Space

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Here are the winners and losers when it comes to clouds for Monday’s eclipse

Science, solar eclipse, Space / /

Happy hunting —

News you can use in regard to chasing cloud-free skies.

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Cloud cover forecast for 2 pm ET on Monday, April 8.

Enlarge / Cloud cover forecast for 2 pm ET on Monday, April 8.

Tomer Burg

The best opportunity to view a total Solar eclipse in the United States for the next two decades is nearly at hand. Aside from making sure you’re in the path of totality, the biggest question for most eclipse viewers has been, will it be cloudy?

This has posed a challenge to the meteorological community. That’s because clouds are notoriously difficult to forecast for a number of reasons. The first is that they are localized features, sometimes on the order of a few miles or km across, which is smaller than the resolution of global models that provide forecasts five, seven, or more days out.

Weather models also struggle with predicting clouds because they can form anywhere from a few thousand feet (2,000 meters) above the ground to 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), and therefore they require good information about conditions in the atmosphere near the surface all the way into the stratosphere. The problem is that the combination of ground-based observations, weather balloons, data from aircraft, and satellites do not provide the kind of comprehensive atmospheric profile needed at locations around the world for completely accurate cloud forecasting.

Finally, there is the issue of partly cloudy skies and the transience of clouds themselves. Most places, most days, have a mixture of sunshine and cloudy skies. So let’s say the forecast looks pretty good for your location. According to forecasters there is only a 30 percent skycover forecast for Monday afternoon. Sounds great! But if a large cloud moves over the Sun during the few minutes of totality, it won’t matter if the day was mostly sunny.

With that in mind, here’s the forecast at three days out, with some strategies for finding the clear skies on Monday.

The forecast

The cloud forecast has actually been remarkably consistent for the last several days, in general terms. Texas has looked rather poor for visibility, the central region of the United States including bits of Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, and Indiana have looked fairly good, areas along Lake Erie have been iffy, and the northeastern United States has looked optimal.

Our highest confidence area is northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The reason is that high pressure will be firmly in place for these locations on Monday, virtually guaranteeing mostly sunny skies. If you want to be confident of seeing the eclipse in North America, this is the place to be. But there is a catch—isn’t there always? A snowstorm this week, which may persist into Saturday morning, has made travel difficult. Conditions should improve by Sunday, however.

Rising pressures in the central United States will also make for good viewing conditions. The band of totality running from Northern Arkansas through Indiana is not guaranteed to have clear skies, but the odds are favorable for most locations here.

The Lake Erie region, including Cleveland, is probably the biggest wildcard in the national forecast. The atmospheric setup here is fairly complex, with the region just on the edge of high pressure ridging that will help keep skies clear. I’d be cautiously optimistic.

Finally there’s Texas. The forecast overall has been poor since I’ve began tracking it for the last two weeks. (And as I live in Texas, I’ve been following it closely.) The global models with the best predictive value—the European-based ECMWF and US-based GFS—have shown consistently cloudy skies across much of the state on Monday, with a non-zero chance of rain. I do think there will be some breaks in the clouds at the time of the eclipse, perhaps in locations near Dallas or to the west of Austin, and hopefully some of the cloud cover will be thin, high clouds. But whereas the skies at night are big and bright in Texas, the solar eclipse viewing conditions might just bite.

Some strategies for Monday

There are a lot of helpful resources online for tracking cloud cover over the weekend. One of the best hacks is to search the web for the nearest city or town, i.e. “NWS Cleveland, Ohio” and find the “forecaster discussion” section of the National Weather Service website. This will give you a credible local forecaster’s outlook on conditions. Most have been doing a great job of providing eclipse context in twice-daily discussions.

A meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma, Tomer Burg, has set up an excellent website to provide both an overview of the eclipse and a probabilistic outlook for localized conditions. Your best bets are the national blend of models forecast for average cloud cover (direct link), and a city dashboard that provides key information for more than 100 locations about precise eclipse timing and sky cover.

Good luck, Austin!

Enlarge / Good luck, Austin!

Tomer Burg

Finally, if you’re in the path of totality and are expected to have partly to mostly cloudy skies, don’t despair. There’s always a chance the forecast will change, even a few days out. There’s always a chance for a break in the clouds at the right time. There’s always a chance the clouds will be thin and high, with the disk of the Sun shining through.

And finally, if it is thickly overcast, it will still get eerily dark outside in the middle of the day. It will get noticeably colder. Animals will do nighttime things. So it will be special, but unfortunately not special.

Here are the winners and losers when it comes to clouds for Monday’s eclipse Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn

blue origin, Commercial space, ed Dwight, human spaceflight, launch, Polaris dawn, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / /

The wait is over —

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4.”

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Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Welcome to Edition 6.38 of the Rocket Report! Ed Dwight was close to joining NASA’s astronaut corps more than 60 years ago. With an aeronautical engineering degree and experience as an Air Force test pilot, Dwight met the qualifications to become an astronaut. He was one of 26 test pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but he wasn’t selected. Now, the man who would have become the first Black astronaut will finally get a chance to fly to space.

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.

Ed Dwight named to Blue Origin’s next human flight. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, announced Thursday that 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963, will be one of six people to fly to suborbital space on the company’s next New Shepard flight. 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. It took 20 more years for the first Black American to fly to space. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin is sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people. Five paying passengers will join Dwight for the roughly 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space over West Texas. Kudos to Space for Humanity and Blue Origin for making this happen.

