Space Stuff and Launch Info

[pinball1970]

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 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?

That was amazing. Not just the successful launch but the first stage return landing, on a ship! On a circle!
Like a Heli pad, just incredible.

 

[sophiecentaur]

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.

This is bizarre when we consider Ukraine and the dreaded Putin's behaviour.
I know Science tends to be above these things but this exercise is very high profile. Such is the way of international relations.

 

[mfb]

Running the ISS without Russia would be very difficult, leaving the ISS would be a bad idea, and Russia doesn't want to abandon it either. The seat swap program mixes both Dragon and Soyuz crews and ensures access to the ISS without paying either side.

Science has always tried to be a good example of how we should live and work together. SESAME is one of the most extreme examples, bringing together Israel, Iran and the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey and Cyprus. Countries that don't even recognize the existence of the other countries (Iran -> Israel and Turkey -> Cyprus) work together there.

 

[sophiecentaur]

and Russia doesn't want to abandon it either.

It amazes me that Putin's priorities fall that way. It certainly makes sense but since when has dear Vlad had that sort of sense?

 

[mfb]

I don't know, and I don't think this is the right place to discuss it.

Crew-5 docked with the ISS. Crew-4 will leave in a few days.

Firefly had declared 100% mission success earlier this month, but analysis of the payload orbits shows they were deployed at a significantly lower altitude than planned. Instead of ~300 km they only orbited at ~200-250 km, which comes with a far larger drag and far shorter lifetime. Nevertheless, the rocket has demonstrated that it can reach orbit, being short something like 50 m/s of the target orbit after accelerating by 9 km/s is probably a minor issue that they'll fix before the next flight (planned for late November).

 

[sophiecentaur]

I don't know, and I don't think this is the right place to discuss it.

mmm Putin's attitude to space seems pretty relevant to the title of this thread, actually. He's definite a random factor in the future of space exploration and use.

 

[mfb]

First orbit change measurements after the DART impact are out. The orbit of Dimorphos has been shortened by 32 minutes. This is significantly more than the ~10 minutes they expected. It suggests a velocity change of around 5 mm/s, a bit under 1 mm/s of that from the motion of DART and the much larger rest from debris.

Updating orbit data of asteroids because we forced a change is fun.

5 mm/s * 10 years = 1600 km which is a significant distance for a deflection maneuver.

Future observations should give a more detailed view of the orbit change, and Hera will also measure the mass of Dimorphos directly, currently it's just an educated guess based on its size.

 

[sophiecentaur]

5 mm/s * 10 years = 1600 km which is a significant distance for a deflection maneuver.

Do you have an idea of the change of scale involved to deal with a significant 'rogue' asteroid? I've always imagined that a useful system would need a massive vehicle to deflect a big one. We'd need to plan a deflection of a few hundred thousand km for a real whopper before we could rest easy. (I heard a radio reporter asking an 'expert' whether we could consider ourselves safe now. lol)

The ideal setup would be something large, put together in Earth orbit and sitting there, ready for a mission.
I was searching for some information but my search terms were clearly inadequate because everything I found is either very congratulatory of this particular project or too arm waving. We clearly have some way to go - although logging the possible asteroids seem (?) to have been largely sorted out.

 

[mfb]

We don't need more than ~10,000 km deflection (Earth radius and a bit for Earth's gravity). There is an angle between our ideal direction of deflection and the direction orthogonal to the asteroid approach, but that's the general scale. Most asteroids won't aim at the very center of Earth anyway.

We clearly have some way to go - although logging the possible asteroids seem (?) to have been largely sorted out.

Kilometer-sized objects are almost all known, for smaller ones we still have many to discover.

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Dennis and Akiko Tito booked seats on a Starship mission around the Moon, likely the second one after dearMoon. Dennis Tito was the first space tourist in 2001, this time they want to fly around the Moon (with 10 other passengers on that flight).
Interview----

A Japanese Epsilon rocket had a launch failure, the first for this type of rocket and the first Japanese launch failure in 19 years excluding the test flights of the tiny SS-520.

 

[mfb]

Spooky double booster landing?

After three years, Falcon Heavy is back for a morning launch on October 31 (9:44 local time, 13:44 UTC). Both side boosters will return to the launch site, which is always a great view. The center booster will be expended. This is SpaceX's first mission directly to geostationary orbit, delivering some military satellites.

