Space

rocket-report:-starship-stacked;-georgia-shuts-the-door-on-spaceport-camden

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

atlas v, blue origin, Commercial space, human spaceflight, launch, rocket report, Science, Space, spaceport Camden, spacex, starliner, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan / /
On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

europe-is-uncertain-whether-its-ambitious-mercury-probe-can-reach-the-planet

Europe is uncertain whether its ambitious Mercury probe can reach the planet

Science, Space / /

Hear me bepi, hold together —

“We are working hard on resolving these uncertainties.”

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An artist's rendering of the BepiColombo mission, a joint ESA/JAXA project, which will take two spacecraft to the harsh environment of Mercury.

An artist’s rendering of the BepiColombo mission, a joint ESA/JAXA project, which will take two spacecraft to the harsh environment of Mercury.

ESA

This week the European Space Agency posted a slightly ominous note regarding its BepiColombo spacecraft, which consists of two orbiters bound for Mercury.

The online news release cited a “glitch” with the spacecraft that is impairing its ability to generate thrust. The problem was first noted on April 26, when the spacecraft’s primary propulsion system was scheduled to undertake an orbital maneuver. Not enough electrical power was delivered to the solar-electric propulsion system at the time.

According to the space agency, a team involving its own engineers and those of its industrial partners began working on the issue. By May 7 they had made some progress, restoring the spacecraft’s thrust to about 90 percent of its original level. But this is not full thrust, and the root cause of the problem is still poorly understood.

This is an ambitious mission, with an estimated cost of $2 billion. Undertaken jointly with the Japanese space agency, JAXA, BepiColombo launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in October 2018. So there is a lot riding on these thrusters. The critical question is, at this power level, can BepiColombo still perform its primary task of reaching orbit around Mercury?

The answer to this question is not so clear.

A three-part spacecraft

The spacecraft consists of three components. The “transfer module” is where the current problems are occurring. It was built by the European Space Agency and is intended to power the other two components of the spacecraft until October 2025. It is essential for positioning the spacecraft for entry into orbit around Mercury. The other two elements of the mission are a European orbiter, MPO, and a Japanese orbiter, Mio. After their planned arrival in orbit around Mercury in December 2025, the two orbiters will separate and make at least one year’s worth of observations, including the characterization of the small planet’s magnetic field.

The news release is ambiguous about the fate of BepiColombo if full power cannot be restored to its propulsion system.

Ars reached out to the European Space Agency and asked whether BepiColombo can still reach orbit around Mercury in this state. The response, a statement from Elsa Montagnon, the head of mission operations at the space agency, is not entirely clear.

“Thanks for your legitimate questions on the current uncertainty,” Montagnon said. “We are working hard on resolving these uncertainties.”

Gotta have that delta-V

What is clear, she said, is that the current thrust level can support the next critical milestone, BepiColombo’s fourth Mercury swing-by, which is due to occur on September 5 of this year. This is the first of three swing-bys scheduled to happen in rapid succession from September to January that will slow the spacecraft down relative to Mercury.

“This swing-by sequence provides a braking delta-V of 2.4 km/s and provides a change of velocity vector direction with respect to the Sun as required for the trajectory end game in 2025,” Montagnon said.

At present, a team of experts is working on the implications of reduced thrusters for the other two parts of this swing-by sequence and other propulsion needs in 2025.

This transfer module is scheduled to be jettisoned from the rest of the stack in October 2025, and after that the remaining Mercury approach and orbit insertion maneuvers will be carried out with the chemical propulsion subsystem of the European MPO spacecraft.

Europe is uncertain whether its ambitious Mercury probe can reach the planet Read More »

daily-telescope:-i-spy,-with-my-little-eye,-the-iss

Daily Telescope: I spy, with my little eye, the ISS

daily telescope, Science, Space / /

living long and prospering —

What is black and white and constantly in flight?

–

The International Space Station as seen from 69 km away.

Enlarge / The International Space Station as seen from 69 km away.

HEO on X

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s May 16, and today’s image comes from an on-demand satellite imagery company named HEO. Only this image is not of the Earth, but rather the International Space Station.

According to the company, which is headquartered in Australia, one of its cameras imaged the space station at a distance of 69.06 km away, over the Indian Ocean. HEO flies its sensors as hosted payloads on satellites in Earth orbit. However, HEO’s focus is not on Earth; it’s on other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit to assess their status and identify anomalous behavior.

As for the space station, it remains in good health after a quarter of a century of operations. NASA is currently working with its international partners to extend the station’s operations through 2030. After that, the space agency would like to retire the vehicle and transition to commercially operated space stations.

Source: HEO on X.

