Rockets from Cassiopeia

Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Down to Earth

Dr. Stephen Hawking died on March 14th, at age 76. The New York Times published a thorough review of his life and accomplishments.

NASA’s acting administrator Robert Lightfoot is retiring.

The startup rocket company Rocket Lab plans to launch their first commercial flight this spring. The rocket will be named It’s Business Time which follows in the naming tradition of their first two test rockets: It’s a Test and Still Testing.

Speaking of small rocket startups, Firefly Aerospace used the popular South by Southwest conference to publicly demonstrate an engine test (video below). The engine would power the upper stage of their planned Firefly Alpha rocket.

If you like rocket engine tests, then watch this new video of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine, posted by Jeff Bezos last week.

New test video of Blue’s 550K lbf thrust, ox-rich staged combustion, LNG-fueled BE-4 engine. The test is a mixture ratio sweep at 65% power level and 114 seconds in duration. Methane (or LNG) has proved to be an outstanding fuel choice. @BlueOrigin #GradatimFerociter pic.twitter.com/zWV0jWXIvx

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) March 13, 2018

The US federal government passed a new funding bill for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2018 last week. The large omnibus bill includes $20.7 for NASA. If you’d like a comparison of NASA’s budget over the years, check out this Wikipdia page.

In Orbit

Over the past two weeks there have been only two orbital rocket launches. The first was a Chinese Long March 2D rocket carrying an Earth-observing satellite. The second was a Soyuz rocket launched from Kazakhstan carrying 3 crew members on their way to the International Space Station.

Oleg Artemyev, Drew Feustel, and Ricky Arnold docked to the ISS successfully this past Friday, two days after launch. They join Anton Shkaplerov, Norishige Kanai, and Scott Tingle for the ongoing Expedition 55 mission.

ソユーズ宇宙船が宇宙ステーションに到着し、第55次長期滞在クルー6人が揃いました！

ゲームかアニメで、最後の敵との大決戦の前に、仲間が全員集まったかのような感じがします。
船外活動、ドラゴン宇宙船の打上げなど、大きなイベントが目白押しですが、みんなで協力して乗り切りたいと思います。 pic.twitter.com/Xc67DuzywT

— 金井 宣茂 (@Astro_Kanai) March 24, 2018

Swarm Technologies launched four very small satellites in January without license from the FCC. In fact, the FCC had specifically asked them not to launch because they were too small to track. Now Swarm may not be able to receive future licenses.

Around the Solar System

Mission managers on the New Horizons project have chosen the name Ultima Thule for the small Kuiper Belt object which will be visited by the probe next year. The name would not become official until the International Astronomical Union (IAU) can weigh in.

Recent observations from the Dawn spacecraft reveal that the surface of the asteroid Ceres is dynamic, with changing amounts of visible ice and other materials.

The Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, will likely run out of fuel this year.

Out There

A couple of interesting new exoplanet systems were announced recently:

• K2 data revealed a system of 3 “super-Earths” around star GJ 9827, 100 light-years away.
• Ground observations reveal 6 gas giants orbiting HD 34445, two of them in system’s habitable zone.

In Orbit

The new National Space Council hosted their second meeting, this time at Kennedy Space Center.

Bigelow Aerospace has announced a new sister company, Bigelow Space Operations, who will market their future goals of launching and operating independent space stations.

The latest HI-SEAS space analog mission in Hawaii was put on hold due to some kind of medical emergency.

In Orbit

The only launch of the week was a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg in Californial. The rocket carried three satellites – a payload for the Spanish military and two technology demonstration satellites for SpaceX. The company also tried to “catch” one of the rocket’s discarded payload fairings at sea, but missed slightly. Here is a photo from Instagram of the fairing floating near the SpaceX’s recovery ship.

A Soyuz carrying three space station residents will undock from the ISS on Tuesday morning and return to Earth. Recovery crews are already getting ready out in Kazakhstan.

In a few hours we’ll start pre-staging helos and teams for the landing of @Astro_Sabot @AstroAcaba and Misurkin from @Space_Station. Karaganda, Kazakhstan. pic.twitter.com/SVALfAFaJk

— Bill Ingalls (@ingallsimages) February 25, 2018

Around the Solar System

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had a bit of a scare last week, entering safe mode for about 3 days after a battery malfunction. MRO came out of safe mode on the 23rd and NASA reported that it was being returned to nominal service. MRO is a key asset, as it relays all communications from the two rovers on the surface.

