Space Stuff and Launch Info

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It's finally there! FAA has issued a mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for Starship launches.
SpaceX will have to take "over 75" (FAA statement) different actions to mitigate the environmental impact. Here is the full document. Surprisingly, the executive summary has three pages more than the full document.

Many actions are "SpaceX will continue doing what they already do", "SpaceX will keep following existing laws", or "SpaceX will pay $5000 per year to this environmental protection program" or "in case of an accident, SpaceX will ...". The piping plover got a quarterly beach cleanup to be performed by SpaceX, although SpaceX doesn't do anything on the beach. Some of the actions are absurdly specific:

SpaceX will continue to offer enhanced satellite monitoring via solar powered Starlink to the Peregrine Fund for continuous video coverage of northern aplomado falcon habitat to aid in biological monitoring.
[...]
SpaceX will notify TxDOT that maintenance may be warranted when vegetation along [highway] SH 4 exceeds approximately 9 inches

Can't launch Starship if you only notify them at 10 inches!

We'll see how long it takes to implement the items that need action.

Article at The Verge

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A Cargo Dragon flight originally scheduled for June 10 was delayed because of a valve issue. It will be exchanged, the new launch date is now (no earlier than) July 11. Statement by SpaceX

 

[etudiant]

Actually a nice PR opportunity there with the Piping Plovers.
They are absurdly cute, especially the chicks, but also quite endangered.
They nest on the beach and get crushed by people who drive there, because they hunker down and rely on their excellent camouflage rather than running away. So if SpaceX helps them survive by protecting their beach habitat, it's a big win with birders, most of whom tend to be older and politically active. Plus it is not costly to hire a naturalist and to patrol a beach.

 

[anorlunda]

https://interestingengineering.com/nasa-worried-about-its-iconic-launch-pad-39a

At first, I thought this was yet another case of government trying to torture SpaceX. But upon reflection, I see their point.

SpaceX's methods include many trial and error failures. NASA's methods are to try to prevent any failures. We've seen that demonstrated in the case of rockets. But the same applies to lauch pads.

If SpaceX damaged or destroyed a launch pad, they would just build a new one. But NASA's 39A at Cape Canaveral is not designed to be expendable.

Is there no place on Earth where SpaceX could do their stuff without interference by governments?

 

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SpaceX bought two former oil platforms with the idea to convert them to Starship launch pads. Launching far away from the coast avoids most environmental concerns and almost all proximity issues. These platforms are currently low priority - they focus on initial launches from Boca Chica, with launches from Florida once the ship design is more stable and NASA is happy with its safety. It's possible SpaceX will upgrade their other Florida launch pad to handle Falcon Heavy and Crew launches if something happens at 39A.

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There were three Falcon 9 launches in the last 48 hours, one from each pad. The first one set a couple of nice records (100th reflight of a booster, 50th consecutive landing success, first booster to fly 13 times) while launching another batch of Starlink satellites, the second one launched a German surveillance satellite. The third one is a big mystery. We know it launched a communication satellite for Globalstar, but it's likely that it also launched a military payload:

• Commercial launches are usually announced months or even years in advance but this one only showed up one month in advance, as late as possible.
• The commercial satellite has a mass of only 700 kg, which is essentially nothing for Falcon 9. Despite that the booster landed on a drone ship, which is typically just needed for payloads above ~10,000 kg.
• We usually see a view of the satellite(s) at fairing deployment and/or later into the second stage flight, but didn't get video this time, not even a view of the engine. They finally showed a video of the satellite almost two hours after the launch, after two orbital maneuvers, and there was some additional hardware that looks like a deployment mechanism for other satellites.
• The orbit of this satellite is very close to the target orbit of Zuma, the mysterious 2018 launch that might or might not have failed.

Here is some more discussion
If some larger satellite has been deployed there is a chance that amateurs will spot it and upload orbital parameters to databases in the next days.

