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.
...

“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...

Spread that ketchup around

Some catching up on things.

Flight test 13 correction: 

FT-13 is currently set for Monday evening July 20th at the same launch time of 6:45PM EDT so you can correct for your own time zone. That time has been posted since first time I looked for it, around 8:00 AM this morning (EDT), so I assume unless something major happens, it will probably be shown at least until midday Monday unless something really bad is found - or happens - this weekend.

The launch window is 90 minutes long, but as we learned yesterday, that's for holds that might be needed early in the countdown. A hold at an earlier time might be able to use that hour and a half window, but I think it's the fuel loading - which starts at about 45 minutes before the planned liftoff - that says they're done for the day.  

Could be another touch and go weekend here

Back in June, I let all my fellow hams who don't keep track of this know that the annual ARRL VHF contest was coming and I'd be trying to play it hard in the radio room. It turned out to be pretty much a waste of time. 

It's not-so-instant replay time. This weekend is CQ Magazine's big contest, and WA7BNM's Contest Calendar shows it this way:

CQ Worldwide VHF Digital Contest: 1400Z, Jul 18 to 1400Z, Jul 19
	Geographic Focus:	Worldwide
	Participation:	Worldwide
	Mode:	Digital
	Bands:	6, 2m
	Classes:	Single Op All Band (High/Low/QRP) Single Op Single Band (High/Low/QRP) Hilltopper: Single Op Low Power Portable (6hrs) Rover Multi-Op
	Exchange:	4-character grid square
	Work stations:	Once per band
	QSO Points:	1 point per 6m QSO 2 points per 2m QSO
	Multipliers:	Each grid square once per band
	Score Calculation:	Total score = total QSO points x total mults
	Submit logs by:	2359Z July 24, 2026
	E-mail logs to:	(none)
	Upload log at:	https://cqww-vhf.com/logcheck/
	Mail logs to:	(none)
	Find rules at:	https://www.cqww-vhf.com/

You'll note that the times are very unusual. The contest starts and ends at 1400 UTC, or 10:00 AM EDT. Starting at 10:00 AM would have been great today, so it looks like propagation might be better than the ARRL June contest - at least it looks that way at the moment. On the other hand, ending at 1400 UTC, making it a 24 hour contest, could well be shutting down before propagation gets good on Sunday. 

QSLing used to be quite a bit simpler in the "old days."

For non-hams that statement is as useful as if I spoke it in a strange language, while the hams will understand it. Q-signals are three letter messages that all start with letter Q, and are a shorthand way of transmitting common questions and answers, borne out of having to transmit every letter in Morse code. There's a couple of handfuls of Q signals in common use, and QSL has got to be one of the most commonly used Q signals. The precise definition is a little wordy, but a common reference says. 

I am acknowledging receipt. - ("QSL" as a statement)
Can you acknowledge receipt (of a message or transmission)? ("QSL?" as a question)

From acknowledging you received what another ham sent you, it evolved into a postcard or even letter confirming the contact, and what became known as "the final courtesy" of a radio contact. I remember sending and receiving QSL cards long before I got my ham license ("ticket") as a postcard with a 5 cent stamp on it. 

As with so much else in so many aspects of society, the computer age changed QSLing greatly and while 20 years ago, all options involved sending a physical piece of mail (postcard or paper) now we're flooded with options for electronic QSLs or eQSLs. 

I was considering writing a little summary on what options I see and what I think of it. Does anyone want to see something like that? 

Several minutes later...

FT-13 scrubbed on the pad at engine start ... and rescheduled already. 

This screen grab from SpaceX's page for the mission was at 7:40 PM EDT, so less than one full hour after the abort. 

Judging by SpaceX having looked closely enough to decide they can go tomorrow in that little time, I think that means they considered it didn't look like something that required a lot of unexpected work. There was speculation on the NASA Spaceflight video coverage that it might require replacement of as many as four Raptor3 engines. How they came up with that number isn't something I can answer. 

SpaceX's page is the only one I could find with this information.  

