roscosmos

Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad

ICBM, launch, pld space, rocket report, roscosmos, sentinel, soyuz, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Tim Belzer / March 7, 2026

It looks like United Launch Alliance will build more upper stages for NASA’s SLS rocket.

A welder works on repairs to the Soyuz launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Roscosmos

Welcome to Edition 8.32 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week is NASA’s shake-up of the Artemis program. On paper, at least, the changes appear to be quite sensible. Canceling the big, new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket and replacing it with a commercial upper stage, almost certainly United Launch Alliance’s Centaur stage, should result in cost savings. The changes also relieve some of the pressure for SpaceX and Blue Origin to rapidly demonstrate cryogenic refueling in low-Earth orbit. The Artemis III mission is now a low-Earth orbit mission, using SLS and the Orion spacecraft to dock with one or both of the Artemis program’s human-rated lunar landers just a few hundred miles above the Earth—no refueling required. Artemis IV will now be the first lunar landing attempt.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Sentinel missile nears first flight. The US Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is on track for its first test flight next year, military officials reaffirmed last week. The LGM-35A Sentinel will replace the Air Force’s Minuteman III fleet, in service since 1970, with the first of the new missiles due to become operational in the early 2030s. But it will take longer than that to build and activate the full complement of Sentinel missiles and the 450 hardened underground silos to house them, Ars reports.

Nowhere to put them... No one is ready to say when hundreds of new missile silos, dug from the windswept Great Plains, will be finished, how much they cost, or, for that matter, how many nuclear warheads each Sentinel missile could actually carry. The program’s cost has swelled from $78 billion to an official projection of $141 billion, but that figure is already out of date, as the Air Force announced last year that it would need to construct new silos for the Sentinel missile. The original plan was to adapt existing Minuteman III silos for the new weapons, but engineers determined that it would take too long and cost too much to modify the aging Minuteman facilities. Instead, the Air Force, in partnership with contractors and the US Army Corps of Engineers, will dig hundreds of new holes across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The new silos will include 24 new forward launch centers, three centralized wing command centers, and more than 5,000 miles of fiber connections to wire it all together, military and industry officials said.

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Space One is now 0-for-3. Japan’s Space One said its Kairos small ‌rocket self-destructed 69 seconds after liftoff on Thursday, failing to achieve the country’s first entirely commercial satellite launch for the third attempt in a row, Reuters reports. Three months after a failure of Japan’s flagship H3 rocket, the unsuccessful flight of the smaller Kairos launcher dealt a fresh blow to Japan’s efforts to establish domestic launch options and reduce its reliance on American rockets amid rising space security needs to counter China. Kairos measures about 59 feet (18 meters) long with three solid-fueled boost stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage to inject small satellites into low-Earth orbit. The rocket is capable of placing a payload of about 330 pounds (150 kilograms) into a Sun-synchronous orbit.

Accidental detonation... The Kairos rocket terminated its flight Thursday at an altitude of approximately 18 miles (29 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean, just downrange from Space One’s spaceport on the southern coast of Honshu, the largest of Japan’s main islands. “No significant abnormalities were found in the flight or onboard equipment” before the self-destruction, Space One’s vice president, Nobuhiro Sekino, told a press conference, suggesting that the rocket’s autonomous flight termination system went wrong. This is a rare mode of failure in rocketry, but it has happened before. The first flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket was terminated erroneously in 2017, despite no issues with the launch vehicle itself. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

PLD Space raises $209 million. PLD Space has raised 180 million euros ($209 million) to ramp up production of the Spanish startup’s Miura 5 launch vehicle, marking the largest funding round for a European space business announced this year, Space News reports. PLD said the Series C equity funding round is led by Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, with co-investment from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and the Spanish public funds management company Cofides. The startup has now raised more than 350 million euros ($400 million) to date. Miura 5 has not flown yet, but PLD says it is designed to place more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload mass into low-Earth orbit.

All about scaling... The fresh cash will support PLD’s “transition to commercial operations and the scaling of its industrial and launch capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Miura 5 was designed to address a clear and growing capacity gap in the market, and this investment support strengthens our ability to transition into commercial operations,” said Ezequiel Sánchez, PLD Space’s executive president. “It accelerates the build‑out of the industrial and launch infrastructure required to deliver reliable access to space for an expanding pipeline of global customers.” (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

MaiaSpace delays first launch. Another European launch startup, the French company MaiaSpace, has announced the first flight of its two-stage Maia rocket will take place in 2027, slipping from a previously expected late 2026 launch, European Spaceflight reports. MaiaSpace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which builds Europe’s flagship Ariane 6 rocket. The Maia rocket will be partially reusable, with a recoverable first stage. Just two months ago, MaiaSpace said it was targeting an initial suborbital demonstration flight of the Maia rocket in late 2026.

