Blue Origin gives possible cause of the New Glenn Explosion

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket erupts in a fireball at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

It started making news this afternoon that Blue Origin released an update on their investigation into the explosion back on the evening of May 28, now over two months ago, that destroyed not only their New Glenn test vehicle but much of their pad and surrounding infrastructure. CEO Dave Limp wrote:

Wanted to give an update on the hotfire anomaly investigation. Progress continues. The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections. Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We're making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. We’re manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month. In parallel, we're working through the remaining fault tree analysis. 

New Glenn is bigger than SpaceX's Falcon 9, closer in size to ULA's Vulcan Centaur.  Like the Falcon 9, New Glenn's first stage is recovered and that has been done successfully twice. The booster stage is powered by seven of their BE-4 engines, and ULA's Vulcan is powered by the BE-4 engines. New Glenn is "designed to launch at least 25 times" and their Blue Moon lander is a critical part of NASA's Artemis lunar landing goals that has been designed to fly on New Glenn. 

While it's easy to appreciate the honesty of CEO Limp's statement published above, a little thing that stood out to me was also noticed by Eric Berger at Ars Technica in their article about this. 

Limp said the company’s path forward is “clear” as it works toward returning the New Glenn rocket to flight before the end of this year.
...
This is a positive update, and the transparency is appreciated. However, it also seems clear from Limp’s statement that the company has not yet identified the root cause of the issue.

If any of you readers work in modern manufacturing companies, you probably noticed that there was no mention of that term in the statement. They're not done until the root cause analysis is done and followed.

Blue's founder, Jeff Bezos, has made it clear he wants to see New Glenn flying again before the end of this year - that has been the talk since all of the airborne chunks of debris hit the ground. Tory Bruno, who had been CEO of United Launch Alliance and is now the president of national security for Blue Origin, made reference to a major development program that Blue is working on, "Blue Ring."

[Tory Bruno] indicated on the social media site X that the next flight of New Glenn could carry the company’s “Blue Ring” spacecraft. “She’s in final build now for a flight this year,” Bruno said Wednesday of the spacecraft.

To inject a little unpleasant honesty, Blue Origin has often come across as a bit slow to achieve various goals they publicly state they're aiming for. They really seem to be focused on getting New Glenn launching again, and it seems possible that this is the effect of bringing in CEO Dave Limp to replace Bob Smith - who also replaced a prior CEO (Rob Meyerson). Now, reporters who have regular contacts inside Blue say they seem like a new company, more focused than ever before, this time focused on getting New Glenn flying before the end of 2026. As Eric Berger puts it, "the long-slumbering giant in the US space industry may finally be waking up."

The Falcon 9 upper stage hit the moon - now the race starts

For the last several days, the web has been abuzz with talk about the Falcon 9 upper stage that was expected to crash into the moon. Much of the buzz has been wrong, or just trying to raise awareness (and funds), such as referring to it as a Falcon 9 rocket, when I think we all know that's just not how F9s work. The booster landed when this upper stage was making orbit (or about 8 minutes after liftoff, if you prefer). 

No, this was just the upper stage of the Falcon 9 that launched two private landers to the moon — Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and Tokyo-based ispace's Resilience — launched to a high, moon-crossing Earth orbit in January 2025. The Falcon used up enough fuel that there wasn't enough to perform the usual maneuver to return to Earth. 

So the company performed a different maneuver to take care of this upper stage, Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during a press conference on Aug. 3.

"For high-energy missions, we need to perform a different maneuver to ensure the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations, and so we did that here," she said.

The problem was reality had some other things in mind.

"What has happened is, essentially, a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon," Scheiman said. 

The upper stage slammed into the moon at 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 UTC). Because an exact impact spot wasn't known, they need to work with various other agencies to attempt to learn more, even if just before and after photos of the impact area. 

"NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and NASA’s ShadowCam instrument on the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will look for opportunities to capture before‑and‑after imagery of the impact site," NASA spokesperson Rob Garner, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com. "Image availability depends on several factors, including the impact location, lighting conditions, and when each spacecraft’s orbit next carries it over the area, which may take a few days to receive any imagery." 

Today's impact occurred on the sunlit side of the moon, reducing chances of hobbyist observers seeing anything. A quick search for news like that turned up nothing. So far the only observatory that claims to be sure they saw the impact is the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and reported detections of a lunar plume from the impact.

"We can safely say that we measured a response from the rocket stage impact as a sodium and lithium gas plume a few 10’s of kilometers in size lasting between 5 and 10 minutes after impact," Carl Schmidt told Inside Outer Space's Leonard David.

I'm only vaguely aware of what to expect from a measurement to detect the minerals in the dust column rising from the impact, but the Lowell Observatory provides this photo. I see this as showing two different frequency (or color) lights for sodium and one for lithium. This looks like what I'd expect.

Detections by the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, show evidence of a plume on the moon caused by the impact of a SpaceX rocket on Aug. 5, 2026. (Image credit: Carl Schmidt/Lowell Observatory)

Starship Flight Test 14 looks to be NET August

There just isn't an announced date for it, so I'm assuming Monday August 31. 

FT-14, of course, will be the next flight test after the enormously successful FT-13 back on July 24th. 

The big picture comes from coverage of SpaceX's first ever quarterly earnings report. Starship will achieve orbit and deploy fully operational payloads this time around, according to Elon Musk's talk at the earnings report.

"I'd say things look very good, and that's why we, assuming we receive regulatory approval to do so, will attempt to catch the Ship with the tower on the next flight, which is tentatively scheduled for the end of this month," Musk said during today's call.

The ship, as you know was recovered after its splashdown into the Indian Ocean west of Australia. It's the first Starship to be recovered after one of these flights. While from what we observers could see, the heat shield looked like it survived very well, except maybe to a couple of observers who expressed doubt immediately after the booster recovery, Elon appears to think it looks pretty good. 

"I don't want to jinx it or anything, but I think I'd consider the heat shield problem solved at this point," Musk said.

Both of the launch complexes at Starbase Boca Chica have the (pretty amazing, really) large "chopstick" arms that are designed to both stack the SuperHeavy booster and the ship before flight then to catch both of them in midair after the flight. SpaceX has already famously executed a tower catch of the SuperHeavy booster, but it has not yet tried to catch a Ship. That means Flight 14 could be momentous, provided SpaceX gets permission from regulators to make an attempt.

Flight 14 will also carry up a batch of SpaceX's V3 Starlink satellites, a larger and more capable version of the spacecraft that currently populate the company's broadband megaconstellation. Flight 13 toted 20 Starlink V3s, but Ship deployed them into suborbital space; the satellites will be placed into an operational orbit on the upcoming mission, if all goes to plan, Musk said.

