Space

after-another-boeing-letdown,-nasa-isn’t-ready-to-buy-more-starliner-missions

After another Boeing letdown, NASA isn’t ready to buy more Starliner missions

Boeing, commercial crew, Commercial space, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / /
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft sits atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket before liftoff in June to begin the Crew Flight Test.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft sits atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket before liftoff in June to begin the Crew Flight Test.

NASA is ready for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, stricken with thruster problems and helium leaks, to leave the International Space Station as soon as Friday, wrapping up a disappointing test flight that has clouded the long-term future of the Starliner program.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard Starliner on June 5, closed the spacecraft’s hatch Thursday in preparation for departure Friday. But it wasn’t what they envisioned when they left Earth on Starliner three months ago. Instead of closing the hatch from a position in Starliner’s cockpit, they latched the front door to the spacecraft from the space station’s side of the docking port.

The Starliner spacecraft is set to undock from the International Space Station at 6: 04 pm EDT (22: 04 UTC) Friday. If all goes according to plan, Starliner will ignite its braking rockets at 11: 17 pm EDT (03: 17 UTC) for a minute-long burn to target a parachute-assisted, airbag-cushioned landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, at 12: 03 am EDT (04: 03 UTC) Saturday.

The Starliner mission set to conclude this weekend was the spacecraft’s first test flight with astronauts, running seven years behind Boeing’s original schedule. But due to technical problems with the spacecraft, it won’t come home with the two astronauts who flew it into orbit back in June, leaving some of the test flight’s objectives incomplete.

This outcome is, without question, a setback for NASA and Boeing, which must resolve two major problems in Starliner’s propulsion system—supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne—before the capsule can fly with people again. NASA officials haven’t said whether they will require Boeing to launch another Starliner test flight before certifying the spacecraft for the first of up to six operational crew missions on Boeing’s contract.

A noncommittal from NASA

For over a decade, the space agency has worked with Boeing and SpaceX to develop two independent vehicles to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX launched its first Dragon spacecraft with astronauts in May 2020, and six months later, NASA cleared SpaceX to begin flying regular six-month space station crew rotation missions.

Officially, NASA has penciled in Starliner’s first operational mission for August 2025. But the agency set that schedule before realizing Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne would need to redesign seals and perhaps other elements in Starliner’s propulsion system.

No one knows how long that will take, and NASA hasn’t decided if it will require Boeing to launch another test flight before formally certifying Starliner for operational missions. If Starliner performs flawlessly after undocking and successfully lands this weekend, perhaps NASA engineers can convince themselves Starliner is good to go for crew rotation flights once Boeing resolves the thruster problems and helium leaks.

In any event, the schedule for launching an operational Starliner crew flight in less than a year seems improbable. Aside from the decision on another test flight, the agency also must decide whether it will order any more operational Starliner missions from Boeing. These “post-certification missions” will transport crews of four astronauts between Earth and the ISS, orbiting roughly 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the planet.

NASA has only given Boeing the “Authority To Proceed” for three of its six potential operational Starliner missions. This milestone, known as ATP, is a decision point in contracting lingo where the customer—in this case, NASA—places a firm order for a deliverable. NASA has previously said it awards these task orders about two to three years prior to a mission’s launch.

Josh Finch, a NASA spokesperson, told Ars that the agency hasn’t made any decisions on whether to commit to any more operational Starliner missions from Boeing beyond the three already on the books.

“NASA’s goal remains to certify the Starliner system for crew transportation to the International Space Station,” Finch said in a written response to questions from Ars. “NASA looks forward to its continued work with Boeing to complete certification efforts after Starliner’s uncrewed return. Decisions and timing on issuing future authorizations are on the work ahead.”

This means NASA’s near-term focus is on certifying Starliner so that Boeing can start executing its commercial crew contract. The space agency hasn’t determined when or if it will authorize Boeing to prepare for any Starliner missions beyond the three already on the books.

When it awarded commercial crew contracts to SpaceX and Boeing in 2014, NASA pledged to buy at least two operational crew flights from each company. The initial contracts from a decade ago had options for as many as six crew rotation flights to the ISS after certification.

Since then, NASA has extended SpaceX’s commercial crew contract to cover as many as 14 Dragon missions with astronauts, and SpaceX has already launched eight of them. The main reason for this contract extension was to cover NASA’s needs for crew transportation after delays with Boeing’s Starliner, which was originally supposed to alternate with SpaceX’s Dragon for human flights every six months.

After another Boeing letdown, NASA isn’t ready to buy more Starliner missions Read More »

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NASA wants Starliner to make a quick getaway from the space station

Boeing, commercial crew, Commercial space, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / /

WSSHing for success —

Starliner is set to land at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico shortly after midnight.

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Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is set to undock from the International Space Station on Friday evening.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is set to undock from the International Space Station on Friday evening.

NASA

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will gently back away from the International Space Station Friday evening, then fire its balky thrusters to rapidly depart the vicinity of the orbiting lab and its nine-person crew.

NASA asked Boeing to adjust Starliner’s departure sequence to get away from the space station faster and reduce the workload on the thrusters to reduce the risk of overheating, which caused some of the control jets to drop offline as the spacecraft approached the outpost for docking in June.

The action begins at 6: 04 pm EDT (22: 04 UTC) on Friday, when hooks in the docking mechanism connecting Starliner with the International Space Station (ISS) will open, and springs will nudge the spacecraft away its mooring on the forward end of the massive research complex.

Around 90 seconds later, a set of forward-facing thrusters on Starliner’s service module will fire in a series of 12 pulses over a few minutes to drive the spacecraft farther away from the space station. These maneuvers will send Starliner on a trajectory over the top of the ISS, then behind it until it is time for the spacecraft to perform a deorbit burn at 11: 17 pm EDT (03: 17 UTC) to target landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, shortly after midnight EDT (10 pm local time at White Sands).