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Daily Telescope: I spy, with my little eye, the ISS Read More »

smashing-into-an-asteroid-shows-researchers-how-to-better-protect-earth

Smashing into an asteroid shows researchers how to better protect Earth

asteroids, jpl, NASA, Space, syndication / /

Connecting with a fastball —

Slowing down an asteroid by just one-tenth of a second makes all the difference.

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Riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft sets off to collide with an asteroid in the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test mission in November 2021.

Enlarge / Riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft sets off to collide with an asteroid in the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test mission in November 2021.

On a fall evening in 2022, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory were busy with the final stages of a planetary defense mission. As Andy Rivkin, one of the team leaders, was getting ready to appear in NASA’s live broadcast of the experiment, a colleague posted a photo of a pair of asteroids: the half-mile-wide Didymos and, orbiting around it, a smaller one called Dimorphos, taken about 7 million miles from Earth.

“We were able to see Didymos and this little dot in the right spot where we expected Dimorphos to be,” Rivkin recalled.

After the interview, Rivkin joined a crowd of scientists and guests to watch the mission’s finale on several big screens: As part of an asteroid deflection mission called DART, a spacecraft was closing in on Dimorphos and photographing its rocky surface in increasing detail.

Then, at 7: 14 pm, a roughly 1,300-pound spacecraft slammed head-on into the asteroid.

Within a few minutes, members of the mission team in Kenya and South Africa posted images from their telescopes, showing a bright plume of debris.

In the days that followed, researchers continued to observe the dust cloud and discovered it had morphed into a variety of shapes, including clumps, spirals, and two comet-like tails. They also calculated that the impact slowed Dimorphos’ orbit by about a tenth of an inch per second, proof-of-concept that a spacecraft—also called a kinetic impactor—could target and deflect an asteroid far from Earth.

The final five-and-a-half minutes of images from the DART spacecraft as it approached and then intentionally collided with asteroid Dimorphos. The video is 10 times faster than reality, except for the last six images.

NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/YouTube

Ron Ballouz, a planetary scientist at the lab, commented that what is often seen in the movies is a “sort of last-ditch-effort, what we like to call a final-stage of planetary defense.” But if hazardous objects can be detected years in advance, other techniques like a kinetic impactor can be used, he added.

If a deflection were necessary, scientists would need to change the speed of a hazardous object, such as an asteroid or comet, enough that it doesn’t end up at the same place and time as Earth as they orbit the Sun. Rivkin said this translates into at least a seven-minute change in the arrival time: If a Dimorphos-sized object were predicted to collide with Earth 67 years from now, for instance, the slow-down that DART imparted would be just enough to add up to the seven minutes, he added.

With less lead time, researchers could use a combination of multiple deflections, larger spacecrafts, or boosts in speed, depending on the hazardous object. “DART was designed to validate a technique, and specific situations would inevitably require adapting things,” said Rivkin.

Researchers use data from DART and smaller-scale experiments to predict the amount of deflection using computer simulations.

Scientists are also focusing on the type of asteroid that Dimorphos appears to be: a “rubble pile,” as they call it, because objects of this kind are thought to be made of clumps of many rocks.

In fact, scientists think that most asteroids the size of Dimorphos and larger are rubble piles. As scientists continue to learn more about rubble piles, they will be able to make better predictions about deflecting asteroids or comets. And in 2026, a new mission will arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos to collect more data to fine-tune the computer models.

In the meantime, researchers are trying to learn as much as possible in the unwelcome case an asteroid or comet is discovered to be a threat to Earth and a more rapid response is necessary.

Scientists first suspected that many asteroids are rubble piles about 50 years ago. Their models showed that when larger asteroids smashed into one another, the collisions could throw off fragments that would then reassemble to form new objects.

It wasn’t until 2005, though, that scientists saw their first rubble pile: asteroid Itokawa, when a spacecraft visited it and photographed it. Then, in 2018, they saw another called Ryugu, and later that year, one more, asteroid Bennu. DART’s camera also showed Didymos and Dimorphos are likely of the same variety.

“It’s one thing to talk about rubble piles, but another to see what looks like a bunch of rocks dumped off a truck up close,” said William Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Smashing into an asteroid shows researchers how to better protect Earth Read More »

air-force-is-“growing-concerned”-about-the-pace-of-vulcan-rocket-launches

Air Force is “growing concerned” about the pace of Vulcan rocket launches

Science, Space / /

Where are my rockets? —

US military seeks an “independent review” to determine if Vulcan can scale.

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The business end of the Vulcan rocket performed flawlessly during its debut launch in January 2024.

Enlarge / The business end of the Vulcan rocket performed flawlessly during its debut launch in January 2024.

