Space – Page 9

Rocket Report: Next Vulcan launch slips into 2025; Starship gets a green light

rocket report, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / November 23, 2024

All the news that’s fit to lift

“Constellation companies and government satellite operators are desperate.”

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit captured this photo of the sixth Starship launch from the International Space Station on Tuesday. Credit: Don Pettit/NASA

Welcome to Edition 7.20 of the Rocket Report! This is a super-long version of the newsletter because we did not publish last week, and there is just a ton of launch news of late. Also, I want to note that next week’s report will appear a day early, on Wednesday, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Speaking of which, you all have our thanks for reading and sharing the Rocket Report with others.

On a completely unrelated note, Rocket Lab has had some amazing mission names over the years. But this weekend’s “Ice AIS Baby” launch is probably the best. I always appreciate their effort to find non-vanilla names and find a way to stop, collaborate, and listen.

Please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Firefly raises a tidy sum as its ambitions soar. Firefly announced earlier this month that it has completed a $175 million Series D fundraising round, resulting in a valuation of more than $2 billion. This follows a banner year of fundraising in 2023, when Firefly reported investors funneled approximately $300 million into the company at a valuation of $1.5 billion, Ars reports. In a statement, Firefly said the money raised in the Series D round will help the company “expand market reach with its Elytra spacecraft, move to full rate production of its Alpha launch vehicle, and accelerate hardware qualification for new vehicles in development.”

A busy period ahead … Firefly will soon ship its first Blue Ghost lunar lander to Florida for final preparations to launch to the Moon and deliver 10 NASA-sponsored scientific instruments and tech demo experiments to the lunar surface. Firefly also boasts a healthy backlog of missions on its small Alpha rocket. In June, Lockheed Martin announced a deal for as many as 25 Alpha launches through 2029. And there’s the Medium Launch Vehicle, a rocket that Firefly and Northrop Grumman hope to launch as soon as 2026.

ABL departs the launch industry. At one point Firefly and ABL Space were competing to develop a credible 1-ton launcher. As Firefly soared this month, however, ABL decided to go in a different direction, turning its focus to missile defense, Ars reports. The founder and president of ABL Space Systems, Dan Piemont, announced the decision on LinkedIn, adding, “We’re consolidating our operational footprint and parting ways with some talented members of our team.”

Never made it to space … ABL made its first RS1 launch attempt in January 2023 from Kodiak, Alaska, but a catastrophic fire shortly after liftoff quickly doomed the rocket. A second attempt was precluded in July of this year after an explosion during a static-fire test in Alaska. The company laid off some of its staff in August to control costs. As the company was failing in its efforts to reach orbit, the launch market was also changing, Piemont said. Although not directly mentioning SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket, Piemont said ABL’s ability to impact the launch industry has diminished over the last seven years. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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ESA provides another funding boost. The European Space Agency has awarded Boost! contract extensions worth 44.2 million euros ($46.3 million) to HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, Orbex, and Rocket Factory Augsburg, European Spaceflight reports. ESA member states adopted the Boost! initiative in late 2019. The primary aim of the initiative is to provide co-funding to support the development of commercial space transportation services. Each of the four companies has won awards of varying amounts in earlier Boost! competitions.

Getting across the finish line … According to ESA, the new funding awarded through the Boost! contract extensions is aimed at alleviating the pressure in the months before an inaugural flight when costs are high and the potential to generate revenue is limited. While the ESA press release did not disclose the specific amounts awarded to each company, announcements from the companies have revealed that Orbex will receive 5.6 million euros ($5.9 million), Isar Aerospace 15 million euros ($15.7 million), and both Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse 11.8 million euros each ($12.4 million). (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Oman preparing for its debut launch. The nation on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula is developing a spaceport in the port town of Duqm, with the aim of supporting commercial operations by the year 2030. However, the country’s National Aerospace Services Company will attempt an experimental rocket launch in December, The National reports. The port area will allow launches to the south and east over the Arabian Sea.

Seeking a niche in Mideast space … The National Aerospace Services Company did not specify a date for the launch, nor name the launch vehicle. The firm also said the launch would not be “publicly accessible” and that details about it would only be shared after the fact. The project is part of Oman’s efforts to diversify its economy and secure a competitive edge in the global space industry.

Swedish site launches its 600th rocket. The Esrange Space Center, located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden, recently hit a significant milestone: It launched its 600th suborbital rocket. The MAPHEUS-15 science rocket reached an altitude of 309 km carrying a payload containing 21 different experiments, the Swedish Space Corporation reports. The payloads were later recovered by helicopter.

Orbital flights coming next? … “I am very proud of this milestone which shines a light on the many years of international collaboration at Esrange,” said Lennart Poromaa, head of Esrange Space Center. “This has been instrumental in achieving hundreds of successful rocket missions, providing invaluable access to space for scientists worldwide.” The site was established in 1966 and recently saw the construction of an orbital launch complex for future missions.

Neutron inks multi-launch contract. The launch company said earlier this month it has signed an agreement with an unnamed customer for two Neutron launches beginning in mid-2026. In a release, Rocket Lab characterized the agreement as “the beginning of a productive collaboration” that could allow Neutron to launch the commercial customer’s entire constellation. Intended to be reusable, Neutron is targeted to be capable of lifting 13 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

Competition wanted … “Constellation companies and government satellite operators are desperate for a break in the launch monopoly,” Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said. “They need a reliable rocket from a trusted provider, and one that’s reusable to keep launch costs down and make space more frequently accessible—and Neutron is strongly positioned to be that rocket.” With that said, Rocket Lab still has to deliver the booster. It’s currently targeting 2025 for this, but as always, bringing new launch vehicles into the world is a difficult and time-consuming process. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Tom Nelson)

Russia is pursuing its own Grasshopper rocket. Like a lot of competitors in the global launch industry, Russia, for a long time, dismissed the prospects of a reusable first stage for a rocket. As late as 2016, an official with the Russian agency that develops strategy for the country’s main space corporation, Roscosmos, concluded, “The economic feasibility of reusable launch systems is not obvious.” Well, times change as the company is developing its next-generation Amur rocket, Ars reports. Then the Falcon 9 happened.