EDIT 7/16 @ 10:30 PM EDT, 0230 UTC: A re-check of SpaceX's page for the mission shows the date and time I circled in red are gone, and now it just says "TBD" So cancel this and we'll keep our eyes open. 

I may have just hit the point where I say, "don't launch that"

It's a first. Someone wants to do a wide-impact study in space and I may have just hit the first time I've ever wanted to say, "I don't think that's a good idea." Maybe one test flight, one experiment, but I'm not ready to say "sounds great! Go for it!" Neither am I ready to go sign up to protest their launches. 

The story appeared in several places today such as SpaceWeather.com that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had recently granted approval to a startup company to orbit a test mirror that's intended to reflect sunlight to parts of the world that going through their night. 

Last week, the FCC authorized Reflect Orbital Inc. to launch a huge space mirror named “Eärendil-1.” From an orbit about 625 km high, it will cast a moving, 5-km-wide patch of light onto the Earth about as bright as a full Moon. Later, the company could combine beams from multiple satellites to create much brighter spotlights. Reflect Orbital wants to launch 50,000 more by 2035, selling sunlight-on-demand to solar farms, construction sites and search-and-rescue teams. 

In case you missed it, astronomers - both hobbyists and professionals - have been complaining about not being able to take time exposures without catching reflections from satellites pretty much since SpaceX started launching Starlinks. Those complaints have been blamed on them, but Starlink satellites aren't the same size as that 50,000 mirror constellation that Reflect Orbital is talking about doing (Orbital Radar says there aren't even 10,000 Starlink satellites in use today - there are 9,532) - and neither are the Starlink satellites as big as those mirrors that Reflect Orbital is proposing. 

An artist's concept of sunlight beamed down from orbit. Bats, fireflies, and other creatures of the night could find their darkness interrupted by roving spots of artificial sunlight. Image credit: SpaceWeather.com

If Reflect Orbital's plan is realized, it could be calamitous not only for astronomy but also for the natural world as a whole. Nocturnal animals and night-blooming plants, tuned by evolution to the rhythm of day and night, would suddenly find their darkness interrupted by moving pools of redirected sunlight. Small favors? Reflect Orbital says the light will not be bright enough to start fires.

The FCC acknowledged that there are concerns about this but replied with a limp, "... optical astronomy and the environment lie largely outside their jurisdiction. They can only regulate the project's use of radio signals." Apparently, no US agency regulates how bright a satellite may shine. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is known for ruling with intelligence and accuracy about as often as "pigs will fly and the Earth will fry" to borrow a line (Snookeroo), so I'd hate to get them involved. 

One of the odd aspects to this is the fact that they're reflecting sunlight down. I'd be less concerned about lasers because they're monochromatic, and I'd be rather surprised if as many "nocturnal animals and night-blooming plants" reacted to a monochromatic laser as would react to reflected sunlight. 

What we know about Flight Test 13

The short summary seems to be it's an attempt to verify every fix for every problem from Flight Test 12. The current schedule is still this Thursday, July 16th, NET 6:45 PM EDT 5:45PM local (CDT) or (2245 UTC)  The launch will be from the new Pad 2 at Starbase Boca Chica. 

The most notable change is the inclusion of real, functioning Starlink satellites inside Starship’s cargo bay. SpaceX previously tested the ship’s payload deployment mechanism using simulators mimicking the mass and dimensions of the company’s next-generation Starlink Version 3 broadband satellites.

Like FT-12, this will partly be a test of the "Pez dispenser" approach to carrying the V3 satellites into orbit. The majority of the satellites deployed will be Size and Weight mock-ups simply to provide weight and mass properties of the Starlink V3 satellites to test the Pez dispenser. The first couple of satellites will have more electronics than the mock-up V3 satellites will have,  but the source article on Ars Technica doesn't give exact numbers for mock-ups or real V3 satellites. SpaceX's website for the mission says there are six satellites of the 20 modified for tests. 

The satellites will not be part of SpaceX’s operational network, but engineers will attempt to briefly establish laser communication links between the Starlink V3s and other spacecraft flying in low-Earth orbit. If successful, these links will validate Starlink V3’s interoperability with SpaceX’s previous generation of Starlink satellites. 