United Launch Alliance

It has been nearly four years since the US Air Force made its selections for companies to launch military payloads during the mid-2020s. The military chose United Launch Alliance, and its Vulcan rocket, to launch 60 percent of these missions; and it chose SpaceX, with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters, to launch 40 percent.

Although the large Vulcan rocket was still in development at the time, it was expected to take flight within the next year or so. Upon making the award, an Air Force official said the military believed Vulcan would soon be ready to take flight. United Launch Alliance was developing the Vulcan rocket in order to no longer be reliant on RD-180 engines that are built in Russia and used by its Atlas V rocket.

“I am very confident with the selection that we have made today,” William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, said at the time. “We have a very low-risk path to get off the RD-180 engines.”

As part of the announcement, Roper disclosed the first two missions that would fly on Vulcan. The USSF-51 mission was scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2022, and the USSF-106 mission was scheduled for launch in the third quarter of 2022.

“I am growing concerned”

It turned out to not be such a low-risk path. The Vulcan rocket’s development, of course, has since been delayed. It did not make its debut in 2020 or 2021 and only finally took flight in January of this year. The mission was completely successful—an impressive feat for a new rocket with new engines—but United Launch Alliance still must complete a second flight before the US military certifies Vulcan for its payloads.

Due to these delays, the USSF-51 mission was ultimately moved off of Vulcan and onto an Atlas V rocket. It is scheduled to launch no earlier than next month. The USSF-106 mission remains manifested on a Vulcan as that rocket’s first national security mission, but its launch date is uncertain.

For several years there have been rumblings about Air Force and Space Force officials being unhappy with the delays by United Launch Alliance, as well as with Blue Origin, which is building the BE-4 rocket engines that power Vulcan’s first stage. However, these concerns have rarely broken into public view.

That changed Monday when The Washington Post reported on a letter from Air Force Assistant Secretary Frank Calvelli to the co-owners of United Launch Alliance, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. In the letter sent on May 10, a copy of which was obtained by Ars, Calvelli urges the two large aerospace contractors to get moving on certification and production of the Vulcan rocket.

“I am growing concerned with ULA’s ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rocket and scale its launch cadence to meet our needs,” Calvelli wrote. “Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays. ULA has a backlog of 25 National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Vulcan launches on contract.”

These 25 launches, Calvelli notes, are due to be completed by the end of 2027. He asked Boeing and Lockheed to complete an “independent review” of United Launch Alliance’s ability to scale manufacturing of its Vulcan rockets and meet its commitments to the military. Calvelli also noted that Vulcan has made commitments to launch dozens of satellites for others over that period, a reference to a contract between United Launch Alliance and Amazon for Project Kuiper satellites.

It’s difficult to scale

Calvelli’s letter comes at a dynamic moment for United Launch Alliance. This week the company is set to launch the most critical mission in its 20-year history: two astronauts flying inside Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. This mission may take place as early as Friday evening from Florida on an Atlas V vehicle.

In addition, the company is for sale. Ars reported in February that Blue Origin, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, is the leading candidate to buy United Launch Alliance. It is plausible that Calvelli’s letter was written with the intent of signaling to a buyer that the government would not object to a sale in the best interests of furthering Vulcan’s development.

But the message here is unequivocally that the government wants United Launch Alliance to remain competitive and get Vulcan flying safely and frequently.

That may be easier said than done. Vulcan’s second certification mission was supposed to be the launch of the Dream Chaser spacecraft this summer. However, as Ars reported last month, that mission will no longer fly before at least September, if not later, because the spacecraft is not ready for its debut. As a result, Space News reported on Monday that United Launch Alliance is increasingly likely to fly a mass simulator on the rocket’s second flight later this year.

According to this analysis, some recent rockets launched an average of 2.75 times a year during their first five years.

According to this analysis, some recent rockets launched an average of 2.75 times a year during their first five years.

Quilty Space

After certification, United Launch Alliance can begin to fly military missions. However, it is one thing to build one or two rockets, it is quite another to build them at scale. The company’s goal is to reach a cadence of two Vulcan launches a month by the end of 2025. In his letter, Calvelli mentioned that United Launch Alliance has averaged fewer than six launches a year during the last five years. This indicates a concern that such a goal may be unreasonable.

“History shows that new rockets struggle to scale their launch cadence in their early years,” Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, told Ars. “Based on the number of missions the Department of Defense requires of ULA between now and 2027, precedent says Calvelli’s concerns are justified.”

Air Force is “growing concerned” about the pace of Vulcan rocket launches Read More »

in-the-race-for-space-metals,-companies-hope-to-cash-in

In the race for space metals, companies hope to cash in

Science, Space / /

space truckin’ —

Mining asteroids could reduce the burden on Earth’s resources. Will it live up to its promise?

