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NASA urged Astrobotic not to send its hamstrung spacecraft toward the Moon

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A camera on Astrobotic's Peregrine spacecraft captured this view of a crescent Earth during its mission.

Enlarge / A camera on Astrobotic’s Peregrine spacecraft captured this view of a crescent Earth during its mission.

Astrobotic knew its first space mission would be rife with risks. After all, the company’s Peregrine spacecraft would attempt something never done before—landing a commercial spacecraft on the surface of the Moon.

The most hazardous part of the mission, actually landing on the Moon, would happen more than a month after Peregrine’s launch. But the robotic spacecraft never made it that far. During Peregrine’s startup sequence after separation from its United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket, one of the spacecraft’s propellant tanks ruptured, spewing precious nitrogen tetroxide into space. The incident left Peregrine unable to land on the Moon, and it threatened to kill the spacecraft within hours of liftoff.

“What a wild adventure we were just on, not the outcome we were hoping for,” said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic.

Astrobotic’s control team, working out of the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, swung into action to save the spacecraft. The propellant leak abated, and engineers wrestled control of the spacecraft to point its solar arrays toward the Sun, allowing its battery to recharge. Over time, Peregrine’s situation stabilized, although it didn’t have enough propellant remaining to attempt a descent to the lunar surface.

Peregrine continued on a trajectory out to 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth, about the same distance as the Moon’s orbit. Astrobotic’s original flight plan would have taken Peregrine on one long elliptical loop around Earth, then the spacecraft would have reached the Moon during its second orbit.

On its way back toward Earth, Peregrine was on a flight path that would bring it back into the atmosphere, where it would burn up on reentry. That meant Astrobotic had a decision to make. With Peregrine stabilized, should they attempt an engine burn to divert the spacecraft away from Earth onto a trajectory that could bring it to the vicinity of the Moon? Or should Astrobotic keep Peregrine in line to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and avoid the risk of sending a crippled spacecraft out to the Moon?

Making lemonade out of lemons

This was the first time Astrobotic had flown a space mission, and its control team had much to learn. The malfunction that caused the propellant leak appears to have been with a valve that did not properly reseat during the propulsion system’s initialization sequence. This valve activated to pressurize the fuel and oxidizer tanks with helium.

When the valve didn’t reseat, it sent a “rush of helium” into the oxidizer system, Thornton said. “I describe it as a rush because it was very, very fast. “Within a little over a minute, the pressure had risen to the point in the oxidizer side that it was well beyond the proof limit of the propulsion tank. We believe at that point the tank ruptured and led to, unfortunately, a catastrophic loss of propellant … for the primary mission.”

Thornton described the glum mood of Astrobotic’s team after the propellant leak.

“We were coming from the highest high of a perfect launch and came down to the lowest low, when we found out that the spacecraft no longer had the helium and no longer had the propulsion needed to attempt the Moon landing,” he said. “What happened next, I think, was pretty remarkable and inspiring.”

In a press briefing Friday, Thornton outlined the obstacles Astrobotic’s controllers overcame to keep Peregrine alive. Without a healthy propulsion system, the spacecraft’s solar panels were not pointed at the Sun. With a few minutes to spare, one of Astrobotic’s engineers, John Shaffer, devised a solution to reorient the spacecraft to start recharging its battery.

As Peregrine’s oxidizer tank lost pressure, the leak rate slowed. At first, it looked like the spacecraft might have only hours of propellant remaining. Then, Astrobotic reported on January 15 that the leak had “practically stopped.” Mission controllers powered up the science payloads aboard the Peregrine lander, proving the instruments worked and demonstrating the spacecraft could have returned data from the lunar surface if it landed.

The small propulsive impulse from the leaking oxidizer drove Peregrine slightly off course, putting it on a course to bring it back into Earth’s atmosphere. This set up Astrobotic for a “very difficult decision,” Thornton said.

Astrobotic's first lunar lander, named Peregrine, at the company's Pittsburgh headquarters.