The overall mission plan is suborbital, just like FT-12 and all the previous Starship flights, and all of the satellites will reenter and burn up in the atmosphere, so there will be a few tests involving the functioning satellites but those are going to be lost.

Six of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to continue testing methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test.

FT-12 was intended to do a restart test of the Ship's Raptor 3 engines but was unable to attempt that. FT-13 intends to complete restart, which is considered the last major milestone that needs to be verified before going for an orbital insertion. 

Without a doubt, though, the most important part of the mission is how well the heat shield functions. 

“What’s the single biggest remaining problem for Starship? It’s having the heat shield be reusable,” Musk said in February on the Dwarkesh Podcast. “No one has ever made a reusable orbital heat shield. The heat shield’s got to make it through the ascent phase without shucking a bunch of tiles, and then it’s got to come back in and also not lose a bunch of tiles or overheat the main airframe.” [EDIT - change that first use of "No one has ever made a reusable orbital heat shield" to say "rapidly reusable heat shield ..." Musk says that in a different video I've seen - SiG]

“We have brought the ship back and had it do a soft landing in the ocean. We’ve done it a few times, but it lost a lot of tiles, and it … would not have been reusable without a lot of work,” Musk said. “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.”

On this flight, SpaceX will test out modified tiles and attachment mechanisms to gather flight data on different heat shield options. The shield will also have “load sensing tiles” to take measurements as the vehicle experiences higher dynamic pressure during ascent than on previous flights. This higher dynamic pressure will put “added stress on the tile attachments in exchange for increased payload to orbit capability,” SpaceX said.

Artist's conception of the Starship Pez dispenser deploying a Starlink satellite. Image credi: SpaceX

The thing no one says about Crew Dragon is starting to be said

Six years ago this past May, when Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon from pad 39A on the Kennedy Space center, it was the first time that a manned flight took place from the US, since the last Space Shuttle flight in the summer of 2011. With the safe return of Crew Dragon, the US space agency broke a nearly decade-long gap in its ability to put humans into orbit. 

New readers or people who don't follow this closely may not be clear on this, but when the Commercial Crew program's first contracts were cut, the early winner was Boeing, and their Starliner. Nobody really thought the startup small rocket company, SpaceX would be able to do it. After all Boeing had a massive head start on the little guys and had been a supplier to NASA for practically as long as NASA existed. Since that first SpaceX flight in May of 2020, Boeing's Starliner has not completed one mission, and only made it to the space station one time thanks to a combination of luck and the extreme competence of Butch Wilmore, pilot for that mission.  

That mission was later declared a Type A mishap, the worst level in NASA's failure analysis system, and probably won’t fly another crewed mission before 2028. Based on results so far, it's fair to take any date Boeing issues and double the waiting time.

A complication is starting to attract attention to the lack of a second, proven reliable, vehicle to get astronauts into space. The ISS is scheduled to reach end of life in 2030, and whether or not that's a latest or earliest date for the ISS to be deorbited is somewhat like the old jokes about optimists vs. pessimists. A common theme is that each one sees it their way. 

With the International Space Station slated for retirement in the early 2030s, NASA is partnering with several US companies to develop private space stations. As part of that effort, the private companies will have to work with NASA to determine how they will transport astronauts to and from their space stations, some of which could launch as soon as 2030.

And it turns out this is more difficult than it sounds.

Over the last couple of years, we've run articles on these efforts to develop private space stations. We've seen mention of Axiom Space, Vast, Voyager, and Blue Origin. SpaceX is in a bit of strange place right now considering they're pretty much the world leader in spaceflight. They haven't been contracted to work on a new space station now, and there's apparently belief in the contracting group at NASA that SpaceX is pushing everything they do in the direction of using Starship and "it's too big" for these small space stations. Add to that the fact that there's no agreement to keep producing Crew Dragon capsules 

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said the company will fly Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket for a finite number of years, possibly for less than a decade as the company transitions its launches to Starship.
...
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” one industry source told Ars about Crew Dragon availability in the 2030s. [emphasis added - SiG]

Needing a replacement for the Crew Dragon implies that they'd like the new one to be interchangeable with the predecessor and that a well-made copy of the Dragon would be an acceptable alternative. Enter a company we've reported on a few times in the last couple of years, the European startup called The Exploration Company.