How to watch, and what to watch for

The two videos embedded below will show NASA TV’s live coverage of the undocking and landing of Starliner.

Starliner is leaving its two-person crew behind on the space station after NASA officials decided last month they did not have enough confidence in the spacecraft’s reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, used to make exact changes to the capsule’s trajectory and orientation in orbit. Five of the 28 RCS thrusters on Starliner’s service module failed during the craft’s rendezvous with the space station three months ago. Subsequent investigations showed overheating could cause Teflon seals in a poppet valve to swell, restricting the flow of propellant to the thrusters.

Engineers recovered four of the five thrusters after they temporarily stopped working, but NASA officials couldn’t be sure the thrusters would not overheat again on the trip home. NASA decided it was too risky for Starliner to come home with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on Boeing’s crew test flight on June 5, becoming the first people to fly on the commercial capsule. They will remain aboard the station until February, when they will return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

The original flight plan, had Wilmore and Williams been aboard Starliner for the trip home, called for the spacecraft to make a gentler departure from the ISS, allowing engineers to fully check out the performance of its navigation sensors and test the craft’s ability to loiter in the vicinity of the station for photographic surveys of its exterior.

“In this case, what we’re doing is the break-out burn, which will be a series of 12 burns, each not very large, about 0.1 meters per second (0.2 mph) and that’s just to take the Starliner away from the station, and then immediately start going up and away, and eventually it’ll curve around to the top and deorbit from above the station a few orbits later,” said Anthony Vareha, NASA’s flight director overseeing ISS operations during Starliner’s undocking sequence.

Astronauts won’t be inside Starliner’s cockpit to take manual control in the event of a major problem, so NASA managers want the spacecraft to get away from the space station as quickly as possible.

On this path, Starliner will exit the so-called approach ellipsoid, a 2.5-by-1.25-by-1.25-mile (4-by-2-by-2-kilometer) invisible boundary around the orbiting laboratory, about 20 to 25 minutes after undocking, NASA officials said. That’s less than half the time Starliner would normally take to leave the vicinity of the ISS.

“It’s a quicker way to get away from the station, with less stress on the thrusters,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “Essentially, once we open the hooks, the springs will push Starliner away and then we’ll do some really short thruster firings to put us on a trajectory that will take us above the station and behind, we’ll be opening to a nice range to where we can execute the deorbit burn.”

In the unlikely event of a more significant series of thruster failures, the springs that push Starliner away from the station should be enough to ensure there’s no risk of collision, according to Vareha.

“Then, after that, we really are going to just stay in some very benign attitudes and not fire the the thrusters very much at all,” Stich said.

Starliner will need to use the RCS thrusters again to point itself in the proper direction to fire four larger rocket engines for the deorbit burn. Once this burn is complete, the RCS thrusters will reorient the spacecraft to jettison the service module to burn up in the atmosphere. The reusable crew module relies on a separate set of thrusters during reentry.

Finally, the capsule will approach the landing zone in New Mexico from the southwest, flying over the Pacific Ocean and Mexico before deploying three main parachutes and airbags to cushion its landing at White Sands. Boeing and NASA teams there will meet the spacecraft and secure it for a road voyage back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for refurbishment.

Meanwhile, engineers must resolve the causes of the thruster problems and helium leaks that plagued the Starliner test flight before it can fly astronauts again.

NASA wants Starliner to make a quick getaway from the space station Read More »

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Faced with a tight deadline, NASA and Blue Origin agree to delay New Glenn debut

blue origin, Science, Space / /

Glenn wen? —

“We can’t take our foot off the pedal here.”

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The second stage of the New Glenn rocket rolled to the launch site this week.

Enlarge / The second stage of the New Glenn rocket rolled to the launch site this week.

Blue Origin

NASA and Blue Origin announced Friday that they have agreed to delay the launch of the ESCAPADE mission to Mars until at least the spring of 2025.

The decision to stand down from a launch attempt in mid-October was driven by a deadline to begin loading hypergolic propellant on the two small ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft. While it is theoretically possible to offload fuel from these vehicles for a future launch attempt, multiple sources told Ars that such an activity would incur significant risk to the spacecraft.

Forced to make a call on whether to fuel, NASA decided not to. Although the two spacecraft were otherwise ready for launch, it was not clear the New Glenn rocket would be similarly ready to go.

Waiting on the rocket

NASA procured the debut launch of the New Glenn rocket, which was developed by Blue Origin, for a significant discount. The mission’s managers, University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, always understood there were timeline risks with launching on New Glenn.

Blue Origin appears to have worked with some urgency this year to prepare the massive rocket for its initial launch. However, when the company missed a key target of hot firing the rocket’s upper stage by the end of August, NASA delayed fueling of the ESCAPADE mission. Now, with the closing of a Mars launch window next month, NASA will not fuel the spacecraft until next spring, at the earliest.

Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin successfully rolled the New Glenn second stage to its launch pad at Launch Complex-36 in Florida on Tuesday. The company is now targeting Monday, September 9, for a hot fire test of the second stage.

At the same time, preparations for the rocket’s first stage are nearing completion. All seven of the rocket’s BE-7 engines have arrived at the launch site following acceptance testing. Engineers and technicians are presently attaching the engines to the first stage of the vehicle.

Blue Origin will now pivot to launching a prototype of its Blue Ring transfer vehicle on the debut launch of New Glenn, with the intent of testing the electronics, avionics, and other systems on the vehicle. Blue Origin is targeting the first half of November for this launch. This test flight will also serve as the first of three “certification” flights for New Glenn, which will allow the vehicle to become eligible to carry national security payloads for the US Space Force.

