Tag: Spaceflight

Virgin Orbit is – weather and systems permitting – due to make history on January 9th, 2023, with the first attempt to deliver a payload to orbit from UK soil (and Western Europe as a whole).

Clues that the launch – delayed from late 2022 due to final bureaucratic issues in the delay in a launch permit being issued by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) –  first appeared on Wednesday, January 4th, 2023, when maritime navigation warnings were issue by the UK and the Republic of Ireland identifying a region of open sea close to both denoted as “hazardous operations area for rocket launching”, and keen-eye observers noted it was consistent with the airspace identified as the drop zone for Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket.

The formal announcement of the launch attempt, which confirmed the warnings had been issued in relation to it, was made on Friday, January 6th, 2023. This indicates that the mission – called Start Me Up – is due to get underway at 22:16 UTC, when Virgin Orbit’s 747 carrier aircraft Cosmic Girl will take off from Spaceport Cornwall (aka Newquay Airport), the LauncherOne rocket mounted under the port wing, inboard of both engines.

The aircraft will then climb to an altitude of 11,000 metres, turning out over the sea to reach the launch zone where LauncherOne will be released and Cosmic Girl will enter a climbing turn, allowing the rocket to ignite its motor and accelerate into a near-vertical ascent to orbit. On board the rocket will be a total of nine smallsats with a total combined mass of roughly 100 kg or one-third of the launchers payload capability when launching into a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO – also referred to as polar orbit), or one-fifth its payload capacity when delivering payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO).

As well as being the first payload-to-orbit and rocket launch originating out of the UK / Western Europe, the mission marks the first joint launch mission by the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the British Ministry of Defence (MOD), managed under the guidance of the UK’s Space Operations Centre. Their intent is to place two cubesats, Prometheus 2A and 2B, into orbit to test the ability of such shoebox-sized satellites to perform a range of tasks including communications, GPS navigation data relay, and image gathering.

Following the launch, Cosmic Girl will return to Spaceport Cornwall and, later in the month, make a return flight to Virgin Orbit’s main operations centre at the Mojave Air and Spaceport, California, where it will remain for the rest of 2023 carrying out at least seven further LauncherOne flights. It is currently unclear when the next such flight will take place from UK soil.

NASA 2023 Budget Causes Tensions (As Usual)

The NASA budget for fiscal year 2023 has been set at US 25.4 billion in the Congressional Omnibus Spending Bill signed-off during the final session of the 2022 Congress. On the surface, the Bill represents an apparent 5.6% increase in the agency’s spending over 2022, but comes in at less that the US $26 billion requested by the Biden Administration and initially matched by the US Senate. As such, it is a compromise between the proposed Senate budget and the somewhat lower House budget proposes for the agency.

In terms of the human Exploration programme, the budget sees a US $88 million decrease in spending on both for the Space Launch System and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), which is in line with NASA’s proposed spending on both vehicles.

This is more than offset by an increase of US $300 million in spending on the Human Landing System (HLS) required to transport crews between lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon. However, and of potential interest is the fact that none of this money is to be directed towards the use of the SpaceX HLS despite NASA indicating it was looking to exercise “Option B” on that programme for a second lunar landing beyond Artemis 3, the money instead being solely directed towards additional funding for a n additional (i.e. replacement, in the long term) HLS vehicle.

No budget is (again)is directly provided for the Lunar Gateway station; however, the budget report specifies NASA shall, before the end of the first quarter 2023, provide a breakdown on how it proposes to spend the US $2.63 billion of funding defined as the Artemis Development Programme,  which may offer a breakdown of proposes spending on the Gateway. In addition, part of this $2.63 billion may be used in the development if a “habitation systems programme office” to provide recommendations on the capabilities and technologies required to develop sustainable lunar surface habitats.

In terms of space sciences, the budget initially appears to offer an increase in spending over 2022. However, this again hides some harder realities. The total budget allowance for science missions is US $3.2 billion – some US $80 million more than 2022. However, the majority of this increase  – as per the 5.6% total increase in NASA’s budget – will be absorbed in costs incurred as a result of the COVID pandemic (which also impacted the 2022 budget), coupled with cost increases linked to inflation.

This means that in practical terms, NASA’s science operations are under enormous pressure. While some relief has been gained through missions such as the Mars Sample Return mission being pushed back by two years (2026 to 2028), allowing their costs to be spread more, NASA is also having to juggle other missions.