Ensemble de lancement... On February 24, officials from MaiaSpace and the French space agency CNES gathered at the site of the former Soyuz launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, to sign a temporary occupancy agreement allowing MaiaSpace to begin dismantling Soyuz-specific infrastructure at the site. During the event, MaiaSpace officials revealed they expected to host the inaugural flight of Maia from the facility in 2027. When asked for comment by European Spaceflight, a representative explained that the company remained committed to launching its first rocket less than five years after the company’s creation in April 2022. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Korean company eyes launching from Canada. South Korean launch newcomer Innospace is exploring a planned spaceport in Nova Scotia, Canada, as a potential facility to expand operations to North America, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The company, which has yet to successfully fly its Hanbit-Nano rocket, said on March 4 that it has reached a nonbinding, preliminary “letter of intent” with Canada’s Maritime Launch Services. Innospace said the letter of intent “establishes a strategic framework” for Korean and Canadian officials to “assess the technical, regulatory, and commercial feasibility” of launching Hanbit rockets from Nova Scotia. The first flight of the Hanbit-Nano rocket failed shortly after liftoff last year from a spaceport in Brazil, and Innospace already has preliminary agreements for potential launch sites in Europe and Australia.

Looking abroad... Several launch startups are looking at establishing additional launch sites beyond their initial operating locations. Firefly Aerospace is looking at Sweden, and Rocket Lab has already inaugurated a second launch site for its Electron rocket in Virginia after basing its first flights in New Zealand. Innospace is unique, though, in that the South Korean rocket company’s first launch pad is already halfway around the world from its home base. Meanwhile, Canada is investing in its own sovereign orbital launch capability. “We look forward to working with Innospace to evaluate how our strategic position on the Eastern Atlantic rim of North America can support their launch program while advancing reliable, repeatable access to orbit and strengthening Canada’s commercial launch capability,” said Stephen Matier, president and CEO of Maritime Launch Services.

Russia completes launch pad repairs. Late last year, a Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts to orbit from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But post-launch inspections revealed significant damage. A service structure underneath the rocket was unsecured during the launch of the three-man crew to the International Space Station. The structure fell into the launch pad’s flame trench, leaving the complex without the service cabin technicians use to work on the Soyuz rocket before liftoff. But Russia made quick repairs to the launch pad, the only site outfitted to launch Russian spacecraft to the ISS. Rockets will soon start flying from Pad 31 again, if all goes to plan, Space.com reports.

Restored to service... Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced Tuesday that the launch pad has been repaired. More than 150 employees from the agency’s Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure and representatives from four contractors have wrapped up work at the damaged launch pad. Roscosmos said 2,350 square meters of structures were prepared and painted, and more than 250 linear meters of welds were completed during the repair. Meanwhile, the head of the Roscosmos ground infrastructure division told a Russian TV channel in January that “multiple members” of the launch pad team were under criminal investigation after leaving the service structure unsecured during the November launch, according to Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak. The first launch from the restored pad is scheduled for March 22, when a Soyuz rocket will boost a Progress supply ship to the ISS. A Soyuz crew launch will follow this summer.

SpaceX price hike. SpaceX recently increased launch prices from $70 million to $74 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 ride, and $6,500 per kilogram to $7,000 per kilogram for a rideshare slot, Payload reports. The company has long signaled a steady pace of price bumps, so the move does not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, the increase (along with the lack of real alternatives) highlights a tough truth in the industry: Access to orbit has gotten significantly more expensive in recent years despite all the hoopla and hopium of falling launch prices.

Keeping up… The price of a dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 has risen about 20 percent since 2021, in line with US inflation. A rideshare slot, on the other hand, now costs about 40 percent more than it did in 2021, doubling the rate of inflation, according to Payload. Rideshare pricing is the far more important number to track here. Without a price-competitive alternative, the broader space startup community has relied almost exclusively on Falcon 9 Transporter and Bandwagon missions to get to space over the last five years. Ars has previously reported on how NASA pays more for launch services than it did 30 years ago, a trend partly driven by the agency’s requirement for dedicated launches for many of its robotic science missions.