A good name, apparently … Similar to what SpaceX did about a dozen years ago, Roscosmos is now planning to develop a prototype vehicle to test the ability to land the Amur rocket’s first stage vertically. According to the state-run news agency TASS, constructing this test vehicle will enable the space corporation to solve key challenges. “Next year preparation of an experimental stage of the (Amur) rocket, which everyone is calling ‘Grasshopper,’ will begin,” said Igor Pshenichnikov, the Roscosmos deputy director of the department of future programs. It’s not entirely clear why Russia adopted the exact same nickname as SpaceX.

Don’t forget Europe has a (much more expensive) hopper, too. The European Space Agency announced that it has awarded two new contracts to ArianeGroup to build a second Themis demonstrator and to refine the design of its Prometheus rocket engine, European Spaceflight reports. The two contracts have a combined value of 230 million euros ($241 million). The space agency has already spent hundreds of millions of euros on the project to develop a reusable engine and the Themis test vehicle, dating back more than six years. No tests have yet taken place.

Please build something, at some point … According to the agency, the funding will enable the development of a second Themis demonstrator, an upgraded Prometheus engine, and the renovation of testing and ground infrastructure. “The contract extensions signed today at ESA’s headquarters in Paris, France, are to further demonstrate and test evolutions of the Prometheus engine and the Themis demonstrator with higher and more hop-tests,” explained an ESA statement. Seems like it’s a good deal for ArianeGroup, at least. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

Starship completes its sixth flight test. SpaceX launched its sixth Starship rocket Tuesday, proving for the first time that the stainless steel ship can maneuver in space and paving the way for an even larger upgraded vehicle slated to debut on the next test flight, Ars reports. The only hiccup was an abortive attempt to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in South Texas, something SpaceX achieved on the previous flight on October 13.

A small burn … One of the most important new things engineers wanted to test on this flight occurred about 38 minutes after liftoff. That’s when Starship reignited one of its six Raptor engines for a brief burn to make a slight adjustment to its flight path. The burn lasted only a few seconds, and the impulse was small—just a 48 mph (77 km/hour) change in velocity, or delta-V—but it demonstrated that the ship can safely deorbit itself on future missions. With this achievement, Starship will likely soon be cleared to travel into orbit around Earth and deploy Starlink Internet satellites or conduct in-space refueling experiments, two of the near-term objectives on SpaceX’s Starship development roadmap.

Vulcan’s third launch slips into 2025. The Space Force is now preparing for a 2025 Vulcan national security launch debut instead of the originally planned 2024 launches, Space News reports. Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command, made the disclosure during a conversation with reporters on Thursday. Garrant said ULA’s Vulcan remains on track for certification. The rocket’s second certification launch in October was technically successful, with the payload reaching its intended orbit. However, an anomaly with one of the solid rocket boosters continues to be reviewed.

For now the military flies on Falcons … The anomaly itself isn’t a showstopper for certification, said Garrant. But the cumulative delays and uncertainties are a concern, he said, “as we aim to maintain assured access to space with two certified providers.” Two missions—USSF-106 and USSF-87—are currently waiting in the wings, with payloads ready but no confirmed launch dates. ULA had been targeting a November launch for USSF-106. But with only six weeks left in the year, a 2024 launch window is increasingly unlikely, said Garrant. ULA chief Tory Bruno had been promising to complete two national security launches this year. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

NASA begins stacking Artemis II booster. NASA said ground teams inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida lifted the aft assembly of the rocket’s left booster onto the mobile launch platform, marking the beginning of operations to ‘stack’ the second Space Launch System rocket. Using an overhead crane, teams hoisted the left aft booster assembly—already filled with pre-packed solid propellant—from the VAB transfer aisle, over a catwalk dozens of stories high and then down onto mounting posts on the mobile launcher, Ars reports.

Say goodbye to September … The Artemis II mission is slated to send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the far side of the Moon. A NASA spokesperson told Ars it should take around four months to fully stack the SLS rocket for Artemis II. Officially, Artemis II is projected to launch in September of next year, but there’s little chance of meeting that schedule due to an issue with Orion’s heat shield. It’s possible that, within the next month or two, NASA could announce a new target launch date for Artemis II at the end of 2025 or, more likely, in 2026.

Shotwell predicts rapid increase in Starship launches. As SpaceX made its final preparations for the sixth launch of its Starship rocket last week, the company’s chief operating officer and president spoke at a financial conference on Friday about various topics, including the future of the massive rocket and the Starlink satellite system. The Starship launch system is about to reach a tipping point, Gwynne Shotwell said, as it moves from an experimental rocket toward operational missions, Ars reports.

Those are lofty goals … “We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,” Shotwell said at the Baron Investment Conference in New York City. “We want to fly it a lot.” That lofty goal seems aspirational, not just because of the hardware challenges but also due to the ground systems (SpaceX currently has just one operational launch tower) as well as the difficulty of supplying that much liquid oxygen and methane for such a high flight rate. However, it’s worth noting that SpaceX will launch Starship four times this year, twice the number of Falcon Heavy missions. An acceleration of Starship is highly likely.

