The Big Two Went On As Expected

The big two launches we've all been watching and waiting on went off Thursday as scheduled - more or less.  Meaning the first launch, Blue Origin's New Glenn went after a few delays and Starship Flight Test 7 went after about 35 minutes of delays  (hat tip to Scott Manley for noticing something I never did - that the first letters of that name spell out BONG).  

In a strange irony, while neither mission met all of its major goals, Blue Origin had the more successful flight.  BONG made orbit and released its payload, but lost its booster so there was no booster landing  and no recovery.  SpaceX recovered the SuperHeavy booster - another dramatic capture of the returning booster being caught in the giant Chopsticks - but lost the Starship before it reached the point in its suborbital flight where it could do the many tests scheduled for the ship.  

Of the two, SpaceX had the worse result.  While we were all watching the returning Super Heavy booster maneuvering into position to be grabbed in mid-air by the Chopsticks the telemetry from the Starship was revealing trouble as the six engines started shutting down. The telemetry is visible in the lower right hand corner of this video - here's a screen grab around when the first engine shut down. 

You can see the three vacuum Raptors with the large engine bells around the outer ring still running but the inner (sea level) Raptors have seen one shut down.  There are videos that appear to show that the ship had exploded with debris burning up on the way down, like this link to X from Space.com.

While it's easy to pick on Blue for not succeeding at landing the booster, I don't think anyone familiar with the problems involved in recovering a booster that starts out almost at the Kármán line and hypersonic velocity would attack a failure on their first attempt.  SpaceX required 19 launches before it finally landed an orbital rocket for the first time, back in December 2015, and Blue Origin CEO David Limp had said, "Our objective is to reach orbit, anything beyond that is a bonus. Landing our booster offshore is ambitious—but we’re going for it. No matter what, we will learn a lot."

We know that Ship 33 today was the first Block 2 Starship to fly and that there were many changes, but that's no excuse.  We also know that if there's one thing we can absolutely say about SpaceX is that they'll attack this instantly and will let us know what they find soon after they know. 

"Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability," SpaceX said via X this evening.

SpaceX Rideshare Lunar Lander Launch was This Morning

Back in mid-December, we learned that SpaceX was going to do a launch carrying two lunar landers from two different companies by the middle of this month.  That launch was at 1:11 AM ET this morning, Weds. Jan. 15, from the Kennedy Space Center side of the Cape, LC-39A.

The two landers are the next launches from companies that have been in the current round of lunar exploration.  The first is Firefly Aerospace in Texas which has launched the Blue Ghost lander.  The other company is Tokyo-based ispace which has launched its Resilience lander, a follow on to 2023's Hakuto R1, which they seem to refer to most often as Hakuto R2.

Both of these are taking low energy approaches to the moon, with ispace going with the lower energy path of the two.  They'll both take a long time to get there; they're just not taking the same approach.  

Blue Ghost will spend the next 25 days in Earth orbit, undergoing a variety of systems checks and gathering data with some of its 10 science and technology instruments — NASA gear that earned their spots onboard thanks to the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

The lander — Firefly's first-ever mooncraft — will then conduct an engine burn to head toward the moon. Blue Ghost will reach lunar orbit four days later and spend 16 days there before attempting a touchdown in Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") on the lunar nearside.

Mission profile for Firefly's Blue Ghost - image from Firefly Aerospace

"Following payload operations, Blue Ghost will capture imagery of the lunar sunset and provide critical data on how lunar regolith reacts to solar influences during lunar dusk conditions," representatives of Texas-based Firefly wrote in a description of the mission, which it calls Ghost Riders in the Sky. "The lander will then operate for several hours into the lunar night."

There is talk that the mission might be looking for a glow from the terminator on sunrise or sunset that was only reported by two of the Apollo missions.  Only six people in all of human history have seen this. 

While Blue Ghost is going to take 45 or 46 days or a month and a half to reach the moon, Resilience's mission will be more than twice that long.  Due to its energy-efficient path to lunar orbit, it will take four months to reach the moon - almost three times as long as Blue Ghost.

ispace will then spend another two weeks or so gearing up for the landing attempt, which will take place in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region of the moon's northern hemisphere.

ispace's Hakuoto-R mission 2 profile - image from ispace

Like Blue Ghost, Resilience is carrying five science and technology payloads that go back to NASA's CLPS program. 

Among this gear is a microrover named Tenacious, which was developed by the company's Luxembourg-based subsidiary. The 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will deploy onto the lunar surface and collect lunar regolith as part of a contract with NASA. 

This will be something to keep an eye out for news about - during the next six months.  So far, I find nothing being reported as even slightly wrong with either mission - at less than 24 hours into that six months.  Only one privately built spacecraft has landed on the moon, Intuitive Machines Odysseus (quickly nicknamed Odie) almost exactly 11 months ago.  I'm hoping both of these add to the successes.

Reusability Changes Everything

For the umpteenth time.  

With the cadence of Falcon 9 launches that SpaceX has been putting in - and working to increase - on any given day if they're not launching one, they're rolling one out to the pad to prepare for launch, or bringing one into port for refurbishment.  Or all three. 

The highlight of this is the booster as it's the recycling we see the most of.  Even at nearly 400 successful landings, landing a booster is still incredible.  While it's "the way it ought to be," for every launch I watch video coverage of I still read comments where people say, "it never gets old." 

Last Friday, Booster B1067 became the fleet leader by launching for the 25th time.  B1067 has now launched 457 satellites and eight astronauts over its 25 flights.  You probably remember when they considered achieving 10 flights was a goal.  Now we call boosters with up to 10 flights "near new."

SpaceX now plans to launch each Falcon 9 booster up to 40 times. Engineers temporarily removed two Falcon 9 boosters from SpaceX's launch rotation in 2023 for in-depth inspections after their 15th flight. That allowed SpaceX to extend each booster's certification to 20 flights, and last year, officials announced they were going for 40.