NASA aims for standardized SLS rocket. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on February 27, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage, Ars reports. The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is growing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

CU later, EUS… “NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” The announced changes to the Artemis program include the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket, and future SLS missions, starting with Artemis IV, will use a “standardized” commercial upper stage. Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon. Instead, the Orion spacecraft will launch on SLS and dock with SpaceX’s Starship and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit.

NASA favors ULA upper stage. United Launch Alliance’s Centaur V upper stage, used on the company’s Vulcan rocket, will replace the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) on SLS missions beginning with Artemis IV, Bloomberg reports. ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, also built the interim upper stages flying on the Artemis I, II, and III missions. Those stages were based on designs used for ULA’s now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket. With that production line shut down, ULA will now provide Centaur Vs to NASA. This means Boeing, which was on contract to develop the EUS, will still have a role in supplying upper stages for the SLS rocket. Boeing is also the prime contractor for the rocket’s massive core stage.

Building on a legacy… The Centaur V upper stage is the latest version of a design that dates back to the 1960s. Centaurs began flying in 1962, and the Centaur V is the most powerful variant, with a wider diameter and two hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. The Centaur V still uses the ultra-thin, pressure-stabilized stainless steel structure used on all Centaur upper stages. The Centaur has a reliable track record, and the Centaur V’s predecessor, the Centaur III, was human-rated for launches of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule.

Artemis II helium issue fixed. NASA has fixed the problem that forced it to remove the rocket for the Artemis II mission from its launch pad last month, but it will be a couple of weeks before officials are ready to move the vehicle back into the starting blocks at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. Ground teams moved the SLS rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building last month to repair an issue with the upper stage’s helium system. Inspections revealed that a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from ground systems into the rocket, was obstructing the pathway, according to NASA. “The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved,” NASA said in an update posted Tuesday.

Targeting April 1… NASA is not expected to return the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to the launch pad until later this month. Inside the VAB, technicians will complete several other tasks to “refresh” the rocket for the next series of launch opportunities. NASA has not said whether the launch team will conduct another countdown rehearsal after it returns to Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy. The first of five launch opportunities in early April is on April 1, with a two-hour launch window opening at 6: 24 pm EDT (22: 24 UTC). There are additional launch dates available on April 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Next three launches

March 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-18 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 10: 58 UTC

March 10: Alpha | Stairway to Seven | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 50 UTC

March 10: Falcon 9 | EchoStar XXV | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 14 UTC

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

Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad Read More »

After Russian spaceport firm fails to pay bills, electric company turns the lights off

corruption, Putin, roscosmos, russia, Space, vostochny / Kris Guyer / November 6, 2025

The fall and rise of PSO Kazan

As minor as this dispute may seem, it’s remarkable that PSO Kazan is working on a spaceport in Russia at all.

PSO Kazan won the contract to build the launch site’s second pad, 1A for the Angara rocket, in December 2017. The pad was due to be completed in time for an Angara launch in 2021. The company is owned by a Russian billionaire from the city of Kazan, Ravil Ziganshin, previously known for building sports arenas in the Republic of Tatarstan on the other side of the country from Vostochny.

The adventure into spaceport construction did not go well. According to Russian Space Web, the contract for spaceport construction was not signed until October 2018. Months later, amid allegations of criminal activity and delays, Roscosmos moved to cancel the contract with PSO Kazan.

Other firms emerged as bidders on the contract to build the Angara launch pad, among them the Crocus Group. However, they and others later backed out, saying the Russian government was offering to pay far less money than it would actually cost to build the launch site.

“I said I was ready, but not for that amount of money,” Aras Agalarov, founder of the Crocus Group, explained in an interview at the time. “When they asked me, I said there were two pieces of news. The first was that the second phase of the cosmodrome could be built in two years. The second was that it couldn’t be built with the money allocated. If you increase the cost, you’ll get everything in two years. If not, I’m sorry.”

A toxic reputation?

And so Roscosmos—under the leadership of Dmitry Rogozin at the time—went crawling back to PSO Kazan to lead construction of the Angara launch pad.

“Independent observers were puzzled by the sudden about-face and wondered whether Roscosmos had such a toxic reputation in the construction business that it had failed to attract any other contender for the job and, as a result, the State Corporation had no choice but to keep the original contractor on the hook,” Russian Space Web concluded about the decision.

After years of delays and cost overruns, the Angara pad was eventually completed, with its first launch last November. There does not appear to be too much demand, however, as there has not yet been a second launch from the A1 pad since.