AST signs launch deals for its BlueBird constellation. During a third-quarter earnings call, AST SpaceMobile revealed new launch agreements with Blue Origin, the Indian Space Research Organization, and SpaceX to launch its large satellites over the course of 2025 and 2026, Spaceflight Now reports. Andrew Johnson, chief financial officer and chief legal officer at AST SpaceMobile, said that the launches “enable us to launch up to approximately 45 Block 2 BlueBird satellites, with options for additional launch vehicles for approximately 60 Block 2 BlueBird satellites.”

Glenns and Falcons … The company’s next launch will use India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle. After that, the company will shift its focus to launching with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which are capable of carrying eight and four Block 2 BlueBird satellites, respectively. The company said its Block 2 constellation will be capable of delivering “peak data transmission speeds up to 120Mbps, supporting voice, full data, and video applications.” AST will be competing with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation in providing direct-to-cell communications. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

FAA gives SpaceX a green light for South Texas launches. A day after SpaceX launched its Starship rocket for the sixth time, the company received good news from the Federal Aviation Administration regarding future launch operations from its Starbase facility in South Texas. In a draft version of what is known as an “Environmental Assessment,” the FAA indicated that it will grant SpaceX permission to increase the number of Starship launches in South Texas to 25 per year from the current limit of five. Additionally, the company will likely be allowed to continue increasing the size and power of the Super Heavy booster stage and Starship upper stage, Ars reports.

A final decision is coming next year … The FAA regulates the launch of rockets from the United States and is responsible for the safety of people and property on the ground. The ongoing environmental review stems from SpaceX’s desire to increase the scope of its operations from South Texas and is not yet finalized. Beginning today, the FAA will open a public comment period that will close on January 17. In addition, the FAA will hold five public meetings to solicit feedback from the local community and other stakeholders. A final assessment will likely be issued sometime early next year.

ESA wants a reusable super heavy lift rocket. The European Space Agency has announced that it will commission a study to detail the development of a reusable rocket capable of delivering 60 tons to low-Earth orbit, European Spaceflight reports. The space agency believes it is necessary to have a launch system of this kind to fulfill “critical European space exploration needs beyond LEO, while providing wider space exploitation potentials to answer the growing market opportunities (e.g. mega constellations).”

Studies of studies … The agency launched its PROTEIN (Preparatory Activities for European Heavy Lift Launcher) initiative in June 2022, aiming to explore the feasibility of developing a European super heavy-lift rocket with a focus on reducing launch costs. ArianeGroup and Rocket Factory Augsburg were selected to lead studies. The European 60T LEO Reusable Launch System Pathfinder initiative seems to build upon the agency’s PROTEIN studies, even though this link is not explicitly stated. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Nov. 22: New Shepard | NS-28 | Launch Site One, Texas | 15: 30 UTC

Nov. 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-13 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 26 UTC

Nov. 24: Electron | Ice AIS Baby | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 03: 55 UTC

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Rocket Report: Next Vulcan launch slips into 2025; Starship gets a green light Read More »

A former Orion manager has surprisingly credible plans to fly European astronauts

Europe, Science, Space, the exploration company / Rejus Almole / November 22, 2024

She found herself wanting to build something more modern. Looking across the Atlantic, she drew inspiration from what SpaceX was doing with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket. She watched humans launch into space aboard Crew Dragon and saw that same vehicle fly again and again. “I have a huge admiration for what SpaceX has done,” she said.

Huby also saw opportunity in that company’s success. SpaceX is the only provider of crew transportation in the Western world. It’s likely that Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will never become a serious competitor. India’s human spaceflight program is making some progress, but it’s unclear whether the Gaganyaan vehicle will serve non-Indian customers.

The opportunity she saw was to provide an alternative to SpaceX based in Europe. This would yield 100 percent of the market in Europe and offer an option to countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and other nations interested in going to space.

“I know it’s super hard, and I know it was crazy,” Huby said. “But I wanted to try.”

Starting small

She founded The Exploration Company in August 2021 with $50,000 in the bank and a small team of four people. Three years later, the company has 200 employees and recently announced that it had raised $160 million in Series B funding. It marked the first time that two European sovereign funds, French Tech and Germany-based DTCF, invested together. The news even scored a congratulatory post on LinkedIn from French President Emmanuel Macron, who wrote, “The history of space continues to be written in Europeans.”

To date, then, Huby has raised nearly $230 million. Her company has already flown a mission, the “Bikini” reentry demonstrator, on the debut flight of the Ariane 6 rocket this last summer. The small capsule was intended to demonstrate the company’s reentry technology. Unfortunately, the rocket’s upper stage failed on its deorbit burn, so the Bikini capsule remains stuck in space.

Still, the company is already hard at work on a second demonstration vehicle, about 2.5 meters in diameter, that will have more than a dozen customers on board. The spacecraft for this demonstration flight, named Mission Possible, is fully assembled, Huby said, and it will launch on SpaceX’s Transporter 14 mission next summer, likely in July. This mission was developed in 2.5 years at a cost of $20 million, plus $10 million for the launch.

A former Orion manager has surprisingly credible plans to fly European astronauts Read More »

Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukraine portends new era of warfare

ICBM, IRBM, Military, missile, russia, Science, Space, Ukraine / Rejus Almole / November 22, 2024

The Oreshnik missiles strike their targets at speeds of up to Mach 10, or 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second, Putin said. “The existing air defense systems around the world, including those being developed by the US in Europe, are unable to intercept such missiles.”

A global war?

In perhaps the most chilling part of his remarks, Putin said the conflict in Ukraine is “taking on global dimensions” and said Russia is entitled to use missiles against Western countries supplying weapons for Ukraine to use against Russian targets.

“In the event of escalation, we will respond decisively and in kind,” Putin said. “I advise the ruling elites of those countries planning to use their military forces against Russia to seriously consider this.”

The change in nuclear doctrine authorized by Putin earlier this week also lowers the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons to counter a conventional attack that threatens Russian “territorial integrity.”