As their experience with reuse has gone up, the time it takes to inspect a booster and prepare it for its next flight has gone down.

In November, SpaceX launched the same Falcon 9 booster twice in less than 14 days, the shortest turnaround time for a booster yet. The company has launched 38 missions with booster turnaround times of one month or less, and all but nine of those flights occurred within the last year. 

Don't forget that the 14 days included returning the booster to Port Canaveral on the drone ship it landed on, that's usually around a day and a half travel back to port, followed by days getting it ready for the next flight. 

And it's not just the booster.  They successfully re-fly fairing halves, too, after dropping the concept of catching them in a giant net and instead just letting them splash down into the ocean, then picking them out of the water.  In December, they announced a fairing was launched for the 22nd time. 

SpaceX's factory in Hawthorne, California, must also churn out new upper stages for each Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flight. That's 135 of these multi-million-dollar stages for each Falcon mission in the last 365 days, or one flight (and one new upper stage) every 2.7 days.

They regularly set new records increasing their launch cadence, or decreasing the amount of time spent on the ground. 

When SpaceX landed twice on the same drone ship in three-and-a-half days last year, the company's vice president of launch, Kiko Dontchev, congratulated his team on X. The drone ship "traveled roughly 640 nautical miles in that time with only 3.5 hrs at the dock to drop off a rocket," he wrote.

All of this progress toward faster turnaround times and higher cadence is going to be essential for Starship if Musk's visions for the monster vehicle ever are to be realized.  Musk has suggested that SpaceX must produce 100 or more Starships per year to fulfill his Mars settlement ambitions, even with full reusability.  That link is saying SpaceX needs to build Starships as often as Boeing builds 737s.  Boeing has several plants that can manufacture those planes.  It sounds like they need to clone the Starbase factories in other places around the country. 

In the background, a Falcon 9 rocket climbs away from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Another Falcon 9 stands on its launch pad at neighboring Kennedy Space Center LC-39A awaiting its opportunity to fly. Image credit: SpaceX

New Glenn 2nd Launch Attempt Off Until Thursday

I didn't decide until fairly late yesterday evening to not set an alarm to get up to watch the New Glenn Maiden Flight.  It was close to 11:30 and the alarm would have been set for 12:45 AM this morning.  Why not get up?  The thought that I was almost sure they wouldn't launch this morning, and if they did, it would be after long delays.  First flights aren't normal flights and they're doing critically important things for the first time; that is, they've practiced many things but the atmosphere of a maiden flight test is different than that in the previous tests. 

As you probably expect, the first thing I did this morning was check to see if it had launched, to find that it hadn't.  That's when I found they delayed until 45 minutes were left in the three hour window - so they declared the scrub at 3:15AM ET.

Throughout the window, which opened at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC), the company continued to reset the countdown clock as launch engineers worked out technical issues with the rocket.

I felt like I'd made the right decision after all and started looking for the next launch time.  That didn't show up until rather late in the day today - I think I first saw it at close to 5:00 PM - and said they will try  again tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.  A couple of hours later that bounced out to Thursday morning, Jan 16 at 1:00 AM ET.

According to sources, the primary problem was likely ice clogging one of the vent lines that carry pressurized gas away from the vehicle. Several attempts were made to melt the ice, but these efforts were not successful, necessitating the scrub. Hopefully Blue Origin will provide more information about the cause of the scrub in the coming days.

I was a little surprised at the 24 hour turnaround to try tomorrow morning and so it makes sense to me they've changed to a three day delay.  Whether or not that ice clogging was the actual issue, they must feel they have isolated and overcome whatever it was.  I'd also be less than surprised if they changed the schedule again.  

There are other reasons for pushing as hard as they can.  First is that they've been watching sea states for their droneship Jacklyn where they intend to try to land the booster and some forecasts are showing the seas getting worse as the week goes by.  The other issue is that the current launch period for New Glenn closes on January 16, although that may just be a phone call to the right person at the FAA. 

This New Glenn vehicle during a hot fire test in the last week of December '24. Image credit: Blue Origin

While there was no equivalent countdown for Starship Flight Test 7, that has also slipped to the right.  The current launch time is Wed Jan 15, at 5:00 PM EST, about eight hours ahead of New Glenn.

No Falling Iguanas Around Here

One of those "peak Florida" stories that goes around every winter is to beware of Frozen Iguanas falling out of trees when temperatures drop below 50.  With morning lows from 38 to 43 almost all of last week here in central Florida, various news sources in the state have been posting stories about this and advising everyone to avoid the iguanas and leave them alone.  That link, if you haven't clicked it, is to a Channel 13 TV broadcaster in the Tampa area - Fox 13.

An unstated but obvious requirement is for there to be a population of iguanas in the area before you see them falling from trees or whatever.  There is no self-sustaining population of iguanas in Tampa or really much of anywhere north of the southernmost part of the state. Which isn't to say that there can't be any iguanas here in the central part of the state, just that they're likely to not be a real population, just some lizards that ended up here after exploring and getting lost, or some that were taken as pets and then thrown out. 

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) puts it this way:

Green iguana populations now stretch along the Atlantic Coast in Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach Counties and along the Gulf Coast in Collier and Lee Counties. There have also been reports as far north as Alachua, Highlands, Hillsborough, Indian River and St. Lucie Counties. However, individuals observed in more northern counties are likely escaped or released captive animals and are unlikely to establish populations, as iguanas are not cold hardy. In cleared habitats such as canal banks and vacant lots, green iguanas reside in burrows, culverts, drainage pipes and rock or debris piles. South Florida’s extensive man-made canals serve as ideal dispersal corridors to further allow iguanas to colonize new areas.