Last week, the company hosted an office-opening celebration in Webster, Texas, within a couple of miles of the Johnson Space Flight Center. Founder Hélène Huby said her company was considering making Houston the base of its operations to develop a crewed spacecraft.

The Exploration Company has already won funding from the European Space Agency to develop a cargo vehicle, called Nyx, to carry supplies to the International Space Station. An initial mission may happen in late 2028 or 2029. And Huby has made no secret of her desire to build a crew vehicle.

“It’s very clear that in the United States there is a big need for an additional crew vehicle, and nobody exactly knows if Dragon will continue to serve,” she said. “And even if Dragon continues to serve, which I wish it will because it’s an amazing vehicle, then it’s good to have a bit more competition. And also the path for Boeing is kind of uncertain right now.”

Huby is seeking to attract funding both from the European Space Agency and NASA for the development of a crew vehicle, and then to leverage that money to raise additional private capital for a crew vehicle. The company has already taken preliminary steps toward this, which she estimates will require about eight years and $4 billion.

SpaceX Dragon meets sunrise at launch pad for Crew-10 flight March 10, 2025. Image credit: SpaceX

Eric Berger at Ars Technica adds this good summary to the situation.

If this sounds far-fetched, perhaps it should not. Huby has shown considerable skill in working with European space officials to emerge as a leading contender to build a crew vehicle at a time when leaders there have made their desire for one clear.

A Modest Proposal

Over the course of the World Cup in professional soccer and its intersection with America 250, there has been a flood of stories of how visitors, especially Europeans, are viewing America based on what they're seeing and experiencing firsthand. The reports have focused on their reactions to the random folks they've met, their reaction to American food, American portions, and just how different we are than the stories their media painted about how awful America is. A substantial part of that story is that Europe is undergoing a hot weather period, and how everywhere they visit in the US is air conditioned and European countries generally don't allow air conditioning. 

There were stories of power consumption limits in Europe such that if you had an air conditioner, you couldn't set it to cool below 80 degrees F (which probably isn't correct since there's no Celsius or Centigrade two digit temperature that's exactly 80) but the story brings many things I've read over the years. And there were worse stories, of people who were literally made sick from the heat exposure and got in trouble with the law for running an A/C. 

Like most of the people who grew up in the '50s through the '60s, we didn't have central air conditioning in the homes I lived in while growing up. We were fairly early adopters of window unit conditioners because my dad worked on the night shift (US Post Office) so he would get home at around 4AM and needed to sleep until midday. If you've worked night shifts, you'll know that the world gets much noisier as the day gets going, and his answer was to get a window unit A/C that would let him sleep better and longer. A year or two later, older brother got the next A/C in the house and for a couple of years, we'd move my bed into his bedroom so I could get the cooler air, too. That was only over the summer. I think I got a bedroom window unit the year I turned 13. That house never had central air, but they bought a large window unit for the living room and main living area of the house. 

School wasn't air conditioned until I started high school in the '69/'70 school year. I rode school buses and they were never air conditioned. Walking home from school in whatever the weather was is hardly worth noting as part of life. 

The part of the European Tourist videos that resonated the most with me was their surprise at finding air conditioning everywhere. This morning, I watched this video linked from over at Virtual Mirage. The theme of the video is how of all the things we talk about being thankful for, air conditioning is hardly mentioned. It works and works so well that we absolutely assume it will always be there.  

I've long thought that a technologically advanced civilization couldn't exist without air conditioning. Things like temperature and humidity control that allow even relatively simple technologies to flourish are one thing, but the usefulness for keeping hundreds of people comfortable in an office building could be the biggest advantage. 

Perhaps more than any other group, I think engineers will understand that I think we should propose a holiday be created to celebrate the life of Willis Carrier, the engineer who invented the modern air conditioner in 1902. Carrier was asked to create a way to fix a problem in the emerging printing industry. The printing of four color images required four different printing passes, printing with four different base colors. Because temperature and humidity couldn't be controlled, the paper could shrink or expand enough to ruin the pictures. 