This seems to have already happened. Ukraine launched an offensive into Russia’s Kursk region in August, taking control of more than 1,000 square kilometers of Russian land. Russian forces, assisted by North Korean troops, are staging a counteroffensive to try to retake the territory.

Singh called Russia’s invitation of North Korean troops “escalatory” and said Putin could “choose to end this war today.”

US officials say Russian forces are suffering some 1,200 deaths or injuries per day in the war. In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence sources estimated that a million Ukrainians and Russians had been killed or wounded in the war.

The UN Human Rights Office most recently reported that 11,973 civilians have been killed, including 622 children, since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

“We warned Russia back in 2022 not to do this, and they did it anyways, so there are consequences for that,” Singh said. “But we don’t want to see this escalate into a wider regional conflict. We don’t seek war with Russia.”

Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukraine portends new era of warfare Read More »

NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix

artemis, artemis II, human spaceflight, Kennedy Space Center, NASA, orion, Science, Space, space launch system, vehicle assembly building / Tim Belzer / November 21, 2024

A good sign

The readiness of the Orion crew capsule, where the four Artemis II astronauts will live during their voyage around the Moon, is driving NASA’s schedule for the mission. Officially, Artemis II is projected to launch in September of next year, but there’s little chance of meeting that schedule.

At the beginning of this year, NASA officials ruled out any opportunity to launch Artemis II in 2024 due to several technical issues with the Orion spacecraft. Several of these issues are now resolved, but NASA has not released any meaningful updates on the most significant problem.

This problem involves the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. During atmospheric reentry at the end of the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, the Orion capsule’s heat shield eroded and cracked in unexpected ways, prompting investigations by NASA engineers and an independent panel.

NASA’s Orion heat shield inquiry ran for nearly two years. The investigation has wrapped up, two NASA officials said last month, but they declined to discuss any details of the root cause of the heat shield issue or the actions required to resolve the problem on Artemis II.

These corrective options ranged from doing nothing to changing the Orion spacecraft’s reentry angle to mitigate heating or physically modifying the Artemis II heat shield. In the latter scenario, NASA would have to disassemble the Orion spacecraft, which is already put together and is undergoing environmental testing at Kennedy Space Center. This would likely delay the Artemis II launch by a couple of years.

In August, NASA’s top human exploration official told Ars that the agency would hold off on stacking the SLS rocket until engineers had a good handle on the heat shield problem. There are limits to how long the solid rocket boosters can remain stacked vertically. The joints connecting each segment of the rocket motors are certified for one year. This clock doesn’t actually start ticking until NASA stacks the next booster segments on top of the lowermost segments.

However, NASA waived this rule on Artemis I when the boosters were stacked nearly two years before the successful launch.

A NASA spokesperson told Ars on Wednesday that the agency had nothing new to share on the Orion heat shield or what changes, if any, are required for the Artemis II mission. This information should be released before the end of the year, she said. At the same time, NASA could announce a new target launch date for Artemis II at the end of 2025, or more likely in 2026.

But because NASA gave the “go” for SLS stacking now, it seems safe to rule out any major hardware changes on the Orion heat shield for Artemis II.

NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix Read More »

SpaceX just got exactly what it wanted from the FAA for Texas Starship launches

FAA, Science, Space, spacex / Tim Belzer / November 20, 2024

And there will be significant impacts. For example, the number of large trucks that deliver water, liquid oxygen, methane, and other commodities will increase substantially. According to the FAA document, the vehicle presence will grow from an estimated 6,000 trucks a year to 23,771 trucks annually. This number could be reduced by running a water line along State Highway 4 to supply the launch site’s water deluge system.

SpaceX has made progress in some areas, the document notes. For example, in terms of road closures for testing and launch activities, SpaceX has reduced the duration of closures along State Highway 4 to Boca Chica Beach by 85 percent between the first and third flight of Starship. This has partly been accomplished by moving launch preparation activities to the “Massey’s Test Site,” located about four miles from the launch site. SpaceX is now expected to need less than 20 hours of access restrictions per launch campaign, including landings.

SpaceX clearly got what it wanted

If finalized, this environmental assessment will give SpaceX the regulatory greenlight to match its aspirations for launches in at least 2025, if not beyond. During recent public meetings, SpaceX’s general manager of Starbase, Kathy Lueders, has said the company aims to launch Starship 25 times next year from Texas. The new regulations would permit this.

Additionally, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said the company intends to move to a larger and more powerful version of the Starship and Super Heavy rocket about a year from now. This version, dubbed Starship 3, would double the thrust of the upper stage and increase the thrust of the booster stage from about 74 meganewtons to about 100 meganewtons. If that number seems a little abstract, another way to think about it is that Starship would have a thrust at liftoff three times as powerful as NASA’s Saturn V rocket that launched humans to the Moon decades ago. The draft environmental assessment permits this as well.

SpaceX just got exactly what it wanted from the FAA for Texas Starship launches Read More »

The key moment came 38 minutes after Starship roared off the launch pad

Donald Trump, elon musk, Features, launch, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, Starship Flight 6, super heavy, texas, US Space Force / Tim Belzer / November 20, 2024

SpaceX wasn’t able to catch the Super Heavy booster, but Starship is on the cusp of orbital flight.

The sixth flight of Starship lifts off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site at Boca Chica Beach, Texas. Credit: SpaceX.

SpaceX launched its sixth Starship rocket Tuesday, proving for the first time that the stainless steel ship can maneuver in space and paving the way for an even larger, upgraded vehicle slated to debut on the next test flight.