Starship FT-12 within seconds after liftoff. It isn't exactly like FT-13 but I couldn't tell you what to look for to demonstrate that. Looks just like it to me. Image credit: SpaceX

To borrow that quote from Nils Bohr, “prediction is very difficult; especially about the future”. The predictions and reality of the AI "singularity" don't really seem to be in much agreement, and that has to apply in spades to SpaceX's orbital data centers. Still, SpaceX is working to being able to launch Starships at rates that are mind-boggling.

"We expect the cadence of flights to be increasing rapidly, and, probably a year from now, we will be doing at least one flight a day, possibly more," Musk said.

Did you see that the plan for them to expand into the Louisiana waterfront of the Gulf of America appears to be close to being agreed on. The more launch complexes they have to call on, the more realistic everyday launches become.

Update on SWIFT rescue mission

Back last Tuesday, the story broke that the reaction wheel attitude control system on the Link spacecraft sent up to rescue the Swift gamma ray observatory had apparently failed and the Link satellite was spinning out of control. Two of the satellite’s three reaction wheels, used for pointing, had stopped working.

Things didn't look good for the little spacecraft.

... Link was rotating on multiple axes, rendering it unable to maintain a reliable communications link with the ground and complicating efforts to arrest the spin. Two of the satellite’s three reaction wheels, used for pointing, also stopped working. Through sporadic radio contact, engineers discovered a problem with some of the spacecraft’s cold gas thrusters used for finer attitude control.

It's worth pointing out that Link had been working fine, and was out of communication for a while, something that typically happens for many satellites. 

Katalyst’s ground team, working from a control center near Denver, hurried to find a fix and recover the Link satellite. The good news was, the spacecraft’s other systems remained healthy, including its power supply, three xenon-fueled electric thrusters, and the rendezvous and robotics hardware the Link satellite needs to capture Swift.

Remember that, as pointed out last week, Link's electric thrusters are low powered for this sort of task which means they'll need to run them for a long period of time. As of Friday (the 31st), the spacecraft had cut its spin rate in half, from about 9 degrees per second to approximately 4 degrees per second. Naturally, they hope to reduce it much more so they can do the task Link was developed for. 

“Once we are in a more stable configuration, with much more high-bandwidth comms, we’ll be able to use that to downlink all the rich data (about the condition of the spacecraft),” Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst said. “We do know the states of the reaction wheels and the thrusters and things like that. So our GNC team—guidance, navigation, and control team—has been very hard at work with NASA, essentially remapping all of the control algorithms to be able to have an updated controller ready to go for when we are able to stabilize the spacecraft.” 

The Katalyst engineering team hopes to be able to stop the errant motions entirely and to recover the two reaction control wheels that seem to be completely dead. It would help if they knew exactly what was wrong. They don't really know why the wheels stopped working properly - whether it was a component problem of some sort in the Link satellite or even a collision with space junk of some kind. There are cameras on the Link satellite that can be steered around to look for evidence of what happened. Once the data links are running closer to capacity again. 

It's being considered that the automatic fault detection - a fancy version of turn it off and back on again - could be at least part of the cause.

Whatever the cause, Katalyst’s mission control team lost contact with Link for more than 24 hours after it spun out of control. The satellite then automatically reset itself, just as it was supposed to do.

“This was built-in fault protection logic saying, ‘Hey, if I haven’t heard from anybody in 24 hours, there must be something wrong. I’m going to toggle the power, turn it on and off again,’” Lee said. “It’s just built in. However, that shutdown mode is ungraceful. It basically pulls the plug on everything, and that creates some downstream effects for sensitive systems such as the reaction wheels.

“Basically, there was a big thermal spike that came about as a result of this that over-temperatured the upstream electronic circuits that control the reaction wheels, which ultimately led them to being inoperable,” Lee said.

While busy and this setback ensures they're not quite "there" yet, the Katalyst team is working to complete the rescue mission they contracted for.

“We’re very committed to pursuing this mission,” Lee said. “We’re working side by side with NASA. I just came from a technical working meeting with their controls team, where we’re reviewing the algorithms. It seems like there’s nothing that is preventing us from reestablishing three-axis control of the spacecraft with the remaining reaction wheel, with the remaining thrusters, as well as the electric propulsion.

“It’s not the original mode that we expected to control the spacecraft with, but it seems like we will have sufficient stability and controllability of the spacecraft,” Lee said. “With this, we believe we’ll be able to do the rendezvous with Swift. We believe that we’ll be able to go and do things like the inspection of Swift within a close approach of a few dozen meters. And as it stands right now, we have not made a formal assessment, but we believe that a capture of Swift, an attempted capture of Swift, is very much in the cards.”

A plume of plasma exhaust coming from one of the Link satellite’s xenon-fueled electric engines. Credit: Katalyst Space Technologies

Just like that, it's August in Central Florida

I'm not saying that because of changing the page on the calendar. From the feel of being outside, it has been August for a few weeks. Heck, I know a guy who has a lawn service business and he was saying it has been full tilt summer since about day 1: the solstice back on June 21.  

A sure indicator is when the UV Index says 11 on a scale of 1-10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal in one hour." We know that's aimed at visitors to the area who aren't used to it and don't pay much attention.

There are many places where folks look forward to summer; it's time to go outside - maybe for the first time in months, enjoy warm, glorious days; garden, bike, picnic; maybe enjoy a book while lounging on the beach. Songs like Nat King Cole's classic "Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" come to mind.

That's not here. Here, summer is something to be a bit more reserved about. If you live here, you can keep up with your regular life. If you were from a moderate place, not used to our heat and humidity, running or other outdoors activity could conceivably kill you. August marks the Dog Days of Summer; everything outdoors slows down. Fishing slows - sure the fish have to eat, but they become more active after dark. Animals are more sluggish. Ordinarily, it can be nasty here from about mid-July to almost the middle of September. The worst of it is August. 

The Minnesotans for Global Warming cherish the summer and endure the winter. Here it's the opposite. 

When we first got an HDTV around 20 years ago, Mrs. Graybeard and I naturally spent much of our TV time searching out HD programming.  One of the first movies we watched was "The Chronicles of Riddick". You have to understand this is not even particularly good scifi. It's a fun movie to watch, it's a visual treat, it's a fantastic display of special effects perfect for HD, but don't pay too much attention to the story. To quote a review (long gone from the net), "Furyans, Necromongers, Elementals, The Underverse, the Threshold...it so clearly wants to be epic that it forgets to tie all of these disparate worlds, universes and civilizations into a coherent story. (Director) Twohy clearly makes the mistake of not realizing that there is a huge difference between being grand and being simply confusing and the more ideas that are introduced, the more lumbering it becomes…"

We still watch it on the rare occasion when we run into it.