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A second wet dress rehearsal (WDR) for Artemis 1 is currently in progress, fueling is expected to happen on Monday morning local time. If nothing goes wrong the rocket can move back to the assembly building to be fully configured for flight, roll back to the launch pad and launch in late August, but we won't get a launch date until NASA has checked the WDR results.

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CAPSTONE is now planned for June 25, Rocket Lab's first launch to the Moon.

 

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Artemis WDR made it to t-29 seconds, stopping 20 seconds earlier as planned because of a hydrogen leak. They'll remove the fuel and decide how to proceed. Apparently oxygen loading on the upper stage had a problem, too, and a small fire started from hydrogen burning nearby.
We got more info about future plans, too. The nominal plan is still a crewed flight 2024, a first landing 2025, and then one flight per year from 2027 on, landing on the Moon each year except 2027 and 2029 (these flights would assemble the Gateway space station only) - but delays are likely.

The Globalstar launch also had four secret payloads. As pointed out in replies, a previous rideshare mission seemed to have something similar, but for that one we had a video feed. Note the similarly-looking structure at the front.
Could be Starlink-derived military satellites.

 

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CAPSTONE launched successfully and started its phasing burns to reach the Moon. It's powered by a very small engine so it needs several Earth orbits to get there.
Edit: One burn left

27 Falcon 9 launches in the first half of the year, still keeping the 1/week average.
53 successful landings in a row now - that's better than the launch track record of most rockets, and landing is harder.

China is preparing the first laboratory module for a launch to its space station (July 23).

Many new rockets:

• After a failure in October 2021, the second launch of Nuri was a success (June 21) - the first fully South Korean rocket to reach orbit.
• The maiden flight of Vega-C is planned for July 7. It's an upgraded Vega rocket.
• After a failed flight in September 2021, the second flight of Alpha is planned for July 17.
• ABL Space Systems wants to launch its first rocket August 27.
• The maiden flight of SLS is planned for late August as the wet dress rehearsal achieved most of its objectives

 

[mfb]

CAPSTONE has a communication issue
Deployment was successful and initially NASA got data from the spacecraft , but then communication stopped. It's not clear why. There are several days until the next course correction is needed.

Vega-C was delayed to July 13.

 

[etudiant]

CAPSTONE has a communication issue
Deployment was successful and initially NASA got data from the spacecraft , but then communication stopped. It's not clear why. There are several days until the next course correction is needed.

Vega-C was delayed to July 13.

Solar panels did not deploy, so died when the batteries ran out.

 

[berkeman]

Solar panels did not deploy, so died when the batteries ran out.

Source? This is the latest update I see from yesterday:

Following CAPSTONE’s initial deployment on July 4, the spacecraft successfully deployed solar arrays, was stabilized, and began charging its onboard battery. CAPSTONE’s propulsion system was also readied for the spacecraft ’s first maneuver. CAPSTONE made initial contact with the DSN ground station in Madrid, Spain, followed by a partial contact with the Goldstone ground station in California. From these contacts, mission operators have been able to determine CAPSTONE’s approximate position and velocity in space.

As a result of the communications issues, CAPSTONE’s first trajectory correction maneuver – originally scheduled for the morning of July 5 – has been delayed. This maneuver is the first in a series that are designed to make small corrections to increase the accuracy of the transfer orbit to the Moon, and the spacecraft remains on the overall intended ballistic lunar transfer while awaiting this trajectory correction.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022...on-communications-issues-with-nasas-capstone/

 

[etudiant]

Source? This is the latest update I see from yesterday:https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022...on-communications-issues-with-nasas-capstone/

Happy to say I was wrong, source was a twitter comment, obviously false.

 

[Oldman too]

The latest.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/06/n...happy-and-healthy-after-communications-issue/

Happy to say I was wrong, source was a twitter comment, obviously false.