The only hiccup was an abortive attempt to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in South Texas, something SpaceX achieved on the previous flight on October 13. The Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world, reaching an altitude of 118 miles (190 kilometers) before plunging through the atmosphere for a pinpoint slow-speed splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The sixth flight of the world’s largest launcher—standing 398 feet (121.3 meters) tall—began with a lumbering liftoff from SpaceX’s Starbase facility near the US-Mexico border at 4 pm CST (22: 00 UTC) Tuesday. The rocket headed east over the Gulf of Mexico, propelled by 33 Raptor engines clustered on the bottom of its Super Heavy first stage.

A few miles away, President-elect Donald Trump joined SpaceX founder Elon Musk to witness the launch. The SpaceX boss became one of Trump’s closest allies in this year’s presidential election, giving the world’s richest man extraordinary influence in US space policy. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was there, too, among other lawmakers. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top commander in the US Space Force, stood nearby, chatting with Trump and other VIPs.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, President-elect Donald Trump, and Gen. Chance Saltzman of the US Space Force watch the sixth launch of Starship Tuesday. Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

From their viewing platform, they watched Starship climb into a clear autumn sky. At full power, the 33 Raptors chugged more than 40,000 pounds of super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen per second. The engines generated 16.7 million pounds of thrust, 60 percent more than the Soviet N1, the second-largest rocket in history.

Eight minutes later, the rocket’s upper stage, itself also known as Starship, was in space, completing the program’s fourth straight near-flawless launch. The first two test flights faltered before reaching their planned trajectory.

A brief but crucial demo

As exciting as it was, we’ve seen all that before. One of the most important new things engineers wanted to test on this flight occurred about 38 minutes after liftoff.

That’s when Starship reignited one of its six Raptor engines for a brief burn to make a slight adjustment to its flight path. The burn lasted only a few seconds, and the impulse was small—just a 48 mph (77 km/hour) change in velocity, or delta-V—but it demonstrated that the ship can safely deorbit itself on future missions.

With this achievement, Starship will likely soon be cleared to travel into orbit around Earth and deploy Starlink Internet satellites or conduct in-space refueling experiments, two of the near-term objectives on SpaceX’s Starship development roadmap.

Launching Starlinks aboard Starship will allow SpaceX to expand the capacity and reach of its commercial consumer broadband network, which, in turn, provides revenue for Musk to reinvest into Starship. Orbital refueling enables Starship voyages beyond low-Earth orbit, fulfilling SpaceX’s multibillion-dollar contract with NASA to provide a human-rated Moon lander for the agency’s Artemis program. Likewise, transferring cryogenic propellants in orbit is a prerequisite for sending Starships to Mars, making real Musk’s dream of creating a settlement on the red planet.

Artist’s illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

Until now, SpaceX has intentionally launched Starships to speeds just shy of the blistering velocities needed to maintain orbit. Engineers wanted to test the Raptor’s ability to reignite in space on the third Starship test flight in March, but the ship lost control of its orientation, and SpaceX canceled the engine firing.

Before going for a full orbital flight, officials needed to confirm that Starship could steer itself back into the atmosphere for reentry, ensuring it wouldn’t present any risk to the public with an unguided descent over a populated area. After Tuesday, SpaceX can check this off its to-do list.

“Congrats to SpaceX on Starship’s sixth test flight,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson posted on X. “Exciting to see the Raptor engine restart in space—major progress towards orbital flight. Starship’s success is Artemis’ success. Together, we will return humanity to the Moon & set our sights on Mars.”

While it lacks the pizzazz of a fiery launch or landing, the engine relight unlocks a new phase of Starship development. SpaceX has now proven that the rocket is capable of reaching space with a fair measure of reliability. Next, engineers will fine-tune how to reliably recover the booster and the ship and learn how to use them.

Acid test

SpaceX appears well on its way to doing this. While SpaceX didn’t catch the Super Heavy booster with the launch tower’s mechanical arms Tuesday, engineers have shown they can do it. The challenge of catching Starship itself back at the launch pad is more daunting. The ship starts its reentry thousands of miles from Starbase, traveling approximately 17,000 mph (27,000 km/hour), and must thread the gap between the tower’s catch arms within a matter of inches.

The good news is that SpaceX has now twice proven it can bring Starship back to a precision splashdown in the Indian Ocean. In October, the ship settled into the sea in darkness. SpaceX moved the launch time for Tuesday’s flight to the late afternoon, setting up for splashdown shortly after sunrise northwest of Australia.

The shift in time paid off with some stunning new visuals. Cameras mounted on the outside of Starship beamed dazzling live views back to SpaceX through the Starlink network, showing a now-familiar glow of plasma encasing the spacecraft as it plowed deeper into the atmosphere. But this time, daylight revealed the ship’s flaps moving to control its belly-first descent toward the ocean. After passing through a deck of low clouds, Starship reignited its Raptor engines and tilted from horizontal to vertical, making contact with the water tail-first within view of a floating buoy and a nearby aircraft in position to observe the moment.

Here’s a replay of the spacecraft’s splashdown around 65 minutes after launch.

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting sixth flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/bf98Va9qmL

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 19, 2024

The ship made it through reentry despite flying with a substandard heat shield. Starship’s thermal protection system is made up of thousands of ceramic tiles to protect the ship from temperatures as high as 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius).

Kate Tice, a SpaceX engineer hosting the company’s live broadcast of the mission, said teams at Starbase removed 2,100 heat shield tiles from Starship ahead of Tuesday’s launch. Their removal exposed wider swaths of the ship’s stainless steel skin to super-heated plasma, and SpaceX teams were eager to see how well the spacecraft held up during reentry. In the language of flight testing, this approach is called exploring the corners of the envelope, where engineers evaluate how a new airplane or rocket performs in extreme conditions.

“Don’t be surprised if we see some wackadoodle stuff happen here,” Tice said. There was nothing of the sort. One of the ship’s flaps appeared to suffer some heating damage, but it remained intact and functional, and the harm looked to be less substantial than damage seen on previous flights.