A large portion of the movie, and one of the longest action sequences, takes place on the planet Crematoria (many of the names in the movie are that cheesy).  Crematoria is a planet that has a tremendous temperature variation (probably an impossible amount) with daytime temperatures of 700F and night time temperatures 300 below zero. When the sunrise terminator sweeps through, the force of the heat gales that come with it is literally enough to blow you apart, disintegrating flesh and blowing pieces off until you die. There's a scene where a character (Purifier), a Furyan like Riddick, sacrifices himself by walking into the sunrise terminator and self-immolating. That's him trying to stand up to the gales while being set afire and having pieces of burning flesh blown off him.

The first time I saw that scene, it reminded me of the time we decided to do a long bike ride on July 4th (I think it was a hundred mile ride, but for sure it was a virtually all day ride). I mentioned it to Mrs. Graybeard who said, "sure, we've been out on days like that."

The National Weather Service publishes charts for heat index that show the amount of danger from the combination of heat and humidity.  This is one of their charts.  I've drawn a box around the typical morning conditions here.  This morning, when I was doing some work that required I go outside for a a little while, Weather Underground was reporting 86 with a "feels like" temperature of 96.  That's just about dead center of the black rectangle I added. In the afternoon, it pushes farther into the orange, maybe red.   

 

And that's what life here is like for August or maybe from Mid-July through Mid-September. Stay out of the sun. Do your outdoor activities near sunrise or sunset. Don't expose bare skin to the sun any longer than necessary - and even then, use sunscreen if you need to be out when the sun is intense, say from 10 AM to 4 PM. A protection factor (SPF) of 3 million is adequate. Without air conditioning and mosquito control, a technological civilization could not exist here.

Oh, and for those greenies and others pushing the idea that Americans are lazy for having air conditioning because they don't do that in Europe. Our latitude is well south of Europe, like toward the south end of the Sinai Peninsula. Sharm el-Sheikh airport is just a few miles south of our latitude. All of Europe is well north of us. 

Ran across a fun special events ham station last night

My usual hangout in ham radio has tended to be six meters, (50-54 MHz, and the first VHF band in the USA) and the last handful of days 6 has pretty much done one of its "oh, fuggedaboutit" intervals and nothing has been copyable around here. So last night I did one of those things I tend to do when 6 bores me out ofmy mind and dropped down to HF to see if there was anything going on. It was around 10PM here, so 0200 to around 0230 UTC.  

Dropped to 30m. Heard nothing new. 

Dropped to 80m. Likewise. 

Figuring 40m was likely to be the busiest/most crowded but with the same "nothing new" picture, I went up to 7.074 MHz. Very surprisingly, 40 not only wasn't as busy as I frequently find it, but there were a few stations that my copy of the JTAlert software told me I had never worked on 40. I worked three countries for the first time on 40 but that's not the story. The story is that one of them was a special event operation using the call sign GB64MOD. If you're familiar with the ham web site QRZ.com, this is what you see when you look up that call.  Here's a reduced copy of just one of the graphics on that page:

Their QRZ listing says they have a special web page for this event here. It adds this narrative:

GB64MOD ham radio special event station - Celebrates the spirit of the Mod movement through Amateur Radio.. classic British Culture modern communications with fellow Mods, Ham Operators and Shortwave listeners around the globe!

Calling Radio Amateurs worldwide! - Join us in celebrating Mod culture, music, fashion and more... Lets make this an annual event!

A truly modern Mod revival! Let us know your plans? 

Curtis MW0USK and Kevin MW9KJC.

Now, let me tell you why I'm emphasizing this. While I remember much of the "MOD" music, certainly The Who, and Small Faces that they make buttons for in that graphic, as well as many more, that's not what I'm seeing here. What I'm seeing is more evidence for the movement that says "this is why we were called GREAT Britain" with the implied celebration of being Great and not a place that should be wiped out by the suicidal embracing of immigrants who are wiping out the British culture and society.  Which leads to thinking, "we can be GREAT again and we should work at that." Notice there's nothing explicitly leaning in that direction on the website; just a reminder of those days for those who loved them. Make of it what you will.

If you're unfamiliar with special event stations like this they happen quite frequently. The biggest regular events these days are Parks On The Air (POTA) and Summits On The Air (SOTA). People collect certificates and QSLs from activities like all of these. 

Small Space News Story Roundup 84

Just because they're small stories doesn't mean they aren't interesting

Europe's Ariane Group completes test of reusable Themis booster

The Ariane Group announced yesterday that they had completed something resembling a WDR - Wet Dress Rehearsal - of their Themis booster. The test itself was actually on July 23rd.

During the test, the 28-meter-tall demonstrator underwent a simulated pre-flight sequence under cryogenic conditions. The test did not use the liquid oxygen and liquid methane that will be used during powered testing. Instead, liquid nitrogen was circulated through the vehicle’s cryogenic tanks and lines.

This may not seem super exciting, but… The wet dress rehearsal represents the most significant publicly announced milestone in the Themis test campaign since September 2025, when the T1H demonstrator was erected on its four landing legs at Esrange, marking the start of combined testing. In January 2026, then-director of ESA’s space transportation program Toni Tolker-Nielsen explained that Kiruna, where Esrange is located, was under snow and that they were “waiting for spring.” It is not yet clear when the next milestone in the test campaign will take place.

I've been covering whatever I could find about Themis since it was announced in March of 2019, so over seven years ago, and it has generally been the story that they will go months or years without releasing a word about it, then something like this comes along. 

This image was first posted here in that March 7, 2019 article. And, yes, it sure does look like a Falcon 9 from this angle - although grid fins either aren't there or aren't visible.  

A current photo from this test site is on the European Spaceflight page, linked at the top of this section. It's obvious from that photo that this pad isn't a launch pad and couldn't survive engines firing on it for any length of time.

In keeping with their history of "they will go months or years without releasing a word about it, then something like this comes along", there is no mention of what the next testing will be or when to expect it to happen.

The big, surprising, out-of-nowhere story though was:

The DOT is looking to exempt some launches from environmental regulations

The Department of Transportation is proposing to exempt commercial space launch licensing from many environmental regulations, a move praised by industry but (of course) criticized by environmental groups. This week, the DOT said it intends to file a proposed rule for public comment (I assume they're referring to an NPR or Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) that would exempt Federal Aviation Administration licenses for commercial launches and reentries, as well as launch sites, from 13 federal laws and associated regulations. If the NPR is the way they're doing this, it will be open for public comments for a period defined by the laws. You can be sure the greenies will attack this plan.