Willis Carrier in 1915 - Image Credit Wikipedia

Carrier was put in a situation when the employer he stayed with after inventing the A/C changed their operating mode because of World War I. Seven young engineers pooled together their life savings of $32,600 to form the Carrier Engineering Corporation in New York on June 26, 1915. I think the modern air conditioner company would love a holiday named after Willis, and that's my only second thought in this modest proposal. While I like "Willis Carrier Day" as the name, perhaps Father of A/C Day would be better. I suggest that we pick a day close to what people regard as the first day of summer, near June 1st. When you start your air conditioner for the summer, honor the Father of the Air Conditioner. His birthday, November 26, is a day when Floridians may be the only people who would think of Willis. 

Small Space News Story Roundup 83

SpaceX Pulls in Starship Flight Test 13 to Next Thursday 

Perhaps you've heard that FT-13 was No Earlier Than (NET) July 25, two weeks from today, but I saw this evening that the latest schedule is next Thursday, July 16th, NET 6:45 PM EDT (2245 UTC)  The launch will be from the new pad at Starbase Boca Chica, Pad 2. 

The launch is being described as Suborbital on NextSpaceflight, implying that there will be a splashdown off the west coast of Australia. The mission is largely a response to the troubles encountered on FT-12. From their description of the mission. 

The upcoming flight will aim to complete similar objectives targeted on the previous flight test, which debuted the Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles, while also carrying next-generation Starlink V3 satellites for the first time.

Watch “Critical Path”, the latest episode in the ongoing Starship series that followed SpaceX engineers and technicians through the final days before launch of the first Starship V3.

The booster’s primary test objective will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn at an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America. There have been several modifications to hardware and software to address issues seen on the previous flight.

At stage separation on Flight 12, slight differences in engine startup on the ship caused the directional flip of the booster to be off by approximately 90 degrees. The startup sequence has been modified to be more robust to timing variability and more reliably flip in the desired direction, which is done to increase overall performance. After stage separation and the flip, the Super Heavy booster attempted its boostback burn. Five of its 33 engines experienced issues when attempting to re-light causing the boostback burn to end early. The Super Heavy on this upcoming flight has hardware modifications to improve re-light reliability along with updates to engine alarms and aborts to match the conditions seen in the multi-engine flight environment.

As was the case on FT-12, the SuperHeavy booster is expected to hover over the Gulf of America in the vicinity of Starbase before shutting the engines and splashing into the Gulf. 

An interesting topic on this launch is that this will be the first launch of Gen 3 Starlink satellites.  Being Starship and SuperHeavy, it's really surprising they only intend to deploy 20 of these next generation satellites.  

Starship Flight Test 12 takes to the air back on May 22nd. (Image credit: SpaceX)

German Rocket Builder sets probable August launch date

German rocket company Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) lost their first vehicle almost two years ago, while preparing for its first flight.

Almost two years after an RFA One first stage burst into flames during a static fire test, German rocket-builder Rocket Factory Augsburg is preparing for a second attempt at the rocket’s inaugural flight from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. The launch window will open on August 10, the Spaceport said in its announcement. 

The SaxaVord Spaceport didn't actually identify the specific operator, stating simply that it was “one of SaxaVord’s clients.” However, it did provide enough detail to identify Rocket Factory Augsburg as the unnamed customer.

Additionally, in April, Rocket Factory Augsburg announced that it was working toward a launch window opening on July 1. However, the company stressed that “there are uncertainties, and the schedule may evolve.” Now, it seems, there is less uncertainty.

In the rocket size scale, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Starship could carry the RFA One vehicle without sweating.

China is making progress

Making progress in catching up with SpaceX - and Space 2.0 

China recovered their first orbital booster on an offshore drone ship. 

The nation has recovered a rocket during an orbital launch for the first time ever, pulling off the feat during the Long March 10B's maiden liftoff on Friday (July 10). And that recovery was unique: The rocket's first stage nestled softly into a net-like structure carried by a ship at sea.

