Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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December 7th, 2023
Uncrewed military space plane featuring the United States Space Force logo for the first time.
Image credit: U.S. Space Force/Courtesy Photo
The U.S. Space Force X-37B space plane is primed for a weekend takeoff.
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster to hurl the robotic space plane skyward is set to launch during a ten-minute window that opens December 10 at 8:14 p.m. Eastern Time from Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
According to a Space Systems Command statement, the Space Force mission will expand knowledge of the space environment for future space domain awareness technologies.
U.S. Space Force-52 is carrying the seventh mission of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-7), which is an experimental test program that demonstrates technologies for a reliable, reusable, uncrewed space test platform for the U.S. Space Force.
For more details, go to:
U.S. Military Space Plane: Next Mission – What Will It Do? (Update)
https://www.leonarddavid.com/u-s-military-space-plane-next-mission-what-will-it-do/
Posted in 
Wait a minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Scathing, blistering luncheon keynote: Former NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, at American Astronautical Society’s Advancing Space: From LEO to Lunar and Beyond conference, held October 25-27, 2023 at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Alabama.
As a former administrator, Griffin says he was the administrator not the Creator. “You’re told to do what you are told by the combination of the White House and the hill as best you can do it, but you know you’re lucky if they take your advice. You get a prescription you don’t write the prescription.”
Go to video at:
https://youtu.be/4L8MY056Vz8?si=MIbvSqACeKU1rpdi
Mike Griffin, former NASA Administrator.
Image credit: AAS/Inside Outer Space screengrab
China’s space station work is likely to help the country fabricate solar power satellites. High-definition images of China’s space station were taken by the departing Shenzhou-16 crew on October 30.
Image credit: CMS
A number of teams in China are exploring technologies required to install in Earth orbit a space-based solar power facility.
Hou Xinbin is a senior researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing and a member of the Committee of Space Solar Power of the Chinese Society of Astronautics.
“My colleagues at several domestic institutes and I have proposed a technology demonstration mission to the country’s space community, and are hoping it will happen in the near future,” Hou told China Daily in an interview last month in Beijing, on the sidelines of an international space industry forum.
China space station is captured in this photo taken recently by the departing Shenzhou-16 crew.
Image credit: CMS
Key step
According to Hou, there’s a key step to verifying the feasibility of space-based solar power generation.
“We want to make and place into orbit a pair of satellites — a large one that will collect solar power and convert it to microwaves and laser beams, and a smaller one responsible for receiving laser beams. Meanwhile, a ground station will be in charge of receiving the microwaves. The two satellites will form an in-orbit testing system for wireless power transfer,” Hou said.
A solar power satellite with laser transmission capability, Hou added, can operate in a lunar polar orbit and provide power supply to exploration programs in polar regions on the Moon.
Illumination map of the south polar region of the Moon. Areas in black receive no sunlight, and areas in warmer colors are illuminated a greater fraction of the time.
Image credit: Base image mosaic from NASA, Arizona State University, and Applied Coherent Technology Corp.
Challenges ahead
Hou also pointed to challenges ahead, such as developing high-performance components, not too big or too heavy, integrating those technologies into a satellite, and also ensuring that power beams from space to ground receiving stations can be done with great accuracy.
“In the long term, we need to figure out how to transport large, heavy parts to orbit and then assemble a colossal power station,” Hou told the State-run China Daily.
Pre-launch image shows parachute installation in the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin
The NASA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return capsule that parachuted into the Utah desert on September 24 also was a case of high-altitude drama.
Going over descent video of the capsule and other extensive documentation, project officials have determined that the landing sequence did not go according to plan, with a small parachute called a drogue not unfurling as scripted.
According to a December 5 statement from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, it was found that “inconsistent wiring label definitions in the design plans likely caused engineers to wire the parachutes’ release triggers such that signals meant to deploy the drogue chute fired out of order.”
Out of order
In NASA’s statement, the word “main” was used inconsistently between the device that sends the electric signals, and the device that receives the signals.
“On the signal side, ‘main’ meant the main parachute. In contrast, on the receiver side ‘main’ was used as a reference to a pyrotechnic that fires to release the parachute canister cover and deploy the drogue. Engineers connected the two mains, causing the parachute deployment actions to occur out of order,” the NASA posting explains.
OSIRIS-REx capsule on main chute headed for landing.
Image credit: UTTR/NASA
In order to confirm the root cause of the parachute problem, NASA will be able test the system responsible for releasing the parachutes.
“This hardware is currently inside one of the glove boxes with the Bennu sample at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Once the curation team there completes processing the sample material—the mission’s top priority at present—NASA engineers will be able to access the parachute hardware and verify the cause,” says the NASA statement.
Following its high-speed re-entry, the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule served as an artificial meteor before parachuting into the desert landscape of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range.
Image credit: NASA/Keegan Barber
Technical hiccups
Even on capsule landing day in Utah, there was early suspicion that something in the parachute progression did not go as planned.