Another Falcon Heavy launch could happen as early as November, delivering commercial satellites, and the next military launch is scheduled for January. The latter should have the side boosters do simultaneous landings on drone ships for the first time.

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LauncherOne will fly from Cornwall in the UK to launch a couple of smaller satellites on October 29. Apart from Plesetsk in Russia somewhere around the Europe/Asia transition, this should be the first orbital launch from Europe ever. Arianespace always flies from South America and the British Black Arrow was launched from Australia.

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Edit: Polaris program research plan
It will be a busy flight. Almost all focused on human bodies in space. My favorite acronym:

Literally Looking at More Astronauts in Space (LLAMAS)

 

[.Scott]

Spooky double booster landing?

Not so spooky - now it is NET Nov. 1.

 

[mfb]

Success of the Falcon Heavy launch.

Rollout of the Artemis 1 rocket. Fourth time:
* Wet Dress Rehearsal in March/April
* Wet Dress Rehearsal in June
* Launch attempts in August/September
* Now preparing for a launch attempt in November (14th, 16th, 19th)

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China is playing booster reentry lottery again: They launched a space station module with Long March 5B. It's a "1.5 stage" rocket, meaning one central stage with side boosters. That massive central stage (~21 tonnes) reaches orbit and doesn't have a controlled deorbiting mechanism, so it deorbits at a random spot a few days after launch. Re-entry is expected in around 7 hours in a band crossing Central America, Mexico and the US, most of Africa, parts of Australia and New Zealand and various oceans.
It will be a spectacular show, but some pieces will hit the ground.

 

[sophiecentaur]

but some pieces will hit the ground.

They just don't seem to care. What would the cost overheads be for a controlled re-entry? A bit smaller payload, when you get down to it.

 

[mfb]

Hit the South Pacific. That's a popular spot for controlled re-entry as well, so they were lucky.

~3% payload decrease, cost is difficult to estimate - they would need to add some extra thrusters or make the engine restartable and make the stage live longer to aim at an ocean: Larger batteries, thermal design gets more important, and so on. It's definitely possible but it's not something you can simply change for an upcoming launch.

 

[sophiecentaur]

it's not something you can simply change for an upcoming launch.

Well, no. I was rather assuming that would be built in to initial planning. An 'entry level' feature, in fact.

 

[mfb]

NASA successfully tested atmospheric reentry with an inflatable heat shield: LOFTID.
This was the last Atlas V launch from California, the remaining 19 launches will be from Florida.
Edit: Video from space

Starliner's first crewed test flight has been delayed from February to April, the first operational flight has shifted to 2024. This means SpaceX will launch the last flight of the original contract (Dragon Crew-6, February 2023) before Starliner flies any humans, and finish that flight (around September) before Boeing flies its first operational mission. If there are no further delays then Starliner-1 will replace the astronauts of Crew-7 in early 2024, Crew-8 will replace these in late 2024, and then both systems keep alternating until Starliner-6 and Crew-13 in 2029. NASA booked one more Dragon flight, which could happen in early 2030 as last crew of the ISS. At least on paper everything fits perfectly.

ABL Space Systems prepares its RS-1 rocket for the first flight next week or so, no specific launch date yet. At 1350 kg to low Earth orbit it's a very large rocket for a startup.

Firefly Alpha reached a lower than expected orbit in October, but the rocket for the third flight is being prepared for a launch in late November.

 

[mfb]

Maiden flight of SLS aka Artemis 1 probably at some point within the next 2 hours.
Uncrewed, but it's the first crew-rated capsule going to the Moon since Apollo 17.

 

[mfb]

The Orion capsule of Artemis 1 is in a Moon orbit, there was a short communication gap but it has been fixed.

ESA selected the next astronaut group
For the first time, one of them is missing a leg (after a motorcycle accident). ESA wants to study how that affects spaceflight activities.

Edit: One of them was working at CERN

 

[mfb]

The crew for #dearMoon, a private Starship flight around the Moon, has been announced:



* Yusaku Maezawa, billionaire and the person paying for the program
* Tim Dodd aka Everyday Astronaut, spaceflight photographer, reporter and YouTuber. I'm sure he will extensively cover all spaceflight aspects of this mission.
* Steve Aoki, DJ and producer
* Yemi A.D., art director
* Dev Joshi, actor
* T.O.P, musician
* Karim Iliya, photographer (website?)
* Rhiannon Adam, photographer (website?)
* Brendan Hall, filmmaker (http://www.brendanhall.com/about)

9 people from 7 countries (3 are from the US).