"This mission marks my country's first successful controlled recovery of a launch vehicle and the world's first network-based recovery of a launch vehicle," the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced via social media shortly after the launch. (Translation by Google.) "It signifies a historic breakthrough for my country in the field of reusable rocket technology and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of my country's space access capabilities." 

We don't know much about the Long March 10B, other than that it's 63 meters tall (about 207 feet) and the first stage burns kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, the same as the Falcon 9's Merlin engines. Unlike the Falcon 9, which uses the same propellant for the upper stage, the Long March's second stage uses LOX and liquid methane.  

As we're talking about dealing with China, which means the CCP, there aren't many details available. They say the launch carried a satellite and it successfully achieved "its predetermined orbit," and I'll accept that since there are no claims otherwise. 

The first stage of a Chinese Long March 10B rocket comes down for a landing at sea after successfully sending a satellite to orbit on July 10, 2026. (Image credit: CCTV)

I would like to know what that black smoke coming out of the top of the booster is, and if that's expected, though. 

Up until now, the Chinese launch sector has been working toward other booster landings and recoveries, but hasn't used any for missions like this. I consider this a probable success, and a major improvement. Don't forget we've seen documented situations of Chinese launches culminating in dropping the booster on populated areas. This one is nearly six years ago. 

Honestly, Booster reuse hasn't been as widely used around the industry as I expected it to be.  SpaceX is the obvious and clear leader. Yesterday's post on the 36th flight of B1062 posted that it was the 635th booster landing to date for SpaceX. New Glenn has had a couple of successful landings but hasn't reflown once - the booster that exploded on the launch pad at the end of May was going to be their first attempt. And New Glenn is the only other large vehicle that has attempted landing and reuse. Rocket Lab has landed some of their Electron boosters and done some reuse flights, but Electron lifts much smaller payloads than Falcon 9 does.

SpaceX has been a bit heavily guarding details on how much they save, but rumors go around that a flight they charge in the vicinity of $60 million for actually costs in the $10 to $15 million range. 

Our old friend set another spaceflight record again, this morning

Friend is kind of a wrong concept for inanimate objects, but after writing stories about booster B1067 for over five  years, I've started to feel like it's an old friend. The kind of friend you know you can always count on when you need something. 

B1067 set a new record for SpaceX this morning, with its 5:25 AM EDT (0925 UTC) launch of Starlink 10-42 mission. The record launch is the 36th flight for B1067, and if it seems like its last record flight wasn't long ago, you're exactly right. The record 35th flight was June 8, 31 days ago. 

While completely different sized ships, requiring completely different levels of work to prepare for a flight, the highest number of flights of a reusable ship was NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery. Discovery flew 39 times, and the one month turnaround between flights seems to imply that someone at SpaceX is following that record and wants to ensure that B1067 becomes the world leader in number of flights. If that's the case, four flights sets the new record, which could be by the end of November. Four months from now.

Booster 1067 soars near the Moon as seen from the Kennedy Space Center during the Starlink 10-42 mission on July 9, 2026. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now

B1067, began flying in June 2021 with the company’s 22nd Dragon flight as part of the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract with NASA. It went onto fly the Crew-3 and Crew-4 missions as well as 24 batches of Starlink satellites.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1067 landed on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’, positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 160th landing for this vessel and the 635th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

Miami-based company launches a nuclear reactor on Transporter-17

During the talk about the Transporter-17 mission out of Vandenberg SFB yesterday, what was probably the most technically interesting payload on the Rideshare mission wasn't mentioned at all. 

The satellite from Miami-based City Labs is named BOHR, short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability, and it launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission Tuesday alongside 80 other payloads. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket released the BOHR satellite into an orbit between 350 and 400 miles (nearly 600 km) in altitude. 

City Labs bills the BOHR mission as “the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and first nuclear CubeSat.” CubeSats are modest in scale, and images released by City Labs suggest BOHR is built on a “1U” CubeSat platform, a cubical design measuring about the same size as a softball. BOHR’s power source is a nuclear betavoltaic battery that generates electricity from the decay of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

It probably goes without saying that City Labs is rather proud of BOHR and talks it up by calling it “a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space” and  “BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables persistent, always-on payload operations that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life,” to quote Peter Cabauy, CEO of City Labs, in a statement. 