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An illustration depicts a NASA spacecraft approaching the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. Though there are no plans to mine Psyche, such asteroids are being eyed for their valuable resources

Enlarge / An illustration depicts a NASA spacecraft approaching the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. Though there are no plans to mine Psyche, such asteroids are being eyed for their valuable resources

In April 2023, a satellite the size of a microwave launched to space. Its goal: to get ready to mine asteroids. While the mission, courtesy of a company called AstroForge, ran into problems, it’s part of a new wave of would-be asteroid miners hoping to cash in on cosmic resources.

Potential applications of space-mined material abound: Asteroids contain metals like platinum and cobalt, which are used in electronics and electric vehicle batteries, respectively. Although there are plenty of these materials on Earth, they can be more concentrated on asteroids than mountainsides, making them easier to scrape out. And scraping in space, advocates say, could cut down on the damaging impacts that mining has on this planet. Space-resource advocates also want to explore the potential of other substances. What if space ice could be used for spacecraft and rocket propellant? Space dirt for housing structures for astronauts and radiation shielding?

Previous companies have rocketed toward similar goals before but went bust about a half-decade ago. In the years since that first cohort left the stage, though, “the field has exploded in interest,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

A lot of the attention has focused on the Moon, since nations plan to set up outposts there and will need supplies. NASA, for instance, has ambitions to build astronaut base camps within the next decade. China, meanwhile, hopes to found an international lunar research station.

Still, the pull of space rocks remains powerful and the new crop of companies hopeful. The economic picture has improved with the cost of rocket launches decreasing, as has the regulatory environment, with countries creating laws specifically allowing space mining. But only time will tell if this decade’s prospectors will cash in where others have drilled into the red or be buried by their business plans.

An asteroid-mining company needs one major ingredient to get started: optimism. A hope that they could start a new industry, one not of this world. “Not a lot of humans are built to work like that,” said Matt Gialich, co-founder and CEO of AstroForge. Since the company’s April 2023 demo mission, it has yet to come close to mining anything.

What he and colleagues hope to extract, though, are platinum-group metals, some of which are used in devices like catalytic converters, which reduce gas emissions. Substances like platinum and iridium, meanwhile, are used in electronics. There are also opportunities in green technology, and new pushes to produce platinum-based batteries with better storage that could end up in electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

To further the company’s goals, AstroForge’s initial mission was loaded with simulated asteroid material and a refinery system designed to extract platinum from the simulant, to show that metal-processing could happen in space.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. After the small craft got to orbit, it was hard to identify and communicate with among the dozens of other newly launched satellites. The solar panels, which provide the spacecraft with power, wouldn’t deploy at first. And the satellite was initially beset with a wobble that prevented communication. They have not been able to do the simulated extraction.

The company will soon embark on a second mission, with a different goal: to slingshot to an asteroid and take a picture — a surveying project which may help the company understand which valuable materials exist on a particular asteroid.

Another company, called TransAstra, is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky; Chinese corporation Origin Space has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit around Earth, and is testing out its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test out excavation equipment.

To achieve the ultimate goal of pulling metals from space rocks, TransAstra, Karman+, and AstroForge have received a combined tens of millions of dollars in venture-capital funding to date.

Another company with similar aims, simply called Asteroid Mining Corporation Ltd., doesn’t want to rely much on outside investment in the long term. Such reliance, in fact, helped sink earlier companies. Instead, founder and CEO Mitch Hunter-Scullion is focusing his company’s early work on terrestrial applications that pay up immediately so he can fund future work in the broader universe. In 2021, the company partnered with Tohoku University Space Robotics Laboratory, based in Japan, to work on space robots.

Together, they have built a six-legged robot called the Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorer, or SCAR-E. Designed to operate in microgravity, it can crawl around a rugged surface and take data on, and samples of, what’s there. In 2026, the company plans to do a demonstration mission analyzing soil on the Moon.

For now, though, SCAR-E will stay on Earth and inspect ship hulls. According to one market research platform, this is a nearly $13 billion dollar market globally — as compared to the asteroid-mining market, currently $0, as no one has yet mined an asteroid.

Such grounded work may give the company a revenue stream before, and during, their time in space. “I think every asteroid-mining company has this realization that money runs out, investors get tired, and you have to do something,” said Hunter-Scullion.

“My opinion is that unless you’ve built something which makes sense on Earth,” he added, “you’re never going to be able to mine an asteroid.”

In the race for space metals, companies hope to cash in Read More »

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NOAA says ‘extreme’ Solar storm will persist through the weekend

aurora, NOAA, Science, solar storm, Space / /

Bright lights —

So far disruptions from the geomagnetic storm appear to be manageable.

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Pink lights appear in the sky above College Station, Texas.

Enlarge / Pink lights appear in the sky above College Station, Texas.