A sense of urgency

It’s nearly been a year since Bezos tapped a former Amazon executive, Dave Limp, to lead Blue Origin. Bezos tasked the company’s new chief executive with injecting a sense of purpose toward getting New Glenn flying as soon as possible. Bezos has made a launch this year a high priority.

In an email to Blue Origin employees on Friday, Limp expressed that sense of urgency.

“We can’t take our foot off the pedal here,” Limp wrote. “Everyone’s work to get us to NG-1 flight this year is critical and I’m so appreciative of everyone’s relentless dedication to make this happen.”

As for ESCAPADE, the mission could launch in the spring of 2025. Although the “Mars window” only opens every 18 to 24 months, there are complex trajectories by which a payload launched in the spring of 2025 could reach the red planet. It’s also possible that NASA and Blue Origin could ultimately wait until the next Mars window opens in November 2026 to launch the mission.

Faced with a tight deadline, NASA and Blue Origin agree to delay New Glenn debut Read More »

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With NASA’s plan faltering, China knows it can be first with Mars sample return

china, Mars, Mars Sample Return, NASA, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space, tianwen 3 / /

Questions to heaven —

“China is likely to become the first country to return samples from Mars.”

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A

Enlarge / A “selfie” photo of China’s Zhurong rover and the Tianwen-1 landing platform on Mars in 2021.

China plans to launch two heavy-lift Long March 5 rockets with elements of the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission in 2028, the mission’s chief designer said Thursday.

In a presentation at a Chinese space exploration conference, the chief designer of China’s robotic Mars sample return project described the mission’s high-level design and outlined how the mission will collect samples from the Martian surface. Reports from the talk published on Chinese social media and by state-run news agencies were short on technical details and did not discuss any of the preparations for the mission.

Public pronouncements by Chinese officials on future space missions typically come true, but China is embarking on challenging efforts to explore the Moon and Mars. China aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030 in a step toward eventually building a Moon base called the International Lunar Research Station.

Liu Jizhong, chief designer of the Tianwen-3 mission, did not say when China could have Mars samples back on Earth. In past updates on the Tianwen-3 mission, the launch date has alternated between 2028 and 2030, and officials previously suggested the round-trip mission would take about three years. This would suggest Mars rocks could return to Earth around 2031, assuming an on-time launch in 2028.

NASA, meanwhile, is in the middle of revamping its architecture for a Mars sample return mission in cooperation with the European Space Agency. In June, NASA tapped seven companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to study ways to return Mars rocks to Earth for less than $11 billion and before 2040, the cost and schedule for NASA’s existing plan for Mars sample return.

That is too expensive and too long to wait for Mars sample return, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in April. Mars sample return is the highest priority for NASA’s planetary science division and has been the subject of planning for decades. The Perseverance rover currently on Mars is gathering several dozen specimens of rock powder, soil, and Martian air in cigar-shaped titanium tubes for eventual return to Earth.

This means China has a shot at becoming the first country to bring pristine samples from Mars back to Earth, and China doesn’t intend to stop there.

“If all the missions go as planned, China is likely to become the first country to return samples from Mars,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, in a July interview with Chinese state television. “And we will explore giant planets, such as Jupiter. We will also explore some of the asteroids, including sample return missions from an asteroid, and build an asteroid defense system.”

The asteroid sample return mission is known as Tianwen-2, and is scheduled for launch next year. Tianwen means “questions to heaven.”

China doesn’t have a mission currently on Mars gathering material for its Tianwen-3 sample return mission. The country’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, landed on the red planet in May 2021 and deployed a rover named Zhurong. China’s space agency hasn’t released any update on the rover since 2022, suggesting it may have succumbed to the harsh Martian winter.

So, the Tianwen-3 mission must carry everything it needs to land on Mars, collect samples, package them for return to Earth, and then launch them from the Martian surface back into space. Then, the sample carrier will rendezvous with a return vehicle in orbit around Mars. Once the return spacecraft has the samples, it will break out of Mars orbit, fly across the Solar System, and release a reentry capsule to bring the Mars specimens to the Earth.

All of the kit for the Tianwen-3 mission will launch on two Long March 5 rockets, the most powerful operational launcher in China’s fleet. One Long March 5 will launch the lander and ascent vehicle, and another will propel the return spacecraft and Earth reentry capsule toward Mars.

Liu, Tianwen-3’s chief designer, said an attempt to retrieve samples from Mars is the most technically challenging space exploration mission since the Apollo program, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. Liu said China will adhere to international agreements on planetary protection to safeguard Mars, Earth, and the samples themselves from contamination. The top scientific goal of the Tianwen-3 mission is to search for signs of life, he said.

Tianwen-3 will collect samples with a robotic arm and a subsurface drill, and Chinese officials previously said the mission may carry a helicopter and a mobile robot to capture more diverse Martian materials farther away from the stationary lander.

Liu said China is open to putting international payloads on Tianwen-3 and will collaborate with international scientists to analyze the Martian samples the mission returns to Earth. China is making lunar samples returned by the Chang’e 5 mission available for analysis by international researchers, and Chinese officials have said they anticipate a similar process to loan out samples from the far side of the Moon brought home by the Chang’e 6 mission earlier this year.

With NASA’s plan faltering, China knows it can be first with Mars sample return Read More »

after-starliner,-nasa-has-another-big-human-spaceflight-decision-to-make

After Starliner, NASA has another big human spaceflight decision to make

Science, Space / /

Heat shield a hot decision —

“We still have a lot of work to do to close out the heat shield investigation.”

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The Artemis II Orion spacecraft being prepared for tests at NASA’S Kennedy Space Center in Florida in June 2024.

Enlarge / The Artemis II Orion spacecraft being prepared for tests at NASA’S Kennedy Space Center in Florida in June 2024.

NASA / Rad Sinyak

Now that NASA has resolved the question of the Starliner spacecraft and its two crew members on the International Space Station, the agency faces another high-stakes human spaceflight decision.