While this photo doesn't look to be as small as a softball, this the BOHR test cubesat system.

This is a test mission for City Labs, who plan to use the experimental NanoTritium power generator in demonstration mode to supply electricity to a payload onboard the BOHR CubeSat. 

The spacecraft itself uses conventional solar power for regular operations, the company said. Betavoltaic batteries are best suited for low-power applications that require a reliable, long-duration source of electricity. These use cases include remote terrestrial sensors—such as in undersea or polar locations—and instrumentation for secure communications. City Labs is also studying the use of its NanoTritium technology to power implantable medical devices. 

Those of us who live near the Cape have seen protestors for anything that can be considered nuclear powered and the BOHR module went through all the tests to clear it for flight. It's important to point out that the company’s betavoltaic power systems are small—in the nanowatt to microwatt range—far short of the electricity required to power a smartphone, much less a large spacecraft or a Moon base. 

BOHR was the first commercial nuclear mission to pass through the Federal Aviation Administration’s new nuclear launch approval process. The FAA authorized City Labs to launch the BOHR mission last September.

[T]he BOHR satellite carries just a tiny amount of radioactive material, and the tritium isotope decays more quickly than plutonium or uranium. It’s also less toxic than other well-known nuclear fuels. “Tritium emits a weak form of radiation, a low-energy beta particle similar to an electron. The tritium radiation does not travel very far in air and cannot penetrate the skin,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says on its website.

The small amount of power the BOHR reactor can generate underlines the idea that this must be the first step in the development of flight-rated reactors that produce orders of magnitude more power than this one - millions to billions of times more power. How big those steps can be point toward how long it will be before reactors capable of generating usable numbers of watts can be used.

It's a Pathfinder for future reactor systems that will be tested and used in space. 

Fire detectors, 3D printers and more on SpaceX rideshare mission

Early this morning, 12:12 AM PDT at Vandenberg Space Force Base, SpaceX launched one of their Transporter Rideshare missions into a sun-synchronous orbit (as Transporter launches tend to). This flight, labelled Transporter 17, carried 81 different payloads. The flight was carried by booster B1097 on it's 11th flight, so still an "almost new" booster, and landed on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship 8-1/2 minutes after liftoff. 

It's an interesting mix of payloads 

The Transporter-17 mission continued SpaceX’s model of launching dozens of satellites from companies around the world. Once again, the majority of the payloads hitching a ride on this Falcon 9 rocket were manifested by Exolaunch, which has placed satellites on every Transporter mission going back to the start of the Smallsat Rideshare Program in 2020.

On this flight, Exolaunch was responsible for 49 out of the 81 satellites, representing 20 international customers.

An interesting set of payloads was a trio of Earth Observing satellites for the Earth Fire Alliance, which aims to put up a constellation of fire monitoring satellites aimed at tracking wild fires and helping to control them. 

The Earth Fire Alliance stated on its website that it aims for a constellation of more than 20 satellites in low Earth orbit between 2027 and 2029, allowing it to have a roughly one hour revisit rate on wildfires with an ability to detect fires as small as five by five meters. It aims to ultimately have more than 50 satellites in orbit.

“This story is about living with fire: learning from it, adapting to it, harnessing it, and building resilience around it,” the nonprofit wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Inspired by a species of bird that has evolved alongside fire, our Black Kite Trio (BK-3) mission reflects Earth Fire Alliance’s vision of helping people, ecosystems, and communities confidently coexist with fire.”

This is the trio of satellites after being posed for a photograph between final test and loading onto the Transporter carrier.

A trio of FireSat satellites, which were manufactured by Muon Space on behalf of nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance. Image Credit: Earth Fire Alliance

Other Exolaunch-manifested payloads include four of Iceye’s synthetic aperture radar satellites, Bro-31, the first of Unseenlabs’ second-generation satellites designed for space-based radio detection; and Leonav-1, the United Arab Emirates first low Earth orbit PNT (position, navigation, and timing) satellite.