Enlarge / Astrobotic’s first lunar lander, named Peregrine, at the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters.

Nudging Peregrine off its collision course with Earth would have required the spacecraft to fire its main engines, and even if that worked, the lander would have needed to perform more maneuvers to get close to the Moon. A landing was still out of the question, but Thornton said there was a small chance Astrobotic could have guided Peregrine toward a flyby or impact with the Moon.

“The thing we were weighing was, ‘Should we send this back to Earth, or should we take the risk to operate it in cislunar space and see if we can send this out farther?'” Thornton said.

NASA urged Astrobotic not to send its hamstrung spacecraft toward the Moon Read More »

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Rocket Report: A new estimate of Starship costs; Japan launches spy satellite

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A bigger tug —

One space tug company runs into financial problems; another says go big or go home.

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An H-IIA rocket lifts off with the IGS Optical-8 spy satellite.

Enlarge / An H-IIA rocket lifts off with the IGS Optical-8 spy satellite.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Welcome to Edition 6.27 of the Rocket Report! This week, we discuss an intriguing new report looking at Starship. Most fascinating, the report covers SpaceX’s costs to build a Starship and how these costs will come down as the company ramps up its build and launch cadence. At the other end of the spectrum, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has a plan to get astronauts back to the Moon that would wholly ignore the opportunities afforded by Starship.

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.

The problem at America’s military spaceports. The Biden administration is requesting $1.3 billion over the next five years to revamp infrastructure at the Space Force’s ranges in Florida and California, Ars reports. This will help address things like roads, bridges, utilities, and airfields that, in many cases, haven’t seen an update in decades. But it’s not enough, according to the Space Force. Last year, Cape Canaveral was the departure point for 72 orbital rocket launches, and officials anticipate more than 100 this year. The infrastructure and workforce at the Florida spaceport could support about 150 launches in a year without any major changes, but launch activity is likely to exceed that number within a few years.

Higher fees incoming … Commercial launch companies operating from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, pay fees to the Space Force to reimburse for direct costs related to rocket launches. These cover expenses like weather forecast services, surveillance to ensure airplanes and boats stay out of restricted areas, and range safety support. “What that typically meant was anything we did that was specifically dedicated to that launch,” said Col. James Horne, deputy commander of the Space Force’s assured access to space directorate. This is about to change after legislation passed by Congress in December allows the Space Force to charge indirect fees to commercial providers. This money will go into a fund to pay for maintenance and upgrades to infrastructure used by all launch companies at the spaceports.

Momentus is running out of money. Momentus, a company that specializes in “last mile” satellite delivery services, announced on January 12 that it is running out of money and does not have a financial lifeline, CNBC reports. The company was once valued at more than $1 billion before going public via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) in 2021 but now has a market capitalization of less than $10 million. Momentus has developed a space tug called Vigoride, designed to place small satellites into bespoke orbits after deploying from a larger rocket on a rideshare mission, such as a SpaceX Falcon 9. Now, Momentus is abandoning plans for its next mission that was due for launch in March. In December, the company laid off about 20 percent of its workforce to reduce costs.

Fatal blow? … Momentus may have received a potentially fatal blow after losing the US Space Development Agency’s recent competition for 18 so-called Tranche 2 satellites, Aviation Week reports. Instead, the SDA made recent satellite manufacturing contract awards to Rocket Lab, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and Sierra Space. On Wednesday, Momentus announced it closed a $4 million stock sale. This should keep Momentus afloat for a while longer but won’t provide the level of capital needed to undertake any significant manufacturing or technical development work. (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.

Orbex may go bigger. UK-based launch startup Orbex hasn’t yet flown its small satellite launcher, called Prime, but is already looking at what’s next, according to reports by European Spaceflight and the Financial Times. New Orbex CEO Phil Chambers, who was officially appointed earlier this month, told the Financial Times that the company was already discussing the possibility of developing a larger vehicle. Speaking to European Spaceflight, Chambers described the business model to deliver orbital launch services with Prime as “robust.” Despite this, he admitted that the small launch industry was only a small sliver of the overall launch market.