Many of the removed tiles came from the sides of Starship where SpaceX plans to place catch fittings on future vehicles. These are the hardware protuberances that will catch on the top side of the launch tower’s mechanical arms, similar to fittings used on the Super Heavy booster.

“The next flight, we want to better understand where we can install catch hardware, not necessarily to actually do the catch but to see how that hardware holds up in those spots,” Tice said. “Today’s flight will help inform ‘does the stainless steel hold up like we think it may, based on experiments that we conducted on Flight 5?'”

Musk wrote on his social media platform X that SpaceX could try to bring Starship back to Starbase for a catch on the eighth test flight, which is likely to occur in the first half of 2025.

“We will do one more ocean landing of the ship,” Musk said. “If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower.”

The heat shield, Musk added, is a focal point of SpaceX’s attention. The delicate heat-absorbing tiles used on the belly of the space shuttle proved vexing to NASA technicians. Early in the shuttle’s development, NASA had trouble keeping tiles adhered to the shuttle’s aluminum skin. Each of the shuttle tiles was custom-machined to fit on a specific location on the orbiter, complicating refurbishment between flights. Starship’s tiles are all hexagonal in shape and agnostic to where technicians place them on the vehicle.

“The biggest technology challenge remaining for Starship is a fully & immediately reusable heat shield,” Musk wrote on X. “Being able to land the ship, refill propellant & launch right away with no refurbishment or laborious inspection. That is the acid test.”

This photo of the Starship vehicle for Flight 6, numbered Ship 31, shows exposed portions of the vehicle’s stainless steel skin after tile removal. Credit: SpaceX

There were no details available Tuesday night on what caused the Super Heavy booster to divert from its planned catch on the launch tower. After detaching from the Starship upper stage less than three minutes into the flight, the booster reversed course to begin the journey back to Starbase.

Then SpaceX’s flight director announced the rocket would fly itself into the Gulf rather than back to the launch site: “Booster offshore divert.”

The booster finished its descent with a seemingly perfect landing burn using a subset of its Raptor engines. As expected after the water landing, the booster—itself 233 feet (71 meters) tall—toppled and broke apart in a dramatic fireball visible to onshore spectators.

In an update posted to its website after the launch, SpaceX said automated health checks of hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered the aborted catch attempt. The company did not say what system failed the health check. As a safety measure, SpaceX must send a manual command for the booster to come back to land in order to prevent a malfunction from endangering people or property.

Turning it up to 11

There will be plenty more opportunities for more booster catches in the coming months as SpaceX ramps up its launch cadence at Starbase. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, hinted at the scale of the company’s ambitions last week.

“We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,” she said at the Barron Investment Conference.

The next batch of test flights will use an improved version of Starship designated Block 2, or V2. Starship Block 2 comes with larger propellant tanks, redesigned forward flaps, and a better heat shield.

The new-generation Starship will hold more than 11 million pounds of fuel and oxidizer, about a million pounds more than the capacity of Starship Block 1. The booster and ship will produce more thrust, and Block 2 will measure 408 feet (124.4 meters) tall, stretching the height of the full stack by a little more than 10 feet.

Put together, these modifications should give Starship the ability to heave a payload of up to 220,000 pounds (100 metric tons) into low-Earth orbit, about twice the carrying capacity of the first-generation ship. Further down the line, SpaceX plans to introduce Starship Block 3 to again double the ship’s payload capacity.

Just as importantly, these changes are designed to make it easier for SpaceX to recover and reuse the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage. SpaceX’s goal of fielding a fully reusable launcher builds on the partial reuse SpaceX pioneered with its Falcon 9 rocket. This should dramatically bring down launch costs, according to SpaceX’s vision.

With Tuesday’s flight, it’s clear Starship works. Now it’s time to see what it can do.

Updated with additional details, quotes, and images.

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

The key moment came 38 minutes after Starship roared off the launch pad Read More »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lot of people are mistaking Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for UAPs

elon musk, military space, Science, Space, spacex, starlink, UAP / Kris Guyer / November 15, 2024

That’s just Elon

But many UAP cases have verifiable explanations as airplanes, drones, or satellites, and lawmakers argue AARO might be able to solve more of the cases with more funding.

Airspace is busier than ever with air travel and consumer drones. More satellites are zooming around the planet as government agencies and companies like SpaceX deploy their constellations for Internet connectivity and surveillance. There’s more stuff up there to see.

“AARO increasingly receives cases that it is able to resolve to the Starlink satellite constellation,” the office said in this year’s annual report.

“For example, a commercial pilot reported white flashing lights in the night sky,” AARO said. “The pilot did not report an altitude or speed, and no data or imagery was recorded. AARO assessed that this sighting of flashing lights correlated with a Starlink satellite launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the same evening about one hour prior to the sighting.”

Jon Kosloski, director of AARO, said officials compared the parameters of these sightings with Starlink launches. When SpaceX releases Starlink satellites in orbit, the spacecraft are initially clustered together and reflect more sunlight down to Earth. This makes the satellites easier to see during twilight hours before they raise their orbits and become dimmer.

“We found some of those correlations in time, the direction that they were looking, and the location,” Kosloski said. “And we were able to assess that they were all in those cases looking at Starlink flares.”

SpaceX has more than 6,600 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, more than half of all active spacecraft. Thousands more satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband constellation and Chinese Internet network are slated to launch in the next few years.

“AARO is investigating if other unresolved cases may be attributed to the expansion of the Starlink and other mega-constellations in low-Earth orbit,” the report said.

The Starlink network is still relatively new. SpaceX launched the first Starlinks five years ago. Kosloski said he expects the number of erroneous UAP reports caused by satellites to go down as pilots and others understand what the Starlinks look like.