The choice concerns the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield and whether NASA will make any changes before the Artemis II mission that will make a lunar flyby. Although Starliner has garnered a lot of media attention, this will be an even higher-profile decision for NASA, with higher consequences—four astronauts will be on board, and hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, will be watching humanity’s first deep space mission in more than five decades.

The issue is the safety of the heat shield, located at the base of the capsule, which protects Orion’s crew during its return to Earth. During the Artemis I mission that sent Orion beyond the Moon in late 2022, without astronauts on board, chunks of charred material cracked and chipped away from Orion’s heat shield during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Once the spacecraft landed, engineers found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry damaged the heat shield.

After assessing the issue for more than a year, NASA convened an “independent review team” to conduct its analysis of NASA’s work. Initially, this review team’s work was due to be completed in June, but its deliberations continued throughout much of the summer, and it only recently concluded.

The team’s findings are not public yet, but NASA essentially faces two choices with the heat shield: It can fly Artemis II with a similar heat shield that Orion used on Artemis I, or the agency can revamp the design and construct a new heat shield, likely delaying Artemis II from its September 2025 launch date for multiple years.

What they’re saying

In recent comments, NASA officials have been relatively tight-lipped when asked how the heat shield issue will be resolved:

  • NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in an interview with Ars, in early August: “They are still deciding. I’m very confident [in a launch date of September 2025] unless there is the problem with the heat shield. Obviously, that would be a big hit. But I have no indication at this point that the final recommendation is going to be to go with another heat shield.”
  • NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, in conversation with Ars, in late August: “That’s on a good path right now.”
  • NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development, Catherine Koerner, in an interview with Ars in mid-August: “The entire trade space is open. But as far as the actual Artemis II mission, right now, we’re still holding to the September ’25 launch date, knowing that we still have a lot of work to do to close out the heat shield investigation.”
  • NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Moon to Mars Program Amit Kshatriya to the NASA Advisory Committee in late August: “The independent review team has just wrapped up their analysis, so I expect that to close out. We should have a disposition there in terms of how they incorporate those findings.”

In summary, the Independent Review Team’s work is done, and it has begun to brief NASA officials. A final decision will then be made by NASA’s senior leadership.

What happens now

In preparation for Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft underwent thermal and vacuum testing this year before it will be stacked onto the Space Launch System rocket. Initially, NASA planned to begin the stacking process this month but ultimately delayed this until there was clarity on the heat shield question. The shield is already attached to the spacecraft.

Most people Ars spoke to believe NASA will likely fly with the heat shield as is. Sources have indicated that NASA engineers believe the best way to preserve the heat shield during Artemis II is by changing its trajectory through Earth’s atmosphere.

The inspector general's report May 1 included new images of Orion's heat shield.

The inspector general’s report May 1 included new images of Orion’s heat shield.

NASA Inspector General

During Artemis I, the spacecraft followed a “skip” reentry profile, in which Orion dipped into the atmosphere, skipped back into space, and then made a final descent into the atmosphere. This allowed for precise control over Orion’s splashdown location and reduced g-forces on the vehicle. There are other options, including a ballistic reentry, with a steeper trajectory that is harder on the crew in terms of gravitational forces, and a direct reentry, which involves a miniature skip.

A steeper trajectory would allow Orion’s heat shield to be exposed to atmospheric heating and air resistance for a shorter period of time. NASA engineers believe that the cracking issues observed during Artemis I were due to the duration of exposure to atmospheric heating. So less time—theoretically—means that there would be less damage observed during the reentry of Orion during Artemis II.

After Starliner, NASA has another big human spaceflight decision to make Read More »

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The New Glenn rocket’s second stage set to roll to the launch pad on Monday

blue origin, new glenn, Science, Space / /

Rings of power —

The large rocket will attempt to land on its debut flight.

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Image of the New Glenn second stage on its mobile test stand.

Enlarge / Image of the New Glenn second stage on its mobile test stand.

Blue Origin

Blue Origin plans to enter the final phase of its launch preparations for the New Glenn rocket on Monday by rolling the vehicle’s second stage to Launch Complex 36 in Florida. Pending weather and other final considerations, a rollout could occur as early as Monday afternoon.

This is the flight version of the vehicle, with the exception of a fixed adaptor for weather protection during a test campaign. The launch company is targeting a hot fire test of the upper stage, which is powered by two BE-3U engines, within the next week or so.

The launch company, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is closing in on the debut launch of the massive New Glenn rocket, which will be one of the most powerful launch vehicles in the world. With a fully reusable first stage, New Glenn has a lift capacity of 45 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

A tight launch window

NASA has contracted with Blue Origin for the first launch of New Glenn, seeking to boost two relatively small spacecraft to Mars. These ESCAPADE orbiters have a tight launch window, from October 13 to October 21. Managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, the ESCAPADE spacecraft will analyze the Martian magnetic field.

It is an open question as to whether Blue Origin can integrate, test, and launch ESCAPADE within the launch window, which opens in less than six weeks. Between now and then the company must successfully test fire the second stage, and then roll the first stage out to the company’s facilities at the Cape Canaveral launch complex.

The company’s plan is to mate the second and first stages of the rocket, and add the payload fairing with the spacecraft inside of it, before conducting a short hot fire test of the first stage. If all goes well, Blue Origin plans to attempt a launch during the October window for ESCAPADE. These spacecraft arrived at the company’s launch facilities a couple of weeks ago.

This seems like an ambitious timeline for the new rocket, as final integration of stages is often where issues are discovered with new launch vehicles. However, Blue Origin has found a new sense or urgency under chief executive Dave Limp, who joined the company in December—hence the frenetic activity with the second stage over the Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States.