ZoeAnn Bailey

After a night of stunning auroras across much of the United States and Europe on Friday, a severe geomagnetic storm is likely to continue through at least Sunday, forecasters said.

The Space Weather Prediction Center at the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Prediction Center observed that ‘Extreme’ G5 conditions were ongoing as of Saturday morning due to heightened Solar activity.

“The threat of additional strong flares and CMEs (coronal mass ejections) will remain until the large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster rotates out of view over the next several days,” the agency posted in an update on the social media site X on Saturday morning.

Good and bad effects

For many observers on Friday night the heightened Solar activity was welcomed. Large areas of the United States, Europe, and other locations unaccustomed to displays of the aurora borealis saw vivid lights as energetically charged particles from the Solar storm passed through the Earth’s atmosphere. Brilliantly pink skies were observed as far south as Texas. Given the forecast for ongoing Solar activity, another night of extended northern lights is possible again on Saturday.

There were also some harmful effects. According to NOAA, there have been some irregularities in power grid transmissions, and degraded satellite communications and GPS services. Users of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation have reported slower download speeds. Early on Saturday morning, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company’s Starlink satellites were “under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far.”

This is the most intense Solar storm recorded in more than two decades. The last G5 event—the most extreme category of such storms—occurred in October 2003 when there were electricity issues reported in Sweden and South Africa.

Should this storm intensify over the next day or two, scientists say the major risks include more widespread power blackouts, disabled satellites, and long-term damage of GPS networks.

Cause of these storms

Such storms are triggered when the Sun ejects a significant amount of its magnetic field and plasma into the Solar wind. The underlying causes of these coronal mass ejections, deeper in the Sun, are not fully understood. But it is hoped that data collected by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and other observations will help scientists better understand and predict such phenomena.

When these coronal mass ejections reach Earth’s magnetic field they change it, and can introduce significant currents into electricity lines and transformers, leading to damages or outages.

The most intense geomagnetic storm occurred in 1859, during the so-called Carrington Event. This produced auroral lights around the world, and caused fires in multiple telegraph stations—at the time there were 125,000 miles of telegraph lines in the world.

According to one research paper on the Carrington Event, “At its height, the aurora was described as a blood or deep crimson red that was so bright that one ‘could read a newspaper by’.”

NOAA says ‘extreme’ Solar storm will persist through the weekend Read More »

nasa-wants-a-cheaper-mars-sample-return—boeing-proposes-most-expensive-rocket

NASA wants a cheaper Mars Sample Return—Boeing proposes most expensive rocket

Mars Sample Return, Science, Space / /
The Space Launch System rocket lifts off on the Artemis I mission.

Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket lifts off on the Artemis I mission.

NASA is looking for ways to get rock samples back from Mars for less than the $11 billion the agency would need under its own plan, so last month, officials put out a call to industry to propose ideas.

Boeing is the first company to release details about how it would attempt a Mars Sample Return mission. Its study involves a single flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the super heavy-lift launcher designed to send astronauts to the Moon on NASA’s Artemis missions.

Jim Green, NASA’s former chief scientist and longtime head of the agency’s planetary science division, presented Boeing’s concept Wednesday at the Humans to Mars summit, an annual event sponsored primarily by traditional space companies. Boeing is the lead contractor for the SLS core stage and upper stage and has pitched the SLS, primarily a crew launch vehicle, as a rocket for military satellites and deep space probes.

All in one

Green, now retired, said the concept he and Boeing engineers propose would reduce the risks of Mars Sample Return. With one mission, there are fewer points of potential failure, he said.

“To reduce mission complexity, this new concept is doing one launch,” Green said.

This argument makes some sense, but the problem is SLS is the most expensive rocket flying today. Even if NASA and Boeing introduce cost-cutting measures, NASA’s inspector general reported last year it’s unlikely the cost of a single SLS launch would fall below $2 billion. The inspector general recommended NASA consider buying commercial rockets as an alternative to SLS for future Artemis missions.

NASA’s Perseverance rover, operating on Mars since February 2021, is collecting soil and rock core samples and sealing them in 43 cigar-size titanium tubes. The rover has dropped the first 10 of these tubes in a depot on the Martian surface that could be retrieved by a future sample return mission. The remaining tubes will likely remain stowed on Perseverance in hopes the rover will directly hand off the samples to the spacecraft that comes to Mars to get them.

Boeing says a single launch of the Space Launch System rocket could carry everything needed for a Mars Sample Return mission.

Enlarge / Boeing says a single launch of the Space Launch System rocket could carry everything needed for a Mars Sample Return mission.