Environmental concerns raised… Among the laws that would be waived in the proposed rule is the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires environmental reviews for “major federal actions” that include licenses. “America won the first Space Race, and we can do it again, but only if we get government red tape out of the way,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said about the proposed rule. Environmental groups, though, strongly oppose the proposal, noting it would waive not just NEPA but other environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act.

If you saw the post before Flight Test 13, it was full of environmentalist complaints about using the Texas Starbase to launch anything. As I've said many times, reading Michael Shellenberger's Apocalypse Never showed me in more detail than anything I've come across how modern environmentalism is basically the result of rich, or "well to do" people who want a pretty place to go on vacation. 

SpaceX launch for NRO was by the book

It's hardly news when a Falcon 9 mission goes exactly as described, whether the customer is the National Reconnaissance Office, like this one, or some company we've never heard of. I didn't get out of bed for this one and didn't intend to know it was going on, but something woke me as the low frequency sounds from the launch started rattling the north-facing windows. I recognized the sound and could see the clock well enough to realize it was after 3:10 AM (ordinarily, the sounds of liftoff reach our place when the F9 is about to drop the first stage, at pretty much 2 min 30 sec. That can be seconds different launch to launch, but if it gets to be over 3:00 minutes, I tend to think, "we're not going to hear anything this time."

A streak shot of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from liftoff through landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the NROL-95 mission on July 30, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

In a long exposure like this one, that "not as bright as the launch short streak" on the lower right is the booster's  landing burn. The layout of the photo looks to me like it's taken from the mainland, looking toward the East Southeast, perhaps a place in Titusville, the nearest city.

“The collaboration between NRO, U.S. Space Force, and SSC continues to advance our nation’s intelligence architecture through next-generation satellite technology and integrated operations,” said Col. Kathryn Cantu, director, NRO Office of Space Launch, and NROL-95 mission director. “This collaboration enables us to swiftly field resilient intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems while preserving the flexibility and persistence required to counter evolving challenges.”

As I mentioned in passing last night, this was the 7th launch of this booster, B1096, so it's a "like new! Low mileage!" booster, as the used car dealers would say.  Its previous flights were NASA’s IMAP and CRS-34; Kuiper Falcon 1; NROL-77; GPS III-9; and Starlink 6-87. 

Also by the book, 8-1/2 minutes after liftoff, B1096 touched down at Landing Zone 2 at the Cape. The local papers assure me there was a sonic boom, but either it didn't make it this far or I just fell asleep and didn't hear it. After all, the sonic boom also takes around 2-1/2 minutes to get here from the Cape.

The NROL-95 mission was the third mission procured for the NRO and launched on a Falcon 9 rocket as part of the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contract, managed by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command.

A single sentence Starliner story

A much larger story about Boeing's Starliner appears at Ars Technica, but the whole article can be summed up in one sentence. The sentence came from Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg at an earnings call Boeing made to investors and followers, when he was asked how the work on resolving the problems and redesigning everything was coming along.  

The single sentence was:

“The redesign of the Starliner deficiencies is going quite well, and we’re feeling pretty good about that,” Ortberg said.

You will remember the disastrous first manned flight of the Starliner, in the summer of '24. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, barely made it to the ISS. While there, as flight data was reviewed NASA decided not to return the two on their Starliner, but by a series of changes to crews and launches, turned Butch and Suni's two week mission in June of '24 to the nine month mission that had them return to Earth in March of '25. You'll note both of the retired after that mission.

This February, NASA announced that the failure analysis had rated it a “Type A” mishap, the worst or most serious level failure. 

At the time, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the space agency was working with Boeing to “fully understand the risks associated” with the Starliner spacecraft, and to remediate them. Starliner would not fly its next mission, a cargo flight to the International Space Station, until those problems were identified and remediated. He declined to put a date on the test flight. 

During the earnings call Ortberg suggested much of that work was completed, and that the primary issue now is scheduling a launch date with NASA for Starliner to ferry cargo to the space station to ensure there was an open docking port and astronaut time to unload the vehicle.

An official told Ars that the primary factor now for when Starliner launches is aligning port availability on the space station and launch capabilities on the ground. That means the next flight could possibly be this year, since we're still closer to midyear than the start of the last quarter. 

It turns out, that something none of us thought about while the Summer of '24 mission was going on is suddenly poking its nose up and becoming a concern. Remember the story two weeks ago that mentioned crew dragon might be becoming an issue? 

...  there are uncertainties about the availability of Crew Dragon in the 2030s, and more recently SpaceX has been telling industry officials that it plans to retire Crew Dragon (which flies on the Falcon 9 rocket) no later than 2030. This raises serious concerns for not just NASA, which may seek to fly to the International Space Station into the early 2030s, but also for planned private space stations intended to take its place. These companies are having difficulties negotiating crew transportation services as a result. 

The loss of Crew Dragon will be an immediate concern for NASA, and Cargo Dragon isn't far behind that. I can imagine that NASA would have an easier time convincing SpaceX to build another one or two of each format dragon than the problems Boeing has dealing with Starliner.  The last six Atlas 5s are dedicated to Starliner launches, and after those, there is no launch vehicle for Starliner. That's probably far enough in the future that there's time to figure out ways around it. 

Starliner, by contrast, has several disadvantages. Its Service Module, which houses all of the costly propulsion systems, does not return to Earth after each flight but rather burns up in the atmosphere. Sources said this expendable module costs tens of millions of dollars. There is also the fact that, after its initial run of NASA missions, Starliner will have no rocket following the retirement of the Atlas V vehicle. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket is an option, but there would be not-inconsiderable costs to human-rate the rocket, and it would be more expensive than a Falcon 9. 

SpaceX is in an enviable position as being not simply the single biggest launch provider in the world, but the company that launches more than the rest of the world combined. The other side of that is customers might not be inclined to switch over from the world's most reliable rocket to the less well-known Starship. (Thursday morning at 3:09AM EDT, SpaceX is launching a National Security Payload for the NRO from Cape Canaveral. When I saw this will be the 7th flight for this booster, I literally said, "ooh! A new one!")

Boeing's first Starliner capsule to fly, "Sea Anchor" (visible just below the American flag) before the 2024 flight. Image credit: Boeing

Looks like the Link satellite to rescue Swift has some problems

News broke late today, Eastern, that the Link satellite sent to rescue the Swift satellite from burning up on reentry is in dire conditions itself. Two of Link’s three reaction wheels currently aren't working. 

The Link satellite developed by Katalyst Space Technologies “experienced issues with attitude control” over the weekend, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications.

“Preliminary investigation shows that two of Link’s three reaction wheels currently are not operable, and there is some loss of functionality in its cold gas thruster system,” NASA said. 