The first group of counties they mention are the southern tip of the state.  The next group includes a handful of counties in the central part of the state: Highlands, Hillsborough, Indian River and St. Lucie counties as well as a genuinely northern county, Alachua.  Indian River county is the county south of the one I live in (Brevard).  I've never heard of an iguana population around here. I've seen them in Palm Beach County, some in my brother's yard, but haven't been there when it was cool enough for falling iguanas.

A graphic from Fox13's article. Image credit: FOX Weather

While I said I've never heard of an iguana population here, there have been iguanas spotted from time to time in this county.  I'm just not seeing mention of a regular population here. 

New Glenn Slips One Day Due to Weather

Word broke this afternoon that the Maiden Flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn has been postponed another day due to weather.  Not the weather here on the Cape but down range where the recovery ship is positioned to attempt to recover the booster. 

Instead of Sunday morning at 1:00 AM EST, the target date is now Monday morning at the same time. There's a three hour launch window, and Blue Origin will provide a webcast at this link starting one hour before liftoff.

Of course that means that recovering the booster is a goal for this mission, so it's not just the first attempt to achieve orbit, it's a test flight of the first prototype of their Blue Ring programmable upper stage, and a test of landing the booster at sea. 

"Our objective is to reach orbit," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said this week. "Anything beyond that is a bonus. Landing our booster offshore is ambitious—but we’re going for it. No matter what, we will learn a lot."

As an aside, that's the closest thing to the regular SpaceX line "the only thing guaranteed is excitement" that I've ever heard associated with Blue Origin. 

In contrast with SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rockets tend to finish fueling about two minutes before liftoff, New Glenn is expected to be completely fueled an hour before launch. The first fueling operation, the second stage's liquid hydrogen loading, will begin 4.5 hours before liftoff or 8:30 PM EST.

During a nominal mission the booster stage's seven BE-4 engines—which have previously performed well during two flights of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket—will burn liquid methane for 3 minutes and 10 seconds. If all goes well with this booster stage after separation from the second stage, it will initiate a 28-second burn to make a controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere, followed by a landing burn before touching down at 9 minutes and 28 seconds into the flight.

As with many other launch vehicles, the second stage is going to do two burns in the first hour of the mission.  Blue Origin provided this mission profile, but that's not apparent from this graphic.

Mission Profile for this flight. Image credit: Blue Origin

More in a first mission than even something like Starship's Flight Test 7, it's always possible that something could go wrong with the booster or upper stage in flight, or even both.  As CEO Dave Limp outlined, it's an ambitious first flight, and we wish them luck.  

Wait... There's a Kenyan Space Agency?

Have they flown anything?  Are they working toward flying something? 

Almost two weeks ago, December 30, reports started to surface about a "glowing ring of metal" that fell from the sky near a remote village in Kenya. 

According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds (500 kg) and had a diameter of more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) when measured after it landed on December 30. A couple of days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris, saying it was a ring that separated from a rocket. "Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans," the space agency told The New York Times.

At around eight feet in diameter and half a ton, it clearly wasn't your typical "bits and pieces" that survive reentry but in addition to its pure size, it's also pretty distinctive looking.

A view of the metal ring that fell from the sky on Dec. 30 into Mukuku village in eastern Makueni County, Kenya.  Credit: Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images

Since those initial reports, a group of amateur but experienced space trackers have been trying to determine what space object it might have fallen from.  There's still no answer to that, and a couple of interesting twists to the story. 

Let's start here:

"It was suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is marginal," wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell is highly regarded for his analysis of space objects. "The most likely space-related possibility is the reentry of the SYLDA adapter from the Ariane V184 flight, object 33155. Nevertheless, I am not fully convinced that the ring is space debris at all," he wrote.

Another prominent space tracker, Marco Langbroek, believes it's plausible that the ring came from space, so he investigated further into objects that may have returned around the time of the object's discovery in Kenya. In a blog post written Wednesday he noted that apart from the metal ring, other fragments looking consistent with space debris—including material that looks like carbon wrap and isolation foil—were found several kilometers away from the ring.

First of all both McDowell and Langbroek have graced these pages before (two examples there).  Second they both agree that the most likely source for the object was an Ariane V that was launched back in July 2008, in which the European rocket lofted two satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The Ariane V had some unique features, one of which was to stack two satellites going into geosynchronous orbit

To accommodate both satellites, a SYstème de Lancement Double Ariane (SYLDA) shell was placed over the lower satellite to support the mounting of a second satellite on top of it.

Both McDowell and Langbroek speculate the recovered ring is part of the SYLDA from this mission 16 years ago.  But here's where it gets more interesting.

However, an anonymous X account using the handle DutchSpace, which despite the anonymity has provided reliable information about Ariane launch vehicles in the past, posted a thread that indicates this ring could not have been part of the SYLDA shell. With images and documentation, it seems clear that neither the diameter nor mass of the SYLDA component matches the ring found in Kenya.

Additionally, Arianespace officials told Le Parisien newspaper on Thursday that they do not believe the space debris was associated with the Ariane V rocket. Essentially, if the ring does not fit, you must acquit.

(Never thought you'd get an OJ Simpson reference in a space story, did ya?)

At this point, the narrative goes cold.  As Eric Berger at Ars Technica ends his piece, "so what was it?"  While we can't rule out that "it wuz Aliens," we have to recognize that probability isn't known but we believe it to be very low.  Therefore, we have to ask what else is up there that can't be tracked to a known, documented launch that could both be used "open source" and could have dropped a half ton part without warning.  One simple phrase: spy satellites.  Well, the satellites and the upper stages of the rockets that got them to orbit.  May as well use the old cliché line, "we could tell you but then we'd have to kill you."  (Which I always thought was really "I could tell you, but then 'they' would have to kill me.")

