Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Following on from my previous piece on recent NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports about NASA’s launch infrastructure and the costs associated with Artemis / SLS, Thursday June 30th, 2026 saw the release of the OIG’s latest audit of the NASA Commercial Crew Programme (CCP) which gave rise to the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner vehicles.

As those with an interest in space exploration are aware, one of these vehicles – SpaceX Crew Dragon – has been providing a successful service in ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), whilst the other – Starliner -, despite two uncrewed and one crewed flight test has, yet to enter service. Unsurprisingly, the OIG audit report does not pull any punches where the Boeing system is concerned. However, its target is not so much Boeing as it is NASA itself.

The report starts by noting that whilst both Crew Dragon and Starliner where technically challenging developments, NASA opted to focus primarily on the SpaceX project in terms of management oversight and intervention, despite the fact Crew Dragon was proceeding from a vehicle already in operation: the Cargo Dragon. Meanwhile, Boeing, despite designing a brand new vehicle from the ground up, was subject to far less NASA oversight and management.

Instead, NASA management opted to put their faith in Boeing’s “heritage” procedures and workflows, allowing the company to develop Starliner with minimal intervention. This resulted in programmatic and development issues escaping NASA’s attention where a more hand-on approach would likely have seen them spotted and measures put in place to rectify them long before they became issues deeply embedded in the vehicle’s design.

Nor is the report limited to the development path with Starliner; it is deeply critical of NASA management following the 2024 Crew Flight Test (CFT). This should have been an 8-day test of Starliner liner under crewed control, including time docked at the International Space Station (ISS). However, the vehicle suffered issues remarkably similar to those experienced during the second automated test flight, so it returned to Earth without its crew of Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, who remained on the ISS for a further 278 days before returning to Earth on a Crew Dragon vehicle.

Under NASA’s own requirements, the CFT should have been classified a Type A mishap, prompting an immediate, NASA-led multi-disciplinary investigation into the flight and Starliner, with full root cause analysis, culminating in the development of a complete plan to remediate issues identified and bring Starliner back to operational readiness. Instead, NASA management labelled the flight a “partial success” and maintained their hands-off attitude to addressing Starliner’s issues.

It was not until Jared Isaacman took over at NASA that the CFT was reclassified a Type A mishap, meaning that for 21 months following the flight, Boeing management left to their own devices at a time when the company was known to be experiencing considerable managerial and programmatic issues across a range of its projects and programmes.

The irony here, as the report also notes, is that while this necessary reclassification has now occurred, more recent staff restructurings at both NASA and Boeing mean that neither organisation is in a position to properly drive the Starliner programme, with the result that the OIG casts doubt as to whether the craft will transition to an operational status ahead of the ISS being shut down in the latter half of 2030. As it stands, Starliner is supposed to complete four crew transfers to the ISS between 2026 and 2029, with perhaps only the 2028 and 2029 flights actually happening as planned.

Worse, the report notes that manage has under planned CCP requirements: even if the four Starliner mission do go ahead, they and the three SpaceX missions planned for the same period are insufficient to maintain a US presence on the ISS through until August 2028.  Therefore, NASA is likely to have no choice but to order further transfer flights, with SpaceX liable to be the recipient of the contracts.

In closing, the report notes that CCP was supposed to provide NASA with two crew-carrying vehicles capable of being operated cooperatively but somewhat competitively with one another, rolling contracts for missions being awarded on the basis of reliability and cost-effectiveness. This has not been the case; Starliner’s issues have meant that SpaceX has been the only game in town for crewed launches from US soil – as as such, they’ve had some degree of unilateral freedom to set the costs of flights sans competition. Meanwhile, and despite Boeing effectively having its original contrast reduce by US $500 million and covering much of the extra costs involved in trying to fix Starliner in the wake of the second uncrewed flight, the entire programme has become a shambolic mess.

NASA to Send Mars OPTIMISM to the Moon as a PROMISE?

On June 30th NASA hosted its second monthly Moon Base Update to provide information on Artemis and plans to establish a human presence at the Lunar South Pole. During the event it was confirmed that three private companies – Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines – have received further contracts under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme to deliver payload to the Moon in support of Artemis. However, the surprising aspect of the update was the announcement of plans to send a Mars rover to the Moon.

Formally called OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars), the vehicle in question is a full-sized, almost fully-equipped version of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers (just minus the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) which power the latter), the vehicle has been an essential tool for both rover missions, allowing engineers to trouble-shoot software, electrical and mechanical issues the two rovers have experienced in their travels on Mars.