Meanwhile, down on the surface, Opportunity continues to trundle along in Endeavour crater. JPL even announced some new observations this past week.

The Osiris-Rex spacecraft took an image of Earth from 63 million km away. The probe is currently on its way to the asteroid belt.

Out There

I am in love with this unique interpretation of the Hubble Deep Field from the new website Astronomy Sound of the Month. Follow the link and then, with your sound on, move your cursor over the image to hear different notes correlated to the age of each galaxy.

Down to Earth

The Center for the Advancement of Science In Space (CASIS)  – the organization that manages the ISS as a national laboratory – will be looking for a new executive director after Gregory Johnson steps down.

The White House released their proposed federal budget for 2019, including details for NASA. Here’s a summary from Parabolic Arc of what the budget would include for the space agency. The Planetary Society also has a great summary up on their blog and also covered it in a recent podcast.

Kennedy Space Center’s visitor center has opened a new interactive “Astronaut Training Experience“.

In Orbit

After the launch of a Progress resupply craft to the ISS was scrubbed last Sunday, it was launch successful on Tuesday and docked to the ISS two days later.

Other than the Progress, launched on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonaur, the only other launch last week was a Chinese Long March 3B rocket carrying two global navigation satellites.

ESA celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Columbus modules launch to the ISS.

Two astronauts, Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Norishige Kanai of JAXA, completed a spacewalk on Friday to fix the SSRMS, as well as some other maintenance tasks.

Around the Solar System

The Opportunity rover has now spent more than 5,000 martian days (or “sols”) on Mars. To commemorate the occasion, the JPL rover team commanded Opportunity to take a “self-portrait” mosaic using the cameras on the end of its robotic arm. This is the first time this has been done with Opportunity.

Opportunity self-portrait

New Horizons has broken the record held by Voyager’s famous Pale Blue Dot image for farthest images taken from Earth. The probe is on its way to an encounter with 2014 MU69 next January. While it is cruising through the Kuiper Belt, it took advantage of its “near” pass to two other objects and took some low resolution images of 2012 HZ84 and 2021 HE85.

Down to Earth

Another government shutdown on Thursday night nearly impacted US federal government operations again (including NASA) but was ended in the middle of the night with a budget deal, before facilities could open for work on Friday.

Sierra Nevada Corporation has received their official launch window from NASA for their first uncrewed resupply mission to the ISS, using their DreamChaser space plane.

A SpaceX booster that survived an ocean crash-landing from the GovSat-1 launch on January 31, was demolished at sea as it as deemed a safety hazard.

In Orbit

The only rocket launch since my last post was a big one: the demo flight of the Falcon Heavy. The rocket launched successfully during its first launch window last Tuesday, to the delight of crowds on the ground in Florida and millions of space fans who watched the livestream online. The next Falcon Heavy is scheduled tentatively a few months out, and will carry more official payloads.

Around the Solar System

Not exactly breaking news, but I love this newly released image of Saturn’s moons Titan and Rhea, from the now ended Cassini mission.

Rhea eclipses Titan

Out There

Two new studies of the planets in the Trappist-1 system reveal their atmospheric compositions and densities. It is very possible some of these planets may be habitable with liquid water.

Down to Earth

The US federal government was shutdown briefly over the past weekend, and had some impacts to NASA, but ended by Tuesday morning. The federal budget decision has been moved by Congress to February 8th.

SpaceX completed the long-awaited “hot fire” test of their Falcon Heavy rocket on the launch pad in Florida. The company has reportedly set their launch date February 6th.

The flight controller consoles in NASA’s Historic Mission Control at Johnson Space Center began being removed this week as part of a longterm restoration effort.

NASA’s InSight lander, the next mission to Mars, launching this year, had its solar arrays tested at Lockheed Martin.

During the “Year of Education” onboard the ISS, astronauts will record lessons originally planned for Christa McAuliffe’s teacher-in-space flight on Challenger in 1986.

Johnson Space Center director Ellen Ochoa plans to retire this year.

The Google Lunar X Prize will end this March with no team winning the $20 million prize for sending a private rover mission to teh moon.