The Taller, Heavier, Smarter, Starship Block 2

Let me start out with the little things you'd probably want to know if you haven't spent time trying to keep up.  The big launches the most people are tracking have all slid to the right on the calendars.  New Glenn's maiden flight is now scheduled for Sunday morning, Jan. 12 at 1:00 AM EST.  Starship Flight Test 7 is now scheduled for Monday afternoon, Jan 13 at 5:00 PM EST.  To keep up with these, it's hard to beat NextSpaceflight.com/launches.  SpaceX has had three successful launches so far this year, all from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.  Their fourth flight of the year is tonight, Wednesday Jan 9 at 10:53PM EST from Vandenberg SFB.  

Monday's Flight Test 7 is going to feature the Block 2 Starship, and while we talked about that some on Tuesday, Ars Technica's Stephen Clark did another dive on the subject today.  Starship 33 was rolled to the launch pad today.  In the next couple of days, the ship will be stacked on the Super Heavy booster, tested and verified to be ready for launch.

"The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades, attempt Starship’s first payload deployment test, fly multiple reentry experiments geared towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy booster," SpaceX officials wrote in a mission overview posted on the company's website.

The modifications to Starship to add the Pez dispenser for the simulated Starlink satellites and increasing the sizes of the propellant tanks add nearly 6 feet to the rocket's height, bringing the full stack to roughly 404 feet tall. Yes, that means SpaceX will break their own record for the world's largest launch vehicle.  And they're going to break this record in "a few" more launches when they go to the next version  (Block 3) Starship.  SpaceX says those will have nine upper stage engines, instead of six, and will deliver up to 440,000 pounds of cargo to low-Earth orbit.  Yeah, nearly a half million pounds of cargo on one launch.

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, a little more than 17 minutes into the flight, Starship will deploy 10 dummy payloads similar in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites. The mock-ups will soar around the world on a suborbital trajectory, just like Starship, and reenter over the unpopulated Indian Ocean. Future Starship flights will launch real next-gen Starlink satellites to add capacity to the Starlink broadband network, but they're too big and too heavy to launch on SpaceX's smaller Falcon 9 rocket.

As they did in the last flight test, SpaceX will reignite one of the ship's Raptor engines on orbit. 

The engine restart capability is important for several reasons. It gives the ship the ability to maneuver itself out of low-Earth orbit for reentry (not a concern for Starship's suborbital tests), and will allow the vehicle to propel itself to higher orbits, the Moon, or Mars once SpaceX masters the technology for orbital refueling.

Starship is closely related to what NASA is calling the Human Landing System or HLS for Artemis. That is, HLS is derived from Starship but isn't exactly the same.  Apparently NASA wants more tests of lighting Raptor engines in a very cold environment, I assume as a confidence-builder. 

SpaceX continues to experiment with Starship's heat shield, which the company's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has described as "the biggest technology challenge remaining with Starship." In order for SpaceX to achieve its lofty goal of launching Starships multiple times per day, the heat shield needs to be fully and immediately reusable.

While the last three ships have successfully splashed down to end the mission, the ships lost some heat shield tiles while going through reentry. 

Engineers removed tiles from some areas of the ship for next week's test flight in order to "stress-test" vulnerable parts of the vehicle. They also smoothed and tapered the edge of the tile line, where the ceramic heat shield gives way to the ship's stainless steel skin, to address "hot spots" observed during reentry on the most recent test flight.

"Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry," SpaceX said.

Starship Block 2 has smaller flaps than previous ships. The flaps are located in a more leeward position to protect them from the heat of reentry. Credit: SpaceX 

Comments by Musk after Flight Test 6 strongly implied that this should be the last Starship mission to go suborbital and splash down in an ocean. What they're planning will require at least one full orbit.  

"We will do one more ocean landing of the ship," Musk posted. "If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower."

NASA Punts Decision on Mars Sample Return

Since I first heard of it in 2021, I've been trying to keep on top of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission originally conceived as an add-on to the Perseverance Rover (and the Ingenuity helicopter) currently on Mars. The idea has been that Perseverance would save particularly noteworthy samples of rocks or other things it comes across on Mars, stored inside the rover. At some time later, the MSR mission would rendezvous with the rover, they'd transfer the samples and MSR would return the samples to Earth.  

The problem is that the mission is exceptionally expensive, in the vicinity of $11 billion, and NASA has been concerned it's essentially not doable.

You probably remember the rest of the story.  Briefly, in September of '23, NASA received a report from an independent review board saying that the MSR Mission was unworkable in its current form and wasn't feasible on the schedule and costs they were working under.  They recommended the issues be studied. The studies were disclosed on April 15th 2024, and the agency said everything but that nasty word “cancelled,” ending instead with saying they will seek “out of the box” ideas in a bid to reduce the costs and shorten the schedule for returning samples from Mars.  

On June 7, NASA selected seven companies to provide 90 day studies, valued at up to $1.5 million each, to examine different concepts that could reduce the cost or improve the schedule for MSR. Those companies are Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quantum Space, SpaceX and Whittinghill Aerospace.  That 90 day period ended in September of '24, conveniently enough at the AIAA ASCEND Conference, being held in Las Vegas. (That's the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Conference dedicated to making humanity interplanetary).  That kicked off yet another study period.  Reports in the last two weeks were that NASA would host a conference yesterday, Jan. 7, 2025.  That's more like 120 days from the previous 90 day time block and the conference was held yesterday.

NASA leadership announced Jan. 7 that it would pursue studies of two architectures for its Mars Sample Return effort that would take samples currently being collected by the Perseverance rover and bring them back to Earth as soon as 2035.

The two architectures will be studied for the next year and a half and the final decision left for the next administration. 