Boeing

In his remarks, Green touted the benefits of launching a Mars Sample Return mission with a single rocket and a single spacecraft. NASA’s baseline concept involves two launches, one with a US-built lander and a small rocket to boost the rocket samples back off the surface of Mars, and another with a European spacecraft to rendezvous with the sample carrier in orbit around Mars, then bring the specimens back to Earth.

“This concept is one launch vehicle,” he said. “It’s the SLS. What does it do? It’s carrying a massive payload. What is the payload? It’s a Mars entry and descent aeroshell. It has a propulsive descent module.”

The lander would carry everything needed to get the samples back to Earth. A fetch rover onboard the lander would deploy to drive out and pick up the sample tubes collected by the Perseverance rover. Then, a robotic arm would transfer the sample tubes to a container at the top of a two-stage rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) sitting on top of the lander. The MAV would have the oomph needed to boost the samples off the surface of Mars and into orbit, then fire engines to target a course back to Earth.

Boeing has no direct experience as a prime contractor for any Mars mission. SpaceX, with its giant Starship rocket designed for eventual Mars missions, and Lockheed Martin, which has built several Mars landers for NASA, are the companies with the technology and expertise that seem to be most useful for Mars Sample Return.

NASA is also collecting ideas for Mars Sample Return from its space centers across the United States. The agency also tasked the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was in charge of developing the original dead-on-arrival concept, to come up with a better idea. Later this year, NASA officials will reference these new proposals as they decide how to proceed with Mars Sample Return, with the goal of getting samples back from Mars in the 2030s.

NASA wants a cheaper Mars Sample Return—Boeing proposes most expensive rocket Read More »

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Analyst on Starlink’s rapid rise: “Nothing short of mind-blowing”

quilty, Science, Space, starlink / /

$tarlink —

Starlink’s estimated free cash flow this year is about $600 million.

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60 of SpaceX's broadband satellites stacked before launch.

Enlarge / 60 Starlink satellites stacked for launch at SpaceX facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2019.

According to the research firm Quilty Space, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet business is now profitable.

During a webinar on Thursday, analysts from the firm outlined the reasons why they think SpaceX has been able to achieve a positive cash flow in its space Internet business just five years after the first batch of 60 satellites were launched.

The co-founder of the firm, Chris Quilty, said the rapidity of Starlink’s rise surprised a lot of people, including himself. “A lot of industry veterans kind of scoffed at the idea,” he said. “We’d seen this before.”

Some history

Both SpaceX and another company, OneWeb, announced plans to build satellite megaconstellations in 2015 to deliver broadband Internet from low-Earth orbit. There was a lot of skepticism in the space community at the time because such plans had come and gone before, including a $9 billion constellation proposed by Teledesic with about 800 satellites that only ever managed to put a single demonstration satellite into space.

The thinking was that it would be too difficult to launch that many spacecraft and too technically challenging to get them all to communicate. Quilty recalled his own comments on the proposals back in 2015.

Analysis of Starlink financials in the last three years.

Enlarge / Analysis of Starlink financials in the last three years.

Quilty Space

“I correctly forecast that there would be no near term impact on the industry, but boy, was I wrong on the long-term impact,” he said. “I think I called for possibly a partial impact on certain segments of the industry. Incorrect. But remember the context back in 2015, the largest constellation in existence was Iridium with 66 satellites, and back in 2015, it wasn’t even entirely clear that they were going to make it successfully without a second dip into bankruptcy.”

It is clear that SpaceX has been successful on the launch and technical challenges. The company has deployed nearly 6,000 satellites, with more than 5,200 still operational and delivering Internet to 2.7 million customers in 75 different countries. But is the service profitable? That’s the question Quilty and his research team sought to address.

Build a model

Because Starlink is part of SpaceX’s portfolio, the company’s true financial situation is private. So Quilty built a model to assess the company’s profitability. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago.

“What Starlink achieved in the past three years is nothing short of mind-blowing,” Quilty said. “If you want to put that in context, SES and Intelsat announced in the last two weeks—these are the two largest geo-satellite operators—that they’re going to combine. They’ll have combined revenues of about 4.1 billion.”

In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base, SpaceX has managed to control costs. It has built its satellites, which are connected to Internet hubs on Earth and beam connectivity to user terminals, for far less money than historical rivals. The version 1.0 satellites are estimated to have cost just $200,000.

Building satellites for less.

Enlarge / Building satellites for less.

Quilty Space

How has SpaceX done this? Caleb Henry, director of research for Quilty, pointed to three major factors.

“One is, they really, really aggressively vertically integrate, and that allows them to keep costs down by not having to absorb the profit margins from outside suppliers,” he said. “They really designed for manufacture and for cheap manufacture. And you can kind of see that in some of the component selections and designs that they’ve used. And then they’ve also built really high volume, so a production cadence and rate that the industry has not seen before.”