Backup:
* Miyu, dancer
* Kaitlyn Farrington, snowboarder



It's a Starship development program - that's where most of the money goes - but it's more than that. Unlike the Apollo era, where all astronauts were white men from the US military (plus one geologist), it will be a much more diverse crew this time. They are all somewhat closer to "normal" people: They don't have a PhD and 5000 hours of flight experience in 10 aircraft at age 25. And they have a large audience to share their experiences with.

 

[pinball1970]

The crew for #dearMoon, a private Starship flight around the Moon, has been announced:



* Yusaku Maezawa, billionaire and the person paying for the program
* Tim Dodd aka Everyday Astronaut, spaceflight photographer, reporter and YouTuber. I'm sure he will extensively cover all spaceflight aspects of this mission.
* Steve Aoki, DJ and producer
* Yemi A.D., art director
* Dev Joshi, actor
* T.O.P, musician
* Karim Iliya, photographer (website?)
* Rhiannon Adam, photographer (website?)
* Brendan Hall, filmmaker (http://www.brendanhall.com/about)

9 people from 7 countries (3 are from the US).

Backup:
* Miyu, dancer
* Kaitlyn Farrington, snowboarder



It's a Starship development program - that's where most of the money goes - but it's more than that. Unlike the Apollo era, where all astronauts were white men from the US military (plus one geologist), it will be a much more diverse crew this time. They are all somewhat closer to "normal" people: They don't have a PhD and 5000 hours of flight experience in 10 aircraft at age 25. And they have a large audience to share their experiences with.

One Astronaut? EDIT: Cover? If something happens to him? Seizure? Anything?

 

[berkeman]

I wonder how many have already been training on the "Vomit Comet" aircraft...

 

[mfb]

One Astronaut? EDIT: Cover? If something happens to him? Seizure? Anything?

No professional astronaut on board, but the crew will get extensive training - similar to Inspiration4 which flew last year.

A Falcon 9 will launch HAKUTO-R to the Moon in 9 minutes. A more conventional Japanese lander.

 

[Rive]

I do get very enthusiastic about unmanned missions

Well, stable founding of heavy lifting (and, maybe: orbital operation) capacity helps that too. I can't wait to see what happens when the strict mass limits of deep space missions gets loose enough to deliver few ton worth of equipment (and power source) to Saturn in one go.

 

[nsaspook]

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/s...aft-cancels-russian-iss-spacewalk-2022-12-15/

Dec 15 (Reuters) - A planned routine spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station was called off on Wednesday after flight controllers noticed a stream of particles spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed.

A NASA commentator said the torrent of particles, which appeared to come from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule, seemed to be liquid from the spacecraft, possibly coolant.

NASA said none of the International Space Station (ISS) crew was thought to be in any danger.

 

[berkeman]

Uh-oh. Please update with more information when available. Hopefully the are all allright.

 

[Tom.G]

UPDATE of Dec 14: SWOT launch delayed 1 day to Dec 16

from: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/news/77/nasa-sets-coverage-for-swot-water-survey-mission-launch/

The mission is targeted for liftoff at 6:46 a.m. EST (3:46 a.m. PST) Thursday, Dec. 16, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.Live launch coverage will begin at 6 a.m. EST (3 a.m. PST) on NASA Television, YouTube, Twitter, the NASA app, and the agency’s website, with prelaunch and science briefings beginning Tuesday, Dec. 13.

 

[mfb]

That's now 3 planned Falcon 9 launches within 10 hours and 8 minutes.The maiden flight of Zhuque-2 (privately developed methane/oxygen rocket, ~3000 kg to orbit) failed, the second stage shut down too early. It's still the first methane-using rocket with an orbital launch attempt. Terran 1, Starship, Vulcan and New Glenn are in development or being prepared for a launch.

 

[hutchphd]

Soyuz spewing
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/world/soyuz-spacecraft-leak-iss-scn/index.html

 

[russ_watters]

OT posts moved to their own thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/gw-impact-of-space-exploration.1048243/

Let's stay on topic please.