The road to commercial heavy lift

Limp led devices and services at Amazon for more than a decade, which included oversight of the Project Kuiper satellite project. In his nine months at Blue Origin, he has prioritized completion and launch of the New Glenn rocket amid a large portfolio of projects at the company.

New Glenn will join SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets as privately developed, heavy lift rockets. Its debut will confirm the trend in US spaceflight toward commercial developed large rockets that can be reused. Both Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have identified lower cost, rapidly reusable rockets as a key to expanding human activity in outer space. Bezos would like to see mining and other destructive industrial activities moved off world in order to preserve the natural vitality of Earth.

Whether it launches ESCAPADE next month, or some other payload on its debut flight after October, New Glenn will attempt an ambitious drone ship landing of the first stage on its debut launch. Success is unlikely—SpaceX did not manage to land its first Falcon 9 at sea until the 23rd launch of this rocket.

However, Bezos and Blue Origin are determined to gather all of the data possible from New Glenn’s initial flight in order to reach reusability of the larger booster as soon as possible. The attempt, whether successful or not, should make for compelling viewing.

The New Glenn rocket’s second stage set to roll to the launch pad on Monday Read More »

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The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises

Science, Space / /

Submarines in space —

“I don’t know what’s making it.”

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

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

On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft.

“I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”

Wilmore said he was not sure if there was some oddity in the connection between the station and the spacecraft causing the noise, or something else. He asked the flight controllers in Houston to see if they could listen to the audio inside the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Mission Control radioed back that they were linked via “hardline” to listen to audio inside Starliner, which has now been docked to the International Space Station for nearly three months.

Wilmore, apparently floating in Starliner, then put his microphone up to the speaker inside Starliner. Shortly thereafter, there was an audible pinging that was quite distinctive. “Alright Butch, that one came through,” Mission control radioed up to Wilmore. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”

“I’ll do it one more time, and I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore replied. The odd, sonar-like audio then repeated itself. “Alright, over to you. Call us if you figure it out.”

A space oddity

A recording of this audio, and Wilmore’s conversation with Mission Control, was captured and shared by a Michigan-based meteorologist named Rob Dale.

It was not immediately clear what was causing the odd, and somewhat eerie noise. As Starliner flies to the space station, it maintains communications with the space station via a radio frequency system. Once docked, however, there is a hardline umbilical that carries audio.

Astronauts notice such oddities in space from time to time. For example, during China’s first human spaceflight int 2003, astronaut Yang Liwei said he heard what sounded like an iron bucket being knocked by a wooden hammer while in orbit. Later, scientists realized the noise was due to small deformations in the spacecraft due to a difference in pressure between its inner and outer walls.

This weekend’s sonar-like noises most likely have a benign cause, and Wilmore certainly did not sound frazzled. But the odd noises are worth noting given the challenges that Boeing and NASA have had with the debut crewed flight of Starliner, including substantial helium leaks in flight, and failing thrusters. NASA announced a week ago that, due to uncertainty about the flyability of Starliner, it would come home without its original crew of Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Starliner is now due to fly back autonomously to Earth on Friday, September 6. Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth next February, flying aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft scheduled to launch with just two astronauts later this month.

The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin flies six to space; when will Starship launch again?

Science, Space / /

Nat-sec bonafides —

It seems like we’ll have to wait a bit for ABL to put another rocket on the launch pad.

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The first stage of the RFA One rocket collapses on its launch pad in Scotland after an aborted test-firing.

Enlarge / The first stage of the RFA One rocket collapses on its launch pad in Scotland after an aborted test-firing.

Welcome to Edition 7.09 of the Rocket Report! When will SpaceX launch the next test flight of Starship? It certainly doesn’t look to be imminent, with SpaceX ground teams in Texas feverishly working to beef up the launch pad in preparation for an attempt to catch the rocket’s massive Super Heavy booster when it returns to the launch site on the next flight. Meanwhile, the FAA is reviewing SpaceX’s proposal to recover the booster on land for the first time. And on Thursday, a NASA official monitoring SpaceX’s Starship effort said the next test flight was scheduled for launch in the “fall,” suggesting it could be a month or more away. Also, we’ve listed the next three launches as “TBD” (To Be Determined) because SpaceX is waiting for FAA approval to resume Falcon 9 launches following a booster landing failure this week, and the Polaris Dawn mission is on hold due to an unfavorable weather forecast.

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.

Firefly has a new chief executive. Jason Kim, former head of Boeing-owned satellite-maker Millennium Space Systems, has been appointed CEO of Firefly Aerospace effective October 1, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Kim joins Firefly as the ambitious space transportation startup, which has raised close to $600 million from investors since its 2021 founding, looks to launch a commercial lunar lander for NASA before the end of the year. Firefly is also working on a medium-lift rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman, with the goal of competing for missions to resupply the International Space Station and launch payloads for the US military and commercial customers.

Kim brings national security chops … At Millennium, Kim shepherded several national security space missions to completion, including Victus Nox, a responsive satellite and launch mission for the US Space Force. Millennium manufactured the satellite for the Victus Nox mission, and Firefly Aerospace successfully launched it on an Alpha rocket just 27 hours after receiving the launch order from the military. This required Millennium and Firefly to integrate the satellite with the Alpha rocket on short notice. Kim replaces Bill Weber, who left the CEO role at Firefly in July after allegations he had an improper relationship with a female employee.

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New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin launched six passengers, including a NASA-sponsored researcher and the youngest woman to fly in space, on a sub-orbital trip out of the lower atmosphere Thursday in the company’s eighth crewed spaceflight, CBS News reports. University of Florida researcher Rob Ferl, philanthropist Nicolina Elrick, adventurer Eugene Grin, Vanderbilt University cardiologist Elman Jahangir, American-Israeli entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin, and University of North Carolina senior Karsen Kitchen lifted off from Jeff Bezos’ West Texas launch site on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Kitchen became the youngest woman to fly higher than 100 kilometers (62 miles), and Ferl was the first NASA-funded researcher to fly on a suborbital rocket. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, its competitor in the suborbital human spaceflight market, have long touted their vehicles’ ability to support human-tended research in microgravity.