Getting to a profit

Quilty estimates that Starlink will have an EBITDA of $3.8 billion this year. This value indicates how well a company is managing its day-to-day operations and stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Additionally, Quilty estimates that capital expenditures for Starlink will be $3.1 billion this year. This leaves an estimated free cash flow from the business of about $600 million. In other words, Starlink is making money for SpaceX. It is self-sustaining.

According to Quilty’s analysis, the Starlink business has also addressed some concerns about its long-term financial viability. For example, it no longer subsidizes the cost of user terminals in the United States, and the replenishment costs for satellites in orbit are manageable.

These figures, it should be noted, do not include SpaceX’s Starshield business, which is building custom satellites for the US military for observation purposes and will likely leverage its Starlink technology.

There is also room for significant growth for Starlink as the larger Starship rocket comes online and begins to launch version 3.0 Starlink satellites. These are significantly chunkier, likely about 1.5 metric tons each, and will have the capability for significantly more broadband and enable direct-to-cell communications, removing the need for user terminals.

Analyst on Starlink’s rapid rise: “Nothing short of mind-blowing” Read More »

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Rocket Report: German launch from Australia; Neutron delayed until 2025

rocket report, Space / /
HyImpulse's single-stage rocket, SR75, lifts off from Australia.

Enlarge / HyImpulse’s single-stage rocket, SR75, lifts off from Australia.

HyImpulse

Welcome to Edition 6.43 of the Rocket Report! This week saw the debut of two new rockets, a suborbital lifter from a German startup, and a new variant of the Long March 6 from China’s state-owned launch provider. We also got within two hours of the debut of a crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner vehicle, but a rocket issue forced a 10-day delay. Soon, hopefully.

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.

Orbital launch tally running ahead of 2023. There were 63 orbital launch attempts worldwide in the first quarter of 2024, which is 10 more than the same time last year, Payload reports. SpaceX accounted for 32 of the 34 US orbital launch attempts in Q1. One ULA Vulcan launch and one Rocket Lab Electron launch out of Wallops rounded out the remaining total. (Rocket Lab flights out of New Zealand are not counted in US launch totals.)

SpaceX accounts for more than half … SpaceX flew 31 Falcon missions and one Starship mission in Q1. The company’s launch attempts increased by 11 flights in Q1 2024 vs. Q1 2023. China’s Q1 launch was flat year over year at 14 flights, with its Long March 2 vehicle leading the way with four missions. Europe’s planned summer Ariane 6 launch can’t come soon enough, as the region saw zero launch attempts in the quarter.

Virgin Galactic will lean heavily on mothership. Virgin Galactic says it will fly its existing “mothership” aircraft more frequently than previously planned with its upcoming Delta-class suborbital spaceplanes, allowing the company to defer development of a new plane, Space News reports. In a May 7 earnings call, Virgin Galactic executives said they expect to fly their VMS Eve aircraft up to 125 times a year once the company starts commercial service of the Delta spaceplanes, the successor to the existing VSS Unity, in 2026.

Asking a lot of Eve … “The planned increase in flight cadence for our mothership Eve is a game changer when our first two Delta ships enter commercial service,” added Doug Ahrens, chief financial officer of Virgin Galactic. That is a lot to ask of what was originally a developmental aircraft, which started flights in 2008. Eve was never intended to fly this many times, and it seems likely that refurbishment of the plane between launches could become a major bottleneck for Virgin Galactic as it seeks to scale up operations. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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

HyImpulse conducts its first launch. The Germany-based startup launched a suborbital rocket from Southern Launch’s Koonibba Test Range in Australia late last week. The SR75 rocket’s “Light this Candle!” mission was the inaugural launch attempt of HyImpulse’s booster, a pathfinder for an eventual orbital rocket. In a news release, the company characterized the flight as a “success” but did not specify what altitude the vehicle reached. Nominally, it is capable of flying to 250 km.

Literally lighting a candle … “With this successful launch, which also provides us with valuable data for further development, we have validated our technical concept and demonstrated our market readiness,” said Christian Schmierer, co-founder and co-CEO of HyImpulse. The German launch company is developing its rockets with hybrid technology, using solid paraffin (commonly known as candle wax) and liquid oxygen as fuel. HyImpulse aims to learn from this launch as it develops the SL1 multi-stage orbital launch vehicle, which may debut next year. (submitted by Marakai and Joey S-IVB)

Rocket Report: German launch from Australia; Neutron delayed until 2025 Read More »

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NASA confirms “independent review” of Orion heat shield issue

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

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

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

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

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

Another set of eyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here’s why a rich guy going to space for a second time actually matters

Space / /

A new dawn —

Polaris Dawn will be the first time that SpaceX employees have actually gone to space.