There may have been some technical hiccups in the capsule’s speedy and red-hot descent through Earth’s atmosphere, said Tim Priser, Lockheed Martin’s chief engineer for deep space exploration, in a post-capsule landing press conference in Utah.
Lockheed Martin designed and built the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, asteroid sampling system and sample return capsule at its facilities near Denver. The company also operated the spacecraft from launch through sample return.
“Some things in our sequence may or may not have behaved itself exactly the way we expected it to but the subsequent things in the sequence made up for the fact,” Priser said. “At the end of the day when that main chute deployed it basically corrected any of the sins that may have happened ahead of it,” he said at the time.
Image credit: University of Arizona/Heather Roper
Reconstruct what happened
While there was now-confirmed drogue trouble, the return capsule’s dive through Earth’s atmosphere did perform a “soft as a dove” touchdown in Utah.
One of the advantages of landing at the Utah Test and Training Range, Priser added in the Utah press gathering, is the ground and aerial imagery capability used to monitor the capsule’s sky-rocketing re-entry.
“You have your data. You have your models. You have your observations and you’ve got to put all those pieces together so you reconstruct what happened,” Priser told Inside Outer Space at that September press event.
Genesis return capsule crash in Utah desert.
Image credit: NASA
Blast from the past
But in a blast from the past, that same stretch of Utah landscape has been witness to both calamity and victory.
In September 2004, NASA’s Genesis spacecraft, toting samples of solar wind, failed to deploy its parachutes due to a Lockheed Martin engineering error. A Mishap Investigation Board later identified that a likely cause was improper orientation of gravity-switch sensors that were to set off the capsule’s landing system. Those G-switch sensors had been installed upside down in the spacecraft so they did not detect the capsule’s deceleration and begin the parachute sequence. Also, the mishap board noted that this blunder wasn’t found early by oversight processes. This issue led to a severely banged up capsule and contamination of its prized shipment of solar wind particles.
This mishap was followed in January 2006 by NASA’s Stardust mission – also engineered by Lockheed Martin. Stardust successfully parachuted to Earth its capsule of particles spewed out by comet P/Wild 2, a rich bonanza of material for intense laboratory scrutiny.
Image credit: NBC News
New reporting on UFOs from NBC News’ Meet the Press
NBC News NOW, took a half-hour look at the current conversation around both the unexplained science as well as government transparency on the issue.
Broadcaster Chuck Todd interviews lawmaker Tim Burchett. Image credit: NBC News
The December 2 episode features reporting and interviews from NBC News Correspondent Sam Brock and host Chuck Todd, with guests including:
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)
Ryan Graves, Former F-18 pilot and the Executive Director of Americans for Safe Aerospace
Robert Powell, Chemist and Nanotech Expert; Co-Founder, Scientific Coalition on UAP Studies (featured in Netflix docuseries “Encounters”)
James Webb, Astrophysicist at Florida International University
Garrett Graff, Author, UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There
Image credit: NBC News
Take a video look at this broadcast — “UFOs: Is the truth out there? UFOs are out there. But why is the government keeping secrets?” – a Meet the Press Reports available at:
This broadcast is also available on-demand any time on Peacock.
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying through the Red Planet’s skies. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has chalked up a new flight, #67.
The rotorcraft flew on December 2, zipping across its Jezero Crater exploration zone for 135.9 seconds.
It flew a horizontal distance of 393 meters (roughly 1,289 feet) and reached a maximum altitude of 12 meters (roughly 39 feet).
Chalking up mileage
Overall, since the vehicles first flight back in April 19, 2021, the aerial explorer has collectively attained roughly 121.1 minutes of flight time; Flown some 10 miles (roughly 15,303 kilometers); and shot up to 24 meters (roughly 79 feet) above the surface of the Red Planet.
Image here was taken by Ingenuity’s Navigation Camera mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight. This image was acquired on Dec. 2, 2023, the date of Ingenuity’s 67th flight, as posted by the NASA/JPL-Caltech Ingenuity Flight Log.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Uncrewed military space plane featuring the United States Space Force logo for the first time.
Image credit: U.S. Space Force/Courtesy Photo
That secretive U.S. Space Force X-37B space plane is now targeted for launch on December 10th. Original launch date was December 7 with the slip “due to launch delays and pad availability,” according to a U.S. Space Force statement.
Final preparations to launch the program’s seventh robotic flight, labeled the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-7), are underway.
This X-37B flight will be the first to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket—designated USSF-52.
Onboard the craft are tests to appraise the vehicle’s operation in new orbital regimes, experimenting with space domain awareness technologies and investigating the radiation effects to NASA materials.
For more detailed information on this mission, and the X-37B program in general, go to:
“U.S. Military Space Plane: Next Mission – What Will It Do?” at:
https://www.leonarddavid.com/u-s-military-space-plane-next-mission-what-will-it-do/
Chang’e-5 return capsule holding lunar specimens.
Image credit: National Astronomical Observatories, CAS
NASA has green-lighted space agency-funded researchers to apply for access to China’s lunar samples returned to Earth via that country’s Chang’e-5 moon mission.