The first option, which NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said would cost between $6.6 billion and $7.7 billion, would use the “sky crane” technology previously developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory for landing the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers. The second option, with projected costs of $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion, would use a commercially provided “heavy lander”.

This graphic may help:

There are two complete Sky Cranes depicted here, along with the Propulsive Legged Lander, referred to as the PLL in the inset in the graphic.  Note the predicted mass of the PLL is over 2-1/2 times the predicted mass of the SRL Sky Crane.  Note that the Propulsive Legged Lander refers to the numbers shown as PDR Baseline numbers, where that stands for Preliminary Design Review.  PDR is among the first formal Design Reviews hardware will go through.  That says there's a set of fairly high-confidence design numbers to build a prototype, but there's still a chance that things will be found after PDR that can change the capabilities. 

NASA did not provide a name of prime contractor for the PPL. 

Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, declined to discuss specifics about what companies proposed, citing proprietary information. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX did receive study contracts in June 2024 for concepts that would incorporate technologies they are developing for Blue Origin’s Blue Moon and SpaceX’s Starship lunar landers.
...
Both systems would deliver a redesigned sample retrieval landing platform. It would use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) for power rather than solar panels, a move intended to simplify operations of the lander and better deal with dust storms that would impair solar panels. It would also use a smaller MAV, although NASA did not release details on changes in the design of the rocket that was one focus of the study contracts awarded last June. [NOTE: MAV is the Mars Ascent Vehicle, a small rocket that will lift the samples to Mars orbit for transfer to the ride to Earth - SiG]

The result of this meeting was to punt on how to get this program to work and get the samples that are already sitting in Perseverance back to Earth.  NASA doesn't even have money in the budget to consider the study.

That initial work, Nelson said, requires Congress to provide at least $300 million in a fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill. NASA originally zeroed out MSR in its 2025 budget request last March, then requested $200 million. A House spending bill introduced last year would have provided $650 million while a Senate version offered $200 million. Congress has yet to pass a final 2025 spending bill, more than three months into the fiscal year.

For his part, Bill Nelson said he didn't want to leave just one option to hand to the Trump administration and defended what could be seen as leaving a problem for the new administration saying, “I think it was a responsible thing to do not to hand the new administration just one alternative if they want to have Mars Sample Return, which I can’t imagine that they don’t.” 

SpaceX Releases Starship Test Flight 7 Plans

Last Friday, Jan. 3, SpaceX released some detailed information on the plans for Flight Test 7.  The liftoff has been moved to Saturday, Jan. 11 at 8:00 AM EST. 

That blue text link above the video in this jpeg file leads to this page.

This vehicle is referred to as, "Starship-Super Heavy Block 1/2" on Next Spaceflight which implies "Starship is Block 1 and the Super Heavy (booster) is Block 2. (At least it implies that to me...) while the SpaceX page emphasizes the changes for Starship, which implies the ship is Block 2. They then go into listing the changes one by one.  

The vehicle’s forward flaps have been reduced in size and shifted forward and away from the heat shield, significantly reducing their exposure to reentry heating while simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiling. 

Redesigns to the propulsion system, including a 25 percent increase in propellant volume, the vacuum jacketing of feedlines, a new fuel feedline system for the vehicle’s Raptor vacuum engines, and an improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors, all add additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions.

The ship’s heat shield will also use the latest generation tiles and includes a backup layer to protect from missing or damaged tiles.

Starship's avionics were also upgraded.  Avionics upgrades include a more powerful flight computer, integrated antennas which combine Starlink, GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), and backup RF communication functions into each unit, and much more - including more than 30 vehicle cameras giving engineers more insight into the entire vehicle during flight.

Another totally new feature of this flight will be a test of the "Pez dispenser" that will release 10 Starlink simulators (not functional Starlink satellites).  These will be on the same suborbital path as the Starship, which has its splashdown planned for the Indian ocean.  With no way to slow their speed for reentry, I'm sure they'll burn up on the way down.  For this test, instead of Starlink mock-ups, they could push out actual super-jumbo Pez candies with added weights.

The Super Heavy booster will reuse flight hardware for the first time, with one engine used on Flight Test 5 being used on this flight.  With the tower grab of Super Heavy being cancelled during Test 6, you'd expect that SpaceX has done work on the launch (and catch) tower to increase reliability for a booster catch.  This includes adding protections to the sensors on the tower chopsticks that were damaged at launch. This damage was a cause of the booster being diverted offshore on Flight Test 6. 

They wrap up the description with this:

This new year will be transformational for Starship, with the goal of bringing reuse of the entire system online and flying increasingly ambitious missions as we iterate towards being able to send humans and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

By now, you've probably heard they want to do 25 Starship launches this year or roughly one every other week. Since this launch will be in the second week of the year, they're off to a good start.

Screen capture from the Flight Test 6 video at this SpaceX page on X.  Image credit SpaceX

We Pause to Remember

From one  year ago today 

The Best Story I've Heard About January 6

Today, I saw the best thing I've read about January 6th, the dawning day of American political prisoners and the operation that created them, thanks to Mike Myles at 90 Miles From Tyranny.  

Ashli Babbit wasn't the only woman who was killed that day, but Ashli's killing was so obviously a horrible overreaction by Lt. Byrd who shot her, that her military service and life story have made her the one everyone thinks of first.  She was not a life-threatening risk to Lt. Byrd.  There was also a woman named Roseanne Boyland who died in the capital.  As it is, you'd be hard pressed to find the truth about anything done, anybody killed, and the thousands of years of prison time given to protestors.  I've tried to look up details on these cases but the media saturation with stories made to tell the official party line is making getting details practically impossible. 

From X (Twitter) account InvestigateJ6.  It's a worthwhile 1 minute and 20 second video.

