Space

NASA not comfortable with Starliner thrusters, so crew will fly home on Dragon

Boeing, dragon, Science, Space, spacex, starliner / Mike M. / August 24, 2024

Boeing is going home empty handed —

“I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise.”

Eric Berger – Aug 24, 2024 9: 16 pm UTC

Photos of Crew Dragon relocation on the International Space Station. — Enlarge / Crew Dragon approaches the International Space Station

NASA TV

Following weeks of speculation, NASA finally made it official on Saturday: two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June will not return home on that vehicle. Instead, the agency has asked SpaceX to use its Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth.

“NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the outset of a news conference on Saturday afternoon at Johnson Space Center.

In a sign of the gravity surrounding the agency’s decision, both Nelson and NASA’s deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, attended a Flight Readiness Review meeting held Saturday in Houston. During that gathering of the agency’s senior officials, an informal “go/no go” poll was taken. Those present voted unanimously for Wilmore and Williams to return to Earth on Crew Dragon. The official recommendation of the Commercial Crew Program was the same, and Nelson accepted it.

Therefore, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will undock from the station early next month—the tentative date, according to a source, is September 6—and attempt to make an autonomous return to Earth and land in a desert in the southwestern United States.

Then, no earlier than September 24, a Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch with two astronauts (NASA has not named the two crew members yet) to the space station with two empty seats. Wilmore and Williams will join these two Crew-9 astronauts for their previously scheduled six-month increment on the space station. All four will then return to Earth on the Crew Dragon vehicle.

Saturday’s announcement has big implications for Boeing, which entered NASA’s Commercial Crew Program more than a decade ago and lent legitimacy to NASA’s efforts to pay private companies for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station. The company’s failure—and despite the encomiums from NASA officials during Saturday’s news conference, this Starliner mission is a failure—will affect Boeing’s future in spaceflight. Ars will have additional coverage of Starliner’s path forward later today.

Never could get comfortable with thruster issues

For weeks after Starliner’s arrival at the space station in early June, officials from Boeing and NASA expressed confidence in the ability of the spacecraft to fly Wilmore and Williams home. They said they just needed to collect a little more data on the performance of the vehicle’s reaction control system thrusters. Five of these 28 small thrusters that guide Starliner failed during the trip to the space station.

Engineers from Boeing and NASA tested the performance of these thrusters at a facility in White Sands, New Mexico, in July. Initially, the engineers were excited to replicate the failures observed during Starliner’s transit to the space station. (Replicating failures is a critical step to understanding the root cause of a hardware problem.)

However, what NASA found after taking apart the failed thrusters was concerning, said the chief of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich.

“I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise,” Stich said Saturday. “It was this piece of Teflon that swells up and got in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the thruster the way it needs to. That’s what caused the degradation of thrust. When we saw that, I think that’s when things changed a bit for us.”

When NASA took this finding to the thruster’s manufacturer, Aerojet Rocketdyne, the propulsion company said it had never seen this phenomenon before. It was at this point that agency engineers started to believe that it might not be possible to identify the root cause of the problem in a timely manner and become comfortable enough with the physics to be sure that the thruster problem would not occur during Starliner’s return to Earth.

Thank you for flying SpaceX

The result of this uncertainty is that NASA will now turn to the other commercial crew provider, SpaceX. This is not a pleasant outcome for Boeing which, a decade ago, looked askance at SpaceX as something akin to space cowboys. I have covered the space industry closely during the last 15 years, and during most of that time Boeing was perceived by much of the industry as the blueblood of spaceflight while SpaceX was the company that was going to kill astronauts due to its supposed recklessness.

Now the space agency is asking SpaceX to, in effect, rescue the Boeing astronauts currently on the International Space Station.

It won’t be the first time that SpaceX has helped a competitor recently. In the last two years SpaceX has launched satellites for a low-Earth orbit Internet competitor, OneWeb, after Russia’s space program squeezed the company; it has launched Europe’s sovereign Galileo satellites after delays to the Ariane 6 rocket; and it has launched the Cygnus spacecraft built by NASA’s other space station cargo services provider, Northrop Grumman, multiple times. Now SpaceX will help out Boeing, a crew competitor.

After Saturday’s news conference, I asked Jim Free, NASA’s highest-ranking civil servant, what he made of the once-upstart SpaceX now helping to backstop the rest of the Western spaceflight community. Without SpaceX, after all, NASA would not have a way to get crew or cargo to the International Space Station.

“They’re flying a lot, and they’re having success,” Free said. “And you know, when they have an issue, they find a way to recover like with the second-stage issue, We set out to have two providers to take crew to station to have options, and they’ve given us the option. In the reverse, Boeing could have been out there, and we still would face the same thing if they had a systemic Dragon problem, Boeing would have to bring us back. But I can’t argue with how much they’ve flown, that’s for sure, and what they’ve flown.”

NASA not comfortable with Starliner thrusters, so crew will fly home on Dragon Read More »

Cards on the table: Are Butch and Suni coming home on Starliner or Crew Dragon?

boing, crew dragon, Features, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / Mike M. / August 24, 2024

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

After months of consideration, NASA said Thursday that it will finally decide the fate of two astronauts on board the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, by this weekend. As soon as Saturday, the two crew members will learn whether they’ll return on a Starliner spacecraft in early September or a Crew Dragon vehicle next February.