This must have something to do with twitter rumors.
"It seems the anomaly occurred during the second ground station pass with DSN, when CAPSTONE made partial contact with an antenna in California. As SpaceNews noted, amateur satellite observers first noticed the lack of downlink from CAPSTONE, causing a minor flurry of panic on Twitter. Due to the lack of communications, the first trajectory correction maneuver — the first in a series of maneuvers to ensure the spacecraft stays on an accurate trajectory to the moon — was delayed."

 

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Mission Team Determines Cause of Communications Issues for NASA’s CAPSTONE
User error and a software bug that prevented the spacecraft from recovering automatically.

 

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Successful maiden flight of Vega-C.
The maiden flight of SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) failed due to a communication issue - it left the satellites in an orbit that's too low to be useful.

Astra announced to retire Rocket 3, which had only 2 successful launches in 7 attempts, and focus on the larger Rocket 4. We'll see if they get enough funding to make that work.

Artemis 1 is still planned for August 29.Cygnus (ISS resupply) will fly on Falcon 9, with three launches booked.
It's normally launching on Antares, but that uses Russian engines so it only has two flights left. They are looking for alternative engine options (also reported in that tweet), but that will need more time.

NASA tries to avoid relying on a single rocket/ spacecraft (Dragon also uses Falcon 9 of course), but in this case there is no good alternative. All Atlas V launches are already booked and there are no free Vulcan launches in the near future. Falcon 9 launches once per week anyway, SpaceX can simply replace a Starlink launch with an external customer, even on short notice.

 

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The rocket for Artemis 1 has been moved to the launch pad again, this time in preparation for launch (still planned for August 29).

https://www.space.com/artemis-1-nasa-science-rocket-rollout-webcasts

 

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The Flight Readiness Review for Artemis 1 was successful. I started a thread.

 

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Satellite-based cellphone coverage is becoming reality. The bandwidth will be tiny, but good enough to send text messages. That's all you need e.g. in an emergency. Maybe phone calls will work, too. Satellites don't have dead spots and text messages don't need non-stop connection, so even a few of them can provide emergency services everywhere (with regulatory approval in that country). No extra hardware required, current phones already have everything that's needed.

• Lynk Global launched a few test satellites and wants to launch thousands of satellites in the future.
• BlueWalker 3 by AST SpaceMobile will launch September 7. It's massive when unfolded. After this prototype the company wants to launch about 240 (even larger) operational satellites. It's not yet clear how customers will get access to these two services - it's likely they will cooperate with local phone carriers, country by country.
• T-Mobile (US) and SpaceX announced a cooperation to use a small part of T-Mobile's spectrum on Starlink satellites. They want to start a beta test in late 2023 with the first next-generation ("v2") Starlink satellites. Here is the announcement. The same satellites can be used in other countries as well, pending approval and cooperation with some local carrier.

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A bit over three days until the launch of Artemis-1.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Satellite-based cellphone coverage is becoming reality.

That is very surprising to me. Terrestrial coverage is relatively easy, for a given available spectrum space because the service area of each base station is well defined, small and more or less permanent. Satellites would need much more directive antennae (with very good sidelobe performance) to provide that level of 'subscriber selectivity' and channel reuse.
I guess it all depends on what user bandwidth is adequate and commercially viable but there are fundamentals which will always limit the usefulness and money-making capability of such a system. I read in one link of "planned 5G coverage". That would be very surprising unless cells could be kept to their present size - multiple transmitters on each satellite?

But my intuitive 'numbers' may be way out for an accurate appreciation of the possibilities.

I loved the Steve Jobs black T shirts on the launch video. It went on far too long to hold my interest.

 

[Rive]

Satellite-based cellphone coverage is becoming reality.

That's one big stretch out there, I think. The best can be said about this would be something like 'satellite based emergency contact ability'

 

[sophiecentaur]

That's one big stretch out there, I think. The best can be said about this would be something like 'satellite based emergency contact ability'

Not exactly big bucks, though(?).