Return to flight … This mission, named NS-25, will be the first time Blue Origin flies with human passengers since August 2022. Blue Origin hasn’t announced a launch date yet for NS-25. On an uncrewed launch the following month, an engine failure destroyed a New Shepard booster and grounded Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket program for more than 15 months. New Shepard returned to flight December 19 on another research flight, again without anyone onboard. As the mission name suggests, this will be the 25th flight of a New Shepard rocket and the seventh flight with people. Blue Origin has a history of flying aviation pioneers and celebrities. On the first human flight with New Shepard in 2021, the passengers included company founder Jeff Bezos and famed female aviator Wally Funk. (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.

Revisit Astra’s 2020 rocket explosion. In March 2020, as the world was under the grip of COVID, Astra blew up a rocket in remote Alaska and didn’t want anyone to see it. New video published by TechCrunch shows Astra’s Rocket 3 vehicle exploding on its launch pad. This was one of several setbacks that have brought the startup to its knees. The explosion, which occurred at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex, was simply reported as an “anomaly” at the time, an industry term for pretty much any issue that deviates from the expected outcome, TechCrunch reports. Satellite imagery of the launch site showed burn scars, suggesting an explosion, but the footage published this week confirms the reality of the event. This was Astra’s first orbital-class rocket, and it blew up during a fueling rehearsal.

A sign of things to come … Astra eventually flew its Rocket 3 small satellite launcher seven times, but only two of the flights actually reached orbit. This prompted Astra to abandon its Rocket 3 program and focus on developing a larger rocket, Rocket 4. But the future of this new rocket is in doubt. Astra’s co-founders are taking the company private after its market value and stock price tanked, and it’s not clear where the company will go from here. (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.

Russia’s plan to “restore” its launch industry. Yuri Borisov, chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has outlined a strategy for Russia to regain a dominant position in the global launch market, Ars reports. This will include the development of a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability. In an interview posted on the Roscosmos website, Borisov said he hopes Russia will have a “completely new fleet of space vehicles” by the 2028-2029 timeframe. Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.

Reason to doubt … Russia’s launch industry was a global leader a couple of decades ago when prices were cheap relative to Western rockets. But the heavy-lift Proton rocket is nearing retirement after concerns about its reliability, and the still-reliable Soyuz is now excluded from the global market after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the 2000s and 2010s, Russia’s position in the market was supplanted by the European Ariane 5 rocket and then SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Roscosmos originally announced the medium-lift Amur rocket program in 2020 for a maiden flight in 2026. Since then, the rocket has encountered a nearly year-for-year delay in its first test launch. I’ll believe it when I see it. The only new, large rocket Russia has developed in nearly 40 years, the expendable Angara A5, is still launching dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn Read More »

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NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix

jet propulsion laboratory, memory, NASA, Science, Space, Voyager, Voyager 1 / /

Hope returns —

“Engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally.”

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A Voyager space probe in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977.

Enlarge / A Voyager space probe in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977.

Engineers have determined why NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has been transmitting gibberish for nearly five months, raising hopes of recovering humanity’s most distant spacecraft.

Voyager 1, traveling outbound some 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth, started beaming unreadable data down to ground controllers on November 14. For nearly four months, NASA knew Voyager 1 was still alive—it continued to broadcast a steady signal—but could not decipher anything it was saying.

Confirming their hypothesis, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California confirmed a small portion of corrupted memory caused the problem. The faulty memory bank is located in Voyager 1’s Flight Data System (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft. The FDS operates alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.

The FDS duties include packaging Voyager 1’s science and engineering data for relay to Earth through the craft’s Telemetry Modulation Unit and radio transmitter. According to NASA, about 3 percent of the FDS memory has been corrupted, preventing the computer from carrying out normal operations.

Optimism growing

Suzanne Dodd, NASA’s project manager for the twin Voyager probes, told Ars in February that this was one of the most serious problems the mission has ever faced. That is saying something because Voyager 1 and 2 are NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft. They launched 16 days apart in 1977, and after flying by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 is flying farther from Earth than any spacecraft in history. Voyager 2 is trailing Voyager 1 by about 2.5 billion miles, although the probes are heading out of the Solar System in different directions.

Normally, engineers would try to diagnose a spacecraft malfunction by analyzing data it sent back to Earth. They couldn’t do that in this case because Voyager 1 has been transmitting data packages manifesting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros. Still, Voyager 1’s ground team identified the FDS as the likely source of the problem.

The Flight Data Subsystem was an innovation in computing when it was developed five decades ago. It was the first computer on a spacecraft to use volatile memory. Most of NASA’s missions operate with redundancy, so each Voyager spacecraft launched with two FDS computers. But the backup FDS on Voyager 1 failed in 1982.

Due to the Voyagers’ age, engineers had to reference paper documents, memos, and blueprints to help understand the spacecraft’s design details. After months of brainstorming and planning, teams at JPL uplinked a command in early March to prompt the spacecraft to send back a readout of the FDS memory.

The command worked, and Voyager.1 responded with a signal different from the code the spacecraft had been transmitting since November. After several weeks of meticulous examination of the new code, engineers pinpointed the locations of the bad memory.

“The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working,” NASA said in an update posted Thursday. “Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years.”

Voyager 1’s distance from Earth complicates the troubleshooting effort. The one-way travel time for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1 from Earth is about 22.5 hours, meaning it takes roughly 45 hours for engineers on the ground to learn how the spacecraft responded to their commands.