As a result, the agency has already announced the VERITAS mission to Venus will now launch “no earlier” that 2032 rather than the planned 2029, to allow the Psyche asteroid mission to achieve its planned October 2023 launch date. Elsewhere, the triple Earth Observation Science missions of Terra, Aqua and Aura, thought to have their funding secured through what is effectively their 21st year of operations, have been asked to submit justifications for their continued funding through 2023 and beyond, despite the fact that, while  all three satellites are running low in station-keeping propellants and are thus drifting slightly in their orbits, they continue to return excellent data on the global environment.

Some of the pressure on science budgets has caused both the Senate and the White House to try to intervene. In a joint letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), they have requested an additional $150 million be provided each to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in order to support ground and space-based telescopes. If awarded. the NSF’s extra $150 million would go directly to continued funding of the prestigious Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the massive 25.5 metre diameter primary mirror optical telescope currently under construction at the  Las Campanas Observatory facility, Chile.

Overall, the 2023 budget is being championed as the 10th successive increase in NASA’s budget, lifting it from US 17.7 billion in 2014 to US $25.4 billion – an apparent increase of almost US $8 billion. However, when inflation alone is accounted for, this amounts to just a US $2.54 billion increase in the same period, the majority of which has been taken up by increases in labour, materials, and other costs.

Nor is this money devoted to just highly-visible projects and space missions; the NASA budget covers a broad range of science, aerospace and R&D programmes, as well as STEM activities, materials development, small business funding and grants (aerospace and science related), university research grants, and more. All of which mean that, in real terms and accounting for inflation, NASA – despite the greater demand being placed on it to develop ever more complex human space capabilities – continues to be a highly cost-effective government organisation.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: a launch, a budget, a station & an astronaut” →

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has started preparations to have some of the samples it has gathered to be returned to Earth for extensive analysis.

Since its arrival on Mars in February 2021, the rover has been exploring Jezero Crater and collecting samples of sub-surface rocks in much the same manner as its older sister, Curiosity, which arrived within Gale Crater half a world away on Mars 12 years ago.

Some of these samples have been subject to on-board analysis by the rover’s internal lab, but for the most part they have been sealed in special tubes stored in an on-board cache, part of a total volume of 43 such tubes it carried to Mars tucked within its underside.

The idea behind the tubes – one of which has been used to collect a sample of the Martian atmosphere, and five more contain various materials intended to capture particulates in the ambient environment – is that they would form one or more sample caches Perseverance could deposit at locations where they could later be collected for return to Earth by a European-American sample-return mission.

Thus, on December 21st, 2022, the rover started building the first of these caches with the “drop” of the first tube to be selected for surface caching. The operation involved the rover parking at a recognisable feature within Jezero crater – dubbed “Three Forks” – and then rotating the rotunda of sample tubes so that the selected tube – containing samples of igneous rock collected at the start of 2022 – could be released and dropped to the Martian surface. Then, to confirm the operate had succeeds, and the tube wasn’t snagged somewhere in the mechanism, NASA commanded the rover to use its robot arm to peer down between its wheels and use the camera mounted on the end of the arm to confirm the position of the tube and check its overall condition.

Somewhat resembling a light sabre from the Star Wars franchise, the sample tubes are made up of a mix of materials designed to protect their contents from the rigours of being placed out in the harsh Martian environment and and rick of contamination by solar radiation or by the future process of transferring them to the vehicles that will be used to return them to Earth.

This resemblance to a light sabre is something that has not been lost on the mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I’ve been holding out my hand to my computer screen to see if the tube will be transported from Mars, since as director, I’m pretty sure the Force is with me, right? OK, so no joy so far, but I’ll keep trying!

– Laurie Leshlin, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory director

In all, ten of the 22 tubes so far used by the rover will be dropped around the “Three Forks” location – each one in its own drop point to facilitate easier pick-up. The second of the ten – containing the longest core sample thus far collected by the rover, comprising sedimentary rock taken from the edge of an ancient outflow delta in the crater – was dropped on December 22nd. A second cache of tubes will be established elsewhere in the crater at a later period in the rover’s mission to offer an alternate collection point for samples.

The current plan for the sample-return mission (July 2022) requires an orbiter / return vehicle to be supplied by the European Space Agency and delivered to Mars orbit in May 2028. At around the same time, a Sample Retrieval Lander built for NASA, will also arrive on Mars relatively close the the selected sample cache and carrying an sample ascent vehicle and two small helicopters similar to Ingenuity, already operating on Mars in concert with Perseverance.