Three good chutes … This was Blue Origin’s first New Shepard flight since May 19, when one of the crew capsule’s three main parachutes failed to open fully on the descent. The passengers on that flight were fine, and Blue Origin says the capsule can return safely with just a single parachute if two fail. Blue Origin said it identified the cause of the parachute issue on the May flight, but didn’t offer details other than that the investigation “focused on the dis-reefing system that transitions the parachutes from the reefed to the disreefed state that did not function as designed on one of the three parachutes on NS-25,” Space News reports.

ABL’s rocket test failure damaged ground systems. A fiery malfunction on an Alaska launch pad last month not only destroyed the RS1 rocket ABL Space Systems was preparing for launch, but also damaged some ground systems at the site, ABL said in an update posted on X. The company said a fire developed “external to RS1’s base” after the booster’s 11 engines shut down during an aborted test-firing at Kodiak Island, Alaska. The fire was fed by fuel leaks from two of the engines, and ABL’s launch team was able to use water and inert gases to suppress the fire for more than 11 minutes. But the remote launch site doesn’t have a direct water supply, and mobile water tanks ran dry, causing the fire to grow until the rocket collapsed. ABL said a majority of the plumbing and electrical connections to the launch mount were damaged, but the launch mount’s structure, flame deflector, and other equipment were unharmed.

Few details on next steps … ABL published a detailed update on its investigation into the test failure, and its openness is worth noting. Engineers found two of the engines—the ones that leaked and fueled the fire—experienced “combustion instability” during their startup sequence. ABL said it believes differences in this RS1 rocket, called a Block 2 design, resulted in a higher-energy startup than expected. The company will return its damaged ground support equipment from Alaska to a facility in Long Beach, California, for refurbishment, and ABL says its next RS1 rocket is “well into production.” But the company didn’t share any information on corrective actions or a timeline for implementing them and returning to the launch pad with RS1. ABL aims to compete with other, more established small satellite launch companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace, but its RS1 rocket hasn’t made it far from the launch pad. ABL’s first orbital launch attempt in January 2023 ended when the RS1 rocket lost power and fell back on its launch pad.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin flies six to space; when will Starship launch again? Read More »

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Boeing will try to fly its troubled Starliner capsule back to Earth next week

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Destination desert —

The two astronauts who launched on Starliner will stay behind on the International Space Station.

–

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station at the conclusion of an unpiloted test flight in May 2022.

Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station at the conclusion of an unpiloted test flight in May 2022.

NASA

NASA and Boeing are proceeding with final preparations to undock the Starliner spacecraft from the International Space Station next Friday, September 6, to head for landing at White Sands Space Harbor in southern New Mexico.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were supposed to return to Earth inside Starliner, will remain behind on the space station after NASA decided last week to conclude the Boeing test flight without its crew on board. NASA officials decided it was too risky to put the astronauts on Starliner after the spacecraft suffered thruster failures during its flight to the space station in early June.

Instead, Wilmore and Williams will come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule no earlier than February, extending their planned stay on the space station from eight days to eight months. Flying on autopilot, the Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to depart the station at approximately 6: 04 pm EDT (22: 04 UTC) on September 6. The capsule will fire its engines to drop out of orbit and target a parachute-assisted landing in New Mexico at 12: 03 am EDT (04: 03 UTC) on September 7, NASA said in a statement Thursday.

NASA officials completed the second part of a two-day Flight Readiness Review on Thursday to clear the Starliner spacecraft for undocking and landing. However, there are strict weather rules for landing a Starliner spacecraft, so NASA and Boeing managers will decide next week whether to proceed with the return next Friday night or wait for better conditions at the White Sands landing zone.

Over the last few days, flight controllers updated parameters in Starliner’s software to handle a fully autonomous return to Earth without inputs from astronauts flying in the cockpit, NASA said. Boeing has flown two unpiloted Starliner test flights using the same type of autonomous reentry and landing operations. This mission, called the Crew Flight Test (CFT), was the first time astronauts launched into orbit inside a Starliner spacecraft, and was expected to pave the way for future operational missions to rotate four-person crews to and from the space station.

With the Starliner spacecraft unable to complete its test flight as intended, there are fundamental questions about the future of Boeing’s commercial crew program. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said last week that Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, told him the aerospace company remained committed to Starliner. However, Boeing will be on the hook to pay for the cost of resolving problems with overheating thrusters and helium leaks that hamstrung the CFT mission. Boeing hasn’t made any public statements about the long-term future of the Starliner program since NASA decided to pull its astronauts off the spacecraft for its return to Earth.

Preparing for a contingency

NASA is clearly more comfortable with returning Wilmore and Williams to Earth inside SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, but the change disrupts crew operations at the space station. This week, astronauts have been reconfiguring the interior of a Dragon spacecraft currently docked at the outpost to support six crew members in the event of an emergency evacuation.

With Starliner leaving the space station next week, Dragon will become the lifeboat for Wilmore and Williams. If a fire, a collision with space junk, a medical emergency, or something else forces the crew to leave the complex, the Starliner astronauts will ride home on makeshift seats positioned under the four regular seats inside Dragon, where crews typically put cargo during launch and landing.

At least one of the Starliner astronauts would have to come home without a spacesuit to protect them if the cabin of the Dragon spacecraft depressurized on the descent. This has never happened on a Dragon mission before, but astronauts wear SpaceX-made pressure suits to mitigate the risk. The four astronauts who launched on Dragon have their suits, and NASA officials said a spare SpaceX suit already on the space station fit one of the Starliner astronauts, but they didn’t identify which one.