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The crew of Polaris Dawn from L to R: Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis.

Enlarge / The crew of Polaris Dawn from L to R: Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis.

John Kraus/Polaris Program

Over the weekend the crew of the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission shared a wealth of details about the intriguing private mission that will send humans farther than they have flown from Earth in half a century.

Commanded and funded by private astronaut Jared Isaacman, the mission seeks to test new technologies that will further the expansion of humanity into space. Among the objectives are pushing the performance of the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket, performing the first commercial spacewalk in a new spacesuit developed by SpaceX, and testing Starlink laser-based communications in space.

“Our first objective is to travel farther from the Earth and the last time humans walked on the Moon with Apollo 17, more than 50 years ago,” Isaacman said during an online chat hosted by the social network site X. “So we target an apogee of 1,400 kilometers. That puts us just inside the Van Allen radiation belt. It’s an awesome opportunity for us to get some data, but really it’s about pushing beyond our comfort zone.”

The Polaris Dawn mission does not have a launch date, but SpaceX officials confirmed that it is now the next crewed mission the company will fly. There are likely several scheduling issues at play, but it’s possible the mission could launch within the next six to eight weeks.

Flying high

After liftoff from Florida, Isaacman said Dragon will complete seven orbits with a maximum altitude of about 1,400 km, which is about twice as high as any crewed mission has flown since 1972. After that the vehicle will descend to a more circular orbit of about 700 km and prepare for a spacewalk.

Besides Isaacman, who flew to space for the first time in September 2021 as the commander of the all-civilian Inspiration 4, the crew of this mission includes a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and experienced pilot named Scott Poteet, and two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. This will be the first time that any employee of SpaceX has ever flown into space.

After settling into the lower orbit, the crew will prepare for a spacewalk. They will don spacesuits, and the atmosphere inside the Dragon spacecraft will be vented into space. Then Isaacman and Gillis will exit the spacecraft, with their suits connected to Dragon’s air and other consumables by an umbilical.

Polaris Dawn astronaut and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis shows off the new spacesuit.

Enlarge / Polaris Dawn astronaut and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis shows off the new spacesuit.

SpaceX

Although government astronauts have conducted hundreds of spacewalks over the last 60 years, no private citizen has ever undertaken one.

“This is important because we are going to get to the Moon and Mars one day, and we’re going to have to get out of our vehicles, and out of the safety of the habitat to explore and build and repair things,” Isaacman said. SpaceX has already said it is working on a second generation of the suit for operations on the Moon and Mars.

The company spent about two years designing the first generation of this extravehicular activity spacesuit, an upgrade from its current flight suit. It has been extensively tested in vacuum chambers and other facilities at locations such as NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Isaacman shared more details about the suits in a subsequent conversation with former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

SpaceX has also modified Dragon for the spacewalk. Stu Keech, the vice president of Dragon at SpaceX, said a structure named “Skywalker” has been attached to the spacecraft near the hatch as a mobility aid.

Is this guy legit?

It would be easy to dismiss Isaacman as a space fanboy living out his spaceflight dreams after he got rich. (According to Forbes, the founder of Shift4 Payments is worth an estimated $1.5 billion.) Absolutely, he loves to fly. He owns and regularly pilots a MiG-29—one of only a few of these Soviet fighter aircraft operating in the United States. Spaceflight is the ultimate boundary for people who love to fly.

But Isaacman appears to be in this for more than thrills. On his first two spaceflights, Isaacman sought out crewmates from diverse backgrounds and made charitable donations a major component of each mission. I have had a number of conversations with Isaacman over the last five years, and he has consistently emphasized the goal of opening spaceflight to more people. For example, if humans are ever to have a truly sustained presence in space, spacewalks must be commonplace. Hence, non-NASA astronauts need to start making them. His funding of Polaris Dawn helped SpaceX focus on developing suits for such a purpose down the line.

During the social media event on Saturday, I asked Isaacman about the risks entailed by this mission. By flying higher than a conventional spaceflight, venting the cabin, and performing a spacewalk, he and the crew were taking on a new set of risks.

“We’ve gotten really comfortable going from point A to B to an extraordinary floating international laboratory, but I think humankind’s ambitions are beyond that,” Isaacman said of the International Space Station. “We’re going to encounter different things. The risk is different when you vent the vehicle down to vacuum, and you’re in a spacesuit. But I think these are all positive steps in the direction of goodness towards, you know, humankind’s interest to explore our Solar System and beyond.”

Isaacman has clearly bought in to the idea of space settlement. He’s personally taking risks to help achieve that vision, investing a significant chunk of money and time for training. It is a brave and bold and important thing to be doing.

Here’s why a rich guy going to space for a second time actually matters Read More »