NASA also must use its largest communications antennas to contact Voyager 1. These 230-foot-diameter (70-meter) antennas are in high demand by many other NASA spacecraft, so the Voyager team has to compete with other missions to secure time for troubleshooting. This means it will take time to get Voyager 1 back to normal operations.

“Although it may take weeks or months, engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally without the unusable memory hardware, which would enable Voyager 1 to begin returning science and engineering data again,” NASA said.

NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix Read More »

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It could well be a blockbuster hurricane season, and that’s not a good thing

hurricane season, Science, Space / /

It only takes one —

Although not quite literally, the Atlantic Ocean is on fire right now.

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As of late March, much of the Atlantic Ocean was seeing temperatures far above normal.

Enlarge / As of late March, much of the Atlantic Ocean was seeing temperatures far above normal.

Weathermodels.com

The Atlantic hurricane season does not begin for another eight weeks, but we are deep in the heart of hurricane season prediction season.

On Thursday, the most influential of these forecasts was issued by Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane scientist at Colorado State University. To put a fine point on it, Klotzbach and his team foresee an exceptionally busy season in the Atlantic basin, which encompasses the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico.

“We anticipate that the 2024 Atlantic basin hurricane season will be extremely active,” Klotzbach wrote in his forecast discussion.

The Colorado State forecast calls for 23 named storms, more than 50 percent higher than a typical season of 14.4 named storms; and 11 hurricanes, above a normal total of seven. Additionally, the forecast predicts that the season’s accumulated cyclone energy—a summation of the duration and intensity of storms across the whole basin—will be 70 percent greater than normal. If the forecast is accurate, the year 2024 would rank among the top 10 most active Atlantic hurricane seasons in a century and a half of records.

This forecast is not out of line with other seasonal predictions. Dozens of organizations, from private groups to individual forecasters to media properties, issue these kinds of seasonal predictions. But Colorado State’s is the longest-running and most influential, and its release underscores what is indeed expected to be a very busy season for tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes.

What’s driving this?

Klotzbach cites two major factors driving the busy year. The primary one is sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Atlantic, where tropical systems develop. These seas are seeing record warm temperatures for April—indeed, in many places, the Atlantic is already as warm as it typically would be in June. Undoubtedly climate change is a central factor behind this warming.

Warm seas are one precursor to tropical systems, but they are just one condition necessary for a low-pressure system to organize into a tropical depression.

Another is low wind shear, as cross-directional winds can literally shear a storm apart. While it is not possible to forecast wind shear months ahead of a season, the presence of El Niño or La Niña in the Pacific Ocean is a pretty useful indicator.

In this case, there’s more bad news. The present (weak) El Niño in the Pacific is likely to transition into a La Niña by this summer, especially in August or September. That matters because these are typically the most frenetic months for activity, and with a La Niña in place, wind shear is likely to be lower overall in the Atlantic basin.

This is the first of several forecasts Klotzbach will issue for the upcoming season, and although predictions in April typically have lower skill, it is difficult to ignore the signals out there. “While the skill of this prediction is low, our confidence is higher than normal this year for an early April forecast given how hurricane-favorable the large-scale conditions appear to be,” he wrote.

What does this mean?

Most coastal areas along the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf will not be affected by a hurricane in any given year. I live and work in Houston, which is the largest city in the Atlantic basin that regularly sees significant hurricane threats. But even here, in the subtropics, we only see large, direct impacts from a hurricane or tropical storm about every 10 years.

What a busy season does is load the dice. More activity means a greater likelihood that one of those storms will venture closer to where one lives. So the threat of a hurricane is there every year; it’s just that the threat is greater in some years.

There is an old, oft-repeated adage in hurricane forecasting circles: “It only takes one.” This means that even during a slow season if there’s just one hurricane and it hits you, it was a busy hurricane season for you. We experienced this in Houston back in 1983 when the very first named storm of the year, a hurricane named Alicia, made landfall near the city on August 17. There ended up being just four named storms in 1984, but unfortunately for Houston, one of them struck here.

A busy forecast like this doesn’t mean a whole lot for coastal residents. We really need to be prepared every year, knowing our vulnerabilities to a hurricane, knowing when we need to evacuate, where we would go, and what we would need to take.

However, it does have implications for first responders and government organizations tasked with dealing with hurricane aftermath, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Thus, it seems prudent that the recently passed federal budget for fiscal year 2024 tucked $20.3 billion into the agency’s Disaster Relief Fund.

It could well be a blockbuster hurricane season, and that’s not a good thing Read More »

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Pentagon calls for tighter integration between military and commercial space

Commercial space, military space, Science, Space, space force / /
Aerial view of the Pentagon on March 31.

Enlarge / Aerial view of the Pentagon on March 31.

Photo by Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images

A strategy document released by the Pentagon this week lays out where the US military can most effectively rely on the commercial space industry and what missions should remain in government hands.

“This marks a new effort to harness the remarkable innovation of the commercial space sector to enhance our resilience and strengthen integrated deterrence as a department,” said John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy.

The Space Force already buys a lot from the commercial space industry. The military doesn’t build or own satellite launch vehicles—those come from commercial companies. While the Space Force operates government-owned reconnaissance and surveillance satellites, it also buys supplementary data and imagery from the commercial industry.