“It looks interesting and potentially anomalous. But we can model that, and we can show pilots what that anomaly looks like, so that that doesn’t get reported to us necessarily,” Kosloski said.

A lot of people are mistaking Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for UAPs Read More »

As ABL Space departs launch, the 1-ton rocket wars have a clear winner

Science, Space / Tim Belzer / November 15, 2024

“Take a look around,” Piemont wrote. “US rockets fly every couple of days, with perfect success. It’s revolutionary. While there is still a need for more providers in certain market segments, those opportunities are decreasing. To succeed in such a demanding effort as scaling up an orbital launch program, you need deep motivation around your mission and potential impact, from many stakeholders. As the launch market matured, those motivations thinned and our path to making a big contribution as a commercial launch company narrowed considerably.”

Over the last half decade or so, three US companies have credibly vied to develop rockets in the 1-ton class in terms of lift capacity. ABL has been competing alongside Relativity Space and Firefly to bring its rockets to market. ABL never took off. In March 2023, Relativity reached space with the Terran 1 rocket, but, due to second-stage issues, failed to reach orbit. Within weeks, Relativity announced it was shifting its focus to a medium-lift rocket, Terran R. Since then, the California-based launch company has moved along, but there are persistent rumors that it faces a cash crunch.

Of the three, only Firefly has enjoyed success. The company’s Alpha rocket has reached orbit on multiple occasions, and just this week Firefly announced that it completed a $175 million Series D fundraising round, resulting in a valuation of more than $2 billion. The 1-ton rocket wars are over: Firefly has won.

Focusing on defense

Just as Relativity pivoted away from this class of rocket, ABL will now also shift its focus—this time in an even more radical direction.

US Defense spending on missile production and defense has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and ABL will now seek to tap into this potentially lucrative market.

“We have made the decision to focus our efforts on national defense, and specifically on missile defense technologies,” Piemont said. “We’ll have more to share soon on our roadmap and traction in this area. For now, suffice to say we see considerable opportunity to leverage RS1, GS0, the E2 engine, and the rest of the technology we’ve developed to date to enable a new type of research effort around missile defense technologies.”

As ABL Space departs launch, the 1-ton rocket wars have a clear winner Read More »

Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing

alpha, Commercial space, Firefly Aerospace, launch, medium launch vehicle, Science, Space / Paul Patrick / November 13, 2024

More than just one thing

Firefly’s majority owner is the private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, and the Series D funding round was led by Michigan-based RPM Ventures.

“Few companies can say they’ve defined a new category in their industry—Firefly is one of those,” said Marc Weiser, a managing director at RPM Ventures. “They have captured their niche in the market as a full service provider for responsive space missions and have become the pinnacle of what a modern space and defense technology company looks like.”

This descriptor—a full service provider—is what differentiates Firefly from most other space companies. Firefly’s crosscutting work in small and medium launch vehicles, rocket engines, lunar landers, and in-space propulsion propels it into a club of wide-ranging commercial space companies that, arguably, only includes SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab.

NASA has awarded Firefly three task orders under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Firefly will soon ship its first Blue Ghost lunar lander to Florida for final preparations to launch to the Moon and deliver 10 NASA-sponsored scientific instruments and tech demo experiments to the lunar surface. NASA has a contract with Firefly for a second Blue Ghost mission, plus an agreement for Firefly to transport a European data relay satellite to lunar orbit.

Firefly also boasts a healthy backlog of missions on its Alpha rocket. In June, Lockheed Martin announced a deal for as many as 25 Alpha launches through 2029. Two months later, L3Harris inked a contract with Firefly for up to 20 Alpha launches. Firefly has also signed Alpha launch contracts with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Space Force, and the National Reconnaissance Office. One of these Alpha launches will deploy Firefly’s first orbital transfer vehicle, named Elytra, designed to host customer payloads and transport them to different orbits following separation from the launcher’s upper stage.

And there’s the Medium Launch Vehicle, a rocket Firefly and Northrop Grumman hope to launch as soon as 2026. But first, the companies will fly an MLV booster stage with seven kerosene-fueled Miranda engines on a new version of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket for cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. Northrop Grumman has retired the previous version of Antares after losing access to Russian rocket engines in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing Read More »

For the second time this year, NASA’s JPL center cuts its workforce

Science, Space / Mike M. / November 12, 2024

“This reduction is spread across essentially all areas of the Lab including our technical, project, business, and support areas,” Leshin wrote. “We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden). With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts across the board, and you will see that reflected in the layoff impacts.”

This year’s employee cuts came after NASA decided to consider alternatives to a multibillion-dollar plan to return samples from Mars to Earth, which had been led by JPL. In September 2023 an independent review team found that the JPL plan was unworkable and would cost $8 billion to $11 billion to be successful.

A changing environment

While NASA considers alternatives from other field centers, as well as private companies such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab, the budget for Mars Sample Return was slashed from nearly $1 billion for this fiscal year to less than $300 million. Additionally, there is no guarantee that JPL will be given leadership of a revamped Mars Sample Return mission.

The staffing cuts reflect the fact that after the recent launch of the $5 billion Europa Clipper mission, JPL is not managing another flagship deep-space mission at present. Another sizable mission, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, is almost ready for a launch next year from India. The California laboratory has smaller projects, but nothing on the order of a flagship mission to command a large budget and support a very large staff.

JPL has a long and storied history, including the management of most of NASA’s highest-profile planetary probes, including the Voyagers, Mars landers, and Galileo and Cassini spacecraft. However in recent years other spaceflight centers, such as Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and private companies such as Lockheed have competed for projects and delivered results.