Perseverance, which will have returned to the cache site in the interim, will then collect the sample tubes and pass them to the lander vehicle, which will then use a special robot arm to stow them in the ascent vehicle. Should Perseverance be unable to carry out the collection and transfer, the two helicopters will do so instead. Once all the samples have been collected, the ascent vehicle will launch to a rendezvous with the orbiter, and the containment unit with the sample transferred to it for the return to Earth, arriving in 2033.

Goodnight, InSight

As one team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory were celebrating the success of the latest phase of their mission, another team was saying a final “farewell” to their mission vehicle.

Having operated for a total of four years on Mars – two years longer than its primary mission period – the NASSA InSight lander’s mission was officially brought to an end on December 21st, 2022, its mission team no longer able to communicate with it.

Whilst not as exciting as an ambulating rover mission, InSight – short for  INterior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – was a massively ambitious mission, full details of which can be found in Space Sunday: insight on InSight. As the name suggests, the overall aim of the mission was to gain information on the processes going on deep within Mars.

To achieve this, the lander notably included two experiments it had to transfer from its deck to the surface of Mars, post-landing. One of these experiments, the Heatflow and Physical Properties Package (HP³) and involving a self-propelled “Mole” designed to investigate how much heat is emanating from Mars’ core, did not fare too well, the Mole becoming stuck very early in its attempt to burrow into the ground.

However, the second surface package, SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) – the primary mission element for the lander – proved to be highly successful in its goal of recording details of “marsquakes” and other sound-generating events within and on the planet (such as recording meteor impact later traced to a new 150m diameter crater on the planet), allowing scientists build up a clearer understanding of the planet’s internal structure and activity.

In all, SEIS measured over 1300 seismic events in 4 years, marking Mars as still being geologically active deep below its surface. Fifty of these events were “loud” enough to reveal information about their location on Mars, with a large cluster of them coming from Cerberus Fossae, a region of the planet having been thought to be geologically active relatively recently in its 4.5 billion year history, with many “young” surface features.

SEIS also showed that the Martian core is molten but is larger than thought and less dense than the lower crust. Lighter elements mixed with molten iron in the core lower its density, which explains how the core can still be molten even after cooling considerably.

As a static lander, InSight always had a limited lifespan; as a solar-powered vehicle, its panels would inevitably become so coated in dust and subject to deterioration in the harsh Martian environment that they would no longer be able to generated sufficient power to charge the lander’s batteries.  However, it had been hoped that dust devils, tiny Martian tornadoes created during the changing of the Martian seasons, might help “clean” the panels in much they same way they have with the solar-powered MER rovers. Unfortunately, this was not the case – possibly because the 2m diameter solar arrays used by the lander were simply too big for passing dust devils to effectively blow accumulated dust off of them.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: Mars missions and the Soyuz leak” →

Looking back at the Apollo era now, it is incredible to think that the entire project was conceived and – in terms of its lunar aspirations –  executed in just 13 years, with the missions to the land humans on the Moon all taking place within a span of just 42 months. It was originally initiated in early 1960 under the Eisenhower administration as a means for the US to expand its space capabilities by providing a vehicle system capable of being used in the construction of a space station and, eventually, of carrying humans to the Moon. But in 1961 the project was co-opted as the best means of achieving President Kennedy’s desire to see America “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.

In doing so, Apollo set in motion the biggest single increase in NASA’s capabilities ever witnessed, giving rise to the facilities – such as the Merritt Island Launch Operations Centre with its massive VAB and two launch facilities at pad 39A and Pad 39B, and the sprawling mass of the Johnson Space Centre in Texas (often colloquially referred to as “Mission Control”) – people take for granted today as the most public elements of NASA’s infrastructure. Even so, by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, the programme had already started towards closure: Apollo 20 had already been diverted for use in the Skylab project, while Apollo 18 and 19 would be cancelled early in 1971, leaving Apollo 17 as the last Apollo flight to the Moon.

A “J-Class” mission, Apollo 17 was one of only three of the lunar flights designated as being for “extensive scientific investigation”, the missions up to and including Apollo 14 being focused primarily on the task of making precision lunar landings, with all science activities running secondary to that. It was also the only Apollo mission to the Moon to carry a full trained scientist in the form of geologist Harrison H. Schmitt.