 

[Rive]

Sure makes the equipment cost of a rescue request lower, and may make many instrumental applications cheaper (remote sensors, for example: on sea or anywhere far away), but I can't see the big bucks in this either.

 

[hmmm27]

Could've used some sat coverage the other day : "lost in the woods" for an hour, or so. Not a big deal... okay, not even a small deal (the sun was out, it was daytime, and it turned out I was exactly where I thought I was), but more than a bit annoying that my cell-based compass and cell-based map showed North in two different directions.

 

[anorlunda]

The Garmin Inreach has been around for years. It uses Iridium low-earth satellites. Sailors use them out at sea. Hikers use them when trekking the wilderness. Parents use them to track their kids.

The bandwidth is low, but the value is high. Travelers use it to send a "bread crumb trail" record of their travels to a website (I think once every 10 minutes). They also send and receive SMS messages, and receive weather forecasts (especially marine forecasts for sailors). They have a SOS button to call for help. That one bit of information (SOS), paired with your location has enough value to save your life.

I used to carry an EPIRB beacon on my boat. It cost $3000, and it needed a new $1000 battery every 3 years. It was bulky and heavy. It provide zero value if there was no emergency. Inreach type devices offer much more value for much less money. They fit in your pocket. They duplicate all the EPIRB's capabilities except for the short-range homing beacon on 121.5MHz.

Here is a sample Inreach message from my email inbox back in 2017.

Going downwind for 9 days was an exhilarating experience and we managed to keep abreast of the big boys in the rally

View the location or send a reply to [redacted]: https://inreach.garmin.com/textmessage/txtmsg?extId=822b26a3-b71c-47d3-9349-7b1c1d11a1d4

[redacted] sent this message from: Lat 23.090987 Lon -82.493441

Do not reply directly to this message. This message was sent to you using the inReach two-way satellite communicator with GPS. To learn more, visit http://explore.garmin.com/inreach.

 

[mfb]

multiple transmitters on each satellite?

The satellites have phased array antennas with many (likely thousands) small transmitters.

It's not a replacement of terrestrial coverage, it's an addition for regions where building cell phone towers is not realistic, or as temporary emergency access after a catastrophe, when there is no power or the cell phone towers have been destroyed. A cell phone is everything you'll need to be in contact with others, no matter where (if approved by that country).

Sure, Iridium&co offer that level of connectivity today, but it's expensive and needs custom hardware.

 

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NASA bought five more Crew Dragon flights (Crew-10 to Crew-14). That will cover the demand for the ISS until its retirement assuming the US maintains a long-term crew of 4 people. If e.g. Russia stops sending Soyuz crews then it is possible that NASA wants to send more.

Here is an interesting comparison:

For development of Starliner, two demo missions and 6 operational ISS crew exchange missions Boeing was awarded $4.39 or $4.49 billion (sources disagree).

For development of Crew Dragon, two demo missions and 14 operational crew exchange missions SpaceX was awarded $4.93 billion. More than twice as many flights for almost the same total price. And it's a system that is already flying routinely while Starliner still hasn't flown any astronauts.

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60% chance of acceptable weather for Artemis 1 tomorrow.

 

[mfb]

Satellite-based cellphone coverage is becoming reality.

Apple has announced emergency SOS features for the next iPhone generation. Apple has an agreement with Globalstar which operates 24 satellites in low Earth orbit. It's only for emergency signals transmitting a few bytes of data, it needs the phone oriented in a specific way, it could need a minute to work, and initially it will only cover the US and parts of Canada. But it's following the general trend: emergency communication anywhere, anytime, via satellites. In a few years we might see this working in most places.

 

[Rive]

it's a system that is already flying routinely while Starliner still hasn't flown any astronauts.