Learning to walk before running … While future growth is on Orbex’s radar, its near-term focus is completing construction of a spaceport in Scotland, launching a maiden flight of Prime, and delivering on the six flights the company has already sold. The two-stage Prime rocket, fueled by “bio-propane,” will be capable of hauling a payload of approximately 180 kilograms (nearly 400 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. But Orbex has been shy about releasing updates on the progress of the Prime rocket’s development since unveiling a full-scale mock-up of the launch vehicle in 2022. Last year, the CEO who led Orbex since its founding resigned. Its most recent significant funding round was valued at 40.4 million pounds in late 2022. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: A new estimate of Starship costs; Japan launches spy satellite Read More »

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Axiom, SpaceX launch third all-private crew mission to space station

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Flying private —

A US-Spanish dual citizen commands a crew of Italian, Swedish, and Turkish astronauts.

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A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center to begin the Ax-3 commercial crew mission.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to begin the Ax-3 commercial crew mission.

Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

For the third time, an all-private crew is heading for the International Space Station. The four-man team lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Thursday, kicking off a 36-hour pursuit of the orbiting research laboratory. Docking is scheduled for Saturday morning.

This two-week mission is managed by Houston-based Axiom Space, which is conducting private astronaut missions to the ISS as a stepping stone toward building a fully commercial space station in low-Earth orbit by the end of this decade.

Axiom’s third mission, called Ax-3, launched at 4: 49 pm EST (21: 49 UTC) Thursday. The four astronauts were strapped into their seats inside SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft atop the Falcon 9 rocket. This is the 12th time SpaceX has launched a human spaceflight mission, and could be the first of five Dragon crew missions this year.

The Falcon 9 steered northeast from the Kennedy Space Center to line up with the flight track of the International Space Station. After darting through cloud cover, the rocket’s reusable first stage detached two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff to begin a descent back to Cape Canaveral for landing. The upper stage ignited a single engine to carry the Dragon capsule into orbit.

No retirement party

In remarks radioed to the ground soon after the launch, Ax-3 commander Michael López-Alegría describe the sensations of launch as “acceleration, a little bit of vibration, just a sense that you’re going fast. Wow, what a thrill!”

López-Alegría is a Spanish-born astronaut and US Navy veteran. He is one of the most experienced astronauts in history, and Ax-3 marks his sixth flight to space. López-Alegría, 65, retired from NASA in 2012 after four space shuttle missions. He worked as a consultant and commercial spaceflight advocate, then joined Axiom in 2017, and commanded the company’s first private astronaut flight in 2022.

So why keep up a grueling training schedule at an age when most commercial airline pilots face mandated retirement?

“It never gets old,” López-Alegría said in a prelaunch press conference. “I think I have more appreciation with every launch that approaches … The first time you go, you’re just hanging on for dear life and and enjoying the ride. But I think you appreciate each one a little bit more, especially when you realize just how rare and opportunity it is, so I’m happy to keep doing this.”

He is alternating commands of Axiom missions with Peggy Whitson, another retired NASA astronaut.

“Axiom would definitely like to continue doing private astronaut missions. We’ll probably have other commanders in the future, but as long as they ask me to fly, my hand will be raised,” López-Alegría said. He’s the first astronaut to fly on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft twice.

“I think you’re demonstrating the ultimate in reuse—a reused commander, a reused Dragon, and a reused Falcon, or maybe flight-experienced is a better word,” joked Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX executive serving as chief engineer for Thursday’s launch.

Pilot Walter Villadei sat to López-Alegría’s right during the climb into orbit. He is a colonel in the Italian Air Force. Turkey’s first astronaut, Alper Gezeravcı, and Swedish test pilot pilot Marcus Wandt round out the Ax-3 crew. They will temporarily join the long-duration residents living on the space station, including four crew members who flew on a Dragon to the complex in August to begin a six-month stay.