“To protect our men and women in uniform and to ensure the space services they rely on will be available when needed, the department has a responsibility to leverage all tools available, and those tools include commercial solutions,” Plumb said Tuesday. “From launch to space domain awareness to satellite communications and more, the commercial sector’s ability to innovate, to scale production and to rapidly refresh their technology is opening the door to all kinds of possibilities.”

The Pentagon defines the commercial space sector as companies that develop capabilities for sale on the commercial market, where the military is one of many customers. This is separate from the Pentagon’s procurement of government-owned airplanes and satellites from the defense industry.

Ripe for exploitation

Build or buy is an age-old question facing everyone from homeowners to billion-dollar enterprises. When it comes to space, the Pentagon is buying more than ever. The military’s new strategy document outlines 13 mission areas for national security space, and while the commercial space industry is rapidly growing, the Pentagon predominately buys commercial services in only one of those mission areas.

“Out of those 13, the only that’s clearly primarily commercial now is SAML.. which is Space Access, Mobility and Logistics, and space access is launch,” Plumb said. “So SpaceX, Firefly, Rocket Lab, all these different companies doing commercial launch, that’s where the commercial sector clearly can provide services.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off February 14 with satellites for the US military's Missile Defense Agency. Another Falcon 9 awaits launch in the foreground.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off February 14 with satellites for the US military’s Missile Defense Agency. Another Falcon 9 awaits launch in the foreground.

Currently, the military classifies six mission areas as a hybrid of government and commercial capabilities:

  • Cyberspace operations
  • Satellite communications
  • Spacecraft operations,
  • Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
  • Space domain awareness (tracking of space objects)
  • Environmental monitoring.

In the remaining six mission areas, “a preponderance of functions must be performed by the government, while a select few could be performed by the commercial sector,” officials wrote in the commercial space strategy. In these areas, there is not yet a viable commercial market outside of the government, or commercial capabilities don’t match the government’s needs. These areas include:

  • Command and control (including nuclear command, control, and communications)
  • Electromagnetic warfare
  • Nuclear detonation detection
  • Missile warning
  • Position, navigation, and timing (GPS).

A major tenet of the commercial space strategy is for the military to support the development of new commercial space capabilities. This could involve supporting technology demonstrations and funding scientific research. Over time, new technology and new markets could bring more mission areas into the hybrid or commercial lists.

“I think what this strategy hopes to do is say, yes, continue working on bringing commercial entities in,” Plumb said. “This is actually a thing we want you to do, not just a thing you should be experimenting with.”

Pentagon calls for tighter integration between military and commercial space Read More »

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With payload questions, it’s likely Vulcan will not launch again until fall

Space, vulcan / /

LLAP —

United Launch Alliance may seek certification from the Space Force after one flight.

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The first Vulcan rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

After the impressive debut of the Vulcan rocket in January, it is unclear when the heavy lift vehicle will fly again. The uncertainty is due to a couple of factors, including the rocket’s readiness and, perhaps more critically, what will fly on top of it.

United Launch Alliance, which assembles and launches the Vulcan rocket, has long maintained that it would launch the Dream Chaser spacecraft for Sierra Space on the rocket’s second mission. This would allow the rocket company to obtain enough data about the performance of Vulcan to earn certification for national security payloads.

An indication of the emphasis the company has put on earning certification from the Space Force—launching military payloads is the primary justification for the existence of Vulcan—comes from the names it chose for the first two launches, Cert-1 and Cert-2.

But what happens if the payload is not ready for Cert-2, as increasingly looks likely to be the case?

Chasing Dreams

After a long development period, Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser vehicle is making credible progress toward the launch pad. It is currently undergoing environmental testing at a NASA facility in Ohio, including vibration tests.

On NASA’s internal schedule for missions to the International Space Station, the Dream Chaser mission to supply cargo to the orbiting laboratory currently has a “planning” date of September. However, this is not a firm date and is subject to slippage.

In fact, there is skepticism within the space agency about a fall launch. According to one source, during a recent meeting to integrate planning for space station activities, there were significant inconsistencies in the schedule that Sierra Space officials laid out for NASA.

It is possible that Dream Chaser will not be ready to launch until 2025, and then its flight will be subject to the space station schedule, which must coordinate arriving crew and cargo vehicles from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Russia.

Vulcan wants to fly sooner

United Launch Alliance would very much like to fly the Vulcan rocket sooner, in order to exit the certification phase and begin flying contracted missions for the US Space Force. Immediately after the Cert-1 mission, the launch of an Astrobotic lunar lander on January 8, the company was keeping open the possibility of a spring launch.

The company planned to set aside 60 days to review data from the “Cert-1” certification mission. If the data looked good from that flight, the plan was to move into preparations for the next launch. United Launch Alliance Vice President Gary Wentz said the earliest opportunity to launch the Cert-2 mission was “April-ish.”

As is commonplace in the launch industry, that schedule proved optimistic. However, given that Vulcan appeared to perform very well on its debut launch, a midsummer target seems realistic for the rocket’s readiness. That leaves three or four months to complete production of the core stage, which still lacks engines.

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4,” United Launch Alliance chief executive Tory Bruno said about Vulcan during a conference call with reporters in March. The BE-4 rocket engines, two of which power Vulcan’s first stage, are manufactured by Blue Origin. “The reason the BE-4 is a little bit behind everyone else is because it took a little bit longer to get it developed and finished. It is now. We have wonderful facilities at the BE-4 factory in Huntsville, which was just built and expanded, they literally doubled their factory size to do this. So they have to catch up now to everyone else in building ahead.”