The Link mission was Launched on July 3 of this year on its "one of a kind" mission to grab a satellite that's nearing end of life and boost it back up to a higher elevation in its orbit. It was launched on the last flight of the Northrop Grumman Pegasus launch vehicle over the Pacific, closely approached Swift and started checkouts to proceed. 

Over this weekend, the Link satellite “experienced issues with attitude control”, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications. Some additional control has been implemented but the spinning hasn't been eliminated. 

Reaction wheels work by spinning in orthogonal orientations on the spacecraft, which transfers momentum to the craft allowing the wheels to change and control the position (attitude), of spacecraft in orbit. They are standard components on many satellites. In addition to the reaction wheels Link also has several cold gas thrusters used for finer control, particularly as it nears the Swift gamma ray observatory. 

The electric thrusters are one of the most critical elements of the rescue mission. They are used for orbit raising to allow Link to rendezvous with the Swift satellite some 200 miles above Earth. Once Link attaches itself to Swift with a set of three robotic arms, the electric thrusters will turn on again to raise Swift’s orbit and save it from destruction. Katalyst is now calling upon the electric thrusters to stabilize the Link spacecraft’s attitude, something they were not intended to do.

Over the course of the next few days, the team will be working to control the spin using the electric thrusters. After reestablishing stable attitude and further investigating spacecraft status, Katalyst plans to update Link's guidance, navigation, and control to accommodate the spacecraft’s new configuration.

Concept of operations for the SWIFT rescue mission. Credit: Katalyst Space Technologies

A look at FT-13's heat shield by NASA Expert

The week is off to a slow start with most talk still about Starship's FT-13 last Friday, with one or two smaller, less-interesting (at least to me) stories. The big story about FT-13 is about the heat shield efforts the company has been going through, and a conversation with a former NASA engineer who studied heat shield materials for nearly four decades at NASA Ames Research Center. This expert warns that the current Starship heat shield tech is a “dead end” for rapid reuse. Even video channel Alpha Tech did a discussion that touched on the subject. 

From the quote about, "nearly four decades at NASA", I have to assume that was starting before the shuttles flew for the first time, so (in rough numbers) 1975 until 2015. The design work was done (or declared that way) by the late '70s, and my impression is they may have done some monitoring of the shuttle heat shields but this wasn't like "continuous process improvement" as much as it was "keeping an eye on things." 

So what's up? Why? A point both Alpha Tech's video and Ars Technica's article make is the Shuttles had an aluminum chassis that the heat shield was mounted on. SpaceX uses stainless steel, but not a conventional austenitic alloy like 304. That means that they developed their own alloy with improved properties (including cost!) over the common, COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) alloys. This source says SpaceX patented it as 30x. (Do I need to mention that Musk seems to like the letter X in product and business names?) 

The powerful advantage to using stainless steel instead of something like the aluminum alloys the Space Shuttles used is a much higher tolerance for heat. On top of that, it's better at the cryogenic temperatures of the fuels and oxidizers the ship uses. 

“Starship’s current thermal protection system is a dead-end for all missions that require full and rapid reusability,” Dan Rasky, a former NASA engineer who studied heat shield materials for nearly four decades at NASA Ames Research Center, told Ars. Rasky is credible: He co-invented PICA, the material used for Crew Dragon’s heat shield.

NASA confronted this same issue half a century ago during development of the Space Shuttle, which used thousands of lightweight ceramic tiles to insulate the vehicle’s aluminum structure. Although the tiles worked fairly well, the US space agency was never able to crack the code on “rapid” reuse. Each tile required post-flight inspections, so reuse of Space Shuttle orbiters remained expensive and time-consuming.
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However, according to a new analysis by Rasky and two other space industry officials, former NASA astronaut Charles Camarda and the head of the NASA transition team for the Trump-Vance White House, Charles Miller, significant challenges remain for rapidly reusing Starship.

They give us a handy photo to concentrate on. Notice that whitish streaks seem to diverge from edges and corners (points) on the hexagonal tiles. Seams or boundaries between the tiles. That implies that it's the super hot gas from the upper atmosphere, melting and pushing out material from under the tiles. SpaceX has shown in their own videos that they put something like a white plastic foam under the tiles. 

A close-up of Starship's heat shield after it landed in the Indian Ocean last week. Credit: SpaceX

The problem is that, with the signs of damage, such a heat shield would appear to require a fair amount of inspection and refurbishment before another launch. In other words, SpaceX has a ways to go to reach “full and rapid” reuse of Starship. “Full” means reusing both the booster and the Starship upper stage, and “rapid” reuse means turning each Starship around in days or weeks, instead of months, at considerable expense.

Here, the person that's saying this is completely missing the story. “Full rapid reuse” doesn't mean landing and flying again “in days or weeks” to Elon and crew. It means taking off again in a few hours. More like a commercial jet than a spaceship. 

On various podcasts and X social media postings, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that solving the reusable heat shield problem is one of the toughest problems the company faces. Back in February on a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, Musk expounded on this, saying a reusable heat shield is “the biggest problem that remains” for Starship. “If you want to be able to land it, refill propellant, and fly again, you can’t do this laborious inspection of 40,000 tiles type of thing,” he said.

The Ars article reduces this down to the reasonable conclusion that Starship's heat shield will likely be good enough to deploy the third generation Starlink constellation like the ones FT-13 carried to orbit. But the experts are concerned that it will be unable to hit the high flight rate needed, with several hundred to thousands of low-cost launches annually, for large settlements on the Moon and Mars, orbital data centers, or large-scale space-based solar power. 

This sounds like the kind of "advancing the art and science of spaceflight" that we think NASA could help with, but the problem with that is that NASA dropped this kind of research decades ago. 

The experts noted that NASA has not made substantial investments in thermal protection research for vehicles entering from low-Earth orbit (speeds of Mach 25) for three decades. The underlying technologies on Starship, they note, are all based on work done for the space shuttle, National Aerospace Plane, or X-33 programs. No one today, they said, is seriously investing in new, advanced thermal materials for orbital reentry. 

I think that SpaceX has shown that they might be the best place to go for this sort of development. I've seen video clips where Elon discussed how they've altered the recipe for the heat shield tiles and gotten better performance. Perhaps they just haven't gone far enough down that adventure. Or perhaps it's something else entirely. Maybe instead of the white plastic foam sheet they have the tiles mounted on, perhaps they need a layer of something else there. Another tile? In other words, a sandwich of tile, foam, tile, and foam? 

Let's talk QSLs

We broached the subject last weekend so let's do some ... instead of calling it brain-dumping, I'll call it experience dumping. 

First, my usual message to people who stop by for non-radio stuff: thanks for coming by and I should be  back to my usual tech topics tomorrow.  