Cornering the government market

Villadei, Gezeravcı, and Wandt are flying to the space station through contracts between their governments and Axiom. The astronauts, all military officers, will perform scientific experiments developed by their nation’s researchers, and participate in education and outreach events from orbit.

More than 30 research investigations are flying on Ax-3, ranging from biology physiology experiments looking at how microgravity affects the human body, to technology demonstrations and Earth science. For example, the Italian Air Force developed a software tool it will test on Ax-3 to provide space debris and space weather warnings to the space station. Turkey is sending up experiments in the fields of genetics and metallurgy. Sweden and the European Space Agency sponsor experiments in brain research, remote control and AI, and stem cells.

Michael López-Alegría, Alper Gezeravcı, Marcus Wandt, and Walter Villadei pose inside SpaceX's crew access arm at Launch Complex 39A in Florida.

Enlarge / Michael López-Alegría, Alper Gezeravcı, Marcus Wandt, and Walter Villadei pose inside SpaceX’s crew access arm at Launch Complex 39A in Florida.

SpaceX

But there’s an unmistakable element of national pride intertwined with these scientific objectives.

Villadei is flying under the Italian flag through an agreement between the Italian government and Axiom, whereas most Italian astronauts have historically flown under the umbrella of the European Space Agency. He previously soared into space on a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane, logging a few minutes of microgravity. He was one of three Italian Air Force service members on the Virgin Galactic flight last June.

“This mission is very important for Italy,” Villadei said. “It’s a fundamental step in our national space strategy.”

Gezeravcı’s flight is historic in the sense that he is the first Turkish citizen to travel into space. “We have been long waiting for this mission to become real,” he said. “I’m really honored to take this role in this mission and to be able to make it real.”

Wandt’s mission was made possible through an agreement between ESA and the Swedish National Space Agency. ESA then finalized an agreement with Axiom to secure Wandt’s seat on Ax-3.

Wandt’s presence on the crew marks a first for ESA. It’s the first time the space agency has flown one of its astronauts to orbit with a commercial company, rather than an intergovernmental agreement with the United States or Russia. He was one of 17 astronauts ESA selected in 2022, but he joined ESA’s ranks as a reserve astronaut, meaning he would continue his career as a test pilot at Saab Aeronautics until his selection for a space mission.

He didn’t have to wait long. “This additional flight came up and Sweden was very decisive in this and came together quickly with industry, the armed forces, government, and together with ESA made this happen together with Axiom,” Wandt said.

ESA has six active astronauts who have flown in space, plus five new career astronauts and 12 reserves selected in 2022. Commercial flight opportunities like this one with Axiom enable more Europeans to access space. An ESA reserve astronaut from Poland could launch on an Axiom mission later this year.

“We have our astronaut corps, who represent the spine of our activities in human spaceflight,” said Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, in an interview with Ars on Thursday. “But we selected also these reserves, which is a kind of pool of talent, where we seize the opportunities which come on top. It allows us to do more activities in human spaceflight.”

Axiom doesn’t publicize seat prices for its missions to the space station, but in the past, they have reportedly cost around $55 million. Swedish media last year reported Sweden expanded its investment in ESA by more than 400 million Swedish krona, or more than $38 million at current exchange rates, to enable Wandt’s spaceflight opportunity.

Axiom officials view flying government-backed astronauts as a lucrative market. It’s distinct from the conventional image of wealthy space tourists who pay their own way into orbit. There is, of course, an element of that in Axiom’s business, too. Axiom’s first mission in 2022 flew three self-paying private astronauts, and Ax-2 last year flew a mixed crew consisting of an Axiom commander, a US businessman, and two Saudi astronauts flying on a government-sponsored mission.