I saw a video of this some months ago, and it looked like that description; that the police beat her to death.  I saw the other people trying to resuscitate her.  The official cause of death was "accidental overdose of amphetamines," but she was known to have come off a drug habit and was trying to help others overcome their addictions.  

Of course, there were also men who died on January 6th; I've seen the names Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips, but the official narrative is that they died of heart failure - cardiovascular disease.  As a general rule, nobody cares about white men dying other than their families, so since they weren't wearing fur and horns or caught stealing Nancy Pelosi's desk, it'll be hard to find anything else about them. 

A big thanks to Tom Fitton and Judicial watch for starting the suit on Ashli Babbit's family's behalf.

Vivek Ramaswamy might have won the war of words on Jan.6, tweeting on the 6th about Ray Epps and adding the hashtag, #EntrapmentDay.  Note that on the 6th, DC U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves made it clear that the DOJ is now going to target Americans who were around the Capitol on J6 but did not enter the building.  Anyone who happened to be "around" the Capitol?  How would you define "around" Mr. U.S. Attorney?  Within a hundred yards?  A hundred miles?  Or is it more like people whose political views aren't around the same as yours?  

What Will NASA, SLS, Artemis, and all Look Like Under Trump?

One of the burning questions that many folks have had since Trump's landslide win, depending as it apparently did on Elon Musk's part in the campaign, is what NASA and the major programs will look like in the Trump administration.  All of it is speculation at this point; because the critical decision points in NASA and the rest of the government are all unfilled.  Eric Berger at Ars Technica had an interesting take on it last Friday with an article focusing on a couple of things Musk said that are critical of NASA's approach.

During the last 10 days, Musk has begun airing some of these private thoughts publicly. On Christmas Day, for example, Musk wrote on X, "The Artemis architecture is extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program. Something entirely new is needed."

Then, on Thursday evening, he added this: "No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction."

If you look at that second Tweet, he added the rather realistic, "Mass to orbit is the key metric, thereafter mass to Mars surface. The former needs to be in the megaton to orbit per year range to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars."  Repeat that part about a "megaton to orbit per year" to yourself for a while.  

If it's not obvious from everything I've written about Artemis and the SLS, I'm completely behind Musk's observation that it's "a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program" and it's hard to think of it as being successful in any way other than creating jobs for a select few contractors.  Still, it's not likely to be cancelled.  I don't know how President Trump feels about that now, but Artemis was started in his first term as president.  "I call on NASA to adopt new policies and embrace a new mindset," then-Vice President Mike Pence said in May 2019. "If our current contractors can't meet this objective, then we'll find ones that will."

NASA pretty much ignored that call from VP Pence and the administration, instead keeping its core group of major contractors, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, in place, and transferring billions of taxpayer dollars to them.  

But this time, the push for change is likely to be more concerted, especially with key elements of NASA's architecture, including the Space Launch System rocket, being bypassed by privately developed rockets such as SpaceX's Starship vehicle and Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket.

It's hard to say there's a buzz about this in the open and I hear next to nothing about NASA Administrator nominee, Jared Isaacman who will be a key in deciding this.  He hasn't publicly addressed Musk's comments but when he was nominated made a statement that sounds like he'd agree with Musk to some degree.  

I was born after the Moon landings; my children were born after the final space shuttle launch. With the support of President Trump, I can promise you this: We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place. We will inspire children, yours and mine, to look up and dream of what is possible. Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth.

I can think of this decision being related to the Artemis accords; you've probably heard that Nelson and other NASA "higher ups" have been gathering other nations around the world in signing onto the Artemis accords.  That appears to be trying to build a consensus to not let China claim the moon, and that's now tied to Artemis.  

NASA has pretty much outlined a "moon first, then Mars" plan. Artemis gets us back to the moon by the end of this decade and then we work toward Mars.  Berger thinks what this is going to lead to is both. 

In short, NASA is likely to adopt a two-lane strategy of reaching for both the Moon and Mars. Whether the space agency is successful with either one will be a major question asked of the new administration.

SpaceX first released this artist's conception of a settlement on Mars some years ago.  It shows a domed city surrounded by photovoltaic farms and four Starships. Image credit: SpaceX 

A Ham Radio Shack Update

Something I haven't talked about in a long time is the changes to my station to enable to it to monitor several types of operation in the VHF (6 meter) band where I operate the most.  I think this is the last update, but if not, it's close.  

I never got the system working quite the way I envisioned it and probably the biggest reason why I stopped pushing on it was related to the simple fact that I had it setup to monitor six separate frequencies on the band where different modes are used.  As the year has unfolded, though, the propagation has left Florida and even the SE corner of the US isolated and all the activity seemed to be in only two areas on the band: one for the digital mode FT8 and one for the "old fashioned" or legacy modes of CW (Continuous Wave or Morse code) and phone, or voice. I could just push a button on the rig and go monitor or check those two parts of the band. 

Poor propagation seems inconsistent with this being the peak of the solar cycle, but the first half of the year was better than the second half.  That's not completely true, in the last couple of months, I saw relatively close reports of Alaska being heard.  I never heard the handful of hams in Alaska that were reported but it's still more times and closer to me than I've ever heard of Alaska being reported. 

Another issue I had was that the system needed to be configured to run different instances of the software that the digital modes require. I never got past that point because I was never able to test it and verify it worked.  And that was because whenever I had the multi-receiver (SDR Console pictured at that first link) open I never saw someone using those modes.  

Along the way this year I learned of new piece of software that seemed like it needed to be looked at.  Called JT Skimmer, it's described this way:

JT Skimmer is a freeware, open source 64-bit Windows application for Radio Amateurs. Its main purpose is to monitor the band for digital signals and decode multiple WSJT-X modes, on multiple frequencies, 24 hours a day - and help the operator catch band openings and activity from the rare entities. This is especially useful on 6m because of its unpredictable propagation, but the program may be used on any band.