After Russian spaceport firm fails to pay bills, electric company turns the lights off Read More »

Putin OKs plan to turn Russian spacecraft into flying billboards

advertising, launch, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / October 10, 2025

These are tough times for Russia’s civilian space program. In the last few years, Russia has cut back on the number of Soyuz crew missions it is sending to the International Space Station, and a replacement for the nearly 60-year-old Soyuz spacecraft remains elusive.

While the United States and China are launching more space missions than ever before, Russia’s once-dominant launch cadence is on a downhill slide.

Russia’s access to global markets dried up after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The fallout from the invasion killed several key space partnership between Russia and Europe. Russia’s capacity to do new things in space seems to be focused on military programs like anti-satellite weapons.

The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia’s official space agency, may have a plan to offset the decline. Late last month, Putin approved changes to federal laws governing advertising and space activities to “allow for the placement of advertising on spacecraft,” Roscosmos posted on its official Telegram account.

We’ve seen this before

The Russian State Duma, dominated by Putin loyalists, previously approved the amendments.

“According to the amendments, Roscosmos has been granted the right, effective January 1, 2026, to place advertising on space objects owned by both the State Corporation itself and federally,” Roscosmos said. “The amendments will create a mechanism for attracting private investment in Russian space exploration and reduce the burden on the state budget.”

The law requires that advertising symbols not affect spacecraft safety. The Russian government said it will establish a fee structure for advertising on federally owned space objects.

Roscosmos didn’t say this, but advertisers eligible for the offer will presumably be limited to Russia and its allies. Any ads from the West would likely violate sanctions.

Rocket-makers have routinely applied decals, stickers, and special paint jobs to their vehicles. This is a particularly popular practice in Russia. Usually, these logos represent customers and suppliers. Sometimes they honor special occasions, like the 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight mission by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Putin OKs plan to turn Russian spacecraft into flying billboards Read More »

The curious case of Russia’s charm offensive with NASA this week

iss, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Space / Mike M. / August 2, 2025

Although NASA and its counterpart in Russia, Roscosmos, continue to work together on a daily basis, the leaders of the two organizations have not held face-to-face meetings since the middle of the first Trump administration, back in October 2018.

A lot has changed in the nearly eight years since then, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rocky departure of Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin in 2022 who was subsequently dispatched to the front lines of the war, several changes in NASA leadership, and more.

This drought in high-level meetings was finally broken this week when the relatively new leader of Roscosmos, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, visited the United States to view the launch of the Crew-11 mission from Florida, which included cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Bakanov has also met with some of NASA’s human spaceflight leaders at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Notably, NASA has provided almost no coverage of the visit. However, the state-operated Russian news service, TASS, has published multiple updates. For example, on Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, TASS reported that Bakanov and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy discussed the future of the International Space Station.

Future of ISS partnership

“The conversation went quite well,” Bakanov is quoted as saying. “We agreed to continue using the ISS until 2028. It’s important that the new NASA chief confirmed this. We will work on the deorbiting process until 2030.”

A separate TASS report also quoted Duffy as saying NASA and Roscosmos should continue to work together despite high geopolitical tensions on Earth.

“What’s unique is we might find disagreement with conflict here, which we have,” Duffy said. “We have wild disagreement with the Russians on Ukraine, but what you see is we find points of agreement and points of partnership, which is what we have with the International Space Station and Russians, and so through hard times, we don’t throw those relationships away. We’re going to continue to work on the problems that we have here, but we’re going to continue to build alliances and partnerships and friendships as humanity continues to advance in space exploration.”

The curious case of Russia’s charm offensive with NASA this week Read More »

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

human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space / Mike M. / November 18, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SpaceX launches mission to bring Starliner astronauts back to Earth

commercial crew, Commercial space, crew dragon, dragon, falcon 9, human spaceflight, international space station, launch, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space, spacex, starliner / Mike M. / September 28, 2024

Ch-ch-changes —

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

Stephen Clark – Updated Sep 28, 2024 7: 29 pm UTC

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

NASA/Keegan Barber

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

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

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

Empty seats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NASA/Kim Shiflett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operational flexibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SpaceX

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

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

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

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

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

This story was updated after confirmation of a successful launch.

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

human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / September 21, 2024

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

NASA/Roscosmos

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

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

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

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

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

Fighting through the tension

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

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

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

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

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

Facing “financial crisis,” Russia on pace for lowest launch total in 6 decades

roscosmos, russian space program, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / August 15, 2024

SMO fallout —

“This forces us to build a new economy in severe conditions.”