As for the main question, I don't know how far toward the front of your mind this concept is, but your call sign is a much stronger identifier because while names can be very commonly repeated in your city, your call is the only name you have that uniquely identifies you. For example, there may be many (dozens? hundreds?) of people in the US named Joe Walsh, but only one on Earth who goes by the call WB6ACU (and played guitar for the Eagles). The call conveys what country you live in, generally conveys what part of the country for most nations, although not so much in the US for several years. That excludes virtually all of the people who have the same name as you.

A lot of bloggers use their real life names. Clearly, Silicon Graybeard is not my legal, that you can read on my birth certificate, name. I'm not going to use my call here because there are several freebie websites that allow you to search on a call and get the person's mailing address. In this "information age" that opens doors to unscrupulous actors being able to get into your life. In many places, strangers can look up photos of your home, as well as financial details, county tax assessments and other details you may not want widely looked at. I recommend keeping our calls out of the discussion.  

The oldest way I know of getting QSL cards is having a company printing cards do that for you, and it's still as valid as ever.  Those can be single-sided, so mailing address on one side with QSO details on the other. They're marginally cheaper than first class mail in envelopes, 65 cents vs. 82 according to the US Postal Service. Also in this day of home printers as good as any printer you can get, you can print your own.

But I don't think that's what most people are curious about. They're curious about electronic QSLs.  And maybe that brings us to a question we should have started with. 

What do you want your QSL for?

If you want your QSL for "the final courtesy of a QSO" anything from a paper postcard to anything you printed on a color printer will do. There's a host of companies that have sprung up based on the idea of an electronic QSL or eQSL. Many of them work by generating pretty image files, like the typical jpegs, png, or other file formats you see all the time. They then email the file to the other side of the QSO. I have had a dozen or two from a place called https://qslworld.com/, and another, smaller amount that are more clearly homemade. 

The first company that started a parallel business of doing online QSL exchanges that I knew of was eQSL.cc. and that was in the early 2000s. I started an account with them back then and have been a "member" for (guessing) over 20 years. They have a system called Authenticity Guaranteed (AG) that they started to remove the suspicion that computer pictures generated. If I wanted to use an eQSL for some award that another company issues, I'd ask how to do that. 

The problem with these is that if you want the QSL toward any sort of award you need to find out from the place that does the awards what they'll accept. The more popular awards appear to be Worked All States and DX Century Club - both are from the ARRL. Mailed cards are acceptable, but I don't really know if doing something like printing out a jpg QSL card that you got in an email is acceptable. Or how they'd tell. The thing that electronic QSLs face is the same thing online payments face: fakes. If you apply to the ARRL for DXCC sending them a box with 100 QSL cards in it - or 500 like I did in 2009/2010 -  it's more secure than 100 jpgs. 100 paper cards look distinctly different from 100 pictures on a monitor. 

I guess it was last year that I added eight band endorsement to my 5BDXCC. That was done entirely with contacts confirmed by the ARRL's Log of The World (LoTW). That was the cheapest and easiest way to get an endorsement for (at least) 300 QSOs I've ever come across. 

Well, since I have no idea what the majority of people want to know, maybe I should leave it here and say fire away and leave whatever questions you have. Hopefully there's something that's useful or could spur looking around more.  

An illustration of what the LoTW shows you any time you want it. There are options for what you want to display and I did this a little after I got the 8BDXCC endorsement. I've worked DXCC on 6m, but it'll be a while before I cross the 100 confirmed line and apply for 9BDXCC.

SpaceX eyeing orbit and tower catch of ship next flight

After the wild Flight Test 13, SpaceX has started making statements that are strongly implying FT-14 will focus on putting the ship into orbit, with strong implications it will be a single orbit so they can do a tower catch of the ship, and not need to wait overnight (or whatever it would take).

Starship has made precise splashdowns before. This time, however, the ship gently tipped over and came to rest floating in a remote stretch of ocean west of Australia. Previous splashdowns ended with conflagrations, an outcome SpaceX officials have come to expect with each water landing of Starship.

The buoyant Starship looked to be in fine shape after reaching the Indian Ocean. SpaceX engineers flew drones over the vehicle to inspect its heat shield, getting their best look yet at how more than 18,000 ceramic tiles insulating the ship’s stainless steel airframe weathered the trip to space and back. The tiles withstood temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius) as Starship streaked back into the atmosphere at the end of its hour-long flight from Starbase, Texas.
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“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” Musk wrote on X Friday evening.

Of course, over the last several months, the topic of the heat shield as the key to achieving the critically important capability for "rapidly reusable" intended for Starship has been referred to several times. 

“This is so critical for refining the heat shield and everything else. The really good news is … you’re looking at a pretty intact-looking heat shield,” Huot said. “We were flying at a significantly higher dynamic pressure, so putting way more stress on this vehicle on the way uphill, and it’s sitting there in the water.” 

(Note: Huot is Dan Huot, a SpaceX communications manager who was providing commentary on the company’s live webcast.)

A drone view of SpaceX's Starship vehicle floating in the Indian Ocean after splashdown on Flight 13. The flame visible in this image dissipated after a few seconds. Credit: SpaceX

And a closeup of the "hot end" of the ship. Everything looks about as "like new" as can be. Barely flown.

A close up of the aft end, focusing on the six Raptor engines while the ship was afloat in the Indian Ocean. Credit: SpaceX

The obvious quality of the ship opened discussion of towing it somewhere to be taken ashore and examined by teams of engineers. The source article makes no mention of the ship sinking, deliberately or on its own, nor do the comments to the article. Nor is there mention of it being towed to Australia. 

The only aspect of the mission that didn't go as planned was the return of the booster to landing offshore Starbase Boca Chica. You'll recall that FT-12 in May also had problems with returning that booster and there were a few paragraphs dedicated to describing how this booster was modified. This flight showed some progress, but engineers have more work to do on recovering this version the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX has previously recovered and re-flown Super Heavy boosters twice with the Starship Version 2 design, but not with Version 3. 

A topic we've talked about here a few times is the critical need for orbital refueling. To use Starship for the Human Landing System, it's going to need several ships worth of fuel, because after burning everything to get to orbit, no ship has much fuel left to leave for that purpose. 

For NASA, an orbital flight puts SpaceX on a path toward orbital refueling. This demonstration is vital for any Starship flight beyond low-Earth orbit, including missions to the Moon in support of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop human-rated versions of Starship and the Blue Moon lander to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

“Excited for what will be learned from this mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X after the launch of Flight 13. “When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!”

A person and title I haven't seen from SpaceX before showed up at the end of this Ars article with some wisdom worth relaying.

“Really critical data collected this mission on a demonstration deorbit burn for Raptor, and a first flight for the next generation Starlink satellites,” Shana Diez, SpaceX’s director of Starship flight reliability, wrote on X.