On the eve of this fateful decision, the most consequential human spaceflight safety determination NASA has had to make in more than two decades, Ars has put together a summary of what we know, what we believe to be true, and what remains yet unknown.

Why has NASA taken so long?

Wilmore and Williams arrived at the International Space Station 11 weeks ago. Their mission was supposed to last eight days, but there was some expectation that they might stay a little longer. However, no one envisioned the crew remaining this long. That changed when, during Starliner’s flight to the space station, five of the 28 small thrusters that guide Starliner failed. After some touch-and-go operations, the astronauts and flight controllers at Johnson Space Center coaxed the spacecraft to a safe docking at the station.

This failure in space led to months of testing, both on board the vehicle in space and with similar thrusters on the ground in New Mexico. This has been followed by extensive data reviews and modeling by engineers to try to understand the root cause of the thruster problems. On Friday, lower-level managers will meet in a Program Control Board to discuss their findings and make recommendations to senior managers. Those officials, with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson presiding, will make a final decision at a Flight Readiness Review on Saturday in Houston.

What are the two options?

NASA managers will decide whether to send the astronauts home on Starliner, possibly as early as September 2, or to fly back to Earth on a Crew Dragon vehicle scheduled to be launched on September 24. To make room for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, this so-called “Crew-9” mission would launch with two astronauts instead of a full complement of four. Wilmore and Williams would then join this mission for their six-month increment on board the space station—their eight-day stay becoming eight months.

How are Butch and Suni feeling about this?

We don’t know, as they have not spoken to the media since it became apparent they could be in space for a long time. However, based on various sources, both of the crew members are taking it more or less in stride. They understand this is a test flight, and their training included the possibility of staying in space for an extended period of time if there were problems with Starliner.

That’s not to say it’s convenient. Both Wilmore and Williams have families back on Earth who expected them home by now, and the station was not set up for an extended stay. Wilmore, for example, has been having to sleep in a science laboratory rather than a designated sleeping area, so he has to pack up his personal things every morning.

What does seem clear is that Wilmore and Williams will accept NASA’s decision this weekend. In other words, they’re not going to stage a revolt in space. They trust NASA officials to make the right safety decision, whatever it ends up being. (So, for that matter, does Ars.)

Why is this a difficult decision?

First and foremost, NASA is concerned with getting its astronauts home safely. However, there are myriad other secondary decision factors, and bringing Butch and Suni home on Dragon instead of Starliner raises a host of new issues. Significantly among these is that it would be devastating for Boeing. Their public optics, should long-time rival SpaceX have to step in and “rescue” the crew from an “unsafe” Boeing vehicle, would be terrible. Moreover, the company has already lost $1.6 billion on the Starliner program, and there is the possibility that Boeing will shut it down. NASA does not want to lose a second provider of crew transport services to the space station.

Cards on the table: Are Butch and Suni coming home on Starliner or Crew Dragon? Read More »

Rocket Report: A ULA sale tidbit; Polaris Dawn mission is on deck

rocket report, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / August 24, 2024

Flying high —

“The idea is to learn as much as we possibly can about this suit.”

Eric Berger – Aug 23, 2024 11: 00 am UTC

India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle launched for the third time this week. — Enlarge / India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle launched for the third time this week.

ISRO

Welcome to Edition 7.08 of the Rocket Report! Lots of news as always, but what I’m most interested in is the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission. If all goes as planned, the flight will break all sorts of ground for commercial spaceflight, including the first-ever private spacewalk. Best of luck to Jared Isaacman and his crew on their adventurous mission.

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

RFA One blows up a booster. The first stage of Rocket Factory Augsburg’s first orbital launcher was destroyed in a fireball during a test-firing Monday evening at a spaceport in Scotland, Ars reports. It’s a notable event for the European commercial space industry as the German launch startup aimed to send its first rocket into space later this year and appeared to be running ahead of several competitors in Europe’s commercial launch industry that are also developing rockets to deploy small satellites in orbit. BBC obtained video of the fiery explosion.

Now comes the hard work of an anomaly investigation … In a statement, RFA said there was “an anomaly that led to the loss of the stage” Monday evening. The company said no one was injured and reported that the launch pad had been “saved and secured.” This was the same rocket RFA planned to launch on its inaugural test flight. The hot fire test Monday was the first with all nine engines on RFA One’s first stage. “We are now working closely with SaxaVord Spaceport and the authorities to gather data and info to eventually resolve what happened,” RFA said. “We will take our time to analyze and assess the situation.” On Thursday, the cause was attributed to a turbopump fire. (submitted by SPHK_Tech, gizmo23, brianrhurley, Jay500001, and Ken the Bin)

Orbex says it’s targeting a 2025 launch, but get real. UK-based Orbex is now projecting a 2025 first launch of its small launch vehicle, the company’s chief executive told Space News recently. Phil Chambers, chief executive of the United Kingdom-based company, said the company was making progress on both its Prime small rocket and launch site at Sutherland Spaceport in northern Scotland. “We are shooting for a 2025 launch,” Chambers said but declined to be more specific about a launch date other than to say that the company wanted to avoid a launch in winter because of poor weather conditions. “But I do want it to be 2025.”