Initially, Schmitt had been slated for Apollo 18, but when that mission was cancelled, there was a push from the science community to have him moved to Apollo 17 – a push resisted by mission commander Eugene Cernan, who (understandably) wanted to keep his original team of himself, Ronald Evans and Joe Engle. However, Cernan’s own leadership of the mission was seen as questionable by some at NASA after pilot error on his part caused during a training flight resulted in a helicopter crash; so when it became clear the choice was to replace Engle with Schmitt or have the who crew replaced, Cernan capitulated – and he and Schmitt went on to form a strong working relationship and friendship.

The only night-time launch for an Apollo lunar surface mission, Apollo 17 proceeded precisely on schedule despite a brief launch-pad delay. Planned as the longest of the Apollo missions at 12 days and 14 hours, it would also become the most successful of the three lunar science flights for Apollo, with the science work commencing whist en route to the Moon, with the crew carrying out observations of Earth and its weather patterns. Also carried aboard the Command Module were 5 additional crew members: pocket mice the crew unofficially named Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum and Phooey. Carried in their own self-contain life support unit, they were part of an experiment to investigate exposure to cosmic rays in interplanetary space, although the findings of the experiment were ultimately inconclusive.

This science work took a further turn when, as the CSM and LM combination approached the Moon, a panel on the side of the Service Module was jettisoned to expose the contents of the Scientific Instruments Module (SIM), a battery of lunar science packages Evans would monitor whilst his crewmates were on the Moon’s surface.

twenty-four hours after entering orbit around the Moon, Schmitt and Cernan boarded the Lunar Module Challenger, departing the Command Module America on December 11th, 1972 to touch down within the Taurus-Littrow valley at 19:54:58 UTC that day. The landing marked the start of some 75 hours on the lunar surface. During this time, Cernan and Schmitt carried out 3 EVAs, two of them making use of the third Lunar Rover vehicle to the carried to the Moon.

The rover was deployed during the first EVA, with Cernan managing to repeat an error made by John Young on Apollo 16, accidentally ripping off one of the dust guards over the rover’s wheels such that both he and Schmitt would be showered in lunar “fines” (dust) kicked up by the wheel when the rover was in motion despite efforts to make repairs under Young’s supervision. In addition, this EVA also saw the two men deploy the surface experiments designed to be used within the vicinity of the Lunar Module.

The second EVA, on December 12th set a series of records for lunar surface operations: the furthest distance travelled from the LM (7.6 km), the longest distance travelled in a single EVA overall, the most time spent of the surface of the Moon in a single EVA (7 hours, 37 minutes) and the largest haul of samples from a single EVA to that point – 34 Kg. Along the way they visited several sites – Nansen Crater, at the foot of the South Massif; Shorty crater, and Camelot crater,

This EVA would go down in history for other reasons as well. At Shorty Crater, Schmitt came across orange soil, never before seen on the Moon. Initially it was thought he’d come across a volcanic vent in the lunar crust, but subsequent analysis of the material’s tiny volcanic beads revealed it has been formed some 3.5 billion years ago during the Moon’s volcanic period, and was exposed when a small asteroid slammed into the Moon to form Shorty a mere 20 million years ago.

Between Nansen and Shorty, the crew also stopped at a then-unnamed crater where Schmitt stumbled and fell in an awkward pirouette. While the fall left him uninjured, it prompted duty CapCom Robert Parker to quip to the crew that the Houston Ballet had called, requesting Schmitt audition for them on his return to Earth (in 2019, the crater was officially named Ballet Crater in honour of Schmitt’s tumble). Also during the EVA, both men (led by Schmitt) offered their own take on the popular song I Was Strolling in the Park One Day, which more than anything else revealed the bond that had grown between them.

The final Apollo era lunar EVA began at 22:35 UTC on December 13th, 1972, carrying out surveys of three “stations”: the North Massif and the Sculptured Hills; a house-sized boulder Cernan dubbed “Tracy’s Rock” after his daughter; and Van Serg crater. Whilst short in distance that the second EVA, this one set a further new record for samples collected – 66 Kg, including the 8 Kg sample designated 70215, a small part of which is now displayed at the Smithsonian Institution as one of the few samples of lunar rock the general public can touch.