NASA is also supporting these private astronaut missions. The US space agency opened up the International Space Station to private visitors flying on all-commercial missions in 2019. It’s a cornerstone of NASA’s strategy to foster a commercial market for human spaceflight in low-Earth orbit, with an eye toward eventually building a business case for a privately-owned space station to replace the ISS after its planned retirement in 2030.

Axiom, SpaceX launch third all-private crew mission to space station Read More »

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Axiom and SpaceX are disrupting Europe’s traditional pathway to space

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Image of a rocket clearing the tower during liftoff.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches the Axiom-2 mission on May 21, 2023.

SpaceX

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) has a deal with Axiom Space to get more Europeans in orbit. But does the partnership benefit European taxpayers who fund the agency’s operations?

On Wednesday, January 17, the third privately funded mission by US commercial spaceflight company Axiom Space is set to lift off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Inside the Crew Dragon capsule will be a quartet of space travelers, including Swedish fighter pilot Marcus Wandt.

Wandt will be flying under the European Space Agency (ESA) flag, although he is not exactly an ESA astronaut. In the 2022 European astronaut recruitment round, Wandt didn’t make the final five of Europe’s “proper” astronaut class, who became ESA staff members and started their astronaut training in 2023. Instead, he was selected as a member of ESA’s first astronaut reserve pool, a novelty developed by ESA with an apparent goal of encouraging its member states to pay for national missions in addition to their regular contributions to ESA’s budget. Sweden was the first to jump at the opportunity in April last year and is paying for Wandt’s two-week space trip through a contract brokered by ESA as part of a Memorandum of Understanding the agency signed with the American commercial company Axiom Space in October 2023.

Ticket to ride

Wandt is the first but not the only reserve astronaut with his ticket to space while his seemingly more successful colleagues who made the proper astronaut corps are still in training. Poland, too, has signed up and expects to fly its reservist, Sławosz Uznański, on another Axiom mission later this year.

Compared to their overall investment in space activities, the price these countries pay to see their nationals float in microgravity is not negligible. At the November 2022 ESA ministerial council—the triennial member state summit that decides the agency’s budget for the following three-year period—Sweden pledged 317 million euros ($355 million).

According to a 2018 announcement, Axiom Space sells 10-day space trips for $55 million a seat. The overall cost of each mission is likely to be quite a bit higher. Last year, Hungary signed a contract directly with Axiom to send a Hungarian national to the International Space Station independently of ESA. Hungary discussed plans for a national mission back in 2022 and, at that time, estimated the project to cost about $100 million. Based on that estimate, Sweden may be easily paying an equivalent of its annual contribution into the ESA budget to get Wandt to space.

In addition to Wandt and Uznański, the ESA astronaut reserve pool includes nine other candidates, none of them officially employed by ESA. By filling this astronaut reserve pool, ESA seems to have created a market for Axiom Space, a move that might raise questions given the agency’s purpose is to promote the European space sector. In fact, the ESA’s founding Convention enshrines the principle of geo-return, which grants member states at least an 80 percent return on their contributions into ESA’s budget in the form of research and development contracts. Although the cost of the Axiom missions is paid through ESA, most of this money goes to the Texas-headquartered Axiom Space and its launch provider, SpaceX.

Secret contracts

ESA refused to disclose details of the arrangement between Axiom Space and Sweden, calling it “proprietary data as this is implemented through a confidential commercial contract.” The Swedish National Space Agency didn’t respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment.

Poland’s announcement of a national mission for Uznański arrived in August last year, accompanied by a jaw-dropping increase of the country’s contribution to ESA’s budget. At the 2022 ministerial council, Poland earmarked 197 million euros for the agency’s activities in the 2023 to 2025 period. In August, the Polish Space Agency more than doubled this contribution, committing an additional 295 million euros ($322 million). It is not clear how much of this money will go toward Uznański’s space trip.

In the months following the announcement of the astronaut reserve pool, Axiom Space began actively approaching home countries of the reservists with offers to fly those men and women to space, according to media in the Czech Republic, which has recently declined the offer.