Eric Berger – Aug 15, 2024 5: 52 pm UTC

Enlarge / A Soyuz 2.1b rocket booster with a Frigate upper stage block, the Meteor-M 2-1 meteorological satellite, and 18 small satellites launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome.

Yuri Smityuk/TASS

A Progress cargo supply spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Thursday, local time. The mission was successful, and Russia has launched hundreds of these spacecraft before. So it wasn’t all that big of a deal, except for one small detail: This was just Russia’s ninth orbital launch of the year.

At this pace, it appears that the country’s space program is on pace for the fewest number of Russian or Soviet space launches in a year since 1961. That was when Yuri Gagarin went to space at the dawn of the human spaceflight era.

There are myriad reasons for this, including a decision by Western space powers to distance themselves from the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, after the invasion of Ukraine. This has had disastrous effects on the Russian space program, but only recently have we gotten any insight into how deep those impacts have cut.

In recent weeks, the first deputy director of Roscosmos, Andrei Yelchaninov, has given a series of interviews to Russian news outlets. (Most Russian media are state-owned or state-controlled, so none of this information can be independently verified, but it is interesting nonetheless.) One of the most revealing of these interviews was given to national news agency Interfax. It was translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell and provides perspective on Russia’s space crisis and how the country will seek to rebound.

A financial crisis

“We are in an ongoing process of emerging from financial crisis, and it’s complicated,” Yelchaninov told Interfax. “I would remind you that contract cancellations by unfriendly contacts cost Roscosmos 180 billion rubles ($2.1 billion US). This forces us to build a new economy in severe conditions.”

As a result of this, Russia’s space industry has been operating at a loss in recent years and may not begin to break even until 2025. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also came as United Launch Alliance finally ended its practice of purchasing RD-180 rocket engines, manufactured by NPO Energomash. This fact, in concert with decreased commercial demand for Russia’s Proton and Soyuz rockets, has forced the Russian government to subsidize these elements of Roscosmos.

These companies “are currently in a financial revitalization procedure and have received State subsidies several years ago in order to maintain viability, and are now seeking new sales markets and additional workload,” Yelchaninov said. Asked about possibly selling more Russian-made engines to the United States, Yelchaninov replied, “That issue is not on the agenda.”

Russia had to look to new sales markets after what Yelchaninov euphemistically refers to as the “special military operation,” which is Russia’s term of art for its war against Ukraine. “After the beginning of the SMO we were forced to shift from our traditional partners in Europe and the US, with whom we had many years of interaction, for new international directions including the countries in Africa, the Mideast, and Southeast Asia,” he said.

During the interview, Yelchaninov confirmed that Russia has committed to participating in the International Space Station program until “at least” 2028. NASA is pushing to extend the operational lifetime of the station to 2030, at which point the United States plans to de-orbit the aging laboratory using a modified Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Rather than working with the United States in space, Yelchaninov said that Russia’s space program would focus on cooperation with China rather than competition there. “The key project of our bilateral cooperation is creating an International Lunar Station to which we are jointly striving to attract additional international partners,” he said.

Big plans, big delays?

In addition, Russia is also continuing the development of its oft-delayed “Russian Orbital Station,” or ROS. The current plans call for the launch of a scientific and power module in 2027, with the core of the station (four modules) to be launched into orbit by 2030. Further expansions will take place in the early 2030s. It should be noted, however, that these dates can charitably be described as aspirational.

Even more speculatively, Yelchaninov mentioned several future rocket projects, including the Amur-LNG vehicle and the Corona rocket.

In 2020, Russia aimed to debut the methane-powered Amur rocket with a reusable first stage by 2026. This vehicle was developed to be cost-competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Yelchaninov now said Roscosmos intends to develop first-stage reuse in two phases. In the first of these, a Grasshopper-like program would test landing technologies before moving to experiments with a complete booster. But don’t expect to see Amur any time soon. Yelchaninov revealed that Russian and Kazakh officials are still in the design phase of a launch site at Baikonur, rather than actively building anything.

Yelchaninov also said Roscosmos would like to develop a single-stage-to-orbit rocket named Corona in the future. This appears to be an updated take on a Russian rocket design that is more than three decades old.

“We have already studied whether or not a new booster of this type will be in demand,” Yelchaninov said. “The answer is obvious—we are reducing the cost of access to space by more than an order of magnitude and discovering entirely new opportunities for super-operational delivery of cargo, and we are moving toward an ideology of space as a service.”

I would not hold my breath on seeing Corona fly.

Facing “financial crisis,” Russia on pace for lowest launch total in 6 decades Read More »