China has made available to several countries access to that Chang’e-5 lunar collection. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is now orchestrating the 7th round of receiving applications for access to Chang’e-5 lunar samples. This is an opportunity that is open until December 22 of this year.
Photo taking during Chang’e-5 moon surface sampling session in December 2020.
Credit: CNSA/China Central Television (CCTV)
In a communiqué from the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES) the space agency has certified its intent to Congress to allow NASA-funded researchers to apply for access to the Chang’e-5 samples.
For more information on this development and its implications, go to my new Space.com story – “China’s Chang’e 5 moon samples, beyond NASA’s reach for years, are finally available to US scientists” – at:
https://www.space.com/china-moon-samples-change-5-nasa-researchers
Image credit: NASA
NASA’s “re-booting” of the Moon via the Artemis program faces multiple challenges, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO).
“NASA and its contractors have made progress, including completing several important milestones, but they still face multiple challenges with development of the human landing system and the space suits. As a result, GAO found that the Artemis III crewed lunar landing is unlikely to occur in 2025.”
The GAO points out that Moon lander provider, SpaceX and its Starship vehicle, must complete a significant amount of complex technical work to support the Artemis III lunar landing mission.
That SpaceX work includes developing the ability to store and transfer propellant while in orbit.
A critical aspect of SpaceX’s plan for landing astronauts on the Moon for Artemis III is launching multiple tankers that will transfer propellant to a depot in space before transferring that propellant to the human landing system.
SpaceX Starship human lander design to carry NASA astronauts to the surface of the Moon under the Artemis program.
Credit: SpaceX
The GAO flags the fact that NASA documentation has stated SpaceX has made limited progress maturing the technologies needed to support this aspect of its plan.
The GAO-identified issues include:
An ambitious schedule: The Human Landing System program is aiming to complete its development—from project start to launch—in 79 months, which is 13 months shorter than the average for NASA major projects. The complexity of human spaceflight suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the program to complete development more than a year faster than the average for NASA major projects, the majority of which are not human spaceflight projects. GAO found that if development took as long as the average for NASA major projects, the Artemis III mission would likely occur in early 2027.
Delays to key events: As of September 2023, the Human Landing System program had delayed eight of 13 key events by at least 6 months. Two of these events have been delayed to 2025—the year the lander is planned to launch. The delays were caused in part by the Orbital Flight Test, which was intended to demonstrate certain features of the launch vehicle and lander configuration in flight. The test was delayed by 7 months to April 2023. It was then terminated early when the vehicle deviated from its expected trajectory and began to tumble. Subsequent tests rely on successful completion of a second Orbital Flight Test.
Image credit: NASA
Notional Depiction of the Human Landing System
A large volume of remaining work: SpaceX must complete a significant amount of complex technical work to support the Artemis III lunar landing mission, including developing the ability to store and transfer propellant while in orbit. A critical aspect of SpaceX’s plan for landing astronauts on the moon for Artemis III is launching multiple tankers that will transfer propellant to a depot in space before transferring that propellant to the human landing system. NASA documentation states that SpaceX has made limited progress maturing the technologies needed to support this aspect of its plan.
Space suit challenges: Axiom is leveraging many aspects of NASA’s prior work to develop modernized space suits, but significant work remains to resolve design challenges. For example, NASA’s original design did not provide the minimum amount of emergency life support needed for the Artemis III mission. As a result, Axiom representatives said they may redesign certain aspects of the space suit, which could delay its delivery for the mission.
Go to the GAO report — “NASA Lunar Programs: Improved Mission Guidance Needed as Artemis Complexity Grows” – at:
https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24106256.pdf
Credit: Yuqi Qian, et al.
NASA has certified its intent to Congress to allow NASA-funded researchers to apply to the China National Space Administration (CNSA) for access to lunar samples returned to Earth on that country’s Chang’e-5 Moon mission and made available recently to the international scientific community for research purposes.
Chang’e-5 transported its lunar sample collectibles to the Earth on December 16, 2020.
“The Chang’e-5 samples originate from regions of the Moon not yet sampled by NASA and are expected to provide valuable new scientific insight on the geological history of the Moon, which could provide new understanding of the Earth-Moon system and potentially inform NASA’s future lunar exploration plans,” states a “Dear Colleagues” communiqué from NASA.
Chang’e-5 return capsule holding lunar specimens.
Credit: National Astronomical Observatories, CAS
“Applying for samples will ensure that United States researchers have the same research opportunities as scientists around the world,” the communiqué adds.
Applications due in late December
This 7th round of applications for access to Chang’e-5 lunar samples as orchestrated by China is open until December 22, 2023, at 11:00 am Eastern Time / 2400 Beijing Time.
NASA-funded researcher have been asked to follow the CNSA application process identified on this site: https://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/n6465652/n6465653/c10413163/content.html
If a NASA-funded researcher’s application is selected, NASA should be informed for guidance on next steps.
“This allowance applies specifically to Chang’e-5 mission samples; the normal prohibition on bilateral activity with PRC [People’s Republic of China] on NASA funded projects remains in place,” the NASA statement concludes.