Shooting to be the first orbital launch success from the UK … There is an interesting detail in the story that caught my eye: “Vehicle subsystems are going through critical design reviews, with some flight hardware under construction.” Let’s be honest, if they’re still working through the critical design review process for subsystems, the chance of a launch in 2025 is zero, and honestly for a company founded in 2015 it should not provide much confidence that the company will ever successfully launch an orbital rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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

SSLV makes its third launch. India successfully launched its third Small Satellite Launch Vehicle on Thursday, placing an Earth observation satellite into orbit and completing the solid rocket’s development process, Space News reports. The rocket carried the experimental Earth observation EOS-08 spacecraft into its intended 475-kilometer circular orbit for the Indian Space Research Organization.

Two for three … According to ISRO chairman S. Somanath, the successful completion of the SSLV’s development phase paves the way for technology transfer to Indian industry, enabling serial production and operational deployment of the SSLV. The first SSLV flight failed in August 2022 when an upper stage malfunction left its payloads stranded in a very low orbit. The second launch, in February 2023, was successful. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Indian firm plans suborbital launch. A Chennai-based startup, Space Zone India, plans to launch its Rhumi-01 suborbital rocket on Saturday from a mobile launcher. The hybrid vehicle, combining both solid and liquid rocket propellants, will carry three cubesats and 50 smaller picosats on its debut launch, the New Indian Express reports.

Seeking to recycle rockets … According to the company’s website, the Rhumi launch vehicle can reach an altitude of about 30 km. The three cubesats are designed to monitor and collect data on atmospheric conditions, including cosmic radiation intensity, UV radiation intensity, air quality, and more. The company said most of the rocket is designed to be recoverable and reused. (submitted by brianrhurley)

Sierra Space kicking the tires on ULA. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are in talks to sell their rocket-launching joint venture United Launch Alliance to Sierra Space, Reuters reports. A deal could value ULA at around $2 billion to $3 billion, sources told the publication. A potential deal would be an ambitious move for Sierra Space, spun off from Sierra Nevada in 2021 to focus on bringing to market its long-delayed Dream Chaser spaceplane. A deal with ULA could give the company a rocket, Vulcan, for uncrewed and potentially crewed launches of Dream Chaser.

A source believes the deal is unlikely … ULA has been up for sale, actively, for more than a year. Blue Origin and Cerberus Capital Management had placed bids in early 2023 for the company, but none of those offers resulted in a deal. I heard about Sierra’s interest last Friday, but the Reuters story came out before I could write something up. I will say, from the reporting I have been able to do, that the discussions between Sierra and ULA’s owners were serious and substantial. However, at this time, my best information indicates that a sale is unlikely to happen. The parents believe ULA is worth more than Sierra is willing to pay. Sierra would also need to borrow substantially to make any transaction happen. (submitted by Hacker Uno and Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: A ULA sale tidbit; Polaris Dawn mission is on deck Read More »

After months of mulling, NASA will decide on Starliner return this weekend

commercial crew, Commercial space, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / Rejus Almole / August 24, 2024

Standby for news —

“The agency flight readiness review is where any formal dissents are presented and reconciled.”

Stephen Clark – Aug 22, 2024 10: 33 pm UTC

A high-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite owned by Maxar captured this view of the International Space Station on June 7 with Boeing's Starliner capsule docked at the lab's forward port (lower right). — Enlarge / A high-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite owned by Maxar captured this view of the International Space Station on June 7 with Boeing’s Starliner capsule docked at the lab’s forward port (lower right).

Senior NASA leaders, including the agency’s administrator, Bill Nelson, will meet Saturday in Houston to decide whether Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is safe enough to ferry astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth from the International Space Station.

The Flight Readiness Review (FRR) is expected to conclude with NASA’s most consequential safety decision in nearly a generation. One option is to clear the Starliner spacecraft to undock from the space station in early September with Wilmore and Williams onboard, as their flight plan initially laid out, or to bring the capsule home without its crew.

As of Thursday, the two veteran astronauts have been on the space station for 77 days, nearly 10 times longer than their planned stay of eight days. Wilmore and Williams were the first people to launch and dock at the space station aboard a Starliner spacecraft, but multiple thrusters failed and the capsule leaked helium from its propulsion system as it approached the orbiting complex on June 6.

That led to months of testing—in space and on the ground—data reviews, and modeling for engineers to try to understand the root cause of the thruster problems. Engineers believe the thrusters overheated, causing Teflon seals to bulge and block the flow of propellant to the small control jets, resulting in losing thrust. The condition of the thrusters improved once Starliner docked at the station when they weren’t repeatedly firing, as they need to do when the spacecraft is flying alone.

However, engineers and managers have not yet reached a consensus about whether the same problem could recur, or get worse, during the capsule’s journey back to Earth. In a worst-case scenario, if too many thrusters fail, the spacecraft would be unable to point in the proper direction for a critical braking burn to guide the capsule back into the atmosphere toward landing.

The suspect thrusters are located on Starliner’s service module, which will perform the deorbit burn and then separate from the astronaut-carrying crew module before reentry. A separate set of small engines will fine-tune Starliner’s trajectory during descent.

If NASA managers decide it’s not worth the risk, Wilmore and Williams would extend their stay on the space station until at least February of next year, when they would return to Earth inside a Dragon spacecraft provided by SpaceX, Boeing’s rival in NASA’s commercial crew program. This would eliminate the threat that thruster problems on the Starliner spacecraft might pose to the crew’s safety during the trip to Earth, but it comes with myriad side effects.