I wonder what would happen if they miss the ISS with their six paid crew missions

 

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Firefly's second attempt to reach orbit with their Alpha rocket (630 kg to low Earth orbit) is scheduled for today 22:00 UTC, that's in 5 hours (live coverage e.g. here). It's a 4 hour launch window. The first flight in September 2021 failed due to an engine problem. They fly the same mixture of small payloads for technology demonstration, and even copies of the same satellites where the customers managed to build another one.
Edit: Scrubbed, next attempt a day layer.

ABL Space Systems aims at a maiden flight of RS1 (1350 kg to low Earth orbit) in 1-2 weeks, no fixed date yet.

Terran 1 (1250 kg to low Earth orbit), built by Relativity Space, could also make its maiden flight this month, but we don't have a launch date and it has been delayed often.

This month could more than double the number of US startups with active and successful small rockets (RocketLab and Virgin Orbit fly their rockets routinely).

Not a small rocket: The next launch opportunity for SLS (Artemis 1) is now September 23, in a launch window opening 10:47 UTC.

 

[sophiecentaur]

@mfb keep 'em coming. Much appreciated.

 

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Engine failure during NS-23, an uncrewed suborbital flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule. The capsule used its escape system and landed safely.

Video. The timestamp is set to 10 seconds before liftoff, engine failure happens at 1:04. We see about a second of extra fire that shouldn't be there before the much brighter flame from the launch escape system takes over.

Article

It's likely the booster crashed (or got destroyed in flight), but nothing specific from Blue Origin so far (this happened just 2 hours ago).

 

[berkeman]

Wow, that escape system rocket fired very quickly, which I guess is by design.

 

[mfb]

Still nothing more specific about New Shepard. We might have to wait for the results of the investigation before we hear more.

Space Launch System tanking test is ongoing, if it works well there is a chance to launch September 27 or October 2.

DART will hit Dimorphos on Monday (23:14 UTC). After billions of years of asteroids bombarding Earth, we finally strike back!
It's accompanied by a cubesat to watch the collision. NASA will provide live coverage on YouTube. We should quickly get confirmation that a collision happened, but studying the change in momentum could take months.
The spacecraft Hera is planned to reach the system in 2026 to study it in more detail.

 

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6 hours 15 minutes until the DART impact.

DART is currently ~140,000 km away and its target Dimorphos is still too dim to be visible, so it's still navigating based on Didymos.

Live coverage will be linked here: https://www.nasa.gov/

 

[anorlunda]

The NASA FAQ on the Dart mission doesn't cover my question.

When will we get confirmed data about the magnitude of the deflection achieved? [I imagine several months from now.]

 

[mfb]

Months is what I heard, too. It's difficult to see it from Earth, we fully rely on the orbital period to change slightly which means the difference in position will accumulate over time.

The larger Didymos is a bit under 1 km in diameter.

 

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Impact!

Last frame where it was visible fully, they had some extremely high resolution images of the impact site in the last seconds (after the picture I copied).

Images that will be studied for months, because the next time we will see it up close will be 2026.

Images from the cubesat should arrive over the next days. It's smaller and the images are less urgent so it has a much smaller bandwidth than the primary mission.

 

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As seen from South Africa

As seen by ATLAS (Hawaii? also South Africa)

Last seconds combined in a video

 

[sophiecentaur]

As seen from South Africa

As seen by ATLAS (Hawaii?)

Last seconds combined in a video

That clip from ATLAS will be used in every submission for project funding for years. It looks just like a Zap moment - straight to the hearts of the committee.
The movie suggests that the whole target was broken up. Presumably the cube sat will show the details..

 

[mfb]

It shouldn't have enough energy to break it up, and I don't see how you would get such a pattern from a breakup either. It's clearly directional, away from the impact on the side of that impact.

Some early images from the Italian cubesat

 

[pinball1970]

This is nice, the detail on the comet before the impact is fantastic.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I don't see how you would get such a pattern from a breakup either.

Puzzling. The cloud seems just to disperse and disappear, almost as if it turns to gas. Or perhaps it's an artefact of the image processing and a hard black level being set. Astrophotographers get up to tricks like that to make features more obvious.