I can't say everything is working as I'd really like to see it, but as soon as I put a receiver on the FT8 frequency it started decoding. I suppose I could arrange to sit down with a friend some miles away and we could go back and forth with the various modes. 

There are aspects of this that aren't working and one is because it comes with rig control program different from the one I'm using so certain things that go to the rig control don't work, and other things make my setup do weird things. The one that comes with JT Skimmer is called Omnirig while I'm using Ham Radio Deluxe - a story in its own right for another day.

As we edge closer to spring, I expect the propagation on 6m to improve with Sporadic E propagation leading the way.  With that trend may come regular transequatorial (TE) openings into South America as well as skewed TE into Africa or the south Pacific. A true sign of the solar cycle peak will be long propagation that comes from F2 layer of the ionosphere and could reach to opposite side of the planet.  Perhaps it will be worthwhile to monitor more modes simultaneously.

The First Launches of 2025 All Slipped Later

On New Year's Eve, I posted a screen capture of the first three launches of the year from Next Spaceflight to show the first three launches of the year. I'll just repost it here.

All three of those launches have shifted later. We just watched the Thuraya 4-NGS launch from the backporch here south of the Cape. Instead of being at the earliest time that would be called Jan. 2nd, it was about 3-1/2 hours less than two full days late. 

The Starlink 6-71 mission is bumped from Sunday afternoon at 12:10 PM to Monday, Jan. 6 at 11:44 AM.  Since it's launching from the same complex as tonight's flight, I figure there must be some amount of time allowed to recycle everything between launches.  

New Glenn is currently set for Weds. Jan. 8 at 1:00 AM.

A new Starlink mission, Group 12-11 which will be launched from Pad 39A, is now inserted between Sunday's Starlink 6-71 and New Glenn early Wednesday morning.  This new group 12-11 mission will launch NET Tues. Jan 7 @ 10:51 AM EST.

And if you can keep all that straight without going reflexively back and forth to NextSpaceflight, you're doing better than me! 

The first launch of 2025, tonight's Falcon 9 launch from SLC-40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Screen capture from the NSF (NASA Spaceflight) video. 

There are reports or rumors that SpaceX has set their goal for this year at around 180 launches. I've also seen 188 mentioned as the goal, and I don't know of an official place to see that. So pick one or the other of those and divide 365 days by that number of launches.  You'll get a number close to two, which implies a launch every other day.  Last year, SpaceX launched more than every other launch provider on Earth, combined.  I don't see that as likely to change.

Small Space News Story Roundup 49

Because there's still nothing big going on, where big is defined as more than one news service talking about it.  

Parker Solar Probe Updates for the Second Time

On Dec. 27, I updated the previous story to add the Parker solar probe was in contact, downloading the status that it had successfully conducted (and survived!) its close approach to the sun.

In that same story, it was mentioned that a more detailed report would be sent back to Earth on January 1st.  That data came down as expected on New Year's Day. 

On Wednesday (Jan. 1), mission control at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland began receiving the Parker Solar Probe's first telemetry — or housekeeping data — that confirms Parker's systems and science instruments are "healthy and operating normally" after its historic rendezvous with the sun, NASA shared in an update on Thursday (Jan. 2).

"All is looking good with the spacecraft systems and instrument operations," Michael Buckley, a spokesperson at JHUAPL, which oversees the Parker Solar Probe mission, told Space.com in an email. "It really is a remarkable spacecraft!"

Briefly, the probe survived with no problems at all; the data indicates every instrument behaved properly, the spacecraft had executed the commands that had been programmed into its flight computers before the flyby and all instruments report being healthy. 

The measured data is still to be downloaded but no source I could find would say when to expect that. 

A visualization of the Parker Solar Probe in front of the sun. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

Update to SpaceX Flight to be the First Crewed Orbital Mission over the Poles

Remember talk about this mission?  On August 12, SpaceX announced they will provide launch and space hardware for the first human flight that will go into a polar orbit. The private mission is being led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years.  The projected launch date back in August was said to be "around the solstice" but not exactly which solstice.

We learned today from the Payload newsletter that the mission has the mission, called Fram2, is expecting to launch No Earlier Than this spring.  To be pedantic, that's an equinox not a solstice:

The crew of Fram2 from left to right: Rabea Rogge, Eric Philips, Chun Wang, and Jannicke Mikkelsen. Image credit: Fram2 on X.

(as an aside, I had completely forgotten that Fram2 is the mission name, and that it's named after a Norwegian research ship named Fram. I honestly thought "it's named after an oil filter brand?"

That Payload Newsletter is worth taking a look at. It's a couple of screens of "What to Expect in 2025"

Very Little Space News Today

You'd think it was some sort of holiday observed in most of the world or something. 

The only thing I saw reported that was pretty much new was the SpaceNews (dot com!) article on the record year that the US Space Force had at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.  

Florida’s Space Coast capped off a record-breaking year with 93 launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, up from 74 launches in 2023.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, commander of the Eastern Range and Space Delta 45, credited the accelerated pace to innovations by both Space Launch Delta 45 and the private sector. “We’ve been able to reach these crazy numbers by leveraging automation, modernizing infrastructure, and streamlining processes,” Panzenhagen told SpaceNews.

The interesting thing General Panzenhagen pointed out was of those 93 launches, 88 were SpaceX.  The other five were United Launch Alliance.  

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All that out of the way, two memes that have been on my mind. The first one is just a simple observation.

The second one is an observation that seems obvious to me.

I think Candace Owens is absolutely right: those people being against Tulsi is as good an endorsement as  you'll see.  I guess I'm assuming this is either exactly the same group that covered up Hunter's laptop and called it Russian disinformation or there's a lot of overlap.  A favorite observation I came across years ago is that the biggest benefit of true Freedom of Speech is that it makes it easier to know who the assholes are.  If everyone is censored, it's harder.  In this case, by giving their names publicly, they've made it easier to identify who the corrupt operators are so they can be gotten rid of faster.