“It feels like we are ready to kick into gear on delivering payload to orbit, which I am very excited for,” Diez added. “Development vehicles are fun but at the end of the day, we are here to put things into space and I am psyched about this rocket’s game changing capabilities.”

Ms. Diez also added this joke. (Kiko Dontchev's last mention was titled vice president of launch) 

Where's the Kaboom?

To quote Marvin the Martian from the Looney Toons world, "Where's the Kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!"  

Of course, my real target of this quote was Flight Test 13. Watched the whole thing from about 30 minutes left in the countdown until NASA Spaceflight's video coverage dropped off. That's from about 6:15PM to 9:20PM EDT video coverage. 

If I was going to be more respectful to the mission as opposed to my odd sense of humor, I'd say what I did right after Flight Test 10: "OK - THAT was incredible". Much like FT-10, we knew this was about more than just testing the ship and the suborbital landing in the Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Australia. The quote from Marvin popped into my head when booster didn't blow up. I was expecting the big kaboom.   

The booster fixes focused on stopping the booster from moving so fast during staging that it couldn't get fuel to the engines and couldn't fly properly. Not flying and decelerating properly was a problem again and the booster didn't do the planned hover over the GoA near Starbase, crashing into the water at too high a speed. 

After that, the rest of the mission went incredibly well. We were able to get fantastic views during reentry of the ship being heated, with no evidence of heat shield tiles coming off (of course, we can't see them all). To my surprise (as well as everyone else's), Ship 30 survived falling over into the ocean and while there was some flame around the ship during the first minute or two, a few minutes ago, NSF was showing a live map showing the ship was still floating and communicating (via Starlink) a full hour after splashing into the ocean.  

Before the launch I didn't get a really clear feeling about how much success this test flight would need to have before they'd make FT-14 the first orbital Starship flight, but to my way of interpreting this flight, it was an amazing mission and (IMO) losing the booster doesn't mean anything big to the next mission. I expect FT-14 to be in end of September to early October time frame. The booster for FT-14 was in process today. 

I knew I shoulda saved this meme - and I'm glad I did!

If SpaceX themselves use it for their launch coverage, it's golden.  

Yes, today's scrub of FT-13 was due to clouds in the area being too dense and too high above the ground. To quote SpaceX directly:

A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won't be possible with today's weather conditions. Visibility is forecast to be ideal for a Friday attempt.

The main culprit is probably tropical storm Bertha, or rather the remains of Bertha, which went ashore around 2:00 PM EDT / 1800 UTC over near the Louisiana/Texas border, and is dissipating away. Like all tropical storms, it's "a poopy day with a press agent" who warns you about all the rain and wind you should be aware of and not need a warning for. But that's just my opinion.

The current word is the launch has been slipped to tomorrow, Friday July at 6:45 PM EDT.

Starship Flight Test 13 looking good for Thursday

There are two things that I ought to get to before much else of the news. 

1. That's as of now, Wednesday night July 22, less than 24 hours to go on the clock, and the criticality of that time goes up every minute until the Thursday 6:45 PM EDT launch time. That is, a problem that happens now might be fixable but if the same problem showed up an hour before launch, it might not be fixable.
2. It hints at a problem that SpaceX has that isn't specifically related to Starship and FT-13. SpaceX is absolutely hated by environmentalists that want every square inch that they like to be pretty; to match their ideas that a natural and pretty environment is more important than anything else humanity might want in their future. Environmentalists keep indigenous populations around the world stuck in the 1800s, denying them electricity, clean water and more - to keep the places they live "wild."

While there might be problems with this rule of thumb, the people who absolutely hate SpaceX are a close overlap with the people screaming for socialism now. SpaceX is a very rich company led by a very rich man, so they are therefore very, very bad. 

The second story made news this morning on Space.com. While the date the agreement was reached doesn't appear in the Space.com article, it focuses on a deal SpaceX made with the federal government.

That deal, which the company made with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), gives SpaceX 727 acres (294 hectares) of public land that's currently part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. In exchange, the company hands over 683 acres (276 hectares) of its territory in the area, not all of it contiguous, to the USFWS.

Last month, a coalition of conservation and tribal groups sued the USFWS over the swap, saying it degrades the refuge and violates multiple laws, including the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997. And yesterday (July 20), those groups filed an emergency injunction, asking a federal judge to stop the exchange until the courts can rule on the ongoing case.

"Federal officials are racing to fork over America's public lands to one of wealthiest corporations on Earth before the courts can even weigh in," Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement yesterday (July 20).

The people opposed to this trade just seem to want more. As in they'll be quiet if SpaceX stops developing that area, but they'll be even quieter if SpaceX just goes away. Laiken Jordahl added, "This refuge is one of the last places left for the public to enjoy nature in the Rio Grande Valley. Why should Texans be forced to surrender even more of their public lands to a trillion-dollar corporation? The court has to intervene now, because once these refuge lands are transferred to SpaceX, they’re gone forever."

I say, "so what?" He doesn't say why the market value of a company's stock should have any bearing on what it's behavior should be. That idea that whoever "THOSE people are" are so rich they're getting away with crime is so baked into the modern left. The "gospel of envy" as Winston Churchill put it. 

SpaceX's Starbase site sits amid wetlands with high biodiversity in South Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Laiken Jordahl never says what's so special about these 727 acres, such that trading for an area 44 acres smaller isn't considered a reasonable swap. My guess is it's prettier. "Wilder looking... so it's prettier." Or they just want to see how much more they can get.

Today we said good-bye to Falcon 9 booster B-1069-32

Today we got to see the rarest of spaceflight missions, a Falcon 9 mission that does not recover the booster. Deliberately. These are only performed when the customer for the mission wants an orbit that an F9 can't achieve without using the fuel that would allow the vehicle to decelerate and land under control. 

I know they do it occasionally but a quick search of the blog shows the last time I posted about them doing it was in November of 2022. From the customer's view, the launch costs more than if SpaceX recovers the booster, I just think that if it was much more, they'd go to another provider.  The booster's final flight today was its 32nd mission.  Fleet leader B1067 flew its 36th flight back on July 9.

Interestingly, if not ironically, the customer paying to launch the payload is Northrop Grumman, which is about as experienced in the space business as any company. 

The mission was to launch a satellite "rescue" spacecraft called MRV-MEV, because it's sending up a Mission Robotic Vehicle and three Mission Extension Pods (MEPs). These spacecraft will be operated by SpaceLogistics, a subsidiary of Virginia-based aerospace giant Northrop Grumman. The launch was from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, SLC-40, this evening at 5:14  PM EDT. 