 

[mfb]

Here’s what we know, and what we don’t, about the damaged Soyuz spacecraft
The leak "stopped" when it ran out of coolant. The risk of overheating flight computers seems to be the main concern. ESA's robotic arm didn't see much, they'll try to get a better view with the Canadian arm. We should have more information early next week.

The Starlink flight was moved by one day, no double launch from Florida.

 

[mfb]

Soyuz updates

They localized the damage, likely caused by a micrometeoroid or a small piece of space debris. Temperatures stabilized, not an emergency. The crew is expected to either return with this spacecraft in March or with Soyuz-MS23 which could be sent up empty, with a decision expected later this month.

 

[mfb]

Vega-C failed on its second flight (after a successful flight earlier this year). The second stage stopped working properly.

SpaceX plans to launch some initial next-generation Starlink satellites ("v2") on December 28. They are significantly heavier (~4 times) and more capable (~4-8 times?) than the current v1.5 satellites. Originally SpaceX wanted to launch them on Starship only, but delays in that program made them develop a special design that fits into the smaller Falcon 9 fairing. Despite the larger size, SpaceX expects the satellites to be dimmer than the old ones. We'll see how well that works.

 

[pinball1970]

Soyuz updates

They localized the damage, likely caused by a micrometeoroid or a small piece of space debris. Temperatures stabilized, not an emergency. The crew is expected to either return with this spacecraft in March or with Soyuz-MS23 which could be sent up empty, with a decision expected later this month.

This in the Guardian yesterday

https://www.theguardian.com/science...to-plan-possible-rescue-of-space-station-crew

 

[mfb]

Still no decision on which Soyuz to use.

JWST has reached its first birthday in space.

 

[Borg]

Happy birthday to JWST!

 

[davenn]

Destin has an amazing YT channel, he does so many in depth looks into various technologies but with a fun and educational point of view.
This video is a guided tour of the Saturn 5 Apollo rocket system by Luke Tally who worked on the electronics for the first 3 stages.

 

[berkeman]

This video is a guided tour of the Saturn 5 Apollo rocket system by Luke Tally who worked on the electronics for the first 3 stages.

Um, but, didn't the Saturn 5 rocket have only 3 stages? Who worked on the other stages?

 

[davenn]

Um, but, didn't the Saturn 5 rocket have only 3 stages?

stage 4 is the command/service module

 

[davenn]

Who worked on the other stages?

watch the video

Spoiler: who did the stuff above stage 3 and the instrument ring

Johnson Space Centre

 

[dlgoff]

Um, but, didn't the Saturn 5 rocket have only 3 stages? Who worked on the other stages?

That's what I thought. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satur...ed of three stages,used liquid hydrogen (LH2).

It consisted of three stages—the S-IC first stage, S-II second stage, and S-IVB third stage—and the instrument unit. All three stages used liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer. The first stage used RP-1 for fuel, while the second and third stages used liquid hydrogen (LH2).

 

[hutchphd]

The Saturn V had three stages (which were controlled by the saturn computer which famously survived the two lightning hits in Apollo 12 without a hiccup). The spacecraft also had four propulsion engines: the escape tower, the Service propulsion system main engine, the Lunar Module descent engine, and the LunarModule ascent engine. At least some of these could properly be considered "stages" but were not part of Saturn proper.

 

[mfb]

Station Crew Wraps Up a Busy Year as Soyuz Review Continues
Still no decision about Soyuz (now delayed to some time in January). Soyuz-MS23 could potentially launch as early as mid/late February instead of its originally planned mid March launch.

NASA has asked SpaceX if the Dragon capsule that is currently attached to the ISS can return more than its nominal crew of 4. They don't have extra seats, and they don't have the right suits: This would only be used if there is an emergency with the ISS and the crew has to decide between the damaged Soyuz and Dragon.

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For the first year, SpaceX has exceeded its planned launch cadence: 61 launches in 2022, while 52 ("once per week") were expected in January and 60 in March. Up from 31 in 2021.
SpaceX launched twice as much mass to orbit as the rest of the world combined.

 

[mfb]

No official confirmation yet but it looks like Soyuz MS-22 will be declared too unsafe to return crew.