At the end of the EVA, Schmitt and Cernan unveiled a plaque mounted on the side of the Lunar Module’s descent stage, commemorating both their own time on the Moon and the Apollo mission as a whole. Schmitt then climbed back into the LM, leaving Cernan as The Last Man On the Moon, expressing some of his thoughts thus:

I’m on the surface; and, as I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future … And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

– Eugene Cernan, December 13th, 1972

Cernan and Schmitt successfully lifted off from the lunar surface in the ascent stage of the LM on December 14th, 1972 at 22:54 UTC. Following a 7-minute ascent, they entered lunar orbit and coasted to a rendezvous with America, where Evans had been busy with his own work. Following docking and transfer, Challenger was jettisoned at 04:51 UTC on December 15th, 1972, to be successful de-orbited to crash on the Moon’s surface where seismometers left by several Apollo mission recorded the impact.

While en route back to Earth, Evans completed one of only three “deep space” EVAs so far performed, and the last EVA of the Apollo missions to the Moon. At 296,000 km from Earth, he departed the Command Module, watched over by Harrison Schmitt, and retrieved the film cassettes from the cameras in the SIM on the Service Module.

America re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean at 19:25 UTC, December 19th, 1972 just 6.4 km from the recovery ship USS Ticonderoga. The splashdown brought the Apollo lunar missions to a close. However, 5 more missions would fly under the Apollo banner: the four Skylab missions between 1973 and 1974 (which included the final flight of an Apollo Saturn V rocket), and the lS half of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in 1975.

Apollo 17 marked the last time Cernan flew into space, and the first and last times Schmitt and Evans did likewise. In 1976, Cernan departed NASA for the private sector, but maintained strong views on the direction of the US space programme, being highly critical of the Obama administration’s cancellation of the Constellation Programme and NASA’s move to rely on private sector resources. He passed away in January 2017, and is the subject of an obituary in these pages,

Ronald Evans remained at NASA until March 1977, performing key roles in both the ASTP mission and in the development of the space shuttle system. He passed away in 1990 after suffering a heart attack in his sleep. Harrison Schmitt was the first of the three to depart NASA, doing so in 1975 to pursue his political aspirations as a Republican Senator for New Mexico (1976-82). He became chair of the NASA advisory council in 2005  but then abruptly resigned 2008, clashing with NASA on the subject of climate change – of which he is a fervent denier (going so far as to state in 2013 that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere are “good” because they allow us “to grow more crops”). He has also aligned himself with extremist conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones.

Artemis 1 Comes Home

While it was not planned this way, fate determined that the 50th anniversary of Apollo17 landing on the Moon would be shared with the return to Earth of the first of NASA’s next generation of crew-carrying, lunar orbit capable vehicles, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

I’ve covered the 26-day mission of Artemis 1 over the last few editions of Space Sunday. In many respects, it is the “reverse book-end” of Apollo 17; while the latter brought America’s first forays to the Moon to an end, Artemis 1 opens the door to a far more ambitious, international, and potentially far-reaching return to the Moon.

The mission, launched on November 16th, 2022, sent the Orion vehicle on a wide, slow cruise out to the Moon, which it transited past on November 21st, to enter a distant retrograde orbit (DRO), where it remained until December 5th, when a second close pass by the Moon allowed it to fire its main engine and start its way back to Earth.

The extended nature of the mission was to allow the systems on Orion to be thoroughly checked out over the duration of a typical mission duration, and to gather data on how well the vehicle protects the crew from radiation in the interplanetary medium – and the likely impact of exposure to the likes of cosmic radiation on humans who will spend 20-30+ days away from the protection of Earth’s magnetic fields.

Approaching Earth on December 11th, 2022, the Orion capsule separated from is its European-built Service Module at 17:00 UTC, immediately performing a “skip” re-entry. This saw the capsule descend to around 60 km above the Earth before rising once more to 90 km to start its “full” re-entry. This “skip” manoeuvre allowed the vehicle to shave off its huge velocity – 40,000 km/h – in stages, both reducing  the over G-load the vehicle would face in a single go whilst also offering a greater flexibility in selecting a  splashdown location should there be an issue with the primary.

Splashdown came at 17:40 UTC bringing to an end a test flight covering a total distance of 2.3 million km. Prior to striking the water, the last of the vehicle’s velocity was reduced through the use of no fewer than 11 parachutes, opened in groups during its descent through the denser atmosphere.

While the mission will be subject to an extensive post-flight analysis, the general consensus is that SLS rocket and the Orion vehicle passed the test with more-or-less flying colours, helping to ensure things remain on course for the crewed mission of Artemis 2, due to take place in May 2024 over 10 days, head of the first planned lunar landing for Artemis 3, currently planned for launch in 2025.