A pressure suit for the other Starliner crew member will launch on the next Dragon spacecraft—on the Crew-9 mission—set for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than September 24. Starliner’s troubles have also disrupted plans for the Crew-9 mission.

On Friday, NASA announced it would remove two astronauts from the Crew-9 mission, including its commander, Zena Cardman, who is a spaceflight rookie. Veteran astronaut Nick Hague will move from the pilot’s seat to take over as Crew-9 commander. Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will join him.

NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, have an agreement to launch Russian cosmonauts on Dragon missions and US astronauts on Russian Soyuz flights to the station. In exchange for NASA providing a ride for Gorbunov, NASA astronaut Don Pettit will fly to the space station on a Soyuz spacecraft next month.

The so-called “seat swap” arrangement ensures that, even if Dragon or Soyuz were grounded, there is always at least one US astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut on the station overseeing each partner’s segment of the outpost, maintaining propulsion, power generating, pointing control, thermal control, and other critical capabilities to keep the lab operational.

Boeing will try to fly its troubled Starliner capsule back to Earth next week Read More »

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NASA makes a very tough decision in setting final Crew-9 assignments

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From four to two —

“I am deeply proud of our entire crew.”

–

Nick Hague, left, and Zena Cardman train inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft mock-up in November 2023.

Enlarge / Nick Hague, left, and Zena Cardman train inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft mock-up in November 2023.

NASA

On Friday NASA publicly announced a decision that has roiled the top levels of the agency’s human spaceflight program for several weeks. The space agency named the two crew members who will launch on a Crew Dragon mission set to lift off no earlier than September 24 to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will serve as the mission’s commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will serve as mission specialist. Instead of a usual complement of four astronauts, a two-person crew was necessitated by the need to use the Crew 9 spacecraft, Freedom, as a rescue vehicle for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They flew to the station in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner vehicle, which has been deemed unsafe for them to return in.

Wilmore and Williams will join the Crew-9 increment on board the space station and fly back to Earth with Hague and Gorbunov next February.

The story behind the story

This represents a significant change from the original makeup of the Crew-9 manifest. NASA publicly named the original members of Crew-9 last January, which included three NASA astronauts and Gorbunov. It was to be commanded by Zena Cardman, piloted by Hague, with Stephanie Wilson and Gorbunov as mission specialists.

At the time, the naming of Cardman was significant—she would have been the first rookie astronaut without test pilot experience to command a NASA spaceflight. A 36-year-old geobiologist, Cardman joined NASA in 2017 and is well-regarded by her peers. The assignment of a rookie, non-test pilot to command the Crew-9 mission reflected NASA’s confidence in the self-flying capabilities of Dragon, which is intended to reach the station autonomously. The assignment was made by then-chief astronaut Reid Wiseman in 2022, and the Astronaut Office was confident that Cardman, with an experienced hand in Hague at her side, could command the mission.

The need to rescue Wilmore and Williams changed the equation. It fell upon Joe Acaba, a veteran astronaut who became chief of the Astronaut Office in February 2023, to down-select to a new crew manifest. To maintain its ongoing rotation with the Russian space program, one of the crew members needed to be Gorbunov. So Acaba had to pick from Cardman, Hague, and Wilson.

Initially, Acaba stuck with Cardman. She was the original commander of the mission, after all. But this prompted considerable dissent within the Astronaut Office, sources said. While Cardman is respected, and Dragon designed to be fully autonomous, it was asking a lot of her to be the sole NASA representative on board the vehicle. (Russian astronauts, generally, are not trained in depth on piloting US vehicles.) A non-trivial percentage of professional astronauts succumb to space sickness during the initial hours of their spaceflights.

Some members of the astronaut office argued that Hague was the safer choice. An Air Force test pilot, Hague survived a harrowing Soyuz spacecraft abort in 2018, and subsequently flew to space for more than six months in 2019. Hague, these astronauts said, was the safer choice for NASA if the agency truly sought to maximize chances of mission success.

Eventually these dissenters, with some support from the upper echelons of NASA management, prevailed, and Acaba swapped Hague for Cardman. A decision was reached before a Flight Readiness Review meeting on August 24, but it was not publicly announced until this Friday.

NASA’s official comment

“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” Acaba said in a news release issued Friday. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission. Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch, and they exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut.”

There was also a classy quote in the news release from Cardman, who revealed Friday that her father, Larry Cardman, passed away three weeks ago. “I am deeply proud of our entire crew,” she said. “And I am confident Nick and Alex will step into their roles with excellence. All four of us remain dedicated to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right.”

Here’s hoping her time comes very, very soon.

NASA makes a very tough decision in setting final Crew-9 assignments Read More »

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Space Command chief says dialogue with China is too often a one-way street

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Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, speaks earlier this year at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

Enlarge / Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, speaks earlier this year at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

The head of US Space Command said Wednesday he would like to see more transparency from the Chinese government on space debris, especially as one of China’s newer rockets has shown a propensity for breaking apart and littering low-Earth orbit with hundreds of pieces of space junk.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, said he’s observed some improvement in the dialogue between US and Chinese military officials this year. But the disintegration of the upper stage from a Long March 6A rocket earlier this month showed China could do more to prevent the creation of space debris, and communicate openly about it when it happens.

The Chinese government acknowledged the breakup of the Long March 6A rocket’s upper stage in a statement by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 14, more than a week after the rocket’s launch August 6 with the first batch of 18 Internet satellites for a megaconstellation of thousands of spacecraft analogous to SpaceX’s Starlink network.

Space Command reported it detected more than 300 objects associated with the breakup of the upper stage in orbit, and LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket.

“I hope the next time there’s a rocket like that, that leaves a lot of debris, that it’s not our sensors that are the first to detect that, but we’re getting communications to help us understand that, just like we communicate with others,” Whiting said at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute marking the fifth anniversary of the reestablishment of Space Command.