United Launch Alliance did not respond to a request for comment for this story about the Vulcan rocket’s readiness or a potential shuffling of the launch manifest. A source said the company is willing to wait until September to launch Dream Chaser. But if the vehicle is not ready by then, Vulcan will likely seek out alternatives.

One-flight certification

Two sources said United Launch Alliance had asked Space Systems Command, the Los Angeles-based unit responsible for military access to space, for at least a partial certification of Vulcan based on data from its initial launch. This would potentially allow Vulcan to carry national security payloads on its second flight or perhaps Defense Innovation Unit payloads such as Blue Origin’s DarkSky-1 mission.

A spokesperson for Space Systems Command declined to respond to questions from Ars about an expedited certification process.

Previously, Col. Douglas Pentecost of the Space Force said United Launch Alliance had chosen the Vulcan certification path requiring the least amount of launches: two. By contrast, Blue Origin has agreed to a three-flight certification process, which requires less paperwork. There is also a six-flight option and even a 14-flight option for certification. The latter option essentially means that if your rocket flies 14 times, it earns certification.

Nevertheless, there is a precedent for a single-flight certification. In 2018, the Air Force agreed to certify SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket after its debut launch in February of that year. That decision was controversial enough that it generated a review by the Department of Defense Inspector General, which found that the military had “generally complied” with its procurement rules.

It’s worth noting, however, that the Falcon Heavy did not carry a military payload on its next two flights. The initial certification appears to have been conditional on the success of the next two commercial missions.

With payload questions, it’s likely Vulcan will not launch again until fall Read More »

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Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida

Florida, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, space debris, space junk / /
This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero's home in Florida last month.

Enlarge / This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home in Florida last month.

A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.

In all likelihood, this nearly two-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2: 34 pm local time (19: 34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2: 29 pm EST (19: 29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.

Otero’s likely encounter with space debris was first reported by WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida. Since then, NASA has recovered the debris from the homeowner, according to Josh Finch, an agency spokesperson.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will analyze the object “as soon as possible to determine its origin,” Finch told Ars. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”

Ars reported on this reentry when it happened on March 8, noting that most of the material from the batteries and the cargo carrier would have likely burned up as they plunged through the atmosphere. Temperatures would have reached several thousand degrees, vaporizing most of the material before it could reach the ground.

The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space station’s power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a standard kitchen refrigerator. It’s important to note that objects of this mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but they’re usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit after completing their missions.

In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from “the responsible agencies” to resolve the cost of damages to his home.

Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.

Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his my son.

Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response. pic.twitter.com/Yi29f3EwyV

— Alejandro Otero (@Alejandro0tero) March 15, 2024

If the object is owned by NASA, Otero or his insurance company could make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

“It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States,” she told Ars. “If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused.”

This could be an issue in this case. The batteries were owned by NASA, but they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan’s space agency.

Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida Read More »

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Russia has a plan to “restore” its dominant position in the global launch market

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Roscosmos Space Corporation Chief Yuri Borisov peruse an exhibit while visiting the Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, October 26, 2023, in Korolev, Russia.

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Roscosmos Space Corporation Chief Yuri Borisov peruse an exhibit while visiting the Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, October 26, 2023, in Korolev, Russia.

Contributor/Getty Images

It has been a terrible decade for the Russian launch industry, which once led the world. The country’s long-running workhorse, the Proton rocket, ran into reliability issues and will soon be retired. Russia’s next-generation rocket, Angara, is fully expendable and still flying dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut. And the ever-reliable Soyuz vehicle lost access to lucrative Western markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Yet there has been a more fundamental, underlying disease pushing the once-vaunted Russian launch industry toward irrelevance. The country has largely relied on decades-old technology in a time of serious innovation within the launch industry. So what worked at the turn of the century to attract the launches of commercial satellites no longer does against the rising tide of competition from SpaceX, as well as other players in India and China.

Through the first quarter of this year, Russia has launched a total of five rockets, all variants of the Soyuz vehicle. SpaceX alone has launched 32 rockets. China, too, has launched nearly three times as many boosters as Russia.

However, Russia has a plan to reclaim the dominance it once held in the global launch industry. In a recent interview published on the Roscosmos website (a non-geo-blocked version is available here) the chief of the Russian space corporation, Yuri Borisov, outlined the strategy by which the country will do so.

The first step, Borisov said, is to develop a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket, called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability.

“I hope that by the 2028–2029 timeframe we will have a completely new fleet of space vehicles and will be able to restore our position in the global launch services market,” Borisov said in the interview, which was translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell.

A miracle, Amur

Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.

The country’s space industry first unveiled its Amur plans back in 2020, when officials said they were targeting a low price of just $22 million for a launch on Amur, which would be capable of delivering 10.5 tons to low-Earth orbit. Essentially, then, it would offer about half the carrying capacity of a Falcon 9 rocket for one-third of the price.

At the time, Roscosmos officials were targeting a 2026 debut for Amur. Had they been able to deliver such a capability, it would undoubtedly be an attractively priced offering. Alas, the year 2026 appears to be off the table now. Through his comments, Borisov indicated that Amur will not be ready before 2028 or 2029.

Since there has been almost a year-for-year slippage in that date since Amur’s announcement in 2020, it seems likely that even this target late in the decade is unrealistic.