In Orbit

There were two rocket launches last week:

• January 25 – China launched a Long March 2C rocket carrying three satellites.
• January 25 – ESA launched an Ariane 5 rocket carrying two communications satellites.

The Ariane 5 rocket had some kind of anomaly with the upper stage and placed the payloads in the wrong orbit.

ISS astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle completed a spacewalk last Tuesday to service to Canadarm-2. Unfortunately, an issue discovered after the spacewalk has caused a change of plans, and a second excusion planned for this coming Monday will be used to enact some repairs.

Around the Solar System

Some news from Mars:

• Researchers hope to observe a global dust storm on Mars in the near future to validate a theory that dust storms contribute to the loss of the planet’s atmosphere.
• Data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has found potential ice sheets at mid-latitudes on the red planet.

Down to Earth

Some recent crew assignment changes for the ISS have been receiving a lot of press, including the replacement of Jeanette Epps with Serena Aunon-Chancellor for a launch this summer. NASA has not provided specific details on the reason for the change.

As of Saturday morning, the US federal government has no official funding and must shutdown many services. This shutdown affects NASA and its field centers. The specific impacts to NASA operations will become more clear if the shutdown extends into the work week on Monday morning. In the meantime, NASA will press forward with the ISS spacewalk on Tuesday.

There was a lot of talk last week about an update on the schedule for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which has slipped according to a report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP). There was also a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the same topic.. The reports outline a few issues that the commercial providers – SpaceX and Boeing – both need to work through before their rockets and capsules can be certified to flight NASA astronauts to the ISS. Both companies answered questions at a congressional hearing following the report on Wednesday.

SpaceX still has not conducted a static fire of the Falcon Heavy rocket on Pad 39A. They are expected to try again this coming week with a potential launch before the end of the month.

In Orbit

The following rocket launches occurred last week:

• Jan 17 – Japan launched an Epsilon rocket carrying an Earth observing satellite.
• Jan 19 – China launched a Long March 11 rocket carrying several small satellites.
• Jan 20 – ULA launched an Atlas V rocket carrying a missile warning satellite for the US government.
• Jan 21 – Rocket Lab finally reached orbit with their second rocket, Still Testing, delivering some small satellites.

Out There

A detailed study of Fast Radio Burst (FRB) 121102, one of the few repeating signals, has yielded a new hypothesis that these highly energetic events are caused by massive black holes.

NASA has demonstrated the concept of deep space navigation using neutron stars with the NICER payload onboard the ISS.

Here’s my roundup of all of the year-end summaries posted by various space agencies and space reporters.

NASA’s year in review video:

ESA’s year in review video:

NASA headquarters photographers’ best images of 2017.

Space.com’s top space science stories of 2017.

Space.com’s top spaceflight stories of 2017.

Mashable’s top 5 space stories of 2017.

Parabolic Arc’s analysis of worldwide rocket launches for 2017.

Top planetary science stories of 2017, from The Planetary Society.

Or if you prefer audio, here’s The Planetary Radio’s year-end wrap-up show.

Top stargazing images of the year from EarthSky.

And for non-space context, here’s the year in pictures from around the world:

Boston Globe Year in Pictures: Part I

Boston Globe Year in Pictures: Part II

Washington Post’s year in photos

Down to Earth

Retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts has published a “coffee table book” of images he took while aboard the ISS during Expeditions 42 and 43.

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO team.

Canadian company MDA has acquired DigitalGlobe and the new merged corporation will be changing their name to Maxar Technologies. MDA is the company that build the Canadarms and DigitalGlobe is a major provider of orbital imagery for users like Google.

In Orbit

Three rocket launches since my last post. All of them occurred today, October 9th:

• China launched a Long March 2D rocket carrying a Venezuelan satellite.
• SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 10 new communication satellites for Iridium.
• Japan launched an H-2A rocket carrying a native navigation satellite.

Things have been quite busy up on the ISS. Astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Randy Bresnik executed the first of a series of spacewalks last week to maintain the station’s robotic arm. They will go out again tomorrow, October 10th, to continue the work. Here are a few pictures from last week’s EVA:

Without the @space_station lights it would be really, really dark out there. #Goodnight everybody! pic.twitter.com/bS1KcSXNiY

— Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade) October 9, 2017

Salute to the entire #spacewalk team for getting the robotic arm back in great shape. Image credit: @Astro_Sabot pic.twitter.com/RuuO8HoHCz

— Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade) October 9, 2017

On a #spacewalk, the Earth never lets you forget you are 250 miles/400 km high. pic.twitter.com/dMrcQTB5FQ

— Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade) October 9, 2017

NASA has announced plans to keep the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) on the ISS for longer than planned and use it as a logistics module.