The "root cause" reason for using all of the fuel the F9 can hold is that the heavy satellite is bound for geosynchronous orbit 22,236 miles up.

At this altitude, orbital speed matches the velocity of our planet's rotation, allowing spacecraft to "hover" over the same patch of ground continuously. For this reason, GEO is a popular destination for spy, communications and weather satellites.

The new mission will work to extend the lives of such satellites. The MRV is equipped with two 10-foot-long (3 meters) robotic arms, each built by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It will use those arms to attach the MEPs — the first three ever to launch — to three separate satellites in GEO.

"Once installed, the MEP uses electric propulsion to provide orbit control and momentum unloading for a client satellite," Northrop Grumman wrote in an MEP fact sheet. "The MEP is controlled by the customer via a self-contained C- or Ku-band telemetry and command system, and [is] capable of providing up to eight years of life extension for a typical 2,000 kg satellite in GEO."

The refueling system on the satellites is "Northrop Grumman-developed Passive Refueling Module (PRM), the first refueling interface standard approved by the U.S. Space Force, which enables MRV to be refueled in orbit," 

A nine minute video of the launch through the "nominal orbital insertion" can be found here.  

I remember reading and posting about the first rescue of a satellite in GEO orbit back in 2019, and it surprised me mildly to see images posted that looked a lot like the images of today's payload. Here's a post from April of 2021 called, “The Age of Reusability in Space is Dawning”. 

Following its launch in summer 2026, Northrop Grumman’s Mission Robotic Vehicle (left) will install Mission Extension Pod (right) jetpacks to extend the lives of client satellites in geosynchronous orbit. MRV also can perform inspection, relocation, repairs, upgrades, and other missions yet to be imagined. Illustration credit: Northrop Grumman. Illustration sourced and caption from: SpaceFlight Now

57 years ago today - "The Eagle Has Landed"

57 years ago this morning at 9:27 EDT, Buzz Aldrin crawled into the Lunar Module Eagle and began the lengthy process of powering things up for the short mission life of the module.  An hour later, Neil Armstrong joined Buzz in the LM.

A little over three hours after that, 1:47 PM, they released the latches and separated from the Command Module.  At 2:12, Michael Collins fired thrusters on the CM moving it two miles away from the LM.  Except for that small altitude difference, both vehicles remained in their initial orbit from yesterday's lunar orbit insertion until 3:08 PM when Armstrong fired the descent engine to lower the Eagle's orbit. 

What follows is a 20 minute video depicting the landing which is easily the best modern reconstruction of the landing that I've seen.  It combines video from the window as Armstrong would have seen it with the audio traffic from Mission Control.  The first three minutes gives a modern simulation and animation of how it all worked; after that, it goes to the view recorded on the LM with spacecraft communication on the left speaker and mission control intercom on the right.  Yes, I think it's worth the time.  

The LM touches down at 4:18PM EDT.

At 6:00 PM, Armstrong radios down to mission control that he recommends they start the EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) sooner than planned; at 9 PM.  Although they don't make the 9PM goal, the 10:39 beginning of the EVA is still five hours earlier than the mission plans.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, this was the last vacation I would ever take with my parents. July of 1969 was the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years of school, and I was 15 years old. Like millions of people around the world, I hung by the front of the black and white TV; this one in my uncle's house in New York City.  We watched intently but I don't recall exactly how much we saw or if we watched until 1:11 tomorrow morning when the EVA officially concluded. It's a sobering thought how many of the family members there on that historic day and night have passed away. Both of my parents, my uncle and aunt, and I'm simply not sure how many else. 

Over the years, this meme from Aesop at Raconteur Report has become my default way of thinking of the Apollo program itself. While he clearly means the landing of Apollo 11, I can see the entire Apollo program as a strong contender for the Peak of Western Civilization. 

Weekend wrapup

As I mentioned in Friday's post, this weekend was the CQ Worldwide VHF Digital Contest, only I described it incorrectly. Or incompletely. 

CQ Magazine has been running a July VHF contest for years, but with the rather amazing rise in popularity of the digital modes (which I know I've talked about before) a group of hams who prefer the "good old" analog modes like voice, mostly single sideband (SSB), with a small amount of FM, along with CW (Morse code) have been finding the contests much less interesting, and I've read that a noticeable number of these operators have stopped participating in the contests. This year, CQ introduced a new concept: a second contest.  Enter the one you prefer or both of them, your choice. The "CQ Worldwide VHF SSB/CW Contest" was held in the first weekend of July with the same 24 hour interval as yesterday's VHF Digital Contest 1400Z, Jul 4 to 1400Z, Jul 5. No, I didn't participate in that. 

So how did it go? Miles better than contest I keep comparing to, last year's ARRL VHF Contest. With the start and end times for this contest being in the morning, it tends to help to remember that propagation will be toward the sun, with paths in the sunlit part of the day. In the mornings, we'll hear the eastern part of the US, and as far as into Europe we can (if we're lucky), while in the evening we'll get more openings to the west. My perspective on open to the west is that from here on the east coast of Florida, pretty much everywhere is "toward the west." That's how it went, only the opening toward the west coast was over pretty early, long before it was sunset on the left coast.

The two pieces of software I'm running and depending on the most are a second-source of WSJT-X, called "WSJT-X Improved," and a program that helps with human interfacing to WSJT-X improved called JTAlert. Describing how to connect them and even get started is "beyond the scope of this paper" (as they used to say). JTAlert's default display puts up a box where incoming messages are tagged so that we can tell at a glance if we've worked that station before, the station's grid square designation, notes if they're calling CQ or a few other things. When that display window contains a lot of calls, it can be hard to read what I need to get out of it in the 15 second intervals FT8 uses. For much of the contest, that window contained 40 to 60 calls in every 15 seconds. Somewhere in that 40 to 60 second interval is where I'd run out time to read it all.

So how good was the weekend?  During the 24 hours of the contest, I only worked two new grid squares (where New simply means I haven't worked them before). That's more or less a "Meh" result. This morning, while 6m was open to Europe, I nudged my number of countries worked up to having worked my ninth band DXCC (100 countries worked on each band). Needless to say, I haven't got 100 confirmed, and can't apply for that wallpaper until I get the 100 QSLs. In my work toward the 8 band DXCC I have now, I've just come to know I need to work a bit more than the 100. Five or 10 extra is generally plenty. 

This afternoon, with the contest over, I worked two more new grids, making the weekend total four. That's not remarkably great, but it's a good day. Certainly more than average. I'm trying to work new ones all the time and I know I've gotten two or three in one day several times. Of course, the more you have worked already, the fewer there are left to get in one day. 

This story about 9BXCC fits nicely with the idea of a post about QSLing, which seemed to get a positive reaction.  

And since this needs a picture here...