These effects include disrupting crew activities on the space station by bumping two astronauts off the next SpaceX flight, exposing Wilmore and Williams to additional radiation during their time in space, and dealing a debilitating blow to Boeing’s Starliner program.

If Boeing’s capsule cannot return to Earth with its two astronauts, NASA may not certify Starliner for operational crew missions without an additional test flight. In that case, Boeing probably wouldn’t be able to complete all six of its planned operational crew missions under a $4.2 billion NASA contract before the International Space Station is due for retirement in 2030.

FRR-eedom to speak

The Flight Readiness Review at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will begin Saturday morning. Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut and head of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, will chair the meeting. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will participate, too. If there’s no unanimous agreement around the table at the FRR, a final decision on what to do could be elevated above Bowersox to NASA’s associate administrator, Jim Free or to Nelson.

“The agency flight readiness review is where any formal dissents are presented and reconciled,” NASA said in a statement Thursday. “Other agency leaders who routinely participate in launch and return readiness reviews for crewed missions include NASA’s administrator, deputy administrator, associate administrator, various agency center directors, the Flight Operations Directorate, and agency technical authorities.”

NASA has scheduled a press conference for no earlier than 1 pm ET (17: 00 UTC) Saturday to announce the agency’s decision and next steps, the agency said.

Lower-level managers will meet Friday in a so-called Program Control Board to discuss their findings and views before the FRR. At a previous Program Control Board meeting, managers disagreed on whether the agency was ready to sign off that the Starliner spacecraft was safe enough to return its astronauts to Earth.

There’s one new piece of information that engineers will brief to the Program Control Board on Friday:

“Engineering teams have been working to evaluate a new model that represents the thruster mechanics and is designed to more accurately predict performance during the return phase of flight,” NASA said. “This data could help teams better understand system redundancy from undock to service module separation. Ongoing efforts to complete the new modeling, characterize spacecraft performance data, refine integrated risk assessments, and determine community recommendations will fold into the agency-level review.”

After months of mulling, NASA will decide on Starliner return this weekend Read More »

Against all odds, an asteroid mining company appears to be making headway

asteroid mining, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / August 20, 2024

Forging ahead —

“It’s not easy to ever raise for an asteroid mining company, right?”

Eric Berger – Aug 20, 2024 4: 00 pm UTC

Enlarge / The Odin spacecraft passed vibration testing.

Astro Forge

When I first spoke with space entrepreneurs Jose Acain and Matt Gialich a little more than two years ago, I wondered whether I would ever talk to them again.

That is not meant to be offensive; rather, it is a reflection of the fact that the business they entered into—mining asteroids for platinum and other precious metals—is a perilous one. To date, NASA and other space agencies have spent billions of dollars returning a few grams of rocky material from asteroids. Humanity has never visited a metal-rich asteroid, although that will finally change with NASA’s $1.4 billion Psyche mission in 2029. And so commercial asteroid mining seems like a stretch, and indeed, other similarly minded startups have come and gone.

But it turns out that I did hear from Acain and Gialich again about their asteroid mining venture, AstroForge. On Tuesday the co-founders announced that they have successfully raised $40 million in Series A funding and shared plans for their next two missions. AstroForge has now raised a total of $55 million to date.

“It was challenging,” Gialich said of the latest fundraising effort, in an interview. “It’s not easy to ever raise for an asteroid mining company, right? Let’s be honest. We talked two years ago and you told us this. And you were not wrong. So a big part of this funding round was just showing people that we can actually build a spacecraft.”

Making some mistakes

In April 2023, the company launched a shoebox-sized cubesat, named the Brokkr-1 mission, on a SpaceX Transporter flight. Although the vehicle flew as intended for a while, AstroForge was unable to send the necessary commands to the spacecraft to initiate a demonstration of its space-based refining technology.

However, Gialich said AstroForge learned a lot from this mission and is working toward launching a second spacecraft named Odin. This will be a rideshare payload on the Intuitive Machines-2 mission, which is due to launch during the fourth quarter of this year. If successful, the Odin mission would be spectacular. About seven months after launching, Odin will attempt to fly by a near-Earth, metallic-rich asteroid while capturing images and taking data—truly visiting terra incognita. Odin would also be the first private mission to fly by a body in the Solar System beyond the Moon.

It has not been an easy project to develop. In the name of expediency, AstroForge initially sought to develop this spacecraft by largely outsourcing key components from suppliers—a practice known as horizontal integration. However, in March, the Odin spacecraft failed vibration testing. “Originally, our concept was to be different than SpaceX, and be horizontally integrated, not vertical,” Gialich said. “That was completely wrong. We have very much made changes there to be vertical.”

After the original vehicle failed vibration testing, which ensures it can survive the rigors of launch, AstroForge decided to bring forward a spacecraft being developed internally for the company’s third flight and use that for the Odin mission. To remain on track for a launch this year, the company had to complete vibration testing of the new, 100-kg Odin vehicle by August 1. AstroForge made that deadline but still must complete several other tests before shipping Odin to the launch pad.

Docking with an asteroid

On Tuesday, the company also announced plans for its third mission, Vestri (the company is naming its missions after Norse deities). This spacecraft will be about twice as large as Odin and is intended to return to the targeted metallic asteroid and dock with it. The docking mechanism is simple—since the asteroid is likely to be iron-rich, Vestri will use magnets to attach itself.