Russia has a plan to “restore” its dominant position in the global launch market Read More »

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Rocket Report: Will Northrop’s rocket be reusable? Fourth Starship gets fired twice

rocket report, Science, Space / /

For want of nitrogen —

“So don’t have that expectation, please. It’s not going to be perfect.”

–

The final Delta IV Heavy rocket is seen on the launch pad in Florida.

Enlarge / The final Delta IV Heavy rocket is seen on the launch pad in Florida.

United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 6.37 of the Rocket Report! The big story this week is the final launch of the Delta IV Heavy rocket, which is one of the biggest spectacles to enjoy lifting away from the planet. Because of a scrub on Thursday, there is still time to clear your calendar for a second attempt on Friday at 1: 37 pm ET in Florida.

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.

Orbex patents reusable rocket tech. The British launch company said this week it has patented a “REFLIGHT” technology that enables the recovery of the first stage of its small Prime rocket. Essentially, Orbex designed an interstage that will function somewhat like grid fins on the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage. “After Stage 1 detaches from Stage 2, the interstage on top of Stage 1 reconfigures into four ‘petals’ which fold out and create drag forces that passively reorients and slows the spent rocket stage’s descent to Earth,” the company stated.

Show me, don’t tell me … This petal structure will combine with a parachute to enable a low-speed landing at sea, where Orbex plans to recover its first stage. It all sounds good, but this seems to be something of putting the cart before the horse. Orbex is now nearly 9 years old, and it’s not clear when the Prime rocket will take flight for the first time. As with all small launch companies, the focus should really be getting to the first flight, demonstrating a capability, and then ramping up launch cadence. Talk of reuse and recycling is great. But flying is better. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Boeing sues Virgin Galactic. Boeing and its subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation, have sued Virgin Galactic, alleging the space tourism company has misappropriated trade secrets, The Register reports. In 2022, Virgin Galactic selected Aurora to build new motherships for its spacecraft as replacements for the VMS Eve carrier aircraft. The lawsuit alleges that Virgin Galactic has failed to pay it almost $26 million for work on new craft. In response to the lawsuit, Virgin Galactic said, “We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend ourselves in the appropriate forum.”

Going forward with just one aircraft … At the time of the agreement, Virgin Galactic said it needed new motherships to support an increased cadence of spaceflights. Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said, “Our next-generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain, and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year.” The first delivery was due in 2025. After it began work on the project, Aurora concluded that a new mothership would cost nearly twice as much as Virgin Galactic hoped and would not be completed before 2027. Now, Virgin Galactic plans to soldier on with just Eve for the time being. (submitted by EllPeaTea and 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.

JAXA inks with Interstellar Technologies, others. Japan’s space agency has selected startup Interstellar Technologies as a priority launch provider as part of a program to advance the commercialization of space, Space News reports. Space One, whose Kairos solid rocket exploded seconds after liftoff earlier this month, was also selected under the small satellite initiative by JAXA, as were Space BD and Mitsui Bussan Aerospace.

Broadening the domestic industry … The agreements mean the companies will have priority for future contracts. These are designed to support private-sector entities capable of launching satellites developed under JAXA’s small satellite missions and advance the commercialization of space transportation services. Japan is targeting a domestic launch capacity of approximately 30 institutional rockets and private rockets per year by the early 2030s. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Will Northrop’s rocket be reusable? Fourth Starship gets fired twice Read More »

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The Delta IV Heavy, a rocket whose time has come and gone, will fly once more

cape canaveral, delta iv heavy, delta rocket, launch, National Reconnaissance Office, nrol-70, Science, Space, united launch alliance / /
United Launch Alliance's final Delta IV Heavy rocket, seen here in December when ground crews rolled it to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance’s final Delta IV Heavy rocket, seen here in December when ground crews rolled it to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

This is the rocket that literally lights itself on fire before it heads to space. It’s the world’s largest rocket entirely fueled by liquid hydrogen, a propellant that is vexing to handle but rewarding in its efficiency.

The Delta IV Heavy was America’s most powerful launch vehicle for nearly a decade and has been a cornerstone for the US military’s space program for more than 20 years. It is also the world’s most expensive commercially produced rocket, a fact driven not just by its outsized capability but also its complexity.

Now, United Launch Alliance’s last Delta IV Heavy rocket is set to lift off Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency.

“This is such an amazing piece of technology, 23 stories tall, a half-million gallons of propellant and a quarter-million pounds of thrust, and the most metal of all rockets, setting itself on fire before it goes to space,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. “Retiring it is (key to) the future, moving to Vulcan, a less expensive higher-performance rocket. But it’s still sad.”

45th and final Delta IV

Weather permitting, the Delta IV Heavy will light up its three hydrogen-fueled RS-68A engines at 1: 40 pm EDT (17: 40 UTC) Thursday, the opening of a four-hour launch window. The three RS-68s will fire up in a staggered sequence, a permutation designed to minimize the hydrogen fireball that ignites around the base of the rocket during engine startup.

The Delta IV Heavy will certainly have a legacy of launching national security missions, along with NASA’s Orion spacecraft on an orbital test flight in 2014 and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in 2018 on a mission to fly through the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

But the fireball will leave an indelible mark in the memories of anyone who saw a Delta IV Heavy launch. It all comes down to the choice of super-cold liquid hydrogen as the fuel. The three RS-68 engines burn hydrogen along with liquid oxygen as the oxidizer.

“We like those propellants because they’re very, very high performance,” Bruno said. “In order to prepare the RS-68 engines to get that very cold cryogenic propellant flowing through them, before they’re ignited, we start flowing that propellant.