In addition to Sweden and Poland, the UK also intends to use Axiom’s services and conduct a British-only mission that will be headed by semi-retired ESA astronaut Tim Peake. It will also include the UK’s Rosemary Coogan, newly named as one of ESA’s career astronauts, as well as reservist Meganne Christian and para-astronaut John McFall. Unlike the Swedish and Polish mission, the British mission will be funded by the private industry in the UK rather than by taxpayers, according to the BBC.

Axiom and SpaceX are disrupting Europe’s traditional pathway to space Read More »

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NASA scientist on 2023 temperatures: “We’re frankly astonished”

2023, Berkeley Earth, climate change, global warming, NASA, NOAA, Science / /

Extremely unusual —

NASA, NOAA, and Berkeley Earth have released their takes on 2023’s record heat.

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A global projection map with warm areas shown in read, and color ones in blue. There is almost no blue.

Enlarge / Warming in 2023 was widespread.

Earlier this week, the European Union’s Earth science team came out with its analysis of 2023’s global temperatures, finding it was the warmest year on record to date. In an era of global warming, that’s not especially surprising. What was unusual was how 2023 set its record—every month from June on coming in far above any equivalent month in the past—and the size of the gap between 2023 and any previous year on record.

The Copernicus dataset used for that analysis isn’t the only one of the sort, and on Friday, Berkeley Earth, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all released equivalent reports. And all of them largely agree with the EU’s: 2023 was a record, and an unusual one at that. So unusual that NASA’s chief climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt, introduced his look at 2023 by saying, “We’re frankly astonished.”

Despite the overlaps with the earlier analysis, each of the three new ones adds some details that flesh out what made last year so unusual.

Each of the three analyses uses slightly different methods to do things like fill in areas of the globe where records are sparse, and uses a different baseline. Berkeley Earth was the only team to do a comparison with pre-industrial temperatures, using a baseline of the 1850–1900 temperatures. Its analysis suggests that this is the first year to finish over 1.5° C above preindustrial temperatures.

Most countries have committed to an attempt to keep temperatures from consistently coming in above that point. So, at one year, we’re far from consistently failing our goals. But there’s every reason to expect that we’re going to see several more years exceeding this point before the decade is out. And that clearly means we have a very short timeframe before we get carbon emissions to drop, or we’ll commit to facing a difficult struggle to get temperatures back under this threshold by the end of the century.

Berkeley Earth also noted that the warming was extremely widespread. It estimates that nearly a third of the Earth’s population lived in a region that set a local heat record. And 77 nations saw 2023 set a national record.

Lots of factors converged on warming in 2023.

Enlarge / Lots of factors converged on warming in 2023.

The Berkeley team also had a nice graph laying out the influences of different factors on recent warming. Greenhouse gases are obviously the strongest and most consistent factor, but there are weaker short-term influences as well, such as the El Niño/La Niña oscillation and the solar cycle. Berkeley Earth and EU’s Copernicus also noted that an international agreement caused sulfur emissions from shipping to drop by about 85 percent in 2020, which would reduce the amount of sunlight scattered back out into space. Finally, like the EU team, they note the Hunga Tonga eruption.

An El Niño unlike any other

A shift from La Niño to El Niño conditions in the late spring is highlighted by everyone looking at this year, as El Niños tend to drive global temperatures upward. While it has the potential to develop into a strong El Niño in 2024, at the moment, it’s pretty mild. So why are we seeing record temperatures?

We’re not entirely sure. “The El Niño we’ve seen is not an exceptional one,” said NASA’s Schmidt. So, he reasoned, “Either this El Niño is different from all of them… or there are other factors going on.” But he was at a bit of a loss to identify the factors. He said that typically, there are a limited number of stories that you keep choosing from in order to explain a given year’s behavior. But, for 2023, none of them really fit.

Something very ominous happened to the North Atlantic last year.

Enlarge / Something very ominous happened to the North Atlantic last year.