The plan is to use a mass spectrometer to sample and characterize the asteroid weekly until the spacecraft fails. AstroForge seeks to launch Vestri on another Intuitive Machines mission in 2025. Vestri’s goals are highly ambitious, as no private spacecraft has ever landed on a body beyond the Moon.

AstroForge is tracking several candidate asteroids as the target body for Odin and Vestri, Gialich said, each of which is about 400 meters across. He won’t make a final decision for several months. The company does not want to tip its hand due to the interest of potential competitors, including China-based Origin Space.

However, there is no shortage of potential targets. Scientists estimate that there are about 10 million near-Earth asteroids, which come within one astronomical unit (the distance between the Sun and Earth) of our planet. Perhaps 3 to 5 percent of these are rich in metals, so there are potentially hundreds of thousands of candidates for mining.

Against all odds, an asteroid mining company appears to be making headway Read More »

Rocket Lab entered “hero mode” to finish Mars probes—now it’s up to Blue Origin

blue origin, Commercial space, escapade, heliophysics, launch, Mars, new glenn, rocket lab, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / August 19, 2024

The two spacecraft for NASA's ESCAPADE mission at Rocket Lab's factory in Long Beach, California. — Enlarge / The two spacecraft for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission at Rocket Lab’s factory in Long Beach, California.

Two NASA spacecraft built by Rocket Lab are on the road from California to Florida this weekend to begin preparations for launch on Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket.

These two science probes must launch between late September and mid-October to take advantage of a planetary alignment between Earth and Mars that only happens once every 26 months. NASA tapped Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission with a $20 million contract.

Last November, the space agency confirmed the $79 million ESCAPADE mission will launch on the inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. With this piece of information, the opaque schedule for Blue Origin’s long-delayed first New Glenn mission suddenly became more clear.

The launch period opens on September 29. The two identical Mars-bound spacecraft for the ESCAPADE mission, nicknamed Blue and Gold, are now complete. Rocket Lab announced Friday that its manufacturing team packed the satellites and shipped them from their factory in Long Beach, California. Over the weekend, they arrived at a clean room facility just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians will perform final checkups and load hydrazine fuel into both spacecraft, each a little more than a half-ton in mass.

Then, if Blue Origin is ready, ground teams will connect the ESCAPADE spacecraft with the New Glenn’s launch adapter, encapsulate the probes inside the payload fairing, and mount them on top of the rocket.

“There’s a whole bunch of checking and tests to make sure everything’s OK, and then we move into fueling, and then we integrate with the launch vehicle. So it’s a big milestone,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s lead scientist from the University of California Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory. “There have been some challenges along the way. This wasn’t easy to make happen on this schedule and for this cost. So we’re very happy to be where we are.”

Racing to the finish line

But there’s a lot for Blue Origin to accomplish in the next couple of months if the New Glenn rocket is going to be ready to send the ESCAPADE mission toward Mars in this year’s launch period. Blue Origin has not fully exercised a New Glenn rocket during a launch countdown, hasn’t pumped a full load of cryogenic propellants into the launch vehicle, and hasn’t test-fired a full complement of first stage or second stage engines.

These activities typically take place months before the first launch of a large new orbital-class rocket. For comparison, SpaceX test-fired its first fully assembled Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad about three months before its first flight in 2010. United Launch Alliance completed a hot-fire test of its new Vulcan rocket on the launch pad last year, about seven months before its inaugural flight.

However, Blue Origin is making visible progress toward the first flight of New Glenn, after years of speculation and few outward signs of advancement. Earlier this year, the company raised a full-scale, 320-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and loaded it with liquid nitrogen, a cryogenic substitute for the methane and liquid hydrogen fuel it will burn in flight.

Rocket Lab entered “hero mode” to finish Mars probes—now it’s up to Blue Origin Read More »

Rocket Report: ULA is losing engineers; SpaceX is launching every two days

falcon 9, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, NASA, rocket lab, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, starship, stoke space, united launch alliance / Kris Guyer / August 17, 2024

Every other day —

The first missions of Stoke Space’s reusable Nova rocket will fly in expendable mode.

Stephen Clark – Aug 16, 2024 11: 00 am UTC

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 booster returns to landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station following a launch Thursday with two WorldView Earth observation satellites for Maxar.

Welcome to Edition 7.07 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX has not missed a beat since the Federal Aviation Administration gave the company a green light to resume Falcon 9 launches after a failure last month. In 19 days, SpaceX has launched 10 flights of the Falcon 9 rocket, taking advantage of all three of its Falcon 9 launch pads. This is a remarkable cadence in its own right, but even though it’s a small sample size, it is especially impressive right out of the gate after the rocket’s grounding.

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.

A quick turnaround for Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab launched its 52nd Electron rocket on August 11 from its private spaceport on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, Space News reports. The company’s light-class Electron rocket deployed a small radar imaging satellite into a mid-inclination orbit for Capella Space. This was the shortest turnaround between two Rocket Lab missions from its primary launch base in New Zealand, coming less than nine days after an Electron rocket took off from the same pad with a radar imaging satellite for the Japanese company Synspective. Capella’s Acadia 3 satellite was originally supposed to launch in July, but Capella requested a delay to perform more testing of its spacecraft. Rocket Lab swapped its place in the Electron launch sequence and launched the Synspective mission first.