The job of Leshin and others at NASA is to ensure that JPL has a bright future in a changing world of planetary exploration. This week’s cuts will ensure such a future, Leshin wrote, adding: “We are an incredibly strong organization—our dazzling history, current achievements, and relentless commitment to exploration and discovery position us well for the future.”

For the second time this year, NASA’s JPL center cuts its workforce Read More »

There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about

astronauts, Crew-8, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / Tim Belzer / November 11, 2024

“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it. I said we’re not going to talk about it.”

NASA astronaut Michael Barratt works with a spacesuit inside the Quest airlock of the International Space Station on May 31. Credit: NASA

The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth.

In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an unspecified “medical issue” after splashdown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that concluded the 235-day mission. After an overnight stay in a hospital in Florida, NASA said the astronaut was released “in good health” and returned to their home base in Houston to resume normal post-flight activities.

The space agency did not identify the astronaut or any details about their condition, citing medical privacy concerns. The three NASA astronauts on the Dragon spacecraft included commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin accompanied the three NASA crew members. Russia’s space agency confirmed he was not hospitalized after returning to Earth.

Dominick, Barratt, and Epps answered media questions in a post-flight press conference Friday, but they did not offer more information on the medical issue or say who experienced it. NASA initially sent all four crew members to the hospital in Pensacola, Florida, for evaluation, but Grebenkin and two of the NASA astronauts were quickly released and cleared to return to Houston. One astronaut remained behind until the next day.

“Spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand,” said Barratt, a medical doctor and flight surgeon. “We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes. This was one of those times, and we’re still piecing things together on this, and so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we’re going to say about that event at this time.”

NASA typically makes astronaut health data available to outside researchers, who regularly publish papers while withholding identifying information about crew members. NASA officials often tout gaining knowledge about the human body’s response to spaceflight as one of the main purposes of the International Space Station. The agency is subject to federal laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, restricting the release of private medical information.

“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it,” Barratt said. “I said we’re not going to talk about it. I’m a medical doctor. Space medicine is my passion … and how we adapt, how we experience human spaceflight is something that we all take very seriously.”

Maybe some day

Barratt said NASA will release more information about the astronaut’s post-flight medical issue “in the fullness of time.” This was Barratt’s third trip to space and the first spaceflight for Dominick and Epps.

One of the most famous incidents involving hospitalized astronauts was in 1975, before the passage of the HIPAA medical privacy law, when NASA astronauts Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand stayed at a military hospital in Hawaii nearly two weeks after inhaling toxic propellant fumes that accidentally entered their spacecraft’s internal cabin as it descended under parachutes. They were returning to Earth at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, in which they docked their Apollo command module to a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit.

NASA’s view—and perhaps the public’s, too—of medical privacy has changed in the nearly 50 years since. On that occasion, NASA disclosed that the astronauts suffered from lung irritation, and officials said Brand briefly passed out from the fumes after splashdown, remaining unconscious until his crewmates fitted an oxygen mask tightly over his face. NASA and the military also made doctors available to answer media questions about their condition.

The medical concern after splashdown last month was not the only part of the Crew-8 mission that remains shrouded in mystery. Dominick and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson were supposed to go outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk June 13, but NASA called off the excursion, citing a “spacesuit discomfort issue.” NASA replaced Dominick with Barratt and rescheduled the spacewalk for June 24 to retrieve a faulty electronics box and collect microbial samples from the exterior of the space station. But that excursion ended after just 31 minutes, when Dyson reported a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of her spacesuit.

While Barratt discussed the water leak in some detail Friday, Dominick declined to answer a question from Ars regarding the suit discomfort issue. “We’re still reviewing and trying to figure all the details,” he said.

Aging suits

Regarding the water leak, Barratt said he and Dyson noticed her suit had a “spewing umbilical, which was quite dramatic, actually.” The decision to abandon the spacewalk was a “no-brainer,” he said.

“It was not a trivial leak, and we’ve got footage,” Barratt said. “Anybody who was watching NASA TV at the time could see there was basically a snowstorm, a blizzard, spewing from the airlock because we already had the hatch open. So we were seeing flakes of ice in the airlock, and Tracy was seeing a lot of them on her helmet, on her gloves, and whatnot. Dramatic is the right word, to be real honest.”

Dyson, who came back to Earth in September on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, reconnected the leaking umbilical with her gloves and helmet covered with ice, with restricted vision. “Tracy’s actions were nowhere short of heroic,” Barratt said.

Once the leak stabilized, the astronauts closed the hatch and began repressurizing the airlock.

“Getting the airlock closed was kind of me grabbing her legs and using her as an end effector to lever that thing closed, and she just made it happen,” Barratt said. “So, yeah, there was this drama. Everything worked out fine. Again, normal processes and procedures saved our bacon.”

Barratt said the leak wasn’t caused by any procedural error as the astronauts prepared their suits for the spacewalk.

“It was definitely a hardware issue,” he said. “There was a little poppet valve on the interface that didn’t quite seat, so really, the question became why didn’t that seat? We solved that problem by changing out the whole umbilical.”

By then, NASA’s attention on the space station had turned to other tasks, such as experiments, the arrival of a new cargo ship, and testing of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule docked at the complex, before it ultimately departed and left its crew behind. The spacewalk wasn’t urgent, so it had to wait. NASA now plans to attempt the spacewalk again as soon as January with a different set of astronauts.

Barratt thinks the spacesuits on the space station are good to go for the next spacewalk. However, the suits are decades old, and their original designs date back more than 40 years, when NASA developed the units for use on the space shuttle. Efforts to develop a replacement suit for use in low-Earth orbit have stalled. In June, Collins Aerospace dropped out of a NASA contract to build new spacesuits for servicing the International Space Station and future orbiting research outposts.

“None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use and not really upgrading,” Barratt said.

There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about Read More »