One that caught my eye is they put a 3D printer in orbit. 

Polish-German manufacturing company, Orbital Matter, also flew its Replicator-2 satellite on this mission. It focuses on the capability of 3D printing materials in the vacuum of space.

“It has 4 of our Printer Assisted Deployment Systems (P.A.D.S) onboard, 2 of which will be used to deploy our custom in-house designed foldable solar array. The other two will be standalone printers, one of which is deploying a secret antenna payload,” wrote Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter CEO, on LinkedIn.

“The goal for this mission is to not only show that 3D printing is possible directly in the harsh space environment but also to show that it can be used for deployment right now! This is the latest in a string of missions focused on advancing our printing technology, with each mission getting us closer to the target of large scale and cheap solar power in orbit.”

Image credit: Robert Inhnatisin on LinkedIn

'Acceleration without fuel' - revolutionary thruster aces first tests on orbit

News broke on Space.com this afternoon about successful tests of the first of its kind thruster that uses superconducting magnets to move a satellite in space. 

Zenno Astronautics, a spin-off from the University of Auckland, has flown its new "Supertorquer" system on the Mira satellite built by California-based start-up Impulse Space. The tests began shortly after Mira's launch in November last year aboard the SpaceX Transporter 12 mission and saw the shoebox-size device perform with flying colors, Zenno Astronautics CEO and founder Max Arshavsky, told Space.com.

Superconducting magnetics can convert solar energy input directly into momentum in space, by interacting with the Earth's magnetic field, so the solar energy input takes the place of liquid fuels carried for onboard thrusters. The problem with this approach has been that the hardware to do it was too big, complex, and heavy to fit on a satellite. 

"It's a technology that allows a spacecraft to not tumble violently in space and point in the right direction," Arshavsky said. "The unit has multiple super-conducting magnets that are positioned in different axes. When we power up the magnets, they generate a magnetic field, which interacts with Earth's magnetic field, and because we can control the magnetic field on the satellite, we can control the way in which it turns with respect to Earth."

Shoebox size? Like this? I'll guess that's about a foot along the horizontal axis and around 4" on the vertical. It wouldn't work on some really small satellites, but maybe that's not the target mission. For now.

Zenno Astronautics' Supertorquer attitude control system uses superconducting magnets powered by solar energy to generate thrust aboard satellites. The system was recently tested in orbit. (Image credit: Zenno Astronautics)

If you're familiar with any of the demonstrations of superconductivity like I've seen, you might be thinking, "doesn't that require super cold liquid to soak the wires in?" The wires have to be super, single digit-Kelvin temperatures, but liquids aren't required. Nor does it depend on the environment where it's operating (the satellite) be that cold. 

The unit housing the superconducting magnets is wrapped in layers of insulation and fitted with a heat pump that removes all the excess heat from the system. Every time the satellite needs a push, the superconducting coils power up, drawing energy from a battery charged by the satellite's solar panels. 

Superconducting magnetics are a potentially huge field, Arshavsky talks about using magnetics to make Earth to Mars missions more reasonable. The details there aren't clear to me, but I've never studied things like the solar magnetic field, that I know we live in and are affected by but without important details. CEO Arshavsky has been looking at other applications. 

"Once you have super-conducting technology available in space, you can then create very strong magnetic fields and you can use them for various use cases," he said. "You can accelerate things in space very fast or change the trajectory of a satellite completely without fuel."
...
Powerful superconducting magnets could also provide a solution to the problem of cancer-causing cosmic radiation that explorers will encounter during stays on the moon or trips deeper into space.

"When we go to space, we get hurt by radiation, and these superconducting magnets can create umbrellas of magnetic fields around the spacecraft to protect the interior," said Arshavsky. "So we can shield people in space from that radiation."

Zenno Astronautics company plans to fly a larger demonstrator on an undisclosed mission later this year.

Yeah, he's a CEO, so I automatically figure that some percentage is too wishful and it's not all easy or maybe not even doable at all, but it's some pretty interesting stuff.