Now, silence at the launch pad … Rocket Lab hailed the swap as an example of the flexibility provided by Electron, as well as the ability to deliver payloads to specific orbits that are not feasible with rideshare missions, according to Space News. For this tailored launch service, Rocket Lab charges a premium launch price over the price of launching a small payload on a SpaceX rideshare mission. However, SpaceX’s rideshare launches gobble up the lion’s share of small satellites within Rocket Lab’s addressable market. On Friday, a Falcon 9 rocket is slated to launch 116 small payloads into polar orbit. Rocket Lab, meanwhile, projects just one more launch before the end of September and expects to perform 15 to 18 Electron launches this year, a record for the company but well short of the 22 it forecasted earlier in the year. Rocket Lab says customer readiness is the reason it will be far short of projections.

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

Defense contractors teaming up on solid rockets. Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are joining forces to kickstart solid rocket motor production, announcing a strategic teaming agreement today that could see new motors roll off the line as early as 2025, Breaking Defense reports. The new agreement could position a third vendor to enter into the ailing solid rocket motor industrial base, which currently only includes L3Harris subsidiary Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman in the United States. Both companies have struggled to meet demands from weapons makers like Lockheed and RTX, which are in desperate need of solid rocket motors for products such as Javelin or the PAC-3 missiles used by the Patriot missile defense system.

Pressure from startups … Demand for solid rocket motors has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the United States and its partners sought to backfill stocks of weapons like Javelin and Stinger, as well as provide motors to meet growing needs in the space domain. Although General Dynamics has kept its interest in the solid rocket motor market quiet until now, several defense tech startups, such as Ursa Major Technologies, Anduril, and X-Bow Systems, have announced plans to enter the market. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Going polar with crew. SpaceX will fly the first human spaceflight over the Earth’s poles, possibly before the end of this year, Ars reports. The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years. The “Fram2” mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX’s launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three- to five-day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.

Wang’s inclination is Wang’s prerogative … Wang told Ars he wanted to try something new, and flying a polar mission aligned with his interests in cold places on Earth. He’s paying the way on a commercial basis, and SpaceX in recent years has demonstrated it can launch satellites into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, something no one had done in more than 50 years. The highest-inclination flight ever by a human spacecraft was the Soviet Vostok 6 mission in 1963 when Valentina Tereshkova’s spacecraft reached 65.1 degrees. Now, Fram2 will fly repeatedly and directly over the poles.

Rocket Report: ULA is losing engineers; SpaceX is launching every two days 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 »

NASA shuts down asteroid-hunting telescope, but a better one is on the way

asteroids, jet propulsion laboratory, NASA, near earth object, NEOWISE, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / August 14, 2024

Prolific —

The NEOWISE spacecraft is on a course to fall out of orbit in the next few months.

Stephen Clark – Aug 14, 2024 8: 34 pm UTC

Artist's illustration of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft. — Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft.

Last week, NASA decommissioned a nearly 15-year-old spacecraft that discovered 400 near-Earth asteroids and comets, closing an important chapter in the agency’s planetary defense program.

From its position in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft’s infrared telescope scanned the entire sky 23 times and captured millions of images, initially searching for infrared emissions from galaxies, stars, and asteroids before focusing solely on objects within the Solar System.

Wising up to NEOs

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, spacecraft launched in December 2009 on a mission originally designed to last seven months. After WISE completed checkouts and ended its primary all-sky astronomical survey, NASA put the spacecraft into hibernation in 2011 after its supply of frozen hydrogen coolant ran out, reducing the sensitivity of its infrared detectors. But astronomers saw that the telescope could still detect objects closer to Earth, and NASA reactivated the mission in 2013 for another decade of observations.

The reborn mission was known as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer). Its purpose was to use the spacecraft’s infrared vision to detect faint asteroids and comets on trajectories that bring them close to Earth.

“We never thought it would last this long,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE’s principal investigator from the University of Arizona and UCLA.

Ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent the final command to the NEOWISE spacecraft on August 8. The spacecraft, currently at an altitude of about 217 miles (350 kilometers), is falling out of orbit as atmospheric drag slows it down. NASA expects the spacecraft will reenter the atmosphere and burn up before the end of this year, a few months earlier than expected, due to higher levels of solar activity, which causes expansion in the upper atmosphere. The satellite doesn’t have its own propulsion to boost itself into a higher orbit.

“The Sun’s just been incredibly quiet for many years now, but it’s picking back up, and it was the right time to let it go,” Mainzer told Ars.

Astronomers have used ground-based telescopes to discover most of the near-Earth objects detected so far. But there’s an advantage to using a space-based telescope, because Earth’s atmosphere absorbs most of the infrared energy coming from faint objects like asteroids.

With ground-based telescopes, astronomers are “predominantly seeing sunlight reflecting off the surfaces of the objects,” Mainzer said. NEOWISE measures thermal emissions from the asteroids, giving scientists information about their sizes. “We can actually get pretty good measurements of size with relatively few infrared measurements,” she said.

The telescope on NEOWISE was relatively modest in size, with a 16-inch (40-centimeter) primary mirror, more than 16 times smaller than the mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope. But its wide field of view allowed NEOWISE to scour the sky for infrared light sources, making it well-suited for studying large populations of objects. One of the mission’s most famous discoveries was a comet officially named C/2020 F3, more commonly known as Comet NEOWISE, which became visible to the naked eye in 2020. As the comet moved closer to Earth, large telescopes like Hubble were able to take a closer look.