Under the lunar plans, the vehicle is to be renamed PROMISE (Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration –  someone at NASA gets to stay up very late dreaming up acronyms!), and would be delivered to the Moon where it could operate largely autonomously. If the vehicle could be readied and flown in time, it could act as a valuable survey scout and mobile lab, gathering data and carrying out experiments that could greatly help in characterising the Lunar South Polar Region ahead of human landings. However, there are some issues around the idea:

• Loss of an engineering and software test-bed for the on-going Curiosity and Perseverance missions on Mars, potentially impacting their longevity should a significant issue with either develop in the future.
• The rover will likely require the development of a suitable lander system for delivering to the Moon, assuming the “skycrane” approach cannot be modified for use in lunar deployments. This will take time – potentially years.
• As a nuclear powered vehicle, it will require an RTG. These are no longer manufactured and in short supply. Use of one with PROMISE means denying its use on a deep-space mission.
• The rover will face a far wider range of surface temperatures on the Moon than its systems were designed for when operating on Mars. This means it will require substantially more in the way of heating in order for delicate systems to withstand the cold lunar nights and, conversely, a cooling system so those same systems don’t overheat during the heat of the lunar daytime.

As such, there are considerable pros and cons to the idea, so exactly where this idea goes will be worth following.

Updates

Blue Origin Updates and Unveils

Blue Origin has provided an update on efforts to get Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station back to an operational status following the catastrophic explosion of the NG-4 vehicle in May 2026 which wiped out the main launch pad and caused considerable surrounding damage, including to the vehicle and payload integration building, shown below.

As a part of this update, the company provided a video animation revealing how they plan to both equip the rebuilt launch facilities and prepare their New Glenn rockets – both the existing 7×2 vehicle and the in-development 9×4 (the numbers refer to the count of first and second stage engines on each version) – for launch.

Prior to the NG-4 static fire test explosion, Blue Origin utilised a 1,800 tonne Transporter Erector (TE) and a series of hydraulic actuators on the pad in order to get New Glenn to the pad and ready for launch. These were all completely destroyed in the May explosion. The TE would deliver the rocket to the pad horizontally, the actuators connected and then both rocket and TE would be raised to the vertical, the base of the TE becoming the rocket’s launch platform and the TE’s strongback its “launch tower”.

Under the new plans, a New Glenn will be moved to the launch pad by a simplified transporter and without the payload attached. A mobile crane will then raise it the the vertical and lift it onto a new permanent launch platform on the pad, with a new tower supporting the rocket through until launch.

The latter will actually be the lightning conducting tower which survived the NG-4 explosion, completely repurposed and expanded to fulfil the role of launch tower. It will include two halves of a rotating service platform designed to fit around the upper part of the rocket, allowing the payload within its fairings to be lifted into position by crane, with the necessary connections between it and the rocket then being made.

The overall plan is daring in scope and still ambitious, given that Blue Origin is sticking to their bullish view New Glenn will return to flight before the end of 2026.

This week also saw Blue Origin unveil their planned lunar Power Tower system for use on the Moon.

Whilst the preferred means of powering a lunar base is nuclear, there are some significant challenges to overcome to make this a reality. In the interim, solar power remains an option – at least to a limited degree, given nights on the Moon last 14 terrestrial days making any sole reliance on solar impossible. However, even when the Sun is above the horizon, it remains at a relative low angle in the sky, and this can limit the ability of ground-based solar arrays in gathering sunlight, as they can easily end up stuck in shadows for long periods of the lunar day.

The Blue Origin Power Tower, which can be delivered to the Moon on specialised Blue Moon MK1 landers – offers a possible means of continuous solar power during the lunar day by suspending “sails” of solar arrays from a 20+ metre tall deployable boom system, thus lifting them clear of areas of shadows, etc.

Exactly how effective such a system might be is open to debate, but the system could potentially help power smaller outposts and stations during lunar daylight hours and which are both beyond the reach of having power routed to them from nuclear reactors and do not need to be in constant use.

Swift Rescue Mission Launches

Following my previous Space Sunday report, the mission to rescue NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory finally launched on Friday, July 3rd after weather and a software issue conspired to delay the mission for three days.

The launch was flown out of the Ronald Reagan Space and Missile Test Range located on the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, the Pegasus XL rocket – the last one scheduled to be used – carried to an altitude of 12,000 metres by As I noted last time, the mission was air launched utilising a Pegasus XL rocket (the last mission the rocket will actually fly) carried aloft by Northrop Grumman’s modified Lockheed L-1011 aircraft Stargazer. At 08:36 UTC on July 3rd, the aircraft passed through the designated drop zone for the mission and the Pegasus XL was released, allowing it to fall safely clear of Stargazer before its rocket engine ignited sending it into low Earth orbit in just under 10 minutes.

Following deployment from Pegasus, the 4.9 metre long LINK deployed its solar arrays for power and is currently going through an initial systems check-out. Once this has been completed, the craft will fire its ion thrusters to gradually close on the Swift observatory. Once within range, LINK enter a 2-3 week observation of Swift, flying around it so that engineers can confirm the best point for LINK to attach itself itself to the observatory to commence the operation to raise Swift’s orbit and save it from burning-up in the upper atmosphere.

The lifting manoeuvre will last several months, boosting Swift from its present 300 km altitude to around 600 km, adding at least another 5 years to Swift’s mission in the process. Not bad for a mission that cost US $250 million and was supposed to last just 2 years when it commenced 22 years ago, and a rescue mission which has cost just US $30 million and was put together in just nine months.