Berkeley Earth had a great example of it in its graph of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, which have been rising slowly for decades, until 2023 saw record temperatures with a freakishly large gap compared to anything previously on record. There’s nothing especially obvious to explain that.

Lurking in the background of all of this is climate scientist James Hansen’s argument that we’re about to enter a new regime of global warming, where temperatures increase at a much faster pace than they have until now. Most climate scientists don’t see compelling evidence for that yet. And, with El Niño conditions likely to prevail for much of 2024, we can expect a very hot year again, regardless of changing trends. So, it may take several more years to determine if 2023 was a one-off freak or a sign of new trends.

NASA scientist on 2023 temperatures: “We’re frankly astonished” Read More »

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A cat video highlighted a big year for lasers in space

lasers, NASA, psyche asteroid, Space / /

Pew Pew —

NASA has invested more than $700 million in testing laser communications in space.

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Taters, the orange tabby cat of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, stars in a video beamed from deep space by NASA's Psyche spacecraft. The graphics illustrate several features from the tech demo, such as Psyche’s orbital path, Palomar’s telescope dome, and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate. Tater’s heart rate, color, and breed are also on display.

Enlarge / Taters, the orange tabby cat of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, stars in a video beamed from deep space by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. The graphics illustrate several features from the tech demo, such as Psyche’s orbital path, Palomar’s telescope dome, and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate. Tater’s heart rate, color, and breed are also on display.

It’s been quite a year for laser communications in space. In October and November, NASA launched two pioneering demonstrations to test high-bandwidth optical communication links, and these tech demos are now showing some initial results.

On December 11, a laser communications terminal aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft on the way to an asteroid linked up with a receiver in Southern California. The near-infrared laser beam contained an encoded message in the form of a 15-second ultra-high-definition video showing a cat bouncing around a sofa, chasing the light of a store-bought laser toy.

Laser communications offer the benefit of transmitting data at a higher rate than achievable with conventional radio links. In fact, the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment on the Psyche spacecraft is testing technologies capable of sending data at rates 10 to 100 times greater than possible on prior missions.

“We’re looking to increase the amount of data we can get down to Earth, and that has a lot of advantages to us,” said Jeff Volosin, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA space communications and navigation program, before the launch of Psyche earlier this year.

Now, DSOC has set a record for the farthest distance a high-definition video has streamed from space. At the time, Psyche was traveling 19 million miles (31 kilometers) from Earth, about 80 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. Traveling at the speed of light, the video signal took 101 seconds to reach Earth, sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second, NASA said.

A playful experiment

After reaching the receiver at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, each video frame was transmitted “live” to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where it was played in real time, according to NASA.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at JPL, in a statement. “But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”

The video of Taters, the orange tabby cat of a JPL employee, was recorded before the launch of Psyche and stored on the spacecraft for this demonstration. The robotic probe launched on October 13 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, with the primary goal of flying to the asteroid Psyche, a metal-rich world in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

It will take six years for the Psyche probe to reach its destination, and NASA tacked on a laser communications experiment to help keep the spacecraft busy during the cruise. Since the launch in October, ground teams at JPL switched on the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment and ran it through some early tests.

One of the most significant technical challenges involved in the DSOC experiment was aligning the 8.6-inch (22-centimeter) optical telescope aboard Psyche with a transmitter and receiver fitted to ground-based telescopes in California and vice versa. Because Psyche is speeding through deep space, this problem is akin to trying to hit a dime from a mile away while the dime is moving, according to Abi Biswas, DSOC’s project technologist at JPL.

Once you achieve that feat, the signal that is received is still very weak and therefore requires very sensitive detectors and processing electronics which can take that signal and extract information that’s encoded in it,” Biswas said.

The telescope aboard Psyche is mounted on an isolation-and-pointing assembly to stabilize the optics and isolate them from spacecraft vibrations, according to NASA. This is necessary to eliminate jitters that could prevent a stable laser lock between Earth and the Psyche spacecraft.