“The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as it helped us better understand our place in the universe by tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on Earth,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate.

What’s out there?

The original mission of WISE and the extended survey of NEOWISE combined to discover 366 near-Earth asteroids and 34 comets, according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. Of these, 64 were classified as potentially hazardous asteroids, meaning they come within 4.65 million miles (7.48 million kilometers) of Earth and are at least 500 feet (140 meters) in diameter. These are the objects astronomers want to find and track in order to predict if they pose a risk of colliding with Earth.

There are roughly 2,400 known potentially hazardous asteroids, but there are more lurking out there. Another advantage of using space-based telescopes to search for these asteroids is that they can observe 24 hours a day, while telescopes on the ground are limited to nighttime surveys. Some hazardous asteroids, such as the house-sized object that exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. A space telescope has a better chance of finding these kinds of asteroids.

WISE, and then the extended mission of NEOWISE, helped scientists estimate there are approximately 25,000 near-Earth objects.

“The objects (NEOWISE) did discover tended to be overwhelmingly just dark, [and] these are the objects that are much more likely to be missed by the ground-based telescopes,” Mainzer said. “So that, in turn, gives us a much better idea of how many are really out there.”

NASA shuts down asteroid-hunting telescope, but a better one is on the way Read More »

NASA chief to scientists on budget cuts: “I feel your pain”

bill nelson, NASA, Science, Space / Paul Patrick / August 13, 2024

Nelson as Senator Administrator —

“I can’t go and print the dollars.”

Eric Berger – Aug 13, 2024 9: 32 pm UTC

Photo of Bill Nelson. — Enlarge / Administrator Bill Nelson delivering remarks and answering questions from the media at the OFT-2 prelaunch press conference.

Trevor Mahlmann

Ars Technica recently had the opportunity to speak with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who has now led the US space agency for more than three years. We spoke about budget issues, Artemis Program timelines, and NASA’s role as a soft power in global diplomacy. What follows is a very lightly edited transcript of the conversation between Senior Space Editor Eric Berger and Nelson.

Ars Technica: I wanted to start with NASA’s budget for next year. We’ve now seen the numbers from the House of Senate, and NASA is once again facing some cuts. And I’m just wondering, what are your big concerns as we get into the final budgeting process this fall?

Administrator Bill Nelson: Well, the big concern is that you can’t put 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack. When you get cut $4.7 billion over two years, and when $2 billion of that over two years is just in science, then you have to start making some hard choices. Now, I understand the reasons for the cuts. Had I still been a member of the Senate I would’ve voted for it simply because they were held hostage by a small group in the House to get what they wanted. Which was reduced appropriations in order to raise the artificial, statutory budget debt ceiling in order for the government not to go into default. That’s part of the legislative process. It’s part of the compromises that go on. It happened over a year ago, and it was called the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The price for doing that wasn’t cuts across the entire budget. Remember, two-thirds of the budget is entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and it certainly wasn’t in defense. So, all the cuts came out of everything left over, including NASA. I’m hoping that we’re going to get a reprieve come fiscal year ’26 when we will not be in the budgetary constraints of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. But who knows? Because lo and behold, they’ve got another artificial debt ceiling they’re going to have to raise next January.

Ars: What would you say to scientists who are concerned about Chandra, the cancellation of Viper, and Mars Sample Return, who see the budget for Artemis Program holding steady or even going up? It seems to me those of us who lived through Constellation saw this unfolding 15 to 20 years ago. Is the same thing happening with Artemis, is science being cannibalized to pay for human exploration?

Nelson: My response to the scientists is, I feel your pain. But, when I am faced with $2 billion of cuts over two years just in Science, I can’t go and print the dollars. And so, we have to make hard choices. Now, let’s go through those ones that you mentioned. Mars Sample Return. This was getting way out of control. It was going up to $11 billion, and we weren’t even going to get a sample return until 2040. And that’s the decade that when we’re going to land astronauts on Mars. So, something had to be done.

I convinced the budget director, Shalanda Young (director of the US Office of Management and Budget), and she was a partner in this, that we need to get those samples back. And so we pulled the plug on it. We said, “We’re going to start over, and we’re going to go out to all the NASA centers and to private industry, and we’re going to solicit and give some incentive money for their studies. And those studies will come back in, and by the end of the year, we will make a decision.” I’m hopeful that we are going to find such creativity and fiscal discipline that we’re going to end up with a much cheaper Mars sample return that will come back in the mid-30s, instead of all the way to 2040. So, if that’s what happens, and every indication I get is we’re getting some really creative proposals, if that’s what happens, then it’s a win-win. It’s a win for the taxpayer clearly. It’s a win for NASA because we didn’t have the money to spend $11 billion on it.

So, that’s one example. Another one that you used is Viper. Viper was running 40 percent over budget. Now, there comes a limit, and when you have to take a $2 billion hit just to science, you have to make tough choices. And so, that decision was made. We’re still getting (to the Moon) with Intuitive Machines at the end of the year. We are getting a lander that is going to drill to see if there is water underneath the surface. Understand that Viper was a much bigger rover, and it was going to rove around, but it was also 40 percent over budget. And so, these are the choices that you have to make.

You mentioned Chandra. By the way, I think we’ve worked Chandra out. Although it’s not going to have the funding way up there at the top funding. What we have worked out is, we are going to from what we requested, which was $41 million, it’s going to be some amount in excess of that. Although there will be some layoffs, not nearly as many, and all of the science will be protected. There will not be any diminution of the science.