“Hydrogen is lighter than air, so after it flows through the engine and into the flame trench, it then rises. When the engines are finally full and ready to go and we start spinning up the pumps, then we actually drop the main load (of propellant), we ignite it, and that flame carries on up that … plume of hydrogen, which is clinging to the side of the booster and rising up.”

The Delta IV rocket cores are covered in orange foam insulation. One of the reasons for this is to protect the rocket from the fireball, leading to a “very dramatic effect of a self-immolating booster” that has the appearance of a “toasted marshmallow” as it heads to space.

A few seconds after the engines start, 12 hold-down bolts will blow to release the triple-core rocket from its restraints. More than 2 million pounds of thrust will power the Delta IV Heavy off the launch pad toward the east from Cape Canaveral. The RS-68 on the center core will throttle down to conserve liquid hydrogen and liquid hydrogen propellant, while the rocket’s two side boosters will burn through their propellants in less than four minutes.

Once the Delta IV lets go of its side boosters and falls into the Atlantic Ocean, the center core throttles up and burns for another minute and a half. A few moments later, the first stage booster jettisons, and the upper stage’s RL10 engine ignites for the first of three burns needed to propel the rocket’s classified cargo into an orbit thousands of miles above Earth.

There’s just a 30 percent chance of favorable weather for liftoff Thursday. High winds and cumulus clouds are the primary concerns. The weather forecast improves for a backup launch opportunity Friday afternoon.

The Delta IV Heavy, a rocket whose time has come and gone, will fly once more Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starship could fly again in May; Ariane 6 coming together

ariane 6, astrobotic, china, european space agency, falcon 9, launch, moon, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, soyuz, Space, spacex, starship / /

Eating their lunch —

“I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right.”

–

Nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines power Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle off the pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, early Thursday.

Enlarge / Nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines power Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle off the pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, early Thursday.

Welcome to Edition 6.36 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX wants to launch the next Starship test flight as soon as early May, the company’s president and chief operating officer said this week. The third Starship test flight last week went well enough that the Federal Aviation Administration—yes, the FAA, the target of many SpaceX fans’ frustrations—anticipates a simpler investigation and launch licensing process than SpaceX went through before its previous Starship flights. However, it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for Starship to start launching real satellites.

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.

Starship could threaten small launch providers. Officials from several companies operating or developing small satellite launch vehicles are worried that SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket could have a big impact on their marketability, Space News reports. Starship’s ability to haul more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit will be attractive not just for customers with heavy satellites but also for those with smaller spacecraft. Aggregating numerous smallsats on Starship will mean lower prices than dedicated small satellite launch companies can offer and could encourage customers to build larger satellites with cheaper parts, further eroding business opportunities for small launch providers.

Well, yeah … SpaceX’s dedicated rideshare missions are already reshaping the small satellite launch market. The price per kilogram of payload on a Falcon 9 rocket launching a Transporter mission is less than the price per unit on a smaller rocket, like Rocket Lab’s Electron, Firefly’s Alpha, or Europe’s Vega. Companies operating only in the smallsat launch market tout the benefits of their services, often pointing to their ability to deliver payloads into bespoke orbits, rather than dropping off bunches of satellites into more standardized orbits. But the introduction of Orbital Transfer Vehicles for last-mile delivery services has made SpaceX’s Transporter missions, and potentially Starship rideshares, more attractive. “With Starship, OTVs can become the best option for smallsats,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. If Starship is able to achieve the very low per-kilogram launch prices proposed for it, “then it will be difficult for small launch vehicles,” Fragnito said.

Rocket Lab launches again from Virginia. Rocket Lab’s fourth launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, and the company’s first there in nine months, took off early Thursday with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency, Space News reports. A two-stage Electron rocket placed the NRO’s payload into low-Earth orbit, and officials declared it a successful mission. The NRO did not disclose any details about the payload, but in a post-launch statement, the agency suggested the mission was conducting technology demonstrations of some kind. “The knowledge gained from this research will advance innovation and enable the development of critical new technology,” said Chris Scolose, director of the NRO.

A steady customer for Rocket Lab … The National Reconnaissance Office has become a regular customer of Rocket Lab. The NRO has historically launched larger spacecraft, such as massive bus-sized spy satellites, but like the Space Force, is beginning to launch larger numbers of small satellites. This mission, designated NROL-123 by the NRO, was the fifth and last mission under a Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract between NRO and Rocket Lab, dating back to 2020. It was also Rocket Lab’s second launch in nine days, following an Electron flight last week from its primary base in New Zealand. Overall, it was the 46th launch of a light-class Electron rocket since it debuted in 2017. Rocket Lab is building a launch pad for its next-generation Neutron rocket at Wallops. (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.

Night flight for Astrobotic’s Xodiac. The Xodiac rocket, a small terrestrial vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology testbed, made its first night flight, Astrobotic says in a statement. The liquid-fueled Xodiac is designed for vertical hops and can host prototype sensors and other payloads, particularly instruments in development to assist in precision landings on other worlds. This first tethered night flight of Xodiac in Mojave, California, was in preparation for upcoming flight testing with the NASA TechLeap Prize’s Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge. These flights will begin in April, allowing NASA to test the ability of sensors to map a landing field designed to simulate the Moon’s surface in near-total darkness.