Happy New Year 2025!

I'll keep it short this year.  Just a few little things, too small even for a Small Story Roundup. 

This morning's early SpaceX mission went without a hitch, marking the 134th mission of the year and surpassing last year's record by 38 missions. Of the 134, 89 were Starlink missions, including this morning's. That's almost exactly 2/3 of the total. 

SpaceX's first launch of 2025 will be New Year's night (on the eastern time zone) at midnight also known as Thursday morning at 12:00 AM.  This will be a communications satellite called Thuraya 4-NGS for the UAE based Yahsat. The Falcon 9 will lift the satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit.

It will be a relatively busy first week "just up the road" on the Space Force Station.

Note the announced date for the (dare I say "long-awaited"?) Maiden Flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn.  This one is going to be a "must see." 

There are no launch dates assigned to Vandenberg so far, and the fifth scheduled launch of the year is Starship's IFT-7 from Boca Chica Starbase in Texas. 

On last year's post I made a couple of predictions for '24. "I'm fairly confident Vulcan Centaur will fly - maybe even both Certification missions.  I'm rather less confident that Boeing's Starliner will fly, and about the same level of confidence New Glenn will fly."  Vulcan Centaur flew both certification missions in a roundabout way, and its first National Security flight is looking to be in spring of this year.  Starliner flew, but it's hard to consider it a proper mission since the two astronauts are still up there and Starliner came back to Earth empty.  Half a flight?  New Glenn, as just mentioned, didn't fly and is currently scheduled for its first flight on Sunday the 5th.  Thankfully, I think my predictions pretty much were right on.

I've never been much of a fan for celebrating New Years, so let me leave it there, along with a wish for a very Happy New Year to everyone who stops to read here.  May it be happy, healthy and fun for all.

India Launches Test of one of those Critical Technologies

This morning (EST) India launched a pair of satellites into orbit designed to test out methods of docking two spacecraft autonomously. 

A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) lifted off at 11:30 a.m. Eastern (1630 UTC; 10 p.m. local time) Dec. 30 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, with the rocket climbing into the night sky.

The PSLV-C60 rocket carried the primary payload in the form of the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) as well as 24 different experiments aboard the POEM-4 secondary payload module. Of the latter, 14 are Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and institutional payloads and 10 further payloads from non-government entities. These include a walking robotic arm, a debris capture robotic manipulator, a compact plant research module and a range of sensors.

SpaDeX is a mission by India's Space Research Organization (ISRO) to demonstrate on orbit docking using two small spacecraft.  Docking is one of those key technologies that the world's leading space programs have demonstrated the ability to do, going back to the 1960s with the Gemini program in the US.  Success will make India the fourth country to demonstrate rendezvous and docking, which will be essential for India's Gaganyaan program with a first crewed flight currently planned for 2026.  Uncrewed test flights are scheduled for 2025.

The SpaDeX mission consists of two small spacecraft (about 220 kg each) to be launched by PSLV-C60, independently and simultaneously, into a 470 km circular orbit at 55° inclination, with a local time cycle of about 66 days. The demonstrated precision of the PSLV vehicle will be utilized to give a small relative velocity between the Target and Chaser spacecraft at the time of separation from the launch vehicle. This incremental velocity will allow the Target spacecraft to build a 10-20 km inter-satellite separation with respect to the Chaser within a day. At this point, the relative velocity between the Target will be compensated using the propulsion system of the Target spacecraft.  

The chaser spacecraft is referred to as SDX01, with the target called SDX02.  The ISRO mission site doesn't talk about a schedule of when the various experiments will happen but it appears to be a long mission with the two spacecraft being used for more experiments after the initial docking and related experiments. 

“After successful docking and rigidization, electrical power transfer between the two satellites will be demonstrated before undocking and separation of the two satellites to start the operation of their respective payloads for the expected mission life of up to two years,” ISRO stated in a mission briefing. 

Image Credit: ISRO

Once they've demonstrated their abilities in this critical area, you can be sure we'll see it in more future missions.  It has already been talked about for the Chandrayaan-4 lunar south pole sampling mission, expected to launch in 2027 or 2028.

SpaceX's Last Launch of 2024

It's looking like SpaceX's last launch of the year will be Monday night just after midnight EST; more precisely at 12:34 a.m. EST (0534 GMT) on Tuesday, New Year's Eve.  Of course the farther west time zones will all show this as Monday, Dec. 30.   

The launch will be SpaceX’s 134th Falcon flight in 2024, surpassing the company’s prior year total by 38 missions. Of this year’s 134 launches, 89 were devoted to expanding the Starlink global network (including this upcoming flight).

Tuesday's launch is also SpaceX's third Falcon 9 launch in three days, following a Starlink mission launched from California and a four-satellite launch for Astranis from the company's other Florida launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

This will also be a Starlink mission, carrying 21 Starlink satellites including 13 with direct to cell phone capability.  It will be the 16th flight for the booster which previously launched Crew-6, BlueBird-1, USSF-124, mPOWER-B, and 11 Starlink missions. Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions about 8 minutes after liftoff. 

This morning's (12:00 AM local or 0500 UTC) Astranis mission is in highlight video format here.  

Starlink is a remarkable achievement. There are close to 7,000 active Starlink satellites of various versions on orbit now (currently said to be "more than 6,850" - meaning six or seven more launches gets them to 7,000).  At the recent pace of three launches per week, not all Starlink, they'll be at 7,000 by the end of January.

File photo of a Falcon 9 liftoff closer to sunset than midnight, from SLC-40.  Image credit: SpaceX