 

[gleem]

DART had the energy equivalent of about 3 tonnes of TNT. It seemed to me that there was a lot of debris on the asteroid's surface which is held loosely on the smallish Dimorphos. So the cloud is just this material being kicked off?

 

[hutchphd]

 

[mfb]

DART had the energy equivalent of about 3 tonnes of TNT. It seemed to me that there was a lot of debris on the asteroid's surface which is held loosely on the smallish Dimorphos. So the cloud is just this material being kicked off?

Sure. Different pieces have a different velocity so the debris cloud spread out quickly.

 

[sophiecentaur]

So the cloud is just this material being kicked off?

It's the momentum of the 'cloud' going in one direction that changes the momentum of the asteroid in another direction. It's important that the mass and composition of the cloud is right (fast and small bits) to avoid any of it being potentially a collision hazard with Earth. (mV = -Mv symbols self explanatory)

 

[Baluncore]

So the cloud is just this material being kicked off?

On collision, the impactor and part of the target were vaporised in the flash.
The incandescent gas released was visible, moving outwards at a thermal velocity, until it cooled and condensed.

 

[.Scott]

Here is what I see from the Atlas telescope shot:
1) The collision occurs and a relatively small amount (compared to the full asteroid) of material is ejected.
2) The ejected material spreads out and quickly become too dispersed to track.
3) On the Atlas video, it appears the collision occurred at the 8 or 9 o'clock position on the asteroid and not on its perimeter as seen from the telescope. In other words, it hit either on the earth-facing side or the opposite side and not that close to the boundary separating the sides.
4) A cloud of loose material remains around the asteroid - causing it to appear about twice its original diameter. The cloud did not disperse as quickly as it formed, so there may be a substantial amount of material that was left orbiting the asteroid.
5) Not surprisingly, no change in the asteroids trajectory can be discerned in the video.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The collision occurs and a relatively small amount (compared to the full asteroid) of material is ejected.

I was thinking about the frequent threads about the shapes of craters from meteorite impact. The argument is that they tend to be circular because the biggest effect is from the 'explosion' due to the kinetic energy, rather than the momentum changes. But perhaps the 6.6km/s closing speed of dart would not be as high as for a meteorite (about ten times that value, max).

 

[mfb]

NASA, SpaceX and the Polaris program collaborate to study a possible Hubble reboost mission with Dragon. Maybe even a reboost and service mission. Such a mission can extend Hubble's lifetime by years.

The study is expected to take 6 months. This could become the second flight of the Polaris program. The first one will include an EVA, which would make a lot of sense if the second mission wants to exchange some ageing components of Hubble. A reboost isn't helping much if the spacecraft fails a few months later.

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Firefly is at the next launch attempt.
Currently holding for reasons I didn't catch, but the rocket is fueled and they have about 2 hours left in their launch window.

Edit: Reached engine ignition but aborted before takeoff. Next attempt tomorrow.
Edit2: Success! Another startup has made it to orbit. Video quality is pretty poor, unfortunately.

 

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45 minutes until the launch of Crew-5. SpaceX livestream.
Anna Kikina will be the first Russian astronaut to fly on Dragon, and first Russian astronaut to fly on a US spacecraft that's not the Shuttle.

8th flight of Crew Dragon, second flight of this capsule, first flight of the booster which has gotten rare.

Edit: Successful launch, Dragon is in space. Based on an unlucky orbital alignment they'll need 29 hours to reach the ISS.

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Atlas V has 20 launches left. It uses Russian engines so that number is known precisely, and all launches have been booked. Someone noted how the types of launches align with Tolkien's 20 rings:

Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for mortal men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne;
In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

Three launches will be US government satellites.
Seven launches will be Starliner capsules, where the rocket is shorter than usual.
Nine launches will be for Project Kuiper (Amazon).
That makes Viasat, the customer for the last launch, the Dark Lord?

 

[pinball1970]

@Astranut