“What optical or laser communications allows you is to achieve very high data rates, but on the downside, it’s a very narrow laser beam that requires very accurate pointing control,” Biswas told reporters before the launch. “For example, the platform disturbance from a typical spacecraft would throw off the pointing, so you need to actively isolate from it or control against it.

“For near-Earth missions, you can just control against it because you have enough control bandwidth,” he said. “From deep space, where the signals received are very weak, you don’t have that much control bandwidth, so you have to isolate from the disturbance.”

The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment is mounted on NASA's Psyche spacecraft on the way to an asteroid. The inset image shows the mirror of the instrument's telescope for receiving and transmitting laser signals.

Enlarge / The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment is mounted on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft on the way to an asteroid. The inset image shows the mirror of the instrument’s telescope for receiving and transmitting laser signals.

There’s another drawback of direct-to-Earth laser communications from space. Cloud cover over transmitting and receiving telescopes on Earth could block signals, so an operational optical communications network will require several ground nodes at different locations worldwide, ideally positioned in areas known for clear skies.

A cat video highlighted a big year for lasers in space Read More »

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Hubble back in service after gyro scare—NASA still studying reboost options

Hubble Space Telescope, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / /
The Hubble Space Telescope viewed from Space Shuttle Atlantis during a servicing mission in 2009.

Enlarge / The Hubble Space Telescope viewed from Space Shuttle Atlantis during a servicing mission in 2009.

NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope resumed science observations on Friday after ground teams spent most of the last three weeks assessing the performance of a finicky gyroscope, NASA said.

The troublesome gyroscope is a critical part of the observatory’s pointing system. Hubble’s gyros measure how fast the spacecraft is turning, helping the telescope aim its aperture toward distant cosmic wonders.

Hubble still provides valuable scientific data for astronomers nearly 34 years since its launch aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990. Five more shuttle servicing missions repaired Hubble, upgraded its science instruments, and replaced hardware degraded from long-term use in space. Among other tasks, astronauts on the last of the shuttle repair flights in 2009 installed six new gyroscopes on Hubble.

Moving parts sometimes break

The gyros have long been one of the parts of Hubble that require the most upkeep. A wheel inside each gyro spins at a constant rate of 19,200 revolutions per minute, and the wheel is, in turn, sealed inside a cylinder suspended in a thick fluid, according to NASA. Electronics within each gyro detect very small movements of the axis of the wheel, which supply Hubble’s central computer with information about the spacecraft’s turn rate. Hair-thin wires route signals from the gyroscopes, and these wires can degrade over time.

Three of the six gyros installed on Hubble in 2009 have failed, and three others remain operational. The three still-functioning gyros are based on a newer design for longer life, but one of these units has shown signs of wear in the last few months. This gyroscope, designated Gyro 3, has always exhibited “consistent noisy behavior,” said Pat Crouse, Hubble project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Hubble typically needs three gyros to operate normally, so ground controllers shut down Gyro 3 for roughly seven years until Hubble needed it in 2018, when another gyroscope failed, leaving only three of the devices still working.

“Back in August, we saw issues,” Crouse told Ars this week. “It would sort of sporadically output some rate information that was not consistent with the observed spacecraft body rates, but it was short-lived, and we were characterizing what that performance was like and how much we could tolerate.”

The gyro’s performance worsened in November when it fed Hubble’s control system erroneous data. The gyroscope sensed that the spacecraft was changing its orientation when it really wasn’t moving. “That, then, contributed to an error in attitude that was kind of causing a little bit of drift,” Crouse said.

Automated software on Hubble detected the errors and put the spacecraft into “safe mode” two times last month. Hubble quickly resumed science observations each time but then went into safe mode again on November 23. Hubble managers took some extra time to gather data on the gyro’s health. Engineers commanded Hubble to move back and forth, and the suspect gyro consistently seemed to work well.

Hubble back in service after gyro scare—NASA still studying reboost options Read More »