NASA chief to scientists on budget cuts: “I feel your pain” Read More »

I trust NASA’s safety culture this time around, and so should you

Science, Space / Rejus Almole / August 12, 2024

Through a cloud-washed blue sky above Launch Pad 39A, Space Shuttle <em>Columbia</em> hurtles toward space on mission STS-107. ” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/16271647815_f0b8187e11_o-640×474.jpg”></img><figcaption>
<p>Through a cloud-washed blue sky above Launch Pad 39A, Space Shuttle <em>Columbia</em> hurtles toward space on mission STS-107. </p>
<p>NASA</p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p>My first real taste of space journalism came on the morning of February 1, 2003. An editor at the Houston Chronicle telephoned me at home on a Saturday morning and asked me to hurry to Johnson Space Center to help cover the loss of Space Shuttle <em>Columbia</em>.</p>
<p>At the time, I did not realize this tragedy would set the course for the rest of my professional life, that of thinking and writing about spaceflight. This would become the consuming passion of my career.</p>
<p>I’ve naturally been thinking a lot about <em>Columbia</em> in recent weeks. While the parallels between that Space Shuttle mission and the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft are not exact, there are similarities. Most significantly, after the Space Shuttle launched, there were questions about the safety of the vehicle’s return home due to foam striking the leading edge of the spacecraft’s wing.</p>
<p>Two decades later, there are many more questions, both in public and private, about the viability of Starliner’s propulsion system after irregularities during the vehicle’s flight to the space station in June. NASA officials made the wrong decision during the <em>Columbia</em> accident. So, facing another <a href=

I trust NASA’s safety culture this time around, and so should you Read More »

NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation

Boeing, commercial crew, Features, human spaceflight, NASA, Science, Space, starliner / Paul Patrick / August 12, 2024

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, seen docked at the International Space Station through the window of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. — Enlarge / Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, seen docked at the International Space Station through the window of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

As soon as this week, NASA officials will make perhaps the agency’s most consequential safety decision in human spaceflight in 21 years.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are nearly 10 weeks into a test flight that was originally set to last a little more than one week. The two retired US Navy test pilots were the first people to fly into orbit on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft when it launched on June 5. Now, NASA officials aren’t sure Starliner is safe enough to bring the astronauts home.

Three of the managers at the center of the pending decision, Ken Bowersox and Steve Stich from NASA and Boeing’s LeRoy Cain, either had key roles in the ill-fated final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 or felt the consequences of the accident.

At that time, officials misjudged the risk. Seven astronauts died, and the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed as it reentered the atmosphere over Texas. Bowersox, Stich, and Cain weren’t the people making the call on the health of Columbia‘s heat shield in 2003, but they had front-row seats to the consequences.

Bowersox was an astronaut on the International Space Station when NASA lost Columbia. He and his crewmates were waiting to hitch a ride home on the next Space Shuttle mission, which was delayed two-and-a-half years in the wake of the Columbia accident. Instead, Bowersox’s crew came back to Earth later that year on a Russian Soyuz capsule. After retiring from the astronaut corps, Bowersox worked at SpaceX and is now the head of NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate.

Stich and Cain were NASA flight directors in 2003, and they remain well-respected in human spaceflight circles. Stich is now the manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, and Cain is now a Boeing employee and chair of the company’s Starliner mission director. For the ongoing Starliner mission, Bowersox, Stich, and Cain are in the decision-making chain.

All three joined NASA in the late 1980s, soon after the Challenger accident. They have seen NASA attempt to reshape its safety culture after both of NASA’s fatal Space Shuttle tragedies. After Challenger, NASA’s astronaut office had a more central role in safety decisions, and the agency made efforts to listen to dissent from engineers. Still, human flaws are inescapable, and NASA’s culture was unable to alleviate them during Columbia‘s last flight in 2003.

NASA knew launching a Space Shuttle in cold weather reduced the safety margin on its solid rocket boosters, which led to the Challenger accident. And shuttle managers knew foam routinely fell off the external fuel tank. In a near-miss, one of these foam fragments hit a shuttle booster but didn’t damage it, just two flights prior to Columbia‘s STS-107 mission.

“I have wondered if some in management roles today that were here when we lost Challenger and Columbia remember that in both of those tragedies, there were those that were not comfortable proceeding,” Milt Heflin, a retired NASA flight director who spent 47 years at the agency, wrote in an email to Ars. “Today, those memories are still around.”

“I suspect Stich and Cain are paying attention to the right stuff,” Heflin wrote.

The question facing NASA’s leadership today? Should the two astronauts return to Earth from the International Space Station in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, with its history of thruster failures and helium leaks, or should they come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule?

Under normal conditions, the first option is the choice everyone at NASA would like to make. It would be least disruptive to operations at the space station and would potentially maintain a clearer future for Boeing’s Starliner program, which NASA would like to become operational for regular crew rotation flights to the station.

But some people at NASA aren’t convinced this is the right call. Engineers still don’t fully understand why five of the Starliner spacecraft’s thrusters overheated and lost power as the capsule approached the space station for docking in June. Four of these five control jets are now back in action with near-normal performance, but managers would like to be sure the same thrusters—and maybe more—won’t fail again as Starliner departs the station and heads for reentry.

NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation Read More »