Out There

A recent study of “Tabby’s Star” using NASA’s orbiting observatories Spitzer and Swift has a new theory for the unexplained dips in brightness: dust. The new hypothesis is compelling because the telescopes detected differences in the dimming at different wavelengths, which implies something transparent like dust.

Down to Earth

U.S. Vice President Pence visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama last week. Pence spoke to the crew onboard the ISS from the Payload Operations Center, as part of his tour.

Check out this amazing video of a Soyuz re-entry over Kazakhstan taken from onboard a nearby airplane.

NASA has announced that the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been delayed from late 2018 to early 2019.

NASA opened a new facility at the Langley Research Center named after Katherine Johnson, one of the central women profiled in the book and film Hidden Figures.

The latest crew of the HI-SEAS Mars simulation facility in Hawaii completed their 8-month mission.

In double Hawaii news this week, the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) approved the construction permit for the long-debated Thirty Meter Telescope to be built on Maunakea.

At the International Astronautical Congress, SpaceX CEO gave a 45 minute presentation updating the public on his company’s plans for future rocket designs and Mars exploration. Here is the full video of the talk:

In Orbit

Three orbital launches since my last post:

• September 28 – A Russian Proton rocket launched a communications satellite.
• September 29 – China launched a Long March 2C rocket with an unknown payload.
• September 29 – An Ariane 5 rocket launched two communications satellites.

I’m back from my own personal August recess and catching up on almost a month of space news. Here’s your headline dump for August 14 to September 9! A lot has happened

Down to Earth

The Trump Administration has named Oklahoma Congressman Jim Bridenstine as their nominee for NASA administrator.

The Chinese and European astronauts conducted a joint survival training exercise off the coast of China.

Sierra Nevada Corporation conducted a “captive carry” flight of their Dream Chaser spaceplane.

Last week an ESA Ariane 5 rocket had a pad abort. The agency is still investigating.

In Orbit

The Dragon capsule launched two days earlier docked with the ISS on August 16th.

The day after the cargo. arrival, cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy conducted a successful spacewalk to do space station maintenance as well as some small satellites deployments.

Then on September 3rd a Soyuz returned to Earth, safely carrying Jack Fischer, Peggy Whitson, and Fyodor Yurchikhin to the steppes of Kazakhstan. Both Yurchikhin and Whitson now have accumulated over 600 days in space.

.@AstroPeggy , Fyodor and @Astro2fish right before leaving last night… say ciao to #Earth for us! #Expedition52 #VITAmission pic.twitter.com/c2yPKBJuEl

— Paolo Nespoli (@astro_paolo) September 3, 2017

Meanwhile on the ground, a dedicated team of flight controllers was riding out Hurricane Harvey in Houston’s Mission Control Center to ensure the successful undocking and return of the crew.

Speaking of hurricanes, the ISS crew has taken some incredible imagery of Irma has it makes its way across the Caribbean and now Florida.

Tonight, far too many people in #Irma’s path and in its wake. pic.twitter.com/bWQMxae9GV

— Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade) September 8, 2017

Lots of launches while I was out. Here’s a worldwide rundown:

• August 16 – Russian Proton rocket launched carrying a communication satellite.
• August 18 – ULA Atlas V rocket launched from Florida carrying a NASA tracking and data relay satellite.
• August 19 – Japanese H-II rocket launched carrying a communications satellite.
• August 24 – SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg carrying a payload for the government of Taiwan.
• August 26 – Orbital Minotaur rocket launched from Florida carrying a payload for the U.S. Air Force.
• August 31 – India attempted to launch a rocket carrying a navigation satellite, but the payload never made it to orbit.
• September 7 – SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida carrying the fifth X-37B flight for the U.S. Air Force.

Around the Solar System

Congratulations to the engineers and scientists on the New Horizons project; the International Astronomical Union has selected many of their original choices for features on Pluto as official names!

Good news for Mars enthusiasts: there is new talk at NASA of planning a robotic Mars sample return mission for the middle of the 2020s.