There is a new more complicated alternative plan being discussed (graph here):
Launch Soyuz MS-23 with only one crew member (Kononenko, the only one with prior flights) instead of three, launch Dragon Crew-6 with three instead of four crew members (kicking out the Russian Fedyaev). Both should fly in February. This means the two Russian MS-22 crew members can return with MS-23 and one (Rubio from the US) can return with Crew-6, both in Fall 2023. All three crew members of MS-22 would stay on the ISS for about a year with this plan - not unheard of, five astronauts did that on the ISS before and the Mir had similar stays.

 

[pinball1970]

Seems trivial with what is going on with Soyuz but it is a first so I will post here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64218883

 

[mfb]

ABL Space Systems maiden flight fails after liftoff

Ceres-1 made its fifth flight on Monday. All its flights were successful, which is very rare for new rockets and unique for a start-up.

The other three launches this year were routine - a Falcon 9 rideshare flying over 100 satellites, another Falcon 9 launching OneWeb satellites, and Long March 7A launching a Chinese technology demonstration satellite.

Worst start of a year for a while - 6 orbital launch attempts, two failures - although both failures came from very new systems (first flight of RS1, sixth flight of LauncherOne).

A Falcon Heavy launch is planned for Friday 13 January 22:51 UTC. Both side boosters will return to Florida for a night landing. Should be highly visible.

 

[mfb]

No official confirmation yet but it looks like Soyuz MS-22 will be declared too unsafe to return crew.

Now confirmed, and it's using the original rescue plan: Launch Soyuz MS-23 without crew on February 20. The MS-22 crew currently on the ISS will return in MS-23, extending their mission to about 1 year.

No change to the Dragon flights. The original crew of MS-23 will fly with MS-24 later this year.

 

[mfb]

NASA has given us some more details about Artemis III, the planned crewed Moon landing.

1 week of surface mission for two astronauts. Starship will land within 100 meters of its target spot.
Several moonwalks are planned:

During their time on the Moon, the astronauts will do scientific work inside Starship and conduct a series of moonwalks, exiting Starship to explore the surface. The astronauts will don advanced spacesuits, exit through an airlock, and descend on Starship’s elevator. NASA has selected Axiom Space to provide the Artemis III surface suits and spacewalk systems. These suits will give the astronauts increased range of motion and flexibility to explore more of the landscape than on previous lunar missions.

During their moonwalks, the astronauts will take pictures and video, survey geology, retrieve samples, and collect other data to meet specific scientific objectives. The view from the lunar South Pole region will look very different from the photos taken on Apollo missions in the Moon’s equatorial region. The Sun will hover just above the horizon, casting long, dark shadows across the terrain, which the crew will explore using headlamps and navigational tools. The information and materials collected by Artemis III astronauts will increase our understanding of the mysterious South Pole region, the Moon, and our solar system.

On the ISS, they will move the seat of Rubio (American astronaut of Soyuz MS-22) to Crew Dragon. If the crew needs to evacuate the ISS in an emergency then Rubio will return with Dragon while the Russian astronauts will take the damaged Soyuz capsule. I wonder if we get pictures of this arrangement.
Source

 

[mfb]

20 minutes until the Falcon Heavy launch. Just a bit after sunset, it should look great from large parts of Florida (and online).

SpaceX coverage
NASASpaceflight coverage (more commentary)

Edit: No views of the second stage because it was a classified mission but the booster flight looked amazing.

One booster fighting against the atmosphere as it slows down to return to the launch site (the booster is flying "downwards" in the image, so the engines are the front):

 

[Lnewqban]

… Just a bit after sunset, it should look great from large parts of Florida (and online).

Indeed!
It was a perfect view from my location in South Florida, against a completely cloudless sunset sky.

Thank you for the links!

 

[mfb]

Here is a long exposure
A video from a different angle, you can see how the boosters (below) push away the exhaust of the upper stage (above) before entering the exhaust stream, reaching zero horizontal velocity and then flying upwards and back towards the launch site.

Electron's first flight from the US (from Virginia) is now scheduled for January 23. An evening launch farther north than Florida, so it's going to be in darkness. Should still be visible up to New York at least if the weather is good, and potentially as far as Pittsburgh.

Terran 1 should make its first flight somewhat soon-ish (from Florida), but no launch date yet.