Building on the legacy of Masten … Xodiac has completed more than 160 successful flights, dating back to the vehicle’s original owner, Masten Space Systems. Masten filed for bankruptcy in 2022, and the company was acquired by Astrobotic a couple of months later. Astrobotic’s primary business area is in developing and flying robotic Moon landers, so it has a keen interest in mastering automated landing and navigation technologies like those it is testing with NASA on Xodiac. David Masten, founder of Masten Space Systems, is now chief engineer for Astrobotic’s propulsion and test department. “The teams will demonstrate their systems over the LSPG (Lunar Surface Proving Ground) at night to simulate landing on the Moon during the lunar night or in shadowed craters.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Starship could fly again in May; Ariane 6 coming together Read More »

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SpaceX’s workhorse launch pad now has the accoutrements for astronauts

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A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Upgrades at SpaceX’s most-used launch pad in Florida got a trial run Thursday with the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship heading for the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft launched at 4: 55 pm EDT (20: 55 UTC) Thursday from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission, known as CRS-30, is SpaceX’s 30th resupply mission to the space station since 2012.

The automated Dragon supply ship took off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, heading for a monthlong stay at the International Space Station, where it will deliver more than 6,000 pounds of hardware, fresh food, and experiments for the lab’s seven-person crew.

In the last few months, SpaceX has outfitted the launch pad with the equipment necessary to support launches of human spaceflight missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Cargo Dragon capsule is the same size and shape as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, but it’s filled with cargo racks and storage platforms rather than seats and cockpit displays.

This week, SpaceX technicians used the newly installed launch tower and crew access arm at SLC-40 to load time-sensitive experiments and supplies into the Cargo Dragon capsule atop the Falcon 9 rocket.

“CRS-30 will be our first Dragon to launch from Pad 40 since we put that brand-new crew tower in place,” said Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, in a prelaunch press conference.

Building new capability

Starting last year, construction crews at Cape Canaveral erected segments of a more than 200-foot-tall metal lattice tower at SLC-40, right next to the starting blocks for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Before then, SLC-40 was based on a “clean pad” architecture, without any structures to service or access Falcon 9 rockets while they were vertical on the pad.

In November, contractors raised the crew access arm to an attach point near the top of the tower. This walkway will allow astronauts to crawl into the Crew Dragon spacecraft during a launch countdown. It also provides access to the hatch on the Cargo Dragon spacecraft for final cargo loading.

Earlier this year, SpaceX tested an escape chute at SLC-40 that would be used in an emergency to help astronauts and ground crews quickly get away from the pad. The chute is similar in function to slide-wire baskets in use for decades at LC-39A, but instead of riding a basket from the top of the tower, personnel escaping a pad emergency would slide down a chute to carry them several hundred feet from the rocket.

SpaceX employees tested the pad escape chute last month at SLC-40. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, took the ride down the chute. “Astronaut and personnel safety is SpaceX’s highest priority, which is why I had to personally test the new slide,” she posted on X, alongside a wink emoji.

Teams test the new emergency chutes from the pad 40 crew tower in Florida pic.twitter.com/rWVj7zaHp0

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 19, 2024

“The team took commercially available off the shelf technology and applied it to the crew tower,” Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, wrote on X. “You are trained on it the same way you are trained on using an emergency exit door on airplane. Only takes a couple of quick physical actions to deploy the slide and anyone can effectively do it.”

As more people travel to space, particularly on larger vehicles like SpaceX’s Starship, simplifying safety systems will be important.

“This system will help us scale to bigger towers and spaceships (think 100 people on Starship),” Dontchev wrote.

SpaceX and its contractors completed all of this work as Falcon 9s fired off SLC-40 every few days with Starlink satellites and other missions.

For the last four years, all of SpaceX’s crew and cargo launches to the space station have departed from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles up the coast from SLC-40. In 2018 and 2019, SpaceX outfitted LC-39A for Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon missions ahead of the company’s first human spaceflight mission in 2020.

Walker said the new infrastructure added at SLC-40 is “nearly functionally identical” to the equipment for crew missions at LC-39A. The primary differences are the means of pad escape—the chute instead of slide-wire baskets—and a more robust elevator in the tower at SLC-40.

Previously, SpaceX used both SLC-40 and LC-39A for launches of its now-retired first-generation Dragon cargo capsules, which had their final supplies loaded before SpaceX raised the rocket vertical for launch. Like regular satellite launches on Falcon 9s, both pads could support the first-generation Dragon cargo missions.

“Thanks to this new state-of-the-art crew tower required for our human spaceflight missions, that late-load cargo operation got a massive upgrade, too,” Walker said. “It is much easier to load a huge complement of time-critical NASA science into our Dragon spacecraft in the flight orientation.”

SpaceX has drastically ramped up its launch cadence since building LC-39A for Dragon missions. The company plans nearly 150 Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launches this year. When you’re flying rockets every two or three days, it’s inevitable two missions will end up vying for the same launch slots. Most recently, that happened in February, when a NASA crew mission was ready to launch from LC-39A around the same time as a narrow launch window for Intuitive Machines’ first commercial lunar lander. Both had to go off of LC-39A.

“Historically, Pad 40 has kind of become our high rate pad,” Walker said. “We’ve gotten the time between launches down to just a couple of days.”

LC-39A has seen less use, primarily for Dragon crew and cargo flights, Falcon Heavy missions, and other “uniquely complex” missions like the Intuitive Machines lander, Walker said.

SpaceX’s workhorse launch pad now has the accoutrements for astronauts Read More »