Whiting said he didn’t have any technical details about why the Long March 6A rocket’s upper stage broke apart, but it happened after the rocket deployed all of its payloads. “They had already released the satellites at that point, and it seems like the mission was overall successful, but all this debris gets left in orbit,” he said. “We certainly don’t want to see that kind of debris.”

Due regard

The Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron, located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, is responsible for tracking objects in Earth orbit, maintaining a catalog of all satellites and space junk, and monitoring for potential collisions between spacecraft or debris. Space Command regularly issues warnings of conjunctions, or close approaches, between objects to commercial companies and foreign governments.

“For decades now, the United States has so cared about the space domain that we have made available the vast majority of tracking data that we have, for free, for the world,” Whiting said. “Every day, we screen every active satellite against all that debris, and we provide notifications out to everyone, including the Chinese and Russians.

“People sometimes ask, ‘Well, why do you do that?’ Well, it’s because we don’t want satellites to run into pieces of debris and create more debris. So we think it’s really important, and we have a set of responsible behaviors that we follow each and every day. We provide these notifications to the Chinese,” Whiting said.

The Commerce Department plans to take over some of the military’s role in space traffic management, but Space Command will maintain its own catalog and will remain responsible for working with foreign militaries on space debris matters, according to Whiting.

Space Command chief says dialogue with China is too often a one-way street Read More »

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Sparks are flying day and night as SpaceX preps Starship pad to catch a rocket

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Pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks, workers wielding welding guns and torches have climbed onto SpaceX’s Starship launch pad in South Texas to make last-minute upgrades ahead of the next test flight of the world’s largest rocket.

Livestreams of the launch site provided by LabPadre and NASASpaceflight.com have shown sparks raining down two mechanical arms extending from the side of the Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, Texas. We are publishing several views here of the welding activity with the permission of LabPadre, which runs a YouTube page with multiple live views of Starbase.

If SpaceX has its way on the next flight of Starship, these arms will close together to capture the first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, as it descends back to Earth and slows to a hover over the launch pad.

This method of rocket recovery is remarkably different from how SpaceX lands its smaller Falcon 9 booster, which has landing legs to touch down on offshore ocean-going platforms or at concrete sites onshore. Catching the rocket with large metallic arms—sometimes called “mechazilla arms” or “chopsticks”—would reduce the turnaround time to reuse the booster and simplify its design, according to SpaceX.

SpaceX has launched the nearly 400-foot-tall (121 meter) Starship rocket four times, most recently in June, when the Super Heavy booster, itself roughly 233 feet (71 meters) tall, made a pinpoint splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Starbase.

On the same flight in June, the Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world and reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. The ship survived reentry and splashed down in the open ocean northwest of Australia. This flight was the first time either part of the Starship rocket made it back to Earth intact, but SpaceX didn’t recover the booster or the ship.

Doubling up

Lessons learned from the June test flight prompted SpaceX to replace thousands of heat shield tiles on the Starship vehicle for the next mission. While the ship survived reentry in June, onboard camera views showed numerous tiles ripped away from the vehicle. Last month, SpaceX test-fired engines on the booster and ship assigned to the next launch.

On August 8, SpaceX said Starship and Super Heavy were “ready to fly, pending regulatory approval” from the Federal Aviation Administration. An FAA spokesperson said the agency is evaluating SpaceX’s proposed flight profile for the next Starship test flight, when SpaceX wants to try catching the booster on the pad. This will be the first time SpaceX will try to bring the stainless-steel Super Heavy booster, as long as and wider than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, back to a landing on land.

Sparks fly at Starbase as welders work overnight at the Starship launch pad.

Enlarge / Sparks fly at Starbase as welders work overnight at the Starship launch pad.

While the rocket appears to be ready to fly, SpaceX officials clearly believe there’s more work to do on the launch pad. Closer views revealed welders are installing structural supports, or doublers, to certain parts of the catch arms. Elsewhere on the arms, workers were seen removing and adding other unknown pieces of hardware. SpaceX hasn’t specified exactly what kind of work teams are doing on the Starship launch pad in Texas, but the focus is on beefing up hardware necessary for catching the Super Heavy booster.

All of this work is occurring during the hottest part of the year in South Texas. On most days this month, afternoon temperatures have soared into the mid-to-upper 90s Fahrenheit, with sticky humidity. A lot of the work on the catch arms has occurred at night, when temperatures drop into the lower 80s.

It’s unclear how long it will take for the FAA to approve a license for SpaceX to launch and recover the rocket on the next test flight or when SpaceX will complete the upgrades on the launch pad. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, suggested earlier this month that the flight could take off by the end of August, but the condition of the launch pad and remaining tests indicate a launch is still probably at least a couple of weeks away.

Once workers finish up their tasks upgrading the pad and clearing scaffolding and cranes from the area, SpaceX will likely stack the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage and fill them with propellants during a full countdown rehearsal, as it has before each previous Starship launch.

Musk has signaled several times that the company will try to catch the Super Heavy booster on the next flight, which will also accelerate the Starship upper stage to nearly orbital velocity for another reentry demonstration over the Indian Ocean. Last month, SpaceX released a video teasing a catch of the booster on the next Starship flight, showing the rocket returning to Starbase with its Raptor engines firing.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has stacked a second Starship launch tower next to the existing launch pad in Texas. The company still has a lot of work to do to outfit the second launch pad before it is ready to support a Starship flight, but SpaceX could have it ready for activation sometime next year. SpaceX also plans two Starship launch pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida. All these sites will allow SpaceX to launch Starships more often. The company is also finishing a sprawling factory near the Starship factory in South Texas, just a couple of miles inland from the launch pads there.

Sparks are flying day and night as SpaceX preps Starship pad to catch a rocket Read More »